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erupted again with raucous laughter and good-natured jostling.
    â€œHear me!” Aidan screamed as loudly as he could. “Hear this well! I will have nothing to do with any rebellion against the king! I will not stand by, either, and let anyone revolt in my name!” But nobody heard him or paid him any mind.
    Aidan jumped off the platform to rejoin Percy and Dobro. “Let’s get out of here!” he still had to shout to be heard, even though he was standing beside them. “These people are all fools or traitors!”
    â€œThat may be!” Percy shouted back. “But that doesn’t mean they’ve got it all wrong!”

Chapter Nine
The Boss of the Forest
    Aidan, Dobro, and Percy gave up on getting supplies for their journey to Sinking Canyons. Now all they wanted was to get away from Hustingreen; but that proved to be no easy matter. A group of boys noticed them trying to slip out of the village and followed them, whooping, capering, and pushing each other. Soon the whole village was following them north on the River Road, as if they were on a pleasure outing.
    â€œTo Tambluff!” somebody yelled. They were, after all, headed in the direction of the capital city.
    â€œHurray!” the crowd shouted in response.
    Aidan could hear the boisterous, happy conversation between several old men near the front of thecrowd. “You gotta like his style,” said one of them. “Bold, determined.”
    â€œI’m with you,” said another. “We know the king ain’t there; he’s off at the swamp with our boys.”
    â€œHee-hee,” laughed the first. “King Darrow’s in for a surprise when he gets home, ain’t he?”
    â€œBut don’t you reckon he left somebody guarding the castle?” suggested a third man.
    But the other two seemed unconcerned. “Don’t you worry about that, old boy. If I know Aidan Errolson, he’s got a plan.”
    Aidan Errolson did have a plan, but it had nothing to do with storming Tambluff Castle. Taking the River Road was only a ruse. The last thing they needed was a whole village of Aidanites following them to their hideout in Sinking Canyons. Their true destination lay many leagues to the west and south, far from the River Road—far indeed from any road.
    On Dobro’s signal, the three disappeared into the forest on the left side of the road, clambering up a convenient tree and soaring through the treetops, hidden from the wondering eyes of the Hustingreeners.
    Dobro led the way to the banks of Bayberry Creek. They waded the creek, pausing to cool themselves and to drink of the black water before pushing on to the west and south.
    The tangled forest of the bottomlands opened up into a great pine savannah a few leagues below the Bayberry. Confident that the Aidanites couldn’t possibly have tracked them, the three travelers returnedto the ground and continued their trek on foot, careful to avoid the few small farms, turpentine camps, and other tiny settlements that dotted the landscape in this part of the island.
    By midmorning on the second day after they had left Hustingreen, even those small, isolated settlements were nowhere to be found. Aidan, Dobro, and Percy were entering Corenwald’s Clay Wastes. Unlike most of the island, here the soil was too poor for farming. Even the forests looked thin and degraded. The stately old longleaf pines of the upland savannah were replaced by scrubby second-growth pine trees. A few trees were as tall as seventy or eighty feet, but even those were so spindly they looked as if a good strong wind might snap them in two. In some places the trees formed dense thickets. In others, they were so far apart that even a person with a strong arm could hardly throw a rock from one tree to the next. Without the protection of the longleaf overstory, the waving wiregrass was overrun by vines and briars. It was exactly the kind of vegetation that made tree walking