Jonathan Rogers - The Way of the Wilderking

Aidan noticed that Bayard was gazing into the gully. He had a faraway look in his eyes. Aidan had seen that look before-on that day, six years earlier, when Bayard came to Longleaf, searching for the Wilderking. The day he foretold that Aidan would be the Wilderking. The old prophet seemed to be in another world. Aidan couldn’t tell whether Bayard could even hear what he was saying.

“‘Fallen are the Vezeyfolk,’” Bayard muttered, still staring at the opposite bank of the gully. He turned on his heel and strode along the edge of the gully toward the Western Road. His goats trotted to keep up.

“Bayard!” Aidan cried, a little alarmed at the sudden change in the man. “Where are you going?”

“To the library!” Bayard shouted without looking back.

“Wait, Bayard! Come to Sinking Canyons with us!” Aidan called after him. “We need you!”

Bayard didn’t answer, but kept walking with the long, fast strides of a man with a purpose.

“Bayard, I need your help!” Aidan was almost begging now, trying to push past the goats to catch up with the Truthspeaker. “I need advice, Bayard.”

Bayard kept walking but turned his head to speak. “Live the life that unfolds before you.”

“Not that kind of advice, Bayard!”

“Love goodness more than you fear evil.”

“No, Bayard! That’s what you always tell me. I need some new advice!”

Bayard stopped dead at the edge of the road and turned to face Aidan. “No, Aidan,” he said firmly, “you don’t need any new advice. You need to heed the old advice.”

“But, Bayard, everything has gotten so complicated. I try to lead, but people don’t always follow. I try to follow, and nobody seems to be leading. I just don’t understand what I’m supposed to-”

Bayard quieted Aidan with a raised hand. “Well then, Aidan, here’s my advice: Do what you were doing already. Hurry to Sinking Canyons. Be ready to fight. The Pyrthens are coming.”

Aidan nodded.

“Did you need a prophet to tell you that?”

Aidan shook his head no.

“The future is a dark path, Aidan. It’s even dark for me most of the time, and I’m a prophet. But the living God always gives you light to get to the next turning. Stay in the path, Aidan. There’s light enough. When you get to the second turning, the third, the twentieth, they’ll be lit too.”

Bayard put a hand on Aidan’s shoulder. “You don’t need a prophet as much as you think you do, Aidan. You need to live the life the living God is unfolding before you.”

Bayard turned to go east, the direction from which Aidan and Dobro had come. Then he turned back for one last word. “This was no chance meeting.” He pointed up the gully. “Remember this place. Here is written the history of Corenwald.”

Aidan just wanted to rest when he got back to Sinking Canyons. It had been a long trip from Tambluff. But Jasper wouldn’t wait. He grabbed Aidan by the arm and began leading him down-canyon. “Aidan!” he said. “You’re not going to believe this!”

“Can it wait?” Aidan asked. “I really need to see Father.”

“See Father later,” Jasper insisted. “You’ve got to see this.”

“Are you taking me to the diggings?” Aidan asked.

Jasper nodded eagerly.

“Jasper, we’ve got a lot of things to do that are a lot more important than digging up old timbers and broken pottery. You’re supposed to be helping train an army.”

“I have been helping train an army, Aidan,” Jasper retorted, a touch of indignation in his voice. “You’re the one who’s been gallivanting all over the place.”

They soon arrived at the diggings, which were significantly bigger than they had been when Aidan left for Tambluff. “Looks like you’ve put the new recruits to work,” Aidan observed.

“Every good soldier needs to have some practice digging fortifications,” Jasper said. “They might as well practice here.”

“But this is what I wanted to show you,” Jasper continued. He pointed at a blue-gray granite block, about two feet in height, depth, and width.

“You dug this up?” Aidan asked.

“Yes. It took eight men to drag it out of the hole.”

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.”