The Palace of Glass (10 page)

TO THE SURFACE

A
CTINIA WOKE
A
LICE THE
next morning, carrying a pot of water with the extreme caution of a factory worker handling a vat of toxic waste. Alice drank gratefully, a process which the young fire-sprite watched in fascination, and then ate breakfast from among her supplies. She clicked open the silver pocket watch and tracked the second hand as it made its smooth circuit.
Six days and a few hours to go.

While she was rooting through the torn bedsheet she'd tied into a pack, Actinia hesitantly spoke up.

“I got you this too.” The boy held out a leather bundle. “I saw that your pack was torn, and we had an old one.”

Alice took the bundle and unfolded it. It was a proper backpack, all stitched from leather with thick, tough thread. The clasp was made of black glass, worked into the shape of a tiny flame.

“Thank you,” she said. The bedsheet wouldn't have lasted much longer.

“I heard you were going on a journey,” Actinia said, eyes fixed firmly on his feet. “And you saved us from the bluechill, so I thought . . . my spark said you could have it.”

“Please give him my thanks as well,” Alice said, repacking her things. She got off the stone slab and stretched, feeling surprisingly well. Her boots were at the foot of the bed—Flicker must have brought them—along with three slightly scorched-looking squares of parchment.
The wards.
Alice picked them up, frowning as she felt for the magic within them. It was still there, but broken, incomplete, like a snapped thread.

Actinia escorted her down a short corridor to the great hall. She'd last seen it being used as a makeshift surgery. Now it was quiet, though the tables and a certain amount of mess attested to a party having ended not long before, and the air was thick with the scent of smoke.

Pyros was waiting, with Flicker. The old man looked
grave, and the boy bore his usual angry scowl. They both got to their feet as Alice and Actinia entered.

“Reader,” Flicker said curtly.

Pyros frowned and ran one hand through his hair. He looked uncertain.

“I have decided,” he said, “that Flicker will accompany you as far as the Palace of Glass. It is quite possible you have saved us from annihilation, and we can offer no less.”

“Flicker?” Alice looked from one of them to the other. “
He's
coming with me?”

Flicker's scowl deepened. “I'm not good enough for you, Reader?”

“Flicker has the most complete memories of the surface and the other side of the gate,” Pyros said. “He may not be the greatest of our warriors, but he knows where you need to go and the difficulties you may encounter.”

“I . . .” Alice paused. What she wanted to say was,
I thought Flicker hated Readers.
The boy noticed her hesitation and crossed his arms.

“It wasn't my idea,” Flicker said, glaring. “But Pyros is the elder here. Unless you'd rather have someone else?”

“No,” Alice said. “I'd be happy to have you along. I was
just . . . surprised. I know it's dangerous. I'll do everything I can to keep us safe.”

“Do you have any further preparations to make?” Pyros said, over a fresh scowl from Flicker. Alice shook her head, and the old man went on, “Then I suggest you go as soon as possible.”

“No percentage in hanging about,” Alice agreed with a touch of melancholy.

Flicker, equipped with a glass-tipped spear and a pack of his own, hugged Actinia tight for a long time. Alice waited while Pyros whispered a few final words in the boy's ear. Behind the elder, a few other fire-sprites were watching. Their expressions were not pleasant.

Tribute.
She
wasn't
taking Flicker away to lock him in a prison-book, but from the sprites' point of view it looked the same. She wanted to promise them she'd bring him back, but how could she?
No wonder Pyros wanted us to get moving quickly.

With good-byes completed, Flicker opened the single door that led back out into the tunnels beyond the village. Alice followed and let it crash closed behind her.

A grinding, crackling sound filled the air as soon as they'd rounded the first bend. Flicker stopped and waited,
and a moment later Ishi bounded into view, stumpy rock-tail wagging and both heads drooling flame. The fire-sprite bent and rubbed the dog-thing affectionately.

“Is he coming with us?” Alice said, giving the creature an appraising look.

“Ishi?” Flicker shook his head. “He couldn't survive on the surface. I can eat anything that will burn, more or less, but he needs molten rock.” He looked at the dog-thing and added, “That's why there's even fewer of them left than there are of us.”

“Oh.”

“Take care of everyone, Ishi.” Flicker rubbed the dog-thing's muzzles, then pointed the way they had come. Ishi gave a double bark, like a pair of rocks cracking, and trotted off. Flicker gestured and said, “Come on. It's this way.”

They walked in silence for a while, winding through tunnel after tunnel, always tending slightly upward. Sometimes the tubes connected of their own accord, joining up like tributaries to a river, but more often doorways had been cut between them by long-ago sprites. Here and there, rock-falls had blocked the path, and they had to backtrack and work around, but Flicker's confidence never wavered.

“Is this all in your memories?” Alice said. “The ones you got from your . . . spark?”

Flicker looked back at her, glowing eyes unreadable. “Pyros told you about that?”

“A little.”

The boy shrugged. “Some of them. I've done a lot of exploring on my own too. I told you I'm the only person in our village to have been to the surface.”

“What's it like?”

“Nothing special. Cold. Dark.”

They walked on for a few heartbeats. The light from Flicker's hair was bright enough to see by, so Alice hadn't invoked the devilfish, but the slow churn of the colors made the shadows bend weirdly.

“I remember your world,” Flicker said abruptly. “Almost none of the others can, but I do. It's so . . . bright.”

“Sometimes,” Alice said.

“And strange. Full of things to eat, but also so
wet
. I remember
rain.
” He shivered. “I don't know how my ancestors stood it.”

“Does water really hurt you?” Alice said.

Flicker looked back at her again. “Not
hurt
, exactly. Just . . it's . . . urgh. Disgusting. Does it rain very often?”

“It depends where you are,” Alice said. “Where I live, it
rains all the time, in the summer. In the winter, it snows.”

“What's
snow
?”

Apparently that hadn't been included in Flicker's inherited memories. Alice grinned, thinking of Ashes and his opinion on the subject. “It's a bit like . . . fluffy ice, I suppose? It falls from the sky like rain and builds up in mounds. I think you would hate it.”

“I think you're right.” Flicker smiled for a moment, then replaced it with a scowl as soon as he realized what he was doing. He gestured to a larger doorway up ahead. “This is what we're looking for. It's the quickest way to the surface, but it's a little bit of a climb.” He raised an eyebrow. “I assume a Reader can handle it?”

“I can handle it,” Alice said, all too aware of the ticking in her pocket. She tested her threads and found them near to hand. She didn't think she was quite back to full strength, but she felt recovered enough for a little exertion.

Flicker led the way into a large tunnel, different from the others. It was rougher, wider, and went upward at close to a forty-five-degree angle, like the eaves of a house. The slope was strewn with bits of rock and glass. Flicker picked his way forward, moving from boulder to boulder and scrambling over the smooth patches. Alice
took a deep breath, called on Spike's strength, and followed.

It went on for longer than she'd expected, but she realized she had no idea how deep underground they were. The first hint that they were approaching the top was a change in the air. The tunnels had a faint sulfurous smell that Alice had stopped noticing, but the new breeze carried a different taste. It was cold and dry, and smelled of ice.

There wasn't much light, though. Alice guessed it was night, then wondered if there
were
days and nights here.
Assumptions. I can't make too many assumptions.

“Almost there,” Flicker said, pausing in the lee of a large boulder for a rest. He was breathing hard, the fire in his hair pulsing raggedly. He looked at Alice with a little more respect. With the dinosaur's borrowed strength, she'd strolled up the steep slope as easily as walking a garden path. “A bit more, and we'll be out.”

“Then what?”

“Then we try and find the gate.”

“Try?” Alice raised an eyebrow of her own. “I thought you remembered where it was.”

“I remember where it was hundreds of years ago. The gate won't have moved, and I can guess where to go by
looking at the mountains, but it's not exact.” He shrugged. “We'll find it. The question is what happens when we get there.”

“Why? What's at the gate?”

“I don't know. Didn't I just say no one had been there for hundreds of years? But
something
will be using it.” Flicker sighed. “Whatever it is, I'm sure you'll be able to kill it. Come on.”

Flicker pushed off the boulder and started climbing again. After a short scramble up a narrow rock shelf, the slope leveled out a bit, and they could walk more comfortably. Ahead, Alice could see a narrow band of darkness, rapidly expanding as they moved toward it.

Oh,
she thought.
So they
do
have day and night here . . .

Between one step and the next, she'd emerged from under the overhang of the cave roof and into the open. Her eyes went to the sky, and stayed put while her mouth hung loose and her thought trailed off in wonder.

It was a perfect dark night, darker than even Geryon's estate, miles from the lights of Pittsburgh. There was no moon, and the stars were ablaze, rank on rank of them, glittering across the heavens like diamond dust spilled on black velvet. But it wasn't their clarity or number that made Alice stop in her tracks. They were
moving
.

Not the slow, night-long rotation of stars on Earth, the imperceptible rise and set of constellations. Here the brilliant pinpricks crawled visibly across the sky, making a great, stately circular sweep around a point halfway between the overhead and the horizon. It felt like looking into a giant whirlpool, a huge, endlessly spinning vortex, and for a moment Alice felt a queasy vertigo, as though she were going to fall
up
and drown in the void.

Then her perspective shifted. The stars didn't move, they'd taught her that in her lessons. The
world
did, spinning on its axis. She'd never
felt
it spinning before, but she did now, watching the steady procession of the heavens. Her stomach flip-flopped, and she forced herself to look at the ground before she threw up.

“It used to take me like that, sometimes,” Flicker said, coming up beside her. He glanced up at the stars, unconcerned. “I thought you humans lived out in the open, though.”

“It's not being in the open,” Alice said, keeping her breath slow and regular. “The stars here are . . . wrong.”

“Really?” Flicker looked at the sky again. “What are they supposed to be doing?”

Apparently Flicker's memories of Earth weren't
that
extensive. Alice shook her head, steeled herself, and
looked around. The wheeling stars tugged at her gaze, but as long as she didn't stare upward, she didn't get the sick
falling
sensation in the balls of her feet. She swallowed.