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

The scims drove them smack into a screaming mob, brandishing fiery torches and weapons under a darkening sky. The crowd spread as far as Sophie could see in every direction, converging from four different kingdoms around a walled-off plot of land.

The Four Point, Sophie thought. It’s where her quest mates were headed on the Snake’s Quest Map. Now she and Agatha were heading there too.

Sophie spotted Camelot’s flag flying high above the Four Point.

Chills ran down her spine.

The Snake was bringing them all there for a reason.

Even so, the Four Point was still a hundred yards off with at least a thousand bodies in the way—

The scims paid no mind, barreling straight for the jagged-ice walls and thrusting the two girls into the crowd with reckless force. Sophie ducked her head, jammed between men and trolls, children and centaurs, scims gripping her tighter and tighter. She could hear the crowd as she squeezed through—

“King Tedros is on his way with his knights,” a horned ogre said to his family.

“But I thought Camelot had no knights anymore,” said his lumpy ogre daughter.

“Then he’ll fight single-handedly,” his humpbacked mother assured. “He’s King Arthur’s son.”

“A useless king, that’s what he is,” groused her surly son. “Don’t even have Excalibur.”

“Watch your mouth, boy. Heard folk say they saw him riding down Glass Mountain,” a pastel-dressed man cut in. “He’ll be here soon—”

“And he’ll make whoever’s responsible for this pay,” growled a troll.

Sophie’s head jerked up. If they were all waiting for Tedros to save them …

That means they’re on our side!

This whole crowd was on their side, Good and Evil! Everyone knew Agatha was Tedros’ princess and Sophie his friend. Everyone knew their fairy tale—

She swiveled her head left and right, frantically making eye contact with the ogres and everyone else near her. But as the scims rammed her and Agatha through the crowd, no one seemed to notice. Confused, Sophie started bucking against her binds, knocking hard into people and creatures, who whirled around, peering angrily, but then went back to surging towards the walls.

Undaunted, Sophie cried out: “Help! Someone help us!”

A few people glanced in her direction, perplexed.

Sophie tried harder. “We need help! It’s us, Sophie and Aga—”

A scim gagged her.

Can’t anyone see us? Sophie thought, flailing wildly. They’re acting like we’re—

She stiffened.

The scims on her and Agatha’s backs.

They were made of snake scales.

Which meant …

We’re invisible.

Snakeskin was the one fabric that could hide its wearers, given the right hex. Sophie had used it for her own devilish designs at school; indeed, her famous snakeskin cape now hung inside the Exhibition of Evil, cased in a special gallery dedicated to her and Agatha’s fairy tale. But now the Snake was cheekily ambushing her with snakeskin as if to turn her own fairy tale on its head. …

They were almost at the frozen walls. Just as Sophie could glimpse through them as to what lay inside, the scims yanked her and Agatha into the air, flying them up and over the walls, their backs caressing the Camelot flag flying over the Four Point. Embers of sun blinded her before they extinguished in the horizon, and it was only as she descended that Sophie could see what lay beneath her, illuminated by the crowd’s torch flames. …

Gallows.

Sophie lost her breath, scanning three rows of prisoners to be hanged, their nooses made of oily black scims. The first row had Hester, Anadil, Dot, Hort, and the rest of her crew mates, still chained together, hands cuffed behind their backs. … In the second row, leaders of Ever and Never kingdoms were strung up by the neck, which had drawn the raging crowd, desperate to save them. … But it was the third row that startled Sophie the most, loaded with fourth years from the School for Good and Evil, kidnapped from their quests. These captives gazed fearfully into the crowd, unable to see Sophie or Agatha descending to the stage in front of them. Ravan looked gaunt, his once-flowing black hair crudely shaved; Mona’s green skin was littered with bruises; Vex was missing a chunk of his pointy right ear; Kiko cried to herself, burn marks on her arms. More classmates teetered on trapdoors near them, all injured in one way or another: Brone … Giselle … Drax. …

The last light in the sky went dark as the scims parachuted Sophie towards the wooden platform, Agatha floating down next to her. Their feet touched the stage—

Instantly the scims scattered off them, stripping them of their invisibility and revealing them to the mob.

The crowd froze in shock.

Agatha spun around, finally able to see. She took in the stunned prisoners, her eyes assessing the scene like a panther’s, her fingertip glowing gold. “The Snake … Where is he?”

Sophie scanned the stage, her fingertip glowing pink. “I don’t see him!”

A buzz swept through the crowd, hopeful and intense—

“IT’S TEDROS’ FRIENDS!” someone cried.

“THAT MEANS HE’S HERE!” shouted another.

“WE’RE SAVED!”

“Hurry up, you nitwits!” Hester barked at Sophie from the front row, demon strung up next to her. “Cut us loose!”

“No, the children first!” the King of Jaunt Jolie said—

Sophie was about to sprint for his young princes, but then she saw Agatha hadn’t moved, her friend’s eyes wide and pinned ahead.

Slowly Sophie turned to see the scims reassembling at the front of the stage, globbing and sticking to each other at lightning speed, until they’d reformed the Snake, his mask glimmering green in the mob’s torchlight.

It’s why Agatha had silenced her in the garden.

The Snake had been with them all along. Split up into scims on their backs, waiting for the moment to reunite.

Now the Snake’s cold blue gaze crept across the crowd, which was silent as a tomb. “For thousands of years, you thought your pen told you the Truth,” he said, voice resounding. “The pen of Good and Evil. The pen whose stories you have believed without the slightest doubt. And what does that pen tell you now? It tells you I am the one who attacks your kingdoms. It tells you I am Evil. That I am the enemy.” The Snake paused. “But what if I tell you everything you think is Truth is Lies?”

His eyes moved to the flag flying over them. “You won’t believe me, of course. No one will. Not even your greatest heroes,” he said, glancing at Sophie and Agatha.

“You think a Lion is your only hope. You think only a Lion can save you. All of you. That’s what Camelot promised. A Lion who can destroy Evil like me. A Lion with King Arthur’s blood.”

He looked back down at the people. “You wait for this Lion named Tedros. You wait for him to answer your prayers. Yet here we are on the Lion’s land … with the Lion’s princess … with the Lion’s friends … with the rulers who call on the Lion to lead. … Everyone but the Lion himself,” he mocked. “He stays in his castle while your kingdoms burn. He stays in his castle while his friends die. He stays in his castle like a coward.”

He turned to the crowd. “Say it with me. ‘Cowardly. Little. Lion.’”

Nobody made a sound.

The Snake stabbed out his finger and the noose around the youngest prince of Jaunt Jolie strangled him. The prince choked, legs twitching.

The crowd screamed in horror—

“Say it with me,” the Snake hissed. “Cowardly. Little. Lion.”

“Cowardly Little Lion!” the crowd shouted.

“So he can hear you from his castle in the sky,” the Snake demanded.

“Cowardly Little Lion!” the crowd yelled louder.

“He can’t hear you!” the Snake lashed.

“COWARDLY LITTLE LION!” the crowd thundered, shuddering the land.

The Snake dropped his finger and the prince’s noose relaxed, the young child wheezing for breath. His mother and father crumbled into sobs.

“Cowardly Little Lion indeed,” said the Snake.

His eyes flicked to Sophie and Agatha. “Well, then. Let’s see if he comes out of his cage.”

He whirled to the mob and with a wave of his hand, snuffed out the sea of torches.

The stage plunged into darkness.

In the vast, empty night, two dozen nooses glowed green, fluorescing like electric eels, lighting up the prisoners with heads looped through.

At the front of the stage, Sophie and Agatha faced off against the Snake, awash in the gallows’ alien green haze.

Beyond the iced walls, the crowd was hushed in the dark, like an audience in wait of a play. Sophie could see them looking back anxiously, searching for any sign of Tedros.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t write off the Lion so soon. By now he knows of your predicament,” the Snake said to the girls, the edge coming off his voice. “I’ll give him ten more seconds to show his face.”

Neither Sophie nor Agatha moved.

“Aren’t you going to help your friends?” the Snake said serenely. “1 … 2 …”

“Go!” Kiko shrieked.

Sophie twirled to Agatha. “I’ll take front row.”

“He’s lying, Sophie,” Agatha breathed—

“3 … ,” said the Snake.

Sophie took off, shooting the back nooses with her pink glow. Agatha unleashed her gold glow at the front row’s.

“It’s not working!” Sophie shouted—

“Magic won’t break it!” said Dot.

“Try something else!” said Anadil, her three rats dangling from tiny nooses next to her.

“4 … 5 …”

“Break the wood!” Nicola cried, eyeing the beams over their heads.

Agatha and Sophie both fired at them—

The beams only turned thicker and stronger.

“6 …”

“Hurry!” Hester bellowed.

Sophie magically sealed the trapdoors around her feet, but the doors grew weaker, threatening to break.

“Spells are backfiring!” Hort said.

“7 … 8 …”

Sophie shot the frozen walls with her glow, hoping to shatter them and let the crowd storm in—

Nothing.

“9 …”

Agatha climbed the beams and tried to undo the nooses by hand. They shocked her like lightning and she fell to the platform—

“10,” said the Snake.

The two girls turned to him, panting.

“And still no Lion … ,” the Snake tutted. “So now the real show begins.”

He opened his palm and a pack of playing cards appeared with a tuft of smoke. He spread them out in his fingers, revealing some of their faces—

Not card faces, Sophie realized. Actual faces. For each of the cards had a prisoner painted on it: Dot … Bogden … Nicola … the King of Bloodbrook …

“Each of you takes a turn picking a card,” the Snake said to Sophie and Agatha. “Whoever you pick, their door drops.”

The crowd drew a breath, cocking towards the horizon like panicked chickens. Surely Tedros would stop this. Surely he would slay this villain the way King Arthur had slain many before. …

“Why are you doing this?” Agatha rasped.

The Snake’s eyes glittered like gems. “Ask my father.”

He held out the deck. “Pick.”

Sophie looked at Agatha, paralyzed.

Agatha slackened, her cheeks bright red.

Then she picked the first card, the back of it painted with the Snake’s crest.

Her hands shook as she turned the card over.

The face on it was Kiko’s.

The door under Kiko’s feet dropped open but Agatha was already diving, snagging her friend by the legs and pulling her back onto the platform so she couldn’t fall through.

It happened so fast that the crowd didn’t make a sound.

Agatha stayed on her knees, hugging Kiko’s calves with all of her strength, as Kiko hung from the noose at an angle. If Agatha let her go, her friend would drop and break her neck. Which meant both of them were trapped in their position.

“Don’t leave me,” Sophie heard Kiko whimper.

“I won’t,” Agatha assured.

“Bad things happen when you leave me,” Kiko said. “Bad things happen to all of us.”

“Your turn,” a voice said.

Sophie looked up to see the Snake glaring at her.

He held out the deck of cards.

There was a flatness in his eyes, a ruthless insistence on the rules of the game as if he knew precisely how it would end.

“Pick,” he said.

Sophie did.

The card was Nicola’s.

Across the platform, Nicola’s trapdoor opened.

In a flash, Sophie sprinted across the stage and tackled the first year just before she fell through, shoving her to the side of the opening and holding her by the ankles.

Sophie looked up and saw Nicola goggling at her. Agatha too.

“Guess we’re friends now,” Sophie said to Nicola.

With no sign of Tedros, the crowd revolted, battering the walls with renewed force—

Suddenly, thirty young pirates broke through the crowd, seizing the hardest protestors from behind, swords to their necks. The rest of the mob went quiet with fear.

“It seems we have a dilemma … ,” the Snake continued, watching the two girls in opposite corners, clutching their friends. “Because someone has to pick next.”

Neither girl budged.

The terrified crowd glanced between them and the Snake.

“Ah, I see,” the Snake said. “It seems you’re both a bit tied up. Well, then.”

He held out the deck in his open palm.

“I’ll pick.”

He turned the first card over.

Hort.

Sophie and Agatha whirled to each other. Either one of them had to let go of their friend or Hort would hang.

“Go!” Nicola said to Sophie.

“No! Stay!” Hort cried.

Tears fogged Sophie’s eyes. She couldn’t watch Hort die—

His trapdoor opened. The noose around his neck yanked tight.

Sophie and Nicola screamed—

Instantly, the rest of the prisoners in the row kicked their legs out, using the chain cuffed across them to swing like a five-headed dragon: Hester, Anadil, Willam, Bogden, and finally Dot, who thrust her legs and caught Hort’s backside with her shins before he fell through the door. With every ounce of strength, she held him up by the tailbone, their bodies planked at right angles, like trapeze performers midflight.

Sophie buckled in relief, briefly losing grip of Nicola but catching her just in time.

Hort was dripping sweat, rope burns around his neck.

“Thanks, Dot,” he croaked.

“Don’t thank me, thank Uncle Miyazaki,” Dot panted, smiling over at Nicola. She looked back at Hort. “Though I’ll take a date too if you’re offering.”

Hort coughed.

The Snake watched all of this, his body still, his green mask obscuring any reaction, except for his winnowing blue eyes.

“So much for the rules of the game,” he said.

With a flourish, he flung the cards into the air, dozens of painted faces glinting in green glow as they fluttered to the stage.

Sophie locked eyes with Agatha, their hearts stopped.

Every trapdoor started to magically open, all the prisoners about to drop through.

The crowd reeled, preparing for mass carnage—

Suddenly fire-tipped arrows bombed down from the sky, just missing the Snake and igniting the wooden platform.

The Snake swiveled, taken by surprise, the gallows doors still half-open.

In the distance, the mob parted a path as two figures in buckskin tunics blazed through, astride a red-spotted deer: a blond shooting arrows from a bow as someone behind, dark-skinned with long brown hair, lit arrows on fire with her purple fingerglow. They were being chased by at least fifty bellowing pirates with swords and spears, trying to catch up with the sprinting deer. Sophie recognized the riders at once—

“Beatrix and Reena,” Sophie marveled.

And the deer was …

“Millicent,” Agatha realized.

More of Beatrix’s arrows rained over the wall, aimed at the Snake—

He split into a thousand squealing scims, dispersing like leeches to elude them.

Reenergized, the crowd came to Beatrix’s and Reena’s defense, rushing headlong at the pirates, while onstage flames from the missed arrows started to spread.

Agatha whirled to Sophie. “Fire kills the scims! Just like fire killed Rafal’s zombies!”

She grabbed one of Beatrix’s missed arrows and lit Kiko’s noose, searing away the shrieking eel and setting her classmate free.

Kiko blubbered: “I thought I was going to die and then I would see my beautiful Tristan up there in heaven and I would say—”

“Kiko!” Agatha said, glaring at all the prisoners still hanging.

“Good point,” said Kiko.

Like a rabbit, Kiko dashed across the blazing stage, grabbing arrows out of the wood and lighting the scaly nooses on fire along with the chains between prisoners, starting with Nicola’s.

“I have no idea who you are, but Sophie doesn’t help anyone unless they’re important,” Kiko cheeped, before burning through Nicola’s cuffs, which let Sophie drop the first year to the stage, grab one of Kiko’s arrows, and start helping the others in the row, while Agatha took the second and third rows.

“Hurry, Sophie!” Agatha cried, as she freed the young princes of Jaunt Jolie. “The fire is spreading!”

Sophie ran to Hort first. But out of the side of her eye, she glimpsed Beatrix and Reena outside the iced walls, cornered by the pair of young pirates they’d seen kicking cages in Castle Jolie. The boys had stripped the Evergirls of their bows and arrows and were aiming the arrows back at their heads. Beatrix and Reena leapt off Millicent and hewed together, confronting the pirates with lit fingers. …

“Man-wolf. Now,” Sophie ordered Hort as she freed him.

“Aye-aye, Captain,” Hort said, lighting his fingerglow and bursting out of his breeches a mighty, hairy beast, before scaling the Camelot flagpole in a single bound and bellyflopping onto the pirates with a howl.

As Kiko, Nicola, and the other freed prisoners helped burn away more nooses, Sophie felt Agatha seize her from behind.

“Whole stage will collapse!” Agatha said, covering her mouth from the smoke. “We have to get everyone out of here!”

Sophie squinted up at the high walls that sealed them into the Four Point, while the war against the pirates raged beyond them. “But how can we get them over that?”

“Leave it to me,” Hester grunted, prying between the girls, fingerglow lit. The tattooed demon on her neck engorged with blood, turning redder, redder, until it tore out of its chains and flew off her skin, swelling to three-dimensional life. Mumbling hissy gibberish, it began snatching prisoners from the stage, three at a time, starting with kings and queens, and ferrying them over the walls and to the ground beyond, where throngs of citizens shielded them and spirited them back towards their kingdoms.

“Move faster, Hester!” Agatha cried as the witch directed the demon with her glow from inside the Four Point. “Stage is burning up!”

“And I’m on the stage so believe me when I say I’m moving as fast as I can!” Hester berated.

Eyes watering from the smoke, Sophie weaved around the fires, intending to free Mona and Brone next—

But now she saw Hort’s man-wolf slammed up against the glass wall in front of her by tattooed Thiago, who’d pinned the tip of his pirate blade against Hort’s hairy belly.

“Knew I’d seen yer grubby lil’ face before,” Thiago seethed. “Scourie’s son. Bragged ye’d be the first man-wolf pirate at Hook’s Parley years ago. Took a blood oath to help us fight the Lost Boys. Instead ye turn round and kill Hook’s captain like yer Pan’s stooge. Ye killed my father.” He dug his blade into Hort’s stomach, drawing drops of blood. “Shoulda bragged ye’d be the first fink.”

“I did what any true man would have, unlike your lot,” Hort growled in pain. “You kill for money. You follow a leader with no soul. You’re the real Lost Boys.”

Thiago cut him deeper. “Bleats a pirate who killed one of ’is own.”

“What I killed wasn’t your father,” Hort insisted.

“Tell yerself all the lies ye want,” Thiago snarled. “But this I know fer sure. The thing I’m about to kill is you.”

He gripped the sword hilt to run Hort through, but Hort grabbed the blade by the tip and muscled it away from his stomach, the steel slicing into his hand. Before Thiago could react, Hort slapped him across the head as hard as he could with his big, hairy palm. The pirate wheeled wildly, swinging his sword and biting it into Hort’s bicep, spattering the frozen wall with blood and obscuring Sophie’s view.

Spinning around, Sophie saw Hester’s demon had rescued nearly all the prisoners from the stage, with only her, Agatha, Hester, Anadil, and Dot left. On the battlefield, Willam, Bogden, Beatrix, Reena, and Nicola were fighting pirates with weapons flung at them by fleeing citizens—

Hester’s demon swooped to rescue Sophie, his beady eyes flashing: “Lookie missie witchie fishie!”

“No, take the witches!” Sophie said, ducking his grab. “You three! Go help Hort!”

The witches gaped at Sophie, then at Agatha, as if they didn’t trust Sophie could possibly be deferring her own rescue.

“Go!” Agatha cried.

Immediately the three witches hooked on to the demon’s claws and flew up and over the walls. As he streaked down, Hester’s demon attacked Thiago, blasting red firebolts from the demon’s mouth, while Anadil’s rats grew twenty feet tall and crashed into the fray, rampaging through pirates as the three witches rode on the rats’ backs, shooting stun spells right and left.

Onstage, Sophie and Agatha were the only two left behind, pushed to the edge by the fires.

“Aggie, we don’t have time for the demon to come back,” Sophie said. “It’s spreading too fast!”

“Maybe this’ll work,” said Agatha, thrusting her glowing fingertip into the air. Heavy rain started falling over the Four Point, dousing the blaze. It was one of Agatha’s trusty spells from her first year at school—

Then, all of a sudden, the fires seemed to grow stronger in the rain … the orange flames turning a glowing emerald green. …

Agatha’s eyes bulged. “What in the—”

But now there was something falling towards them, straight out of the sky: a deer bounding over the wall, hooftip glowing red, and landing on the stage, which half crumbled like a giant sinkhole, before the deer recovered, lurching for the two girls.

“Come on! Get on my back!” Millicent said.

Sophie and Agatha leapt onto her, just as the gallows imploded in the green flames. Millicent sprinted for the walls, her legs tensing with power, about to magically propel over the barrier—

Something slammed into Sophie and Agatha like harpoons, bashing them off the deer’s back and pinning them into opposing walls.

Scims.

They glued down the girls’ wrists and legs and spread them against the inside of the glass, like mice caught in a trap.

Petrified, Sophie swung her head towards Agatha, the two of them struggling against the scaly black eels.

At the center of the stage, the Snake reformed again, rising out of the green bonfire like a phoenix.

Millicent charged for him, hurdling over the holes in the stage.

The Snake calmly peeled one of the scims off his chest, which rolled up in his palm like a tiny tube. Instantly it turned to shiny black steel, razor sharp at both ends.

Millicent leapt, hooves aimed at his chest, poised to crush him—

The Snake hurled the scim at her, spearing the deer in the heart. She fell down dead and burnt up in the green flames.

Outside the walls, the students saw Millicent fall and stopped fighting, paralyzed in horror. The pirates seized them at once, knives and swords to their throats. With a pirate’s dagger to her own neck, Hester stalled her demon, as did Anadil her rats, afraid to cost any more friends their lives. Hort gnashed his teeth, feeling Thiago’s sword point on his spine, poised to slice him open. Nicola, Bogden, Dot, and Willam were all trapped by pirates, along with the rest of the questing Evers and Nevers.