The Secret of the Swamp King (18 page)

Father and son walked back to the manor house. Errol asked many questions about Aidan's journey into the swamp and back, but Aidan answered them evasively,
studiously avoiding anything that would reveal any information about the false Wilderking. It just wasn't worth it, Aidan finally decided. Father was looking healthier, happier. Even in the three weeks since Aidan had seen him, Father seemed to have come to terms with the loss of Maynard. Why open that wound again? Maynard was better off dead. And Aidan was better off getting out of there until he was better prepared to talk to his father about what happened in Feechiefen.

“I've got to get back to Tambluff tonight,” Aidan announced when they reached the manor house. “But I'll come back as soon as I can.” Errol was understanding. He packed Aidan's supper himself and had his horse brought from the stable—the same horse Aidan had ridden down from Tambluff three weeks earlier. Moira's brief ministrations to the frog orchid had worked wonders. It wasn't exactly good as new, but it looked much more presentable.

Father followed Aidan out the door. On the front porch he asked the question he always asked anyone who came to Longleaf from the Eastern Wilderness: “Have you seen my son Maynard?”

Aidan froze. His eyes darted aside from his father's gaze as a lie formed in his mouth. He had decided he would never tell his father what he had seen on Bearhouse Island. But the lie wouldn't come out. His mouth wouldn't open.

Errol smiled at his son. “I know that Maynard lives,” he whispered. “In the trial of the plume hunters, they told me who they worked for. They didn't even know
Maynard's real name. But I figured it out. I know what he's doing in the Feechiefen. I know he's impersonating the Wilderking. I know about his plot against King Darrow.”

Errol looked beyond Aidan and down the cart path. “And it all breaks my heart.” He paused. “But where there's life there's hope. And the heartache of knowing my son's wickedness is outweighed by the joy of knowing he's still alive and may yet turn back. I didn't have that hope when I thought he was dead.”

Errol looked at Aidan's eyes now. “I can't explain it,” he concluded, “except to say that I am still his father, and he is still my son.”

King Darrow could hear his son's exuberant shouts even before he burst uninvited into the throne room. “Father! Father! He's back! Aidan has returned from the Feechiefen!”

The castle was already buzzing with the news. Even in the city of Tambluff, the rumor was starting to spread that Aidan Errolson had gone into the Feechiefen and come out again bearing the frog orchid of old lore.

The king was in a darker mood than usual that night. His melancholic episodes had grown noticeably meaner and more frequent in the three weeks or so since the hunt feast. That night he sat sulking in the glum light of torches, refusing to let his servants light the brighter-burning wax candles.

Steren's voice echoed against the sandstone walls. “Father! Our prayers are answered! The frog orchid is here and Aidan is alive! Your melancholy is cured!”

The king cast heavy-lidded eyes on Steren. He neither smiled nor gave any other signal he had heard or even recognized his son.

“Should I bring him in?” asked Steren eagerly. “Do you want to see the frog orchid?” King Darrow didn't speak
but waved a hand in an ambiguous gesture. He might have been granting Steren permission or he might have been shooing him away. Steren took it as a gesture of permission and darted out of the room to fetch Aidan. He came back immediately, pulling the returning hero by the arm. In his hands Aidan held a tree branch, and above it, on a long, limber stem, nodded a delicate white flower trailing two long ribbons like the springy legs of a leaping frog.

At the very sight of the frog orchid, Darrow felt his spirits lift. A man would have to be made of stone not to be affected by a thing of such exquisite beauty. Perhaps it was, as the old lore said, “melancholy's surest cure.”

Aidan knelt before the king's throne. Bowing deeply, he held the flower out as an offering to the king. “Your Majesty,” he said, “the frog orchid. Out of many perils and many hardships, I bring this gift to you.”

Darrow took the branch and flower from the kneeling Aidan. He turned the branch around in his hands and examined the flower's delicate beauty from every angle. A smile softened his face, the first smile Steren had seen in days. The true King Darrow seemed to be breaking through the cloud of melancholy that had obscured him these many months. It wasn't just the flower itself that touched the king, but the sacrifice of this boy, a boy he had believed to be his enemy, in the service of his king. Even as his smile of happiness grew, a tear of regret began to form in the king's eye. He silently vowed to be more worthy of such loyalty.

The king rose and carried the flower to a torch, to see it better in the light. But as he stood in the torchlight, the
jealousy and hatred that had caused him to send Aidan to the Feechiefen in the first place washed over him again like a wave. With a sudden movement he snapped the flower from its stem and dangled it over the licking flames of the torch. The long, ribbony legs of the frog orchid shriveled in the blaze. Then the king plucked the petals one by one and watched them curl and smoke as he dropped them into the fire. Then he dropped the bud, the last morsel of the flower, into the torch.

Darrow turned and spoke to Aidan for the first time but without emotion: “There is only one way the frog orchid could have cured my melancholy: only if it had lured you to your death in the Feechiefen Swamp.”

Aidan's eyes filled with tears. He realized that his king was lost and that he could do nothing to bring him back. There wasn't much hope, as the prophet had said, for a man who wouldn't live in the grace he was given. The Truthspeaker had warned him: No chemist could cure what ailed King Darrow. And yet, Aidan hadn't believed it until he saw the look of hatred in the king's eyes. Aidan turned and ran from the throne room. At last he understood that his days in King Darrow's court were over.