One True King

by Soman Chainani

  “Where’s Dean Brunhilde? Where’s Nightwind?” Tedros questioned. “This isn’t what we planned. You were to hide in the Celestium until I made my wishes and called Merl—”

  “He got in, Tedros,” said Agatha.

  Tedros blinked. “What? Who?”

  “The Snake,” she said. “He got in.”

  Shouts echoed in the distance.

  Tedros turned sharply to the north. Miles downhill, the twin armies of Shazabah and Camelot were circling around. Agatha’s heart stopped. The Snake’s men must have ridden on when she and her friends disappeared . . . but now they’d been spotted. Camels and horses thundered back towards them.

  “Tedros?” Sophie rasped.

  The prince tracked her gaze in the opposite direction.

  From the south came a lone figure in the night.

  Limping, blood-soaked, his blue-and-gold suit shredded.

  Japeth picked up his sword from the sand.

  Then he set his sights on Agatha.

  “At the ready!” Queen Jacinda called.

  Her knights fanned out, covering Agatha and her prince from the north, while Tedros shielded his princess from the south. Sophie rushed to Agatha’s side, trying to summon another scream, but mustered only a hacking cough. She lit her fingerglow, but it, too, was weak. Hort’s wolf snatched Sophie onto his back. “Put me down!” Sophie demanded. “And watch you die? Not a chance,” said Hort. Behind them, a pink beetle scampered to Uma’s piled clothes and instantly reverted to the lithe princess, who joined with the knights.

  The Snake and his armies closed in, Agatha suffering a dark sense of déjà vu.

  “How could Japeth find the Celestium? He’s not a wizard!” Tedros pressed her. “And why isn’t Brunhilde with you—” The prince went rigid, reading his princess’s grief. “I don’t understand. I sent you all there to be safe. Until I could finish the plan to beat him. The second half of the plan . . .”

  But Agatha knew better.

  Death cared nothing about plans.

  The Snake moved across sand like a shadow, picking up speed, what strength he had left focused on killing her. Behind them, two armies swarmed the knights, faster, faster, about to smash through them—

  Six dunes erupted under the Snake’s armies like volcanos—camels buried in sand, now launching to their feet. Familiar camels. Faithful camels, who’d had their own plan to help their friends. The camels jammed straight into the stampede, bleating calls of alarm, sending enemy steeds bucking in confusion. Instantly, Shazabah camels and Camelot horses began dumping their riders and fleeing to the north. In the chaos, Tedros’ knights saw their chance and escaped south. “Hurry, Aggie!” Sophie yelled as Hort wolfed her away—

  Agatha grabbed Tedros, but her prince didn’t move.

  He was still watching Japeth, stalking right at them. Tedros gripped Agatha’s palm. “Whatever you do, don’t let go of my hand.”

  Her prince faced the Snake dead-on.

  Tedros had no weapon.

  He had no defense.

  Whatever his plan to beat Japeth, it couldn’t work.

  Tedros felt her resisting. “Trust me, Agatha.”

  Agatha knew she should. That was Arthur’s test. To trust his son with her life. But she couldn’t. Not like this. “We have to run!” she fought, pulling Tedros away.

  Her prince held her in place. “Trust me.”

  Japeth started sprinting at them.

  “He’ll kill us, Tedros!” Agatha cried. “We have no move to make!”

  “Except this one,” said her prince.

  Tedros pulled something from his coat. Agatha anticipated a dagger, a sword—

  Instead, the prince produced a dirty mirror.

  “That’s your plan?” Agatha gasped.

  “Consider it a detour,” said Tedros.

  Japeth raised his sword to kill them. Both of them—

  Tedros flashed the glass at the Snake.

  Moonlight reflected between Japeth’s eyes, his startled face caught squarely in the mirror.

  Then Agatha felt herself falling, her prince’s arms wrapped around her, like two rabbits down a hole.

  22

  TEDROS

  Snake Eyes

  “Where are we?” Agatha asked.

  Tedros couldn’t see anything, his arms still around his princess. There was no sun-gold light this time. They’d fallen straight into darkness before sliding into dry, scratchy earth. It smelled oily and rank, like fish gone bad.

  “We’re inside his secrets,” said Tedros.

  Agatha pulled away. “What?”

  She sparked her glow, casting it around—

  They were in a tunnel.

  Made of scims.

  The ceiling, the floor, the walls . . . all of it was a mass of dead, desiccated eels, black and briny, packed like mulch.

  Tedros rose, shining his own glow behind them. No visions or clues. No window into the Snake’s heart. Just more endless tunnels. More darkness and scims.

  Is something wrong with the mirror? Tedros worried. Did it not work outside the cave? Was that the genie’s revenge? Trapping them inside someone else, with no way out? A someone else that just happened to be their nemesis?

  “How are we inside his secrets?” said Agatha, still in a fog.

  “A magic mirror I picked up from the genie’s cave,” Tedros said quickly, masking his panic, trying not to tell his princess that he just locked them inside the Snake’s soul. “Supposed to show you a person’s greatest secrets. Things they want to hide.”

  “Supposed to?” Agatha said, eyes narrowing.

  “Like it showed me the genie’s secret word to escape his cave, and it showed me my mother so happy with Lancelot that she never really wanted me back in her life,” Tedros rambled. “Explains a lot, actually—”

  “But where are his secrets, then?” Agatha pressed. “According to you, we’re supposed to be seeing the Snake’s, but there’s nothing here.”

  Tedros swallowed. “Right.”

  “So how do we get out?”

  “Uh . . . not sure.”

  Agatha waited for him to say something else.

  He didn’t.

  Her cheeks flushed, as if about to unleash on him, for his foolishness, for his failure to think through things, a big, fat I-told-you-so speech that she surely was holding in about his impetuousness and poor instincts and all his other shortcomings as a man, the same speech Tedros had waited so tensely for his dad to give him before he died, the speech that never came, but instead lived in the prince’s own head day after day, now at last to be spoken out loud by his princess . . .

  Instead, Agatha smiled at him. “Still alive, aren’t we?”

  Tedros watched her sleuth around the cave. “How did you see your mother’s secrets?” she asked.

  “They were just there, clear as day—”

  Her gaze fixed past him. “What’s that?”

  Somewhere, at the end of the darkness, a tiny green light beamed.

  Agatha moved towards it, but Tedros cut her off. “Stay behind me.”

  His princess hesitated, then followed. Tedros could hear her holding her breath. If there was one thing about Agatha, she really didn’t like being led.

  “The others,” she panicked. “They’re still up there—”

  “When I went in the mirror before, I returned without losing time. The same way time stops in the Celestium. Which means our friends are safe as long as we’re here. Speaking of which, Japeth looked like he’d been boiled to a pulp. Your doing?”

  “Sophie’s. He tried to kill me . . . and she screamed.”

  Tedros simmered. That Japeth tried to kill Agatha and he wasn’t there to save her, leaving Sophie to do the job . . . He forced a light tone. “Vintage move! Not surprised she still had it in her. Once a witch, always a witch. Wonder what would happen if we went inside Sophie’s secrets. Better not. Might find out she’s still in love with me.”

  “She’d rather marry Japeth.
” There was no levity in Agatha’s voice. Instead, she looked crestfallen. “We were so close to killing him, Tedros. To all of this being over.”

  “It wouldn’t be The End, even if you did,” said the prince. “Killing Japeth might have made you the hero, Agatha. You and Sophie. But it wouldn’t have made me king. You said it yourself at the palace. I need people to believe I’m the Lion. There’s only two ways to do that: win the tournament or expose Japeth as a fake. Thought I could win the tournament, but I’m trapped at the second test. So we need to expose Japeth. To make him give up the throne. That’s the plan the knights and I came up with. But maybe there’s an easier way . . . Which is why I brought us here, inside his secrets. Hoping to find the secret that can show the Woods who he really is.”

  “Makes sense,” said Agatha flatly.

  “What are you really thinking?” Tedros asked.

  “Both of us are being fools, thinking there’s an easy way out. Your father made the tournament for a reason. He wants you to finish the tests, not find some way around them.”

  “But I can’t get past the second test—”

  “Why would your father make a test you can’t pass?” Agatha pushed. “You who he gave his ring to? You, his true heir?”

  Tedros thought about this. “What if these tests aren’t just meant to prove I’m king? What if they’re meant to make me a better king than my dad? The first test was about the Green Knight. Why? To learn there were two Japeths and a connection between them, yes. That strange vision of Evelyn you saw in the pearl. But the test was more than that: to see that the Green Knight was one of my dad’s mistakes. He lost his brother to anger and pride. He lost Merlin too. He knew I could be just as angry and prideful, like when I refused to hear the story of the Green Knight. He feared my emotions would get the best of me. So the test was a lesson. Swallowing Merlin’s beard meant swallowing my pride and letting the grudges against my father go. It meant accepting him as fallible and forgiving him for it. The first test of being a good king.”

  “Only I messed it all up,” said Agatha.

  “Did you?” said Tedros. “Or did Dad want the second test to be about you? Maybe Dad had a glimpse of the future, like you and Sophie guessed. The more I think about it, the more I think he wanted to put you to the test. The next Queen of Camelot. Because Dad chose the wrong one. My mother ruined him and nearly brought down the kingdom. Everything that’s gone wrong in Dad’s story can be traced to the Guinevere Mistake. Dad wanted her to die for the pain she caused him. He even put a death warrant on her head. Not because he truly wanted her to die. Because he wanted her to come back to him. That death warrant was his last cry of love. So now he’s putting the same warrant on your head. Daring us to find a way out. Maybe this is his way of forgiving my mother—if I can learn from her sins. If I choose the right queen because of her. That’s why I think Dad moved the bounty to you. To test our love. To redeem Guinevere. To finish his and my mother’s story.”

  Tedros exhaled. “Only I have no idea how. Which is why we’re inside a Snake, looking for something to help us.” He walked taller, his voice steeling. “But we will win somehow. I promised you that from the beginning. You are the queen, Agatha. My queen. We’re unbreakable in a way Arthur and Guinevere never were. Which means we’re not going to die from this. We’re going to come out stronger.”

  He waited for her to say something. When she didn’t, he looked back at her, silhouetted in their twin gold glows, his princess quiet and thoughtful, her head bowed. She clasped his hand, letting him lead her. Soon, their glows faded, neither able to sustain them. But the green light paved the way, throbbing bigger, brighter ahead, like an emerald in a mine.

  “Your wishes,” Agatha remembered. “What did you ask the genie for?”

  “Powers,” said Tedros vaguely, still feeling the genie’s magic pulsing in his blood.

  “Powers that can help us?” Agatha probed.

  Tedros didn’t answer. Because he didn’t know the answer. The genie’s powers wouldn’t last much longer. Would they work against the Snake when the time came? Tedros still had doubts about the Knights’ plan. Which is why he needed to find something here fast . . . something else to use against Japeth . . .

  “Suppose he can see us?” said Agatha, eyeing the glow ahead. “Suppose he knows we’re in his secrets?”

  “We’re safe here,” Tedros reminded. “It isn’t real.”

  “I thought the same thing when I went into Rhian’s blood,” she pointed out. “Japeth saw us, remember? Almost killed me and Sophie.”

  The blood crystal, Tedros thought. It was inside Rhian’s blood that Agatha had learned that Rhian and Japeth were Arthur’s sons with Evelyn Sader.

  And yet . . .

  “What about Japeth’s blood?” Tedros mulled. “To get into the Celestium, he had to have wizard’s blood. There’s no other way in.”

  “But how could Japeth have wizard’s blood?” Agatha asked. “Rhian’s blood said he and Japeth are Arthur and Evelyn’s sons. Neither parent is a wizard or sorcerer. There must be another explanation.”

  “Like what?”

  “How could Rhian pull Excalibur the first time? Why did the Lady of the Lake kiss Japeth, thinking he was the king? Why did Rhian have a fingerglow and not his brother? Why did I see Evelyn Sader in the pearl? There’s so many questions without explanations, Tedros. As if we not only have the story wrong, but don’t even know the story at all—”

  Tedros stalled, Agatha bumping into him.

  “What is it?” his princess said. Then she stiffened. “There’s . . . two?”

  Two green balls of light, as big as globes, each a distance from the other.

  Which meant the tunnel had to have gotten wider while they were walking.

  A lot wider.

  Slowly, the prince and princess shined their glows.

  Tedros’ blood ran cold.

  They weren’t lights.

  They were eyes.

  A colossal black snake glared right at them, as big as a whale, floating over a pit of dead scims that extended infinitely in every direction, like the darkest of nights.

  Agatha recoiled, expecting it to attack—

  But the snake didn’t move.

  It was at once alive and dead, green eyes glowing, its mouth wide open around knife-sharp teeth, but otherwise lifeless in midair, as if frozen in time.

  There was nothing else in sight.

  Nowhere else to go.

  This was where the mirror had led them.

  Which meant they had only one choice.

  Tedros took a deep breath.

  “No, don’t!” Agatha choked.

  But her prince was already climbing into its mouth.

  IT WAS SURPRISINGLY cool inside, the air crisp and dry, the passage ink-black. Tedros tried to light his fingerglow, but it didn’t work this time. Neither did Agatha’s apparently; he heard her dress rip as she stumbled over the snake’s bottom teeth, his princess mumbling un-princess-like words, before she found Tedros in the dark.

  “Magic must not work in here,” he said.

  “Maybe because we are inside a snake’s mouth. Why are we inside a snake’s mouth!”

  Tedros squinted ahead. “To find that.”

  Deep inside the snake, the prince spotted something blocking their path.

  A door.

  He led her closer, the door growing sharper in its details, smooth and luminescent, as if under a spotlight. But it was only when they came within a few feet of it and spotted the lion pattern on the moldings, the distinctive orange-gold of the knob, that Tedros and his princess both realized something.

  “White Tower,” said Agatha, glancing at her prince. “Isn’t this what the doors look like?”

  Exactly like this, Tedros thought. The White Tower, where Tedros rarely ventured in his time at Camelot’s castle, whether during his father’s reign or his own. There was no reason to: it was mainly staff quarters and storage. But there was one room in the White T
ower that Tedros knew well. A room that kept pulling him back, like a ghost out of a grave. A room where all the darkness in this story had been born. And as Tedros turned the knob, moving deeper into the Snake’s secrets, he was quite sure this was the room he was about to enter . . .

  He opened the door.

  Immediately he smelled the familiar thick, unwashed scent.

  The Guest Room.

  That strange suite his father had built soon after he became king. It was a room for visiting friends, his father would tell him as a child, but Arthur never used it for guests as far as Tedros knew. Arthur hadn’t even let maids in this room (hence the smell), nor his wife or son. Indeed, only Arthur had the key to it. And Lady Gremlaine, Tedros remembered. She’d had a key too, since her private quarters adjoined this one. In later years, Tedros’ father would lock himself in here during his drunken hazes, but it never explained why he’d built the room in the first place. Tedros himself had only been inside a few times since his father died, and each time, it gave him a dark, seedy feeling.

  Except the room was different now, Tedros realized.

  The brown-and-orange rug was bright and fairly new, the leather sofa fresh and unstained, the beige walls unblemished. There was even a brass flowerpot in the corner, with blooming seedlings—

  “Tedros?” Agatha rasped.

  He followed her eyes to the bed in the corner.

  Someone was sleeping on it.

  A young man with gold curls, rosy cheeks, and a coat of light, patchy stubble. For a moment, Tedros thought he was looking at himself . . . then saw the man was taller, ganglier, and at least a few years older . . .

  The prince’s eyes flared. “Dad?”

  He moved past Agatha, thrusting a hand out for the young Arthur, but it went straight through, as if Tedros was a phantom. King Arthur remained asleep.

  Tedros could see Agatha’s fists tighten, her throat bobbing, and only then did he understand.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” Tedros said, tensing. “The scene you saw in Rhian’s blood.”