The Orphan King (5 page)

Not a person moved.

“You are out of weapons, boy,” the old man cackled quietly. “How do you expect to force them now?”

His question immediately became prophetic as the hangman dared to protest again. “All three? Impossible.”

Murmurs came from the people as they, too, began to lose their edge of fear. A rock, thrown from the back of the crowd, narrowly missed Thomas.

He roared in anger, but without flame or the cast of blindness, it was a hollow roar.

Another rock.

“Old man,” Thomas hissed from black shadow, “this is your doing. Help me now.”

The old man smiled and looked past the specter’s shoulder at the sun. “Raise your arms,” he commanded.

One more rock struck the ground at their feet. Murmuring grew.

“Raise them now,”
the old man repeated with urgency.
“Before it is too late.”

Thomas raised his arms. He’d extended the arms of the cloak and
used sticks hidden by the sleeves to make his arms appear longer than any human arms. The crowd fell silent as if struck.

The old man continued quietly. “Repeat all of my words. If you hesitate, we are both lost. There is less time remaining than for a feather to reach the ground.”

The black hood nodded slightly.

“Do not disobey,” the old man whispered. “Tell them, ‘Do not disobey.’ ”

“Do not disobey.”
Thomas added heavy emphasis to his voice.

“I have the power to turn the sun into darkness,” the old man instructed.

“Impossible,” Thomas whispered back to him.

“Say it! Now!”
The old man’s eyes willed him into obedience.

Thomas boomed his voice in measured slowness.
“I have the power to turn the sun into darkness.”

A laugh from the crowd.

The old man whispered more words, and Thomas repeated each one slowly.

“Look over my shoulder,” he said. “I have raised my arms and even now you will see the darkness eating the edge of the sun!”

Another laugh, this time cut short. Sudden gasps and a few fainting spells in front of him startled Thomas. He fought the impulse to look upward at the sun himself.

The old man gave him more instructions. Thomas forced himself to repeat his words. “Should I wish, the sun will remain dark in this town forever!”

He nearly stumbled at the words given to him, because already the light of day grew dim. “What kind of sorcerer are you?” he demanded of the old man as he paused for breath.

The old man ignored the question. “ ‘All prisoners shall be released immediately,’ ” he replied in a hypnotic whisper. “Say it now while they are all in terror.”

Thomas did as instructed.

In the unnatural darkness, he heard the hangman and the soldiers scurrying into action.

Then he repeated the final words as given to him by the old man. “Send each prisoner from town with food and water. Tonight, at the stroke of midnight, the town mayor shall place a pouch of gold on these very gallows. The messenger I send for the gold will appear like a phantom to receive your offering. Only then will you be free of the threat of my return.”

As Thomas finished these words—trying hard to keep the wonder and fear from his own voice—unnatural darkness completely covered him, the gallows, the crowd, and the countryside.

“You have done well, boy. Go now,” the old man spoke. “Drop from your stilts and wrap your robe into a bundle and disappear. Tonight, if you have any brains in your head, you will be able to retrieve the gold. If not …”

In the darkness, Thomas could only imagine the old man’s hunched shrug.

“These prisoners?” Thomas whispered back. He wanted the knight more than he wanted the gold.

“You desired the knight. As you planned, he will be yours.
If
you prove to him you are his rescuer.”

As I planned?
Thomas wondered.
How did the old man know?
In his confusion of questions, he blurted, “Why release the others?”

Around them, moans of panic rose as the crowd fled in all directions.

The old man answered, “Take them with you. It will guarantee you a safe journey to Magnus. And you must succeed to bring the winds of light into this age of darkness.”

“You cannot possibly know of Magnus.”

“You have little time before the sun returns.”

“Who are you?”

Thomas wondered later if there had been a laugh in the old man’s reply.

His words came through the darkness. “The answer is in Magnus, boy. Now run, or you shall lose all.”

T
homas slipped from tree to tree in pursuit of the knight, who cut through the forest like a roe deer. In contrast to the stiffness of the stilts Thomas had discarded less than an hour earlier, he followed the freed knight on the leather soles strapped to his feet. His tunic, crudely sewn and badly dyed coarse linen, fit him as tightly as his breeches.

Normally that double reminder of poverty—clothes he must wear long after outgrowing them and the brown of monks’ charity cloth—irritated Thomas. On this occasion, while silently dodging branches, he was grateful for the brown that made him blend into the background and happy there was little loose material to snag on twigs and bark.

Thomas glanced up, seeking the sun’s position by the light that streamed dappled shadows onto the moss of the forest floor. He made a rough calculation. Distance? Already they were five miles east of Helmsley and the abandoned gallows. Time? Shortly before the
sext
bells that marked midday. A half day of light remained. Yet were there enough hours left to secure the gold at midnight?

Thomas decided he could not risk a delay. He must confront the knight soon. He calculated the knight’s forward progress and began a wide circle through the falling slope of the forest to intercept him.

The deep moss soaked up the sounds of his footfalls, and he was careful to avoid dead and dry branches. Around him, bird songs echoed against the hush of the forest.

On the trees, some leaves were still only buds, but others had been encouraged by the warm spring air to unfold. The splashes of green among trees long since tired of winter gave the forest an air of hope.

Thomas did not pause to enjoy the beauty. He concentrated on silent footstep after silent footstep, hoping he remembered the lay of the land correctly.

Fifteen minutes later, Thomas grinned at the sight of a wide stream at the bottom of the valley. While it blocked him, it would also block the knight. A thick fallen tree appeared the only way to cross the water.

Thomas reached the primitive bridge and scrambled to its center. He sat cross-legged and half-hidden among the gnarled branches that bent into the stream, and waited.

When the knight finally appeared, Thomas saw his face clearly. It had been hidden on the gallows by a bowed head but was now revealed beneath the sharp shadows of the midday sun. Hair cropped short—no gray at the edges. Dark eyes. Most compelling was the ragged scar down his right cheek.

Thomas waited for the knight to notice him.

William merely raised an eyebrow when he reached the bank of the stream and saw a boy among the branches of the log.

“This appears to be a popular bridge for a forest so lonely,” he said.

It drew a smile from the young man, who added a touch of his own irony. “A shrewd observation, sir.” The young man stood and balanced in the middle of the fallen tree. “I shall gladly make room for you to pass, sir. However, I beg of you to first answer a question.”

Most men who had fought long and hard to reach the status of
knighthood would have been enraged at such insolence. Most knights would have responded with a menacing steel blade. William simply permitted himself the slight curl of a grin.

“What’s your name?” William asked. He kept it casual, but this was a more important question than it appeared.

“Thomas. And yours?”

“William.”

“You are a knight.”

“Formerly a Templar,” William answered. A vision came to him of the days when he, like his brothers, could proudly wear the white mantle with a red cross, when they were known everywhere as the most skilled fighting units of the Crusades.

The recent troubles, building for some time, had been twofold. First, those in the order who were not fighters had amassed a fortune for the order, for the Knights Templar had been a popular charity for centuries. But this very success proved a foundation for destruction—the noncombatant members of the order had taken this money and formed banking structures that had begun to threaten the power of kings across Europe.

The kings could not act, however, with such popular support for the Templars, tied closely to the victories of the Crusades. This support had disappeared over the last half century, however, as the Crusaders slowly lost the Holy Land to the infidels. When they had been defeated in their last stronghold on the edge of the Holy Land—a fortified town called Acre, a harbor on the Mediterranean—the king of France, who was deeply in debt to the order, took advantage of the loss. He had French members arrested and tortured into false confessions against the Church, then pressured the pope to officially disband the order.

Too many of William’s brothers-in-arms had died not by the
swords of infidels, but by burning piles of wood lit by the very authorities they’d gone on Crusades to honor and protect.

“Your arrest, then,” Thomas said, “was unfortunate politics?”

“I refused to renounce my vows to the order,” William said. “It is a common fate for all of my brothers, one I was not afraid to share.”

“And—”

William interrupted whatever question Thomas intended next. He’d shared his own history hoping to learn Thomas’s. “Well, Thomas, from where do you hail?”

This was even more important than knowing Thomas’s name. If the young man was who William suspected, there was much to gain from the answer. He could send someone back to learn about Thomas’s boyhood and habits. From there, perhaps, the treasure could be found.

“I’ll ask the questions, if you don’t mind,” Thomas said.

William hadn’t expected it to be easy, but it had been worth a try.

“You are an unlikely troll.” William set down the large leather bag he had been carrying over his shoulder and contemplated Thomas. “That
is
a legend in this country, is it not—the troll beneath a bridge with three questions to anyone who wishes to pass?”

“I am not a legend,” Thomas answered, then added boldly, “but together, we may be.”

They stared at each other in a silence pleasantly broken by the burbling of the stream.

William saw a square-shouldered boy, dressed in the clothing of a monk’s assistant, who did not flinch to be examined so frankly. Ragged brown hair tied back. High forehead to suggest strong intelligence. A straight, noble nose. And a chin that did not waver with fear at a knight’s imposing gaze.

Then the knight noticed Thomas’s hands. Large and ungainly,
they protruded from coarse sleeves too short for their wearer.
Nearly a man, yet still a puppy with much growing to do
, the knight thought with amusement.

What checked the knight’s smile was the steady grace promised in the young man’s relaxed stance, and the depth of character in the gray eyes flecked with blue that stared back with calm strength.
Does a puppy have this much confidence
, the knight wondered,
this much steel at such a young age?

Then the knight did grin. This puppy was studying him in return with an equal amount of detached curiosity.

“I presume,” the knight said with a mock bow, “I pass your inspection.”

Thomas did not flush as the knight expected. He merely nodded gravely.

Strange. Almost royal. As if we are equals
, the knight thought. He let curiosity overcome a trace of anger and spoke again. “Pray tell, your question.”

Thomas paused, seeming to weigh his words carefully. “Does your code of knighthood,” he finally asked, “make provisions for the repayment of a life saved and spared?”

William thought back to his tired resignation at the gallows, then to the powerful joy that followed at being spared by the miracle of the darkened sky. Even though he had expected the old man to appear at exactly the right time, it had still been a relief when the eclipse occurred as they had calculated.