فصل 19

Chapter 19

TEDROS

Secret Weapon

“You are a very strange compass,” Tedros murmured, who was used to a brass arrow that oriented you towards a goal. But instead, the Sultan’s compass featured a tiny phantom of a belly dancer, shimmying her hips to the left.

“Go that way,” the belly dancer advised.

Tedros jogged west in the dark, the glowing numbers near the belly dancer’s waist counting down the distance to the caves: 1,000 feet . . . 900 feet . . . The prince glanced back at the rest of his team, hustling to keep up. Over their heads, he could see the flames of Japeth’s army high on the dunes, miles away, but gaining ground. The Sultan had told Japeth everything, no doubt, thinking he was Rhian. Given him soldiers too.

Ten minutes, Tedros guessed.

That’s how much time they had.

At the most.

“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Agatha asked, rushing to his side.

“The implication being that I don’t?” said Tedros. “Uma and Kaveen didn’t trust each other. Look how they turned out.” Agatha prickled. “You won’t tell me the plan.”

“For a reason,” said Tedros. “I know what’s at stake. Not just a test. Your life.” “And what about the thousand men chasing us?” Agatha hounded.

“Choo-choo! Choo-choo!” said a voice.

Agatha looked down at Merlin, mop-haired and up to her ribs now, scampering beside her. The young wizard smiled.

“Big job for Tee Tee,” he piped.

Agatha peered at him.

“Like I said. We have a plan,” Tedros clipped, sprinting ahead. “Follow the others!” Despite the Snake bearing down, he felt unshackled and free. Finally he’d taken control, having learned from the first test. This time, he’d handle the Snake himself, keeping Agatha in the dark. Not to punish her, but to protect her. If she knew what he and the Knights were planning, she’d jump into the fray. And with the Snake hunting her, that was the last place she should be.

And yet, he still had misgivings about the Knights’ plan. Japeth relinquish the throne by choice? The Snake surrender . . . for love? Only women could invest in such a plot. But he didn’t have a better one and the more he thought about it, the more his heart pulsed with hope. If he played his cards perfectly, then maybe . . . just maybe . . .

He picked up speed, looking back to see his princess fall farther behind, while the Snake and his army vanished into the valley of a dune. The idea of leaving Agatha outside the cave when Japeth attacked made Tedros sick. The Snake would go right for her to win the second test. Would Merlin stick to the plan . . . ? Tedros’ gut knotted tighter. He’d entrusted a six-year-old with Agatha’s life. A six-year-old who still peed his pants and had to be bribed with chocolate cake. No going back now, the prince thought, burying his doubts. He ran harder, tracking the compass girl’s hips . . . 200 feet . . . 100 feet . . . 50 feet . . .

A storm of sand erupted in front of him, a towering wall rising so high, it obscured the moon. Wind whittled this wall like a sculptor, Tedros covering his eyes, his lips and tongue coated in hot dust, before he squinted through his fingers and glimpsed the cave’s shape: a colossal magic lamp made out of sand, the tip of the lamp the opening to the cave, its portal of gold glow piercing the night.

Behind Tedros, the others arrived and flanked him like a shield: Agatha, Sophie, Uma, Hort, and the Knights of Eleven.

It was one thing to hear Kaveen tell a story. But to see the cave now, a real place, with the magic lamp sealed inside, the lamp that made Aladdin a legend . . . This is what Readers must feel like, Tedros thought. The prince’s palms started to sweat, his mouth dry.

“H-hi,” he said, inching towards the cave, “I’m Prince Tedros of—” A voice thundered from deep within: “Many a man has disturbed me, seeking my Cave of Wishes. But none with so feeble an army.” Tedros could hear the rumble of Japeth’s horses. There was little time for negotiation. “I come for the lamp,” he declared.

“All fools do,” the cave taunted, low and resounding. “But to enter the cave, you must bring me something in return. And as far as I can tell, you don’t even have a sword, feckless prince. So go. Before I feel offended enough to deal with you.” The sand under Tedros’ boots thickened, as if to swallow him whole. By the time he looked up, the cave was collapsing back into the desert— “I don’t come empty-handed,” said Tedros. “I bring your true love.” The cave instantly re-formed.

“Show me,” it commanded.

Princess Uma stepped forward, taking her place next to the prince.

The cave seemed to shudder at the sight of her, the light of its portal burning red-hot, like a stoked fire.

Tedros could see Agatha grinding her teeth, as if she’d already decided this was the worst plan ever.

“Give her to me,” the cave ordered. “Then you may enter.” “You’ll get her once I enter and exit your cave safely,” Tedros countered. “Otherwise, I have no assurance you’ll let me leave alive.” “And what of my assurances? You may use the lamp to wish my true love out of this deal. Or she may flee while you are inside.” “Neither of those will happen,” Tedros vowed. “I will deliver her as promised.” “Your promises mean nothing to me,” said the cave. “What happens if you take what you now say is mine? What happens if you cheat?” “Then you can have me,” spoke a voice.

Guinevere stepped forward.

“His own mother,” she said.

Tedros showed little reaction, as if this too was part of the plan.

“I’ll enter the cave with him,” the old queen explained. “If he fails to deliver the princess, then you may keep me as punishment.” The cave’s light shone upon Guinevere, as if verifying she was who she said.

“What do I want with you, old bones,” the cave mocked. “Better fed to vultures.” “Which is why you can trust me to deliver your true love,” said Tedros. “No boy would sacrifice his mother to certain death. The terms favor you.” The cave paused, considering this.

Smoke fogged the sky, the smell of torch flames rising. The cave beamed its light into the distance, on the twin armies riding towards them.

“I suggest you make your decision quickly,” said Tedros, with an eye towards Uma. “Given impending company, your true love may not last long enough to see the end of our bargain.” The cave’s sands hardened.

“Enter,” he snarled.

Tedros clasped his mother’s hand, pulling her into the Cave of Wishes. The moment he stepped into the portal’s light, he felt the drop in temperature, the air cool and sharp. From inside the cave, he glanced back one last time, at Agatha, his princess looking helpless and scared, the same way Tedros looked whenever she went chasing after his quests without him.

Sand poured over the door like a tomb being sealed.

Then he and his mother were alone.

FIVE MINUTES, TEDROS thought.

Any more than that and Agatha and the rest would be at risk.

Guinevere stumbled, gripping on to Tedros’ arm. “Careful,” she breathed, “there’s a step.” Tedros lit his fingerglow. “Lots of steps.”

A crooked staircase made out of sand spiraled down into darkness, beyond what the prince could see. He slid his boot onto the first step, sand crumbling. With each step, the footing seemed more uneven, like a rocky shoreline. Guinevere tripped again.

“You okay?” Tedros said.

“Go ahead,” she said, limping. “I’ll meet you at the bottom.” Tedros put his arm around her and guided her, step by step.

It was strange to be here with her. When they’d made the plan at the pub, she’d seemed the right choice to brave the cave with him. If he’d taken Agatha, she would have questioned his every move. Sophie would have been worse. And everyone else, he didn’t feel comfortable with, not the way he did with his mother, which was ironic, given he’d spent the last ten years thinking her a disloyal witch. And yet, now that he was alone with her, there was an odd tension between them. Not anger or resentment. That was gone from his heart, his mother’s sins forgiven. It was something else. Vacancy. Emptiness. As if they were two strangers, any bond between them imagined.

Then, in the cast of his glow, Tedros glimpsed something embedded in one of the steps: a gold coin. As he swept his glow downwards, he saw why the stairs were so uneven, each of them laden with treasures: polished jewels, glinting rings, at least four crowns, and more gold than Tedros had ever seen, coins and talismans and goblets, scattered and fossilized deep into the sand. For a second, Tedros was baffled . . .

Then he saw the skulls.

Scores of them, hanging off the staircase by ropes of tightly packed sand, some attached to their skeletons, others severed at the neck or shoulders or ribs, like a gallery of warning. These must be the seekers who’d come to this cave and hadn’t made it back out, leaving the treasures from their wishes behind.

“They made mistakes,” said Guinevere nervously.

How? Tedros wondered. It was the Cave of Wishes. You ask your three wishes and hurry away with your plunder.

Then again, when it came to magic, there was always a catch.

They went faster now, Tedros moving his glow off the remains of wishers past and keeping the light on the bounties of each step, one by one, until they reached the bottom, a small cellar of sand. Given the corpses along the way and the famed power of the lamp, Tedros was expecting obstacles to finding it or at least some kind of test . . . but instead, there it was, lying on its side on the floor of the cave, copper in color, tarnished and scratched up, like an old trinket in an attic. There was nothing else down here except a dirty, broken mirror, leaning against a wall.

Tedros studied the lamp, its tip poking out of the sand, like an elephant’s trunk. “Doesn’t look like much, does it?” A thunder of hooves echoed outside.

“Hurry, Tedros,” said his mother, watching the cave walls quake.

Tedros grabbed the lamp, rubbing sand off its surface with his palm.

Nothing happened.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Rub the lamp? Tedros rubbed it harder, against his elbow, his chest, then with both hands at the same time— The lamp glowed fire red, scalding his fingers; Tedros yelped and dropped it to the sand. In the lamp’s reflection, he spotted a pair of yellow eyes glaring right at him. Red smoke lashed out of the lamp, building high over Tedros’ and his mother’s heads, a thick mist, murky and ragged at the edges, a man’s torso with a tiger’s head and the golden eyes Tedros had seen in the reflection, now fixed on him and Guinevere. In fairy tales, genies were friendly, comforting creatures, solid in body, but soft in spirit. But this genie was hazy in body, harsh in spirit, and very clearly not his friend.

“Three wishes,” said the genie, the same stark voice they’d heard outside. “But to exit the cave, you’ll need the secret word. A word I cannot speak myself without being condemned to eternal pain. So you may not use one of your wishes to procure it. And if you die in this cave by your own incompetence . . .” He glanced at the skulls of all the men who had. “. . . then the princess you’ve brought as my gift is still mine.” The catch, Tedros thought. He knew it seemed too easy.

Guinevere frowned. “But how do we—”

“One question. That’s all you get, plus your three wishes,” the genie cut off. “Use your question wisely. Any further questions will be taken out of your wishes.” Guinevere bit her tongue.

“Tell me what you were going to ask,” Tedros whispered, careful not to phrase it as a question.

“How to find the secret word,” said his mother.

“That’s your question, then,” the genie prompted.

“No. Everyone must ask how to find the secret word,” said Tedros. “And yet, there’s a hundred dead bodies hanging in this cave? It’s a trap. We need to ask something else.” “Cleverer than you look,” the genie remarked, tiger eyes gleaming. “If you had asked, I would have told you ‘it’s a secret’ and you’d be no better off than before. Now ask your question. I care little about what becomes of you. Only your friends outside. One friend, rather, soon to be mine.” For a split second, Tedros wanted to ask the genie what was happening to Agatha . . . then stopped himself. The last thing Agatha would want was for him to waste his question on her. He needed to focus on why they were here: the plan to beat Japeth and keep his princess alive. He glanced at his mother, hoping she was working out the secret word— Guinevere wrung her hands. “What would Lance do?” she whispered to herself.

Tedros almost laughed. He’d forgotten who his mother was. She’d dumped his gallant father for the chauvinist brute that was Sir Lancelot. Lance, who swept her off her feet and let her live a highland fantasy, devoid of real responsibility. Now his mother was still lost in the fantasy, waiting for her knight to save her.

It’s why Tedros had chosen the girl he did. He didn’t want one like his mother. He wanted an equal.

That free feeling he’d had on the dunes evaporated. Suddenly he missed his princess.

What would Agatha do?

Tedros stifled a smile. Maybe he was more like his mother than he thought.

And yet, Agatha wouldn’t be distracted like he was. She’d be thinking about those who escaped the cave . . . the ones like Aladdin, who’d made their three wishes and gotten out alive . . .

The wishes, Tedros realized.

Agatha would tell him to focus on the wishes.

He looked up at the genie. “What were Aladdin’s three wishes? Consider that my one question.” The genie’s eyes flickered in surprise, before he answered: “His first wish was to be Sultan of Shazabah. His second wish was for Princess Asifa, the Sultan’s daughter, to fall in love with him. And his third wish was for that mirror over there,” he said, nodding at the cracked slab of glass against the wall.

The prince picked up the mirror, a piece of misshapen glass, veiled in dust. Aladdin had used his last wish to have this. And he hadn’t even taken it with him. Not a surprise: magic mirrors had pitiful powers. Even the queen who hunted Snow White could only use hers to assess her rivals’ beauty from afar. Yet Aladdin had invested his last wish to have a mirror of his own. Why?

Tedros took a deep breath. Only one way to solve this mystery. He blew the sand off its surface and was faced with his own reflection.

Instantly, the eyes of his mirror twin glowed yellow, like the genie’s— Then Tedros was falling into them like a hole.

He could see the Tedros left behind in the cave, as if he’d split into two selves. Gold light blinded him, like he’d dropped into the sun, before he came out the other side, floating without gravity through a hall of mirrors, each mirror playing a scene from his life.

Young Tedros, writing a message to his mother . . . then stuffing it into a bottle and setting it into the Savage Sea.

Tedros, crying alone in his dorm room at school.

Tedros, stiffening as Aric came towards him in a prison cell, a whip on his belt.

Tedros, lost in Filip’s gaze on a window ledge, he and the boy about to kiss.

Tedros, gouging out the eyes of his father’s statue in King’s Cove . . .

These weren’t just scenes, Tedros realized.

These were his secrets.

Suddenly, he was back in the genie’s cave, turning away from his reflection, sucking in air.

“Tedros?” his mother asked behind him.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t think.

Instead, he held up the mirror and reflected her.

In the glass, Guinevere’s eyes burned yellow and now Tedros was falling into them.

Into her secrets.

Guinevere in her wedding veil, walking down the aisle towards Arthur . . . but behind the veil, she looked racked with doubts . . .

Guinevere, embraced with Lancelot in a forest, the two disguised by the night.

Guinevere, in a dark hood, sneaking into young Tedros’ room . . . kissing him goodbye . . . then seeing him wake . . . and hurriedly closing the door to lock him in.

Guinevere, on the shores of Avalon’s lake, receiving Tedros’ message in a bottle . . . and crumpling it as she saw Lancelot coming, clutching freshly picked flowers.

Guinevere, years later, glimpsing teenage Tedros arrive with his friends on the moors of Avalon . . . her face clouding over . . .

Tedros ripped himself out of his mother’s secrets, reeling from the mirror— “What’s wrong?” said Guinevere, as if she’d been frozen in time. “What are you seeing?” “You never wanted me to find you, did you?” her son asked. “After you ran off with Lancelot. You would have been happy never being with me again.” The flush in his mother’s face told Tedros all he needed to know.

This mirror spoke the truth.

The darkest truths, locked away in each person’s heart.

And his mother’s was what he’d known all along: her heart was with Lancelot, only Lancelot, whether the knight was alive or dead. That’s why Tedros felt that empty feeling around her. She was here in body, but no longer in soul.

Hooves pounded the desert outside, shaking the cave harder.

He was running out of time.

Tedros focused again on the mirror, keeping his face out of its reflection. What had Aladdin used it for? How did it help him get out of this ca— Of course.

Slumdog, street rat . . . but a legend for a reason.

The prince tucked the mirror into the back of his pants. Then he gazed up at the genie, his blue eyes aflame.

“I’d like to make my first wish, please,” said Tedros.

THE GENIE GAVE the mildest swish of his hand.

“Done,” he declared. “Won’t last more than an hour. Even my magic has limits.” Tedros inspected his body, unchanged on the outside. But inside, his blood tingled with bubbling heat, as if his veins were growing wider. His skin felt looser on his bones, more elastic. He held up a hand and with a simple focus of mind, he watched the hair on the back of it recede, the skin turning paler, more feminine . . . Then he stopped the transformation just as he’d started it, his hand reverting to a golden, sinewy fist.

“An hour is all I need,” said Tedros.

He glanced at his mother, who was surely thinking the same thing as her son. That the genie had given Tedros precisely what he’d asked for. But whether this first wish was well-used . . . only time would tell.

“And your second wish?” the genie asked.

“Same as the first,” Tedros answered. He pointed at his mother. “But do it to her.” TEDROS COULD SEE her clutching her arms over her chest, as if trying to block the sensations she was feeling inside. Mother and son shared the same powers now. But where these powers emboldened Tedros, they seemed to make his mother shrink deeper into her skin.

Will she be able to do the job when the moment comes? the prince wondered. Did I make a mistake in picking her?

“And your third wish?” the genie asked.

Tedros’ heart thumped harder, drowning out the sounds from beyond. This last wish was the rub. He kept his face steady, trying to give nothing away.

But his mother had no such restraint. He could see her chewing on her lip and picking at her nails, glancing worriedly at him.

The genie noticed.

“And your third wish?” he repeated, with suspicion.

The prince looked hard into the genie’s eyes. “My third wish is that you become deathly allergic to ladybugs.” “What?” the genie snorted.

From the ceiling of the cave, a big pink ladybug dropped onto his shoulder.

Instantly, the genie broke out into bright pink pox and clutched his throat, gagging for breath. He flung the beetle to the ground, about to stomp on it— “Wouldn’t do that, considering it’s your princess,” said Tedros.

The genie ogled him, confused. Then he looked down at the pink bug, blinking up at the genie with almond-shaped eyes, before it began skittering around him, making him erupt in a fresh riot of blisters. Panicked, the genie punted the bug across the cave, straight into Tedros’ hands.

“You said to deliver your princess to you. You didn’t say in what form,” the prince smiled, petting the beetle. “And it turns out a teacher of Animal Communication enjoys mogrifying into the precise insect that now kills you to be near. Doesn’t sound like this tale will end in Happily Ever After, will it?” The ladybug whispered in Tedros’ ear.

“Besides, Uma says she might be your true love but you’re certainly not hers,” he relayed.

The genie’s mist went redder, his eyes poisonous yellow. “We had a deal! You made a promise!” “Which we fulfilled,” Tedros pointed out.

“You think you’ll get away with this!” the genie shouted. “You cheat! You thief!” “Says a genie who makes a sport of stealing men’s lives,” Tedros reproached. “The genie who thinks he can cheat his way to love.” The genie lunged for him, but Uma’s bug bounced onto his face and the genie recoiled in horror. He smacked her away, except the ladybug kept scuttling towards him, cornering him against the lamp, choking him with her mere presence as he contorted with pain. Desperate to stay alive, the genie pulled back into his lamp, leaving only his scared face exposed . . . Then his expression changed, a triumphant leer growing, as he extended his neck like a snake’s and confronted Tedros, eye to eye.

“You’re forgetting something, failed prince. You don’t know the secret word. You’re trapped here forever. You idiot. You arrogant fool!” “I don’t know the secret word,” Tedros confessed. “That is true.” He looked up at the genie.

“But you’re forgetting something too.”

Tedros pulled Aladdin’s mirror out of his pants and held it up, reflecting his stunned opponent.

In a flash, the prince was falling through tiger eyes . . .

But only one secret played in the genie’s soul, again and again and again.

A single, shining word, carved in darkness, like a wish against the night.

Tedros yanked himself back into the cave, just as the genie surged out of his lamp with the last of his strength, claws out for the prince— Tedros put his nose to the genie’s. “The secret word is . . . human.” “NO!” the genie screamed, dragged back into the lamp.

All at once, sand swelled under Tedros’ feet, lifting him and his mother out of the cave, Uma’s bug scrambling after them. Soaring upwards, Tedros smelled the heat of the desert above him, sweat beading on his skin. He could hear the confused cries of Japeth’s army, the first part of the plan surely complete— His mother snatched at the mirror, still in his hands.

“Leave it!” Guinevere said. “Bad things happen to thieves!” Tedros ignored her, gripping the glass, the desert surface coming closer. Taking the mirror wasn’t part of the plan, but no way was he leaving it behind.

Not because he was a thief.

Because he was the king.

And the mirror his new weapon.

Secrets this time, instead of a sword.

Tedros grinned, rising out of the cave.

Oh yes.

There were more souls he’d be looking into.