A Crystal of Time Page 6

  “Poot,” said the first.

  “Mah poot,” said the second.

  They dropped their bags and charged at her.

  Facing five hundred pounds of rabid slime, Agatha plunged into the mob and shoved people in the goblins’ way like shields but the goblins rammed past them, the two creatures reaching out with stubby arms and grabbing on to Dovey’s bag—

  Agatha spun around and overturned a vendor’s cart of fake crystal balls in their path, the rubber balls parroting “I see Agatha! I see Agatha!” in off-synch yelps and tripping up the goblins and half the crowd. Panting in relief, Agatha slid behind a newsstand, watching the goblins flop all over the slippery balls, while a female vendor beat them mercilessly with her shoe.

  Suddenly, Agatha noticed the headlines of the Gillikin Gazette, clipped to the front of the stall:

  LION SETS EXECUTION FOR “KING” TEDROS; WEDDING FESTIVITIES BEGIN TOMORROW

  Agatha leaned closer, reading the article’s details about how Sophie handpicked the axe and executioner for Tedros’ beheading (a lie, thought Agatha) . . . about King Rhian’s new pen, Lionsmane, that was more trustworthy than the Storian . . .

  An even bigger lie, Agatha scorned, remembering the cheap gold pens people were snapping up in the booth. The Storian told stories the Woods needed. The Storian kept the Woods alive. But if people were suddenly doubting the enchanted pen and favoring a fake one . . . then she wasn’t just fighting Rhian. She was fighting the countless minds he’d corrupted too. How was she supposed to do that?

  Only there was more in this Gillikin article, Agatha realized, reading on . . . this time about Rhian’s brother, who’d supposedly been named the liege of the king . . .

  Agatha studied a painting of this liege, included on the front page. Japeth, it said his name was—

  Her eyes bulged.

  Not just Rhian’s brother.

  Rhian’s twin.

  She thought back to the Lady of the Lake’s drawing.

  Now she understood everything.

  It wasn’t Rhian in the Snake’s mask who the Lady had kissed. It was Japeth.

  There were two of them all along.

  One the Lion, one the Snake.

  That’s how they tricked both the Lady and Excalibur. They shared the same blood.

  And yet, both the Lady and Excalibur believed that blood to be the blood of Arthur’s heir.

  But even if they were twins, wouldn’t one of them have been born first? Agatha wondered. Meaning only one of them is the true heir—

  Agatha shook her head. What am I saying? Those two monsters can’t possibly be Arthur’s sons. They can’t be Tedros’ brothers.

  She could feel herself holding her breath . . .

  Can they?

  A shadow swept over her.

  Agatha swiveled and saw the two goblins glowering at her, their bodies covered in welts.

  The female vendor who’d beaten them was with the goblins too, staring at Agatha.

  So were a hundred other people behind them, who clearly knew who she was.

  “Oh. Hullo,” Agatha said.

  She dashed for her life, hurtling through the crowd, but more and more people ahead were hearing the cries of the people pursuing her and started chasing her too. Trapped on the yellow road between booths, there was nowhere for her to go—

  Then she saw the stall next to her.

  TAMIMA’S TADPOLES!

  Best Frog Breeder in the Everlands

  Tadpoles. She knew a spell about tadpoles. She’d learned it at school, reading Sophie’s Evil textbooks . . .

  Instantly, she veered towards the booth, diving under the fabric skirting the bottom of it and accosting the vendor, who was stewing a vat of the squiggling critters. Before the vendor could grasp what was happening, Agatha shoved her out of the way, snatched the tub of tadpoles with both hands, felt her fingerglow burn gold—

  “Pustula morphica!” she gasped.

  She dunked her face in.

  When the goblins and other bounty hunters came rushing by, they couldn’t find Agatha in the crowd—only a soggy girl covered in red boils, stumbling away from a tadpole booth.

  A few moments later, itching at her red, oozing sores, this boil-covered girl shambled up to Gilly’s Ticket Hub and its handsome young barker.

  “Flight to Beauty and the Feast, please,” she said.

  The man jerked back in disgust.

  “Forty silver pieces,” he groused, reflexively touching his smooth cheek. “Or rather, forty silver pieces your pestilent fingers haven’t touched.”

  “I don’t have any silver,” Agatha replied.

  “Then give me whatever is in that bag,” he said, eyeing Dovey’s sack on her shoulder.

  “Soiled diapers?” Agatha replied with a straight face.

  The barker scowled. “Out of my sight before I call the Wizard Guard.”

  Agatha glanced over her shoulder and saw a commotion at the tadpole booth, the vendor pointing her way—

  She whipped back to the barker.

  “I could pay you with a good strong sneeze, though,” she said coolly. “Feel one coming as a matter of fact. Right at your pretty little face.”

  The barker raised his eyes, taking in her pocked cheeks.

  “Diseased hag. You want to fly? Be my guest,” he sneered, shining a green-flamed torch into the sky, illuminating a cloud of invisible fairies, suddenly seeable in the green light. “One look at you in Sherwood Forest and they’ll put an arrow through your skull.”

  As the fairies soared down on the barker’s command and scooped Agatha high into the sky, she grinned at him and the crowd of Agatha hunters rushing his booth.

  “I’ll take my chances,” she said.

  “YOU SHOULD HAVE come here straightaway instead of messing about in Fairyland,” Robin Hood grouched, dabbing Agatha’s boils with beer he’d soaked onto a napkin.

  “It was too far to get here on foot and I wanted to find news of my friends,” said Agatha, now itching with boils and beer. “Besides, last time I was here, you said Merry Men don’t get involved in other kingdoms’ affairs, and that’s why you wouldn’t help us fight the Snake. But now you have to help or Tedros will die in six days’ time. You’re my only hope—Lancelot is dead, Merlin’s been captured, Professor Dovey and Guinevere too, and I don’t know how to reach the League of Thirteen or if they’re even still alive—”

  “I knew that Rhian boy was a maggot,” Robin growled, splashing beer all over his green coat. “Stuck to Tedros’ bum like a flea: ‘My king! My king!’ Saw right through him. Anyone that servile to a king is bound to be in it for himself.” He tightened his brown cap, speared with a green feather. “Moment I heard the news I wasn’t surprised in the least.”

  “Don’t lie, you goat,” snorted a ravishing black woman with long, curly hair and a flowy blue dress, flitting around the bar at Marian’s Arrow, rinsing wine cups and wiping down counters as moonlight streamed through the only window. “You told me you’d never met a ‘sturdier chap’ and that if you could, you’d steal Rhian from Tedros and induct him into the Merry Men.”

  “Always go countin’ on Marian to tell us a’truth,” a deep voice said.

  Robin glanced over at twelve men of various shapes, sizes, and colors wearing brown caps like Robin’s, each with a beer mug in hand, seated at tables in the otherwise deserted bar.

  “First Robin brings a traitor into our ranks: that boy Kei who set the Snake free and killed three of our men,” said a towering man with a big belly, “and now he wants to bring in an evil king too?”

  “This is why Marian’s Arrow is named after Marian and not him,” a dark man jeered, bowing to the woman behind the bar.

  “Hear! Hear!” the men resounded, banging their mugs.

  “And this is why from now on, you can pay for your drinks in my bar like everyone else,” Robin thrashed.

  The Merry Men fell quiet.

  “For the record, Marian’s Arrow is my bar,” Maid M
arian said as she toweled a mug dry.

  Robin ignored her, turning to Agatha. “King’s guard won’t step foot in Sherwood Forest. You’ll be safe here,” he said, inspecting her pustulous face, then slathering her with even more beer. “Stay with us as long as you please.”

  “Stay? Didn’t you hear what I said? Rhian’s going to kill Tedros!” Agatha shot back, her face itching more than ever. “He’s captured everyone—Dot included, who freed you from jail and now needs you to do the same for her. I’m not staying here and neither are you. We need to attack the castle and rescue them!”

  She heard the Merry Men murmur. A couple chuckles too.

  Robin sighed. “Agatha, we’re thieves, not soldiers. Might hate the nasty, scheming rat, but Rhian has the whole of the Woods behind him and royal guards in front of him. No one can rescue your friends now, no matter how much we love Dot. Just be thankful you escaped, even if you ended up a bit mangy-looking.”

  “She’s lovely as she is, you shallow twit,” Maid Marian snapped, marching towards him. “Won’t be long before you’re humpbacked and wrinkled like a prune, Robin. Who’s going to take care of you then? All the young ladies you whistle at? And what in good heavens are you doing to the poor girl? If you’re not going to help her, at least don’t make things worse.” She grabbed a red pepper shaker off a table, poured a handful of powder into her hand, and blew it straight into Agatha’s face. Agatha hacked violently, shielding her eyes with her fingers . . . which probed at her soft cheeks.

  The boils were gone.

  Robin gaped at Marian. “How’d you know how to do that?”

  “Forest Groups at school. I did your homework on ‘Antidotes,’” said Marian.

  Agatha wheezed, her throat filled with pepper. “You and I have a lot in common.”

  Marian’s face fogged over. “No. Not anymore. I used to be like you. Willing to quest into the Woods and fight Evil like we were trained to do at school. But living in this Forest with Robin has changed me. Changed all of us. Turned us just as lazy and complacent as the fat cats Robin robs from.”

  Robin and his men glanced at each other and shrugged.

  Agatha felt tears coming. “Don’t you understand? Tedros is going to die. The real King of Camelot. King Arthur’s son. We have to save him. Together. I can’t do it alone.”

  Robin met her eyes, quiet for a moment.

  Then he turned to his men.

  “All I need is one more man to say yes,” he spoke firmly. “If any of you wants to ride and take on the king, then we all ride as one. No man stays behind.” Robin drew a deep breath. “All in favor of joining Agatha in the fight . . . raise a hand!”

  The men surveyed each other.

  No one lifted a finger.

  Stunned, Agatha spun to Maid Marian, whose back was turned while she put away beer mugs in the cupboard, as if Robin’s vote didn’t apply to her.

  Agatha launched to her feet, staring down Robin’s men. “I get it. You came to Sherwood Forest to drink your booze and have your fun like overgrown boys. And sure, maybe you do raid the rich to give to the poor from time to time, believing it’s all the Good you need to do to avoid real responsibility. But that’s not what Good is. Good is about taking on Evil whenever it rises, no matter how inconvenient. Good is about stepping up to face the truth. And here’s the truth: there is a fake king ruling the Woods and we in this room are the only ones who can stop him. Will it be dangerous? Yes. Will we risk our lives? Yes. But Good needs a hero and ‘sorry, I have to finish my beer’ isn’t a reason to stay behind. Because if you turn a blind eye now, believing the ‘Lion’ and the ‘Snake’ are not your problem, I assure you it’s only a matter of time before they will be.” Heat rashed across her neck. “So I ask again. On behalf of King Tedros, your friend Dot, and the rest of my quest team who need you in order to stay alive, all those in favor of riding out to Camelot beside me and Robin . . .” She closed her eyes and said a silent prayer. “. . . Raise your hands now.”

  She opened her eyes.

  No hands were raised.

  None of the men could even look at her.

  Agatha froze, her heart shrinking as small as a pea.

  “I’ll give you a horse so you can leave in the morning,” said Robin Hood softly, avoiding eye contact too. “Ride on to someone who can help you.”

  Agatha glared at him, red-faced. “Don’t you understand? There isn’t anyone else.”

  She whirled to Marian for one last appeal—

  But there was no one behind the bar, its namesake already gone.

  WHILE THE MEN remained at Marian’s, Agatha came back to Robin’s treehouse, hoping to scrounge a few hours of rest before she left at first light.

  But she couldn’t sleep.

  She stashed Dovey’s bag in a corner and sat in the doorway, gazing out at the other treehouses, her legs dangling over the edge, brushed by bright purple lotus blossoms quivering in gusts. The wind upended the lanterns too, strung between the treehouses in a rainbow of colors, and forest fairies zipped about setting them right, their wings detonating red and blue like tiny jewels.

  The last time Agatha was here, it had all felt so magical and safe, a protective bubble set off from the chaos of real life. But now the whole place felt callow. Insidious, even. Dark things were happening in the Woods and here in Sherwood Forest, purple lotuses luminesced and the houses still glowed bright, their doors wide open.

  “I used to be like you,” Marian’s voice echoed.

  Then she’d come here to be with Robin. She’d come here for love. A love that had sealed her off from the world and made time stand still. Isn’t that what true loves wanted in the end: to hide away in paradise?

  After all, if she and Tedros had hidden away, they never would have had to lead Camelot. If she and Tedros had hidden away, he never would have heard her tell Sophie that he’d failed his quest as king.

  They’d still have their Ever After.

  They’d still have their perfect love.

  Agatha let out a sigh.

  No. That isn’t love.

  Love isn’t locking yourselves in or hiding where everything is perfect.

  Love is facing the world and its tests together, even if you fail them.

  Suddenly, she felt the need to leave this place right now—to go back into the Woods, no matter how perilous—

  But where would she go?

  She was so used to taking care of things herself. That’s what had made her set off on her quest to find the Snake after Tedros’ coronation. She’d done it to help Tedros, of course. But she’d also done it because she trusted herself to solve problems: more than she trusted her prince or her best friend or anyone else.

  Only this time, she couldn’t work alone. Not with her prince a few days from execution and the whole Woods hunting her and Sophie under Rhian’s thumb and the rest of her friends trapped in prison. If she tried to work alone, Tedros would die. That’s why she’d come here. To forge new alliances. And instead, she’d leave even more alone than before.

  The wind turned cold and she glanced back, hoping to find a blanket or quilt—

  Something caught her eye in the corner.

  A black coat, hanging amongst a sea of green ones in the closet.

  As she moved towards it, she saw it was splotched with dried blood . . .

  Lancelot’s blood.

  Tedros had worn the coat the night they’d come to Sherwood Forest to bury the knight along with Lady Gremlaine. He must have left it here when he’d changed clothes for their dinner at Beauty and the Feast . . .

  Agatha clutched the coat in both hands and put it to her face, inhaling her prince’s warm, minty scent. For a half-second, it made her feel calm.

  Then it dawned on her.

  This could be the last she ever had of him.

  Her heart kickstarted, that helpless feeling returning—

  Then her hands felt something stiff in the coat pocket.

  Agatha reached in and pulled out a sta
ck of letters, banded together. She flipped through the first few.

  DEAR GRISELLA,

  I KNEW THERE’D BE UNDUE ATTENTION ON ME AT SCHOOL, BUT THIS IS ABSURD. I’VE ONLY BEEN HERE A FEW DAYS AND I’M STILL TRYING TO GET MY BEARINGS, YET EVERY EVER AND NEVER IN THE PLACE KEEPS HOUNDING ME, ASKING ME ABOUT HOW I PULLED EXCALIBUR FROM THE STONE AND WHAT BEING KING OF CAMELOT FEELS LIKE AND WHY I’M AT SCHOOL WHEN I SHOULD BE RULING MY KINGDOM. I TELL THEM THE “OFFICIAL” STORY, OF COURSE—THAT MY FATHER WENT TO THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND I WANT TO HONOR HIS LEGACY . . . BUT THE NEVERS DON’T BELIEVE ME. AT LEAST THEY DON’T KNOW THE TRUTH—THAT THE PROVISORY COUNCIL ONLY APPROVED MY CORONATION ON THE CONDITION THAT I RECEIVE A FORMAL EDUCATION (AKA HAVE TIME TO “GROW UP” BEFORE I RULE). BUT I DON’T INTEND TO TELL PEOPLE THAT MY OWN STAFF WON’T LET ME BE KING UNTIL I GRADUATE THIS PLACE. AND NOT ONLY GRADUATE, BUT GRADUATE TOP OF THE CLASS AND WITH A SUITABLE QUEEN-TO-BE PICKED OUT. I FEEL OVERWHELMED, HONESTLY. I CAN BARELY CONCENTRATE ON MY CLASSES. YESTERDAY, I BOTCHED PROFESSOR SADER’S QUIZ ON THE HISTORY OF CAMELOT. THAT’S RIGHT: I FAILED A TEST ON MY OWN KINGDOM—

  DEAR GRISELLA,

  THE DAYS AT SCHOOL ARE LONG AND DIFFICULT (ESPECIALLY YUBA THE GNOME’S CLASS IN THE BLUE FOREST—HE SWATS ME WITH HIS STAFF WHENEVER I MISS AN ANSWER AND I MISS PLENTY). BUT YOUR LETTERS FROM THE CASTLE HAVE GIVEN ME GREAT COMFORT AND REMIND ME OF OUR LIVES AT SIR ECTOR’S BEFORE I WAS KING, WHEN WE STARTED EACH DAY KNOWING EXACTLY WHAT WAS EXPECTED OF US—

  DEAR GRISELLA,

  I’VE BEEN PICKED FOR THE TRIAL BY TALE! EVEN THOUGH MY NEW FRIENDS LANCELOT AND GUINEVERE BOTH PLACED AHEAD OF ME. GUINEVERE I CAN UNDERSTAND (SHE’S BRILLIANT), BUT LANCELOT? HE’S GREAT FUN, BUT NOT THE SHARPEST SWORD IN THE ARMORY. NEEDLESS TO SAY, I’M FEELING THE SPIRIT OF COMPETITION MORE THAN EVER. IF THE NEW KING OF CAMELOT DOESN’T WIN THE TRIAL BY TALE, THE ROYAL ROT WILL BE RIDICULING ME ON THE FRONT PAGE FOR MONTHS. SPEAKING OF ROYALTY, IS EVERYTHING RUNNING SMOOTHLY AT THE CASTLE? I HAVEN’T HEARD FROM YOU IN WEEKS—

  Agatha paged through more of them.

  These weren’t Tedros’ letters. They were his father’s.

  King Arthur must have written them when he was a first year at the School for Good. But who was Grisella? And why did Tedros have his father’s letters in his coat?