The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (48 page)

Gully nodded and reassured the guard, “You did, yes. Thank you, Dunnhem. Very much! The other night, when first you met them, it was easier not to delve into a lot of explanations in front of everyone. Rest assured, Roald knew of their abilities before he left with them, though.”

The patriarch arrived at the group in the middle of the courtyard and Gully smiled again. He said, “Patriarch, you are a most welcome sight to me!”

The patriarch said nothing in return and instead looked down at the ground. Slowly, and with the aid of his staff, he knelt down and only then said, “Majesty, you must know that it is I who have the grace of an honor scarcely imaginable to be here before you.”

Gully frowned again and begged, “Please, patriarch, stand. You have no business on your knees on these hard stones! We have this conversation too often!”

The patriarch stayed where he was. “Dunnhem explained the remarkable things that have been discovered about your true birth parents as he escorted us here to the courtyard.”

The patriarch began to stand and Gully went to help him. The patriarch patted Gully’s arm as he helped to lift the old man. “Such things would scarcely be believable in others, and yet in you, Di’taro, they seem almost inevitable! Fate has been greatly occupied with you, and it seems I cannot turn my back on you for even a moment without you surprising all of us yet again.”

Thaybrill could see the pink rise in Gully’s face. Gully gestured towards Thaybrill and said, “Patriarch, Wyael, I should introduce you to Prince Thaybrill, who I have found is my twin brother.”

Gully placed his hands on the wolves’ heads and added, “It seems I now share something in common with the two of you, Gallun and Gellen.”

The patriarch bowed reverently before Thaybrill and smiled at him. He said, “Any man looking at you could hardly fail to see the unmistakable resemblance. I think the only two that would have such similarity hidden from them would be each other! It is truly an honor to make your acquaintance, Prince Thaybrill!”

There were a few more introductions of Wyael and the Archbishop. As they talked, even more people from around the Folly had noticed strange things in the Courtyard of the Empyrean and were gathering in ever larger numbers to see.

Gully finally asked, “But where is your ocelot self, patriarch?”

Before the patriarch could answer, a large brown and black pilcher owl flew down and landed on a leather pad on Wyael’s shoulder, flapping a few times as it found its balance. The guards standing nearby, and the Archbishop himself, took another step back at the surprising arrival, and there was an audible gasp from the people gathering around the edges of the courtyard.

Gully smiled again, “Omalde? It
is
you, isn’t it?”

The owl nodded and clicked her beak a couple of times. Thaybrill, even having previously seen his brother talk to wolves, was suddenly surprised again to see him converse with an owl as if it was the most natural thing in the world. But the warm smile on his brother’s face, wolves at his sides and his arms around the boy, Wyael, made him truly happy for Thayliss for the first time since the tragic loss the night they tried to arrest Krayell.

“I saw a pilcher owl flying around earlier in the daylight hours and wondered if there was a chance that it was you!” exclaimed Gully.

The owl nodded again enthusiastically.

“Omalde, with her sharp eyes, is who helped us find you in the city, my dear Gully,” said the patriarch.

“And her presence, and my presence, are why your brother Roald need not be cut off from your counsel as he prepares to fight off the Maqarans.”

Thaybrill may not have understood how their arrival could help in this sense, but it did not stop the tiny thrill he felt run through him at the thought of brave, gallant Roald.

Thaybrill could not make sense of the patriarch’s statement, but Gully said, “You are with him! You and Omalde are among the Mercher clan members that went with him!”

“Yes, now you see,” said the patriarch. “Now you see some of the assistance that we can be!”

Gully, sensing the confusion among the others around him, explained, “Gallun and Gellen are transmute balmors, and they can shift their form from man to wolf whenever they like. Omalde and the patriarch, though, are of a different kind called familiars. They exist in both forms at the same time. The patriarch exists as both a man and an ocelot simultaneously. His human self is here, and his ocelot self is with Roald. Roald can speak to the patriarch’s ocelot form, and the patriarch here with us can relate Roald’s message. And I can reply to Omalde, and she will tell Roald what I’ve said!”

“Precisely, Your Majesty!” said the patriarch.

Gully’s face clouded and he said sharply, “Patriarch, I must have your word... when the time comes, you must be safely away from any fighting!”

The patriarch’s head tilted to one side some and his eyes twinkled. “I am not as helpless as you think. And Raybb and Encender will keep an eye—”

Gully raised his hand and the patriarch stopped speaking immediately.

“Please, patriarch. Give me your word!” begged Gully.

The patriarch bowed his head and said, “You have my word, of course.”

Thaybrill found it odd that Gully could chastise the patriarch this way, and the patriarch did not seem to mind in the least. Even the smile perched on the corner of the patriarch’s face was genuine. If he did not know better, he would have sworn that the patriarch
wanted
Gully to force his compliance in this matter.

Gully turned to Thaybrill anxiously and said, “Thaybrill, I must speak to Roald! Is there somewhere that we can gather and talk?”

Thaybrill said, “Certainly there is!”

The prince led his brother and the party inside and presented to Gully his personal salon, the sovereign’s chambers, at the back of the Throne Hall. There, they could converse with East End more privately and erase the distance between the two cities.

Roald’s boot dug into the loose sand among the rocks, and he brought his eyes down from the heavens above and looked into the pre-dawn dark from his high perch on the mountainside towards where he knew East End lay. The trees were scrubby, small things and grew sparsely on the mountainside. Below, where the pass was, there was more rock interrupted by thicker copses of trees here and there, and then finally the edge of the Ghellerweald itself picking up where the feet of the Sheard Mountains left off.

He turned towards the west again. The stars of his mother and father had long since rotated beyond where he could see, and even the black hole in the sky that was the trickster moon was obscured by some passing clouds. He felt he should have been kneeling in his prayers, but he was too tired to do so. His nerves had kept him up all through the night until he finally abandoned the futile effort to find sleep, and he had come to pray one last time instead. One last prayer before he would be tested in a way he never expected to be tested in all of his days.

His eyes lifted aloft again and he wondered,
how do you feel knowing that you acted as mother to the future king of Iisen, and to the heir of a long-ago decimated empire?
He knew she would be pleased, her eyes turning to merry half-moons and her cheeks flushing as pink as a spring rose as she laughed at the idea. She had always struggled trying to get Thayliss to fully claim the role as Roald’s younger brother the way she wished he would, but loved him despite his bull-headed waywardness. Thayliss had always been too headstrong, too reluctant, to make anyone’s love easy. But she would ignore that now that she knew about her son, Bayle, what everyone else knew.

Roald had been gob-smacked to learn of what had transpired since he left with Gallun and Gellen. His conversation with Thayliss and Thaybrill, a solid day-length away by swift horse, had been miraculous enough, but what he had learned of his brother Bayle in that conversation had changed everything for him. Mostly he was relieved to know that Lohrdanwuld was safe, for now, as were both Thayliss and Thaybrill. He was astonished, too, and yet at the same time, he found he was not so surprised after all about his Gully’s — Thayliss’, he reminded himself again — true parents. But that discovery, added to his birthright among the Balmorean people in the Mercher clan, made his brother something beyond extraordinary, something that Roald no longer knew how to treat.

When Thayliss had introduced Prince Thaybrill to him and they stood next to each other in his apartment, Roald remembered being taken by how undeniably much the two resembled each other, even standing side by side. He would have wondered at it then and asked about it, if it were not for the crisis looming at their doorstep and a wretched lack of time forcing them into rapid action that evening.

Behind him and below, in the dark and hidden behind the part of the mountainside he sat upon, was the valley pass that led between the two kingdoms. At some point, almost certainly soon, around dawn he figured, the Maqaran army would advance, taking control of the pass and entering Iisen through that valley. Only they would be unaware that they were expected until they were in that very valley and surrounded by Iisenors on higher ground, their retreat cut off.

In a final moment of supplication, he did kneel down. The cooler air of the hours before dawn swept across the mountains, touching his face and hair. He prayed to his parents that this was, indeed, the proper strategy to take. He had argued repeatedly about this strategy with the two Marshal Adjuncts, Marshal Pumblennor over the soldiers from veKinn’s fief and Marshal Yorghen from veOusthendan’s fief. It was their absolute belief that the Iisen forces should merely keep the Maqarans force out; Roald did not deny that their approach was simpler, more practical, and an imminently safer strategy. What he did know, what he did argue, was that such a strategy left no leverage. He knew that Prince Thayliss would see the leverage as everything; he knew he would lay down his life to provide that leverage to the person he had shared a bed with as family for so many years, if that is what it took.

If it were not for Prince Thaybrill’s specific wish that he be in charge, with a signed and sealed letter in the prince’s own hand demanding the same, he would not have been able to stand against the two senior ranking officers in this argument. But then after his first conversation with Thayliss through Omalde and Aian, when Thayliss had begged that they capture the Maqarans, Roald was only too pleased to tell him that this was the plan already being put in place. The comment earned ugly glowers from the two Marshal Adjuncts sitting with him. It was only when Thaybrill, whose words came through the old woman, Omalde, threatened the two adjuncts with being thrown in irons if they did not follow Roald’s every command without question that the two officers capitulated and argued no more about it.

Roald had assured both princes, through the ocelot, that all would be well and that their highnesses could rest in assurance. Omalde had described Prince Thayliss’ relief at the plan, but then related how Thayliss had mumbled that he would not rest easy until all was over, the Maqaran forces had been captured, and no Iisenors or Balmoreans were harmed in the process. Roald, through Aian, had told him that all but the last request was reasonable, but that he would do his best to make the prince regent proud. He kept his own role in the mission underneath his tongue for fear of upsetting Thayliss unnecessarily, which he felt sure it would.

Roald remained on his knee and prayed again to his parents — for strength, and cunning, and most of all, for luck. He prayed that whatever his own fate would be in this battle, that he would make his erstwhile brother, now about to become king, proud of what he had accomplished, proud that he could be trusted to follow out the wishes of the twin princes to the best of his ability.

He stood and allowed himself a moment to dwell on his longstanding attraction to the prince regent, and also on the recent and almost immediate physical attraction he felt towards Prince Thaybrill since meeting him, too. With it came the light touch of the shame he felt for giving safe harbor to these feelings for two men as great as they, for direct heirs of the royal family. It had grown even worse with Thayliss. Thayliss was not only the son of Colnor the Fifth, but he was also the son, through this so-called blood seal, of Ollon, and now the heir to the last remnants of the Balmorean empire, such as it was. He prayed briefly, to whoever in the sky might be able to hear him, for forgiveness for the effrontery in having these feelings towards them.

Perhaps, if the battle went well, and once things were back to normal in Iisen, he would be honored with an invitation to see the coronation first-hand. It would be wonderful to see the man that had once upon a time been his brother have the crown of Iisen placed on his head and to see him take the seat of the monarchy.

These musings were bittersweet for him. He had always known that sooner or later he would lose his brother, the last of his family, the one that he loved so very deeply. It was just that he never would have imagined that this would be the way he would lose him — to the crown instead of the gallows or bogs. Not for all the swords in Iisen would he ever have thought.

His silent meditations were interrupted by the sound of a rock nearby tumbling away and he heard a huffing and puffing of someone climbing. In the dark, he still did not see well and his hand went to the sword at his side, but the voice he heard speak his name made him relax.

“Ho there! Roald!” called Raybb, “Must you Iisenors
always
insist on being so high up to pray?”

Raybb was close enough now that Roald could see both his human and bear half climbing the last of the distance between them.

Roald laughed and replied, “I expected to be back at our camp before my absence was noticed. How did you find me here, anyway?”

Raybb sat down with a tired huff next to where Roald stood and said as he caught his breath, “A bear’s nose is a remarkable instrument. I was able to follow you as easily as if you had left a trail of rope along the path you climbed.”