“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. Japeth’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.
“Merlin! Come down at once!” Sophie demanded. “Nightwind, you too!”
“Faster, choo-choo! Faster!” Merlin tooted, buzzing his carpet around so wildly it blew the veils off Hester’s and Anadil’s heads.
“Merlin!” Sophie shouted.
“Not the Mama!” Merlin heckled, all the clouds morphing into bald, warted Sophies, complete with witches’ hats—
Agatha shot a spell, tying Nightwind’s tassels, sending it crashing to their cloud.
Merlin looked at her grumpily. “Tee Tee said I could have playtime. Once I finished Big Job. Tee promised.”
“You can have all the playtime you want, after you explain a few things,” said Agatha. “Tedros told you to bring us here?”
“Wait ’til horseys and bring Mama and friends to secret place. That’s what Tee said,” Merlin nodded, subtly untying his carpet’s tassels. “Then have playtime with choo-choo and stay in secret place until . . .” His voice trailed off.
“Until . . . ?” Agatha asked.
“Until when, Merlin?” Sophie tag-teamed. “Stay in the secret place until when?”
Merlin chewed on his lip and Agatha realized he didn’t have the answer because he didn’t know the answer.
“Until we can’t stay no more?” Merlin guessed.
“How long is that?” said Hort, popping out of a cloud, back to his pale, weaselly body, his waist wrapped in downy white fluff. He rubbed at his scalded right hand. “How long until we ‘can’t stay no more’?”
But the young wizard was back in the air, Nightwind untethered and taking him higher and higher, Merlin’s hoots echoing through his private galaxy.
“Tedros warned me once: that we couldn’t stay here long,” Agatha remembered. “Back when we were looking for a spot to hide from Rafal. He said the air was too thin. Eventually we’d lose our breath and be forced back down.”
“We’re alive for now. That’s what matters,” the Queen of Jaunt Jolie sighed, sitting gingerly on a cloud.
“The plan is only half-done,” said Dean Brunhilde, settling beside her. “We’ll have work to do once Tedros and Guinevere return if we’re to defeat the Snake for good.”
“What work?” Agatha asked, trying to suss out the rest of the plan.
“And how can we beat the Snake without killing Aggie? That’s the second test,” Sophie badgered, but the Dean was lost in thought.
“He was the same RJ I’ve always known,” she shuddered. “I could see it in his eyes.”
“Are you sure they can’t find us here?” Maid Marian asked nervously.
“Only those with wizard blood can find other wizards’ thinking places,” Jacinda reassured. “Presumably so wizards can meet one another in private. But mostly wizards stay out of each other’s heads. That’s what my own wizard tutor, Joffrey, told me. I attempted to find his thinking place on several occasions, but each time, I’d wake up high in a tree with no way down.”
Merlin chuckled somewhere in the sky.
Agatha sat next to Anadil and elder Dot, the two witches in pearly armor, sharing cloud pieces Dot had turned to chocolate.
“Can’t believe the idiot’s plan worked,” Anadil mused. “Who knew Tedros could think?”
Agatha snatched the chocolate out of her hands. “He’s not an idiot, first off,” she said, eating the cocoa cloud puff. “Second of all, you heard the Dean; the plan is only half-done, so don’t speak too soon. Third, I don’t know why he kept the plan from me or why none of you will tell me what it is, especially since I’m the one the Snake is supposed to kil—oh, this is delicious.”