Chapter Twenty-four

Throne Room

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.