“How did Jason get here?” Blue asked. “Is he okay?”
“I sent some Lost Boys and Girls through the citadel to find him when the fighting was over. You’re welcome.”
“And SJ?” I asked.
“She went searching for some crown of Ozma’s,” Merlin replied.
“The Simia Crown!” I said. “It controls Oz’s flying monkeys. Glinda has one and Ozma had the other before she was captured.”
“SJ had an idea about where it was hidden,” Merlin said. “Somewhere in the Knights’ Room apparently. I’ll escort you there; I know a shortcut.”
“Fine,” I said. “Blue, I’ll meet you in the infirmary in five.” I turned to Arthur and my expression softened.
“Go,” he said. “Take some of our forces with you if it helps. You may need them against Glinda.”
“I doubt whether more soldiers will make a difference against Glinda’s Pure Magic,” I said. “She can produce force fields with her powers, and with the Aurora so close, she’ll be stronger than ever. But here is what you can do. You know how we told you about the antagonists in our realm who are going to try and break free? I’m really worried that our Fairy Godmothers won’t be strong enough to stop them from taking down the In and Out Spell. If you could send some reinforcements—”
“Crisanta,” Arthur interrupted. “You and your friends can have whatever you need, whenever you need it. Starting with this.” He drew the sheath that held Excalibur and handed it to me. “Just bring it back in one piece.”
“Will do,” I said with a slight smile, taking the sheath.
“What are your orders, Crisa?” Ormé asked, standing at attention.
“Gather as many members of the Gwenivere Brigade as you can spare, then use your Hole Tracker to get to Book. Make your way to the border of Alderon and find the Fairy Godmothers. They will only grow weaker as the Aurora approaches, while the Pure Magic witches and warlocks of Alderon grow stronger. The Godmothers will need defending against the flying monkey attack I’ve foreseen coming as they use their magic to sustain the magic barrier around the kingdom. I suggest you leave immediately.”
Ormé nodded. “We’ll get there as fast as we can. Will we see you there?”
“As soon as we’ve finished up in Oz and retrieved Paige’s mind from the memory stone.”
“Then good luck,” Ormé said firmly. She gripped my arm in camaraderie then did the same with Blue. After a bow to Arthur and Gwenivere, she sped down the hall to rally her troops.
Blue and I bid quick adieus to Arthur, Gwenivere, and Peter—promising to return Excalibur when our mission was done. Considering how important we’d all been to one another, maybe our farewells should have been more drawn-out and dramatic, but we had places to go, and now was not the time for deep sentiment. Plus, honestly, I was so full of different emotions right now that I wanted to block them out as much as possible. They were too distracting.
Blue headed for the infirmary while I hurriedly followed Merlin through a busy hall. Members of the Gwenivere Brigade and navy knights bowed their heads respectfully as we passed.
“What’s with that?” I asked Merlin.
“The projection orbs,” Merlin explained, ducking beneath some fallen marble pillars. “Pretty much everyone in the citadel saw Arthur’s confrontation with Rampart. Most of us stopped fighting because the orbs’ holographic screens could be seen and heard through the castle windows. The orbs captured all of Arthur’s speech after the duel, including his recognition of you as the one who returned him to Camelot and retrieved Excalibur. Everyone here knows what you’ve done.”
“It’s not as though I did it alone,” I commented. “I would’ve been dead long ago if it weren’t for my friends. If anyone deserves praise, it’s them.”
Merlin arched an eyebrow before darting through a thin passageway that looked like a servants’ corridor. “You don’t consider yourself to be the hero of this story, do you?” he asked.
“If I can be the hero of my own story, that’ll be enough. As far as the greater story goes, that all depends on the perspective of the audience, doesn’t it?”
We reached a shaft in the wall. It was like a super-sized dumbwaiter. Merlin pressed a button and the platform began to lower. He hopped on and beckoned for me to do the same. I leapt inside and we descended through stone walls—everything dark but the gold on Merlin’s robes, which took on a shimmering luminescence.
“As noted by the citizens’s reverence, Crisanta,” Merlin continued. “The audience seems to be on your side.”
I huffed and crossed my arms as I watched the stones ascend over my head.
“Audiences only know what they are shown, and that’s rarely the full truth. People like you with your prophecies and my mentor Liza with her protagonist books—you author the narrative. You show the audience where to look and when to look. I doubt those people out there would think of me as such a great hero if they’d seen me use my powers to suck the life from a living creature earlier. Just like I doubt they’d consider you a great hero if they knew you’d prevented me from saving our own troops.”
The dumbwaiter was rickety beneath my feet. The disconcerting screech of wires under our weight echoed through the shaft.
“Crisanta,” Merlin said. “Being a hero is a complicated endeavor. It means having the courage to do what you know is right, even if it means sacrificing some part of your own morality. I took no joy in keeping you from using your magic. Those men’s lives are on my conscience, and I don’t take that lightly. I carry that weight to the fullest extent. But I stand by my decision because I know it was the right one.”
The wizard’s tone had grown serious. His last sentence had been spoken with such sternness that he scared me a little. Merlin acted so over-the-top sometimes that I forgot there was a side of him that was methodical and intense.
I wondered for a moment if I ever came across that way to my friends—like a split personality. I cracked a lot of jokes and veered toward sass and silliness on a regular basis, but in the moments that mattered, a more sullen, calculating side took over. Perhaps that’s why Lena Lenore thought I was coldhearted.
Merlin exhaled deeply, releasing the fire I sensed inside him gradually like steam. “Every day, I only do what you aim to do, Crisanta—I use my power to make the best choices I can, protect those I care for, and try and bring a little good into this world. If you, or anyone else holds that against me, so be it. As you say, if I can be the hero of my own story, that’s enough. And in my book, I’ve played that part well.”
The dumbwaiter slowed to a stop. Light bled in. Merlin slid open a metal door and climbed out. I trailed him through the connecting corridor in silence. After all, what could I say? Much as I didn’t want to be like Merlin, there was truth in his words I could relate to.
We turned left and were deposited into a hallway lined with floor-to-ceiling tapestries. It was airy in here. Glancing around the corner as we moved forward, I saw that the adjoining corridor was lined with large open windows. I thought the area looked familiar, and then I realized why. I spotted the door that led to the Knights’ Room.
As we approached, I heard the sound of stone grinding against stone. Merlin and I entered as SJ stepped out of the fireplace on the other side of the room. I met her eyes across the thirty-foot-long mahogany Round Table. She smiled and held up her hand. Dangling from her delicate fingers was something small, gold, and shiny that I’d seen in a dream—the Simia Crown.
“How did you find it?” I exclaimed, racing around the table to meet her. My boots clomped noisly against the marble as my reflection darted through the ceiling’s fragmented, overlapping mirrors.
“That dream you described where Rampart was telling Arian that he hid the crown,” SJ explained. “Immediately after you had it, you said you had a quick vision of this fireplace and then saw an image of a crown.”
“Yeah, but my visions aren’t always connected.”
“In this case, I thought they
might be,” SJ replied. She ducked beneath the fireplace again, gesturing for me to follow. I stooped beneath the mantle. The fireplace went several feet back and we had to remain crouched low.
“When I was under here during our previous visit to the castle, I saw these indentations,” SJ said, tracing grooves in the stone over our heads. “I thought they might open but was not sure how. And then you told us that your vision specifically focused on the mantle’s gold florets.”
Still staying under the fireplace, SJ reached around me, extended her hand to the brim of the mantle, and pressed down. Suddenly, one of the overhead stones jutted out, revealing a hidden compartment.
“Each of these grooved sections is like a drawer,” SJ explained. “And each floret opens a different drawer. I simply tested them all until I found the compartment that hid the crown.
“Oh, and look what else I found,” she continued. “I discovered this by accident. When you press down on this stone, it activates a hidden passage.” SJ pushed her palm against one of the stones and the wall at the back of the fireplace drew back, revealing a dark tunnel big enough to crawl through.
“I do not know where it leads,” SJ said as we both peered into the tunnel. “But it looks like you can lock it from the inside.” She gestured at a lever and a deadbolt latch slightly past the opening. “It must be a bunker of sorts, or an escape route.”
I leaned into the tunnel—staring into the blackness and feeling moist air against my skin.
“That’s amazing,” I said.
“Quite,” SJ agreed. “This castle’s architectural diversity is stunning.”
“No, I mean you,” I clarified.
“It was as good a guess as any,” SJ replied nonchalantly. “I merely figured that if I was going to hide something important like a magical crown, I would keep it in the place where I felt the most secure. For someone like Rampart, security equals power.”
SJ gracefully swooped beneath the mantle and stood up. I popped up next to her and brushed a strand of hair out of my face.
“With this room being home to the Round Table,” she continued, “and this fireplace preserving the entrance to the Boar’s Mouth Temple, it is arguably the most power-centric room in the castle. Merlin agreed and guided me here after we freed Ozma so I could conduct my search.”
“Well, at least that’s one point in the old guy’s favor,” I said. I looked across the room to acknowledge the wizard but didn’t see him. “Merlin?”
A deep, chilling feeling flooded through me.
“Merlin?” I repeated. Still nothing.
I maneuvered hastily around the Round Table. As I came close to the other side, I saw Merlin’s robes, and then him. The wizard lay motionless on the floor, maroon and gold robes spread around him. I ran to his side. “Merlin!”
A deep stomach wound had darkened the maroon and smeared the gold into red. I slid to my knees beside him. He wasn’t breathing.
“What happened?” SJ exclaimed. She was about to join me when she was unexpectedly flung back, like something unseen had knocked her in the chest.
“SJ, wha—” The door to the Knights’ Room slammed shut and an invisible hand grasped me by the neck and threw me across the floor. I tumbled to a stop next to one of the room’s obsidian pillars.
Two forms flickered into existence surrounded by an aura of silver energy. I recognized the men as magic hunters we had met in the Shifting Forest. One of them stood over SJ. He pinned her arm down with his boot and snatched the Simia Crown from her hand.
“Thank you very much,” he said to SJ. The hunter spun a dagger in his free hand. It was covered in blood. Merlin’s blood no doubt. “You know, I remember you from the Shifting Forest.” He leaned in so that his bushy beard was right over SJ’s face. “You shot me with one of your ice potions. It stung. Just like this will.”
“Cole, don’t,” said the magic hunter in front of me. He had a gray mustache, salt-and-pepper hair, and a burgundy jacket. “You know our orders have changed. Don’t hurt her; grab her.”
“Over my dead body,” I said. But as I propped myself up, a third magic hunter turned visible beside me. He had dark skin, curly black hair, hungry eyes, and was way too close for comfort. He slapped me hard and I fell back.
“Not just yet,” he said with a leer.
My cheek throbbed as the blood rushed to it. The magic hunters each removed some sort of modified facemask from their respective jackets and slipped them on. Cole reached into his pocket and pulled out an orb the size of a tennis ball. It was translucent with a sickening-purple gas swirling inside.
I flashed back to my potions TA sessions with Madame Alexanders at school. This had to be some kind of Poppy Potion reduced to gas form. Earlier in the semester, magic hunters had launched a grenade with such a substance into our room to knock us out. It didn’t have as big an effect on me because my magic gave me a certain immunity to Poppies. However, when the toxic flowers were combined with the right ingredients, they could still take me down temporarily. I had to escape before this dose was released. I’d been lucky at school, but there was no guarantee I’d have the same fortune here.
Right as Cole threw the orb to the floor, I held my breath and kicked the curly haired magic hunter’s feet out from under him. He toppled and I launched myself up. I ducked under the swing of the salt-and-pepper magic hunter and ran to other side of the room. When I reached it, I glanced back at SJ and Merlin and made a split-second decision that I hated.
“Stop her!” yelled salt-and pepper.
I reached the fireplace. SJ hadn’t closed the passage. I dropped beneath the mantle and darted into the tunnel. Scampering farther in, I twisted around and saw Cole and salt-and-pepper right behind me. Purple gas filled the room around them.
I kicked at the lever in the tunnel and the wall slid shut before they reached me, but not before the slightest wisp of purple gas made it inside the tunnel and I inhaled it.
I felt gagging in my throat, but didn’t let that slow me down. I morphed my wandpin to a wand and by its light found the deadbolt latch. I heaved on it with all my force. The sound of iron scraping iron echoed around me, then I felt the lock release. The passage was sealed.
“Try to break it down,” I heard Cole say from the other side.
I shuffled back in fear. The wall thudded violently but thankfully remained shut.
“It won’t budge,” said one of the hunters. “What should we do?”
“Leave her,” Cole replied. “She’ll come for them anyway. Grab the other princess and let’s go. We’ll tell Arian what happened.”
My heart beat loudly in the pitch-black space. I heard the door to the Knights’ Room close with a bang. Then I gasped. I’d hoped that whiff of Poppy Potion I’d inhaled hadn’t been enough to take me out, but it was not so. My breathing got rapid and though I struggled against it, eventually I was dragged into brisk unconsciousness.
Quick visions flashed through my head. A magnificent room with twelve canopy beds and a huge roaring fireplace. The library at Lady Agnue’s. Swans flying across the sky. And Tara Gold—Arian’s right-hand woman on Earth—looking out a classroom window.
I’d had many dreams about this teenage girl with blonde hair and eyes so dark they looked black. She was the antagonist that Arian and the queen of Alderon, Nadia, would eventually send to destroy the spirit of Natalie Poole.
Natalie was a girl on Earth who I’d had visions about for years. Liza’s prophecy about her indicated she had the potential to open a mystical entity called the Eternity Gate, which would cause the normal magic of all realms to temporarily shut down while Earth was brought under the review of some higher entities of power and judgment.
Nadia intended to use this turn of events as a fallback option for freeing the antagonists if today’s siege on Alderon’s In and Out Spell failed, as that type of shut down would lower the spell for certain.
Regardless of what happened today though, Nadia wanted to access Paige’s memories so she�
�d be able to release the genies after the Eternity Gate shut down was initiated. If she set them free after the fact, the genies could use their wish-granting magic to aid the antagonists while the normal magic of the Fairy Godmothers was out of commission.
That was a scary thought. A lot of genies equaled a lot of wishes, but I doubt the villains would need a dozen to destroy us all.
Natalie would arrive at her crossroads with the Eternity Gate in eight months, the day she turned twenty-one. However, since Earth’s timeline moved twenty times faster than Book’s, right now on Earth the unassuming girl was probably around age eight. She had a while before that horrible adversary Tara invaded her life and began tormenting her, pushing her closer to the breaking point that would trigger the opening of the Eternity Gate.
Tara’s image held my dream focus for a moment as my perspective slowly closed in on her. Then her face snapped in my direction and I was shocked awake by her scary dark eyes.
Where am I?
Tunnel. Right.
My breathing was ragged, but my arm veins glowed gold as they chased away the purple discoloration that any kind of Poppy contact caused. As my pulse steadied, I checked my Hole Tracker for the time. I hadn’t been unconscious for more than half a minute. That was good. When the magic hunters mentioned Arian before I blacked out, I worried that maybe he’d accounted for my powers and made a stronger Poppy Potion. Whether he had or not, I imagined it would be hard for anyone to formulate the right ingredient combo to take me down; I was an unusual subject.
I sat up straighter. Though the hindering effects of the Poppy Potion had passed, I felt my stomach churn with some guilt when I remembered Merlin dead on the floor and SJ unconscious. It was completely opposite my nature to leave anybody behind—but if I hadn’t made a break for it, SJ and I would both be at the mercy of the hunters. At least now I could go back and save her.
Crisanta Knight: The Lost King Page 15
