The Mad Apprentice

by Django Wexler

  Ashes was curled in a tight ball outside her door. As Alice came down the corridor, he got up and wove back and forth in front of her like he was trying to get stepped on.

  “She returns at last!” the cat said. “It can’t have been that bad. You’ve still got all your limbs!”

  Alice was not in the mood for Ashes’ humor, and that comment only reminded her of Dex’s misadventure with the crocodile. She stepped past him.

  “Alice?” Ashes hurried after her. “Wait. Alice!”

  For a moment she wanted to slam her door, but it wasn’t really Ashes she was angry at. She left the door cracked open, and a moment later his head popped through, with the chagrined look of a cat expecting a smack.

  “You are all right, aren’t you?” he said. “Was it really terrible?”

  “I’m fine,” Alice said, though she wasn’t sure that was the truth. “It was . . . hard.” Then, seeing Ashes’ drooping ears, she added, “Honestly, though. I’m okay. I’m just . . . very tired.”

  “All right,” Ashes said. He still sounded dubious.

  “We can talk in the morning,” Alice said.

  “It is the morning.”

  “In the evening, then. Or tomorrow. Whenever I wake up.”

  “Okay,” Ashes said. “I’ll tell Mother you’re safe. She’ll be glad to hear it.”

  I bet she will. She still didn’t know what to think about Ending, or how much she was going to tell her. Later.

  Ashes withdrew, and Alice shut the door the rest of the way. She took the pitcher of iced water from the platter and drank quite a lot of it, then forced herself to eat one of the sandwiches. After that, her eyes started to close of their own accord, and she just managed to stagger over to the bed before sleep closed around her like a warm, fuzzy blanket.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  AND IF YOU WRONG US . . .

  GERYON WAS RUNNING, HIS whiskers wild and disheveled, his robe flapping around him. He was in a complicated tangle of brick walls, taller than a man, marking out narrow corridors, turns, and junctions, like a maze from a children’s puzzle book built full-scale. His threadbare slippers flapped and scraped against the cobblestones underfoot.

  “You don’t know what you’re doing!” he shouted. “We’ll destroy you for this! You don’t have a chance!”

  Alice regarded him with unblinking black eyes. Her body was huge, six-legged, magnificently strong and armored in scales. She was the Dragon. She towered above the walls of the maze, and when she took a step forward, bricks crunched and exploded under her claws.

  “You might as well give up!” Geryon said. He sounded as tiny and pathetic as he looked, hurrying along the brick corridors, his ample stomach bouncing with every step. “There’s nothing you can do against me!”

  Alice chuckled, and it was a vast, booming sound. She took another step forward, effortlessly crossing corridors it would have taken Geryon hours to get through, and put her foot down right behind the fleeing Reader. He jumped into the air at the sound of crumbling masonry, and ran even faster, zigging and zagging desperately through the maze in an effort to get away from her. It was no use, though. Every time he tried to escape, the walls of the maze turned him back, leading him inexorably on a path back toward where Alice was waiting.

  “I’m warning you!” Geryon wheezed, gasping for breath. “You’ve got one last chance to turn back.”

  “You lied to me,” Alice rumbled. The buzz of her voice made stones jump in the piles of rubble by her feet. “You let my father die. You watched it happen.”

  “So what?” Geryon’s lips turned down petulantly. “He would have died anyway. It doesn’t make a bit of difference. He wasn’t one of us, he didn’t matter.”

  “Shut up!” Alice roared, lunging forward. She planted a huge claw on either side of him, leaning down until her shadow fell across the Reader. “You have no idea what matters. You’ve never cared about anyone but yourself. You deserve . . .”

  “What?” The Reader looked fearful. “What are you going to do?”

  Alice ate him. He tasted sweet, like a sticky gumdrop, and she chewed thoughtfully a few times before swallowing him down.

  “Monster!” someone shouted. “You’re a monster!”

  She looked around, huge body coiling. The maze was gone, and in its place was a city street. Standing alone on the pavement was her father, in the nightshirt she’d seen him wearing in the magic mirror, pointing a trembling finger at her.

  “No,” Alice said. “Father, it’s me. You don’t understand.”

  “Kill it!” Her father bent over, picked up a stone, and hurled it at her. It struck her in the face, and the impact hurt, in spite of all her size and armor. “Come on, help me!”

  A small crowd was gathering. There was Miss Juniper, her tutor, and Cooper, her father’s man. Mr. Pallworthy the lawyer was there, and the postman who’d always said hello to her as he went about his rounds, the librarian from the Carnegie Library, and the man who sold her favorite candy in Grand Central Station. And more, faces she couldn’t put names to, everyone she’d known in the days before Geryon had come into her life and wrenched it onto a new course. Now they were all grabbing stones and throwing them at her, and she shrank under the barrage.

  “Wait!” she shouted. “Father, it’s me, it’s Alice! Please!”

  It was because she still had the Dragon’s shape, she realized. Hurriedly, she fumbled with her threads, trying to uncoil the black one that led to the Dragon and return to human form. But her mental grip slipped off it, as though it were coated in ice, and no matter how hard she tried, the control she needed wouldn’t come.

  “Kill it!” her father screamed. “Kill it!”

  Wailing, Alice turned and ran, pursued by a rain of stones.

  She opened her eyes as the light of sunset painted her room orange. The old toys in the window threw enormous, rabbit-shaped shadows across the floor. Alice lay still for a moment, breathing hard, as the remnants of the dream chased themselves around and around inside her head.

  Father . . .

  Carefully, wincing at the aches in her muscles, she sat up and slid her legs out of bed.

  She couldn’t shake off the memory of her father’s face in the dream. Twisted up, not with hate or rage, but something even worse. Disapproval? Disappointment?

  Alice would never have thought of herself as a person who would seek revenge. It happened sometimes, in stories, usually when some old king had been done in by a villain and the heroic prince swore never to rest until the responsible party was brought to justice. Pulp heroes on the radio were always getting revenge too, for girlfriends or innocent victims of vicious criminals. It had always seemed a bit stupid to Alice. After all, meting out vengeance wouldn’t bring the victims back, or help their loved ones forget, or do anything except pile one unfortunate tragedy on top of another.

  Now, though, she understood. The cold, helpless feeling as she’d watched the images in the mirror play out, as Geryon and Esau fought each other and destroyed her entire life as an afterthought. And the rage, rising like bile from her stomach into the back of her throat, at the thought that Geryon might just get away with it. That if she hadn’t seen those images, she might have come back none the wiser, and lived out her time as an apprentice in the house of the man who’d done more to hurt her than anyone still alive.

  And now that she knew, she couldn’t do nothing. She couldn’t. The anger would build inside her, on and on, forever, until it poisoned her. Every time she saw Geryon, she would return to those images, to the wash of electric fire sweeping down on the Gideon. How can I do nothing?

  He has to answer for it. Somehow, some way, he has to answer.

  She could feel her father’s eyes on her. It felt like if she turned her head, she’d see his face, frowning in disapproval. He wouldn’t like this.

  Alice sat, deep in though
t, for a long time. As the orange light faded to crimson, and then finally to darkness, she realized she’d made her decision.

  Her father wouldn’t like it. But her father was dead. And she would have her revenge.

  End

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

  My deepest gratitude to the usual suspects:

  To Seth Fishman, my agent, for being generally awesome. Also to everyone else at The Gernert Company, Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardner, and Andy Kifer, for also being awesome. Caspian Dennis at Abner Stein is awesome on a completely different continent!

  To Elisabeth Fracalossi, my long-serving, long-suffering first reader.

  To Kathy Dawson, my editor, for her input and also for putting up with my ignorance of the genre I decided to write in. She has done a great deal to educate me. Also Claire Evans, her assistant, for all her hard work.

  To Alexander Jansson, for his spectacular covers and artwork.

  To all the hardworking people whose care and effort made this book a reality.

  Finally, of course, to everyone who read and spread the word about The Forbidden Library: readers, booksellers, librarians, and parents. I couldn’t do this without you.

  DJANGO WEXLER

  is a self-proclaimed computer/fantasy/sci-fi geek. He graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with degrees in creative writing and computer science, worked in artificial intelligence research and as a programmer/writer for Microsoft, and is now a full-time fantasy writer. Django is the author of The Shadow Campaigns, an epic fantasy series for adults published by Roc (an imprint of Penguin), and The Forbidden Library, a classic fantasy series for young readers published by Kathy Dawson Books (an imprint of Penguin Young Readers Group).

  Learn more at www.DjangoWexler.com, and follow Django on Facebook and Twitter (@DjangoWexler).

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