The Mad Apprentice

by Django Wexler

  Spike was struggling to get his balance back after embedding his horns in the labyrinthine’s hide. Before he could free himself, Torment gave a wild shake, like a dog climbing out of a pond, and the dinosaur was suddenly flying through the air to crash upside down into one of the statues. The black wolf was on him in a moment, pouncing almost playfully, and he struck at Spike’s exposed belly. The dinosaur was armored all over with thick plating, but Torment’s claw went through it as if it were butter. Alice doubled over in pain as her creature died, feeling as if someone had driven a knife into her stomach. Through blinding tears, she could see Isaac staggering against a statue, similarly affected.

  “Sister Alice! Brother Isaac!” Dex spun, turning her back on the wolves, and charged Torment. Alice wanted to cry out, but her lungs had seized up, and for the moment she could only whimper. Torment gave Dex a pitying look, but a moment later his eyes crossed in pain as she buried one of her swords in his nose. The huge wolf gave an irritated grunt and actually retreated a step, but not before the other silver blade opened a cut on his forepaw, leaking thick, black blood.

  Torment growled, a low rumbling sound like a truck engine. He snapped at Dex, who dodged lithely aside, leaving another cut on the wolf’s cheek. But Torment kept coming, ignoring his wounds, and Dex was forced to give ground.

  Alice found enough air to shout a warning. “Dex! Behind you!”

  It came a moment too late. A shaggy brown wolf, creeping out from behind a statue, had positioned itself square in Dex’s path. As she backed toward it, it lunged, jaws closing on her ankle. The caryatid’s armor kept its teeth from her skin, but it still managed to pull her leg out from under her, leaving her unbalanced. As she fought to steady herself, Torment swiped at her with a paw, sending her flying backward. She landed on the ground with a crunch and a clatter of armor, silver swords skittering across the stone.

  Torment’s tongue came out again, licking the cut on his nose. His eyes narrowed, and he padded toward Dex’s fallen form.

  I have to stop him. Alice struggled to her feet, breathing hard. I have to . . .

  Run. The Dragon’s voice echoed through her skull.

  No! These are my—my friends. I’m not going to leave them!

  You misunderstand. Get Torment’s attention, and then run. He will follow.

  Alice blinked. What if he doesn’t?

  He will. He is my brother, but he is still part wolf, and it is in his nature to chase the prey that flees.

  Right. Alice cast about for a moment, not sure how to get the labyrinthine’s attention. She spotted Soranna, who had been hiding among the statues but was now creeping out toward Torment. All she had was her spear, but she obviously meant to try to attack the giant wolf, suicidal as that might seem. She’s braver than she gives herself credit for.

  “Soranna!” Alice hissed. The girl looked around, and Alice held up her hand. “Throw me the spear!”

  Soranna complied, and Alice snatched the spear of moon-stuff out of the air. It was almost weightless, with a point like a needle. Alice wrapped herself in Spike’s supernatural strength, lifted the weapon, and sent it flying into Torment’s flank. It flashed through the air, a shaft of solid moonlight, and buried itself a foot deep in the labyrinthine’s ebony fur.

  Torment staggered under the blow, and his head snapped around. Alice waited a moment until she was certain she had his full attention. Then she looked him in the eye, stuck out her tongue, and ran for it.

  She sprinted down a narrow alley between the statues, ducking under the stone warriors’ outstretched arms and unsheathed weapons. Wolves tried to come at her from the sides, but Alice outpaced them, dodging snapping jaws. One beast emerged in her path, and Alice lowered her shoulder and slammed into it with her best footballer’s tackle. With Spike’s strength behind her, the wolf went flying.

  Risking a look over her shoulder, she saw Torment in pursuit, shouldering the statues aside or snapping them to pieces in his jaws. Alice wrapped the Swarm thread around herself, to protect her skin from flying splinters, and ducked out past the last rank of statues and through the doorway.

  The corridor outside was deserted, but not for long. Three wolves were hard on her heels, and she could hear more furry feet padding after her. That’s good. The more that follow me, the fewer the others have to deal with. As long as Torment himself kept coming, Isaac could probably handle any wolves that were left behind. And Dex, if she’s . . . if she’s okay. Alice desperately hoped the caryatid’s armor had provided enough protection to blunt Torment’s claws.

  Doorways came up on both sides. Alice took the first turn, hearing the claws of the wolves scrabbling on the slick stone, and pounded down another corridor. She was just looking over her shoulder when she caught a flash of movement from a doorway to one side.

  It was a wolf, in mid-leap. Alice tried to sidestep, but she was moving too quickly, and the beast fastened its jaws on her arm. Its teeth ripped a great ragged hole in her sleeve, but her Swarm-hardened skin proved too tough for them. Even so, the momentum of the creature pulled her to the ground, and girl and wolf went down together in a rolling heap of fur and flailing limbs.

  Alice ended up on the bottom, on her back. The wolf released her arm and went for her face, jaws wide. Alice could smell its hot, stinking breath, like rancid meat. She jammed her hand under its muzzle, pushing it up and away, and gathered her legs underneath her. She planted both her bare feet in its belly, fur soft between her toes, and shoved with all of Spike’s strength. The wolf was launched into the air so hard it rebounded off the ceiling and landed in a whimpering heap.

  Alice scrambled to her feet and ran. The next turn led to a corridor with a half-dozen wolves blocking the way, and Alice headed back the way she’d come. She ran down another corridor, and reached the next doorway just in time to see a pair of wolves saunter into the hallway behind her. They weren’t running anymore, just padding after her, jaws open and tongues lolling, as though mocking her earlier gesture of defiance.

  They’re playing with me. The realization woke a deep, smoldering rage. Torment is playing with me. He’s got me going around in circles. She’d forgotten, in her haste to get away, that the labyrinth included the interior of the keep. He wants me to keep running until I drop. The Dragon had been right about its brother’s animal nature.

  Okay. Alice tried to calm her mind. I’ve got his attention. I need to keep it. Now what?

  He’s not the only one who can play tricks with the labyrinth . . .

  “I’m really sorry about this,” Alice muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

  The swarmer dipped its beak, regarding her with beady black eyes, almost as if it understood. Alice hefted it carefully, testing its weight, then leaned around the corner. There were three wolves waiting there with their backs to her. They’d expected her to come from the other direction, but a little twist to the labyrinth had put her behind them instead.

  She stepped out, quiet in her bare feet, and hefted the swarmer. I wish I’d paid a little bit more attention when the boys played baseball in the street.

  Any deficiencies in her technique, however, were more than compensated for by the prodigious strength of her throwing arm and the active assistance of the “ball.” She hurled the swarmer overarm in a fast arc, its beak aimed squarely at the wolves. The little creature twisted in midair to stay in position, and it slammed into the hindquarters of one beast hard enough to drive its beak several inches into the thing’s rump. The wolf yipped in pain, squirming frantically to get its jaws on the swarmer. Alice let the little thing vanish and ducked back around the corner as the other two wolves spun and came after her.

  As they rounded the doorway with a screech of claws on stone, they were met by the massed ranks of the Swarm, lined up like tiny soldiers. Taloned feet made a tiktiktiktik sound on the stone as the little creatures charged, beaks slashing and stabbing. The wolves fought bac
k for a moment, and one of them even got a swarmer in its mouth, but its teeth were unable to make an impression on the rubbery little thing. The wolf yelped as the swarmer poked its tongue, and scrambled after its companion, who was already beating a hasty retreat.

  Alice sent the Swarm in pursuit, keeping a few steps behind. The two fleeing wolves stampeded the third one, who had been turning in circles searching for the vanished swarmer, and the three of them set off down the corridor chased by a tide of little black bodies. Alice, her mind half on the labyrinth-fabric, felt Torment react furiously. More wolves burst out of side corridors ahead of them, and others appeared from doorways behind her. Reunited with the rest of their pack, the three fleeing animals turned to attack. The swarmers bounced every which way, kicked and hurled from the wolves’ jaws, as though a bunch of overexcited dogs had been set loose on a room full of tennis balls.

  Alice let the Swarm disappear. There was a doorway just ahead of her, and she reached out for the fabric, twisting a path between here and there that took her back onto familiar territory. She plunged through to find herself in the garden room, with its bushes, its flowing fountain, and its enormous central—

  —tree. Alice grinned. She let go of Spike’s thread, which snapped back in quivering relief, and pulled the tree-sprite’s around and around herself, until she began to change.

  Through the green-on-green eyes of the sprite, the dead stone all around her was vague, gray and lacking in details. But when she looked at the bushes, she saw them with stark clarity. They stood out in beautiful colors, not just the leaves, but a hundred subtle movements under the surface—she could even see water moving upward through the branches by capillary action, nutrients slowly leached from the soil to be shuttled to growing buds, and all the other processes that drove the life of a plant. The wolves, behind her, were a mass of dull red animal shapes, ugly and incomprehensible.

  But the tree, ahead of her, was the most startling thing of all. It was alive in a way Alice had never really grasped, less a single organism than a whole colony budded from a single seed, stretching from the thinnest root tendrils in the soil to the leaves that hung from the branches. Scrambling forward to put her green-skinned hand against it, Alice could feel the slow, gentle pulse of its life energy. She felt the strain it was under, growing in these unnatural conditions—surrounded by stone, kept watered and fed only by magic.

  And she felt it twist and shudder, eager to reshape itself in response to her commands. A branch curled down toward her, as easily as if it were her own arm, and she grabbed it with both hands and let it lift her up into the canopy. The wolves were pouring into the room, surrounding the planter and blocking the doorway. The bolder members of the pack sniffed the air near the tree and stared up at Alice’s diminutive green form.

  There’s only one way out of here, Alice thought. Her lip curved upward. They think they’ve got me cornered. All the better. While they’re here, they’re leaving the others alone.

  Bark rippled out from where she touched the tree, flowing across her body like water, then hardening into a dense, raspy armor. Her fingers became claws like splintered branches. Where her feet rested on the branch, the armor merged with the bark of the tree itself, as though Alice were a branch herself.

  The first wolf scratched at the bark with its claws. Alice bent the tree’s biggest limb back until it was taut as a bow, then let it loose. It snapped down with the force of a sledgehammer, leaves scraping and rustling against the ground, catching the wolf in its midsection and flinging the beast into the wall. Another limb whipped into the next-nearest wolf, bowling it over into several of its fellows.

  The wolves attacked en masse, in a wave of frothing muzzles and slashing claws. They ran at the tree, biting at the branches as they swished by, and threw themselves at the trunk, trying to pull themselves up by their claws to get at Alice’s high perch. All the tree’s limbs went into action, like a great leafy octopus, slamming the creatures back or wrapping around them and flinging them aside. Their claws and teeth did no more than slash the bark of her mighty wooden partner, while its awesome strength wreaked havoc.

  Soon the wounded were creeping out of the melee, backing away, hopping down from the planter and out of range of the branches, but Alice didn’t intend to let them go so easily. The soil at the base of the tree foamed and sprouted hundreds of tiny white tendrils, snaking outward like eyeless worms. The wolves snapped at them, severing a few only to find dozens of others wrapping around their legs and paws. When a strand got a hold, it started to thicken into a more substantial root, growing faster than the desperate animal could chew through it.

  It seemed like only moments had passed, but the battle was over. A few wolves retreated through the open doorway, but the rest were helpless; hurled about by the branches and now webbed over by a thick matting of tree roots that covered every inch of the stone floor like a living carpet. Alice, riding a branch, did a full circle of the tree and smiled in satisfaction.

  A shadow blocked the doorway, obscuring the lanterns in the corridor outside.

  “I am getting awfully sick of you,” Torment said.

  He pushed into the room, carefully, only just able to fit through the doorway. The roots he trod on crunched and splintered under his weight.

  “I am beginning to think,” he went on, “that my dear sister has played me false. Perhaps she sent you here to make certain everything went wrong? Or perhaps she simply underestimated you.” He took another long step forward. “Either way, I am going to very much enjoy tearing out your throat.”

  The roots sprang at him, hundreds of tendrils wrapping around all four of his paws. They thickened as quickly as she could make them grow, into tough, finger-sized vines. Torment looked down, then back up at Alice.

  “And what do you expect this to accomplish? You think you’re going to stop me with a plant?” Torment raised his forepaw. There was a moment of strain as the roots struggled to hold him in place, but the black wolf’s strength was immense. With a chorus of cracks and pops, the restraining tendrils snapped and shredded.

  “I am a labyrinthine,” Torment said as he ripped another paw free. “Do you have any idea what that means, girl? We are the true masters of this world, the lords of creation, and if not for you humans and your books—”

  He tore himself free entirely and sprang forward, covering the distance to the tree in a single leap. Branches slammed into him from all sides, stiffened leaves with razor-sharp edges cut into him, but Torment ignored the buffeting and the blades. He turned his head sideways, opening his maw wider and wider, until he could fit the entire trunk of the tree between his teeth. Then, with unbelievable strength, he forced his jaws closed. Wood popped, groaned, and splintered, and the tree branches whipped desperately at the black wolf’s muzzle. He twisted his head, and the whole top of the tree came away, leaves rustling madly. With a contemptuous twist of his jaws, he hurled it aside.

  Alice was shaken free, landing amid the carpet of roots. Torment padded to the edge of the planter, looking down at her with ice-blue eyes.

  “Have you had enough?” he said wearily. “Ready to lay down and die?”

  Alice thought of the others, back in the throne room. Hopefully they would have gotten out of there by now. Every minute she kept Torment’s attention here, with her, was a minute where he couldn’t set them to running in circles. It wasn’t much of a chance, but it was all she could do.

  Never give up. Not ever.

  The tree-sprite’s lips were not really designed for human speech, but Alice managed to make them form words.

  “Not ever,” she said.

  Torment growled, and leaped for her throat.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  END OF THE LINE

  ALICE WORKED THE THREADS faster than she ever had before, letting the tree-sprite fall away and pulling on the Swarm. It was so quick, she passed from one creature’s form to t
he other without ever becoming human in between. Her bark armor bulged, then split like a kernel of popcorn, releasing a horde of tiny black swarmers. The little creatures scuttled madly through the fallen branches of the wrecked tree, hopping over twigs and ducking through small spaces. Torment landed on the remains of the tree-sprite, shattering it to fragments under his massive paws. His jaws snapped at a swarmer near the back of the pack, but not quickly enough to catch it.

  It took Torment a moment to smash the branches out of the way, and in that moment the Swarm flowed back together near the doorway, recombining into Alice’s familiar body. This time she didn’t bother to taunt the labyrinthine, just turned and ran. Out the door and into the corridor, ready to lose herself in the maze of hallways—

  She felt the fabric of the labyrinth jerk under her feet. She stumbled, passing through the doorway. The corridor she’d been expecting was gone, and in its place she’d stepped into a large, square room that looked like some kind of storehouse. There was stuff piled against the walls: a giant mirror in a gilded frame, a pile of winter coats, an armchair lying on its side, trunks and strongboxes piled high or lying open and empty on the floor, even a suit of medieval armor on a wooden stand that looked like it belonged in some European castle. Everything was covered in dust, as though the room had not been used in a long time.

  Alice just had time to glance around before Torment came through the doorway behind her, a huge cloud of dust billowing around his feet as he skidded to a stop. He was panting, dark red tongue lolling over his teeth. Slaver and thick, black blood dripped from his jaws.