broken by the clanging of Moira’s dinner bell.
Moira was bringing around pies she had made from plum preserves, but as usual, Percy was so busy talking to the guests that he had hardly touched his dinner of venison and sweet potatoes.
“So if you needed timber at Last Camp,” Percy asked Massey, “why didn’t you just cut down some of the trees down there? Hustingreen to the Big Bend is a long float.”
Massey straightened in his chair and answered self-importantly, “I ain’t a timber cutter,” as if felling trees were beneath the dignity of an alligator hunter.
“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so,” observed Percy, “you aren’t much of a rafthand either.” Percy’s twin Jasper, who had taken off from his studies to eat dinner, couldn’t help but snicker. Ebbe, standing behind Lord Errol’s chair, raised the back of his hand to his mouth as if to conceal a laugh.
Lord Errol intervened, mindful of his guests’ feelings. “Why do you need a raft of timber at Last Camp?”
“We’re building a stockade,” answered Floyd.
“A stockade?” asked Errol. “Who would attack hunters and trappers?”
“We don’t know,” said Floyd. He was grimly serious now. “That’s what’s got us worried.”
“Somebody wants us gone from Last Camp,” explained Massey. “They hide in the woods and shoot up the camp with arrows, throw spears in amongst us.”
“Just the other day,” said Floyd, “Massey was leaning up against a tree resting after a day-long hunt, when a spear come sailing in and stuck in the tree just above his head.”
“Parted my ever-loving hair like a Tambluff dandy,” added Massey. With his right hand he showed the motion of the spearpoint, imitating the noise of an arrow in flight striking a tree: “Sssssssssst-thwonnnngg!”
“I never seen such a near miss,” said Floyd.
“Was it a near miss,” asked Jasper, “or a warning shot? A man who can part your hair with a spear can kill you just as easily.”
“Well, whatever it was,” said Massey, “near miss, warning shot, or friendly hello, we’re building ourselves a fort.”
“And we’re building it strong,” added Floyd.
The diners returned to their plum pies. Errol, poking at his rather than eating it, finally asked the question he always asked anyone from the Eastern Wilderness. “Have you seen my son Maynard?”
Massey and Floyd looked at each other, then at Errol. “No sir,” answered Floyd. “Why?” Errol didn’t answer, only picked more at his pie.
Mostly to fill the dead air, Percy asked, “Do you boys ever run into plume hunters in the Eastern Wilderness?”
Massey looked a little shocked, as if someone had asked him if any of his friends were grave robbers, but Massey did his best to answer politely. “No, plume hunters know they ain’t welcome at Last Camp, and they stay clear of us in the forest too.”
Errol’s face went from red to purple, and he pounded the table. “Percy!” he shouted. “How can you sit at my table and even speak of plume hunters?” He pushed his pie away. His appetite was ruined. “The vile criminals-how I’d like to get my hands on a few plume hunters!
“It’s a mean business, plume hunting. Trading a heron or an egret’s life for two feathers on a dandy’s hat-to pluck a dead bird’s plumes and leave the rest of it on the ground to rot. Nobody gets fed. Nobody gets clothed. Just feathers for a dandy’s hat.”
It was a good thing, thought Aidan, that his father hadn’t been to Tambluff lately. His old-fashioned frontier sensibilities would have been shocked by the extravagance of the latest spring fashions. The Pyrthen Empire may have been Corenwald’s bitterest enemy, but the Pyrthens still defined clothing styles for the known world, and wealthy Corenwalders worked hard to mimic the Pyrthens’ outlandish dress. Men and women alike, bowing and nodding their elaborately plumed hats at one another, bobbed up and down Tambluff’s High Street like tall ships under sail.
“That’s not the worst of it either,” continued Errol. “The navy stopped a smugglers’ ship near Middenmarsh last week. They found bales and bales of plumes.” He paused a minute, finding it hard to finish saying what everyone at the table could figure out for himself. “Those plumes were headed for Pyrth. There’s hardly a plume bird left on the continent. The Pyrthens have used them all up for hats and horse bridles. So somebody is sending them ours… for as long as they last.”
Errol wiped his mouth with his napkin and stood to leave. It was clear from his abrupt manner that he was finished talking about plume hunting. “Percy,” he said, “go get a field wagon and carry me around to see how the melons are coming along.”
Chapter Seven
Aidan spent the rest of the afternoon in the library with Jasper. He was hungry for any old lore related to the frog orchid, the Feechiefen Swamp, or the ways of the feechiefolk.
The two brothers leaned over a huge map of Corenwald, stretched out to cover the whole library table. Here was the kingdom in its entirety. In the north, the high mountains towered over dales, hollows, and high country lakes. A different kind of wildness prevailed there-not the swampy, sandy wildness of Aidan’s native haunts, but a wildness of crags and rocks and waterfalls, of elk and brown bears three times the size of a man.
South of the mountain range rose the foothills, where miners scratched out a living under the ground. A low plateau stretched across the middle of the island. This was Corenwald’s breadbasket. Its lush and rolling land was sectioned into farms arranged in tidy grids. Here the map was dotted thickly with villages and towns. Here the world seemed orderly and safe.
At the bottom edge of the plateau, the capital city of Tambluff, the gleaming jewel of Corenwald, was tucked into a bend of the River Tam. From there, to the south, east, and west, the land dropped to a low and sandy plain where the rivers meandered slowly, taking their sweet time on the last long leg of their journey to the sea.
On the western coast, the chief city was the deep-harbored port of Middenmarsh. The first settlers of Corenwald landed there and radiated east across the Bonifay Plain and toward the River Tam. In the southwest quarter of the island, the land drained by the Eechihoolee River, the population was sparser than in the center of the island. But still, the map showed farms and villages stretching as far down as the southern coast, where oranges and lemons grew.
The swampy heart of Corenwald was in the south and east, where the River Tam flowed. Here the map grew murky indeed. Flowing south from Tambluff, the river rolled through Hustingreen, then along the edge of Longleaf Manor. But as the river flowed through the Eastern Wilderness, the map showed nothing else for leagues and leagues. No village, no settlement, no farmstead. Beyond Longleaf, there was only one more marking on the map. The river made a looping bend before turning east for its last push to the sea. This was Big Bend. And situated on the very bottom of the bend, on the north side of the river, was Last Camp. It was the last outpost of civilization in the Eastern Wilderness.
To the south of Last Camp, across the river, the bottom right corner of the map was simply labeled “Feechiefen Swamp.” There was no further detail-no islands, no waterways, not even an outline of the swamp. No one really knew what lay beyond Last Camp. Jasper dug up every map he could find. Pretending to look for something in the Eastern Wilderness, Aidan let his eyes wander down to the southeastern extremity of each map. But each was the same. No matter how detailed the map, the Feechiefen was a big blank. As far as the mapmakers were concerned, Feechiefen was beyond the edge of the world. The only thing to be learned from the maps was what Aidan already knew: To get to Feechiefen, he would have to go to Last Camp and turn south. And pray to the One God.
Jasper rolled up the last of the maps. Aidan remarked, “Lord Cleland mentioned something called the frog
