by JF Smith
The prince’s face turned determined, and also grateful. “Thank you, Bayle. I do appreciate what you have done for me.”
He studied Gully’s face for a moment, his face clouding briefly before he brushed it away and added, “I thought all was lost after you promised to free me in the city and then disappeared. I thought the next time I stood up from that cart, I would die. Thank you, again.”
Gully decided he would withhold further opinion of the prince, but he was feeling a little better about having rescued him.
Without even a look back at the two kidnappers, Gully plunged into the thick brush of the woods on the south side of the road, and the prince followed immediately behind him.
~~~~~
For hours, Gully and Thaybrill trudged carefully through the woods. Gully worried that the kidnappers may free themselves quickly and come after them. As a result of that fear, he chose to avoid the road entirely, but this slowed their progress. Also, Gully had to be careful on behalf of the prince, keeping an eye on where he walked and warning him to stay away from soft spots that could swallow a person and leave no trace behind.
Thaybrill mis-stepped only one time, sinking to his knees in a bog and starting to panic before Gully could grab hold of his arms and slowly pull him from the mire. A few minutes after that, they had to stop again as Thaybrill began to complain of his wet, muck-filled boots and how they rubbed uncomfortably against his feet. Gully was a little annoyed by this, but he knew it would only get worse, so he offered Thaybrill his own boots to wear instead. When Thaybrill asked what shoes Gully would wear, Gully replied he would go without, and told the prince how he had spent much of his youth without shoes in the woods, especially in the summertime.
When Thaybrill pulled the offered boots on, he was very pleased to find they fit him just as well as they had fit Gully. He seemed worried about Gully going without, and Gully said that there was probably an old pair at his cabin he could use instead once they arrived.
At several points early in their journey, Gully would stop and insist on utter silence while he listened carefully, checking that no one had managed to follow them. He knew it was all but impossible for anyone to do so given the path that they had taken, but with the company he had with him, the risks were now higher than ever and he would leave nothing to chance that he did not have to.
The rest of their time walking they spent telling each other what they knew of the crimes. Gully explained, a little apprehensively, to the beleaguered prince how he had he not been taken to be killed when he had been rescued. The prince almost went into shock when Gully told him that he would probably have had his tongue cut out that evening and that then he would have been sold into slavery in Maqara. It took some reassurances and coaxing to get the prince to resume their walk after hearing the cruelty that had been planned for him.
It got even worse, though, when Gully explained how that same fate was what had befallen all of the people of Iisen that had disappeared over the years.
Gully continued walking as he made the comment, but then turned and looked back when he realized how silent it had become. He found Thaybrill standing still a distance behind, his eyes glazed and distant.
The horror of what so many people had suffered hit the prince so hard that Gully had to go to him and insist they sit for a while. They sat on a log and Gully offered a couple of apples to the prince that he had taken from the cart while he tried to encourage him. They ate in silence and Gully watched the prince sting from the guilt at the cruel greed and treachery of his own court and advisors. He watched Thaybrill’s shock at the suffering visited on so many citizens of the realm, all for the increased fortunes of a very few. He sat quietly so the prince could better shoulder the burden that a single day had brought him.
When they resumed, Gully explained how he came to know about the plot and the people involved. He left out his own career as a thief, but explained that he came across a letter between Chelders veBasstrolle and someone whose initials were K. D. that described the slave trade in disguised terms. He told of how he had recently freed two men that had been kidnapped and only then understood the truth of what the letter was describing. He skirted around the truth some more and did not mention that the two men he freed were of the “feared” gypsy people in the northern woods, instead saying only how they had run away in fear. He related how he realized that the robbers holding the men captive were members of the Kingdom Guard disguising their identities.
Some of the aggravation Gully had felt at how overly indulged and entitled the mincing prince had behaved was softened when he saw how concerned the prince truly was for the abducted, and how appreciative he was for what Gully had done to fight these crimes and help the people who had been victimized by them.
Thaybrill took his turn and told Gully how he wound up as one more of the kidnapped that very day. He told Gully of the Domo Regent’s desire for the alignment with Maqara, the failed engagement, the Domo’s anger and frustration when he failed to win the Maqarans over. He told Gully how the Domo had left the royal party to meet with veBasstrolle as soon as they were back on Iisen land, almost certainly, he now felt, to plan his abduction. He finished by telling how the Domo Regent had lured him to the royal orchards that very day to be assaulted by the Lord Marshal and carried off to his doom.
The prince finished his story, and Gully could hear the despair in his voice again. The both of them fell into silence as they walked, each lost in his own melancholy thoughts and unsure what move should come next. Gully was certain that the men at the heart of these crimes would do any desperate thing now to keep the prince silenced, and there was no way to know whom to trust and whom not to trust among the royal court and noble families.
At least they had bought themselves some time to think through it.
By the time they arrived at the cabin, they were both very tired and Gully was glad to have an excuse not to dwell on it for a little while.
He held out his hand and welcomed the prince to the cabin where he had been raised. “It is a humble sort of hospitality to offer you, and not what you are accustomed to, Prince Thaybrill, but it will be absolutely safe. I can give you perfect assurance that no one knows the location of this cabin and no one has ever stumbled across it.”
The prince looked at it as he wiped the sweat from his brow. “You grew up here? With your parents?” asked Thaybrill.
“Yes, well, with my father. I never knew my mother.”
“You had a father...” said Thaybrill distantly. “Then it is already a far richer home than what I ever had. I grew up under a roof with traitors and connivers that slowly plotted to take the kingdom for their own evil ends. All the while, I believed in them and trusted them. I thought I was raised by people that actually had my interests at heart, and it was naught but a pit of vipers the whole time!”
Gully listened to the prince, his hand touching at the presence of his father’s pendant under his tunic without a conscious thought. It was strange to think that the person before him, hardly any different from himself, was to have been crowned king in only a few days. In his mind, he had always seen the prince as being the worst of the nobles, drunk with power and utterly unconcerned about the people beneath him, but this prince, who felt so similar to himself, was not the typical nobleman he had made him out to be.
Gully’s first order of business was to find some shoes that he could wear. He had no extra shoes of his own, though. The only other pair of boots in his cabin were the extra boots his father had left behind. Gully had kept them for the day his father returned, for going on ten years now. Now he found himself in need of them.
He pulled them out of the chest he had kept them in and looked at them blankly for a long time.
Thaybrill said cheerfully, “Oh, you do have extra boots after all!”
Gully responded with an inattentive “hmm...” as he stared at his father’s boots on the dirt floor in front of him. It felt wrong, but he slowly pulled them on. He was surprised to find tha
t they almost fit him. His father, whom he loved and idolized so much, who always seemed so large to him, had boots that now were only insignificantly too large on Gully.
“Are you well?” asked Thaybrill, breaking Gully away from his thoughts.
“Huh? Oh, yes, I’m fine,” said Gully. He looked around and said, “Well, I suppose we need to prepare for a stay, shouldn’t we? First, let me look at that knot on the back of your head. I believe it is still bleeding a little.”
The prince allowed Gully to examine the back of his head. The wound was still a little sticky with blood, so Gully went outside and looked under the eaves of the cabin and gathered a clump of cobwebs. He told the prince to hold them against the wound until the bleeding stopped and they could then wash it.
After that, Gully set about making the cabin habitable for a few days. The prince mostly watched, which began to irritate Gully yet again. Gully stoked a small fire in the fireplace, then went and fetched some fresh water. He also gathered some wild peppers, spring onions, and squash that were growing nearby for dinner and set a trap to perhaps catch a rabbit or one of the small piglets that lived amongst the bogs.
While he worked and the prince rested himself, he wondered what exactly to do next. He knew he needed to see Roald before anything else. But taking the prince back into the city would be reckless. If Thaybrill was spotted by someone who was a part of the conspiracy, they would be in serious danger and all could be lost too easily.
When they were done eating, Gully was ready to fall into his bed. The prince, though, had already assumed he would have choice of the beds, and had taken Gully’s. Gully, too tired to be stern enough to remind the prince that he was a guest, did not try to correct him. It bothered Gully for the minor presumptuousness on the part of the prince, but it also bothered him because he would now be sleeping in his father’s bed, something he had never done.
Just as Gully was about to disrobe and crawl into his father’s bed to sleep, Thaybrill stopped him.
“Bayle, I very much need to pray to my father tonight. With all that has happened and all that I have learned, I must have time for this,” begged the prince.
Gully wanted to tell the prince to go outside and pray all he wanted, but he hesitated. Then he realized what the prince was really asking. The trees were so thick over the cabin that the prince would not be able to see the sky, and Gully knew that Thaybrill would want to see his father’s star to be able to pray in full faith.
He rubbed his eyes a few times and pulled his tunic back on. He said, “There is a place not too far where we can go.” He looked out of the window to check again and added, “The light of the laughing moon is very bright right now to light our way, but you must stay with me exactly, no wandering.”
“I will not wander, Bayle. Believe me, I will not wander,” said Thaybrill.
Gully led the prince through the woods. The frogs and crickets sang their songs of night and the sparkflies were out in abundance in the humid air of the Ghellerweald. The prince, who had seen no more than a few sparkflies before, was amazed at how many there were this deep in the woods.
Before long, they arrived at the small meadow, Gully’s favorite one from his childhood. He told the prince, “The meadow is safe. There are no dangerous bogs in it and the field is covered in the soft leaves of spring hail. I spent many days of my youth here with my father. Come, there’s a rock near the center from which you should be able to see most of the sky.”
“Is this where you come to pray to your mother and father?” asked Thaybrill as they crossed into the center of the meadow.
Gully responded sullenly, the same way as always when asked this question, “’Twould be pointless. My father is still alive.”
Gully settled off to the side of the rock while Thaybrill knelt and looked up to the Trine Range constellation to pray. Thaybrill communed with his father and ancestors, and Gully watched indifferently at the twinkling of the stars that filled the bright sky. Vasahle made her way across, chasing to catch her fatter sister in the west.
Gully played idly with the pendant around his neck and thought back on his father, Ollon. He thought of how they spent many days in that field — him, his father, and Pe’taro. Knowing now that the games he had played with the fox were really games played with his father made the ache from his father’s absence burn much more brightly. He hoped his father was still alive somewhere, and that one day he would make it home from wherever he was so that he could be welcomed back with everything Gully had to offer.
He also thought of his stay with the Merchers. He had not mentioned them to Thaybrill because of his promise, but his own mind thought back over these remarkable people, almost gone now. His mind also caught on the words of the patriarch, and he wondered again about his real parents. He wondered what happened to them, if they had been kidnapped as well, and if that was how Ollon came to be his father instead.
He refused to let himself dwell on it for long, though. His father was Ollon, and Ollon had loved him with everything he had, and Gully needed none other than him.
“Tell me something you remember of your father, Bayle. What sort of man was he?” said a whisper.
Gully had not even realized Thaybrill had finished praying and was sitting on the rock and gazing at him interestedly instead.
Gully couldn’t bring himself to talk about the times with his father in the field. Those memories were not to waste and give away to others. He thought for a moment to find something to share with the man next to him, who had had the luxury of everything except any family.
“He was a large man, with dark hair and a beard. But he... he loved me very much and taught me... almost... everything he knew.”
Gully felt a pang at the things of which his father had not had time to teach him, things he wished so much they had been able to share together. The happy face of Pe’taro came to his memory again and almost choked him up.
“I remember... I remember...” mumbled Gully. An almost-forgotten memory flooded back into his mind, one that suddenly made more sense if his father truly had been a balmor.
“He was strong, and smart, but very loving towards me. I remember there was a time when a wolf came to this part of the woods and we saw him a few times. It concerned my father greatly for my safety, and yet I remember he was strangely reluctant to trap or kill the wolf,” related Gully, his voice soft. His eyes strayed to the sparkflies gently wending in and out of the trees at the edge of his meadow.
“My father would not let me outside unless he was with me, but the wolf grew bolder and bolder. We had a pet fox that even chased it off a few times, if you can imagine that.”
“You had a pet fox? One brave enough to chase a wolf?! That is a most remarkable thing, Bayle!” exclaimed the prince.
Gully thought as he scratched at his palm for a moment, not even remotely as remarkable as whom the fox was in truth! In his mind, he could feel Pe’taro’s soft smoke-gray fur around him as they snuggled in the sun in the middle of the meadow that was now dark around him. He lay back on the rock and stared up as the tender memory of happier days flowed back through him.
“Oh, uh, yes... the fox was very intelligent, and brave, too, to chase after a wolf,” he said. “Eventually, seeing how aggressive the wolf had become, my father could avoid it no longer. He resolved that he had to kill it. It took three of my father’s throwing knives and perfect aim to bring the animal down and end its life. Once dead, I... I remember my father cradling it in his arms and crying miserably. Killing it upset him terribly, and I remember the tears in his eyes for days after.”
“It all—” Gully was about to say that “it all made sense now” but stopped himself. Instead, he stroked at the pendant beneath his tunic and began again in a painful whisper, “It all was so long ago...”
He now understood. His father would be reluctant to kill any animal that might become one with a balmor-familiar. Perhaps it could have even been the familiar of a balmor bound by silver and cut off from it as a
result. He remembered even Pe’taro moping around the cabin for days after. And if his father and Pe’taro were sad, then Gully was too.
Thaybrill listened, and then said quietly, longingly, “I am at a loss to even imagine what it would be like to have real family, people not plotting to drive a dagger into your backbone at a carefully chosen opportunity. You are very lucky to have been born whom you are, Bayle.”
Gully continued staring straight up into the sparkling sky. Without even thinking, he replied, “My father used to tell me that we are all born somebody, but whom we choose to be is all that matters, Prince Thaybrill.”
Chapter 18 — The Conjure
“You cannot!” cried Thaybrill, his face turning as white as milk. “They are all in this against me! He will finish what you prevented the others from doing!”
“No, no. You must listen to me, Prince Thaybrill, this is the best way!” said Gully, his hands up and trying to calm the anxious prince.
“I do not trust any of them!”
“But you trust me, do you not?” asked Gully.
“Yes, Bayle, I do,” said Thaybrill, calming slightly. “You are the one person in all the kingdom that I feel, strangely, but perhaps not so strangely under the circumstances, like I know and can fully trust. Even more than what the past day would allow, if that somehow could make sense.”
“Let me explain,” said Gully as he went back to picking at the roasted rabbit they were having for breakfast. He waved a finger at Thaybrill’s own plate to get the prince to resume eating his own breakfast as well.
“Remember I mentioned a foster family that raised me in Lohrdanwuld? The guard that I will speak to and bring back, he is my foster brother, and in so many ways, a true brother.” Gully put a rabbit bone back down on his plate and added, “More brother than I deserve, in truth. But he is a true swordsman, honest and valiant. He was horrified to learn of the crimes of his fellow guards and the Noblesir veBasstrolle, and will be even more horrified to know of what has been done to you. We will need people like Roald whom we can trust, Thaybrill. It is the only way we will bring the crimes of the Domo Regent to light and make him pay.”