The Marus Manuscripts Page 5

  “It has more rooms than I ever expect to use in my lifetime,” Darien explained to Kyle. “I don’t bother with the east wing of the house. The west wing suits me perfectly.” That wing had a kitchen, dining room, library, and four bedrooms. They established that Kyle would sleep in the room that overlooked the garden. It didn’t matter much to Kyle where he slept. He was more worried about his sister and his family. By now he’d been gone for more than a day. Everyone at home would be alarmed. Maybe even the police were searching for him.

  In the library, Darien sat down at a grand piano and began to play a tune that, to Kyle, sounded classical. A maid interrupted to take instructions from Darien for their dinner. He simply said to fix him his “favorite.” Kyle wandered over to a tall suit of armor with a colorful shield and a long sword clasped to its side. He could see his reflection in the shiny chest plate.

  “We’ll rest tonight,” Darien said as he played. “Tomorrow I’ll take you to see the Old Judge.”

  Just then, someone tapped on the glass of the double doors that led into the garden. It startled Kyle, but Darien acted as if he’d expected the noise. He got up from the piano, parted the curtains, and opened one of the doors. Prince George stepped in. The two men shook hands and clapped each other on the back and said the kinds of things men say when they haven’t seen each other in a long time.

  Then Prince George saw Kyle and smiled. “So this is the boy who saved your life,” he said.

  “He is indeed,” Darien replied. “Kyle, this is our beloved Prince George, the son of the king and my greatest friend.”

  “Hi, Your Honor—er, Highness—er, sire.” Kyle blushed as Prince George laughed.

  “Our servant Damaris is fixing dinner. Are you hungry?” Darien asked George.

  George shook his head. “I can’t stay long. My father is expecting me for some state function tonight. But I wanted to talk to you about something urgent.” He darted an uneasy glance at Kyle as if to ask, “Can he be trusted?”

  Darien nodded. “Say what you must. We are all trusted friends here. Aren’t we, Kyle?”

  Kyle replied, “Yes, sir. I’m in big trouble otherwise.”

  The two men laughed, then sat down on a thick red sofa next to the dormant fireplace. Prince George’s face grew earnest.

  “I’m here to warn you,” he said. “The king is in a dangerous frame of mind. I’m not sure what has seized his disposition, but it’s something dark and threatening.”

  “Are you in any sort of danger?” Darien asked.

  Prince George sighed. “I’m not, but you may be.”

  “Me?” Darien’s face lit up with surprise. “I’ve done nothing against the king. I’ve served him well, I thought.”

  “You’ve served him too well. Your successes make him think he’s a failure. Your popularity makes him feel unappreciated. Your acceptance makes him feel rejected.”

  “But he’s the king,” Darien said.

  Prince George nodded. “He’s the king, yes, but he feels that his position is threatened. He imagines that you may be maneuvering your way to become the next king.”

  “He is my king as long as he lives!” Darien exclaimed. “I would do nothing to take his throne away from him . . . or you.”

  Prince George stood up and paced thoughtfully. “There’s no point in fooling ourselves,” he said after a moment. “I will never be king. You are the chosen one. You will reign one day. The Old Judge said so.”

  Darien implored, “He said I was chosen, but never for what or even for when. Stop this nonsense, George. I’m a loyal subject of the king, your father. I would not lift a finger against him.”

  “I know that, Darien. But my father doesn’t.”

  “He used to. He has treated me like a son. Would I spit on that? Would I shove a dagger in the back of a man who treated me so well?”

  Prince George moved closer to his friend. “My father isn’t himself these days. You know he hasn’t been the same since his last argument with the Old Judge. He’s fearful and suspicious. I don’t know what they said to each other, but it’s changed my father. That’s why I’m here to warn you.”

  The two men gazed at each other silently for a moment.

  “Thank you, George,” Darien said softly.

  “Surround yourself with only those you trust wholeheartedly. My father has eyes and ears everywhere.” George crossed the room to the double doors and opened one. The smells of the flowers in the garden wafted in. Halfway through the door, he turned back and said, “And, Darien . . .”

  Darien faced his friend.

  “When you do become king, remember me.” Then he was gone.

  Darien was in a thoughtful mood for the rest of the evening. He didn’t eat much of his dinner, which annoyed Damaris because she’d fixed his favorite meal of lamb, potatoes, carrots, and a breadlike pastry that Kyle didn’t recognize. Kyle thought the food was delicious and wolfed it down as politely as he could.

  Just as Damaris was clearing away their plates, a messenger arrived from General Liddell. He was a young man dressed in a smart, gray uniform. After a quick salute, he said, “A renegade group from Adria has crossed the border and attacked a town in the Territory of Peace. General Liddell wants you to join him and his brigade in driving the Adrians back into their own land.”

  “Tell the general that my men are in no condition to fight so soon after their return,” said Darien.

  “General Liddell anticipated your concern,” the messenger said. “The general doesn’t want your men. Just you.”

  Darien considered this for a moment, then nodded. “All right. Tell the general I’ll come.”

  The messenger saluted again and, with a click of his heels, turned and left.

  “What’s your pleasure, Kyle?” Darien asked when they were alone again.

  “My pleasure?”

  “You can stay here until I return, or you can go with me as my personal assistant.”

  Kyle was surprised. “You want me to go into a battle with you?”

  “I doubt it’ll be much of a battle. A small skirmish mostly.” Darien leaned back in his chair. “It’ll mean a delay in our speaking with the Old Judge about getting you home.”

  Kyle considered it for a moment. He could rush back to his worrying sister and grandparents or get to see a real battle. If only he could send a message somehow! But he couldn’t. So what should he do? “I’ll go with you,” he said finally.

  Darien smiled. “I thought you might.”

  The battle—if that’s what it could be called—took place in the town of Krawley, some two miles inside the Territory of Peace. In theory, the Territory of Peace was a neutral zone between Marus and Adria, established 100 years before in the Treaty of the Kings. “But the Adrians are barbarians at heart,” Darien explained to Kyle on the train the next morning. “Seven years ago, they slaughtered their king and his entire family. Now they’re a loose collection of rebel factions who are trying to take over the entire country. Every once in a while, they decide to venture into our realm just to stir things up. It’s annoying mostly.”

  “It seems like you’re surrounded by people who like to attack your country,” Kyle observed. “The Palatians, the Adrians . . . Is everybody out to get you?”

  Darien chuckled and nodded. “I think they are. Ours is a beautiful and blessed country. Our rival nations believe that if they can conquer us, they’ll share in what we have. But they don’t understand that it’s the people who make a nation great, not the land. If you conquer us, you’ll conquer the very thing that makes Marus worth having. It’s like caging a bird for its song. Once caged, the bird will stop singing.”

  When Kyle and Darien went to meet with General Liddell in his private car, Kyle noticed that the general was a stern-looking man with distinctive features: primarily a handlebar mustache and a scar on his cheek. He ignored Kyle—even though Darien introduced them—and got down to business with Darien about how to attack the Adrians. Kyle sat quietly in the corn
er while General Liddell, Darien, and several other officers made their plans.

  In Lester, a town a few miles from Krawley, the train stopped and unloaded Liddell’s soldiers, artillery, horses, and provisions. The local garrison met them and, together, they numbered almost 1,000. “Can you ride a horse?” Darien asked Kyle.

  Kyle had to confess that he couldn’t.

  “Then you’ll ride with me,” Darien said. On horseback, they joined the cavalry and rode toward Krawley.

  The battle for Krawley was nothing like what Kyle had imagined. He thought there would be a lot of shooting and hand-to-hand combat. There wasn’t. For one thing, they found that the Adrians had retreated from the town itself and were now hiding in the nearby hills. For another thing, Marutian cannons on large wheels were rolled in to drive the Adrians out. They fired shells at the hills mercilessly for an entire morning. The constant boom, boom, boom gave Kyle a headache.

  When the Adrians stopped firing back, the Marutian army marched into the hills to see if the Adrians had deserted or were prepared to surrender. Kyle again rode with General Darien on his horse. Once in the hills, they found evidence that the Adrians had indeed been there. A few bodies littered the camps and rocky inclines where the shells had hit with the most force. Kyle got physically sick at the sight. They were men. And they were dead. It was awful. He retched behind one of the gun carriages.

  Darien patted him lightly on the back and handed him a canteen full of water. “It doesn’t get better,” he whispered.

  “Spread out and search for prisoners,” General Liddell ordered. As second only to the king, General Liddell could command Darien like no other officer. “You check those rocks to the north,” he told Darien.

  “They’ve retreated, I’m sure,” Darien said.

  “Check anyway,” General Liddell insisted.

  With a handful of men, Darien and Kyle went up into the northern part of the hills.

  “They’d be fools to stay after that shelling,” Darien told Kyle as they sat down on a large rock a few minutes later. They shared water from a stream.

  “General Liddell was pretty sure he wanted you to look around, though,” Kyle said.

  “So he was.”

  Kyle glanced at the soldiers canvassing the area. From a distance, they looked like wild animals grazing in the grassy knolls. A flicker of light from farther above them caught Kyle’s eye. He squinted as an odd feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. A man was leaning against a rock with a rifle pointed in their direction. How strange, Kyle thought, the feeling in his stomach making him nauseated.

  Then he realized what the man was doing. Kyle leaped up and threw himself at General Darien. They both tumbled off the rock to the ground as splinters of gravel sprayed upward from a bullet that had just missed them. A fraction of a second later, they heard the sharp report of the gunfire echo around them. A great commotion broke out among the soldiers. Some knew instantly what had happened and fired in the direction of the man. Others rushed to make sure General Darien hadn’t been hit.

  What they found was the bizarre sight of their general with his back on the ground and Kyle lying on top of him.

  “Are you all right?” Kyle asked as he rolled off of Darien.

  “You have more strength than I would’ve given you credit for,” Darien replied pleasantly. He called out to his second-in-command, “Bryson! Bryson!”

  Colonel Bryson came around the rock, his face panicked. “Are you all right, sir? Have you been hit?”

  “No,” Darien said. “Thanks to my guardian angel. Was it an Adrian assassin?”

  “We don’t know yet, sir.” Colonel Bryson disappeared from view again. More shots were fired, then someone yelled, “Over here!”

  Darien leaned against the rock. “What am I going to do with you?” he asked Kyle. “This is the second time you’ve saved my life. I’m in your debt and deeply grateful to you.” He shook Kyle’s hand vigorously. “If I were a king, I’d knight you . . . Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Kyle said, turning a deep crimson.

  They stood up, careful to stay behind the cover of the rock, and dusted themselves off. “I’m hesitant now to ever let you go back home. No doubt I’ll be killed the instant you go.”

  Colonel Bryson returned just then and said, “We got him, sir.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Colonel Bryson shuffled awkwardly for a moment.

  “Well?”

  “He’s one of ours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s not an Adrian. He’s one of our soldiers, though I don’t know with whom he serves.”

  “One of our own men tried to kill me?” Darien asked, perplexed.

  “It would appear so, sir.”

  Darien tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Now why would he want to do a thing like that?”

  A few minutes later, when they had explained the incident to General Liddell, he promised to conduct a full-blown investigation into the murder attempt. A look in his eye, however, made Kyle think the case would never be solved.

  Three days passed. While Kyle chased the Adrians and then returned to Sarum with Darien, Anna stayed with the Old Judge at his cottage. She mended her clothes with a thread and needle the Old Judge had given her, walked through the lush green forest and over the small hills, and, at night, stared with an insatiable curiosity at the two moons.

  Part of their routine—one that Anna suspected the Old Judge had been doing for years—was to begin the day with prayer to the Unseen One and reading from the Sacred Scroll. Since Anna didn’t know much about either, the Old Judge used the time to teach her.

  “The Unseen One is the Creator and Sustainer of all things,” he explained. “He is everywhere at all times; all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful.”

  “Like our God,” Anna said, relating the description to what she knew from her world.

  “Not like God,” the Old Judge corrected. “The Unseen One is God. The God of love and justice.”

  Anna pointed to the large roll of paper spread out in front of them. “Is that your Bible?”

  He pondered her question. “The word bible means ‘book.’ In which case, the Sacred Scroll might be considered that. It contains an account of the relationship between the Unseen One and the created. It spans history back to the beginning of time. It tells the story of the faithful and the faithless, of despots and statesmen, of common folk and warriors, of heroes and cowards. I’m writing sections of it now myself, recounting my own work as a chosen voice for the Unseen One.”

  “Chosen? You keep using that word. What does it mean?”

  “It means several things. We are chosen because of the Unseen One’s love for us. That love reaches out to us, and we, in turn, respond to it by faith—by our belief in the Unseen One.”

  Anna nodded. That much she could understand.

  The Old Judge continued, “Yet we, the faithful, are also chosen in specific ways, to do specific tasks for the Unseen One. I was chosen before I was born.”

  “Before you were born?” Anna said, surprised. “Then how did you know you were chosen?”

  “My parents had dedicated me to the Unseen One at my birth. I was a child when they gave me over to the priests to be trained.”

  “Your parents gave you away?”

  “They knew I was chosen—or called—by the Unseen One. It was their duty to give me to those who would help me hear that call more clearly. We had many priests in those days. Very few are left.”

  Anna was still thinking about the Old Judge’s being separated from his parents. “Didn’t you miss them?” she asked.

  “I still saw them. We visited often. But I would not have refused the Unseen One’s call even if I could.”

  Anna knitted her brow. “But . . . how did your parents . . . or you know you were called?”

  “That’s part of the mystery, I suppose,” he said. “My mother knew from the moment I was conceived. I inherited th
at knowledge from her. Others are called later in life.”

  “How do they know?”

  The Old Judge patted his beard thoughtfully. “It is a matter of faith, child, and it works differently from person to person. My parents had faith in the Unseen One, and their faith extended to me—that is, until I had faith of my own to believe.”

  Anna still didn’t understand. “So which part comes first? Your faith or being chosen?”

  “That’s like asking whether the sun first rises or the sun first sets.” The Old Judge smiled. “All things begin with the Unseen One. We could not have faith unless the Unseen One first gave us the capacity for faith. We believe because He makes it possible to believe. Once we believe, then it’s safe to assume we are chosen. Chosen for what is part of the mystery. But know this: Where there is faith, there is calling.”

  Anna shook her head. It was too much to take in. “But how do you know what the calling is?”

  “Sometimes the knowledge comes in visible and tangible ways. For most, though, it comes through prayer and the study of the Sacred Scroll. In time, the voice is unmistakable. The calling is there. Sometimes the knowledge comes through an old prophet like myself. I identify the one who has been called, even before they know it themselves. As I did to make Lawrence the king. And as I did to make General Darien the king.”

  “Lawrence and Darien—both kings?” Anna asked. “You called both? But won’t that cause a lot of trouble?”

  “It certainly will,” the Old Judge said sadly. “But the trouble is not from the Unseen One. The problems come when a man is disobedient to the call—allows himself to be seduced by man-made powers and forces—and turns his back on the Unseen One. He is leading this nation to faithlessness. So a new king had to be chosen. General Darien is that king.”

  “I don’t think King Lawrence will like that very much.”

  “It’s the way of man to avoid the consequences of his faithlessness. King Lawrence will cling to an imaginary crown for as long as he can and lead the people of Marus even further away from the Unseen One. However, in his heart, Lawrence knows his rule is over. He rejected the Unseen One, and now the Unseen One has rejected him. Does he accept it? No. It drives him to madness even now.”