by JF Smith
“Fate...” he said, turning to face Gully directly, “fate has protected and kept the bloodline for all this time until it could be reunited with us.”
The crowd erupted with cheers, which caused Gully to flush red in the face yet again and stare down at his feet in embarrassment. The very feet that were now wearing his father’s boots.
Exoutur stepped forward and said for all to hear, “That would explain Ollon’s impatience to wait. He had good reason to perform the seal as early as he did, to ensure the continuation of the line!”
“Yes, Exoutur,” said the patriarch, “The puzzle starts to fit!”
Gully leaned towards the patriarch and whispered, “Goodsir, I must speak to you in private. All... this... cannot be the case.”
The patriarch smiled at him again and said, “My dear Di’taro, if you will allow me the use of that name since I now have a distaste for the name Gully, the very last thing in the world we are trying to do is mock you or make you feel ill at home. What we wish for you is precisely the opposite. But you are right... we should talk more on this matter.”
The patriarch addressed everyone and said, “This night is a special night for us as a people, but Gully and I must speak some more, privately. Exoutur, you and Encender should join us, as well as you, Raybb.”
Gully was surprised to find that he wished again that Gallun and Gellen were present. He would find their company a comfort right now when his head was spinning and on the verge of splitting open from all that had happened in the span of only a few days.
The crowd dispersed, talking loudly and animatedly amongst themselves at the turn of events that evening.
Gully looked over and saw the men waiting on him. It came as a shock to see even Encender now present, humbled and attentive before Gully. But Gully flashed angrily when he saw the patriarch offering his chair to him.
“Absolutely not, patriarch!” snapped Gully. “I will not sit in your chair and leave you to struggle with an uncomfortable log! Take your own seat, or I will quit this camp immediately!”
The patriarch smiled again and said, “I suspected that would be your response, but I wanted to show you at least the honor of offering it to you.”
Gully grumbled, “Do not offer it again.”
They all sat down and fell into an uncomfortable silence, all seeming to wait for Gully to be the first to speak.
Gully gritted his teeth and then said, “I’m lower than spit on a cobble and worth less!” He even glanced helplessly towards Encender, expecting agreement from at least him if not anyone else around the fire. The patriarch’s elder son showed no emotion at the comment, and instead ducked his head down without meeting Gully’s eyes. “I am not a king!” said Gully, his voice tinged with anger. “Or... or some... confounded emperor! Not even the emperor of a tattered and wandering ‘empire’ of only a few hundred people!”
Gully reined in his anger and drew his hand across his forehead to wipe the sweat forming there. He said more gently, “I’m sorry. I mean no offense by that, and I do not intend to speak heartlessly towards a group of people that have been more than kind to me.”
“That... that I’ve grown quite fond of,” he mumbled.
The patriarch’s smile would not budge from his face. “I know that you are shocked and confused by all of this. It is a shock to all of us, I assure you. I am shocked to learn that the bloodline has survived in secret for all this time, and that conjures are still in existence. But you must understand, I am also greatly comforted to find this out. The very sight of the pendant hanging around your neck, in its rightful place, brings to me a joy and a hope that I have never experienced in my entire lifetime of wandering. To think that I lived to see this moment is a gift with no equal in my life!”
“Here, here!” called Raybb loudly. And even when Gully glanced at Encender, the man that would have killed him met his gaze and nodded his agreement curtly.
“You must listen to me, though...” said the patriarch. “Like this or not... prepared for it or not, you now hold a very special and honored place among us as a people. Not just the Mercher clan, mind you, but among every remaining Balmorean that exists anywhere. You give us hope that we can survive as a people after all.”
Gully shook his head in confusion. “I do not know how to give you what you want from me!”
“It is enough that you are here! That you are among us! There is no additional duty for you to take on, especially given what you already bear. We do not ask that you suddenly take on as the leader of us as a people. Or act as some spoiled king among us, since that is on your mind these last few days. All we ask is that you be yourself among us. Your presence makes us all feel heartened, steeled against the trials to come. Your presence, whom you are... makes us feel less like the gypsy clan of Merchers... and more and more like Balmoreans again. Things are happening, Gully Snipe! Things are very much happening!”
Gully held his head in his hands and tried to think through all that was going through his mind, but his thoughts merely careened around in a hopeless melee.
He finally said, “I doubt that I have any choice in this. But I will at least ask this... treat me as you did before. No more kneeling and all of that. Do not now begin to set me apart if we are to be in this together.”
“Agreed,” said the patriarch. He stood and said, “We should celebrate tonight! Given the danger that faces us because of this greedy and traitorous Domo Regent, we will have little other chance to do so!”
They all began to go about making preparations for a celebration, but Gully was unsure how to best help.
He was about to follow after Exoutur and Raybb to offer them assistance when he spied Wyael hiding behind a tree and watching him shyly.
Gully motioned him over to the fire while the patriarch spoke to a few people about the feast. Wyael moved slowly, but finally came and sat on the ground near Gully reluctantly.
“Is something wrong, Wyael?”
The patriarch finished speaking to the others and watched the interchange between them.
Wyael shook his head in answer, but still refused to look up at Gully.
“Earlier, you practically knocked me down in the woods. Now you will not so much as look me in the eye. How am I to believe that something has not changed?”
Wyael finally looked up nervously at him, his eyes large. He said, “Is it true, sir? Are you really a... a king now?”
Gully sighed very deeply. He shrugged and said, “What makes a man a king, Wyael? In truth, I do not know how to answer.”
The patriarch, leaning on his staff and watching the two of them, said quietly, “Indeed. A very good question, indeed, Di’taro.”
Gully patted on the log next to him and said to the boy, “Come up here and sit by me.”
Wyael stood and sat next to Gully as requested. Gully leaned over to him and whispered into his ear, “You can keep the secret with me. I’m still just a thief, despite all this mule-rot about kings and empires! I will treat you as I always have if you will treat me as you always have! Is it agreed?”
Wyael grinned and whispered back in Gully’s ear, “Will you still teach me what you promised earlier?”
Gully laughed and whispered back to him, “As long as you keep your end of the bargain, I swear to you that I will!”
Wyael nodded vigorously in agreement, and Gully pulled the boy into a hug.
“May I have the fox back?” asked Wyael.
“My fox? My Pe’taro? You only just gave it to me!” said Gully, hurt.
“For only a short time, sir! Your father was a conjure and I want to paint him the right color, and then I will return him to you! I wish I knew a real conjure like you! We have bedtime stories about what powerful fighters they are because they can appear and disappear so fast that their opponent is fighting no more than smoke!”
Gully nodded and took the fox from the pocket of his surcoat and stared at it in his hands. He marveled at the thought of his father being a bedtime story hero in r
eal life and then gave it to Wyael to be repainted.
~~~~~
By the time the feast had ended, Gully took his leave and told everyone he was going to sleep. He entered Gallun’s and Gellen’s shack to do so, but after trying, he found that sleep would not come. He lay for a while, turned one way and then the other on the mat, then finally got up and went outside to sit by the fire again.
The rest of the camp was tucked away for the night except for the increased patrols far outside the camp’s borders, and Gully was able to stare into the fire in solitude and think through everything that was spinning around in his mind and keeping him awake.
He wondered if it was really possible. Could it be that my father really was the last of some sort of a royal line? Or is all this but the deluded and wishful thinking of a people that face extinction?
Gully picked up a stick, and with his elbow on his knee and his chin resting on his hand, he poked a few times at the fire. The smoke rose up and through the trees until it vanished.
What would it be like to dream an animal and then make it real from the smoke of a fire? Could my father really do as the patriarch said? Could he vanish and reappear elsewhere on no more than a tendril of smoke? The idea would have been absurd had he not seen so many other things equally as absurd in the last few days, but which were very real.
Gully sighed as each moment brought only more questions that his father was not there to answer.
Every day he longed more and more for the man that had taught him so well, and yet, it seemed, taught him nothing at the same time.
He thought back to the dream, the dream of when he had gone to fetch water for the first time, only to find his father behind him. Gully wondered... if he had turned around but a second sooner, would he have seen his father appear behind him from nothing more than a puff of smoke?
He wondered at what an empire like Balmorea was like at its height, an entire empire filled with people and animals together. The pictures in his imagination were so fanciful as to be preposterous, and he had to remind himself again of the people in the camp all around him. People, and animals, with whom he had spent all night feasting and dancing. And telling stories of his father and how he grew up, and the pendant, too.
And now, through some unbelievable coincidence, he was considered the blood heir of the most powerful family to ever rule over their ancient empire. The weak mead from the celebration and the wild thoughts made his head hurt.
The feast had been wonderful, even as modest as it was for the limited means of the Mercher clan. Everyone was fascinated by his stories, and he would find himself telling them to groups here or there — people, foxes, bears, hawks, wolves, panthers, owls, lynxes, leopards, and more, all mixed together. And they all wanted for Gully to show them the pendant, the cut crystal of two overlapping circles inside a larger one. It even brought some of the older clan members to tears at its sight.
The only one that seemed shy and awkward about all of it was Encender. Encender had hesitantly asked Gully to affirm for him whom his father was, to describe the man, and Gully’s answers made the patriarch’s son even more uncomfortable. Probably rightly so, Gully decided at the time, given how the man had tried to murder him when they had first met. At least Encender seemed to be withholding his animosity towards him, and Gully was glad of that.
Abella Jule was timid as well, but mostly only because that seemed to be her nature all the time. She was very curious about the pendant, however, almost entranced by it. Gully had held it out for her to take and examine, but she resolutely refused, seeming to feel as if doing so would be some sort of transgression she was not willing to make.
His favorite part of the evening was a display of balmor fighting. Raybb, in both human and bear form, fought honorably, but very aggressively, with the black panther transmute that Gully had seen on his previous stay. The panther, named Aalehvan, was almost as big and strong as Gallun and Gellen were. Neither used weapons, but it was a remarkable sight to see both use their natural abilities to their best advantage. Raybb was as one perfectly coordinated fighter consisting of both bear and human. And Aalehvan would shift between panther and human form so fast as to become a blur at times. Each, without the benefit of or need for weapons, was perfectly deadly nonetheless. It made Gully very glad that Raybb had not decided to fight with him on their first meeting after all. Raybb narrowly won when his bear half managed to pin Aalehvan while his human half kept Aalehvan’s panther teeth from inflicting damage.
Through the evening, he found that the patriarch, and Exoutur and Raybb, had reverted back to treating him the same as before they had discovered his birthright. Which was to say they treated him very warmly, but hardly any different from any other member of the clan. It was a balm to him to be treated the way he had been before.
As he sat remembering, Gully caught a glimpse of one of the members of the clan, an owl, fly from one tree to another while it was on patrol. The bird dipped his head to Gully and flew on to another tree. His eyes caught Gallun’s and Gellen’s shack in the flickering firelight as the owl flew past. He wondered how the two whose home he shared would react to all of the day’s revelations. Even after having the entire clan fussing over him all through the feast, he found he missed having the two wolves nearby. He was disappointed that he would not be able to see them before he left again.
The idea of leaving the Merchers, and why he had to leave made him feel selfish for lying to the prince and feasting all night while Thaybrill was alone in an unfamiliar cabin and probably scared witless about what was going to happen to him. The feeling of kinship with the poor prince that had begun to grow seeped through him, reminding him of the responsibility he still had towards him. He poked at the fire a few more times and thought some about how to best help the prince.
Getting the prince back into Lohrdanwuld would not be too difficult when the time came, and he had been honest when he told Thaybrill that he did not want to risk it until he had spoken to Roald. Gully decided, though, that getting the prince back into the city was all he needed to accomplish. If the Domo Regent and the Lord Marshal had publicly stated that the prince had been abducted like so many others right out from within the city walls, then having the prince show up in Bonedown Square and accuse the two of them, and Chelders veBasstrolle, of being behind the disappearances would bring the conspiracy to its knees very quickly. In a matter of hours, there would be arrests, and then in a matter of days there would be hangings. And then it would all be finished and everything would be back to the way it should be.
And he need not be involved in that at all.
That plan nagged at the corner of Gully’s mind for some reason, but he couldn’t quite decide why. He finally let go and decided that this plan would be the best, and he felt somewhat better about the coming days.
He stood to go back into the shack to go to sleep. As long as the patriarch’s beloved fate was done with its surprises, then all would be well and finished, and Gully could resume his search for his father.
As he settled back onto his mat to sleep, he did something he had never done before. He begged that Vasahle would be kind to him and bring him dreams of his father and his fox, to let him feel like he was with them once again.
Chapter 20 — The Storm From Beyond The Mountains
Gully trudged through the forest after he left the next morning, wending his way north from the Mercher camp so that he would emerge onto the East End Road and then follow it back to Lohrdanwuld. After discussing his plan with the patriarch, they agreed that this was the best route in case the soldiers Gully had attacked were watching the South Pass Road for the prince or anyone else traveling by it. The patriarch had been insistent on sending a couple of Mercher fighters with him for his protection, at least to the western edge of the forest, but Gully stubbornly refused such an escort. The camp needed protection and sentries far more than he needed guards, and it took several minutes of unyielding discussion to convince the patriarch of this.
&nb
sp; When he departed the camp this time, every single member of the clan came to see him off, despite the drizzle of rain that had started. Such a show began to make him uncomfortable and he got away from the camp as quickly as he could.
By the time he was almost an hour from the Mercher camp, the rain was falling steadily and he began to hear the deep rumble of thunder getting nearer.
Ahead of him, Gully spotted a tree, very tall, but standing alone in the forest. Above, he could see the sparkling, glittering white light gathering in the rain clouds overhead. He approached the tree just as the blue white light of lightning poured from the cloud. It whipped and jerked as it slowly meandered through the sky until it finally reached the top of the tree. It slipped and splintered into so many fingers of pure light that crept along the branches and down the trunk towards the ground. By the time he reached the tree, the brilliant tendrils of the lightning were just above him. He reached out and placed his hand on the trunk and the lightning grabbed onto his hand and arm, caressing it with its warm, tingling touch. It felt warm and almost tickled as it slipped along his arm and down his side. The final, fading threads of the lightning spread out along the ground a short distance from the base of the tree.
Gully had seen lightning from a distance in times past, but had never managed to touch it. Roald had said before that lightning was another form of the star-send from ancestors sending their favors, sending bravery and forthrightness, to those below who would gather it in their hands. He didn’t believe that, but still it was something to feel it for himself.
The lightning dissipated, and all that was left was the feeling of warmth in the tree where Gully’s hand still lay. It certainly left behind a feeling of peace and contentment. He felt the trunk of the tree a moment more and then resumed his journey out of the forest.