by JF Smith
After a while and without quite knowing why, Gully began to tell her a little of his father, of Ollon. He spoke to her of common, everyday things he remembered — cooking dinner, playing chase with Pe’taro outside the cabin, cutting firewood — while she continued to hold his hand. It felt good to remember these things, the memories that felt like they were slowly slipping away from him with every passing year.
From another pocket, he pulled the fox carving. He handed it to her and said, “I’m not sure if you saw this or not. Wyael made it as a gift for me — a bonsmoke fox. I probably should not carry it with me everywhere I go because I will wear the paint off of it, but... I cannot seem to part with it, either.”
Abella studied the small fox carving carefully for a few moments before handing it back to Gully with a very broad smile and a radiant warmth in her eyes. Gully found that Abella’s eyes were so different from Mariealle’s. Mariealle’s were full of fire and adventure, and brashness. They were like emeralds that would be hot to the touch. Abella’s eyes were deep and dark and content. And safe. They were dark ponds of which you could never see the bottom, and yet knew you could trust them without any doubt.
“Even without the fine sight of a hawk, I can look below and see all of Lohrdanwuld, all the way to Kindern, even. All of these people, and more, looking to me now.” Gully sighed, “And the one I want the most, my father, is not among them. It is perhaps to my discredit, but I would give anything to have him with me again, for even one day, so I could tell him what he means to me. To tell him that there is one person in the world that loves him and knows him and will always remember what he taught me. That will always remember him.”
His voice faded to barely a whisper, hardly audible over the blowing of the wind. “Oh, dear stars in the sky, what would I give for that? What have I given to hope to see that day?”
Abella put her hand on Gully’s shoulder and he could feel the warmth of it through the plain tunic he had worn. His head dropped and she let him cry out his grief and loneliness.
He realized what he was doing and wiped at his eyes. “Forgive me, Abella! I abuse the companionship that you offer and ignore the pains and worries of your own that you carry.”
Abella smiled gently again at him and reached over to push a stray lock of Gully’s hair from his forehead where the wind had blown it. The look on her face, and the modest shake of her head, told him not to worry about such things at all.
Gully was tempted to start talking again, to share more of what was spinning in his head, but he stopped. He accepted that his lot was his own and he should not worry others with it, especially someone as kind and as delicate as Abella Jule.
They sat in a more comfortable silence, watching the clouds and the wild birds in front of them, Gully very aware of the feeling of his hand as it rested in hers.
Abella Jule pointed at Gully, then down at the Folly below, and made a careful and deliberate walking motion with her fingers down a sloped palm of her hand. Gully smiled and nodded obediently at her.
He said, “Yes, I promise to be careful going down the mountain.”
Abella stood and removed the cloak loaned to her, tossing it back into Gully’s lap as he blushed once again at the sight of her. She gave him one last smile and a cheerful wink and then she leapt off the side of the mountain. In her dangerous dive, the sight of her body flickered slightly, and then she was once more a beautiful hawk, swooping effortlessly and barely skimming over the shear rocks and boulders.
Gully watched, entranced, as she soared back down towards the Folly below with wings spread wide. He laughed to himself, feeling bolstered, and thought to himself, now that is a wondrous sight if I have ever seen one.
Chapter 33 — Ascension
Gully slowly traced a finger across the elaborate letters on the thick book sitting on the golden table, the one containing all of the liturgies and sacraments and tenets of the faith of the Iisen religion. The Archbishop had let him leaf through it for a while one day when he had visited the Nighting Chapel, but the writing in it was so old and intricate that he found it very difficult to understand any of the words. Today, his mind was elsewhere, and his finger traced lightly over the letters of the thick leather cover without any conscious thought.
The candles and lamps in the Nighting Chapel cast a honeyed glow all around. Through the narrow and deeply-set windows spilled even more light from the far more numerous torches and standing lamps out in the courtyard.
Gully squared his shoulders and stepped over to look in the mirrored glass on the wall, the same one that had shown him that he was indeed Thaybrill’s twin on that terrible night not so long ago.
He adjusted the stiff, high collar of the golden doublet he wore, trying to get it to stop digging into his neck. He gave up on that and instead made sure that the mantle he was wearing, the one of a fine silk and pale blue in color, was centered properly at his neck. At least he found he could be successful at that task. The Archbishop had told him that it was the very same mantle his father had worn at his own coronation. Gully tugged again at the golden clasp that held it around his neck.
He glanced at Wyael watching him quietly, the boy dressed resplendently in new dove-gray breeches and an emerald green tunic. His hair had been cleaned and trimmed and he now looked more like a young man than a boy. Wyael was swinging his legs back and forth under the cushioned bench where he and the patriarch sat.
“You look magnificent, Wyael,” commented Gully.
“Not like you do, Sire!” replied Wyael with a cheeky grin.
Gully raised an eyebrow at him and said, “What did you promise me, Wyael? None of this ‘sire’ or ‘majesty’ business in private, please. And I’m not sure how to interpret your comment... I’ve been too much in the company of the lords of Iisen and instantly ascribe multiple intentions to even the most innocent of statements.”
“Yes, Gully, I remember. You look like a king! That is what I mean!”
Gully stopped pacing for a moment and looked down at his own arms and hands, as if trying to see what Wyael saw. He wondered what the arms and hands of a king were supposed to look like.
The patriarch, understanding the doubt visible in Gully’s examination of himself, stood and placed a hand on Gully’s shoulder. He said, “Fate has chosen well, my friend.”
Gully sighed. He scratched at his eyebrow for a moment and shook his head. “The fate of Balmorea is about free-will and the choice to be made, patriarch.”
He looked down at his feet and added, “The path that has led me here has offered no forks from which to choose, not in truth. Perhaps what this really is... is fate dealing to me a punishment for all I have done wrong.” He glanced at Wyael pointedly, making sure Wyael was listening, “For being a thief! For being selfish! That is why there is no choice involved.”
Gully stared off into space. “I feel as if I am on a runaway swift horse, and you know that I have no knowledge of how to ride a horse!”
The patriarch thought for a long moment on the perspective Gully had offered. His face was considered, but also deeply sympathetic. He said, “That is perhaps one way to look at it. But it is not the only way to look at it. Yes, it is a new... a very new... chapter in your remarkable life, but that does not make it a punishment.”
“Perhaps if you were wearing these uncomfortable shoes right now you would see it differently,” said Gully.
The patriarch was not swayed by Gully’s attempt at humor. He said, “I see your point of view more than you realize. But I am also open to other perspectives, of which you have not given yourself the benefit just yet. And it is a testament to the singular strength of your character that you do not see the choices that you have, in fact, made along the way.”
The patriarch paused, his brow furrowed in concern, and he licked at his lips for a second. He said, tentatively, “I see the burdens you take on, that you so acutely feel, Di’taro. I see them very well. And... I am loathe to say this for fear of upsetting a balance in you that
is still to play out fully... but I think that your blindness to whom you really are and what you have done is one of your greatest virtues, even as it eats away at you. I see how every moment of your life made you the person who would find it so hard to see the truth of yourself, and yet that failure is critical to why you are where you are now.”
“I’m afraid I do not understand your meaning,” said Gully.
“I don’t know that I can, or should, make you understand. Instead, let me say this... do not be so judgmental of yourself. I know that you feel inadequate for the crown about to be placed upon your head. I think that is part of what fate intended. You say that you have been given no choice, and perhaps that is true for now. Perhaps now is not the time for you to freely choose. Have faith in yourself, Gully, and the day will show itself. Wyael and I both have faith in you. There are so many outside right now, even as we speak, who have that same faith.”
Gully considered what the patriarch had said, and was trying to unravel it when the patriarch added in what was barely a whisper, “The future can only be what it can because the past is what it was.”
Gully took a deep breath and wished that the patriarch would not speak in these sorts of riddles. He opened his mouth to try to pull a clearer meaning from the man, but the door to the chapel opened, and Dunnhem stepped in, his uniform so crisp that it looked like it could cut a finger.
“All the noble families are in place, and His Royal Highness Prince Thaybrill has taken his spot as well. It is time for you, now, Your Highness,” said Dunnhem softly.
The patriarch rose from his seat and said, “Wyael and I will watch with deep pride and joy in you, Your Majesty.”
“Even you, patriarch? Must even you insist on useless titles that do nothing?”
The smile on the patriarch’s face practically glowed. “You pretend the title is not legitimate. Perhaps if you knew how much pleasure it gives me to refer to you this way, you would not begrudge its use. Sire.”
Wyael ran over and hugged Gully around his waist and whispered so Dunnhem could not hear, “Good luck to you, Gully! I’ll wave at you when you walk by!” Gully squatted down and hugged the boy back as hard as he could.
The patriarch and Wyael slipped out of the chapel to take their places for the coronation, and Dunnhem waited while Gully checked himself one last time. The anxiety rose in him as the last few moments slipped away.
Should he run? Would Dunnhem stop him? He had fought with guards before and gotten away every time, and he could do so again. Dunnhem was one of the guards on Roald’s squad, so he would be cleverer and better trained than the others. He suspected he could best him, though, given the element of surprise. The corner of his mouth turned up in a dry smile at the thought.
No, these were all foolish wonderings and pointless daydreams. His days of escape were done, and he had no desire to reward Dunnhem’s good nature so rudely. So that was it. He was out of options. He had nowhere he could go because this time he accepted what fate had dealt him. He never felt so helpless, so powerless, in all of his life.
“I am ready, Dunnhem,” he said quietly.
Dunnhem snapped to a stiff attention and said very formally, “Then I await to escort you to your coronation, Your Highness!” He held out his hand towards the open doors of the Nighting Chapel, two King’s Guards standing at attention on either side.
As soon as Gully stepped out of the door with Dunnhem leading the way, every head present in the packed courtyard turned to see the approach of the first monarch the Iisendom would have in over twenty years. The prestigious crowd in attendance lined both sides of the Courtyard of the Empyrean, and each end as well, leaving only a long rectangle of open space in the center. All of them strained to get their first look at the entrance of their new king.
Dunnhem led him past the armillary sphere and through the crowd to a small raised platform where the Archbishop waited. Off the four corners of the platform stood four disciple interpreters wearing their elaborate pale gold robes, burning handheld bowls of incense and chanting supplications under their breaths. Next to the Archbishop was a table with a book of the coronation rites and beside that was the stand with the crown that would be placed on his head.
Above, the night sky blazed with the multitude of stars that not even the torches and lamps illuminating the courtyard could compete against. From the dais where the Archbishop stood extended a long, indigo-colored carpet that led to the far end of the courtyard. There, the throne awaited Gully on yet another raised platform. The crowds stood formally on either side, filling every available spot in the courtyard and watching intently as the new king stepped up next to the Archbishop. Dunnhem stomped his foot and bowed low, then moved off to the side to his position as honor guard.
Along either side, Gully saw the noble families of Iisen in the front. At the end and in front of the gilded sphere was his brother, Prince Thaybrill, a pale gold sash across his own deep blue doublet. Next to Thaybrill, in the scarlet dress uniform of the Lord Marshal, stood Roald very stiffly.
Beyond the royal families were the other privileged guests of the evening, including many of the Mercher clan that Gully absolutely insisted have places of honor. The patriarch and Wyael had already taken their places amongst Wyael’s parents and the patriarch’s sons and families.
At the far end, on each side of the throne, he managed to catch a glimpse of the two wolves sitting as still as statues, waiting for Gully to take his place between them.
He felt the hundreds and hundreds of eyes upon him and he desperately wanted to fidget with the mantle around his shoulders. He caught himself scratching at his left palm and forced himself to stop. He looked at the Archbishop, who was waiting patiently for Gully to signal his readiness, and nodded his assent.
The Archbishop smiled and held his hand up to pull everyone’s attention to him. Gully waited for the Archbishop to begin reading from the book, but that is not what happened. What happened next took him by surprise.
The Archbishop looked at the book for a moment, open to the page with the ceremonial text for the coronation, and instead of beginning to recite from it, he reached out and gently closed it.
He surveyed those gathered, and then said aloud for all to hear, “This night does not bring us a typical ascension to the throne of Iisen, which has sat empty now for twenty years. The chair of our monarch has been vacant while our land was stewarded in the intervening years by a traitor among us, a man that used the power of his office to corrupt those around him and to enrich himself. A man that betrayed the trust of King Colnor and Queen Sophrienne to murder them. A man that even would have destroyed the entire kingdom to try to satisfy his own boundless avarice.”
Gully watched the Archbishop closely, keeping his surprise at the unexpected deviation from the ceremony closely held. The crowd gathered in the courtyard seemed to lean in even more given the words of the leader of the church. Even the interpreters had stopped their mumbled chants and glanced at each other in furtive curiosity.
“As much as we would see the life of Prince Thayliss veLohrdan as a curse upon him — nearly murdered at birth and an orphan multiple times over, left to fend for himself in the alleys, consigned to the gutters and gullies of the streets, the selfsame gutters and gullies that he took into a name by which some know him,” continued the Archbishop, “we must, each of us, think about the truth of what has happened.”
The Archbishop raised a hand to the stars overhead. “If the events of the last few weeks and His Royal Highness Prince Thayliss veLohrdan’s role in it are not evidence of our ancestor’s grace and guidance, then nothing in this world will ever rise to that standard. Out of the curse and treachery and tragedy of His Highness’ life has come the saving grace of our land in one of our deepest moments of crisis. By our law and his birthright, all of us gathered, and all those of our land, owe him our full loyalty and due, for he is crowned our king. But by our hearts and our very lives, and far deeper than law, we owe him our full loyalty in gratitu
de for keeping us safe from the betrayal of our kingdom and our enslavement at the hands of Maqara. There is not a one of us here today, walking free, that does not owe this to the man who stands before us now.”
Gully felt his cheeks prickle and turn pink, but the Archbishop was not paying attention to him. The Archbishop’s attention was fully on the assembled people while he paused dramatically. There was not a sound at all from anywhere in the courtyard. There was no motion from any of the people watching, and those present might have even been tempted to claim that the stars above paused in their trek through the night.
The Archbishop turned his gaze back to Gully. He raised both his hands to the stars above and intoned, “Thayliss veLohrdan, first born of King Colnor, Fifth of the Name, please kneel before those of your family that have gone before you and now witness this night from their places of honor in the firmament.”
Gully slowly knelt down onto one knee. Per the ceremony, Gully lifted his head and his eyes skyward, towards those who sat in judgment of him in the evening sky. He held like this until the Archbishop touched his forehead, signaling to Gully to lower his eyes and head. Surrounded by so many people, he felt lonelier than he ever felt in his life and he had to place his hands on one knee to keep them from trembling.
In his mind, he sought out memories to comfort himself. He remembered to distract himself. He remembered in order to still his heart and to remind him of whom he was. In his mind, he saw his father scolding him gently for getting a tear in his breeches one day while playing, then his father laughing and telling him when he saw his son’s frown and distraught eyes that he could not even get properly angry with him.