The Mad Apprentice

by Django Wexler

  “Are you still angry at me, then?” she said to Ashes, when the tree was repaired.

  He blinked, and rolled onto his stomach, wiping at his ear with one paw. “Nah. Too much work, and it’s too nice a day.” The cat yawned. “Just don’t do it again.”

  “I’ll do my best,” Alice said.

  Ashes looked around with exaggerated caution, and lowered his voice. “By the way, Mother said you should come by tomorrow and see the acorns.”

  Alice blinked, and matched his quiet tone. “Why? Has it worked this time?”

  “She didn’t tell me. Come and see, she said.”

  That sounded like Ending, all right. The great shadow-cat never said or did something simple if there was a way to make it obscure and complicated. That went hand in hand with being the guardian of a forbidden library, Alice supposed, but it made her frustrating.

  Her secrecy also made Alice’s relationship with her master more complicated. As far as Geryon knew, Ending barely talked to Alice; in fact, the black cat often appeared when she was deep in the library on some task, and helped her practice aspects of her magic that Geryon had neglected. Just why Ending did this, Alice had no idea, but after the help Ending had offered trapping Vespidian, she didn’t feel in a position to refuse.

  The other thing Alice had never told Geryon about was Isaac, the other apprentice who’d broken in to the Library, and the way the two of them had worked together to bind the Dragon. Officially, she was still angry with Isaac for the trick he’d played on her, making her think he’d wanted to kiss her when he was only stealing the Dragon book for himself. But she found herself wishing sometimes that he would turn up, so she could be angry with him in person. At night, she found herself reaching out for the Dragon’s thread, black and imperturbable as stone. Every so often she could feel the faintest of vibrations through it, and she knew that somewhere, in some world, Isaac was reaching out too.

  The sun was slipping behind the trees, and this line of thought made her melancholy. Alice bid Ashes good-bye and went back up to the house to eat the dinner the invisible servants set for her. It was delicious, as always, but she found she barely tasted it. Her thoughts kept drifting back to her father, and what he would think of what she had become. When she was full, she went upstairs and tried to shake the feeling with a solid dose of last-century German philosophy, always guaranteed to produce a good night’s sleep.

  Once she was asleep, though, she dreamed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  CENTRAL PARK

  IT WAS A PERFECT autumn afternoon, the air just chilly enough to put a little color in Alice’s cheeks, but drenched in golden sunlight that made her feel deliciously warm and sleepy. She lay on a blanket beside the demolished remains of a picnic lunch. Her father sat next to her, his back propped against a tree stump, with his hands behind his head and his hat tipped down over his eyes.

  Nobody went to Central Park anymore, or so the common wisdom ran. It was, Alice had to admit, a bit of a dump. Many of the trees were dead, the flowerbeds trampled, and the old wrought-iron benches overturned, lying legs-up like helpless turtles. Bits of trash were everywhere, and torn newspapers fluttered through the air when the wind blew, like tumbleweeds in a Western.

  But Alice’s father had been coming here for picnic lunches since he’d been a boy accompanying his father, and Alice loved the park because her father loved it. He knew all the best spots too, places off the usual paths, where a few trees were still clad in gorgeous red and gold and you could bask in the afternoon sun. A hundred yards away, a fluffy white sheep wandered, looking lost but contented, poking curiously at bits of garbage and tugging at the browning grass.

  “Not supposed to be sheep here,” Alice’s father commented, to no one in particular. “The sheep are down at Sixty-fifth Street.” He patted Alice on the shoulder, as though to reassure her. “I imagine someone will be along to collect it presently.”

  Alice yawned and closed her eyes. She could feel the prickle of the grass through the blanket, and hear the leaves rustling as the wind tugged them one by one from the trees. The sun was warm and soft on her face.

  Whenever they came to the park, her father liked to talk to her about whatever was on his mind. Usually that meant business. He would tell her about pools and syndicates and high-leverage investment trusts, the prospects of US Steel and the Shenandoah Corporation. Alice understood most of it only dimly, but she didn’t mind. What mattered was that he spoke to her as someone who was every bit as smart and grown-up as he was; in Alice’s world of tutors and condescending servants, that was a treasure beyond price.

  He’d started out talking about business today, but after a while he’d gone silent. Now, in a quiet voice, he said, “You don’t remember Dad, do you?”

  Alice shook her head.

  “You were only two when he died,” her father said. “It’s a shame. He would have really liked you. I can see a lot of him in you.”

  Alice opened one eye and turned to look up at him. “Really?”

  “Mmm-hmm. He was a smart man. Very logical.” Her father cocked his head and grinned. “And stubborn. ‘Never give up,’ he would say. Whenever I complained about anything, that I was tired or it was too hard, he just shook his head and said, ‘Never give up. Not ever.’ It used to make me very angry with him, when I was your age.”

  Alice had a hard time imagining her father as a boy her age. It was hard to imagine him as anything but what he was, the solid, dependable rock around which her life revolved. It was like wondering what the sun was like, before it was the sun.

  “He would have been proud of you,” her father said. He looked out over the park, past the wandering sheep, and sighed.

  Something was wrong. Alice could feel it, feel some emotion in her father that she couldn’t quite identify, but she didn’t know what to do. She rolled over and pressed herself against his side, and his hand came down to tangle in her hair.

  “You don’t remember your mother either,” he said, so quietly she wasn’t sure he meant her to hear. “But I do. I remember.” His voice was sad, but also fierce, full of quiet determination. “Someday . . .”

  All Alice could do was hug him a little tighter. He tipped his hat down farther, to shade his eyes, and they sat there in silence until the sun touched the buildings on the West Side and the cold of the breeze began to bite. Then they went home and had chicken pot pies for dinner. They were her father’s favorite, and she loved them because he loved them.

  Alice woke up and thought it was before dawn, judging by the gray, dead light, but when she looked outside, she found the sky covered by clouds from edge to edge. A spattery, fitful rain pinked and tinked against the glass. The sun was nowhere to be seen.

  She cleaned up and dressed slowly, still half mired in the dream. She hadn’t thought about that day for a long time. Her life before had faded into the background, somehow, of her daily life at the Library. It was why she was here, but she couldn’t think about it without feeling awful, like there was a horrible gap in her chest where her heart ought to have been. So, mostly, she didn’t.

  A wave of guilt descended on her like a bucket of cold water. It’s only been six months since he disappeared, and you’re forgetting him already. She closed her eyes, welcoming the painful thoughts as a sort of penance.

  Emma brought her breakfast on a tray and Alice took it into her room, careful to remind the girl to go back to the kitchen afterward. Alice had learned long ago to be extremely literal when giving Emma directions; once, when she’d said “Here, take these,” she’d returned hours later to find the maidservant still standing patiently with a tray in her arms. The food was excellent, as usual, but Alice raced through it and barely tasted a thing. She left the dirty dishes for the Library’s invisible servants to clean up and hurried downstairs.

  Geryon was waiting for her in his study, as usual. He was reading something, and Alice th
ought he looked troubled, but his face smoothed into a friendly mask as soon as he looked up at her.

  “Good morning, Alice.”

  “Good morning, sir.”

  “Are you recovered from your trial yesterday?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excellent.” Geryon tapped his chin thoughtfully. “You’ll be in the library with Mr. Wurms today, at least for now.” His eyes flicked to his desk and the papers there. “I may have something for you to take care of later on.”

  “Yes, sir.” Alice hesitated. Geryon didn’t like it when she asked too many questions, but the guilt churning in her gut wouldn’t be assuaged unless she did something. “I wanted to . . . ask you something. Sir.”

  Geryon’s expression was impassive, but his hard eyes fastened onto hers and didn’t let go.

  “Oh?” he said, after a moment of pointed silence.

  “It’s . . .” She paused, then spoke in a rush. “It’s about my father.”

  “I see,” Geryon said.

  “It’s just that you said you would look into what happened to him, to find out for certain. I know his ship went down, but we don’t know why, or whether he was really on it.” He promised that, after the Dragon incident. “And I’ve been here six months, and . . . I wondered, I mean if you’d . . . learned anything.”

  Another, longer silence. Geryon shook his head. His expression was compassionate, but it didn’t touch his eyes, which were dark and hard as tiny marbles.

  “I have put inquiries in motion, as we agreed,” he said, “both for your sake, and to discover how the other Readers learned of your existence in spite of my protection.”

  Alice swallowed. She knew at least part of the answer to that last question—Mr. Black had betrayed her to Vespidian and his master, Esau-of-the-Waters. But that wasn’t the whole story; Geryon had said there were other old Readers after her as well. Esau had wanted her badly enough to send Vespidian to the Library after her, but she had no idea if he’d also been involved in her father’s disappearance. Nor, for that matter, did she know why she was so important to the old Readers, except that apprentices were hard to come by. But that can’t be all.

  At any rate, she’d promised not to tell Geryon about Mr. Black, in exchange for the traitorous servant’s cooperation in trapping Vespidian so that Alice could interrogate him. And because if Geryon found out, he’d have Mr. Black killed. Mr. Black had betrayed and hurt her, but Alice wasn’t sure she was ready to condemn him to death with a word.

  “That a Reader was involved is certain,” Geryon went on. “But beyond that, I can’t yet say. We are a jealous fraternity, and information is hard to come by. Still, I have . . . called in some favors, and set the wheels in motion.” He put on a sad smile. “We will know the truth in the end, I promise you.”

  “Thank you.” Alice bowed her head. She wanted to question him, but she felt as though she’d pushed her luck already. “I’ll . . . go and help Mr. Wurms, then.”

  He waved a hand in dismissal. “I’ll send for you if I have need.”

  The wind went from pleasantly cool to vicious, and sheets of rain swept across the lawn between the house and the library like the ranks of a conquering army. The change in weather matched her mood, which had turned dark after she’d nerved herself up to question Geryon and been put off with vague promises. There has to be something he can do, something he knows. The more she learned about magic, the more certain she’d become that her father had to be alive, somehow, taken by one of the old Readers to who knew what hidden fortress. She needed to do something, but she didn’t know where to start.

  There was an umbrella in her room, somewhere, but Alice couldn’t be bothered to go and search for it. I wonder if there’s a creature I could bind that could keep me dry? She checked the thought at once. That was old Reader thinking, the tendency to view the wondrous creatures that lived beyond the book-portals solely in terms of what power they could provide. For all that she was Geryon’s apprentice, she didn’t want to become that sort of person.

  She made a dash for it, and the carved bronze door came open at her touch. She stepped into the warm, stuffy darkness of the anteroom and shook herself like a dog, spraying water against the stone.

  The shelves were full of hurricane lamps, but she let them be. Now that she was a Reader, Alice didn’t need them. She wrapped the devilfish thread loosely around her, and her hand began to glow an eerie blue green. She concentrated until it brightened enough for her to see by. As usual, at least a dozen cats had come to greet her at the inner door, eyes glowing otherworldly colors in the strange light. Alice waved politely, in case any of them could talk. None of the cats had ever spoken to her except Ashes and Ending, but it didn’t pay to make assumptions.

  Beyond the cats, the regular grid of library shelves stretched out into infinity under the great dome with its obsidian markers. Alice set out down one of the aisles, trailing a cloud of disturbed dust. She didn’t pay much attention to where she was going. One of the lessons she’d learned in the past six months was that landmarks and directions inside the library meant very little; you generally ended up where Ending wanted you to, no matter what direction you walked in.

  This morning, that meant checking on the acorns before reporting for duty to Mr. Wurms. Alice was not surprised to find herself quickly leaving the tame, organized shelves behind and passing into the wild library that lived behind them. Here the shelves were arranged in clusters, squares and rings and pentagons, and were mostly empty. Strange noises and even smells leaked out of the gaps between them—the clatter of metal, the cheer of a crowd, the scent of roasting meat.

  Inside each cluster was a book, or a set of books that shared similar characteristics. Portal-books and prison-books were not like ordinary volumes or the tomes in which Alice founds fragments of magic for Geryon to extract. They were nothing but magic, and—under a Reader’s gaze—they were a pathway between one place and another, one world and another. Left alone, they leaked. Part of Ending’s job as guardian of the library was to arrange these clusters of shelves that in some way kept the books contained and prevented their inhabitants from wandering about.

  The inside of each cluster tended to reflect the environment on the other side of the portal. They were like little worlds unto themselves, usually much larger on the inside than they looked from the outside, although mere spatial impossibilities had ceased to really surprise Alice. She found the cluster she was looking for—it was marked on the outside with a complicated rune, but she could smell the rich, wet scent of it yards away in any case—and squeezed herself into a gap between the shelves. Though it looked like it was only a few inches wide, she fit easily.

  Inside, the backs of the shelves resembled a ring of stone monoliths surrounding a clearing a couple of hundred yards across. About half of it was occupied by a pond, and an enormous waterfall poured into it, filling the air with its splash and roar. Around the edges of the pond, jungle trees grew dense and thick, wound round with hanging vines and lianas. Huge, thick green leaves hung everywhere, dripping with moisture, and interwoven with sprays of tiny, wildly colored flowers, like miniature fireworks. It was hot enough that Alice started to sweat almost immediately.

  Her logical mind wondered where the waterfall came from—the source was lost in the mists—or where the water went when it drained off. Inside the library, though, such questions simply didn’t apply. Ending took care of it, as she took care of everything.

  In the center of the little jungle was a circle of flagstones, cracked and overgrown with grass and flowers. In the middle of the circle there was, of course, a book, a thick, ancient-looking thing bound in green leather. Alice had left it carefully alone during her visits here; reading even the first page would take her through. If it was a portal-book, that wouldn’t be so bad, she’d be able to return by the same route; but if it was a prison-book, there was no way out except by defeating the pr
isoner. One lesson that both Geryon and Ending had drummed into her was never to open a book if you didn’t know what was on the other side.

  The magic that leaked through, even while the book was closed, had gradually created this sprawl of jungle, and it was that energy Alice hoped to capture. She’d gathered a handful of acorns out in the woods and brought them here, priming them with a careful tweak of the tree-sprite’s power. They would drink in the magic until they were full to bursting, and then Alice would able to call on them when she needed to.

  That was the theory, at least. Getting the little tweak right proved harder than she’d thought. This was the third batch—the dozen acorns in her first two tries had variously sprouted into miniature trees, decomposed into necrotic slime, or simply exploded like tiny grenades when she’d picked them up, lodging bits of nutshell in her skin. Each attempt had to be left to soak for a week, so experimenting was a slow process.

  In this batch, laid out in a neat ring around the book, she could see two of the little short-lived oak trees, and the one nearer her seemed to have transformed into a small patch of mushrooms. The other three looked intact, though, and she wondered if she’d finally gotten it right. Ending, while tremendously knowledgeable, could only describe what she had to do, not actually demonstrate it—using the powers of bound creatures was magic for Readers alone.

  Ending’s voice, a deep velvet purr, reached Alice’s ear as though summoned by her thoughts. “Hello, Alice.”

  Alice kept herself from jumping only by strenuous effort. As usual, the only sign of Ending was a pair of huge yellow eyes at a level with Alice’s own, staring out of the deep shadow of the undergrowth. Beneath them, Ending’s long fangs were just a hint of an ivory gleam.