by JF Smith
The Archbishop began to ask the same questions again, and Gully’s mind sank into itself. He saw, repeating over and over, the last glimpse of Mariealle’s hair, the red on her throat, as she fell with hand outstretched.
There was an additional commotion, which Gully ignored, when several more loyal swordsmen arrived, saw Prince Thaybrill with their own eyes, and were given assignments by Dunnhem. For Gully, it was all noise and motion in the corner of his eye as he ignored it and sank deeper into his despair.
At one point, while several of the guards were conferring with one another, Thaybrill placed his arm around Gully’s shoulder and said into his ear sympathetically, “I am so very sorry, Bayle. I know you feel as if you went over that wall with her, or that you wish you had. She will be remembered as a heroine of the realm, one who gave her life to defend the safety of the Iisendom.”
Gully closed his eyes and tried to hold the tears back while Thaybrill sat quietly with him.
The next thing Gully knew, he heard a sharp voice almost shouting at him. “Ho there, Bayley boy!! Yeh got yerself caught up this time, aye! Here ye are, caught up!”
“No, Almonee,” said Gully lifelessly as he saw her pointing at him and grinning a toothless grin.
“Bah! Here ye be!” she said, smacking her lips with a crazed glee.
The Archbishop interrupted her, “Good Bayle, I am much vexed by the words of the Domo Regent. He is not one to take giddy flights of imagination, confusing people and seeing ghosts, as he would seem to have done tonight. It simply is not in his character to do so. Thaybrill tells me you grew up in the Ghellerweald with your father, is that not true?”
“Yes, it’s true,” said Gully with little interest.
“What of your mother?”
“I do not know whom my mother is.”
“But you lived with your father until he disappeared when you were 9 years of age.”
“Yes. Except... well...” Gully glanced at Thaybrill, and took a deep, sad breath. “I’m not sure what to believe, but there are some... you’ve heard me speak of the patriarch, Thaybrill... that believe that the man who raised me was my adoptive father. He seems to have good reasons to believe it, though, and I am wont to believe it as well. So whom my real parents may be, I do not know.”
“How many years of age are you, Bayle?” asked the Archbishop.
Gully thought for a moment. “Well, I’m...” he stopped and his brow furrowed as he thought about it. “I’m of twenty years now, Archbishop.”
“The same as Prince Thaybrill, whose birthday was yesterday, when he was to have been crowned. When is your birthday, do you know?”
“It is strange. I only realized it when you asked. My birthday is today, or at least it will be when the morning comes.”
The Archbishop took a step back in shock. His eyes narrowed and he said, “One day apart! The coincidences are too much for chance! You are sure that today is your birthday?”
“Yes, the one my father always told me,” replied Gully.
As they spoke, Almonee, hobbled closer to Gully and trained her yellowed eye upon him. She looked sideways at Prince Thaybrill and then drew back. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened like she was now the one seeing a ghost. “It cannot be!”
She stepped back up to Gully, and pulled him violently down by his ear so she could study it closely, so close that Gully could smell the raw potato she must have had for dinner on her breath. Almonee shuffled over to Thaybrill and tried to do the same to him.
The Archbishop warned her sternly, “Mind your manners, Almonee! Remember whom he is!”
Almonee grunted and pulled at Thaybrill’s ear anyway.
She muttered to herself, “The nose, aye! The eyes, colored the same. The ears be identical. I lost me crown! I let it be stolen away!”
She began bawling out loud, “The night me most loved queen passed, giving birth. I be sworn to secrecy! Told I would hurt the realm if I spoke, would throw all into chaos! But the ghost has come back to haunt me!”
“What do you mean, Almonee?” said Bayle.
“The Domo Regent took him, said he was still-born. Took him from me hands to bury him in secret!” she wailed. “Said to never speak naught of it for the good o’ the kingdom, under pain o’ death! The queen was failing, and I let him to tend to her!”
The Archbishop said, “Are you saying the queen gave birth to two children that night?”
Almonee screeched at Thaybrill, “Yeh tunic! Take it off! Take it off! Let me see!”
The Archbishop was about to warn Almonee again about transgressing against the crown prince in such a way, but Thaybrill held his hand to stay Nellist’s censures. He removed the worn black cloak he was wearing and then the tunic.
Almonee started pulling at Gully’s as well, her bony fingers much stronger than he would have ever guessed. “Off! Take it off! Must see!”
When Thaybrill had removed his tunic so that he stood bare-chested before her, Almonee turned him and looked at his back, on his right shoulder-blade. She pointed for all to see. There was a small birthmark located there, one shaped like a bee and no bigger than a swallowstamp.
She examined Gully’s shoulder blade the same, while he clutched at his father’s pendant and attempted to look over his own shoulder to see at the same time.
“The same! ’Tis the same!” she shrieked and started shaking almost violently.
She looked at the two of them, broken again at the memory of so many years past. “He said yeh be dead! Stillborn!”
She clutched at Gully’s arms, tears beginning to flow, as she sobbed, “I sent yeh to yer death at his hands! I killed yeh, good boy Bayle! Yeh’ve haunted me for years, like a kind star walking amongst us, and too daft to even see it am I!”
“Almonee!” shouted the Archbishop. “Calm down and explain what you mean!”
Almonee’s sobs subsided slightly and she said through her despair, “The birthmarks are identical!” She pointed at Gully and said, “He is Thaybrill’s twin! The one claimed stillborn that night and taken in secret as part of the wicked Domo’s plan! But all too alive today, thanks be to his blessed father’s protection!”
Gully stepped back from her in shock, unable to hold all that had come to be in one night.
Almonee grabbed his arms again, digging into them with her fingernails, and shouted, “Yeh be Thayliss veLohrdan, boy!”
The Archbishop clutched at Almonee’s arm and said, breathlessly, “Think back with care, Almonee! Who was born first?”
“There be no need for care! That night has burned the backs of me eyes ever since, it has!” She turned to Thaybrill and said, “Prince Thaybrill... This be yer twin brother, Thayliss, born 22 minutes before you!”
Almonee fell to her knees at Gully’s feet and shrieked, “He took yeh thinkin’ yeh be the only child, and I let ’im! I cannot be forgiven for this! I sent yeh to yer death! Sweet stars o’ night, what have I done? What’ve I done?!” She cried miserably for the deception she had not prevented twenty years earlier.
Gully stepped back and saw the shocked look on the faces of Thaybrill, the Archbishop, Dunnhem, and all the others gathered around while Almonee sobbed and clutched at his feet in agony. His mouth hung open, he could no longer draw a breath into his chest, and his heart beat in a panicked drumming.
The Archbishop gaped at Gully and his voice became no more than a whisper in the silence. “This revelation makes you the true crown prince of Iisen!”
Gully felt that surely that his mind had left him. He shook his head in utter horror at what the Archbishop had said. His jerked his tunic and surcoat up tight against his chest, and his whole body began to tremble. His heart felt like it would surely beat through his chest at any moment.
Thaybrill moved slightly, began to step forward, and said, “Thayliss—”
Before another word could come out of the prince’s mouth, out of anyone’s mouth, Gully turned and fled as fast as he could.
Chapter 26 — Sparks Int
o The Nighting
Gully wandered the dark streets of Lohrdanwuld at their quietest, before the people rose early to begin their day before dawn. His mind was twisted around everything that had happened, all that became too much to bear at one time, and he had to be alone and away. His stomach and heart felt eaten away by the guilt inside of him, but he had still managed to be resolute enough to sneak out of the Folly unchecked. Dunnhem had attempted to go after him, out of duty and concern for a new member of the royal family, but Gully evaded him quickly amongst the shadows of the castle grounds.
He spent time walking aimlessly through the cobbled streets and dirt roads of the quiet city, his head spinning so fast he could not grab and hold onto a thought long enough to try to make any sense of it.
Eventually, he found himself in front of a door, and he knew the one thing he needed to do, no matter how painful it was.
He stared at the family crest on the double doors and tried to build the courage to do what he had to do.
He wiped his sweating hands on his surcoat and then beat them noisily on the door.
“Goodsir Allerdaain! Sir, you must open the door!” he bellowed loudly, his voice cracking in pain.
He shouted and pounded his fists on the door and then waited in turns until he finally saw a single candle moving through the windows of the first floor of the townhouse.
When the door opened, and a frightened housemaid poked her nose out of the door, Gully did not give her the chance to close it again.
He shoved the door open and shouted into the interior of the house, loud enough so that even those on the upper floors would hear the commotion.
“Goodsir Allerdaain! You must come down! I must speak with you, now!”
The small maid looked terrified and whispered, “Do not shout! The master will strip the skin from me bones if he’s awakened so!”
Gully told her, “I’m sorry if that happens. This cannot wait!”
He shouted again up the grand staircase, “I must speak with you now! You must come down!”
The maid tried to close the door on him and lock it, but Gully refused to let her. He was about to begin shouting into the house again when he heard a very angry voice coming from up the stairs.
“Now you’ve done it! I’ll be sacked before dawn!” she moaned.
Candlelight appeared at the top of the stairs and the master of the house appeared in a haphazardly donned velvet robe. He came storming down the stairs, his hair askew, and he almost knocked over a gilded table with a beautiful statue of a Belder horse sitting upon it.
“I’ll flay you alive myself! Whoever you are breaking into my house at this hour, it’ll be the last thing you do!” he yelled.
As he got to where he could see through the door, he stopped a moment, his eyes squinting at Gully’s figure standing there, who held his chaperon hood in his hands out of respect for the bad news he brought.
“You!” shouted the goodsir. “Back here again! Why, the arrogant temerity you show by setting foot in my doorway is—”
“Goodsir Allerdaain!” shouted Gully over the man’s apoplexy.
Gully was forceful enough that it stopped the words from the man’s mouth for a brief moment.
“I’m sorry to wake you, I truly am. And I would not darken your doorway under any other circumstances,” said Gully while he had the chance, even though his voice now felt like he had swallowed ashes from the fireplace. He wiped his arm across his eyes again, trying to dry them. “But you must go to the Folly, right now! You must go to the Nighting Chapel.”
Goodsir Allerdaain’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Gully choked a moment and then continued, “It is in regards to your daughter, Mariealle. There has been an accident. She... well...”
He tried to say it, but the words took more strength than he had. They sank back down in him, almost suffocating him.
Before he could force them out, the merchant’s anger exploded again and he shouted at Gully, “Stop speaking of my daughter! If I hear her name cross your lips one more time, I’ll run you through with a dagger myself and leave you on the street for the honeywagon to collect! My daughter is asleep upstairs in her room, where she has been all night! Go away, leave my family be, and never return!”
Gully’s eyes began to pour their tears out. The man spoke of driving a dagger into his heart, but he didn’t realize there was one already there. If he knew of the dagger that was even now lodged in his chest, the head of the Allerdaain family would be on the step crying with him.
“Mariealle has been killed!” shouted Gully through his miserable tears. The maid standing off to the side gasped and her hand shot over her mouth.
Goodsir Allerdaain could take no more. He stormed through the door and grabbed Gully by his surcoat violently. He spat in Gully’s face, “Your lies and your presence are not welcome here! Ever!”
He dragged Gully and physically threw him down the front steps. Gully landed hard on his shoulder, crying out as he landed and sobbing from the pain in his heart. The pain shot through him, and he slowly rolled onto his back, tears streaming from his eyes as he grimaced in agony. By the time he sat up, Allerdaain had emerged again from his front door, this time with a horse crop in his hands, ready to come after him and to beat him in the street with it. The merchant muttered under his breath about flaying the skin from his worthless bones.
Gully scrambled to his feet and ran, the shouts and threats of Goodsir Allerdaain chasing him down the road. He sniffled and rubbed at his sore shoulder as he ran. He gave up on the merchant, knowing that the maid, if no one else, would go to check on Mariealle and find that she was missing. Then they would understand and go to the Nighting Chapel to learn of the calamity that he had tried to explain to them.
He limped off, holding onto his shoulder, and was no longer sure of what he should do or where he should go.
Gully wandered for hours, aimlessly, his mind a disjointed collage of images of Mariealle falling, Krayell holding a knife to her neck, Almonee screeching nonsense at him, his own bloodied hand, and the black emptiness on the other side of the arcade wall where Mariealle had fallen. Over and over the images stabbed into his eyes and his heart until he could see or feel nothing else.
When he took true notice of the world around him again, he found himself in front of the oratory tower nearest the Swordsman Market. The sky was still dark and no one was around, and Gully stared blankly at the tower for a long time. It had been years since he had been up to the top of one, back when he was still small enough that Astrehd, his foster mother, would make him go with her and Roald.
The elocutor had long since left and the tower was empty of any supplicants, so Gully entered and slowly climbed to the top of it.
At the top, he sat in the middle of the prayer space and did something else he had not done in many years. He took the pendant from around his neck and held it in his hands and stared at it. In the starlight from above, he stared at the reflections and refractions that it seemed to capture and hold for a moment before releasing them out into the world again. He rubbed his fingers along the smoothly carved curves forming its circles.
He was so tired, and his shoulder hurt like fire, and he wondered what was the meaning beneath everything that was happening to him.
Why is this happening to me? he thought. Why is my life being pulled apart from so many different directions?
Off near the horizon, he spotted the Trine Range constellation about to fall from view for the night. He wondered if it was really possible that his father was one of those bright stars — King Colnor veLohrdan, Fifth of the Name. He wondered if the line of kings that stretched back for generations was the family of his whom he never knew about, were the family he never wondered much about because he was perfectly content with his father, Ollon. He wondered if Thaybrill truly could be his brother, his twin.
Whatever doubts he might have tried to cling to in all of this dissolved when he thought back to seeing his face next to Thaybrill’
s in the mirrored glass.
He felt the pendant in his hands again and wondered at it, about the patriarch’s story that Ollon had to have been the last of an imperial family of an empire that hadn’t existed for hundreds and hundreds of years.
He couldn’t be something like that. He couldn’t be royalty, of any sort. The whole idea was preposterous. A petty thief was what he was, raised in a one room cabin tucked into the bogs, destined for no more than time spent searching for his lost father until caught and hung at the end of a rope in the Bonedown.
He wondered if maybe what had happened to Mariealle was his punishment. He wondered, if he really was Thaybrill’s twin brother, if Mariealle’s death was Colnor’s punishment from on high for his life of thievery, for degrading the veLohrdan name. He wondered if Colnor was the kind of man that would callously kill someone as kind and pure and wonderful as Mariealle just to punish a wayward son. If that was the kind of man that the old king was, then Gully wanted nothing to do with him. He was happy with his life the way it was, and Colnor could go stick his head in a bucket for all he cared. He was glad he had been an orphan if that was the measure of his supposed father.
Gully looked down at the pendant in his hands again and felt ashamed. He was trying to blame a man he had never known for the tragedy that had befallen Mariealle. It was his choice to be a thief. It was his choice to allow Mariealle to accompany them this evening rather than send her home. He felt ashamed for trying to shift the burden of her death to someone else.
He let the weight of the pendant rest in his cupped hands. At that moment, he would have traded every day that remained in his life for only a few minutes with his father, Ollon, to try to understand what was happening to him. He would have given anything for a few brief moments with his father to ask him whom he was supposed to be.