Aidan marveled at the great block of granite. What kind of flood brought it into the canyon? “It looks almost like a gate stone,” he said.
“It is a gate stone,” said Jasper. “Look at this.” He tapped the far side of the stone.
Aidan walked around to that side of the stone, where he saw an inscription: “New Vezey.”
“Didn’t I say you wouldn’t believe it?” Jasper whooped.
“New Vezey,” Aidan read again. “What is New Vezey?”
“It’s carved on a village gate stone, so we figure it’s the name of a village,” Jasper answered. “But nobody’s heard of a village called New Vezey. We’ve got men from all over Corenwald here, and I think I’ve asked every one of them. But nobody knows of a place called New Vezey.”
“And nothing from the old lore?”
“There was a village registry among the manuscripts I brought from the library at Longleaf, but it makes no mention of New Vezey.”
Aidan concentrated on those words, New Vezey. Something was on the tip of his tongue, but it just wouldn’t come.
“So what do you think?” Jasper asked.
Aidan raised his hand for silence. “New Vezey,” he mumbled, his eyes closed, “New Vezey… Vezey… Vezey… Vezey…”
Suddenly, Aidan’s eyes popped open, and he raised an index finger. He recited: Oh, Veezo, you is ruint, Covered up in clay. With choppin’ and plowin’ You tore up the ground And now it’s washed away.
“What are you talking about?” Jasper asked. His expression showed genuine alarm, as if he thought his brother had gone crazy.
“Dobro’s sadballad,” Aidan answered. “About Veezo and the magical plow.” He repeated the stanza again: Oh, Veezo, you is ruint, Covered up in clay. With choppin’ and plowin’ You tore up the ground And now it’s washed away.
“I think that legend might tell what happened here.”
Jasper stared at his brother. Yes, he thought, he’s finally lost his wits.
Aidan looked up at the band of red clay just below the canyon rim. He rested his fingers horizontally across the bridge of his nose to shield the rest of the canyon wall from his vision. “Pretend there’s no canyon here,” he told Jasper. “Pretend there’s just a clay bank cut into the ground.”
Jasper shielded his own vision the way Aidan had and gazed up at the bank.
“Have you ever seen anything that looked like that?” Aidan asked.
“Just looks like a plain old gully when you look at it that way,” said Jasper.
“Dobro and I saw one yesterday. A man had plowed a furrow straight down a slope instead of terracing across it.”
“Not very smart,” Jasper observed.
“That was only four years ago. Four years of rains washing down that slope, and that furrow has become a gully you can’t jump across. Every bit of topsoil has washed away, off down the hill somewhere. Topsoil ten feet deep, all the way down to the bedrock, just gone.”
“I still don’t see what you’re getting at,” Jasper said.
“Let’s say you put a farm-no, not a farm, a whole village-on a spot where that nice red topsoil isn’t sitting on bedrock or hardpacked clay but on a layer of sand and loose clay a hundred feet thick.” Aidan pointed straight up in the air, where he imagined this village might have once stood. “And let’s say there’s a farmer whose fields border the village, and he plows his furrows the wrong way-down the slope, not across it.
“When the topsoil is gone from that farmer’s field, can you imagine how quickly the sand below it would wash out? You saw how much sand and clay moved through here in a single rainstorm.”
Jasper looked as if he was starting to get the picture. “So you’re saying this farmer is the Veezo from Dobro’s story?”
“No, I’m saying the song isn’t about a man named Veezo. It’s about a village called New Vezey. It must have gotten garbled through the years. It wasn’t a farmer who got swallowed up by the clay. It was a whole village. This gate stone, these timbers, the plow blade didn’t wash up. They fell down, just like that pine tree did.”
Jasper wasn’t yet ready to accept all of Aidan’s theory. “It just doesn’t make sense, Aidan.”
“It makes more sense than any other explanation we’ve come up with,” Aidan insisted. “It explains a lot of the feechies’ peculiar ways. Think about how many superstitions Dobro has about this place.”
“Time to leave these neighborhoods,” Jasper mimicked in his best Dobro voice.
“Exactly,” said Aidan. “Probably the worst disaster in the history of feechiedom. A whole village abandoned, then swallowed up by the earth. Even if they don’t exactly remember what happened here, you can imagine the superstitions that would grow up around this place.”
“Dobro did say the feechies started out as farmers and villagers,” Jasper remembered.
Aidan raised both hands to gesture at his surroundings. “And then this happens. No wonder they gave up farming and took to the forest. This is what made them feechiefolk.”
“I’ve just got one more question,” said Jasper. “Why would farmers-even bad farmers-try to farm the Clay Wastes?”
Aidan shrugged. “Maybe they weren’t Clay Wastes three hundred years ago. Maybe they only became Clay Wastes after the topsoil washed away.”
Jasper smiled. “Perhaps it was for the best that the feechies gave up farming. There may not have been any topsoil left on this island by the time the civilizers got here.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three weeks after Aidan and Dobro returned from Tambluff, a convoy of Pyrthen ships landed at Middenmarsh and disgorged four legions-twentyfour thousand fighting men. They took the port city without any real resistance and, after leaving a small occupying force behind, began raking eastward toward Tambluff. As they marched, they burned the farms and villages along the Western Road.
It was not a complete surprise, therefore, when Ottis ran up to the washing pool from his guard post at the mouth of the canyon. “Pyrthens!” he called. “Pyrthens! A troop of Pyrthens is headed this way!”
“Are you sure they’re Pyrthens?” Errol asked.
“Yes, sir,” Ottis answered. “I’ve seen enough Pyrthens to know them when I see them. Black-andred battle standards. Black armor.”
“I suppose you do know a Pyrthen when you see one,” said Errol. “How many men?”
“A hundred or so, on horseback.”
“A hundred,” Errol repeated. “A small cavalry unit.”
“Why would they be coming this way?” Brennus asked. “We’re twenty leagues off the Western Road.”
“They must have heard about rebels holed up in the canyons,” Aidan surmised. “They’ve sent a party to find out whether we’re friend or foe.”
“I can answer that easily enough,” said Errol, instinctively feeling for the sword at his left hip. “How long before they get here, Ottis?”
“A quarter hour at the most,” he answered.
Errol began giving orders. “Percy,” he said, “you go up the canyon and alert the main camp. We’d rather hide than fight if we can help it, at least until we know what we’re up against.” He gave Percy a little push in the direction of the camp. “Brennus,” he continued, “I want archers on the canyon rim. Fifty here”-he pointed to a stand of trees above them-“and fifty on the north rim. And stay hidden.” Brennus sprinted off to do his duty.
Errol pointed to the brushy pine boughs stacked nearby. “Start covering our tracks,” he said. “Even if we can’t hide the fact that we’ve been here, we can at least keep the Pyrthens from knowing how many of us there are.”
Down the canyon he could see a cloud of dust rising. The Pyrthens would be coming around the bend any
