Chronicles of the Red King #3: Leopards' Gold by Nimmo Jenny

Author:Nimmo, Jenny [Nimmo, Jenny]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2013-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Petrello stepped back. He looked at his hand, then at the bird on the wall with its dusting of silver. He could see no finger poking through the painted plumage, and yet he had felt one. Definitely. Unless he was going mad.

“What’s going on, Solomon?” He turned to the snake, now coiled protectively about the king’s treasures. “Did you see … ?”

Petrello looked back at the fresco. “Oh!” he gasped.

Before him stood a boy. He was taller than Petrello and had pale skin and large, mud-colored eyes. His hair was dark and stuck out like a brush.

“Where have you come from?” It was Petrello’s first thought.

The boy stared at him wordlessly.

Petrello tried again. “How did you get here?”

This brought a puzzled frown to the boy’s face.

So he was a foreigner. He was certainly wearing an unusual outfit. His tight breeches were faded and a rather dirty blue. He wore no tunic and no shirt. Instead, the upper part of his body was clothed in a grass-stained white garment with short sleeves.

The boy was now staring intently at Petrello, his gaze traveling from Petrello’s curly head right down to his leather boots. He smiled and spoke a few words. Petrello thought he recognized one of them, but the boy’s language was still foreign to him.

Perhaps signs would work, Petrello thought, but before he could try one, footsteps could be heard approaching the solarium and both boys turned to the entrance. A moment later, the king appeared.

“Father,” began Petrello, “I can explain. Aunt Zobayda said I should —”

The king raised his hand for silence. He looked astounded. When at last he found his voice, he murmured, “This has never happened before.”

“I don’t know where he came from,” said Petrello, looking at the boy. “But …”

The king shook his head. “I don’t mean that. I know where Charlie came from; we meet often. But it has only ever been us two.”

“Often?” said Petrello in a small, surprised voice. “But who is he?”

The boy was looking from the king to Petrello, with a big smile on his face.

“He is my descendant,” the king told Petrello. And then he began to speak in the boy’s unknown and mysterious language. The boy nodded and grinned at Petrello, before answering the king in long, excited sentences.

“What is he saying? Why is he here?” Petrello could hardly contain himself.

“It would take a very long time for me to explain it all,” said his father. “Charlie lives nine hundred years ahead of us, in another era. He speaks our language but it has changed considerably over the centuries. He is of my blood and through all those long years a small part of the realm of enchantments has reached some of my descendants. Charlie has been gifted with the ability to travel through images. He can touch one and travel.”

“Is the bird still there, so many centuries ahead? Don’t things fade and crumble?”

Petrello glanced at the bird with its dusting of snake silver.

The king smiled. “Not these frescoes, it seems.

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