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—
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—
Quests for Glory Page 25