“It’s a thought. Have you got anything else?”
Alice shook her head, then paused. There was another thread, a wooden one, at the back of her mind. When she touched it, it still felt jittery, but she was able to get a grip on it. Trying to pull it outside herself, to summon the creature, met strong resistance, but she was able to loop it around herself a few times fairly easily.
She opened her eyes to find Isaac looking at her intently.
“There’s . . . something else,” she said. “I’ve never used it before, so I’m not quite certain, but I think it’s a tree-sprite.”
“How can you not be certain? Either you went into a prison-book or you didn’t.”
“I did,” Alice said, “but I don’t remember coming out again. It nearly killed me, but I think Geryon came in and stopped it.”
“Oh.” Isaac was quiet for a moment. “Can you summon it?”
“I don’t think so. It feels like something’s wrong with it. I have an idea, though.”
She stood up, dusting off her tattered dress, and looked around the little hollow until she found a single, pencil-thin root, snaking all the way down from some desperate little tree on the surface. Alice put her hand against it experimentally and closed her eyes.
She could feel . . . something. A sense of light, and heat, and the vague feel of wind rustling through scraggly leaves. Her mind could follow the root all the way to the surface, where the gnarled trunk of the tree hunched in a bowl of thin soil, and back down a dozen other questing roots that forked and spread through the rock-pile.
Isaac poked his head in the end of the crevice. “Did you find something?”
Concentrating, Alice focused her will on the root. With a faint sigh like an old man forced to leave his comfortable chair, it pulled itself away from the rock and looped into the air in front of her, vibrating gently. Alice kept it there for a few moments, then let it drop.
“I think that’s about it. Trees.”
“I see.” Isaac scratched the side of his nose. “Not terribly useful in our present circumstances, then.”
“All right,” said Alice defensively. “What have you got? Can you use that Siren to put it to sleep?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t have the power-charm anymore, and the Dragon is too big. Besides, she’s still singing out there, and I’m not sure what would happen if I tried to pull her in here with us as well.”
“What about the one you used on me?”
“The iceling?”
Isaac extended one hand toward the rock wall and frowned. Cold wind whipped for a moment, and tracks of frost spread out from a central point like the rays of a star.
“It can freeze water and move the ice about a bit,” he said. “And I have a couple of little ones, like the glow-wisp and the lizard-frog.”
“That’s it?” Alice said, with a bit too much satisfaction. “I’m not sure that’s very useful in our present circumstances.”
He gave a wan smile, which she hadn’t expected. “No, I’m afraid not. I told you, I never expected to have to fight the Dragon.”
“There’s got to be something we can do.” Alice felt the flutter of fear again, and balled up her fists. “What do we know about the Dragon?”
“It’s big?” Isaac offered. “And it has big pointy teeth.”
“It moves like a snake,” Alice said. “It’s fast, and agile.”
“It—”
“Shh.” Alice held up a hand. “Did you hear something?”
Isaac went silent. A moment later, the air was filled with an enormous rending crash, and one wall of their little hollow vanished upward. Brilliant sunlight flooded into the shadowy underside of the rock-pile, and Alice automatically raised her hand against the glare and blinked furiously. She could see the black shape of the boulder, and a long, snake-like protrusion wrapped around it.
It was the Dragon’s tail. It lifted the multi-ton stone out of its way with sinuous ease, flicking it away to crash with a rumble out in the rock-pile. The thing’s arrowhead-shaped snout filled the gap, blocking out the sun and plunging them back into shadow. The hot, fetid wind of its breath washed over Alice like a wave. She stared back at the two closest eyes, and found she could see something moving inside the smoky black hemisphere. Inside an enormous iris was a pupil, contracted to a pinprick but slowly expanding in the sudden gloom.
“Hello, little wizard,” it said. “I can smell you, you know.”
“I don’t want to fight you,” Alice said. “Please. If we could just talk—”
“Were you fighting? It looked to me like you were hiding under a rock.” It snorted, a geyser of hot breath all around her. “Is this the best you can do?”
Alice found her hand closing around a fragment of stone. Before she could tell herself what a bad idea it was, she threw it as hard as she could, right into the Dragon’s eye. It bounced off the black casing as though from thick glass, causing no apparent harm, and the huge pupil swiveled and struggled to focus. A moment later the Dragon’s head lunged forward like a striking snake, thrashing against the rock just beside Alice.
A deep crevice ran away from the newly exposed hollow. Alice grabbed Isaac’s hand and ducked into it, flattening herself sideways to pass a narrow point in the rock. The crevice branched, and branched again, threading through the boulders. Alice, terrified of finding a dead end with the beast so close behind them, summoned a dozen swarmers and sent them on ahead, checking with their monochrome vision to make sure there was enough room for the two humans to pass through. Isaac followed her willingly enough, glancing frequently back over his shoulder toward where the Dragon was tearing their brief resting place to pieces.
When they’d come what felt like a safe distance, Alice paused for breath, the swarmers forming around them like a bodyguard. Isaac let go of her hand and leaned back against a rock, puffing hard.
“It’s . . . too strong,” he said. “Did you see the way it lifted that rock?” He coughed for a while, then spat a thick glob of dust on the ground. “I thought maybe we could . . . I don’t know, drop rocks on it, but anything we could lift wouldn’t even slow it down!”
Alice nodded weakly. “The eyes are no good either. Maybe if we could get up close and bash it with stones, but . . .”
“We’re dead,” Isaac said. “There is no way—”
“Don’t start that again,” Alice snapped.
“I’m open to suggestions,” Isaac said. He slid down the rock, tattered coat bunching at his shoulders. “God, I’m thirsty.”
Alice’s own lips were cracked, but she’d been trying to ignore them. She was about to scold Isaac again for complaining when something occurred to her.
“Your iceling can make . . . ice, can’t it?”
“It doesn’t really make it. It can freeze water that’s already there, and there’s always a little bit in the air.” He frowned. “Maybe we could scrape up the slush and have enough for a drink? It’d be dirty, though, and it wouldn’t be much in any case.”
“How much water can it freeze?”
Isaac laughed. “Quite a bit. One time, I was out with Evander, and we froze a lake solid so we could go skating at mid-summer.” He sighed. “Of course, once it melted, all the dead fish came floating to the top. Master was not pleased.”
“Water.” Alice looked upward. Far overhead, atop the rock-pile, the sun filtered down in a dappled pattern through the sparse leaves of another scraggly tree. “Somewhere, there has to be water.”
They climbed cautiously back to the top. The Dragon was visible a ways off, still apparently searching around where it had last seen them. Boulders occasionally flew in long parabolic arcs as it hurled them away in a rage. Alice led the way again, picking her way through the top layer of rocks rather than climbing over it, and always keeping something between them and the beast. It made for slow going, and it felt
like hours before they found what they were looking for.
A little stream of muddy water trickled down the side of the boulders, and Alice led Isaac along it until she found a little spring-fed pool on top of a great round rock. A couple of shallow depressions had gathered a small bed of soil, and a tree grew from one of them, many-branched and a bit taller than Alice.
The water was so cold that it hurt to touch, but she and Isaac slaked their thirst from cupped hands until they started going numb. Then, sitting cross-legged with the tree between them and the Dragon, Alice jammed her fingers in her armpits and explained the plan. Isaac seemed impressed and dubious by turns, especially when she came to her part in it.
“Are you sure you can do that?” he said. “I mean—”
“I did it once before,” Alice said.
“What if you get lost?”
“I won’t get lost.”
“All right.” He thought for a moment. “I’m still not certain the ice will do what you want it to do, though.”
“Let’s give it a shot, then.”
They went to the edge of the pool, where it trickled over the side of the little hillock and down among the field of boulders. Isaac reached down to a spot where it flowed between two of the enormous rocks and dipped his fingertips in the water. Patterns of frost spread out instantly, like blossoming flowers, and in a few seconds milky-white ice began to form.
For a while Alice worried that Isaac had been right. The boulders were too heavy, or too close together, or else the iceling simply wasn’t strong enough, whatever Isaac claimed. Then, with a faint groan, the huge boulder shifted, just a fraction of an inch, as the expanding ice forced it upward. Tons of rock shivered, letting fall a rain of dust and pebbles. It moved a little farther, perhaps an inch, and Isaac pulled his hand away. Instead of lying directly against the neighboring boulder, the rock was now resting on an inch-thick layer of dirty ice.
“I didn’t know it could do that,” Isaac said.
“At home,” Alice said, “we once had a hard freeze right after a rain. Some of the piping on the roof burst. Father brought it down to show me afterward. Solid iron, but the ice broke right through it. It expands when it freezes, you see, and . . .” She shook her head, not wanting to think about her father. “All right. It works. Now, let’s get ready before that thing comes looking for us.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
THE TRAP
THE STRAIN WAS EVIDENT on Isaac’s face by the time they were done. He had the look of a man struggling under some enormous weight, brow furrowed, teeth clenched, hard-pressed but determined not to let it fall.
“Are you all right?” Alice said.
“I can hold it,” Isaac said. “For a while, anyway.”
“If it gets away from you,” Alice said, “for God’s sake say something. I’d rather not end up buried under a thousand tons of rock.”
“I’ll hold it.” He puffed a breath between his teeth. “I’m more worried about you. Will you have time to get away?”
“I think so.” Alice thought about the huge eye trying to focus on her. “I don’t think it’s very good at going from light to dark and back again. I should have a few seconds before it can even see me.”
“That’s a thin guess to bet your life on.”
“If you had any better ideas, you should have said so earlier.”
Isaac shook his head. They stood in silence for a moment.
“Well,” Alice said. “Let’s get started.”
She left Isaac on the little hillock, beside the spring, while she climbed down to the base of their prepared section of the rock-pile. A touch of the Swarm thread kept her from skinning knees or elbows on the stone, but did nothing for the chill, which pebbled her skin to goose bumps. Waves of cold washed over her whenever the wind gusted from the direction of all the ice Isaac had laid down.
The Dragon had quieted down some. The huge cloud of dust had dispersed, and she could see the enormous thing pawing methodically through the rocks, occasionally lifting a boulder out of the way with its tail.
Wouldn’t it be a laugh, she thought, if we went to all this trouble and the thing decided it was bored with us?
She could feel a touch of hysteria, bubbling under the surface of her determination, and she forced it down ruthlessly. Reaching the rock she wanted, she looked over her shoulder toward the hillock. It was invisible behind a small mountain of boulders. From here, they looked just like any of the other small rises in the rock-field, but Alice couldn’t help imagining what would happen when the mass of stone got loose.
I wouldn’t even be a smear on the rocks, she thought, before forcibly derailing that train of thought. She turned around, facing the Dragon, and cupped her hands to her mouth.
“HEY!” Alice screamed. “YOU WANT TO FIGHT? I’M ABOUT READY!”
Her voice carried and echoed oddly across the field of stones. The Dragon looked up, head cocked, like a dog hearing a rustling in the bushes.
“Impudent wizard,” the Dragon rumbled. “Quit your scurrying about.”
“Come on, you ugly thing!” Alice shouted. “What are you waiting for?”
The enormous tail lashed back and forth. Slow at first, but accelerating quickly, the Dragon headed in her direction. Eight multi-jointed legs carried it smoothly across the broken, irregular surface of the rocks.
Alice backed up, first to the edge of her rock and then, climbing slowly, onto a large boulder that leaned against it. She could feel the cold of the ice all around her, and she had to clench her fists to keep from shivering.
“That’s right,” she went on, throat already raw. “Come and get me. Dinner is served . . .”
It had gotten sight of her now, and its legs were a blur, moving faster than a charging horse. Alice hoisted herself up onto a ledge and scrambled backward, tightening her grip on the Swarm thread. She would have only a few seconds, at best, before everything came crashing down.
The Dragon hit the edge of the pile of rocks, but Alice had crawled back in and among them. The creature’s huge head pushed in after her, between a pair of boulders. Alice could see it lose its bearings in the sudden gloom, enormous snout sweeping back and forth. When she moved, it swung toward her, drawn by the sound of her shoes on stone. The great mouth opened, letting loose a hot wind that smelled of dead, rotting things. Alice could see past its teeth into the bottomless recesses of its throat.
God in heaven, she thought. I wouldn’t even be a morsel.
“Isaac,” she shouted hoarsely. “NOW!”
At the same time, she yanked the Swarm thread into herself, wrapping it around her essence over and over until her body started to change. There was a weird, fragmented moment of dissolution, flesh flowing and melting in a way that made Alice want to vomit. She tasted bile at the back of half a hundred tiny throats, as the swarmers spilled forth in a wave. They—she—dashed off, up through the rocks, leaving only a pair of shoes to mark where she’d been standing.
The swarmers couldn’t climb stone as well as they could trees, but the slopes weren’t as steep, and they were excellent jumpers. Alice’s consciousness expanded as she raced through the pile of rocks, dodging the icy bonds that held them in place, racing away from the Dragon and up toward the hillock. The swarmers leaped from boulder to boulder and stormed through the crevices, working their way through passages too small for any human. Below, the Dragon swung its head back and forth, hunting for some sign of the prey that had suddenly vanished.
As soon as she’d shouted, if everything had gone according to plan, Isaac would have released his grip on the iceling. They’d spent the better part of an hour directing the little stream into carefully iced-over channels, growing discs and pads of ice between the boulders, feeling the whole structure twist and complain at every shift. Now he threw that process into reverse, drawing the cold away, melting the ice much faster than th
e chilly air could. The hill of boulders, padded with planes of slippery, half-melted ice, began to move.
Alice nearly didn’t make it out before the avalanche began. Her leading swarmers had reached the firmer ground of the hilltop, beside the tree and the trickling spring, but the rest of her felt the rocks begin to slide underfoot. She jumped, leaping from rock to rock even as they began to move, and the last couple of swarmers hurled themselves blindly into space as they lost their footing, trusting to their rubbery physique to keep them relatively intact.
The collapse picked up speed as more of the boulders slipped free of the ice and began crunching down toward the Dragon. The first rock bounced off another boulder in a cloud of dust and struck the creature a glancing blow on the flank, and the Dragon jerked its head up from where it had been searching for Alice and emitted another ear-shattering roar. By then boulders were coming down all around it, though, bouncing and tumbling and smashing themselves to bits in sprays of flying stones.
Alice soon lost sight of the Dragon in the cloud of dust, but she could hear it bellowing. It was too much to hope that the rock-slide alone would kill it, but she thought that much stone should pin it in place, at least for a while. She let the Swarm thread slip out of her mental grasp, and the cluster of gray-brown swarmers flowed together, losing their definition until they became a girl, lying gasping on the hilltop beside the spring. Alice sucked air desperately, until she had enough strength to roll over. She groped with one hand until she found the base of the tree that stood beside the little pool, and gave a yank on the other thread that coiled through her mind.
This tree was much stronger than the ragged one she’d felt before. The tough little trunk with its leafy branches was only the tip of a much larger plant—its roots extended down into the rocky piles and burrowed in wherever they found purchase.
Alice grabbed hold of the tree, bending it to her will, forcing it into a frenzy of activity ten thousand times faster than anything nature had intended. The fronds trailing in the little pool thickened and multiplied, filling with water like fire hoses, drinking in everything the pond had to offer.
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