The Mad Apprentice

by Django Wexler

  “Oh.”

  Alice walked to the mirror. Its surface had gone silver again, and she put out one hand, feeling the cool glass under her fingers. She stood there for a long time, eyes closed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  REUNION

  AFTER A WHILE, SHE felt the warm, dry weight of the tip of the Dragon’s tail curling around her shoulders.

  “Alice,” the Dragon said. “I am sorry.”

  “Thank you for helping me,” Alice said. “I thought . . .” She shook her head and wrapped her arms tight across her chest. “I thought I was going to die.”

  “You might have,” the Dragon said. “You have a great deal of talent, but as a Reader you are still just beginning. When a Reader summons a creature, it is her energy that sustains it, calls it into this world from the world of the prison-book. The more powerful the creature, the more energy is required. Your energy was not sufficient to summon me, and the attempt to do so was tearing you apart.”

  Alice’s voice was a whisper. “So what happened?”

  “I used my own power to . . . make up the difference, you might say. It cost me a great deal. Replenishing my power is difficult while I am imprisoned.”

  “Oh.” Alice blinked away her tears. “I’m sorry.”

  “No. You had no alternative, and Torment needed to be . . . dealt with. However, it does mean I will not be able to appear in this way for some time. Perhaps quite a long time. Even speaking to you will be difficult. I will . . . sleep, if you like.”

  “I don’t . . . I didn’t want that.” Alice took hold of the Dragon’s tail and pressed it to her cheek. She felt a sudden closeness to this vast, alien creature, with its insect-black eyes. It was the way it spoke to her—without sentimentality or condescension, like an equal. She felt tears pricking her eyes again. “But I need your help. I still have to find my father.”

  “Alice . . .” the Dragon said.

  “Could Torment have been . . . lying, in the magic mirror?”

  “No. Not here. Not to me.”

  “Then the ship really did go down.” Alice balled her hands into fists. “It has to be something else, then. One of them sucked him into a book, or some creature grabbed him, or . . .”

  She trailed off. That can’t be it. Not just like that. The world could not bring her all this way, through all these dangers, for this to be the end. In a place full of magic—of swarmers and Readers and talking cats—there had to be a way out. There has to be.

  “Alice.” The Dragon’s voice was soft. “What motive would Esau or Geryon have to do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know!” Alice said. “Geryon lied to me. He’s been lying to me all along. Who knows what his real plans are?”

  The Dragon’s head swung around in front of her. She could see herself reflected in its trio of dark eyes, three tiny, haggard girls staring back at her.

  “There has to be something,” Alice said in a small voice. “Or else . . . what was the point of any of this? What’s the point of anything?” She sucked in a long breath, fighting tears. “What am I supposed to do now?”

  The Dragon was quiet for a long time. Alice could hear the puff of its breath, like a vast bellows.

  “There is a great deal I could tell you,” it said, finally. “But if I did, I would be no better than the others, who think to use you as a tool for their own ends. Do you remember when you came to fight me, in the prison-book?”

  Alice laughed hollowly. “I’m not likely to forget.”

  “Do you know why I submitted to you, rather than fighting to the end?”

  She shook her head.

  “I thought you were there at my sister’s direction. It is her way to use everyone around her as a part of her plans, whether they are aware of it or not. In this, she is no better than Geryon. But you . . . I felt that you would not be used. Would not allow yourself to be used. You deserve the opportunity to make your own choices, to walk your own path. Indeed, I believe you will do so, regardless of what Ending, Geryon, or anyone else intends. You must do what you believe to be right.”

  “Right?” Alice said. “What if I can’t tell for certain?”

  The Dragon’s face was immobile, but Alice thought she heard a smile in its voice. “Which of us can?”

  It was too much to think about, and Alice was too tired. She felt drained, cored, like a rind of fruit after it had been squeezed for juice.

  “Right now,” she said, “all I want to do is go home.” That meant the Library, she realized. Her small room on the third floor, with the cracks in the ceiling, the book lying half read on her pillow, and the two threadbare rabbits standing silent sentry by the window. She shook her head, fighting the exhaustion. “But the others. I need to get back to them.”

  “Yes. This is good-bye, then. For a time. Someday you will be a powerful enough Reader in your own right to call me up and bend me to your will.” The Dragon inclined its head. “I hope, when that day comes, you remember . . . moments like this, when you were in the power of another. It is something that the other Readers, I fear, have forgotten.”

  “I will.” Alice climbed to her feet, shrugging the Dragon’s tail off of her shoulders. “Thank you.”

  The Dragon’s black tongue flicked out between its teeth, tasting the air. “Good luck.”

  Then, with a rush of air that set the dust to swirling, the vast creature was gone.

  Alice was glad to find that the Dragon’s disappearance did not remove her ability to manipulate the labyrinth. But Torment’s absence was like a vast wound in the fabric, and without his power to maintain the twisted, folded space, it was unraveling. For the moment, it was still solid enough that Alice, eyes closed, could pull a doorway into the storeroom, and then connect it to the throne room.

  Before going through, she looked around at the accumulated junk piled against the walls. Some of it was probably valuable, or magical, or both, but she couldn’t bring herself to paw through the hoard. She turned her back on it and stepped through, letting the path close behind her, arriving in the throne room mid-argument.

  “—you’re hardly in good enough shape for that,” Isaac was saying. “And even if they have gone, it doesn’t mean that Torment has.”

  “We cannot simply sit here and do nothing.” It was Dex’s voice, and Alice’s heart leaped. “Sister Alice is in danger, and we must go to her assistance.”

  “She’s right,” Soranna agreed quietly. “She would come for us.”

  “I know,” Isaac said. “I’ll go, but the two of you should stay here—”

  “Um,” Alice said. “Hi.”

  Isaac spun, coat flaring around him. “Alice?”

  “Yeah,” Alice said. “I—”

  She was caught unprepared as he ran right at her, wrapping his arms around her in a fierce hug. For a moment Alice stood ramrod-straight, not sure what to do. Then she softened, and brought her hands up tentatively to grip his shoulders.

  “I thought . . .” Isaac’s voice was a whisper in her ear. “I thought you had died on me, too.”

  “I’m okay.” It was all Alice could think to say. “Really. I’m okay.”

  He stepped aside, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. But hugs were apparently the order of the day, and Dex was next in line. One half of her face was purpling into a monstrous bruise, and she walked with a limp, but otherwise her encounter with Torment seemed to have left her none the worse for wear. She put her arms around Alice, and Alice hugged her back, gently, not sure where Dex was hurt.

  “I was worried about you,” Alice said. “After Torment cut through Spike so easily, when he hit you . . .”

  “The caryatid protected me most excellently,” Dex said, pulling away. “I was just telling Brother Isaac that this expedition has been more successful than most in that respect.” She raised her arm, with the circular scar where it had b
een severed and reattached. “After all, I am still in one piece!”

  Alice couldn’t help but smile.

  Dex stepped back, revealing Soranna, standing awkwardly with her hands behind her back. She looked at Alice, uncertain, and Alice stepped forward to hug her as well.

  “But what happened?” Isaac said, over Soranna’s shoulder. “Where’s Torment?”

  “Gone,” Alice said. “Banished.”

  “You—” He shook his head. “How did you do that?”

  “It’s a long story,” Alice said. “And for now I think we’d better get out of here, or else we’re going to have a very long walk.”

  She reached out for the unraveling fabric of the labyrinth and folded a long path, from the throne room to the portal-book. Cold air from the outside gusted in through the doorway. Then she glanced back at the dais, where Jacob had fallen. There was something there now, a glittering pyramid of ice.

  Isaac followed her gaze. “I sealed him in,” he said. “It should last for a while. When our masters clean this place out, I’ll make sure they bring him back to me. He deserves that.”

  Alice swallowed and nodded. She led the way, out the door and across the fortress by a trick of folded space, back to where they’d begun.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  HOMECOMING

  FOR A MOMENT THE throne room, via an eye-twisting doorway, led directly out to the long, lonely bridge on the edge of the fortress. When they were all through, Alice let go of the fabric, and they were once again on the small, circular platform where they’d first come in. On the stone pedestal sat the portal-book leading back to the cavern of front doors, right where they’d left it.

  It was colder out here than it had been in the keep, and Alice hugged herself against the wind that whistled and moaned up from the abyss. The four apprentices walked over to the book and looked down at it solemnly.

  “Are you going to be all right, Soranna?” Alice said. The thought had been nagging at her. “You said your master would be angry with you if you allowed yourself to be polluted with ‘impure ideas.’”

  Soranna gave a tiny smile. “I think I will be fine. I realize now that she has more need of me than I once believed. I am the last of my cohort, after all.” She shrugged. “When she asks what happened, I will simply tell her what she wants to hear.”

  “Thank you, Sister Soranna,” Dex said. “We would not have made it without you.”

  Alice hesitated. “I guess this is good-bye, then.”

  “It is.” Soranna nodded to Isaac, and accepted a hug from Dex. “But I think I will see you again.”

  “I hope so,” Alice said.

  Soranna looked down, but her smile broadened. She turned away and flipped the book open. Between blinks, she was gone. The pages of the portal-book crackled with light for a moment, and it snapped shut with a thump.

  “As for myself,” Dex said, “I am also confident I will see you again, Sister Alice and Brother Isaac. I will consult the auguries and discover when that will be, and await the day with considerable enthusiasm.”

  “Thank you,” Alice said. “For everything.”

  Dex smiled and gave a jaunty wave. She stepped up to the book, and a moment later she too was gone.

  Alice looked sidelong at Isaac. His face, always thin, was now practically gaunt.

  “Are you all right?” she ventured.

  “No,” Isaac whispered. “I’m not. Are you?”

  “No. I’m . . . sorry about Evander.”

  “I was right there.” Isaac’s hands clenched into fists, and he thrust them into the pockets of his coat. “I was right there and I couldn’t do anything.”

  Alice, thinking of the magic mirror in Torment’s hoard, nodded in silent sympathy. “I . . .”

  She hesitated, and he cocked his head. Alice took a deep breath.

  “I came here,” she said, “to find my father.”

  Isaac looked at her, uncertain, as Alice began the story. She’d never told anyone the whole thing, not like this, from the fairy in her kitchen to her ambush of Vespidian, and her desperate hope that somewhere in Esau’s fortress she would find an answer. There was no one else in the world she could tell, no one else who knew the truth about her deal with Ending, or what had happened inside the Dragon’s book. It took longer than she expected.

  When she arrived at her confrontation with Torment, where she’d nearly died, Isaac’s eyes went wide. Alice swallowed hard and continued, describing the scene in the magic mirror and the battle above the Gideon. As she reached the very end, her voice cracked.

  “My father . . . tried to give himself up. For all the other people on the ship. He knew what would happen. But Esau and Geryon . . .”

  Alice shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t allowed herself to cry, not since they’d told her that her father was dead; crying was what you did for someone who was really and truly gone, and she had never believed that. Tears were spilling down her cheeks now, and she was powerless to stop them.

  She felt Isaac wrap his arms around her, hugging her tight, and she rested her head on his shoulder.

  “What am I supposed to do now?” she whispered. “I came here to find him, to save him. Now . . .”

  Isaac pulled away, and she found herself staring into his eyes. The pain she saw there was a mirror of her own.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s the same for you, isn’t it?”

  He nodded.

  “I feel like I have nothing left,” Alice said. “Now what?”

  “I don’t know,” Isaac said. “But we’re alive. You and I. That’s something.”

  A long, quiet moment passed. Isaac suddenly seemed to realize how close they were to each other, noses nearly touching, and he flushed and took an awkward step back.

  “What are you going to tell Geryon?” he said, after a pause.

  “I don’t know.” Alice felt something new bubbling up inside her, a hot, bright rage that cut through the guilt and grief. “He lied to me. He’s been lying to me all along. He and Esau killed my father. They didn’t even mean to, it was just . . . just an accident!” She looked up at him, new fire in her eyes. “And your master, Anaxomander, sent your brother here to die, didn’t he? He traded him like a pet. We can’t let them get away with it.”

  “Get away with it?” Isaac looked taken aback. “They’re old Readers, our masters. What can we possibly do?”

  “I’ll think of something. I’ll find something.” She looked at him speculatively. “Will you help me?”

  “I . . . if I can.” Isaac shook his head. “Be careful, Alice. I don’t want you to end up like . . . like Jacob.”

  “I won’t. I promise.” Alice took a long breath and looked around the empty platform. “We should go back.”

  “Next time I see you,” Isaac said, “it’ll probably be another mission, like this one.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What if we end up on opposite sides?” Isaac shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t think I could hurt you, Alice. Whatever my master told me to do. If he sent us to fight, I’d . . .”

  “We’d work something out.” Alice forced a smile. “We always do.”

  Isaac gave a weak smile and nodded. He flipped the portal-book open and looked back over his shoulder.

  “I’m glad you were here,” he said.

  Then, before she could reply, he looked down at the book and vanished. There was a flicker and a snap as the book slammed itself shut, and Alice was alone.

  She waited a few moments, looking back at the constellation of lights that was Esau’s fortress. Going back meant facing Geryon, and she wasn’t sure she was ready for that. She took the black thread that led to the Dragon in her mental grip, and sighed. I wish . . .

  But she was filthy, hungry, and so, so tired. She turned back to the portal-book, fli
pped it open, and Read herself through into the cavern. Then, summoning the devilfish for a little light, she found her way back to the boulder marked Geryon, and the little volume that sat on top of it. She took a deep breath, opened it, and read:

  “Welcome back, Alice,” Geryon said. “We were starting to worry . . .”

  “Welcome back, Alice,” Geryon said. “We were starting to worry that something had gone wrong.”

  She was standing in front of Geryon’s desk, in his study, staring down at the portal-book. Geryon reached out and picked it up carefully, and put it back into its metal cube of a chest.

  “How long has it been?” Alice said. Her voice felt scratchy.

  “The better part of three days. I trust you successfully completed your assignment?”

  Alice looked up into Geryon’s smiling face. He looked almost the same as ever—the same as she’d seen in the magic mirror—but she thought she could sense a change. Something around the eyes, a tiny hint of suspicion peeking through his kindly facade. Or is it me that’s changed?

  “Yes, sir,” she said, in a business-like tone. “Jacob is dead, and none of the other apprentices stole anything from the fortress.”

  “Good, good. I imagine there’s a lot of cleaning up to do there.”

  “Yes, sir. Quite a bit.”

  “All in good time. You’ve done well, and you must be tired. We can go over the details later.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Alice said. “I’m going to go and get some rest.”

  She nodded politely to Geryon, turned, and left the study. The weight of exhaustion was suddenly oppressive, and she shut the door and rested against it for a few moments.

  She didn’t notice Emma, as silent as a solid ghost, until she was standing right in front of her with a platter bearing a pitcher of water and a plate of sandwiches.

  “For me?” Alice said.

  Emma nodded.

  “Please put it in my room, and then come back here,” Alice said. The girl marched up the stairs at once, and Alice followed when her legs felt up to the challenge. Ascending to the third floor was a torture of aches and bruises. It felt like a thousand years ago that she’d been sprinting down the hallways of Esau’s fortress with wolves in hot pursuit. Emma, platter delivered, passed her on the stairs, going back down to wait for further orders.