When we came out of the portal there was no one. The whole place was empty. There were no tents, no soldiers and the king was also not there.
“George, can you tell me where we are?”
“WE are in the same place where we left, Oliver. The only thing is that the war has not yet started.” George said.
“What do we do now?” I asked.
“We should go to the palace’s court-room. The city is half a mile away. So now we should walk.”
“How do we go into the palace?” I asked.
“Oliver, I am a commander of this city. No one will question me except her,” he showed Eva “, and Adam.”
“Adam? Who’s Adam?”
“You’ll know. Now start walking.” he said and started walking.
“You sure we have to walk half a mile? You can’t do any magic or throw some powder in the air and bring some horses?” I asked. But he did not listen. So I started to walk. The whole place was filled only with rocks and sand. No greenish plants or trees. We walked, walked and walked. Thank God it was evening time. I would have fainted if it had been noon or something.
“How much further?” I asked. My legs were aching.
“We are near.” George said.
“You are saying that for the seventh time George.” I said but he did not answer. After a while he said
“Here we are.” There was an archway n front of us and something was written on it.
“Hinckly” I read. Hinckly is a city nearby Leicester. I have gone there in my century but the city was totally different when I visited it. We went in. As it was evening there were not many people wandering on the streets. There were houses on both sides of the road. Actually it was not a road, just a rocky and sandy path. I scanned the whole place. At the far end of the path was a hill and at the top of the hill sat the huge and majestic palace. Then I saw the houses. Many houses were small like the huts made of wood. They had wooden frames filled in with strips of wood woven together by some animal hair and clay. There were pure white houses or bright colored houses. All the huts had at least two rooms and some of them had only one room (I guessed the rooms by seeing the windows). The windows were also different. In our century we used to have glasses on wooden frames fitted to hinges. But here all the houses had wooden shutters instead of windows and most of them were closed. The houses did not have chimneys. But some houses were made of stone and these houses had chimneys and glasses on their windows. I guessed that the rich people lived in those houses. The men and women who were wandering around wore the same dress like us.
As we went deeper into the town, greenish places started to appear. The trees and plants with their flowers blossomed appeared. Finally we reached the bottom of the hill. As I saw the castle I saw five skinny, square towers guarding the weakest point of the castle. Those skinny towers were connected by strong and thick walls. Openings were scattered on the walls. In every opening an archer was standing. The only way in was guarded by two huge doors. This is all I could see from the bottom of the hill. We started to climb. A small path was made to make the hill climbing easier. The fire torches were blowing on both sides of the path. We climbed the hill and reached two huge doors. The doors were open and some people were coming out of the castle. There were eight soldiers guarding the gates. When we neared the soldiers I thought they would stop us and arrest us and put in the dungeons. But they saluted on seeing George and did not care about us. So we just moved on. As soon as we entered the castle I thought we had come out again. We were standing on a huge square which would have been enough to set a cricket stadium. At the centre of the square, was a fountain which was designed as if two dolphins were jumping out of the water and water was flowing through their mouth. Huge walls were raised on all three sides of the square and I saw almost ten corridors on those walls.
“Those corridors are the offices of various ministries and the ministers of the castle would stay there.” George explained. I saw many ways leaving from the square. Each way led to some buildings, gardens and many more. I was sure that if we three had to split up we would never meet again. I was starting to doubt if George knew the correct way. We walked the full stretch of the square and entered into one of the corridors. This corridor led us straight into a room. This room was a huge hall. Red mats were spread all over the hall. There were sofas, small tables and teapots and teacups on those tables. The cushions of the sofas were decorated with golden lining. The teapots and teacups were also made of gold. At the end of the hall there was another door.
“If we go through that door we will enter the court room. But we should not go straight into the room and stand in front of the king. I have a plan and I know a way. You two stay here. I’ll go and deal with the guards and come back.” he told and went to the door and started speaking to the guards. As we were watching George, suddenly there came a voice.
“Hey, Elisa.” The voice was a perfect male voice. It was not too harsh or not too childish. Eva turned and looked at him. Her look became confused. First it was a I-know-this-guy look then it changed to I-don’t-remember-him look.
“Why are you standing here?” he asked. He was wearing the official court uniform of the country that I had studied in history. A tailcoat and a waistcoat, breeches and stockings, lace cuffs and a cocked hat and he had a sword. he turned to me and asked
“Who are you?” I was staring at him in awe. He was tall and had arms like he had recently won the Mr. World championship. His eyes were green and he had scar on his chin. His hair was blonde and combed neatly.
“uh…” I started.
“He’s a friend” George finished.
“Oh! Hey, George. I didn’t know friends other than us.” He gave Eva a shove. She was still staring at him with the same look. The one thing that satisfied me was she didn’t ask who he was.
“Why are you staring me like that? Anyway court’s going to begin. Don’t be late” he said to George.
“I’m always on time, Adam.” George said.
“This is the same dialogue that you told before yesterday’s court” he said and went through the doorway.
“What are you guys doing?” George whispered furiously to us.
“Have I seen him?” Eva spoke for the first time after coming to this place.
“Not in a while. You’ll be explained everything when you listen what is about to happen in the court room.” George said.
“How are we going to go into the court room without being seen?” I asked.
“You see, there’s a small passage near that doorway. That will lead us straight through the court room and we can exit it and come out from behind the throne. From there we can listen everything.” Then we went for the doorway. No one was there. George started to open the passageway which I didn’t know if it even existed. So I peeped into the court room. It was huge, majestic, royal, great, marvelous, glorious, impressive,… I ran out of words (I’ll leave the task to you to fill it). It was just cool. There were two stands opposite to each other and many civilians were seated. Next to the stands there were twelve thrones made of twelve different precious stones. I saw Adam. He was sitting on a throne which was made of ruby. His throne was literally red in color and shining. Nearby him another throne was empty. The throne was pure white like it was made of pearls. Before I could see more George pulled me in.
