One True King

by Soman Chainani

  The wishes, Tedros realized.

  Agatha would tell him to focus on the wishes.

  He looked up at the genie. “What were Aladdin’s three wishes? Consider that my one question.”

  The genie’s eyes flickered in surprise, before he answered: “His first wish was to be Sultan of Shazabah. His second wish was for Princess Asifa, the Sultan’s daughter, to fall in love with him. And his third wish was for that mirror over there,” he said, nodding at the cracked slab of glass against the wall.

  The prince picked up the mirror, a piece of misshapen glass, veiled in dust. Aladdin had used his last wish to have this. And he hadn’t even taken it with him. Not a surprise: magic mirrors had pitiful powers. Even the queen who hunted Snow White could only use hers to assess her rivals’ beauty from afar. Yet Aladdin had invested his last wish to have a mirror of his own. Why?

  Tedros took a deep breath. Only one way to solve this mystery. He blew the sand off its surface and was faced with his own reflection.

  Instantly, the eyes of his mirror twin glowed yellow, like the genie’s—

  Then Tedros was falling into them like a hole.

  He could see the Tedros left behind in the cave, as if he’d split into two selves. Gold light blinded him, like he’d dropped into the sun, before he came out the other side, floating without gravity through a hall of mirrors, each mirror playing a scene from his life.

  Young Tedros, writing a message to his mother . . . then stuffing it into a bottle and setting it into the Savage Sea.

  Tedros, crying alone in his dorm room at school.

  Tedros, stiffening as Aric came towards him in a prison cell, a whip on his belt.

  Tedros, lost in Filip’s gaze on a window ledge, he and the boy about to kiss.

  Tedros, gouging out the eyes of his father’s statue in King’s Cove . . .

  These weren’t just scenes, Tedros realized.

  These were his secrets.

  Suddenly, he was back in the genie’s cave, turning away from his reflection, sucking in air.

  “Tedros?” his mother asked behind him.

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t think.

  Instead, he held up the mirror and reflected her.

  In the glass, Guinevere’s eyes burned yellow and now Tedros was falling into them.

  Into her secrets.

  Guinevere in her wedding veil, walking down the aisle towards Arthur . . . but behind the veil, she looked racked with doubts . . .

  Guinevere, embraced with Lancelot in a forest, the two disguised by the night.

  Guinevere, in a dark hood, sneaking into young Tedros’ room . . . kissing him goodbye . . . then seeing him wake . . . and hurriedly closing the door to lock him in.

  Guinevere, on the shores of Avalon’s lake, receiving Tedros’ message in a bottle . . . and crumpling it as she saw Lancelot coming, clutching freshly picked flowers.

  Guinevere, years later, glimpsing teenage Tedros arrive with his friends on the moors of Avalon . . . her face clouding over . . .

  Tedros ripped himself out of his mother’s secrets, reeling from the mirror—

  “What’s wrong?” said Guinevere, as if she’d been frozen in time. “What are you seeing?”

  “You never wanted me to find you, did you?” her son asked. “After you ran off with Lancelot. You would have been happy never being with me again.”

  The flush in his mother’s face told Tedros all he needed to know.

  This mirror spoke the truth.

  The darkest truths, locked away in each person’s heart.

  And his mother’s was what he’d known all along: her heart was with Lancelot, only Lancelot, whether the knight was alive or dead. That’s why Tedros felt that empty feeling around her. She was here in body, but no longer in soul.

  Hooves pounded the desert outside, shaking the cave harder.

  He was running out of time.

  Tedros focused again on the mirror, keeping his face out of its reflection. What had Aladdin used it for? How did it help him get out of this ca—

  Of course.

  Slumdog, street rat . . . but a legend for a reason.

  The prince tucked the mirror into the back of his pants. Then he gazed up at the genie, his blue eyes aflame.

  “I’d like to make my first wish, please,” said Tedros.

  THE GENIE GAVE the mildest swish of his hand.

  “Done,” he declared. “Won’t last more than an hour. Even my magic has limits.”

  Tedros inspected his body, unchanged on the outside. But inside, his blood tingled with bubbling heat, as if his veins were growing wider. His skin felt looser on his bones, more elastic. He held up a hand and with a simple focus of mind, he watched the hair on the back of it recede, the skin turning paler, more feminine . . . Then he stopped the transformation just as he’d started it, his hand reverting to a golden, sinewy fist.

  “An hour is all I need,” said Tedros.

  He glanced at his mother, who was surely thinking the same thing as her son. That the genie had given Tedros precisely what he’d asked for. But whether this first wish was well-used . . . only time would tell.

  “And your second wish?” the genie asked.

  “Same as the first,” Tedros answered. He pointed at his mother. “But do it to her.”

  TEDROS COULD SEE her clutching her arms over her chest, as if trying to block the sensations she was feeling inside. Mother and son shared the same powers now. But where these powers emboldened Tedros, they seemed to make his mother shrink deeper into her skin.

  Will she be able to do the job when the moment comes? the prince wondered. Did I make a mistake in picking her?

  “And your third wish?” the genie asked.

  Tedros’ heart thumped harder, drowning out the sounds from beyond. This last wish was the rub. He kept his face steady, trying to give nothing away.

  But his mother had no such restraint. He could see her chewing on her lip and picking at her nails, glancing worriedly at him.

  The genie noticed.

  “And your third wish?” he repeated, with suspicion.

  The prince looked hard into the genie’s eyes. “My third wish is that you become deathly allergic to ladybugs.”

  “What?” the genie snorted.

  From the ceiling of the cave, a big pink ladybug dropped onto his shoulder.

  Instantly, the genie broke out into bright pink pox and clutched his throat, gagging for breath. He flung the beetle to the ground, about to stomp on it—

  “Wouldn’t do that, considering it’s your princess,” said Tedros.

  The genie ogled him, confused. Then he looked down at the pink bug, blinking up at the genie with almond-shaped eyes, before it began skittering around him, making him erupt in a fresh riot of blisters. Panicked, the genie punted the bug across the cave, straight into Tedros’ hands.

  “You said to deliver your princess to you. You didn’t say in what form,” the prince smiled, petting the beetle. “And it turns out a teacher of Animal Communication enjoys mogrifying into the precise insect that now kills you to be near. Doesn’t sound like this tale will end in Happily Ever After, will it?”

  The ladybug whispered in Tedros’ ear.

  “Besides, Uma says she might be your true love but you’re certainly not hers,” he relayed.

  The genie’s mist went redder, his eyes poisonous yellow. “We had a deal! You made a promise!”

  “Which we fulfilled,” Tedros pointed out.

  “You think you’ll get away with this!” the genie shouted. “You cheat! You thief!”

  “Says a genie who makes a sport of stealing men’s lives,” Tedros reproached. “The genie who thinks he can cheat his way to love.”

  The genie lunged for him, but Uma’s bug bounced onto his face and the genie recoiled in horror. He smacked her away, except the ladybug kept scuttling towards him, cornering him against the lamp, choking him with her mere presence as he contorted with pain. Desperate to stay alive, the
genie pulled back into his lamp, leaving only his scared face exposed . . . Then his expression changed, a triumphant leer growing, as he extended his neck like a snake’s and confronted Tedros, eye to eye.

  “You’re forgetting something, failed prince. You don’t know the secret word. You’re trapped here forever. You idiot. You arrogant fool!”

  “I don’t know the secret word,” Tedros confessed. “That is true.”

  He looked up at the genie.

  “But you’re forgetting something too.”

  Tedros pulled Aladdin’s mirror out of his pants and held it up, reflecting his stunned opponent.

  In a flash, the prince was falling through tiger eyes . . .

  But only one secret played in the genie’s soul, again and again and again.

  A single, shining word, carved in darkness, like a wish against the night.

  Tedros yanked himself back into the cave, just as the genie surged out of his lamp with the last of his strength, claws out for the prince—

  Tedros put his nose to the genie’s. “The secret word is . . . human.”

  “NO!” the genie screamed, dragged back into the lamp.

  All at once, sand swelled under Tedros’ feet, lifting him and his mother out of the cave, Uma’s bug scrambling after them. Soaring upwards, Tedros smelled the heat of the desert above him, sweat beading on his skin. He could hear the confused cries of Japeth’s army, the first part of the plan surely complete—

  His mother snatched at the mirror, still in his hands.

  “Leave it!” Guinevere said. “Bad things happen to thieves!”

  Tedros ignored her, gripping the glass, the desert surface coming closer. Taking the mirror wasn’t part of the plan, but no way was he leaving it behind.

  Not because he was a thief.

  Because he was the king.

  And the mirror his new weapon.

  Secrets this time, instead of a sword.

  Tedros grinned, rising out of the cave.

  Oh yes.

  There were more souls he’d be looking into.

  20

  AGATHA

  Conversations with Friends

  Ten minutes earlier, Agatha panicked as Tedros and his mother disappeared inside the Cave of Wishes.

  The moment the door sealed, Agatha whirled to face Merlin.

  “Merlin. What ‘big job’ did Tedros give you to do?”

  The six-year-old clasped his hands under his bottom, as if unsure how much to share. Then he pointed at the armies charging across the dunes. “Tee Tee said wait ’til horseys.”

  “Wait ’til horseys?” Sophie frowned, sidling beside Agatha.

  “Then what?” Agatha hounded the wizard.

  Merlin beamed up at them. “Choo-choo! Choo-choo!”

  Agatha and Sophie exchanged looks, while Hort, Princess Uma, and the Knights of Eleven clustered together, the Snake and a thousand men storming closer, closer . . .

  “Are we really going to stand here and let him kill Agatha?” Sophie demanded, her dress morphing into white armor, mirroring the steel in her voice. “Didn’t you all say you had a plan?”

  “We do,” clipped Maid Marian, nodding pointedly at Merlin.

  “Knights, take your position!” Jaunt Jolie’s queen ordered, eleven armored females fanning into a frontline.

  Sophie grabbed Merlin. “You little brat, tell Auntie Sophie exactly what Tee Tee told you—”

  “Choo-choo!” the young wizard repeated.

  “I’d give him a spanking but we’re about to die,” Sophie growled. Both girls sparked their fingerglows, pink and gold strobing weakly, fear the only emotion fueling their magic. Over Sophie’s shoulder, Agatha watched Japeth riding for her, an arrow to a target. “How could Tedros just leave you here?” Sophie hissed, sheltering her friend. “He should have taken you into the cave instead of his useless mother! What kind of prince is that?”

  “He said to follow the others. That he had a plan,” Agatha insisted as Japeth drew closer. But deep down, she had the same questions about Tedros, while also feeling guilty about them, as if it wasn’t a boy’s job to play bodyguard for his girl. And yet . . . if their positions were reversed, she never would have left her prince alone to fight. Nor would she have trusted him to survive Japeth without her. Then again, it was exactly this lack of trust that had put them in this mess to begin with.

  “Well, he has a plan and we don’t,” Sophie conceded, squinting back at the cave. “For once in our lives, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt.”

  But she didn’t look convinced.

  Neither did Agatha.

  “Remember this . . .” Hester exhorted her fellow knights, her eyes glinting through her pearlescent veil. “None of those bastards touches Agatha.”

  The Knights of Eleven grabbed swords off their belts, brandishing them to fight.

  “Because that’s how you beat an unkillable Snake. Swords,” Hort groused, exploding out of his clothes into a hulking man-wolf. “Not just Agatha we have to keep him away from. Keep him from Sophie too.”

  “But by all means, let him kill me,” Nicola snapped.

  “Not being your boyfriend means your bad attitude is your problem now,” Hort retorted, cocking his massive biceps as he shielded Sophie. “And you missed my point. We can’t let Japeth get Sophie back. Her blood heals him.”

  “Not anymore,” said Sophie, feeling safer now that wolf-Hort was protecting her. “Rhian told me of a pen’s prophecy. About him and Japeth. One would marry me and be king, the other would be healed by my blood. But not both. Once Japeth killed Rhian and stole the crown, he lost my blood’s powers.”

  “Pen’s prophecy?” said Agatha, the trampling horses and camels so loud she could hardly hear herself. “Which pen? Lionsmane or the Storian?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Sophie dismissed. “What matters is Japeth’s mortal now. He can be killed.”

  “Plus, the Sultan’s army still thinks Japeth is Rhian, so Snake can’t use his scims. Not without giving himself away,” Nicola surmised. “This is our best chance to beat him.”

  “Only thing standing in our way is a thousand pirates and armed soldiers and fire-spitting camels,” said adult Dot, fatally.

  “And our best weapon is a six-year-old,” Anadil echoed, “who seems to have disappeared.”

  Agatha scanned the desert. “Where is he?”

  “30 seconds . . . ,” Dean Brunhilde called as Japeth led two armies straight at them.

  “What about Uma?” Sophie said to Agatha. “Maybe she can stop the camels—”

  The girls whirled to the Princess, hoping her animal skills could save them . . . Instead, Uma mogrified into a pink ladybug, which plopped in sand near the cave’s door.

  “20 seconds . . . ,” Anadil warned, her two rats leaping off her shoulders, starting to swell bigger and bigger, like twin mastiffs.

  Hort roared across the desert, crouched in fighting position. “Come at me, mate!”

  A camel spat a ball of fire, scorching his palm, sending the man-wolf shrieking to the ground before he snuffed the flames in sand. More fireballs slammed into Anadil’s rats, rocketing them into the night.

  “10 seconds!” Beatrix cried.

  Men and beasts flew towards them, about to obliterate them with fury and fire.

  “Your scream,” Agatha gasped at Sophie. “Your witch’s scream.”

  Sophie shook her head. “That was the old me—”

  “Bring the old you back!” Agatha begged.

  “5 seconds!” Reena shouted.

  Sophie bore down, teeth gnashed, chest swelling. But then the two girls glimpsed Japeth, swerving around the Knights of Eleven, the Snake rising tall on his horse’s back, double-fisting his sword, aiming it right at Agatha.

  The scream seemed to catch in Sophie’s throat, as if Evil couldn’t beat Evil. Not this kind, darker than anything inside her own heart.

  Agatha retreated from the Snake in terror, Sophie too late to stop him. Ja
peth’s sword gleamed by moonlight as he raised it over Agatha’s head like an axe—

  Something swooped in front of him.

  A young boy on a magic carpet, looking clear into Japeth’s eyes, then twirling to Agatha with the brightest of smiles.

  “Choo-choo, Mama!”

  Merlin swept his hands like a magician as the Snake slashed his blade across Agatha, cutting full-force into—

  Thin air.

  She was gone.

  Merlin too.

  All of Tedros’ army was gone.

  Except for a pink little beetle, peeping through a vast, empty desert, before it set its sights downward and began burrowing into the sand.

  ONCE, BACK IN Gavaldon, Agatha had asked her mother what happens to people when they die. “The nun at the schoolhouse says our bodies go into the ground but our souls go up into the sky, where we reunite with all our friends. But Sophie says that’s nonsense and the dead have no friends.”

  Callis had continued to stew her frog-skin soup. “Lovely girl, that Sophie.”

  So when Agatha spun from the Snake, waiting for the pain of steel and the shock of her head flying off her body, but instead opened her eyes to find herself reunited with all her friends on a cloud in a strange-colored sky . . . she immediately looked at Sophie.

  “Merlin, sweetie . . . ,” Sophie rasped. “What did you do?”

  The little wizard giggled from atop his magic carpet, breezing through a night full of silver stars, two-dimensional and five-pointed, as if he’d drawn them himself.

  They were in the Celestium, Agatha realized. Tedros must have told Merlin to hide them here . . . to wait until the “horseys” were close and whisk Agatha and her friends to safety . . . The same way Merlin had brought her here to help with the first test . . .

  Only the Celestium was different now, Agatha realized. Instead of the pure, meditative sky she was used to, it was a hodgepodge of purple shades, like a poorly made quilt, filled with fast-moving clouds, comets, and constellations of fantastic shapes—dragons and castles and goblins and ships—as if instead of a wizard’s place to think, it’d become a wizard’s place to play. Together, they’d been transported inside Merlin’s imagination, a six-year-old’s hectic dreamscape, mirrored by the dreamer himself, whizzing around on his magic carpet, gibbering incantations, whereby new comets and clouds burst into being, streaking past his startled guests.