A Crystal of Time (The School for Good and Evil The Camelot Years #2) - Soman Chainani Page 0,87

glowing circle drift around the painting like a spotlight, roving across the lurking pirates on the ground . . . then up the School Master’s tower and through the window . . . past the huddling first years . . . and settling on the fourth years in the corner.

No . . . not all the fourth years, Agatha realized, peering closer.

One fourth year.

And it wasn’t her.

Instead, the pen had picked a brown boy with long, matted hair, a bushy unibrow, and a surly scowl.

The glowing spotlight honed tighter on the boy, zeroing in on his bandaged hand . . . something in his bandaged hand. . . .

Agatha turned. “Ravan,” she said, whip-sharp. “Give me that book.”

Ravan gawked at her.

“Now!” Agatha hissed.

Startled, Ravan tossed it to her like a hot stone. “It’s not mine! It’s a library book! It was the only one with pictures instead of words! Mona made us search for clues about Rhian while we recovered—”

“Don’t blame me, you illiterate fool!” his green-skinned friend berated. “Who carries a library book when running from murderers! No wonder you were so slow!”

“Tried to toss it along the way but the book bit me!” Ravan defended.

Agatha was already kneeling as she lit up the cover with her glowing fingertip, teachers hovering over her.

The History of the Storian

AUGUST A. SADER

Just seeing her old History professor’s name calmed Agatha’s heart. August Sader had never led her astray. Even after his death. If the Storian had pointed her to the book, then there was something she needed in its pages. Something she needed to win this fairy tale. She just had to find what it was.

She pulled open the cover and saw that like all of Professor Sader’s books, the pages didn’t have words. Instead, each page was streaked with a pattern of embossed dots in a rainbow of colors, small as pinheads. As a blind seer, Professor Sader couldn’t write history. But he could see it and he wanted his readers to do the same.

“Is there a reason we’re reading a crackpot’s theory while pirates ravage our school?” Professor Manley growled.

“If it wasn’t for August Sader, we wouldn’t have a school,” Professor Anemone chided.

“Bilious is right, Emma,” Princess Uma added meekly. “As much as I loved August, his theory about the Storian has no proof. . . .”

Agatha tuned them out, thumbing through pages, but the book was as thick as her fist. Where was she supposed to start reading when all the pages looked exactly the same?

Then, out of the corner of her eye, she saw the Storian glow brighter in midair.

Without thinking, Agatha turned a page, keeping her eye on the pen.

The Storian pulsed brighter.

Agatha turned more pages.

The Storian pulsed even brighter.

Agatha flipped through the book, faster and faster, the Storian glowing hotter, hotter, like the last flare of a sunset, its light ballooning through the entire tower. Agatha surged to the next page—

The Storian went dim.

She flipped back to the page before.

“This one,” she breathed.

Far below, she heard the pirates. “Light inna School Master’s tower! Someone’s inside!”

Another answered: “How we gonna git up there?”

Inside the tower, teachers and students exchanged petrified looks.

Agatha was already running her fingertips across the dots on the page—

“‘Chapter 15: One True King,’” spoke Professor Sader’s voice.

Agatha swept her hand across the next line of dots and a ghostly three-dimensional scene melted into view atop the page: a living diorama, the colors gauzy, like one of Professor Sader’s old paintings. Agatha could see the whole school crowding in to watch a vision of the Storian, twirling over the book.

“From the very beginning of the Endless Woods, the Storian has been its lifeblood,” Sader’s voice narrated. “As long as the Storian writes new tales, the sun will keep rising over the Woods, for it is these lessons of Good and Evil that move our world forward. But just as the Pen keeps Man alive, so too does Man keep the Pen alive. Each ruler wears a ring that pledges his or her loyalty to the Storian, carrying the same inscription as the pen’s. A hundred founding realms in the Endless Woods. A hundred rulers. A hundred rings. As long as the rulers continue to wear these rings, the Storian will continue to write.”

The scene zoomed in on the inscription, gleaming in the pen’s steel.

“For many years, the bond between Man and Pen was peaceful,” Sader continued. “But then rulers began to question what the inscription in their rings meant. It is not a known language