A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,73

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