The School for Good and Evil 3-book Collection: The Camelot Years (Books 4- 6)

“Four Point?” Wesley raised his brows. “Should be quite a show, then.”

The pirates snickered before they each curled the chain around their boots and yanked it, sending the kids swinging to their feet and stumbling forward.

As they trudged through the hot, humid gardens, Hort kept peeping back at the castle.

“Hey, why does that pirate keep giving you strange looks?” Dot whispered in front of him.

Hort looked up and saw Thiago eyeing him again as he muttered something to Wesley.

Hort tried to keep his face in shadow.

“You know him, don’t you?” Dot said.

“Shhh,” Hort whispered. “He’s Smee’s son. I recognize him from a Pirate Parley that Dad took me to in Neverland.”

“Smee? Captain Hook’s henchman? You’re friends with his son?” Dot retorted. “Then why are we chained up here like dogs—”

“Because I killed Smee, you fool.”

Dot stared at him.

“Last year during the war against Rafal,” Hort whispered. “Granted it was Smee’s zombie, but even so. If he recognizes me, we’re dead meat. Luckily Thiago hasn’t seen me for a few years and I’ve buffed up and changed my hair, but not enough that he won’t figure it out if we don’t stop talking about it.”

Hort looked back anxiously at the castle again—

“Hort, sweetie. We’re well aware the Snake has Sophie,” Dot simpered. “We all heard the scream and we’re scared for her. Well, not really her, since she’s horrible, but Agatha at least, since she’s the only one who can command our ship and get us out of here. Meanwhile, we’ve been taken captive by pirates, are being marched to our doom, and this chain not only won’t turn into chocolate, but I’m also pretty sure we saw a piece of it turn into an eel back there and fly away. So if I were you, I’d stop worrying about rescuing Sophie and use those lovely buffed-up muscles of yours to rescue us.”

“I thought weasel and Sophie were old news,” said Anadil in front of Dot.

“Left ‘new news’ crying with thorns in her bum,” said Hester in front of her.

Hort glanced back at Nicola, who averted her eyes. Hort sighed gloomily. Here he thought he’d moved on to a girl who was smart and pretty and normal, a girl who actually liked him for his weird, scuzzy self, and then when it came time to show her he liked her too …

He’d picked You-Know-Who instead.

Again.

He forced himself to think of other things, like why they were heading to the Four Point … or how that piece of chain had turned into a flying eel … or where Beatrix’s quest team was. …

But Sophie’s wail still echoed in his head.

Is the Snake torturing her?

Will I ever see her again?

Is she … dead?

He whirled around, but the castle was obscured by colorful groves, which seemed to have sprouted up around him. He squinted over lilac hedges—

“Would she rescue you?” Dot asked, staring at him again.

Hort frowned. “Um, I don’t think that matters—”

“Would Nicola rescue you?” Dot asked.

Hort blinked.

“It does matter, then,” said Dot, archly.

She turned back around.

Hort’s eyes widened as a tree sprinkled white petals on his hair like wedding rice. It’s that simple, isn’t it? If he stopped being an idiot, he could have a girlfriend right now. A real girlfriend kinder than Sophie and more attentive and definitely less psycho … a girlfriend he could take to Halloween haunts and go swimming in the school pool with and dance with at No-Balls and collect fresh beetles to lay on his dad’s grave every Sunday …

“Wait, the Four Point is Camelot’s land,” he whispered to Dot suddenly. “Isn’t that what the beaver said? There’s a chapter about it in A Student’s History of the Woods too. … It’s a memorial to King Arthur. No one is allowed there, Good or Evil. …”

“Didn’t learn much in history, to be honest,” Dot whispered back. “First Sader dies teaching it and then his sister takes over and teaches us the wrong history and then she dies and then the School Master takes over and then he dies and now you’re teaching history, which means you’ll probably die soon, especially since the Storian didn’t include you on our quest to begin with.” Dot pursed her lips. “Goodness. I really shouldn’t think out loud.”

“Forget all that,” Hort said, frowning. “If no one’s allowed on Camelot’s land, why are they taking us there?”

“Because then Camelot’s king will have to rescue us,” Hester cut in, glaring back at them. “A king whose sword is stuck in a stone.”

“Tedros without his sword … ,” said Dot. “Doesn’t inspire confidence, does it?”

“We need to escape now,” Hester demanded. “And by ‘we,’ I mean the whole crew, Agatha, Sophie, and Beatrix’s team included. Questers stick together at all costs.”

“Can’t you turn into a man-wolf and bust us out of here?” Anadil said, swiveling to Hort.

“I can’t wolfify with my hands like this; I need to point my glow at my chest,” said Hort. “What about your rats?”

“Thugs got them too,” Anadil moped.

Hort peered over her shoulder to see her three pets trapped in a chain link, heads squeezed through the loop and tiny feet dangling, like a rat version of an iron maiden.

Meanwhile, Hester’s demon jangled its chains as if to preempt the question.

“So we got nothing,” said Hort.

“Except the word ‘wolfify,’” Dot wisped, eyeing his sweaty chest. “So sensual.”

Hort was stonefaced.

“We need to talk to Nicola,” Dot added, clearing her throat. “She saved our life twice. Maybe she can do it again.”

Everyone looked at Hester for approval, Anadil included.

Hester grimaced. “Fine.”

They glanced back at Nicola, concealed behind Willam and Bogden, who were still twittering. From what Hort could see of her, Nicola was gazing off glassily into the gardens.

“How can I talk to her from here?” Hort asked Dot.

“Send a message through us,” a voice said.

Hort turned to see Willam eavesdropping.

“We’ve been trying to come up with our own plan to help us all escape,” said Willam, red hair glinting in the sun. “I can’t do magic and neither can Bogden because he says he doesn’t have a fingerglow yet. But we figured out we’re both good at fortune telling. Oh, and playing bongos.”

“Helpful. Ask Nicola what we should do, then,” said Hort.

Willam whispered to Bogden, who whispered to Nicola.

Nicola suddenly looked alert, meeting Hort’s eyes for a half-second, before she whispered to Bogden, who whispered to Willam, who swiveled to Hort—

“She says this is like the story Uncle Miyazaki. If we can’t bust off the chain, we all have to work as one unit. Like a snake, with Hester at the head and Nicola at the tail. That is, if Hort still remembers who Nicola is. She told me I had to say that verbatim and make sure everyone heard.”

Hester, Dot, Anadil, Willam, and Bogden glowered at Hort.

“Well, tell her that if we get out of this alive, I’ll take her on a date to Dumpy’s Dumpling House,” Hort promised.

Willam whispered to Bogden, who whispered to Nicola, who sent her reply up the chain—

“She says Sophie can’t come on the date and that it can’t be at a place called Dumpy’s,” said Willam.

“Beauty and the Feast in Sherwood Forest is exquisite,” Dot offered. “Robin Hood took me there once. I didn’t tell Daddy.”

Hort gave her a strange look before turning to Willam. “Tell her she has a deal. First date. Somewhere romantic. Just me and her,” he said, smiling, which Willam was about to pass down the chain, but Nicola had gleaned the message because she was smiling too.

“Glad you have your love life sorted since we’re about to die,” Hester snarled. “How are we supposed to work like one unit when there’s seven of us on this chain, including two first years and an altar boy—”

But the pirates were watching now, clearly listening, and Hester went mum.

Thiago gave Hort another knife-sharp look before murmuring to Wesley.

Ornate gates lay ahead, made of blue-and-white porcelain, marking the end of royal property. Though the gates were unlatched with plenty of room to pass through, Wesley kicked them ajar with his silver-tipped boot, shattering the bottom of a gate. Doves scattered from the trees above.

Dad was a pirate and never acted like these goons, Hort thought. That’s because he and his dad had gone to school, where they’d learned that even though Good and Evil were eternal enemies, the two sides were in balance. The two sides had respect.

Except the Snake and his minions had no respect for Good or Evil. They attacked both sides the same.

A troubling thought dawned on Hort. If the Snake didn’t have respect for either side, what did he have respect for? And what would happen if he gained control of Camelot? You’d have a king of the most powerful realm in the land of Good and Evil who spat in the face of both.

What would happen to the Storian? he thought, chest pounding. What would happen to the Woods?

The broken gate creaked behind him, reminding him of Sophie’s scream. Goose bumps peppered his skin. For all they knew, Sophie and Agatha were dead by now. …

Sooty clouds seeped into the sky, veiling the sun, and a damp cool wind snaked into the garden with a soggy, moldy smell. Hort could see the path widening ahead, the trees and clover growing sparser around it.

He heard something now, drifting in on the wind. A dark rumble, like an elephant shaking the earth.

“What is that?” Hort whispered.

It was getting louder now, slashes of high-pitched noise piercing the thunderous roll.

“Whatever it is, it doesn’t sound good,” Willam said behind him.

The young pirates peeked back and grinned.

The path was gone entirely now, the forest thinning out to open grass that craned steeply uphill, with the ominous buzz coming from beyond it. Hort followed his fellow prisoners up the slope, his legs burning, pushing the limits of fatigue. He could hear Dot panting and Bogden’s puny wheezes, but no one flagged, the amplifying rumbles propelling them forward. Hort’s heart beat faster, surging blood into his muscles, begging him to run and get his friends out of here as fast as he could. But there was no escape from what was coming. It was time to find out the Evil they faced.

Soon they were at the crest, sopping with sweat. Thiago and Wesley fell back with leering smiles, ceding way for their captives to see what lay down below.

The seven crew members huddled together in a ball, the chain folding around their bodies. They peered over the hill.

Hort instantly felt sick.

From his vantage point, he could see four kingdoms in the distance converge on a plot of land in the middle, about 100 yards wide and 50 yards long. From the east, he glimpsed the midnight-blue castle and rising pink moon of his home kingdom, Bloodbrook; from the south, the green peapods of Kingdom Kyrgios; from the north, the kingdom of Ravenbow, with its steaming rivers of blood and towers made of bone; from the west, the outlying vales of Jaunt Jolie, awash in Easter-egg colors. All four kingdoms smashed up against the Four Point, sealed off by four walls made of frozen water, jagged and brittle, as if a waterfall had frozen midflow. The iced walls were at least fifty feet high over the Four Point, shivering with sonic roars.

But now Hort saw what was making the noise.

Bodies.

Thousands and thousands of them—and not just human: dwarves, giants, trolls, dwarves, fairies, nymphs, goblins, and more—assailing the frozen walls from every direction, screaming and kicking and battering them with weapons, revolting against what was inside.

Slowly, Hort’s eyes lifted.

Inside the Four Point, a colossal gallows loomed beneath a pink-and-gray sky like an open-air theater. Dozens of nooses hung from beams above the high wooden platform, arranged in three distinct rows.

Only the nooses weren’t made out of ropes, Hort realized, as they gleamed in the few scraps of sun coming through the clouds. They were made of thick black scales and instantly familiar. Because they reminded him of … eels.

That wasn’t the worst part, though.

The worst part was that the second and third rows of nooses were already filled, the prisoners’ heads slipped through the scaly black loops and their feet planted firmly on trapdoors beneath them. The moment the trapdoors opened, each person would fall through and be hanged.

High above the prisoners, Camelot’s flag fluttered from a pole speared through the stage.

Heart racing, Hort tried to see past the empty first row of nooses to the faces of the prisoners in the second and third rows, but the darkening sky had left most of them in shadow—

“Isn’t that the King of Jaunt Jolie?” Dot said.

As Hort’s eyes adjusted, he made out the king’s sullied robes and broken crown. In the nooses next to him were his two young boys and his queen—a queen that the Snake had already declared dead.

“Get everyone to think she’s dead and then kill her in front of them,” Hester murmured. “Make them grieve twice. What better way to scare people?”

“Not even Granny would have thought of that and she was the White Witch,” said Anadil, unnerved.

Panicked citizens of Jaunt Jolie bashed against the iced walls in their pastel-colored clothes, screaming and begging for their leaders to be saved, for the young princes to be spared. …

As they listened to these pleas, Hort felt his fellow crew members instinctively huddle closer.

“Wait, that’s the king of Bloodbrook!” he said, recognizing the great gray man-wolf who led his home kingdom, noosed up in the second row. Citizens of Bloodbrook, including dozens of man-wolves, beat the walls with weapons and tried to ram them down.

“Walls are still holding,” said Hester. “Even with the Lady of the Lake powerless, whatever charm she put on the waterfalls hasn’t broken yet.”

“But if the walls are holding, how’d the prisoners get inside?” Dot asked.

Hester looked at her.

“Hester,” said Anadil.

Hester tracked her gaze to a black-haired man in a noose with gold flakes in his long beard and hair.

“Pea-man,” said Dot, remembering the Grand Vizier they’d interviewed to be School Master.

Ravenbow too had its queen strung up and its people rushing the frozen walls, desperate to set her free.

Once upon a time, leaders of Good and Evil fought over this piece of land.

Now they’d be killed on it together.

But there were no guards on the stage, Hort realized … no pirates or henchmen or executioners …

Dot was right. How had the leaders been captured?

And who was going to hang them?

“Hort?”

He turned and saw Nicola nestled in next to him.

“The first row,” she said.

Hort followed her eyes to the empty nooses, black scales shining.

“There’s seven of them,” said Nicola, trembling. “And there’s seven of us.”

Everyone stared at her, overhearing—then at each other, then at Hester. But even the fearless witch looked afraid. So did her demon.

Nicola’s eyes welled up. “I want to go home, Hort,” she whispered. “I want to see Pa.”

Gone was the cool, unflappable girl, replaced by a first-year Reader far away from her real life.

It only made Hort want to protect her more. The way Nicola had protected him and their crew.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the spot where the two pirates had just been—

“They’re gone!” Hort blurted, spinning to the group. “The pirates aren’t here. There’s no one guarding us! We have to run—we have to run now—”

A boy’s scream came from the valley, rising over the roar: “HELP!”

Hort stopped cold.

Another scream echoed, this time a girl’s: “PLEASE HELP US!”

Hort’s face went white and he saw the three witches gaping at him with the same expression.

Slowly they looked back down at the gallows.

Not at the empty first row or the second filled with royal leaders … but at the third row, which they couldn’t quite see. The row where the screams had come from. Screams that made Hort’s stomach flip.

Because one scream had been Kiko’s.

And the other scream was Ravan’s.

“He has our classmates,” Hort rasped, making out Mona’s green skin … Brone’s bald head and hulking frame. …

“Hey, guys,” said Nicola—

“We’re not leaving our friends down there,” said Hester, fear burning to anger. “Questers defend each other, no matter what. We have to help them.”

“But how can we get over the walls if we’re chained up?” Anadil asked.

“And how can we get through the crowd?” said Hort.

“Guys,” Nicola said.

All eyes went to her.

“They’re gone,” said Nicola.

“We know the pirates are gone,” Hort said, impatient, “that’s why we need to go right no—”

But Nicola wasn’t looking at where the pirates had been.

She was looking at the nooses.

The front row of them.

All missing.

“Huh? Where did they g—” Hort started.

Then he gasped.

So did everyone else, the chain of teenagers suddenly lurching backwards, each of them tripping over their feet—

Because scaly nooses were flying towards them, over the valley, over the crowd, like bats out of hell.

No one had time to scream.

The eels lashed around their necks like vises and ripped the crew into the air, bodies still chained in a line. Hort bucked madly, feeling Nicola choking beside him, but the nooses just squeezed harder, draining their breath, before all at once, the eels dragged the prisoners down towards the gallows, seven prey quivering before the kill.

20

SOPHIE

The Lion and the Snake

Sophie awoke to the smell of roses.

She opened her eyes, feeling their petals drizzle down her back. A single wine-red bloom lay cupped in the lap of her baby-blue dress. Her body was moving, magically coasting past bushes and flower beds as if pushed by a strong wind. White leaves and florets fluttered from trees overhead like an enchanted snow.

I’m in a dream, she thought, her eyes still on the rose in her lap, its lush folds sparkling under a pink sunset.

Not only because she was magically gliding through a garden under someone else’s power, but because the rose matched the one Tedros had thrown into the crowd on the first day of school, hunting for the girl who would be his princess … a rose Agatha had caught just like this … the happy ending to a fairy tale that hadn’t yet begun. …

But now the rose was in Sophie’s lap, which meant it must be a dream, for this rose wasn’t meant for her. If there was one lesson the whole world learned from her fairy tale, it was certainly that.

Unless it isn’t Tedros’ rose at all, Sophie thought. Unless someone else threw it and I caught it, just like Agatha caught her prince’s. Which means this is a new fairy tale and this time I won’t end up alone. There’s someone else in this story … someone just for me. …

Sophie looked up, curious … fearful … hopeful. …

Her face changed.

It was no dream.

Agatha glided beside her, bound, blindfolded, and gagged by the Snake’s slimy, scaly scims. Not only that, but the entire back of her best friend’s body was covered in scims like a coat of armor, from the dome of her hair, down to her calves, down to the soles of her shoes, not a shred of clothes or skin left bare. With high-pitched gurgles, like a chorus of helium-voiced rats, the scims pushed Agatha along, twitching and waggling, as she writhed blindly under her binds.

Sophie grew aware of the drizzling feeling on her back again … the one she’d dreamily ascribed to falling flowers. …

Dread rising, she peeked over her own shoulder and saw that she too was coated in thick, gooey scims, all the way down to her dainty slippers. Fear bolted her spine straight, upending the rose, which fell to the ground and smashed under her feet. A scream stalled in her throat.

“Aggie,” she wheezed. “What do we—”

But Agatha shook her head sharply and Sophie read the gesture at once: He’s listening.

Sophie’s eyes darted around, looking for the Snake in the garden.

Where is he?

The scims were moving her faster now, through blue-and-white gates and up a steep grassy slope. Sophie looked at Agatha, who was unable to see or talk, her friend’s body helpless to the scims. A swell of panic crashed over her. Sophie liked to pretend the two of them were a team, but in truth, it was always Agatha who took charge, Agatha who kept her safe. No matter how much of a witch Sophie could be, she was Agatha’s princess, riding behind her on her white horse. Maybe that’s why Agatha had been drawn to Nicola as a friend. Because she wasn’t a spinning top like Sophie. Because with Sophie, Agatha always had to take the reins of the story when it counted.

Only now the roles were reversed, with Agatha left helpless. Which meant for once, it was Sophie who had the reins.

She tried to remember what had happened in the Map Room. Slowly it all came back to her … the Quest Map with their classmates’ names … the storybook that called Tedros a Snake and the Snake a Lion … the new pen he vowed would shatter their fairy tale forever. …

All of these were pieces of a bigger plan, the Snake said. A plan Chaddick had figured out.

It’s why he’d had to die.

The Snake wasn’t Rafal. That much was clear.

And yet, he seemed to know her, Agatha, and Tedros intimately … as if he’d come from inside their storybook. …

Something had happened in that story. Something that made him want revenge.

So who was he, then?

Terror attacks.

Arthur’s blood.

Tedros’ crown.

All of it was connected. How?

Aric.

He’d been friends with Aric, he said. Close friends.

But Aric was dead, slain during the School Master’s war … so the Snake and Aric had to have been friends before that. …

Could the Snake have been a student at school?

She pictured the Snake’s long, youthful body … his lean, perfect muscles … his glacial blue eyes. …

Or was it someone Aric met before school?

Sophie’s forehead throbbed. Think harder.

But all she could think about was the Snake pinning her against the pillar, with his minty Tedros scent, before he fractured into a thousand eels, which came flying towards her. …

That’s when Sophie had passed out.

Now these same eels were plastered across hers and Agatha’s backs, wheeling them around like corpses. Sophie felt faint once more, but she forced herself to stay conscious.

The scims pushed the two girls down the hill, through a gathering mist, the fading sun infusing it with a bruised-purple glow. Over the scims’ loud burbles, Sophie heard dark rumbling ahead. But she couldn’t see anything but thick, gray fog. …

Sophie coughed.

Not fog. Smoke.

Only now it was clearing and Sophie’s eyes flared wide—