The Eyes of a King

by Catherine Banner

  “You know Uncle Bradley talks a lot of rubbish sometimes. It’s best not to listen to him.”

  After that he is silent, jogging beside her, every so often looking up to see if the frown has left her face.

  Dusk is falling when they reach the top of the hill, hand in hand. Anna turns and looks down at the lights of the houses. There is a stillness resting over the valley like mist, but they are above it on the hill, and there are restless sounds all around as the night creeps in. She stands still, with Ashley beside her. The farthest lights are the windows of the Lakebank Hotel, Monica’s place, and the dark hill above them is where the old chapel is. And the sliver that reflects the moonlight is all that can be seen of the lake from here.

  When they turn to the stone circle, they both see the difference in the stones. There is an extra one where there used to be a space. And then it moves, and they see that it is actually a man standing a little way off with his back to them.

  A tall man, with black hair already fading, standing in the shadow between two stones so that the moonlight does not reach him. Ashley grips Anna’s hand and presses closer to her. They are both frightened to step into the circle, as if it is enchanted.

  At some small noise, the man turns. She just stands and looks at him, and he looks at her.

  When Anna has thought about this, what would happen if they met again, she has imagined telling him. About the years she has struggled: the shame, the pain, the disappointment. Trying to get through her first term at dance school, getting sicker and sicker—or when she had to leave; maybe that was the worst. All the people she had to tell, and the things they said, which made her stay at home rather than face any more remarks and glances. Going to hospital checkups alone and giving birth alone while he was somewhere else and didn’t know. All the friends who went away and came back breezily, talking about their weddings and their new houses while she jiggled the baby on her knee. And most of all, dancing: the girls she had met in that first term at dance school and what they were doing now—the shows they starred in, the schools where they taught. And the dreams she still had, as though she wasn’t shut out of that world forever.

  It was only luck. She could have done those things. Or if she could not have done them, she never had the chance to try. She had the potential, and the determination, and the right beginning. Everything but the luck. And what she can bear least of all is that he never knew. She has imagined it many times, standing there and telling him and forcing him to listen.

  He looks as if he wants to speak too. But in the end, they don’t say anything.

  Ryan steps forward and holds out his hand. She reaches out and takes it silently. “I never came back here,” he says. “I meant to come back but I started to forget this place. Anna, we should not have parted the way we did.”

  “We should have been together,” she says, and grips his hand more tightly. “Are you really here? Is this real, or is it just a dream?”

  There are tears in Ryan’s eyes, and he looks away from her before they fall. Then he sees Ashley standing at the edge of the circle watching them, almost crying himself because he does not understand. Ryan crosses the empty grass and kneels and looks into his face. Anna puts a hand on Ashley’s shoulder. “Ryan, this is—”

  He raises his hand to quiet her. Suddenly he can tell by the boy’s eyes. Dark eyes, and proud, in spite of his frightened tears; strong eyes, like his own. The eyes of a king.

  It’s hard to shut the book, but I’m going to do it. And it will be hard to let you read it, but I’m going to do it. And maybe, Aldebaran, you’ll think it’s a sad story. But it’s not—it’s really not. It’s my life. Everyone’s life is sad. Everyone cries. Everyone thinks they’re falling sometimes. But in the end, we learn to survive.

  THE LAST DESCENDANTS TRILOGY

  CONTINUES IN

  VOICES IN THE DARK

  READ ON FOR A SNEAK PREVIEW OF BOOK II IN

  THE LAST DESCENDANTS TRILOGY

  Excerpt copyright © 2009 by Catherine Banner.

  Published by Random House Children’s Books,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  NIGHTFALL,

  THE TWENTY-NINTH OF

  DECEMBER

  I want more than anything to tell you the truth about my life. I am a criminal and a liar. But I swear to you that this will be a true account.

  That was how I began as the coach drew away from the city, south and west into the darkness of the moors. The woman opposite me was pretending to sleep, one arm around the shoulders of her little boy. The old man next to me kept sighing and shaking his head. He was saying the rosary; the quiet clicking of the beads was the only sound. We were all avoiding each other’s glances. The snow and fire behind us made wild patterns on the glass. Every few seconds, the old man glanced back and sighed again, as though he had left a good life behind him. Fires were blazing on the walls of the castle, throwing black smoke over the stars. I imagined that he had some ordered existence in the city, and this ritual was all that he could carry of it with him into the unknown.

  I owned nothing but the clothes I wore and the contents of the pockets. I kept checking them to see that everything was still there. I had given the driver fifty crowns and my christening bracelet as payment; by the time we set off, it was nearly midnight, and the queues at the harbor stretched a mile. But I still had a pencil and a stack of papers and a box of matches and a candle and the medallion Aldebaran had given me.

  We did not speak to each other. This would be a long journey, long and cold, but we were still strangers and had nothing to say. The old man beside me had his rosary beads, but ever since I was a young boy, I had put my faith in stories; they came more easily to me than prayers. When we set out on this journey, I had thought that perhaps I could write everything down and explain it. And yet the words did not come easily this time. It was nearly impossible to write with the lurching of the coach, and my heart was heavy. I put the paper back into my pocket and tried to sleep.

  “Get down from the coach!” someone shouted when we had traveled a few miles. It was only the driver, cursing at a broken wheel and glancing about him with his rifle raised. Ahead were the lights of a village. We would have to stop for the night here, the driver told us. If he fixed the wheel now, the horses would be too cold to continue, and besides, this road was dangerous. We would go on to the next inn and stop there. The woman made some protest about this. A cold wind was sweeping over the snow, driving it in gusts against the windows of the carriage. We stepped down, shivering. The little boy clung to his mother’s overcoat. I offered to take one of her cases, but she shook her head. The driver unhitched the horses and led them beside him, and we walked in silence toward the lights.

  None of us had money for a bed, so we all ended up in the front room of the inn. This was just a windswept village in the middle of nowhere. The little boy and his mother slept in a corner with their heads on the table. The old man got out his rosary again, then put it away and ordered a bottle of spirits and sat there drinking it and watching the snow fall. I listened to the wind growling and thought about what I would write. Then I got out the paper and pencil and began again. But it was no good. I sighed and crossed out the start of it.

  The inn sign creaked and rattled in the wind outside. I could not write; every time I tried, it was wrong. When this had gone on for some time, the old man got up and came toward my table, holding out the bottle of spirits. “Here,” he said. “Maybe it will cure your writer’s depression.”

  “It’s kind of you.”

  He poured me a glass, then waited to see if I would let him sit down at the table. I drew out a chair. He settled slowly, flexing each finger so that the joints cracked. I could tell from his face that he had once been handsome, and his eyes were quick and kind. I sipped the spirits and waited for him to say something else.

  “Where are you going?” he asked eventually.

  I shrugged. “I don’t really know.”

  “
Neither do I. I am trying to find my family. Maybe they have gone to Holy Island; that’s what I am thinking. But there again, they could be somewhere else.”

  “I’m supposed to be going to Holy Island too,” I said. “But …”

  “But you don’t think you will,” he said. “Now that you have set out.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Ah,” he said. “A lifetime of studying human nature. Now, tell me what you are trying to write.”

  I thought about this for a long time. “A letter to my brother,” I said eventually. “I’ve done a very bad thing. I don’t know if he’ll forgive me, but I want to explain. And I want to tell him …” I hesitated.

  “Go on,” said the old man kindly.

  “I want to tell him the truth. He’s only a baby now, but I want to record it, for when he grows up. I was never told the truth, you know? And I think if he knows it, he will stand a chance.”

  He nodded for me to continue.

  “And I want to tell him about our life in the city,” I said. “Because that’s all gone now. He’ll never know it.”

  “Admirable,” said the old man.

  “Not really,” I said. “Not if you knew.”

  “So tell me,” he said. “Maybe it will make it easier to write if you tell me first.”

  “Do you think so?” I said.

  He shook his head. “I can’t tell. It depends.”

  “It is a long story,” I said. “It would take a while to explain.”

  “This will be a long journey,” said the old man.

  I folded the paper and drank the rest of the glass of spirits. It burned in my chest like fire and gave me courage and made me melancholy at the same time. He introduced himself at last as Mr. Hardy. I told him my name was Anselm. We sat there talking about nothing at all for a long while, and the wind cried like voices in the dark outside. Then, as the darkness drew on, I started to tell him the story. There was nothing else to do on this bleak night. I told him how it started with our shop and with the graveyard and with the old days on Citadel Street, and there I got confused and fell silent, trying to think where it began. “With Aldebaran’s funeral,” I said eventually.

  “Aldebaran is dead?” he said, and started as though he had been struck in the chest.

  “ Yes,” I said. “He died in July. Did you not know?”

  He shook his head. Everyone in the country knew it, but this man had somehow missed the fact. He went on shaking his head and said, “Aldebaran is dead” again, but this time it was not a question.

  “ Tell me this story,” he said. “I want to hear.”

  Available now!

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Catherine Banner

  Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

  Scripture taken from Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952 [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Originally published in hardcover by Random House Children’s Books in 2008.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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  Banner, Catherine.

  The eyes of a king / Catherine Banner.

  p. cm.

  Summary: In Malonia, fifteen-year-old Leo North finds a mysterious book that slowly

  reveals information about his family’s history, the history of his war-torn country, and

  glimpses of two other teenagers living in a country called England, which Malonians

  think is make-believe.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-89294-3

  [1. Fantasy. 2. Youths’ writings.] I. Title.

  PZ7.B2268Ey 2008

  [Fic]—dc22

  2008007742

  Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.0

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Copyright