Quests for Glory

“I did,” said Lady Gremlaine.

“Well, let’s hope you’re not planning the wedding.”

“The wedding is planned entirely by the future queen,” Lady Gremlaine said, her face a cold mask. “I hope she is capable.”

“That’s a bet I’m willing to take,” said Tedros defiantly, trying not to frown.

Agatha: the wedding planner? Hadn’t she dressed as a bride for Halloween? If it were up to her, they’d marry at midnight in a boneyard, with that satanic cat presiding. …

She’ll be fine, he thought. Agatha always found a way. She’d no doubt share his opinion of Lady Gremlaine and his determination to prove her wrong. Plus, once Agatha saw how he handled his coronation, with royal decorum and integrity, she’d follow his example for the wedding. Soon Lady Grimface would be eating her words.

A long while later, after the monkeys had been soothed with a vat of banana pudding and dragged from the stage, Tedros took his place before Camelot’s chaplain, perilously old, with a bright red nose and wiry hair growing out of his ears. The chaplain put his hand on Tedros’ back and guided him to the front of the stage, overlooking the teeming hills.

On cue, the sun broke out from behind the cloud, spilling onto the young prince.

An awed hush fell over the crowd.

Tedros could see the legions gazing up at him with wide-eyed hope: the boy who vanquished the School Master … the boy who saved the Ever kingdoms … the boy who would make Camelot great again.

“I’m king of all these people?” Tedros rasped, the weight of responsibility finally hitting him.

“Oh, oh, your father asked the same thing, lad! Fear is a very good sign,” the old chaplain said, hacking a laugh. “And luckily, no one can hear us from way up here.”

The chaplain turned to a skinny, red-haired altar boy, who carefully handed him a jeweled box. The chaplain opened it. Sunlight ricocheted through five spires like a web of gold, eliciting gasps from the mob. Tedros gazed down at King Arthur’s crown, the five-pointed fleur-de-lis, each with a diamond in the center.

Once, when he was six, he’d stolen it from his father’s bed table and worn it to his lessons with Merlin, insisting the wizard bow and call him King. He assumed Merlin would put an end to his mischief—but instead the wizard obeyed his command, bowing eminently and addressing him as Your Majesty, all the way through math and astronomy and vocabulary and history. Perhaps the old wizard would have let him be king forever … but soon the young prince removed his crown and sheepishly returned it to his father’s table. For it was too heavy for his soft little head.

Now, ten years later, the chaplain held out the very same crown. “Repeat after me, young prince. The words might sound a bit funny, given it’s an oath that harkens back two thousand years. But words aren’t what make a king. That fear you feel is all you need. Fear means you know this crown has a history and future far bigger than you. Fear means you are ready, dear Tedros: ready to quest for glory.”

Legs quivering, Tedros repeated the chaplain’s oath.

“By thy Lord, on wrest that Godes doth place on my head, I swear to uphold the honor of Camelot against all foel. I swear to be a beacon in the darknell to thy enlightened realm …”

Like the old man warned, he tripped over the strange syllables and sounds, without knowing what he was saying. And yet, somewhere in his heart he did. His eyes welled up, the moment getting to him. Just a few years ago, he was a first-year boy at the School for Good and Evil, full of bluster and insecurity.

Now the boy would be a king.

A husband.

And someday a father.

Tedros made a silent prayer: that he would do Good as all three, just like the man who had made him. A man who he loved and missed every single day of his life. A man he’d give anything to touch one last time.

The chaplain placed the crown upon Tedros’ head and tears streamed down the young king’s cheeks while the crowd roared a passionate ovation that lasted long after he’d managed to get his emotions under control.

The chaplain patted his shoulder. “And now to seal the coronation and officially make you king, you must complete the ceremonial tes—”

“Do you mind if I say a few words first?” he asked the chaplain. “To my people, I mean.”

The chaplain furrowed. “It is a bit unusual to speak before the proceedings are complete, especially since no one will hear you.”

Something fell from above, right into the folds of Tedros’ oversized robe: a small five-pointed white star, like the ones Merlin used to lay in tribute at his father’s tomb in Avalon.

“Strange,” Tedros said, studying it closely. “Why would one of these be …”

His voice instantly amplified for miles.

The crowd gaped in astonishment, as did the chaplain, but Tedros knew full well where such sorcery had come from.

He looked up into the big blue sky and smiled. “Thanks, M,” he whispered.

Then he put the magic star on his shoulder so it would broadcast him far and wide.

“Felt funny looking down at all of you without saying hello,” he spoke, his voice resounding over the cliffs. “So, um, hello! I’m Tedros. And welcome to the … show.”

Crickets.

“Right. You know who I am. Same boy who used to stand here and fidget when my father gave speeches. Just older now. And hopefully a bit better looking.”

A ripple of laughter.

Tedros smiled, feeling the warmth of the crowd. They wanted to hear from him. They wanted him to do well.

He searched for Agatha below, but the sun washed out the faces. He was so used to having his princess by his side when it mattered. But after all they’d been through, he could feel her inside him even when they were apart. What would she tell him to say?

The same thing she always told him to say: the truth about what he was feeling.

Only he was never very good at that.

Tedros took a deep breath.

“When I was a boy standing up here with my dad, Good and Evil seemed so black and white,” he said, his voice steadying. “But of all the things I learned at school, one lesson proved the most important: no one knows what is good or bad until after the story is written. No one knows if a happy ending will last or if a happy ending is happy at all. The only thing we have is the moment we are in and what we choose to do with it.

“And so here we are at this moment. A moment where riding into Camelot doesn’t feel the same as it used to when I was a boy. We aren’t the shining kingdom by which all others are measured anymore. The streets are dirty, the people are hungry, and I can feel a rot at our core. Even the king’s chamber smells a bit moldy.

“Part of it is neglect, of course,” Tedros went on, “and those responsible have been removed from power and punished. But that won’t fix our problems. Even if we could bring back my father, King Arthur couldn’t make things the way they were. The Woods have been changed forever by an Evil School Master. And though he is dead now, the line between Good and Evil has blurred. Enemies disguise as friends and friends as enemies. Look at our own Camelot, decayed from the inside.”

The masses were rapt as they listened, their bodies like trees in a windless forest.

“I may be young. I may be untested. But I trust my instincts,” Tedros declared, confidence growing. “Instincts that helped me find my way back to you even when I had Evil’s sword at my heart and an axe at my neck. Instincts that helped me choose the greatest of all princesses, soon to be your queen.”

Everyone followed his eyes to the royal gallery, where the nobles stepped back, revealing Agatha in the sun’s spotlight.

Tedros smiled, expecting applause.

He didn’t get it.

The crowd took in her pallid, ghostly face, buggy brown eyes, and witchy black helmet of hair and then seemed to look around her, as if she was a stand-in for the great princess Tedros was speaking of, as if they couldn’t believe that this was the Agatha whose fairy tale had grown so famous throughout the Endless Woods. … But then they saw the diadem on her head—the same tiara Arthur once bestowed upon his own wife—and their postures stiffened, a soft murmur building.

“Together, Agatha and I have faced down terrible villains and found our happy ending,” said Tedros. “But after a fairy tale comes real life. This is no longer my and Agatha’s story, written by the Storian. This is the story of our kingdom, which we must all write together. A history and future you are now a part of, even those who doubted my father, even those who doubt me. Today we turn the page.”

He took a deep breath. “And to prove that this is indeed the beginning of a new Camelot, my first act as your king is to present two members of my royal court. Two people who know our kingdom better than anyone and will protect it with love and courage.”

From the corner of his eye, he saw Lady Gremlaine leap out of her seat—

In a flash, Tedros tomahawked Excalibur across the stage, slashing open the scrim over the castle balcony, before the sword planted blade-first in the balcony’s archway.

“Presenting my mother, Queen Guinevere, and our greatest knight, Sir Lancelot!”

Tedros beamed down at the crowd, believing full-heartedly that since he’d learned to forgive Guinevere and Lancelot, his people would do the same.

But now there was a collective wide-eyed gape as if they’d all stopped breathing, and a cold, deathly silence.

“Come, Mother. Come Lance,” Tedros prodded, hurrying over to his mother and yanking at her hand—

Gobsmacked, Guinevere stumbled over the fallen scrim, losing a shoe and almost face-planting before Lancelot caught her and glared daggers at Tedros. “What the hell are you doing!”

“Sit down!” Tedros hissed, shoving his one-shoed mother into his throne and Lancelot into Lady Gremlaine’s seat, while Lady Gremlaine gawped in horror.

Something in the crowd changed too. Tedros felt it in his gut: the way the once warm, hopeful air had turned wary upon his unveiling of Agatha and now had become menacing and tense. Sweat pooled beneath his crown.

His heart had told him welcoming back his mother and Lancelot was the right thing to do … the Good thing …

Did I make a mistake?

He swallowed his doubt. No going back now.

“Let’s get to the test,” Tedros pressured the chaplain, eager to seal this coronation and get his mother and Agatha inside.

“Yes—uh—of course,” the chaplain stammered, his eyes darting to Guinevere and the knight as he fumbled a faded parchment card from his robes. “Uh, hear ye, hear ye. As all prior kings, King Arthur Pendragon conceived this test to prove his successor be worthy of—”

Tedros ripped the card from his hands and read it out loud, his voice booming through the magic star:

“To seal his coronation, the future King of Camelot must pull Excalibur from an ordinary stone, as I once did.”

“Wow. That’s easy,” he blurted, voice echoing.

He hadn’t meant for the crowd to hear that.

“CAN SOMEONE FIND ME A STONE?” Tedros puffed, glancing uselessly around the stage.

Lancelot shifted in his chair, which made the stage creak so loudly the audience’s eyes went to him.

“Preferably one that isn’t made out of wood,” the knight said.

A ruckus echoed behind him and everyone turned to see the red-haired altar boy careen through the fallen scrim onto the stage, having tripped on Guinevere’s shoe. “Sorry! That’s my cue!” he squawked, dragging an iron anvil behind him. “Behold! The stone from which King Arthur once pulled Excali—”

The heavy anvil splintered the wooden platform. The edge of the stage imploded and the anvil plummeted straight through the hole like a cannonball, down to a cliff, where it bounced off the rock and fell into the ocean.

“This is going well,” said Lancelot.

Tedros scorched pink.

His mother’s eyes were glued to her one shoe. Lady Gremlaine wasn’t on the stage anymore. And he couldn’t even look in Agatha’s direction. He’d wanted the coronation to show her what kind of king he’d be. Instead, she was probably as mortified as he was.

“Merlin … some help?” he peeped desperately, glancing upwards.

A pigeon pooed, just missing his head.

“Enough,” Tedros boiled, jaw clenching. “To seal the coronation, I have to pull a sword from a stone? Well, the sword’s in one right now!”

He stamped to the back of the stage and the once-curtained-off castle balcony, where Excalibur was still lodged blade-first into the stone archway.

“So if I pull my sword out of this stone, it’s done, right? We can all go home,” he barked at the chaplain.

“Well, I don’t believe your father meant—”

“IS IT DONE OR IS IT NOT,” Tedros bullied.

The chaplain quailed. “Oh, yes … I suppose. …”

Tedros grabbed the hilt, practically screeching into the star on his shoulder, deafening the crowd: “Then in the name of my father, my kingdom, and my people, I hereby accept my place as Leader, Protector, and King of Camelot!”

He pulled at the sword.

It didn’t move.

“Huh?”

Tedros jerked harder. Still didn’t budge.

He could hear the restless mob shifting.

Putting his foot on the wall, he pried at the blade with all of his strength, his biceps straining against his skin—

Nope. Nothing.

Tedros was sweating now. He pulled right, left, front, back, trying to make the sword slide, but with each pull it seemed to bury harder into the stone. It didn’t make sense. Excalibur wasn’t wedged that deep and the archway’s stone was loamy and weak. Why wasn’t it moving?

People in the crowd were clutching each other, pointing at him open-mouthed. They knew what was happening. They knew after promising to save them as king, he was failing the first test that would make him king, a test that shouldn’t have been a test at all—

“Merlin … ,” he pleaded, but the sky was clear overhead, the white star on his shoulder lost and gone.

He couldn’t breathe, his wet grip on the hilt making his pulls shallow and frantic. His crown skewed on his head. His coronation gown ripped at the seams—

Please, he begged, heaving at the sword. Please!

Lancelot ran up. “Just yank the damn thing out!” he said, helping him jostle the hilt—

Tedros shoved him away. “It’s my test—I have to do it—”

But he pushed Lancelot too hard, who knocked backwards straight into the chaplain, upending the old man over the balcony. His priestly gown caught on the railing, leaving him dangling upside down, robes over his head, exposed save for his saggy pantaloons. Gold coins showered out of his pockets onto the crowd, causing a stampede for them as the chaplain howled. The altar boy ran to help his master, only to plunge through the hole in the stage left by the lost anvil.

Paralyzed, Tedros scanned the scene: Lancelot hoisting the chaplain over a balcony; Guinevere lurching to rescue a squealing altar boy hanging off a beam; his kingdom’s people punching each other for a handful of coins …

And six monkeys straddling a sword stuck in stone, slathering it with banana pudding, and sliding up and down the blade.

Tedros dropped to his knees.

“IT’S THEM!” a woman bellowed down below, pointing at Lancelot and Guinevere. “THEY’VE CURSED US! THEY’VE CURSED CAMELOT!”

“RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING!” an old man yelled.

“WHY’D YOU THINK ARTHUR WANTED ’EM DEAD!” his wife shouted.

“TRAITORS!” a young boy heckled.

“FINKS!”

From the masses exploded a murderous mob, climbing up the stage’s beams towards Guinevere and Lancelot—

“GET THEM!”

“KILL THEM!”

But the beams couldn’t support their weight and shattered like sticks, sending the remainder of the stage timbering down over the crowd, the candles igniting the wood and pooled wax and detonating the stage like a fireball into the drawbridge. Shrieking villagers fled for their lives just as royal guards came smashing out the balcony windows, armed with swords and spears, led by Lady Gremlaine.

“TRAITORS!” the terrible cries echoed below. “MONSTERS!”

As people hurled things at the balcony, guards grabbed Guinevere and Lancelot and spirited them inside to safety, along with the others.

Only Tedros stayed behind, pulling and pulling at Excalibur, his bleeding hands slick with pudding, his face streaked with tears, before he suddenly felt the arms of men throw him over their shoulders—

“No! I can do it!” he choked, hands flailing for the sword. “I can do it!”

He screamed those words again and again, voice crumbling to rasps as they dragged him into the castle, until all that remained of Camelot’s Great Hope was a sobbing little boy, crown slid down over his eyes, hands stabbing wildly into the dark.

3

SOPHIE

Flah-sé-dah

“So is he king or isn’t he?” Dean Sophie asked, nose buried in the Royal Rot. “According to the Camelot Courier, he is, but according to the Rot, he isn’t. What both agree on, however, is that once Tedros finds a way to pull Excalibur out of that balcony, then it’s settled and he’s king once and for all. But if someone else were to pull Excalibur out before Teddy … well, it wouldn’t matter, would it, since only the blood of Arthur can sit upon the throne … which means Tedros is king, now and forever, though it sounds like he’s only a ‘half-king’ without respect or support … or a sword.”

Draped in a plushy black bathrobe, Sophie leaned back, picking at the curlers in her blond hair as she scanned more articles:

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH CORONATION MONKEYS!

AGATHA: LOYAL PRINCESS … OR WITCH WHO CURSED THE CORONATION?

HORRO-NATION FALLOUT: IS LANCELOT PLOTTING TO STEAL THE CROWN?

“Six months later and it’s all anyone still talks about,” Sophie sighed, folding the newspaper and fingering a vial of gold liquid hanging from her necklace. “Poor, poor Teddy.”

“If Teddy’s so poor, why are you smiling,” grunted Hort.

Sophie looked out at her shirtless, raven-haired friend and two first-year Neverboys in sleek black uniforms lugging a marble statue of her across newly refurbished Evil Hall. “Are you implying that I’m happy about my two best friends being the laughingstock of Camelot? Are you implying that I take secret delight in whatever strains this humiliation has put upon their relationship?”

“You stalked Tedros for three years, tried to marry a murderous sorcerer to make him jealous, then held the whole Woods hostage when Tedros wouldn’t kiss you,” Hort said, rippled muscles shining as he slid Sophie’s statue through the red-and-gold ballroom. Above him, a few Nevergirls teetered on ladders to hang a chandelier, each crystal shaped like an S. “Plus, you’ve been writing Agatha for months trying to hijack the wedding planning and she won’t write you back and now you secretly want the wedding to bomb,” he added. “So yeah, not really implying. More just saying it.”

Sophie stared at him. “I want to be helpful to Aggie, Hort. She’s far away in a whole new kingdom, preparing for the biggest day of her life, and I want to be there for her. Am I hurt she hasn’t responded? A little, perhaps. But I’m not mad.”

“When you’re hurt, you get mad,” said Hort. “You get so mad that you turn witchy and start wars and people die. Check the history textbook.”

“Oh sweetie, that’s the past,” Sophie groaned, reclining against her glass throne, shaped like a five-pointed crown. “It’s a new year now and I’ve moved on, just like our former classmates who are off in the Woods, pursuing their fairy-tale quests. Look …”

She slipped the lid off the vial attached to her necklace and turned the vial upside down, emptying the gold liquid. But instead of falling to the floor, the liquid suspended midair, creating the outline of a large square before it magically filled in with a magnificent three-dimensional map of the Endless Woods. Scattered across kingdoms near and far were dozens of brightly colored figurines, like an army of toy soldiers, each resembling a fourth-year student from the School for Good and Evil and labeled with their name.

“And from the Quest Map, it looks like our friends are doing quite well,” said Sophie. “See, here’s Beatrix in Jaunt Jolie, fighting with Reena and Millicent as her sidekicks. … Here’s Ravan in Akgul, plundering the Iron Village with Drax as his henchman and Arachne as his mogrified newt. … Here’s Hester, Dot, and Anadil in Kyrgios on some ‘important’ mission they won’t tell me about, though it can’t be that important if they’re never in the same kingdom for more than a day. … And here’s Chaddick, off on Avalon Island by himself—mmm, strange; I thought he’d gone to Camelot to be Tedros’ knight. Why would he be in Avalon? Nothing but snow and tundra. No one even lives there. Well, except the Lady of the Lake, but she seals her castle’s gates to everyone except Merlin and Camelot’s king. … But it looks like Chaddick’s figure is inside her gates, doesn’t it? Maybe he’s flying over the island on a stymph or something. …”

“Blue means they’re winning their quest?” Hort asked.

“And red means they’re losing. That’s why my name is in blue,” preened Sophie, pointing to her figurine by the miniature school towers on the map. “My quest as Dean was to bring Evil into a new age, and clearly I’ve succeeded.”

“Well, my name’s in blue too,” said Hort, spotting his figure obscured by Sophie’s. “My students love me, I work out every night, and I’ve even started getting fan mail. Just the other day I got a note in a girl’s handwriting saying I was her favorite character from your story and that they didn’t make boys like me in Woods Beyond. Must be a Reader from your old town—”

“Or Castor playing a prank,” Sophie sniffed.

The puff went out of Hort’s chest. “Hey, wait a second. Isn’t it weird that every single name on this map is blue? Shouldn’t someone be losing their quest?”

“Ever since Clarissa gave me this map, we’ve been nothing but winners,” Sophie crowed. “So either I’m good luck or we’re a very talented group.”

“Or your map is broken, which would explain why it says Chaddick is inside the Lady of the Lake’s gates when that’s impossible,” said Hort. “Look, even Tedros and Agatha are in blue, which means, according to the Quest Map, they’re doing just fine.”

Sophie peered at him, then at Agatha’s and Tedros’ names in Camelot, just as blue as the others.

“That can’t be right,” she murmured. “How can Tedros be winning? I read Camelot’s papers every day. He’s the town fool! He’s a disgrace!”

She saw Hort smirking at her.

“Poor Teddy,” he said.

Sophie rose from her throne and sashayed past Hort. “Oh please, for all we know, Clarissa hexed his name to make him look good. Fairy godmothers love to cheat.” She swept her hand through the map, dispersing it to liquid and back into the vial on her neck. “And honestly, I can’t worry about a failed king and a princess who isn’t even queen and yet is somehow too busy to write her best friend. I have my school to run: 125 new Nevers who think Tedros and Agatha are old news and have their eyes on me. Plus, I have these pesky Readers we’ve accepted, who don’t have a clue. Why, on the very first day, a girl from Gavaldon caved in an entire classroom. So my hands are quite full, thank you. And even if I could spare a thought for Tedros—or any boy, for that matter—it would be a wasted one. I’m completely happy on my own, unattached and untroubled by the vagaries of love. Flah-sé-dah, that’s my new mantra: a blissful mélange of ‘laissez-faire’ and ‘la-di-da.’ Who needs the stress of love when there’s important work to do? I prefer a modest life now, dedicated to my students.”