A Crystal of Time Page 2

  Through the cell wall, she could hear the muffled sounds of the ongoing ceremony, turned into King Rhian’s coronation—

  “From this day forward, you are rid of a king who closed his doors to you when you needed him,” Rhian declared. “A king who cowered while a Snake ravaged your kingdoms. A king who failed his father’s test. From this day forward, you have a real king. King Arthur’s true heir. We may be divided into Good and Evil, but we are one Woods. The fake king is punished. The forgotten people aren’t forgotten anymore. The Lion is listening to you now!”

  “LION! LION! LION!” the chants echoed.

  Hester felt her demon tattoo steam red on her neck. Next to her, Anadil and Dot tugged at the pastel dresses they’d been made to wear for the ceremony, along with their prissy, primped curls. Nicola tore off a strip of her dress to re-bandage a wound on Hort’s shoulder that he’d gotten in battle against the Snake, while Hort kicked uselessly at the cell door. Beatrix and Reena were trying to light their fingerglows to no avail, and Anadil’s three black rats kept poking heads out of her pocket, waiting for orders, before Anadil shoved them back down. In the corner, red-haired Willam and runty Bogden anxiously studied tarot cards, with Hester picking up their whispers: “bad gifts” . . . “warned him” . . . “should have listened” . . .

  No one else spoke for a long while.

  “Things could be worse,” said Hester finally.

  “How could it be worse?” Hort shrieked. “The boy we thought was our savior and new best friend turned out to be the most Evil scum on the planet.”

  “We should have known. Anyone who likes Sophie is bound to be horrible,” Kiko wisped.

  “I’m not one to defend Sophie, but it isn’t her fault,” said Dot, failing to turn the ribbon in her hair to chocolate. “Rhian tricked her like he tricked all of us.”

  “Who says he tricked her?” said Reena. “Maybe she knew his plan all along. Maybe that’s why she accepted his ring.”

  “To steal Agatha’s place as queen? Even Sophie isn’t that Evil,” said Anadil.

  “We just stood there instead of fighting back,” said Nicola, despondent. “We should have done something—”

  “It happened too fast!” said Hort. “One second the guards are parading the Snake’s dead body and the next they’re grabbing Tedros and slamming Merlin over the head.”

  “Did anyone see where they took them?” Dot asked.

  “Or Guinevere?” said Reena.

  “What about Agatha?” asked Bogden. “Last I saw, she was running through the crowd—”

  “Maybe she escaped!” said Kiko.

  “Or maybe she was beaten to death by that mob out there,” said Anadil.

  “Rather take her odds than be stuck in here,” said Willam. “I’ve lived at Camelot most of my life. These dungeons are immune to magic spells. No one’s ever gotten out.”

  “We don’t have any friends left to get us out,” said Hort.

  “And given that we serve no use to Rhian anymore, he’ll probably cut off our heads by dinnertime,” Beatrix scorned, turning to Hester. “So tell me, wise witch, how can things possibly be any worse?”

  “We could have Tedros in our cell too,” Hester replied. “That would be worse.”

  Anadil and Dot cracked up.

  “Hester,” a voice said.

  They turned to see Professor Clarissa Dovey thrust her head through the bars of the next cell, her face clammy and pale.

  “Tedros and Merlin might both be dead. The true King of Camelot and Good’s greatest wizard,” the Dean of Good rasped. “And instead of thinking about a plan to help them, you’re making jokes?”

  “Difference between Good and Evil. Evil knows how to look at the bright side,” Anadil murmured.

  “Not to be rude, Professor, but shouldn’t you be the one thinking of a plan?” said Dot. “You’re a Dean and we’re technically still students.”

  “Hasn’t been acting like a Dean,” Hester groused. “Been in that cell the last ten minutes and didn’t say a word.”

  “Because I’ve been trying to think of—” Dovey started, but Hester cut her off.

  “I know fairy godmothers are used to waving away problems with pixie dust and magic wands, but magic isn’t getting us out of this.” Hester could feel her demon searing hotter, her frustration turned on the Dean. “After teaching at a school where Good always wins, maybe you’re in denial that Evil actually won. Evil that’s made itself look Good, which is cheating in my book. But win it did. And if you don’t wake up and face the fact that we’re fighting someone who doesn’t play by your rules, then nothing you ‘think’ of is ever going to beat him.”

  “Especially without your broken crystal ball,” Anadil seconded.

  “Or broken wand,” thirded Dot.

  “Do you even have your Quest Map?” Hort asked Dovey.

  “Probably broke that too,” Anadil snorted.

  “How dare you talk to her like that!” Beatrix blazed. “Professor Dovey has dedicated her life to her students. That’s why she’s in a cell to begin with. You know full well she’s been ill—gravely ill—and that Merlin ordered her to stay at school when the Snake attacked Camelot. But still she came to protect us. All of us, Good and Evil. She’s served the school for”—Beatrix glanced at Dovey’s silver hair and deep wrinkles—“who knows how long, and you speak to her like she owes you something? Would you speak to Lady Lesso that way? Lady Lesso, who died to protect Professor Dovey? She would have expected you to trust her best friend. And to help her. So if you respected Evil’s Dean, then you better respect Good’s Dean too.”

  Quiet stretched over the cell.

  “Come a long way from that Tedros-loving twit our first year,” Dot whispered to Anadil.

  “Shut up,” Hester mumbled.

  Professor Dovey, on the other hand, came alive at the mention of Lady Lesso’s name. Tightening her bun, she pushed through her cell bars to get closer to her students. “Hester, it’s natural to lash out when you feel helpless. All of us feel helpless right now. But listen to me. No matter how dark things seem, Rhian isn’t Rafal. He’s shown no evidence of sorcery, nor is he protected by an immortal spell like Rafal was. Rhian has only gotten this far because of lies. He lied to us about where he comes from. He lied to us about who he is. And I have no doubt he’s lying about his claim to the crown.”

  “Yet he managed to pull Excalibur from the stone,” Hester argued. “So either he’s telling the truth about being King Arthur’s son . . . or he’s a sorcerer after all.”

  Professor Dovey resisted this. “Even with him pulling the sword, my instinct tells me he’s neither Arthur’s son nor the true king. I haven’t proof, of course, but I believe there’s a reason Rhian’s file never crossed my desk or Lady Lesso’s as a prospective student, when every child, Good or Evil, has a file at school. He claims he went to the Foxwood School for Boys, but that could be a lie, like all his other lies. And lies will only take him so far without skills, discipline, and training, all of which my students possess in spades. If we stick to a plan, we can stay one step ahead of him. So listen carefully. First off, Anadil, your rats will be our spies. Send one to find Merlin, the second to find Tedros, and the third to find Agatha wherever she may be—”

  Anadil’s rats sprang out of her pockets, elated to finally be useful, but Anadil squashed them down again. “Don’t you think I thought of that already? You heard Willam. The dungeon is impenetrable. There’s no way for them to— Ow!”

  One of the rats had bitten her, and now all three were scampering through her fingers, sniffing and searching the cell walls, before they squeezed through three different cracks and disappeared.

  “Rats always find a way. That’s what makes them rats,” said Professor Dovey, craning to see a crack in a wall that one of the rodents had squeezed into and spotting a golden gleam coming through. “Nicola, what do you see in that hole?”

  Nicola pressed against the wall and put her eye to the crack. The fi
rst year probed at the hole with her thumbnail, feeling the mildewed stone crumble. Clearly the dungeons, like the rest of the run-down castle, hadn’t been fortified or maintained. With the tip of her hair clip, Nicola pulled away more dirt and stone, which widened the hole a smidge bigger, more light spearing through.

  “I see . . . sunlight . . . and the slope of a hill. . . .”

  “Sunlight?” Hort scoffed. “Nic, I know they do things differently in Reader World, but in our world, dungeons are below ground.”

  “Is that one of the perks of having a boyfriend? Having him explain things to me I already know?” said Nicola acidly, squinting through the hole. “Dungeons might be below ground, but we’re right up against the side of the hill. It’s the only explanation for why I can see the castle.” She scraped away more dirt with her clip. “I see people too. Lots of people packed uphill. They’re looking up at the Blue Tower. Must be watching Rhian . . .”

  The king’s voice echoed louder through the hole.

  “For as long as you’ve lived, you’ve served a pen. No one knows who controls this pen or what it wants and yet you worship it, praying it will write about you. But it never does. Thousands of years, it’s ruled these Woods. What do you have to show for it? Each new story, it chooses someone else for glory. The educated. The children of that school. And leaves scraps for you, the hardworking, the invisible. You, the real stories of the Endless Woods.”

  The crew could hear the people buzzing.

  “Never talked that much when he was with us,” Dot mused.

  “Give a boy a stage,” Anadil quipped.

  “Nicola, can you see the balcony where Rhian is?” Dovey asked.

  Nicola shook her head.

  Professor Dovey turned to Hester. “Have your demon chip at that hole. We need a view of the stage.”

  Hester frowned. “Maybe you can turn pumpkins into carriages, Professor, but if you think my demon can get us out by boring a tunnel through a wall—”

  “I didn’t say ‘get us out.’ I said ‘chip at that hole.’ But if you prefer to doubt me while we lose our chance at rescue, then by all means,” Professor Dovey snapped.

  Hester cursed under her breath as her demon tattoo swelled red on her neck, lifted clean off her skin, and flew towards the hole, jabbing its claws like pickaxes and garbling grunty gibberish: “Babayagababayagababayaga!”

  “Careful,” Hester mothered, “your claw is still wounded from Nottingham—”

  She froze, catching a black blur of movement through the hole. Her demon spotted it too and recoiled in fear . . . but it was already gone.

  “What is it?” said Anadil.

  Hester bent forward, inspecting the hole in the stone. “Looked like . . .”

  But it couldn’t have been, she thought.

  The Snake’s dead. Rhian killed him. We saw his body—

  “Wait a second. Did you say ‘rescue’?” Dot said, twirling to Dovey. “First of all, you heard Willam: there’s no way out of this prison. Second, even if there was and we summoned the League of Thirteen or anyone else, what would they do . . . storm Camelot? Rhian has guards. He has the whole Woods behind him. Who on the outside could possibly rescue us?”

  “I never said it’d be someone on the outside,” said Professor Dovey intently.

  The whole crew looked at her.

  “Sophie,” said Hort.

  “Rhian needs Sophie,” Good’s Dean explained. “Every King of Camelot needs a queen to consolidate his power, especially a king like Rhian who is so new to the people. Meanwhile, the Queen of Camelot is as vaunted a position as her counterpart. It’s why Rhian took careful steps to ensure Sophie—a legend and beloved face across the Woods—would be his queen. As the people see it, the best of Good is marrying the best of Evil, which raises Rhian above the politics of Evers and Nevers and makes him a convincing leader to both. Plus, having Sophie as queen will calm any doubts about having a mysterious stranger as king. So now that that king has his ring on Sophie’s finger, he will do everything he can to keep her loyalty . . . but in the end, she’s still on our side.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Reena. “The last time Sophie wore a boy’s ring, it was Rafal’s, and she sided with him against the whole school and nearly killed us all. And now you want us to trust the same girl?”

  “This isn’t the same girl,” Professor Dovey challenged. “That’s why Rhian handpicked her to be his queen. Because Sophie is the only person in the Woods who both Good and Evil claim as their own—at once the slayer of an Evil School Master and now Evil’s new Dean. But we know where Sophie’s true loyalties lie. None of you can argue that everything she’s done on this quest has been to protect both her crew and Tedros’ crown. She accepted Rhian’s ring because besides being enamored with him, she thought he was Tedros’ liege. She took Rhian’s hand because of her love for her friends, not in spite of it. No matter what Sophie has to do to stay alive, we cannot doubt that love. Not when our own lives depend on her.”

  Beatrix frowned. “I still don’t trust her.”

  “Me either,” said Kiko.

  “Join the club,” said Anadil.

  Professor Dovey ignored them. “Now for the rest of the plan. We’ll wait for Anadil’s rats to return with news of the others. Then, when the time comes, we’ll send Sophie a message through that hole and establish a chain of communication. From there, we can plot our rescue,” she said, checking on the quarter-sized breach that Hester’s demon had managed to bash out of the wet, cracked stone. Rhian’s speech amplified louder through it—

  “And let’s not forget my future queen!” he proclaimed.

  The people sang back: “Sophie! Sophie! Sophie!”

  “Can you see the stage yet, Nicola?” Professor Dovey pressured.

  Nicola leaned forward, eye to the hole: “Almost. But it’s so far uphill and we’re on the wrong side of it.”

  Dovey turned to Hester. “Keep your demon digging. We need a view of that stage, no matter how remote.”

  “Why? You heard the girl,” Hester pestered, wincing vicariously as her demon punched at the hole with its injured claw. “What good is a pea-sized rear view—”

  “One of Rhian’s pirate guards will likely check on us soon,” Dovey continued. “Hort, given your father was a pirate, I’m assuming you might know these boys?”

  “No one I’d call a friend,” Hort punted, picking at his sock.

  “Well, try to befriend them,” Dovey urged.

  “I’m not befriending a bunch of thugs,” Hort shot back. “They’re mercenaries. They’re not real pirates.”

  “And are you a real Professor of History? If you were, you’d know that even mercenary pirates joined the Pirate Parley in helping King Arthur fight the Green Knight,” Dovey rebutted. “Talk to these boys. Get as much information as you can.”

  Hort hesitated. “What kind of information?”

  “Any information,” the Dean pressed. “How they met Rhian or where Rhian really comes from or—”

  Metal creaked and slammed in the distance.

  The iron door.

  Someone had entered the dungeons.

  Bootsteps pounded on stone—

  Two pirates in Camelot’s armor dragged a boy’s limp body past the cell, each gripping one of his outstretched arms. The boy resisted weakly, his eye blackened shut, his suit and shirt shredded, his bloodied body drained by whatever tortures they’d inflicted on him since they’d lashed him in chains onstage.

  “Tedros?” Kiko croaked.

  The prince raised his head, and seeing his friends, he swung towards them, gaping at the crew with his one open eye—

  “Where’s Agatha!” he gasped. “Where’s my mother!”

  The guards kicked his legs out from under him and yanked him down the corridor into pitch-dark shadows before dumping him into the cell at the very end.

  But from Hester’s vantage point, it seemed that the cell at hall’s end had already been occupied, for as they flung Tedros i
nto his cage, they let a prisoner out of it—three prisoners to be precise—who now slinked down the hall, unchained and free.

  As these released captives moved out of the shadows, Hester, Anadil, and Dot pressed against the bars and came face-to-face with another coven of three. These haggard triplets glided past them in gray tunics with salt-and-pepper hair to their waists, rawboned limbs, and leathery, coppery skin; their necks and identical faces were long with high, simian foreheads; thin, ashy lips; and almond-shaped eyes. They smirked at Professor Dovey before they followed the pirates out of the dungeons, the door slamming shut behind them.

  “Who were those women?” Hester asked, swiveling to Dovey.

  “The Mistral Sisters,” said the Dean, grimly. “King Arthur’s advisors who ran Camelot into the ground. Arthur appointed the Mistrals when Guinevere deserted him. After Arthur died, they had free rein over Camelot until Tedros came of age and put them in jail. Whatever reason Rhian has for freeing them, it can’t be good news.” She called down the hall. “Tedros, can you hear me!”

  The echoes of Rhian’s speech drowned out whatever response came back, if one came back at all.

  “He’s hurt,” Dovey told the quest team. “We can’t just leave him there. We need to help him!”

  “How?” said Beatrix anxiously. “Anadil’s rats are gone and we’re trapped here. His cell is way at the other end of the—”

  But now they heard the door to the dungeons open once more.

  Soft footsteps padded down the staircase. A shadow elongated on the wall, then across their cell bars.

  Into the rusty torchlight came a green-masked figure. His skintight suit of black eels hung in slashed ribbons, exposing his young, pale torso spattered with blood.

  The entire crew flattened against the walls. So did Professor Dovey.

  “But y-y-you’re . . . dead!” Hort cried.

  “We saw your body!” said Dot.

  “Rhian killed you!” said Kiko.

  The Snake’s ice-blue eyes glared through his mask.

  From behind his back, he produced one of Anadil’s rats, the rodent writhing in his grip.

  The Snake raised a finger and the scaly black scim covering his fingertip turned knife-sharp. The rat let out a terrible squeak—