The School for Good and Evil #5: A Crystal of Time

by Soman Chainani

  “Precious boy,” she cooed. “Many a king has flattered me with promises of love. Your father included. Perhaps to make me even more devoted and passionate in my service. But none ever meant it. How could they? None could accept the costs. To love me means I must relinquish my powers. No king would abide that. I’m more valuable here. Good’s greatest weapon.”

  “I can protect myself,” said Japeth.

  “Says the boy who just admitted he’s alive because of my protection,” the Lady replied, glancing at Chaddick’s corpse on the shore.

  “And yet here I remain,” said Japeth. “Why? I don’t need anything more from you. I can walk away right now. But I sense a kindred heart, imprisoned by magic. A heart that can give us both what we want.”

  He stepped deeper into her water, his breath misting towards her, their bodies so close. The Lady leaned in, inhaling him. “Sweet, sweet blood of Arthur . . . ,” she sighed softly. “And what of my duties to Good? My duties to defend Camelot beyond your reign?”

  “Good has grown arrogant and weak,” said Japeth. “You’ve defended it for too long. At the expense of your soul.”

  “My soul,” the Lady bantered, touching his cheek. “A boy claims to see my soul. . . .”

  “I know you are lonely,” said the Snake. “So lonely you’ve started to feel bitterness over your place here. You feel yourself changing. No longer do you hold the purity of Good within your heart. You dip into darkness and desolation, the fuels of Evil. All because you won’t give yourself what you want. Stay here any longer and you’ll begin to make mistakes. Instead of protecting Good, you’ll come to harm it. Evil will stake its seed in your heart. If it hasn’t already.”

  The Lady looked at him. All playfulness was gone.

  “You yearn for love as much as I,” said the Snake. “And yet, neither of us can attain that love without another’s help. Someone who can bring that love to life. Otherwise, that love will remain a ghost, a phantom, beyond the rules of the living. I will do anything to find that love. Anything. As will you.”

  The Lady’s skin flushed. “How do you know? How do you know I would do anything for love?”

  The Snake met her eyes. “Because you already have.”

  He kissed her, his hands pulling her down, as the Lady fell into the Snake’s embrace, the lake’s waters curling up around them like the petals of a flower in full bloom.

  But then something in the Lady’s face changed. Her body went rigid, resisting her new love’s. Her mouth pulled away, the veils of water collapsing. She stared at the boy who’d kissed her, her big black pupils jolting with surprise, panic . . . fear.

  Japeth grinned.

  Instantly, the Lady began to dwindle, her body blighting, desiccating. Her hair fell out in clumps; her spine contorted and crackled . . .

  All as the Snake calmly walked away.

  Tedros felt Agatha’s hands on him, pulling him back into the portal.

  The instant the glass of Dovey’s ball appeared beneath Tedros, he was on his feet, pointing at the old crone—

  “Your face . . . I saw your face . . . ,” he panted. “You knew something was wrong. . . . You knew it!”

  The Lady was cowering in the corner, head in her hands.

  “It was the king . . . the heir . . . ,” she defended. “Arthur’s blood . . .”

  “You felt something when you kissed him!” Tedros cried, charging for her. Agatha held him back. “What was it!”

  “Let me out,” the Lady begged.

  “Tell me what you felt!” Tedros assailed.

  The Lady pounded on the glass. “Let me out!”

  She bludgeoned the crystal with both fists—

  “Tell me!” Tedros yelled.

  The Lady slammed the walls, tapping the last of her powers, her fists bashing Dovey’s crystal harder, harder, until it cracked.

  “No!” Agatha shrieked, she and Tedros dashing for the Lady too late as she raised her fists one last time—

  Glass exploded.

  Tedros and Agatha launched backwards, the lake rushing in and filling their shocked mouths. Choking, they thrust out hands for each other, Tedros hanging on to Agatha’s dress, Agatha gripping his thin white shirt. Then came the storm: thousands of glass shards crashing down on them, plunging them into the deep. Thrashing in vain, they sank under the mass of crystals, screams unheard. The Lady of the Lake watched them, robes floating over her head like a reaper’s, her silver tears clouding the sea.

  “Forgive me,” she whispered, her voice resounding. “Forgive me!”

  She thrust out her hand—

  Dark water swirled around Tedros and Agatha, a chasm ripping open in the lake’s center like the mouth of a snake, before it swallowed them both inside.

  DEW COATED TEDROS’ lips, the rich, fresh smell of grass mixing with the scent of Agatha’s hair, his princess spooned in his arms. He opened his eyes to see a lush green heath, sparkling under the sunrise. Agatha stirred, her prince helping her up.

  “We’re . . . here,” she breathed.

  Tedros still felt like he was underwater, the Lady’s last words reverberating. . . . “Forgive me!”

  She had nearly killed them.

  Dovey’s crystal was destroyed.

  And yet, she’d let them pass.

  She’d stayed true to Good.

  He thought of the way she’d embraced the Snake . . . the way she inhaled Arthur’s blood in his veins . . . the way her face darkened once their lips touched. . . .

  What does she know? he asked himself. What does she know that we don’t?

  Across the moors, the old farmhouse where Lancelot and Guinevere once lived lay dormant and overgrown. Sheep, cows, and horses grazed unbounded on the hills.

  “It’s like we never left,” Agatha sighed.

  For a brief moment, Tedros wished he and Agatha could hide here, like his mother and her true love once had. Past is Present and Present is Past, he thought. . . .

  “Tedros?”

  He looked at his princess.

  She squeezed his hand.

  There would be no hiding today.

  THE GRAVE LAY in shadow, sheltered by a small oak grove. A shining glass cross rose out of the ground between two trees, marking King Arthur’s tomb. Garlands of white roses draped the cross, along with a glowing five-pointed star resting against the base. There were more of these stars strewn nearby, ashy and burnt out, as if Merlin returned to lay a new one whenever the old had grown cold.

  But there was a second grave now, Tedros realized, only a short distance from his father’s, deeper in the shadows. A grave he hadn’t seen before, marked with a second glass cross.

  “Chaddick,” said Agatha quietly. “This is where the Lady buried him.”

  Tedros nodded. “It’s where he belongs.”

  His knight. His friend, valiant and true. He shouldn’t be here at all, Tedros wanted to say. Chaddick was too young, too Good to die. He never should have tried to take on the Snake. He never should have tried to do a king’s work.

  Tedros swallowed the knot in his throat.

  Work still left to be done.

  His eyes roved back to his father’s plot.

  “Merlin enchanted the tomb to preserve him,” he said. “Whatever we find, there’ll be hexes and curses to break through. A test I have to pass.” His voice thinned, his palms sweating. “But first, we have to dig him up.”

  He raised his fingerglow to his dad’s grave, his heart jittery, his stomach lurching. His finger started to shake, his gold glow unsteady—

  Agatha stepped in front of him, her own gold glow lit.

  “Look away,” she said.

  She began burning through the dirt.

  Tedros kept his eyes on the glass cross at the head of the grave, reflecting Agatha’s calm face as she worked. At the base of the cross, Merlin’s glowing white star mirrored Tedros’ fidgeting shadow, his square jaw and sweep of curls. He was thankful for his princess, thankful it was just him and Agatha that ha
d made it this far. As much as he loved his mother, his father wouldn’t have wanted her here—

  He broke out of his thoughts.

  Merlin’s white star. His shadow in it.

  It was still moving.

  Only he wasn’t.

  He glanced back at Agatha, her glow burning away more and more earth.

  “They must have buried the coffin deep,” Agatha murmured, tense with concentration.

  Tedros turned back to the star and leaned closer, the shadow inside receding from him, as if to lead him somewhere.

  “This doesn’t make sense . . . ,” Agatha’s voice rasped.

  The prince reached for the star. His fingers brushed the warm white surface and sank right through—

  “Tedros, the grave is empty. There’s nothing here.”

  By the time Agatha turned to her prince, he was halfway in.

  She lunged in horror, grasping her hand for him, but all she found was a cold star, the light snuffed out, like a sun fallen into a sea.

  TEDROS TASTED CLOUDS in his mouth, feather-soft, dissolving like spun sugar, with the sweet tang of blueberry cream. He lifted his eyes to see a silvery five-pointed star shoot past him across a purple night sky, lit by a thousand more of these stars. The air was toasty and thick, the silence of the Celestium so vast that he could hear the drum of his own heart, like it was the beat of the universe.

  A rustle of movement . . . then an intake of breath.

  Tedros grew very still.

  Someone else was on the cloud.

  He looked up.

  King Arthur sat on the edge of the cloud in his royal robes, his hair thick and gold, his beard flecked with gray, a Lion locket sparkling around his neck.

  “Hello, son,” said his father.

  Tedros was ghost-white. “Dad?”

  “Merlin kept this place a secret from me when I was king,” said his father, gazing up at the sky. “I understand why now.”

  “This . . . this is i-i-impossible. . . .” Tedros reached out a shaking hand towards the king. “This isn’t real . . . this can’t be real. . . .” His palm touched his father’s face, quivering against Arthur’s soft beard. The king smiled and pressed his son’s hand into his.

  Tedros stiffened. “But you’re . . . you’re supposed to be . . .”

  “Here. With you, just as you need me to be,” said his father, his voice soothing and deep. “In the way I wish I’d been for all the days I had with you, up to the very last. Our story didn’t have the ending we wanted.” Gently, he brushed Tedros’ hair out of his face. “But I knew long ago that there might come a time when you needed me. A time beyond the Present and your memories of our Past. Yet how can a father see his son beyond the Rules of Time? That’s where it helps to have a wizard as your dearest friend.”

  “So you’re a . . . ghost?” Tedros asked.

  “When most kings die, they embalm the body to preserve it,” King Arthur replied. “But no one can truly preserve a body against time. In the end, all graves are raided or neglected or forgotten. It is the nature of things. Leave it to Merlin, then, to suggest getting rid of my body entirely. To preserve the soul instead. This way you could find me when the time came. The magic was limited, of course. My soul could only reappear to the living once, for the briefest of meetings, before it dispersed forever to the source from which it came. Until then, I would live amongst the stars, waiting patiently for the Present to catch up with the Past.”

  Tears grew in Tedros’ eyes. “How brief a meeting?”

  His father smiled. “Long enough for you to know how much I love you.”

  Tedros panicked. “You can’t go! Not after I’ve found you! Please, Dad . . . You don’t know the things I’ve done . . . the mess I’ve made. . . . A Snake sits on the throne. A Snake that’s your son.” His voice cracked, his posture sinking like he was weighed down by a stone. “I failed your test. I never became king. Not the king you wanted me to be.” Sobs choked out of him. “Only I didn’t just fail the test. I failed Camelot. I failed Good. I failed you—”

  “And yet, you’re here,” said King Arthur. “Just as I asked you to be.”

  Tedros lifted his wet eyes.

  “You passed a test far greater than pulling a sword,” said his father. “A test that is only the beginning of many more.”

  Tedros swallowed, barely able to speak. “But what do I do? I need to know what to do. I need to know how to fix this.”

  King Arthur reached out his hand. He put it to his son’s heart, pressing firm and strong, its warmth filling Tedros’ chest.

  “A Lion roars within,” he said.

  Tears slid down Tedros’ cheeks. “Don’t leave me. I’m begging you. I can’t do this alone. I can’t.”

  “I love you, son,” his father whispered, kissing his head.

  “No . . . wait . . . don’t go . . . ,” Tedros gasped, reaching for him—

  But the prince was already falling through clouds.

  “TEDROS?” A VOICE said.

  The prince roused to the smell of rich, dense earth and the comfort of a deep bed.

  He opened his eyes.

  Agatha looked down from high, oak branches swaying above her, dappled by the sun.

  Then Tedros understood.

  He was in his father’s grave.

  He was in his father’s grave.

  Instantly he was on his knees, scrambling out of the hole Agatha had dug, dirt crumbling beneath his hands and boots, crashing him back down, before he finally managed to claw himself out. He collapsed against his father’s glass cross, the white star cold against his cheek as he heaved for air.

  “What happened?” Agatha hounded, dropping to his side.

  He couldn’t answer. How could he answer? He’d seen his father. He’d smelled him and touched him and felt his dad’s hand upon his heart. Tedros thrust his palm under his shirt, where his father had left his mark. But now the moment was gone, his father lost forever. And Tedros was left with only the memor—

  The prince paused.

  Beneath his shirt, something brushed against his hand. Something that wasn’t there before.

  “Where were you?” Agatha asked, her arm around him. “Where did you go?”

  The prince rose to his knees and pulled down his shirt. A Lion locket hung around his neck, lit by a stream of sun.

  Agatha let go of him. “But that’s . . . that’s your father’s . . .”

  Tedros fingered the gold Lion head at the end of the chain, its two sides fused together. All those years as a child, he’d tried to get it open, day after day, testing any trick he could think of, failing every time, until one day . . . he didn’t fail. His dad had given him the most assured of smiles, as if he’d known it was only a matter of time.

  Slowly Arthur’s son slipped the Lion’s head into his mouth like he had that day, a long time ago. . . .

  “I don’t understand,” Agatha pressed—

  He felt the gold magically soften, his teeth prying at the crease between the two sides at just the right angle . . . until the locket popped open. Bit by bit, his tongue probed the inside of its case, searching for something from his father, a note or a card or—

  His eyes froze.

  Or that.

  He lifted it onto his tongue, tasting the cold, hard surface, savoring the deep grooves along its side, holding it in place as he let the locket slip out of his mouth.

  “Only three swans left,” Hort’s voice echoed. “Or was it four.”

  “Tedros?” Agatha asked, seeing his face. “What is—”

  He kissed her.

  So softly, so delicately, he saw her eyes widen as it moved from his mouth to hers. A glow sparked like a flame in her big brown gaze, the two of them silent and still, sharing this moment as one.

  Carefully Tedros drew his lips from hers. Agatha kept his stare as she reached shaking fingers and pulled it out.

  The ring.

  The ring with the Storian’s symbols.

  The ring
that had never been burned, but instead gifted across time.

  A king’s true coronation test for his son.

  “Tedros . . . ,” Agatha whispered, her eyes aflame. “Tedros . . .”

  Blood rumbled through the prince’s veins, from the forgotten corners of his soul, pounding at the door to his heart, harder, harder, demanding to be let in.

  His princess held out the ring, shining like a sword.

  “Now it begins,” Agatha vowed.

  The prince’s eyes reflected her steel. “Now it begins.”

  He took the ring onto his finger, the door to his heart ripping open, a Lion awakened, a Lion reborn, before Tedros gnashed his teeth to the sky and unleashed a roar that shook heaven and earth.

  About the Author

  Photo by David J. Martin

  SOMAN CHAINANI’s first four novels in the School for Good and Evil series each debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. The series has sold over 1.5 million copies, has been translated into 28 languages across six continents, and will soon be a major motion picture.

  A graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University’s MFA Film Program, Soman has made films that have played all over the world, and his writing awards include honors from Big Bear Lake, the CAPE Foundation, and the Sun Valley Writers’ Fellowship.

  When he’s not telling stories, Soman is a die-hard tennis player who never lost a first-round match for ten years . . . until he started writing The School for Good and Evil. Now he loses all the time.

  You can visit Soman at www.somanchainani.net.

  www.schoolforgoodandevil.com

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  Copyright

  THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL #5: A CRYSTAL OF TIME. Text copyright © 2019 by Soman Chainani. Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Iacopo Bruno. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.