The Mad Apprentice

by Django Wexler

  The thing reminded her of a spider, but she would have welcomed a spider, even a giant one, in preference to this. Its body was a round globe of pallid, eyeless flesh, nearly invisible in the midst of a tangle of limbs. These were arms, dozens of human arms, horribly elongated and twisted into unnatural shapes so that their palms served as the thing’s feet. More arms rose above them, longer than Alice was tall and with three or four elbows each, reaching out above the “legs” to catch and grab. Like the arms in the window, these were all different, thick-fingered men’s hands, delicate young ladies’, even the waving, misshapen fist of an infant.

  The edge of the tower roof was lined by a tall, spike-topped iron fence, and the thing was climbing up it, hauling itself hand over hand. For a moment Alice couldn’t see what it was moving toward; then she spotted the thin figure of Soranna, clinging to the outside of the fence, crawling desperately bar by bar away from the monster.

  “Soranna!” Alice pushed the devilfish’s light as bright as it would go and waved, trying to get the creature’s attention. It was no good—with its prey in sight, the thing slithered over the top of the fence, heedless of the bleeding rips torn in its lower limbs by the spikes. Soranna took a deep breath, and for a moment Alice thought she was going to jump—

  —but instead she pulled herself forward, through the bars, like they were no more substantial than mist. The hands closed on empty air, and Soranna ran toward Alice, gasping for air. The creature spun, pushing itself back over the fence, and landed on the roof. It raced after Soranna, hands slapping the stone with a sound like a hundred people clapping at once.

  Alice let go of the Swarm and yanked on Spike’s thread, hard enough to bring him snapping into reality. The little dinosaur snorted and then charged, his stumpy legs pumping like pistons. Within a few yards he had accelerated to a gallop, horns leveled at the multi-armed horror. By the time he passed Soranna, Spike’s feet were a blur.

  Several arms folded down to grab hold of the dinosaur. But Spike was a good deal heavier than he looked, and his charge carried astonishing momentum. One of the monster’s hands managed to close around a horn, only to be wrenched around, as though it had tried to grab hold of a freight locomotive. Spike hit the creature like a lead shot put and barely slowed, carrying the big thing backward until they both slammed into the iron fence at the edge of the roof. Metal popped and groaned, and the pair of them might have gone over if the spider-thing hadn’t reached out with all available limbs and taken hold of the fence on either side. A whole section of iron rails tilted dangerously outward under the combined weight.

  Alice darted forward, grabbing the astonished Soranna by the hand.

  “Alice.” Soranna blinked. “You came to get—”

  “No time. Come on.”

  “It can climb the tower,” Soranna said. “We won’t be able to outrun it.”

  Alice nodded grimly and dragged Soranna to the top of the staircase. She closed her eyes and felt again for that strange, slippery fabric she had grasped, briefly, that had led her to this tower. There was a tension in it, as if someone else were tugging at the other end, but Alice could still grab hold of a tiny section and pinch. She felt space twisting around her, and without opening her eyes or letting go of Soranna’s hand, she took a blind step forward.

  The heat and sullen red light of the tower were gone. When she opened her eyes, the stairway led into a quite different tower, with ordinary stone walls and the usual mound of books in the center of the floor. Alice led Soranna down a few steps, then stopped suddenly as a bolt of phantom pain ripped through her. The spider-thing had lifted Spike into the air, bending the poor dinosaur’s limbs in directions they weren’t meant to go; Alice hurriedly willed him into nonexistence, and at the same time released the pinch of space. The fabric snapped back, the pathway between here and there closed, and they were safe.

  “You came to get me,” Soranna said, in her low, whispery voice.

  The two girls had collapsed against the pile of books. Alice wished for a moment that Torment would show himself, so she could laugh in his face and scream defiance. She could feel him pull on the fabric, his distant, ice-blue eyes watching her. Go ahead and watch. I’ll save them all.

  “Alice?”

  Alice realized her attention had drifted. She looked over at Soranna. The girl’s face was flushed, and there were a few ragged tears in her leather clothes, but she didn’t seem seriously injured. Thank goodness.

  “Hmm?” Alice said.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why would you come for me?” Soranna drew her knees in, tight against her chest, and wrapped her arms around them. “You helped me before too. I don’t understand what you want from me.”

  “I don’t want anything,” Alice said. “If I hadn’t come, you could have died.”

  “I am a servant of your master’s enemy,” Soranna said. She rested her chin on her knees. “Therefore I am your enemy. My death should make you happy.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Even if Geryon and your master aren’t . . . friendly, that doesn’t mean I would be happy to see you hurt.” Alice shook her head. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Aren’t you glad we got away?”

  “My master sent me here,” Soranna said. “If I die, it is because that is his will.”

  Alice stretched out her aching legs and rubbed her shoulder with one hand, still feeling echoes of Spike’s pain. Her elbow bumped against her pocket, and she remembered what she’d put in there. She extracted two almost-apples, took a big bite out of one, and held the other out to Soranna. The girl’s face clouded with suspicion, and Alice rolled her eyes.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’d hardly come to rescue you only to poison you afterward.”

  Soranna unfolded herself a little and took the apple. She bit into it, cautiously, and licked up the rich juice.

  “It’s good,” she said softly.

  “There’s a few more, if you’re hungry.”

  Soranna ate the fruit with small, careful bites, and wiped her mouth on the back of her hand when she was done. She let herself slump back against the books, legs sliding out, and let out a long, shuddering breath. Alice saw tears sparkling at the corners of her eyes.

  “I thought . . .” Soranna said, and swallowed hard. “That thing chased me all the way up the tower. With those hands grabbing for me. And when I got to the roof, I was sure it was the end. It was my master’s will that I die here, and I should have been happy to fulfill it.”

  “You were screaming,” Alice said. “That’s how I found you.”

  “I couldn’t help it,” Soranna said. “I was scared. I shouldn’t have been, but I was. I didn’t want to die.”

  “I have to say that seems normal to me.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “No,” Alice said. “I don’t. But that’s okay. We’re going to be okay.”

  Soranna raised her head and looked sidelong at Alice. “I’m not even supposed to be talking to you.”

  “To me?”

  “To any of the other apprentices. My master told me I would be polluted by impure ideas. He said he might be forced to destroy me if I was contaminated.”

  Alice was about to say that her master sounded perfectly awful, and only stopped herself when she considered that this might be one of the “impure ideas” that could get Soranna in trouble. Instead, she nodded.

  “What do you plan to do now?” Soranna asked.

  “We have to find the rest,” Alice said. “Isaac and the others.”

  “You think they’re still alive?”

  “Garret is probably not,” Alice said. “But you were, and compared to you, the others seemed like—” She looked for a way to put it delicately. “More experienced fighters.”

  “I’m n
ot a fighter at all,” Soranna said. “I shouldn’t be here. If—” She stopped, and shook her head. “Never mind. How do you intend to find them? We got separated after Garret . . . I’m not sure I could retrace my steps.”

  It’s worse than you know. “I may have a way to get to them. I won’t know until I try it, though.”

  “Is it the same way you brought us here?”

  Alice nodded.

  “An ability of one of your bindlings? I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  By “bindlings,” Alice assumed the girl meant her bound creatures. She nodded again, cautiously. It was true, more or less, even if the nature of that creature was unusual. This power to manipulate the labyrinth must belong to the Dragon. Now that she knew it was a labyrinthine, many things fell into place. It felt different than using her other powers, but that could be because the Dragon, an intelligent creature in its own right, was actively granting her its assistance.

  What she couldn’t figure out was why, or more precisely why now. If he’d only helped me earlier, I might have been able to get them off that bridge. Garret might still be alive.

  She took up the Dragon’s thread, briefly. I don’t suppose you’ll answer now, will you? There was no response, though she hadn’t really expected one.

  “I’ll need to concentrate,” Alice said. “And it may take some time. I need you to keep watch here, on my real body, while I go looking.”

  “But . . .” Soranna looked at Alice, wide-eyed, and then down at her knees.

  “What?”

  “Why would you trust me to do that?” the girl whispered. “I could easily kill you while you were helpless.”

  It was such an absurd question, delivered so earnestly, that it was all Alice could do to keep from laughing. She shook her head.

  “For the moment,” Alice said, “I’ll rely on your sense of gratitude.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE SWARMERS GO FORTH

  “WELL,” ALICE SAID. “HERE goes nothing.”

  She closed her eyes, pulled on the Swarm thread, and seven swarmers popped into being beside her. Alice took a moment to slip behind each pair of eyes and look around to get a feel for how the tower looked from their vantage point, six inches off the ground. Then she sent the first one hopping down the stairs.

  Ordinarily, Alice could only send the swarmers out about the length of a football field before they became too difficult to maintain, which wouldn’t be useful to locate the others. But Alice had been thinking about the nature of the “fabric” she had folded. Here in the labyrinth, distance was an illusion, a malleable, changeable thing in the hands of creatures like Torment and the Dragon. She guessed—hoped, really—it would make a difference.

  Well. No percentage in hanging about. Her lip curved in a half smile at her father’s favorite phrase. She kept hold of the Swarm thread and reached out for the fabric of space. With a pinch and a twist, she connected the stairway to the bridge outside the tower.

  The first swarmer dashed from here to there without any trouble. She ought to have felt the distance as a weight on their connection, but it was as if the swarmer were only in the next room. It works!

  The next step was managing all of them at once. She folded another pinch in the fabric and sent a second swarmer through to a different bridge, then a third to yet another, until all seven swarmers had left the tower.

  Then she started them moving down their respective bridges. At the same time, she shifted her grip on the labyrinth, keeping a portal open just behind each swarmer to maintain the connection to her real body. It was a bit like letting slippery cloth slide through the pinch of her fingers. Alice took a deep breath and sent the swarmers into a run, keeping an eye out for anything human.

  Most of Esau’s towers were just dumps for books, but here and there were structures dedicated to prison- or portal-books, and those were very strange indeed. One tower was full of water, waves crashing around its doorways with salty ocean spray. Another had been filled from top to bottom by thick, cottony spiderwebs, and Alice hurriedly sent her swarmer running in the other direction before some arachnid decided to have it for a snack. A third tower shone with shifting colored lights, and the happy strains of a vigorous waltz drifted over the nearby bridges.

  Alice kept pinching the fabric of space, moving the swarmers deeper and deeper into the fortress, past towers and stairways and endless, crisscrossing bridges. At first she despaired of finding the others—Torment could have scattered them anywhere in the near-infinite sprawl of iron and stone.

  But Alice began to realize that she could feel something else through the fabric. She could sense vibrations, as if a mouse were walking across a tightly stretched cloth. She directed a swarmer toward these vibrations, and finally caught sight of a pair of human figures, two bridges down. It was only a momentary glimpse, but it was enough for her to send all the swarmers rushing in that direction.

  That was when she became aware of another presence in the fabric, sliding around her with a grace and power she couldn’t hope to match. Torment. It was as though the black wolf were sitting beside her, hot breath tickling her ear.

  He wrapped his mental grip around hers and started pulling the fold firmly out of her control, like he was prying her fingers apart. One of the swarmers suddenly lost its connection, and the true weight of its distance from her descended on it like a toppling pallet of bricks. It was torn instantly from reality, sending a stab of pain like a silver needle through Alice’s heart.

  She grit her teeth and urged the others to run faster. Torment was catching up, undoing her folds one by one, and each time a swarmer vanished, the pain increased. Sweat popped out in beads on Alice’s face, soaking her hair and running down her cheeks.

  Almost there. There were only three swarmers left. Torment pounced on one almost playfully, but the other two were running along the same bridge in opposite directions, racing to reach the two humans Alice could see clearly now in the middle.

  Every breath was an effort, but Alice’s heart rose as she recognized Isaac and Dex. They were fighting a pair of creatures that were like bats or moths, with four wide, feathery wings, antennae, and a long, curling proboscis. Isaac sent long streamers of ice condensing around its wings, sending it tumbling helplessly past the bridge. Dex had a more difficult time with the other, trying and failing to skewer it with her swords as its flexible tongue lashed out and got a grip on her throat. Before it could tighten, however, Isaac came up from behind, one hand glowing with a power Alice had never seen him use. When he touched the moth-thing’s wings, they took flame, and the creature fluttered away wildly before combusting entirely in a brilliant fireball.

  Torment ripped the second-to-last swarmer out of Alice’s grip. She gave a grunt as though she’d been punched, and tears worked their way through closed eyelids. The last of the swarmers hurried up behind Isaac and Dex, only to find a silvery blade descending toward it. Alice dodged, desperately, and managed to slip aside as Dex’s weapon clanged off the stone. Isaac, following the movement, caught sight of the swarmer and shouted, “Stop!”

  “Brother Isaac?” Dex cocked her head. “What is the matter?”

  “That’s one of Alice’s!” Isaac bent down to grab the swarmer. The little creature’s natural instinct was to evade, but Alice clamped down and forced it to sit quietly still while Isaac lifted it and placed it on his open palm, level with his face. Seen through the swarmer’s eyes, it was uncomfortably like being picked up by a giant. “Alice? Can you hear me?”

  Alice opened her real mouth to reply, paused, and said a rude word. The swarmer couldn’t talk—its long, sharp beak couldn’t handle the sounds of human speech. Hurriedly, she made it waggle its beak up and down vigorously, in a passable imitation of a nod.

  “You can?”

  She made the swarmer nod again, then hop up and down in irritation. She could feel Torment closing i
n, and she redoubled her grip on the tenuous connection.

  “But this thing can’t speak.”

  The swarmer shook itself rapidly back and forth, like a wet dog. Alice desperately wanted to ask Isaac whether he’d seen Ellen, and if he could find somewhere safe to stay while she came to find him, but all she could do was play twenty questions.

  “Are you all right?”

  She made the swarmer nod, then hop to the side of Isaac’s hand and point at the ground with its beak, looking up at Isaac several times to make sure he got the message. He looked puzzled.

  “Down? You’re down?” Shake.

  “Brother Isaac,” Dex said, looking over her shoulder. “More of those things are coming. We need to move.”

  “Stone? Bridge?” Shakeshakeshake. “Alice, I don’t understand! Ow!”

  The swarmer had nipped his arm, drawing a bright bead of blood. It smeared its beak until it was crimson—Alice had to suppress its natural instinct to lick the stuff up—and hopped from his hand back to the ground. There, with Alice’s careful direction, it began to paint a message onto the stone.

  Torment was trying harder. Alice felt like someone trying to write a note with the wrong hand while a much stronger person pried her hand away from the pen. She managed one letter, two, three, before the blood dried and the swarmer’s beak could only scratch impotently at the ground. Isaac was staring.

  “S-T-A. Stand? Stab?” He pressed one hand to where it had poked him. “Star?” He blinked as the swarmer went into a paroxysm of shaking.

  “Brother Isaac!” Dex said, tugging on his sleeve.

  “Stay?” Isaac said. “You want me to stay here!”

  Alice made the swarmer nod so violently it almost fell over. Isaac pointed to the tower up ahead.

  “We’ll be in there. We need to take shelter from these things.”

  The swarmer nodded again. Alice felt her grip on the fabric slipping.