Tedros was still gawking at him. “But how did you—”
“Hester’s potion,” Agatha realized, her hand in her coat. “Where is it?”
Merlin’s blue hat flounced up from the snow, raggedy and dented, and belched out the vial from its mouth.
“Nicked it off you and took it each day on schedule. You missed the worst of it: at eight, I had a bout of chicken pox and spent most of the day mummified in snow to stop from itching . . . at nine, I rebelled against my hat’s ruthless insistence I eat vegetables and nearly beat the thing to death . . . then at ten, all my baby teeth fell out,” said the wizard, pointing at a pile of white shells in the snow. “Tomorrow I’ll officially be a teenager. Bet Hat’s excited about that.” (Merlin’s cap made a loud fart noise.)
Agatha blanched. “So that means we’ve been asleep for . . .”
“Six days, eight hours, and twenty-three minutes,” the boy wizard chimed.
“Six days?” said Agatha.
“Wait! If you’re almost thirteen, surely you remember your old life now!” Tedros jumped in. “You can tell us why my father made the tournament. You can help me win the third test! You can fix everything!”
“I’m twelve, Tedros. I can barely concentrate on anything other than growing pains, how badly I need a bath, and the first pimple I got an hour ago, which magic won’t make go away,” said Merlin, puffing at his hair. “I remember most of my old life before I turned into a baby, along with my usual command of language, thank heavens, because if I had to speak in the stunted gargles of an adolescent, I’d gag myself with my hat. And yet, my command of magic is juvenile, my best spells erased from my memory. Maybe with each day I’ll remember more, but who knows? And no, I don’t have a clue where the real Excalibur is or how to find it or what your father was up to when he made this tournament, because as far as I can remember, he kept the details secret from me. I don’t know much of anything about his tests at all, other than that your enemy seems to be struggling as much as you are.”
Tedros followed the boy’s gaze to the blinding glare of sun. The prince shielded his eyes and made out gold letters where he hadn’t seen them before. They were small and far away, as if he and his princess were on another planet, Lionsmane’s words faint against the sky.
Your king has returned to Camelot, only to find Excalibur missing and hidden in the Woods. King Arthur’s final test. Help me find it. Help the Lion win, so that Excalibur takes the head of Tedros the Snake. All of you are my Eagle now. He who finds the real sword shall be rewarded!
“Message has been up for five days, so clearly no one’s found it,” said Merlin.
“Japeth’s at Camelot?” Agatha asked. “Must have been dropped there, then.”
“Wait. So he gets dropped at Camelot. Rafal’s son. At my castle. By my dad,” Tedros growled, “and we get dropped in a middle-of-nowhere snowhole?”
“Not exactly nowhere,” said Merlin. He flicked his fingers and magically swelled the snow beneath his and Agatha’s feet, raising the mound higher and higher, until the wizard and princess were fifty feet above ground.
“What about me?” Tedros shouted below.
“Oops,” said the young wizard, flicking fingers quickly—
The snow ruptured under Tedros’ feet, sending him plummeting ten feet into ice. “MERLIN!”
“Still rusty!” Merlin called, with a wink at Agatha, before springing Tedros up on a spout of snow.
“This is pointless. I just see more swords,” wet Tedros groused, glaring into endless white—
Only it wasn’t endless, he realized now.
In the distance, he could see a house on a hill.
A small farm cottage, breaking up the sweep of snow.
The same farmhouse where he and his princess once came to hide from the same School Master whose son threatened them now.
“Agatha?” he rasped.
But she was looking upwards, straight into the gray sky, which upon closer inspection had a flat, undulating sheen as if it was a glass wall, hiding waves of water behind it . . .
Not just water.
Hiding something else too.
A face.
Spying on them from behind the sky, before it vanished back into the lake from which it came.
“Always summer here when the Lady was in good spirits,” said Merlin. “Her mood has changed, it seems.”
“But why are we here?” Tedros asked Merlin. “Why would Dad drop us in Avalon and Japeth at the castle?”
“Who’s to say it was your dad and not you who decided that we be dropped here?” said Merlin, cocking a brow, suddenly looking like the wizard Tedros knew, despite his twelve-year-old form. “Japeth would have wished to return to the castle where he could seek the people’s help to win the last test. Maybe deep down, you knew coming here would be your best chance to find the sword.”
Tedros crossed his arms. “Doesn’t make sense. Why would I come to the Lady of the Lake? What does she have to do with Excal—”
His eyes widened.
Merlin grinned crookedly. “Everything to do with it, Tee Tee. She did make it, after all.”
The prince swallowed. “We have to talk to her, don’t we?”
“You need to talk to her,” said the wizard boy. “Can’t remember the specifics, but I have the vague feeling she hates me. Old me, I mean.”
“While you were gone, she tried to kill me,” said Tedros.
“Mmm, maybe Agatha, then,” the wizard murmured.
They turned to the girl between them.
She was still looking into the sky.
“So let me get this straight,” Agatha spoke finally. “Japeth wished to return to Camelot. Tedros wished to come to Avalon . . .”
She leveled with the two boys.
“So where did Sophie wish to go to?”
26
SOPHIE
Don’t Talk to Strangers
“Yoo-hoo! Boys!” Dean Rowenna sang at the bottom of the staircase, smacking a ruler against her palm. “Hurry up or someone else will find the sword first!”
Sounds of commotion echoed from the top floor.
“Emilio! Arjun! Pierre-Eve! And the rest of you whose names I haven’t learned yet!” She rapped the ruler on the banister. “Get your bottoms downstairs at once!”
Eight boys trampled down the steps of Arbed House, uniform shirts half-buttoned, boots untied, faces in various stages of cleanliness, all with Lion pins on their lapels. Arjun tripped on the last stair, toppling the others in a domino fall.
“Now I see why Arbed boys are kept separate from the rest of the school,” said Dean Rowenna.
“Sorry, Dean Rowenna,” Arjun panted. “Dean Brunhilde said we have to say our prayers and brush our teeth and step in the bath for at least five seconds every morning or the Evil will get in.”
Dean Rowenna lowered her spectacles, revealing emerald eyes, her lips painted matching green, her black hive of hair speared with a pencil and her nose anointed with a big brown wart. She wore a black whipstitch skirt, a green ruffled blouse, and long green boots that shined against black stockings. “Well, Dean Brunhilde isn’t here, is she? Gone to help the Lion find his sword. Called upon by King Rhian himself, since he used to be her student right here, in this very house. Which is why Rhian sent me, his beloved cousin Rowenna, to take Brunhilde’s place as your Dean. And now we, too, will assist the Lion in winning the tournament’s last test.” She leaned in, green eyes sparkling. “Because I know for a fact Excalibur is somewhere here in Foxwood. Which means we’re going to find it, aren’t we?”