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 into 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.”
