James Acton 04 - The Templar's Relic Read Online Free PDF Page B

centuries and eventually cut off from new construction by accident, but this is one room, with just the doorway sealed up.” She paused. “I wonder what’s on the other side of the door.”
    Acton tapped the stone with a small hammer. “We’ll find out when we open this up, I guess. This could just be the tip of the iceberg.” He turned on his heel and shone his flashlight at the four sarcophagi occupying the center of the room. “So, what have we here?” he said, more to himself than anyone else. Laura too switched her attention.
    They were each about six to seven feet long, three feet wide, and the sarcophagi themselves were about three feet high, but sat atop platforms each several feet high. The four tombs were orientated with the head of each in the center of the room, with the bottom-most of the sarcophagi having its feet pointing toward the stoned up entrance. Two stone steps wrapped around the entire outer area of the four sarcophagi, then the third to fifth steps broke off from the base steps into four distinct groups, ending surrounding their respective sarcophagus.
    “A lot of work went into this.”
    Acton nodded. “Whoever they were at one time commanded a lot of respect to have this”—Acton waved his arm at the scene before them—“done for them. I wonder what changed to have them walled up and forgotten.”
    Laura climbed the steps nearest her and gasped. “James, look!”
    Acton climbed the steps surrounding the sarcophagus nearest him, and he felt his heart hammer in his chest in excitement. He had expected the sculpted form of the knight that lay before him, the detail of the armor and the standard chiseled face of a warrior with long hair unsurprising. But what he hadn’t expected was the shield.
    He pulled a large, soft-haired brush from his tool kit he had bundled in his satchel, and gently began to clear the centuries of dust and recent debris from the shield as Laura circled around to join him. Done, he stood back and they both shone their flashlights at what he had revealed.
    “Is that what I think it is?”
    Acton nodded. “That’s a Templar Knight’s shield.” He shone his light quickly at the other three stone carvings topping the sarcophagi. “They’re all Templar Knights.”
    Laura placed her hand gently on the forehead of the carving. “At least now we know why you were forgotten.”
     
     

 
     
     
    Al 'Ayadiyeh, Outside Acre, Dominion of Saladin
    1191 AD
     
    John covered his mouth and nose with his sleeve, batting away the flies with his free hand. His tear-filled eyes sought his friend, his friend who he had met only days before, and who he had never shared a conversation. But there was a bond there, a bond he knew he would feel for the rest of his life.
    He had watched Malik die, powerless to stop it, the horror of the massacre imprinted on his memory for eternity. How King Richard could order such a thing was incomprehensible. What could possess a man to such evil?
    A horse whinnied and a voice called out. “You there, we are leaving. Saladin’s men are returning!”
    John waved the knight off. In the horror of yesterday he hadn’t realized that a small band of Saladin’s men, after witnessing the start of the massacre, had attacked, in a heroic, albeit useless, attempt to stop the slaughter. They had fought valiantly, but ultimately their sacrifice was for naught, evil triumphing in the end.
    After seeing what his fellow Christians were capable of, he no longer believed they had the moral high ground. And as far as he was concerned, death at the hands of Saladin’s men was deserved, for he was responsible for Malik’s death, and the death of the three young boys who had been his companions by chance.
    His father had left for the Holy Land ten years before, when John was just a boy. And when John had turned fourteen, he had left to find him, to the protests of his mother. It had taken over two years to arrive in the land told of in the Bible, and that had