The Gully Snipe (The Dual World Book 1) (56 page)

She cocked her head and eyed him curiously, clucking hoarsely at the same time. She jumped from one rock to another, closing the distance between her and Gully.

Gully said, “Good evening, Abella Jule. I was wondering how long it would be before I was discovered.”

The hawk nodded at him in reply, and seemed to visibly relax, stepping even closer until she was right next to him.

“I envy you, Abella. I must climb, risking a broken neck, to get a perspective on the world that you get with no effort. When the world below feels like it is too much, you can take to the sky and leave it behind for a while. I imagine that with your eyes, you can see easily from one end of the Iisendom to the other.”

They sat in silence for a moment, Abella continuing to watch Gully carefully, as if sensing his resignation. It made Gully feel good to open up to her, to be honest in a way he had struggled with.

“I am probably fortunate that I cannot see the kingdom as well as you. The pressure of understanding its true size would likely crush me, and it is already frightening even in my current ignorance. But you have the gift of being able to see it as it is. You are free.”

Abella picked at her wing, eyed Gully a moment more, and then hopped onto a rock next to his knee. Gully leaned back in surprise, not expecting this sort of intimacy, and Abella nuzzled into his hand. He was a little unsure at first, but then he ventured to use the back of a finger to stroke gently along the underside of her throat, and she allowed the affection.

Abella hopped off onto an open spot nearby. Her image fluttered for a second, and then it was replaced by her naked human form standing there.

Gully flushed at seeing her very pretty body so closely this way. A fraction of second, and he took in the curve of her hip, the gentle bend in her knee, the smooth, olive-hint hue of her skin. He clutched clumsily and averted his eyes, but that only seemed to amuse Abella.

He busied himself and distracted his eyes by taking off his gray surcoat and then offering it to her. He said, “The wind is wilder up here and you will get cold. Please feel free to use this to keep the wind away if you like.”

Abella took the coat and giggled under her breath. For a moment, Gully was afraid she would refuse to put it on, but she did him the favor of wrapping herself in the offered surcoat.

Gully was about to ask her to sit with him when she pointed down at the Folly below, then at him, and then she shaded her eyes with her hand and pretended to search earnestly for something. She pointed at him again.

“Yes, I suppose so. My life is not very much my own anymore and any absence seems to be cause for some sort of alarm among far too many people.” He added, “I find myself constantly on the wrong side of what I’m supposed to do and what people wish of me.”

He leaned back and squinted into the lowering sun once again. “I think I upset Gallun and Gellen most of all when I do this to them,” he said with a wry smile. “You can tell them that I am perfectly safe. No one has kidnapped me or caused me harm and I promise to return soon enough.”

Abella Jule nodded and looked like she was unsure if she was being dismissed. She started to take the cloak off and Gully held up a hand to stop her. “Please, Abella, it is good to have your company here. Sit with me for a while and help divert my mind off the worried wanderings it is so prone to take these days.”

She pulled the cloak back around her and sat down next to him. Gully could see in her human eyes, even without words, what was so difficult to express with the eyes and face of a hawk. In her sparkling black eyes, he saw the gentle sympathy she wanted him to see. She reached out and took his hand in hers and sat peacefully with him, the wind blowing through her short black hair. She made no demand of him to speak or to provide a one-sided conversation. Simply sitting and enjoying the waning afternoon was good enough.

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.

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.