by JF Smith
Gallun took Bayle’s hand and placed it to his own shoulder to prove he was real. Gully could feel the skin and muscle, and the bone underneath, of a living person — the same person whom he had freed. As soon as he removed his hand, and with a tiny flicker of the image, there was once again a wolf next to him.
“How is this possible?” asked Gully, utterly dumbfounded.
“How is the flickering light of a sparkfly possible with neither heat nor flame?” countered the patriarch gently.
The patriarch resumed his slow walk and Gully followed as well. He asked in utter astonishment, “Who are you?”
“Whom and what we are will take a little more to answer, but we have time and I promised you answers to whatever questions you cared to pose.”
They arrived at one of the fires. There were many other people around, but they left Gully and the patriarch alone as requested. In addition to a few logs pulled around the fire, there was a single wooden chair. The patriarch slowly sat in it with a slight groan of effort and laid his walking staff down next to it in the sand.
He said to Gully, “Forgive me for not offering you the chair. I am old and trying to sit on the logs exhausts me too quickly.”
“I’m quite comfortable on the ground, sir,” said Gully. He sat down on one of the logs, now terribly eager to hear about these strange people hidden away in the middle of the Ghellerweald. For cannibal gypsies, they were not at all what Gully expected. But what they actually were was completely unexpected. Both Gallun and Gellen, or the wolves rather, sat down next to Gully, although he had the impression it was less to guard him than it was to stay close enough to hear the full conversation. The ocelot sat on the ground peacefully next to the patriarch.
The patriarch took a deep breath and said, “Let me begin with some history of whom we are, if I may.”
“Please do,” said Gully, fascinated and eager.
“We are not quite the same as you, as you have guessed,” began the patriarch.
“You are called Merchers?” asked Gully.
“That is merely a family name... my family name,” answered the patriarch, “and the clan has taken it to represent all of us. We are almost all that is left of a people that lived in a great empire to the north of here. Have you ever heard of Balmorea?”
Gully’s brow furrowed as he tried to think. “I do not recall ever hearing of such a land.”
“It died away many hundreds of years before Iisen began to form, so I am not surprised. Iisenors do not seem very interested in exploring the land to the north, but if any were to go there, they would still likely find ruins of the civilization. The name of the empire, Balmorea, comes from our word ‘balmor,’ which means dual-bodied. Many of Balmorean blood have one mind and one soul, but it is shared among two physical bodies, one human and one animal.”
Gully glanced at the wolves near him.
The patriarch pointed to the wolf closest to him with his hand. “Gellen here, for example, can shift between a human and a wolf form, as can his twin brother, Gallun,” explained the patriarch.
“Does it hurt?” asked Gully, and then without waiting for an answer he was so curious, “Whom does the ocelot turn into? Can you turn into any animal? How come Gallun and Gellen as wolves have their tongues? Shouldn’t they have been cut out?”
The patriarch laughed and said, “Slowly, please. I can no longer move as fast as one as young as you. Shifting hurts no more than blinking an eye does. It is in their intended nature to transform at will between the two forms. Their wolf forms still have their tongues because the two bodies are separate. Damaging one does not damage the other, with the exception of death. Death to either form is death for both.”
The child, Wyael, arrived with a platter of food for their supper. He also laid the kilts on the log for Gallun and Gellen. Both changed back to human form, which Gully watched with interest now that he could see it happen plainly in the firelight. Aside from the strange flicker in their image that immediately preceded the change, the act of transforming was instantaneous. One moment, the animal was there, and then the next, there was a person. They fastened their kilts around their waists and resumed their seats on the log with Gully. Wyael served out the food to the men, and then seemed to dawdle idly as they began to eat.
The patriarch nodded at him and said, “You may stay, Wyael. But you must let the adults speak in peace, please.”
Young Wyael nodded his agreement violently and sat on the ground so he could listen.
The patriarch chuckled and told Gully, “There is nothing we’re relating that really needed to be discussed alone. To be frank with you, I wanted some time for Encender to calm down and not interrupt every time he thought of a new reason to oppose your presence in the camp. He will likely intrude in on us before too long, my request to be left alone notwithstanding.”
Gully ate a few bites of the steamed greens and asked, “So, whom does the ocelot become when he transforms?”
“The ocelot does not transform,” said the patriarch with a smile. “Ignoring the myths and legends for a moment, and the kinds that have not existed for a while, there are two kinds of balmor. Some, like Gallun and Gellen, are balmors called transmutes. And others, like myself and my son’s husband, Raybb, are balmor familiars.”
“Familiars?” asked Gully. The other way the patriarch referred to Raybb also caught Gully’s attention, but he placed far more importance on the “familiar” concept for the time being.
“I am dual-bodied with the ocelot. I do not change back and forth between the two bodies. Rather, when my balmor nature emerged when I was a young boy entering manhood, I paired with an ocelot and we became one and the same. Two bodies sharing the same mind and soul,” explained the patriarch. “I see with two sets of eyes, smell with two noses, hear with four ears, all at one time. No matter the distance that separates my human form and my ocelot form, one mind experiences both. I am fully cat, and fully human, at the same time. The same is true with Raybb, who shares his human form with the large brown bear that, I believe, startled you in the woods.” He chuckled again and added, “Which is amusing, because amongst all of us and despite being a very accomplished fighter, Raybb has one of the kindest hearts in the entire clan. But, yes, he is quite intimidating if you have no knowledge of that beforehand.”
“What about your sons, Exoutur and Encender? What are they... dualed... with?”
“Not all of us have the dualed nature. It has always been this way, though, even in the Balmorean empire. When a boy becomes a man, or a girl a woman, he or she will come into their nature at that point in their life, if they are balmor. Almost as many are not balmor as those that are.”
“So there are the two different kinds of balmors?” asked Gully.
“Yes. There used to be other kinds, in the past, but they were rarer to begin with. We are now almost extinct as a people and no one has seen those kinds in many years,” said the patriarch.
“Forgive me, but why do you not return to your home country and settle there? Why do you live here instead, hiding away?” asked Gully.
“The land where Balmorea was has changed. It is far colder now, too cold to settle in permanently again. When Balmorea fell, it was cataclysmic, and the people that were left behind scattered. The group that is around you, the Mercher clan, numbering less than two hundred, is the largest single group of Balmoreans that are left. There are a few other splinter clans out on their own, but they are very small compared to my clan. We keep in contact with the others as we can, but it is a risk as Iisenors fear us and want to paint us as monsters and cannibals, and the Maqarans merely want to enslave us.”
“So you’ve been here, in these woods, almost since Balmorea ceased to exist?”
“Not here exactly, we have wandered over time and have yet to find a place in which we can permanently and safely settle. Originally, even before I was born, we lived in the northern woods of Maqara. But the Maqarans found us to be a convenient source of slaves. My parents led
our clan into the northeastern part of Iisen to escape the ruthless Maqarans before I was born. We’ve wandered in the northeast part of the Iisendom, but have settled here for fifteen years or so since the Ghellerweald is so large.” Here the patriarch sighed heavily, “And yet we find that we are still a source of slaves to Maqara.”
“I do not understand, though,” said Gully. “If some of you are bears and some wolves, how can Maqarans capture you? It would seem a terrifying and impossible task.”
“We have a weakness, and the Maqarans discovered it many, many years ago. A binding of silver, no matter how small, severs our dual nature. Even so much as a thin silver ring encircling any part of either body interrupts the connection between the two bodies. It is excruciatingly painful, as Gallun and Gellen can sadly attest, and if left bound long enough, the severance becomes permanent. Many that have been bound this way go mad in the end. It is not like merely having a regular non-balmor human left behind, though. It is quite literally a half a person because the true nature of a balmor is to have two bodies.”
“So that’s why the Maqarans require it! That’s why Gallun and Gellen had the collars of sterling silver! It prevented them from changing into their wolf forms!” exclaimed Gully. “And what purpose does cutting the tongues out serve?”
“None, other than as a barbaric act of dominance for the Maqarans, to show a slave his place,” said the patriarch, his eyes flashing in the light of the fire with anger.
“How many have been taken from you? How many have disappeared?” asked Gully sadly. He glanced over at the two men seated next to him, who were barely picking at their food.
“Fifty-three since we settled here inside the Ghellerweald. There were many more than that taken while we were still within reach of the Maqarans years and years ago. And until you rescued Gallun and Gellen, we had only managed to recover one other before it was too late — my beloved granddaughter, Abella Jule,” said the patriarch.
Gully nodded. He wasn’t aware of any Iisenors that had ever been recovered. At least the Merchers had managed to rescue one. And he felt a warmth inside that he had helped recover yet two more before it was too late for them. For all their good luck, the two men next to him still seemed to have no appetite, however.
Gully said to Gellen, “Are you not hungry? You are not eating.” Gully thought the food was quite good and was far better than what he would have gathered wild for himself if he had spent the evening alone.
Gellen made a pained, doleful face and looked at his brother, Gallun, who had put his food down at his feet.
“It is because of their tongues being cut out so recently,” said the elder as he finished the last of his own food. “My granddaughter, Abella Jule, has gotten used to it, but Gallun and Gellen are still healing from the wound and learning how to eat without a tongue. They are very sore and tend to stay in wolf form most of the time now because of it. They take their human form tonight out of politeness for you.”
Gully thought of how much his own missing tooth hurt. A tongue, ruthlessly cut out, would be far more painful. He brightened and said, “I can help with that some! I have some obsidian nettle with me and can make a tea with it. It is very good at alleviating this kind of pain!” He began to dig around in his pockets looking for the pouch that still contained the leaves of the plant.
The patriarch looked alarmed and said, “You jest, of course! Obsidian nettle is poisonous! You cannot be serious about drinking it!”
“No, no,” said Gully. “I mean, I know that the adult leaves are poisonous. But if you use only the young, tender leaves and shoots, they make a tea remarkably good at relieving pain. I will drink some before you if you do not trust me. I lost a tooth not too long ago and it has helped with the pain so that I barely even notice it! My father taught me many things like this when I was growing up in the woods.” Gully turned to Wyael and asked, “Do you have a pot of water we can heat on the fire?”
“Yes, sir,” said the young boy, anxious to be helpful, and he ran off to retrieve a pot of water.
“Are you sure of what you are doing?” asked the patriarch.
“Very sure! I used some of these same leaves less than a week ago for this same purpose.”
Wyael returned with a pot of water and set it into the fire to warm. Gully went ahead and tipped the pouch of nettle leaves into it to steep as the water heated.
“May I ask why your son seems to be so scornful of Gallun and Gellen?” asked Gully. “They seem like very capable fighters to me, I would think either as wolves or as men.”
Gallun smiled kindly at him and Gellen’s jaw set firmly and unhappily.
The patriarch said, “Those trained as fighters in our society occupy a special and venerable place, even more so now because of our precarious position as a clan. Gallun and Gellen have found themselves dishonored among us because they failed to protect themselves from being captured. And a fighter that cannot even protect himself is far less capable of protecting the rest of us. My son, Encender, has expelled them from the Mercher fighters because of their failure.”
The two brothers’ heads hung in silent shame at the patriarch’s words.
“However,” said the patriarch more directly to the two brothers, “as I have told you before, it is not an unforgivable lapse. We are all aware of the almost impossible standards to which my son holds all of his fighters.” More to Gully, he added, “But it does cause most of the clan to lose faith in them. Losing faith in those trained to protect us causes us to lose faith in our ability to survive for much longer.”
Gully said, “It is not my place to say so, but that seems rather harsh. People make mistakes, and these were trained Iisen soldiers that specifically had silver collars at the ready to capture people like you.” He said to the two brothers, “I’m sure it took but a moment of distraction for your fate to be almost sealed.”
Gallun nodded sadly and put an arm around Gully’s shoulder to thank him for the words of encouragement.
Gully used a stick to take the tea out of the fire and Wyael brought out three cups from which to drink. Gully poured his own cup first, blew on it to cool it a little, and then drank from it. He nodded at Gallun and Gellen to let them know it was good. He was expecting the two brothers to wait a while to see if he would begin to vomit and convulse, but Gellen held out his cup almost immediately, as if wanting to take any opportunity to prove his worth and bravery. Gallun looked less sure, but followed his brother’s lead. Gully poured for both of them.
While Gully was pouring the tea, the patriarch asked, “Soldiers? It is not soldiers committing these crimes against us. They are robbers and highwaymen in league with the Maqarans.”
Gellen looked at his tea nervously for a moment while he blew on it to cool it as Gully had done. Gallun was decidedly more nervous about drinking anything made from obsidian nettle. Gellen poked his brother in the side with an elbow and Gallun began to blow on his tea as well.
“It is good, my lost tooth hurts less already,” encouraged Gully. To the patriarch, he said, “I know Iisen soldiers very well, sir. My foster brother in Lohrdanwuld is a lieutenant in the Guard. These men were disguised as robbers, but they are, without a doubt in my mind, corrupt swordsmen of the Kingdom Guard. That is probably the only reason they were able to get the upper hand and catch Gallun and Gellen unaware.”
Gellen tipped his cup back and drank the entire cup in one awkward swallow. Gallun continued to blow on his a few more seconds, nervously watching both Gully and Gellen.
The patriarch watched the two brothers closely to make sure they were faring well with the tea, but said, “That would explain why they are so well organized and why we rarely seem to be able to catch them in the act. Iisen soldiers are well-trained, unlike typical highwaymen.”
“What’s more,” said Gully, “Lord veBasstrolle, head of the veBasstrolle fief and all of East End, is a part of this conspiracy! I, uh... came across a letter to him admitting as much, but in an indirect way. I was only able to
piece it all together when I realized Gallun and Gellen had had their tongues cut out and had silver restraints holding them.”
The patriarch’s forehead knitted for a moment as he thought about what Gully had said. Gellen’s face looked surprised and he held up his cup to both Gully and Gallun, nodding and smiling for the first time, indicating that the tea was working. Gallun immediately drank his own tea.
Gellen reached around and slapped Gully on the shoulder appreciatively and then smiled at the patriarch while nodding again.
“Your father taught you very well and was obviously more knowledgeable than even we are about the beneficial uses of forest plants,” said the patriarch. “You say the young leaves will work this way?”
“The younger the better. Once the leaves have turned black and glossy, you must avoid them,” said Gully.
“I would like to go back to something you said earlier, please, though,” said the patriarch. “Why would you approach men you suspected of being highway robbers? At night, I might add.”
Gully frowned and fought to come up with a lie that would pass. He gave up when he felt the patriarch’s eyes fixed on him and admitted, “I have occasionally acted as a thief in the past. I thought two robbers in the woods would be fair game after they fell asleep from too much wine. When I saw them up close, I suspected they might be soldiers, but could not be sure until I went through their bags. It was only later that I found Gallun and Gellen tied to the tree away from the fire. But I swear to you that I was not coming here tonight to—”
The patriarch held up his hand and Gully stopped. He said to Gully, “You need not affirm your intentions amongst us. You saved two of our best men and, now tonight, have helped them again with the tea. Perhaps you have stolen in the past, but you are not without merits to outweigh that.”
He added with a twinkle in his eye, “Besides, Abella Jule is a balmor transmute that takes the form of a hawk. You cannot hide from her eyes. And Raybb is a master tracker, in both forms.”
