The Way of the Wilderking Read online

  Darrow was leaning over to tighten a boot lace when he noticed that his badge of kingship was missing. He clutched at the ends of the severed strap that hung loose about his neck. Aidan watched as the king patted around his chest and belly for any sign of the missing medallion. But even as he did so, it was obvious that King Darrow understood the truth: His badge of kingship had been taken.

  “My badge of kingship!” King Darrow bellowed, and his voice echoed all the way across to the feechie side of the River Tam. “My badge of kingship! Who has stolen my kingship from me?”

  The faces of the four night bodyguards were ashen. Their terror was plain to see. Darrow snatched the strap from around his neck and used it as a whip to lash his bodyguards about the head and shoulders. “My kingship!” he roared. “Someone has stolen my kingship from me!” The guards made no move to protect themselves from the lashing but stood erect and looked straight ahead, absorbing this abuse from the king.

  Throughout the camp, all preparations for the crossing stopped as men gaped at the king’s outburst. Darrow was still roaring and flailing like a crazy man when a tall, dark-haired young man strode up behind him. In his bearing was all the natural command of a man born to rule. He was the very picture of King Darrow when he was younger, when he still had all his wits about him. “Father,” he said firmly but gently. He put a comforting hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Father, no one has taken your kingship from you.”

  King Darrow let the strap fall to the ground. The presence of his son Steren brought him back to himself. Aidan, too, was moved by the sight of his dearest friend in all the civilized world. The mere sight of Steren—the true, the brave, the just Steren—awakened in Aidan a loyalty that had lain dormant during his years in the swamp. Steren stood for all that was good about Corenwalder civilization. Aidan could see in the soldiers’ faces a love for the prince that far outstripped any love they still had for his father the king.

  “No one has taken your kingship from you,” Steren repeated, “but your badge of kingship—I will not rest until it has been returned to you.” He fixed his gray eyes on the bodyguards, convinced that at least one of them knew something of the medallion’s whereabouts. The bodyguards, who had stood so bravely under the king’s lashing, wilted under the prince’s glare.

  The long silence that followed was broken by a clear voice in the tree limbs high above the bodyguards’ heads. “Your Majesty,” the voice called. King Darrow, Prince Steren, and nine hundred ninety-five Corenwalder soldiers squinted to see Aidan Errolson dangling the badge of kingship from the tip of a hunting knife. The four bodyguards, anxious to make up for their earlier negligence, lifted crossbows to shoot Aidan out of the tree, but Steren raised a restraining hand.

  Those soldiers who had been conscripted from Hustingreen knew Aidan by sight, and the whispered news raced around Last Camp: The man they were going to seek had come instead to them.

  Aidan bowed in the direction of King Darrow. “Your badge of kingship.” He flipped the medallion toward the nearest bodyguard, who dropped his crossbow in order to catch it. “With all the glad heart of a loyal subject, I return it to my king.” After three years among the plain-spoken feechies, such courtly language no longer came naturally to Aidan. But the assembled soldiers seemed to think it a pretty sentiment. They appeared to be on the verge of applauding Aidan.

  King Darrow, for his part, was speechless with rage. Nor did Steren look very pleased with his old friend’s gesture. “A loyal subject,” Steren said in clipped tones, “would not have stolen from his sovereign to begin with.”

  Some of Aidan’s self-satisfaction ebbed away under the stern gaze of the crown prince. “I truly meant it as a gesture of goodwill,” Aidan said, not quite so confidently. “To show His Majesty, and every man assembled here, that I would never do my king harm.”

  The king’s rage boiled over at this. “You lie!” he shouted. “You have done me many harms! The subjects whose loyalty you have stolen—”

  “Your Majesty, I would never—”

  “The swamp men you have organized into a hostile army—”

  “No, Your Majesty—”

  “My own son, whom you almost turned against me …” As if it weakened him merely to speak of such things, the king leaned heavily on Steren, who neither frowned nor smiled at Aidan.

  Aidan extended the hand that held the hunting knife. “This morning I held this knife an inch away from Your Majesty’s throat, while you slept.” His hand shook as he spoke, and his voice trembled. “If I had meant you any harm, I could have done you harm.”

  This statement seemed to get through to the king, whose aspect softened, though only a little. Aidan continued. “I’m about to go away. Pursue me if you must. But I make this solemn promise: I will not cross again into the land of the feechiefolk. You need not look for me there.”

  King Darrow snorted. “Why should I believe that?”

  “Because I have never lied to you.”

  In that moment King Darrow understood Aidan was telling the truth, as he always had. “Why would you make me such a promise?” the king asked.

  “Because I am not worth the lives of a thousand men. If you lead these men into the Feechiefen, you will be leading them to their deaths. The feechies are fierce, and they aren’t forgiving of outsiders who invade their swamp.”

  Aidan paused to let the king and his men think about what he had said. “I will run for my life if I have to, Your Majesty. But you have my word: I won’t run that way.”

  King Darrow pondered Aidan’s promise. Something about it rankled him—the quarry defining the terms of the chase. Years of smoldering hatred got the better of him. “I will end this now!” he announced. “Archers!”

  Fifty archers raised their bows and awaited the distasteful order from their king—to shoot Aidan Errolson down like a roosting bird. But Prince Steren intervened again. “Wait, Father—Your Majesty,” he called. “There is a more honorable way. I will end this myself.” The look he fixed on Aidan was grim.

  Among the king’s many jealousies was Darrow’s jealousy of Aidan’s friendship with his son. It pleased Darrow to see Steren taking his side in this conflict. He motioned to the archers to stand down. Steren kicked off his boots and checked to be sure his knife was in its sheath. Aidan watched in mute astonishment, his feet rooted to the limb on which he stood, while Steren climbed swiftly, feechielike, toward him.

  Aidan had faced down alligators and wolves, a giant and a rattlesnake, the Pyrthens’ thunder-tubes and the consuming darkness of underground caverns, hostile feechies and a thousand men bent on his capture. Now his best friend in all the civilized world was climbing steadily toward him to “end this.” He suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired. The struggle just didn’t seem worth it now, not if he couldn’t even count on Steren anymore.

  But when Steren was just a few feet away, once he was high enough to be sure no one on the ground could see his face, he gave Aidan a smile and a broad wink. “Run,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “And make it look good.”

  When Aidan leaped from the limb where he stood to a limb on a neighboring tree, Steren was hot after him, careful to jump precisely where he jumped, to land precisely where he landed. For Aidan it was thrilling to be in the forest again with Steren, as they had been so many times when they both lived in Tambluff Castle. For Steren it was no less thrilling. In the years since their famous boar hunt, Steren had often dreamed of that dizzying tree-walk when he followed Dobro and Aidan through the forest canopy to the greenbog. How many times had he wished he hadn’t been too tentative and self-conscious to fully enjoy one of the most exhilarating experiences of his life. How many times had he wished for one more chance to soar and leap through the treetops like this. This time he would enjoy it.

  Aidan and Steren made the full circuit around Last Camp, in full sight of the Corenwalder soldiers. Viewed from below, their frolic through the treetops looked like a harrowing, death-defying chase. The men were whipped in
to a frenzy, shouting and whooping like coon hunters following a pack of hounds on the trail. Aidan spiraled upward into the higher boughs, and Steren followed leap for leap, landing for landing, handhold for handhold. Soon they were well out of sight of their audience, up above the overstory.

  In the highest branches of an enormous gum tree, the two friends perched like a pair of egrets. Below them they could still hear the clamorous shouts of a thousand men desperate for news of the chase. But here they were above it all. All was peace in the treetop. Even the whine of mosquitoes, so incessant in the forest as to go largely unnoticed, was absent here. The sun came to them directly, not filtered through the dense leaves of the forest. They had a straight shot to the bluest sky imaginable. Everything seemed clearer here, more focused. Aidan and Steren were boys again, catching their breath after a frolic.

  “Remember the last time we did this?” Aidan asked. “With Dobro?” He paused, chuckled. “Things were simpler then.”

  Steren looked across the river and into feechie country. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe things weren’t as simple as we thought they were.”

  A long silence prevailed. Neither Aidan nor Steren knew quite what to say, where to begin after three years—and such years as those had been. Finally Aidan spoke. “So,” he said, in that casual way of people who are just catching up, “how’s your father?”

  Steren gave Aidan a perplexed look, then got the joke, and he laughed until he almost fell from his perch.

  “Father,” Steren said when he had regained his composure. “Father … he does better than you might think, judging from your run-in this morning. He’s rational most of the time—almost all the time, really. But when he’s not …” Steren’s voice trailed off. “I’m the only person left who can talk sense to him when he gets that way. And half the time he won’t listen even to me.”

  “What about the Four and Twenty Noblemen?”

  Steren shook his head. “Father doesn’t trust any of them anymore. He’s outlawed three of them—your father, Aethelbert, and Cleland. Gave their lands to half-wits and flatterers he thought he could control. But now he doesn’t trust those men either.

  “Think about how many lives are affected every time a king makes a bad decision. Do you ever think about that?”

  “No, not really,” Aidan admitted.

  “I think about it all the time.” Steren plucked at the leaves where he sat and watched them flutter down through the overstory when he dropped them. “He’s quite sane most of the time,” he said. He almost sounded as if he were trying to convince himself. “The best thing I can do is to help manage those times when he’s not—try to talk him out of his worst decisions.”

  “Isn’t that strange? Trying to manage a king?”

  “Not half so strange as trying to manage your own father.”

  “What about this invasion of the Feechiefen? You couldn’t talk him out of that?”

  Steren gave Aidan a wry smile. “Any mention of Aidan Errolson, any whisper about the Wilderking, sends him into an insane rage. There’s no talking him out of anything when it comes to you.”

  “So these Aidanites …” Aidan began.

  “You know about the Aidanites?”

  “Percy told me about them,” he said, a little embarrassed.

  “Those fools are going to tear this kingdom apart, and they don’t seem to care.” Aidan saw real anger in the prince’s face. “Why they feel the need to force themselves on the ancient prophecies, I’ll never know.”

  “I have nothing to do with those people, you know.” Aidan suddenly felt the need to justify himself.

  “I know that,” Steren answered. “Of course I know that.”

  “But when you hear about the Aidanites, see what they’re doing, does it …” Aidan paused. Did he want to know, or did he not want to know? “Does it make you feel bitterness toward me?”

  Steren sat quietly, pondering how to answer Aidan’s question. “I love Corenwald,” he began, slowly. “I don’t just mean the throne of Corenwald. I mean Corenwald itself—its people, its lands, its creatures. And if ever I am king, I expect I will go down in history as one of Corenwald’s greatest kings. I’m not boasting, I hope you know.”

  Aidan thought of the admiration that shone so clearly on the faces of the men at Last Camp, and he knew Steren was right. He had grown into a leader of tremendous charisma and ability. He would indeed make a great king.

  Steren continued, “And yet I know the Wilderking prophecy. I know it is not God’s purpose that the House of Darrow should stand forever.

  “But I still haven’t answered your question, have I? You asked me whether I ever feel bitterness toward you. Sometimes I do. For the last three years, I’ve been at Tambluff Castle learning what it is to be a king. And learning the hardest way possible, I don’t mind telling you. The burdens I have borne these three years—to watch my father’s court disintegrate around him, to be his only comfort and support. Meanwhile, you’ve been in the Feechiefen Swamp doing who knows what. You had no choice. I understand that. I don’t blame you. But I hope you won’t blame me either when I say I felt a pang of resentment when I heard people declare that Corenwald never will be happy until Aidan Errolson is its king. Aidan Errolson, who was frolicking with feechies while I was already bearing the burdens of kingship without any of its benefits.”

  Aidan nodded, humbled by Steren’s words. “The Aidanites may be right,” Steren continued. “I know they may be right. The time of the Wilderking may be upon us. It may not be the purpose of the living God that I should ever be king.” There was evident pain on his face when he spoke. “But I will say this: If you are ever to be king”—he pointed a finger at Aidan, not in accusation but for emphasis—“you’ve got a lot to learn yet—things you can learn only on this side of the river.”

  Aidan had the strange feeling Steren had outgrown him in the past three years. Steren, who had looked up to Aidan when they were younger, had grown into a man, into someone very like a king. Aidan, on the other hand, felt he was much the same person he had been when he took to the Feechiefen.

  At last Aidan spoke. “Steren, I am as loyal to the House of Darrow as I have ever been. And when you inherit the kingdom of Corenwald, God willing, I will be proud to follow you.”

  “If there is any kingdom left to inherit,” Steren said absently, staring across the treetops. Then, with a slight shudder, he came back to the present. “We should be going,” he said. “Which way are you headed?”

  “West,” Aidan answered. “Up the Overland Trail.”

  “Then I’ll go east. I’ll circle around and come into Last Camp from the east side, tell the men you escaped that way. That should give you a head start.”

  Aidan embraced his old friend before they parted ways. “I don’t reckon we’ll ever talk again like this, will we?”

  Steren looked down through the treetops. “No, I don’t suppose so. Not so long as my father is king of Corenwald.” Looking into his friend’s face, he added, “But, Aidan, you’ll never have a more devoted friend than I.”

  Chapter Seven

  On the Road to Hustingreen

  Dobro was showing Percy basic tactics of feechie fighting when Aidan got back to the moss bed where he had left them. Given the head start Steren had provided, they agreed they no longer required the secrecy afforded by treetop travel. They could safely use the Overland Trail, and they would make much better time. Hustingreen was the nearest village. There they could buy supplies, even horses, for the rest of their journey to Sinking Canyons.

  They hit the River Road just below Longleaf Manor, Errol’s lands, which now belonged to Lord Fershal of the Hill Country. The front fields, once so robust with wheat or sometimes corn, had gone to broomsedge and thistle. Even from the road, they could see that one of the shutters on the front of the manor house was hanging askew.

  “Fershal doesn’t even live there,” Percy remarked. “Spends all his time in Tambluff.”

  “What abou
t all the farmhands?” Aidan asked. “How do they make a living now?”

  Percy shrugged.

  “And who’s growing food for the villagers in Hustingreen?”

  Percy shrugged again. They quickened their pace, eager to put the sad sight of their old home behind them.

  The travelers were almost in sight of Hustingreen when they saw the first of the Aidanites’ posters. Tacked to a tree on the side of the road, it read in thick, black letters,

  WHEN FEAR OF GOD HAS LEFT THE LAND,

  TO BE REPLACED BY FEAR OF MAN;

  WHEN CORENWALDERS FREE AND TRUE

  ENSLAVE THEMSELVES AND OTHERS TOO;

  “These foolish people,” Aidan grumbled. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. They don’t know what they’re doing to Corenwald.”

  A few steps farther down the road, a second poster was tacked to a tree on the other side:

  WHEN JUSTICE AND MERCY DISAPPEAR,

  WHEN LIFE IS CHEAP AND GOLD IS DEAR,

  Aidan snatched the sheet of palmetto paper from the tree and ripped it in half, then half and half again. “How I’d like to rip the man who put these up,” he growled.

  Dobro watched Aidan carefully, not sure what to make of his behavior. He couldn’t read and wouldn’t have recognized the Wilderking Chant even if he could read. He assumed this was a strange civilizer custom.

  Aidan snatched the next poster:

  TO THE PALACE HE COMES FROM FORESTS AND SWAMPS. WATCH FOR THE WILDERKING!

  And the next:

  LEADING HIS TROOPS OF WILD MEN AND BRUTES. WATCH FOR THE WILDERKING!

  Aidan was furious. These meddlers, these Aidanites, couldn’t leave well enough alone, could they? They had to stir up trouble, had to force themselves on the ancient prophecies. Now Aidan’s family was outlawed and living in the most godforsaken patch of ground in all of Corenwald; the civilizers had narrowly missed all-out war with the feechies; Aidan was running for his life and would never see his beloved Feechiefen again—all because of his so-called followers and their posters.