“That was Rafal’s weakness, wasn’t it?” the Snake said, curling closer. “Kissing beautiful girls.”
Sophie’s clammy palm found Agatha’s beneath her binds. Agatha held it tight, while trying to break free—
“And I too had the same weakness for someone in your story. Someone I called a friend,” the Snake said to Sophie, pressing against her. “Someone kinder than me . . . Someone gentler than me . . . Someone who never went quite far enough.” He gazed into Sophie’s scared eyes. “Do you know who it was?”
Sophie choked out a word: “Me?”
The Snake laughed. “No, not you.”
His long tongue licked at her lips. . . .
“Aric.”
Agatha gasped, thrashing wildly against her binds. But two scims blindfolded her, lashing across her eyes. . . . Another squeezed her throat so hard she started to black out. . . .
She heard scims shriek with bloodcurdling madness, then Sophie screaming like she’d never screamed before.
Something ripped Sophie’s hand from hers.
Agatha lunged blindly to find it—
Darkness pulled her under like a sheet.
19
HORT
Four Point
A scream tore through the royal garden.
“Sophie,” Hort choked, taking off towards the castle, barechested and bellowing—
But he’d forgotten he had six prisoners cuffed to him and they all went tumbling down into brilliant flowers, Hort included, like friends playing Ring Around the Rosie.
Nicola groaned, gashed badly by a pink rosebush, thorns still stuck in her skin. She looked to Hort for help, but he was up and running again, trying to pull the other bodies towards the castle. “The Snake has her! Sophie needs me—”
A force held him back, keeping him running in place, slipping and sliding on flower petals.
Furious, he swung around to see Thiago stepping on the chain while sunburnt Wesley puffed on a cigar beside him.
“Thought the Snake killed ’em already,” Wesley groused.
“Took the two girls. Rest comin’ to the Four Point,” said Thiago, studying Hort with his tattooed eyes.
“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 app
roval, 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 wh
o 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!”