A Crystal of Time Read online

  “Horses are so disloyal,” Willam sighed, patting Bogden’s head.

  “What exactly did you say to the horses?” asked Nicola skeptically, still working the lock.

  Bogden mimicked a few grunts and a spirited neigh. “That means ‘go to school.’”

  “That means ‘poo on my foot,’” said Nicola.

  Bogden bit his lip.

  “Explains a lot,” Willam mumbled.

  Professor Dovey let out a pained gasp and Tedros turned to see her fingertip smoking, the skin raw. “Whatever shield Arthur put in place has had enough of me testing it,” she said, sitting wearily on a marble bench next to the pool. All of them looked terrible, but Dovey looked especially feeble, as if she’d never fully recovered from whatever her crystal ball had done to her. She let out a long sigh. “It seems Tedros is right about the room’s defenses.”

  A second later, Nicola’s hair clip broke in the lock.

  Aja and Valentina, meanwhile, were at the edge of the pool, poking at the rotten water with one of Valentina’s boots.

  The sum of all this dithering made Tedros snap from his own stupor. Here he was, judging his teammates, when he wasn’t doing anything to help them. Meanwhile, Agatha had escaped, Agatha had gotten to school, Agatha had come to save him, Agatha had done everything, everything, everything. Had he done anything for her? Or anyone else? That’s why he was in this room to begin with. That’s why he’d lost his crown. Because he’d been so whiny, so self-involved, so entitled that he’d never stood up and done what a king was supposed to do: lead.

  Tedros took to his feet. “Listen, we can’t use magic to get out of here, but maybe we can use something else.”

  “Didn’t we just agree that there’s no way out of this room?” the Dean muttered.

  “Then let’s make a way out,” Tedros resolved. “Does anyone have any talents?”

  Professor Dovey sat straighter, suddenly alert. “Good thinking, Tedros! Aja and Valentina. You two are Nevers. What are you practicing in Professor Sheeks’ class?”

  “I can climb guanabana trees,” said Valentina.

  “Your villain talent, you goose,” Dovey snapped. “The one you practice in school!”

  “That is the one I practice in school,” Valentina repeated.

  Dovey pursed her lips, then turned to Aja.

  “Heat vision,” said the flame-haired boy. “I can see through solid objects.”

  “Can you see through this wall?” Tedros said eagerly.

  Aja locked on the wall and its big marble bricks, each the size of a small window. “I see . . . a black pond . . . Sophie, looking so chic in white furs and a babushka, lost in thought as she feeds the ducks . . . probably coming up with a plan to save us. . . .”

  “We’re in a basement,” Tedros growled. “There’s no ponds at the castle, let alone a ‘black’ one. And when I saw Agatha in her crystal ball, she told me your friends were rescuing Sophie from the church. She’s safe at school by now.”

  Aja tossed his hair. “I see what I see.”

  “And you’ve never gotten one thing right. Not one!” Valentina sniped. “Maybe you should find another talent. Like kissing Sophie’s behind.”

  “Anyone else have a talent?” Professor Dovey pressed.

  “Fortune-telling,” said Bogden.

  “Mine too,” said Willam, pulling out tarot cards.

  Tedros remembered their prophecy about gifts. . . . The two boys had warned him to be wary of them. . . . and it was Rhian’s “gift” to Tedros that had let Rhian pull Excalibur from the stone and steal Tedros’ crown. . . .

  Tedros looked at the two boys with new interest. “Ask your cards if we’ll get out of this room.”

  Bogden dealt a hand. “Says yes.”

  “And soon,” said Willam.

  Tedros’ eyes lit up. “Ask the cards how we do it! Ask them how we get out of King’s Cove!”

  Bogden and Willam looked at the cards . . . then at each other . . . then at Tedros. . . .

  “Potatoes,” the boys said.

  Everyone in the room stared.

  “Potatoes?” Tedros repeated.

  “Clearly they speak Tarot as well as they speak Horse,” said Professor Dovey. “What about you, Nicola?”

  “Readers don’t come with talents,” Tedros griped, watching her search the walls for loose bricks.

  Nicola glanced at him. “Yet your girlfriend’s a Reader and done far more to help us than you have.”

  Tedros made a face . . . then perked up. “She’s right. Agatha freed our friends by using Dovey’s crystal ball from a thousand miles away. She figured something out. Surely we can figure something out too.”

  “Crystal ball? Agatha used my crystal ball?” Dovey chortled. “How ridiculous.”

  “Ridiculous or not, it worked, didn’t it?” said Tedros.

  “No, I mean, she couldn’t have used my ball,” said the Dean. “No one can use my crystal ball besides me. I didn’t name a Second when I had it made. The ball would never answer to her.”

  “Well, I saw her inside it,” Tedros pointed out.

  “Me too,” said Valentina.

  “Could have been any crystal ball—” Dovey started.

  “Let’s hope so, because this one was broken,” Aja puffed. “Kept glitching and it only lasted a few minutes.”

  Dovey’s face dropped. “But . . . but . . . Agatha can’t know how to use my ball! It’s impossible. Because if she does, then she’s in grave danger! That crystal ball nearly killed me! It isn’t working. Not the way it’s supposed to. She must have taken it from me when I came to Camelot! I have to speak to her—I have to tell her never to use it again—”

  “Well, you can’t tell her anything until we get out of here!” Tedros said, venting his new fears for Agatha back at the Dean.

  “There’s only one way out of King’s Cove,” Nicola piped up.

  Everyone turned to the first year, who stood in front of a hole in the wall, struggling under the weight of the big brick she’d extracted from it.

  “We can squeeze through there?” Tedros said excitedly.

  “No. There’s another layer of wall behind it,” Nicola clipped. “The only way out of King’s Cove is to wait for someone to open that door and we hit them with this brick and make a run for it.”

  “That sounds about as promising as ‘potatoes,’” Tedros snorted, shooting a glare at Willam and Bogden.

  “Well, what’s your idea, then?” Bogden attacked.

  “Yeah, what’s your talent other than taking off your shirt and bullying kids at school?” Willam harped.

  “Bullying kids at school?” Tedros said, boggled.

  “Don’t play the altar boy,” said Willam, cheeks searing pink. “My brother told me everything.”

  “I don’t even know who your brother is—” said Tedros.

  Nicola dropped her brick on the ground with a thud. “No one cares about what happened at school or your history of sibling abuse. We’re condemned to die in a basement and ambushing whoever opens that door is our only chance. Surprise them before they surprise us.”

  “Oh please. No one’s coming,” Aja groaned, back to making waves in the pool with Valentina, using Valentina’s boot. “They’re gonna let us starve.”

  “Well, everyone except Tedros,” said Valentina, poking harder at the pool. “They’re still going to cut off his head.”

  “Thank you for the reminder. Is now really the time to be studying the properties of water?” Tedros barked, red-faced.

  “We’re keeping el ratón away,” Valentina explained.

  “Ratón? What’s a ratón?” said Tedros.

  Aja and Valentina pointed at the end of her boot. “That.”

  Tedros leaned closer and saw a fuzzy black cloud squirming in the middle of the pool. “A rat? Nevers are scared of rats?”

  “Valentina and I are from Hamelin,” said Aja.

  “Like Pied-Piper-of-Hamelin Hamelin,” said Valentina.

&nb
sp; “Like the Hamelin-that-had-so-many-rats-it-gave-its-children-to-a-rat-catching-musician Hamelin,” said Aja.

  “Wait, that isn’t just any rat,” Professor Dovey blurted, lurching up from her bench. “That’s Anadil’s rat!”

  Tedros met Dovey’s eyes. Instantly the prince and the Dean dropped down and started pushing at the water from opposite sides, trying to bring the rat to the edge. Nicola, Willam, and Bogden joined in, the two boys cooing things like “Here, little ratty!” and “Swim, little pup!” while the rat floundered, choking and spitting, as everyone’s currents competed, keeping the rat stuck in the center of the pool, before Tedros had enough and leapt in the water with his clothes on and seized the rat in his fist.

  He flung the thankful rodent onto the tiled floor. Splayed on its side, the rat sucked in air with hyper squeaks, regurgitating water again and again, until it took a last deep breath . . .

  . . . and puked out a small purple ball.

  Dovey retrieved the ball as Tedros climbed out of the water and dripped over her shoulder, the rat still panting at their feet.

  The Dean saw Nicola and the others crowd in and she held out her hand—

  “Give Tedros and me a moment.”

  She yanked the prince behind Arthur’s statue.

  “The less they know, the better. Otherwise Rhian can torture them for information,” she whispered. “Look.”

  She held up the purple ball, revealing a crumple of velvet embroidered with silver stars.

  “Merlin,” said Tedros, unfurling the velvet with his fingers. “It’s from his cape—”

  He froze. Because there was something else.

  Something tucked inside the fabric.

  A lock of long white hair.

  Merlin’s hair.

  Tedros paled. “Is he alive?” he rasped, swiveling to the rat.

  But the vermin had already raced around Arthur’s statue and dived back into the fetid pool. Between his father’s stone legs, Tedros watched the rat streak to the bottom of the water and disappear through a crack in the wall.

  “So we know it found Merlin. We just don’t know where or in what condition,” the prince said.

  He heard a loud noise from the other side of the room, like a stone dropping, and the clatter of footsteps, the first years surely up to something. He turned to check on them—

  “Maybe we do know,” said the Dean.

  Tedros saw Dovey holding the lock of hair up to the light of a torch.

  “What is it?” said the prince.

  “Look closer,” said the Dean.

  Tedros moved behind her, focusing on the clump of long white hair.

  Only it wasn’t all white, Tedros realized.

  Because the more he looked at it, from every angle, the more Merlin’s hair seemed to change in color as it progressed along each strand: from thin, stark white at one end to a robust, sturdy brown at the other.

  Tedros furrowed his brows. “Merlin’s like a thousand years old. His hair is all white. But this hair looks like his at the top . . . only the further down the hair you go, the more it looks like it belongs to someone . . .”

  “Younger,” said Dovey.

  The prince met her eyes. “How can hair be old and young at the same time?” he asked, taking the lock from the Dean. But as he did, his palm brushed across Merlin’s hair and a glittery sheen cascaded off it onto Professor Dovey’s hand.

  All of a sudden, the spots and veins of her hand seemed to lighten . . . the wrinkles visibly shallowed . . .

  “Huh?” Tedros marveled.

  But Professor Dovey was still gazing at the lock of hair. “I think I know where he is, Tedros. I think I know where Rhian’s kept Merlin—”

  A burlap sack slammed over Dovey’s head.

  “Head-choppin’ time!” a snaggle-toothed pirate snarled, yanking the Dean backwards. “Execution’s been moved up!”

  Tedros spun to see Nicola, the first years, and Willam and Bogden already gagged, with sacks dumped over their heads by armored pirates.

  “B-b-but it’s me you want! Not them!” Tedros spluttered. “It’s me who’s supposed to die!”

  “Plans have changed,” said a smooth voice.

  Tedros turned—

  Japeth posed in the doorway. He wore his shiny suit of snakes and carried a last burlap sack in his hand.

  “Now it’s all of you,” he said.

  Scims shot off him and grabbed hold of Tedros, sweeping the sack over his head.

  As the eels ripped him forward, Tedros inhaled a whiff of what once filled the sack . . . the sack now dragging him and his friends out of King’s Cove and to the executioner’s axe. . . .

  Potatoes.

  It smelled like potatoes.

  13

  AGATHA

  Sometimes the Story Leads You

  “How many men!” Agatha cried, sprinting through the pink breezeway.

  “I lost count at twenty!” Dot panted, behind her.

  “They got through the shield . . . I saw some kind of purple light attacking it . . . ,” Agatha called back, the bag with Dovey’s crystal ball pounding against her shoulder. “But how? Rhian’s thugs can’t do magic!”

  “Maybe they learned a spell!”

  “Only students who went to the school can do spells! And those pirates didn’t go to the school!”

  “I can’t run and talk at the same time!” Dot wheezed.

  Agatha glanced back at Dot and the twenty first years herding behind her through Good’s glass tunnel towards Honor Tower. Against the darkening sky, the new students shuffled like spooked sheep, whispering anxiously, their eyes wide, their feet pattering high over the Great Lawn.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Agatha saw movement through the other colorful glass breezeways that connected the towers of the School for Good: Hester and Professor Anemone leading a group of first years through the blue breezeway to Valor Tower, Hort and Anadil guiding their first years along the yellow tunnel to Purity, and Yuba and Beatrix’s group using the peach passage to Charity. Meanwhile, on the roof over the crisscrossing breezeways, Agatha glimpsed Castor booting first years along. . . .

  Agatha knew Rhian’s men were searching for her. To throw them off, she and the teachers had divided up the students into Forest Groups, with each group taking a different route to the same place. The one and only place in the school they would all be safe. If they could get there alive, that is.

  “Who are those men?” she heard Priyanka ask.

  “Camelot guards,” said a hairy, three-eyed Never tagged BOSSAM.

  “They don’t look like Camelot guards,” said Priyanka.

  Agatha tracked their stares through the pink glass to the dirt-caked, dead-eyed pirates in silver chainmail as they came into view, stepping over slaughtered wolf bodies and creeping towards the castle behind their captain, wielding swords and bows and clubs. If the pirates looked straight up, they’d see Agatha and her charges in the tunnel. They needed to get out of this breezeway now—

  “Wait!” Dot yipped, pulling to a halt.

  “We don’t have time to wait!” said Agatha.

  “No, look,” Dot said, hands against the glass. “It’s Kei.”

  Agatha glanced down at Tedros’ former guard leading the pirates, sword in hand as he skulked up the hill towards Good’s castle doors, a second man at his side. Neither Kei nor his lieutenant seemed in a rush, nor did any of the thugs fanned out behind them, as if they didn’t need to chase Agatha at all. As if they were waiting for her to come to them. Their movements unsettled her. Agatha peered closer.

  “Kei was the one who took me on a date to Beauty and the Feast,” Dot said softly. “He was my first kiss. . . .”

  “That guy kissed you?” said Bossam. Priyanka kicked him.

  “Only so he could put something in my drink and steal my keys,” Dot sniffled. “That’s how the Snake got out of Daddy’s jail. He better hope we don’t come face-to-face or I’ll—” She saw Agatha gazing downwards. “I know.
Soooo handsome, right?”

  But Agatha wasn’t looking at Kei.

  She was looking at his lieutenant. A short, big-bellied man in a brown robe, with a red beard and even redder face, who appeared less like a pirate and more like Santa Claus’ surly brother. A sleek glass orb floated over his open palm and he and Kei were studying it like a compass as they walked. Purple light filled the glass orb . . . the same purple light that Agatha had seen attacking Manley’s shield. . . .

  “That’s a crystal ball,” said Dot. “Smaller than Dovey’s. Means it’s newer.” She glanced at the bag on Agatha’s arm. “Old ones are like cinder blocks.”

  Agatha had the bruises to prove it.

  “Thought only fairy godmothers can use crystal balls,” Priyanka said.

  “Fairy godfathers too,” Bossam corrected, blinking his third eye. “Must be a strong one if he got through Professor Manley’s shield.”

  “But what’s the captain of Camelot’s guard doing with a crystal ball?” Priyanka asked.

  “Can’t see the inside from here,” said Agatha, squinting hard.

  “We can if I mirrorspell it,” Dot said quickly. “I watched Hester do it in the dungeons—”

  Her fingertip glowed and she pressed it against the glass, before closing her eyes to summon the right emotion. “Reflecta asimova!”

  From her finger spewed a puff of purple fog that formed a two-dimensional projection, floating in the breezeway above the group’s heads.

  “This is a close-up of what they’re seeing inside the ball,” said Dot.

  Agatha watched as the purple mist swirled in the projection, half-heartedly forming various scenes: a castle . . . a bridge . . . a forest . . . before it finally seemed to settle on one: a tunnel . . . with bodies packed inside . . .

  The image sharpened, revealing a group of boys and girls in crisp uniforms, swan emblems on their chests . . . led by a tall, pale girl with big bug eyes and helmet-cut hair. . . .

  A girl who was gazing up at a projection of the very same scene.

  Agatha’s heart stopped.

  “They’re seeing . . . us,” she breathed.

  Rhian’s men hadn’t gone looking for her because they didn’t need to. The crystal ball told them exactly where she was.