“Brennus,” said Aidan quietly, “if you wish to honor Father, then love what Father loved.”
Brennus stomped off without another word, waving a hand behind him. Percy and Jasper weren’t so violent as Brennus in their reactions. But they weren’t yet ready to receive Maynard into the bosom of the family either. They, too, wandered off in the direction of the canyons.
Aidan squatted down beside his older brother and put his arm around him until he stopped his wailing. The two of them walked to the rim of the canyon, still not speaking, and sat with their feet dangling from the edge. They watched the daily activities of thirty-five hundred men, below, getting on with their lives. Men were bathing their wounds in the wash pool, starting fires to cook their evening meals, talking in little groups.
To their left, the sun was going down, the brilliant purples and pinks of its dying light magnifying the colors that swirled in the canyon walls.
They sat that way for five minutes or more before Maynard finally spoke. “His love haunted me, you know. All the way across the ocean it haunted me.” He watched a pebble bounce down the side of the cliff.
“False love I could handle. Flattery, using people, even being used-I understood all that. That made sense to me. But unconditional love was the last thing I wanted, from Father or anybody else. Because to receive unconditional love is to know somebody loves you more than you deserve to be loved.
“I don’t mean Father ever meant to make me feel unworthy. I don’t even think he knew he loved me more than I deserved. I just mean a love that intense can’t help but make you see your own selfishness.
“So I spent my life trying to prove I deserved more than I was getting. That’s why I tried to pass myself off as the Wilderking. Who’s more deserving than a king?
“When that didn’t work, I went to Pyrth. I had something they wanted, and I thought they would honor me for it. I could help give them victory over Corenwald, the one kingdom they had never been able to conquer. I could come home a victor, not groveling for Father’s forgiveness but making him grovel for mine.
“But the Pyrthens didn’t love me. They broke me. They made me a slave, not a general. Then, when it was too late, I understood I needed unconditional love more than I needed anything in the world.”
He began to weep again but softly this time, not violently as before. “I was sure I had finally put myself beyond Father’s love. But after all those years, after all that hurt, it finally tracked me down. And it saved me.”
“He never slackened in his love for you,” Aidan said after a long silence. “I can tell you that.” He looked down into the canyon, which was now growing dark. “And now he’s gone. I can’t get my mind around it. It’s as if we woke up one morning back home and found that the River Tam was gone. Some things you just figure will always be there.”
He waved his hand out over the canyon. “You know, a village used to stand there.”
Maynard pointed down at the canyon floor. “Down there?” he asked, surprised to hear that anyone would put a village in the bottom of Sinking Canyons.
“No,” said Aidan, pointing again. “Out there. It stood right out there, in a spot that’s now a hundred feet in the air. It was solid ground then, and the villagers built solid little cabins on it. They cooked their suppers, raised their children, visited with their neighbors. On nights like this, they stepped out their doors and watched the sun go down.
“And then the earth opened up and swallowed their little village. Which goes to show, you’d better be careful what you put your faith in. The things of earth look mighty solid, mighty permanent. But then they go away.”
The diggings were just visible in the failing light. “We found part of that village, by the way,” Aidan said, lest Maynard think he was making it up, or maybe speaking figuratively. “Dug it up with shovels. The name of that solid little village was right there on the gate stone: New Vezey.”
Maynard got a strange look on his face. “Did you say New Vezey?”
“That’s right,” said Aidan. “We think it was an old feechie settlement.”
Maynard paused, deep in thought. When he finally spoke, he spoke slowly, carefully. “The Pyrthens have a saying: “ Until New Vezey rises, the Empire will stand. ”
Aidan looked perplexed at the odd saying.
“It’s like saying the Pyrthen Empire will stand until pigs fly or until the stars fall from the sky,” Maynard explained. “It means the empire will stand forever.”
Aidan shook his head. “I still don’t understand.”
“There’s a legend people tell on the continent about the Vezians, or Vezeyfolk. They were a warrior tribe that lived in a broad river valley they called Vezey Land.”
“Veziland,” Aidan muttered, remembering the inscription on the coin that Arliss found.
“When the Pyrthen empire first rose to power,” Maynard said, “the Vezeyfolk were one of the tribes they conquered. Vezeyfolk were driven out of Vezey Land, and their king, Halverd the Antlered, led them into the country that came to be called Halverdy. Which is where our people came from.”
“The Halverdens started out as Vezeyfolk?” Aidan asked. “I never knew this.” Indeed, even the most learned of Corenwald’s lore masters were a little hazy on the history of the Halverdens before they came to Corenwald.
“All that part is historical fact,” Maynard continued. “But then there’s the legend of New Vezey. According to the legend, King Halverd sent a select group of Vezeyfolk over the ocean to establish a colony called New Vezey, just in case they put them on ships and waved good-bye, and that was the last anybody ever saw of the New Vezians. They were shipwrecked on an island somewhere. Then, according to the legend, the earth just opened up and swallowed them.
“Just fairy-tale talk, of course. Just a legend. That’s why the Pyrthens say their empire will stand until New Vezey rises again, because there never was any New Vezey.”
“But there was,” Aidan said, his voice rising with excitement. “There was a New Vezey, and we found it. Vezeyfolk…” Aidan muttered. “Feechiefolk… Vezey… feechie…” He remembered Bayard’s misquoted rhyme: “‘Fallen are the Vezeyfolk…’” He remembered Bayard’s sudden realization that sent him running for the library.
“The feechiefolk are Vezeyfolk,” Maynard said, the realization slowly dawning on him. “They’re descended from the lost colony.”
“Yes!” said Aidan, nearly shouting. “Descended from the same people we’re descended from. That explains why we found a Vezilander coin in the diggings. Their Harvo Hornhead is our Halverd the Antlered. That explains why they speak our language.”
The realization made him almost giddy. “The feechies are our people, Maynard! We’re one tribe!”
“ The empire stands until New Vezey rises again, ” Maynard quoted. “So the Pyrthens have better reason to hate us than they know: We are New Vezians, together with the feechiefolk. If only we can rise again.”
Aidan understood a new truth about the Wilderking prophecy: The Wilderking wouldn’t merely unite the feechies and the civilizers into a single kingdom. He would reunite them, two parts of a single tribe that had been separated for three centuries.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Days passed, and the expected attack by the Pyrthens didn’t come. News of the invasion soon came, however, and it wasn’t good. Tambluff had fallen. Much of the city had burned, and Tambluff Castle was now inhabited by Pyrthen officers.
Rather than allow the Pyrthens to besiege Tambluff and subject its inhabitants to starvation and disease, the Corenwalder army had given the Pyrthens battle outside the city walls, led by King Darrow and Prince Steren. The Corenwalder army was scattered to the four winds. King Darrow was killed in the battle. It was believed Prince Steren survived-or King Steren now, if indeed he did survive.
“They will surely be coming now,” said Aidan to his brothers. “And they will bring the main body of their force. This is the only army they have left to fight against.”
To Aidan’s surprise, however, the Pyrthen army wasn’t the first army to arrive at Sinking Canyons. Word had gone out among Corenwald’s scattered warriors that resistance to the Pyrthen occupation would center on Sinking Canyons and Aidan Errolson’s army. They streamed in for a day and a half, in groups of ten, fifteen, fifty. Sometimes
