The Way Of The Wilderking Part 16

"The living G.o.d has delivered us this day," said Aidan. "Praise be to the living G.o.d, who has delivered Corenwald."

All across the field, men were looking for comrades and brothers. There were many joyful reunions, many tearful good-byes. Aidan rejoiced to find all his brothers safe and sound. Dobro was also unhurt. Aidan's check on his men was interrupted by the feechies who swarmed around him, eager to greet the civilizer hero and feechiefriend.

A messenger pushed his way through the feechies to tell Aidan that King Steren needed to see him immediately. Aidan followed the boy at a gallop across the area that used to be the Pyrthens' left flank. Aidan could tell at a glance that Steren's half of the army had suffered greater losses than his had.

The messenger stopped at a spot where men were kneeling in a circle. Some were sobbing loudly, others were praying. In the center of the circle, King Steren lay broken and bleeding, the casualty of a Pyrthen cannonball.

Aidan leaned down over the fallen king. With great effort, Steren raised a hand and held it in front of Aidan's face as if giving a benediction. "Aidan, you have fulfilled your duty to the House of Darrow," he rasped. "Now do your duty to Corenwald. They would have you for their king." The light was ebbing from his eyes. "The living G.o.d has been good to me. I have lived to see Corenwald's deliverance. Hail." He gave a dying gasp. "Hail to the Wilderking." Steren's hand of blessing dropped to his chest, his eyes closed, and the pain on his face melted into an expression of peaceful rest.

Bayard had come running when he heard of King Steren's injury. He reached through the circle of men and placed two fingers on Steren's neck, feeling for a pulse. "The king is dead," he said. "Long live the Wilderking."

Epilogue.

After Bayard the Truthspeaker had left Aidan and Dobro at the gulley on the Western Road, he went straight to the library at Tambluff University. There he consulted some long-forgotten scrolls and pieced together the story of the Vezeyfolk and the first, ill-fated human habitation on the island of Corenwald.

He left immediately for the Feechiefen. There, in the largest swamp counsel ever convened, he told the feechiefolk their story-that they and the civilizers were actually one big tribe, all descended from the Vezeyfolk. They had come to Corenwald in two separate waves of immigration, but they had come for the same reason: to escape the aggression of the Pyrthens, to live in a new land in the way they saw fit to live.

At first, the feechies were troubled by Bayard's story. They were a clannish people, and their fierce loyalty to tribe and family had always made them deeply suspicious of the civilizers. They had to change their whole way of thinking as the meaning of Bayard's story became clear to them. Now, rather than separating them from the civilizers, the feechies' clannishness suddenly bound them to the civilizers as brothers and sisters.

So when Bayard told the feechies about the impending invasion by the Pyrthens, there was really nothing more to talk about. Before night fell, a flotilla of flatboats had put out for the north edge of the swamp-a feechie army coming to the aid of their tribesmen.

The feechie warriors came by the thousands, across the black waters of the Feechiefen, through the scrub swamp, across the great pine savannah. They swam the River Tam, and in the moonlight their helmets looked like a horde of snapping turtles crossing the river into civilizer country. They came up the Overland Trail at a trot, and when they struck the River Road they turned north for Tambluff.

They arrived too late to save the capital city from the Pyrthens. But Bayard led the feechies on another two-day march to the south and west, toward the Clay Wastes. That was how the feechies came to be the heroes of the Battle of Sinking Canyons. New Vezey rose again that day, and the army of the great empire fell, swallowed up by the same ground that swallowed Corenwald's first village. That earlier catastrophe at Sinking Canyons sent the feechiefolk to the swamps and forests. Now another catastrophe, three centuries later, brought them back.

After a week of mourning for King Darrow and King Steren, the city of Tambluff devoted itself to a week of celebrations leading up to the crowning of Aidan Errolson as King of Corenwald. For now no one, not even Aidan himself, could deny that Aidan was the fulfillment of the Wilderking prophecy.

Tambluff had never seen such a week as that one. From every village in Corenwald people came to see the Wilderking crowned. That in itself would have filled the capital city beyond its capacity. But to that number the feechiefolk were added. All of them. Every he-feechie, she-feechie, and wee-feechie on the island crowded into Tambluff for the festivities. For the first time in three hundred years, there wasn't a human soul in the Feechiefen Swamp; it was given over to the alligators and craney-crows and bears and turtles for the week.

During the festival, the usual civilizer entertainments were augmented by such feechie pastimes as fire-jumping, gator-grabbling, and spitting contests. In the wrestling matches, feechies won every weight cla.s.s except the heavyweights-and that was only because none of the feechies was big enough to qualify for the heavyweight cla.s.s. The festive atmosphere was dampened somewhat by some grumbling among the civilizer wrestlers, who remarked on the feechie wrestlers' habit of biting their opponents and occasionally sticking their thumbs in their opponents' eyes.

Truth to tell, the grumbling wasn't limited to the civilizer wrestlers. There was more widespread grumbling about the nine alligators that high-spirited weefeechies fetched from the moat of Tambluff Castle and turned loose in the city's High Street. And there was grumbling (and shrieking) on those unfortunate occasions when exuberant feechies dropped from shade trees into the fine carriages of civilizer ladies.

Taking it all around, however, the civilizers agreed that having feechiefolk in Tambluff was much better than having Pyrthens, so the protests were few. One of the most notable protests came from Lynwood and his family. When it came out that feechiefolk would be attending Aidan's coronation feast, Lynwood announced that he and his wife and daughters had socialized quite enough with feechiefolk and would miss the event.

Lynwood's daughter Sadie did, however, sneak off to the coronation feast, where she sat next to Dobro Turtlebane and shared a rotten lizard egg with him. Dobro and Sadie shared many more meals in the succeeding years, by the way. But that is another story.

The Pyrthens decided that their ambitions didn't extend to the island of Corenwald after all. That was just as well, for their army was in a weakened state after the disaster at Sinking Canyons. Besides, the Pyrthens had their hands full with a dozen rebellious subject states, which were now emboldened to fight against their masters.

Corenwald settled down to a long period of peace and prosperity under Aidan's kingship. That was a good thing, for the work of integrating feechie Corenwald and civilizer Corenwald into a single kingdom took every bit of King Aidan's wit and energy.

The day after the coronation ceremony, Brennus moved back to Longleaf Manor with his wife Gemma and their children and began reclaiming the family farm from the encroaching wilderness. Fershal of the Hill Country graciously gave up his claim to the land.

Maynard took a low-level position in his brother's government. Thanks to his steady work and his unswerving loyalty, he eventually worked his way up to the position of Corenwald's amba.s.sador to the Pyrthen Empire.

Percy became Aidan's Secretary of State, and Jasper accepted a position at Tambluff University, where he immediately began his life's work: a seven-volume history of Corenwald, encompa.s.sing all of civilizer history and all of feechie history into a single narrative.

Dobro became Corenwald's Minister of Feechie Affairs, but that didn't stop him from sleeping in the treetops if he took the notion.

Bayard the Truthspeaker returned to his life of solitude in the forests and swamps, confident that his beloved Corenwald had been set to rights. Aidan hardly saw Bayard ever again. But he finally learned to take the old prophet's advice. He settled down to live the life that unfolded before him.

end.