The Palace of Glass (14 page)

She closed her eyes and created the flower in her mind. It would be red, blue, and green, brilliantly colored instead of pale, and larger than anything she'd seen in the garden. The bud swelled, and she heard Helga's breath hiss. Alice grinned to herself, hand twitching minutely as she directed the tree. The yard was silent, except for the howl of the wind, as the flower bloomed.

Alice felt the flower opening, but it seemed
off,
the tree itself protesting against what she was pushing it to do.
No,
she thought.
Like this. Grow.
She bore down harder, forcing the bud to spread. Something was wrong.

Then Helga began to laugh again.

“Is that it, Reader? Is that what all your power can do?”

Alice opened her eyes.

The flower was blue and red and green, but it was a
far cry from the delicate, intricate mass of petals Helga had shown her. It was a mess, thick slabs of icy leaf interspersed with half-formed petals, most of them still rolled into tight tubes. As Alice watched, several petals cracked under their own weight and fell. Tentatively, she took a sniff, and nearly gagged at a scent like rotten meat.

“I . . .” Alice looked from the hideous flower to Helga's elegant bloom and back. “I'd like to try again.”

“By all means.” Helga smiled her wolfish smile. “I would hate for it to be said that you put forward less than your best effort.”

Alice snapped the ruined flower off, letting it fall into
the pot to dissolve in the water. She closed her eyes again, reaching back out to the tree. There was still power left from the acorn, the tree fairly quivered with it, but she was suddenly unsure of what to do.

What happened?
The flower had been so
clear
in her mind.
Why didn't it grow right?
She tried to picture it, concentrating—the colors, the petals—

It wasn't clear, she realized. Not really. She called Helga's flower to mind. The way the petals interlocked at the base, how they were attached to the plant, each row growing so as to leave room for the next. The way the color faded toward the tips of the petals as it was drawn out of the branch and into the flower. All the delicate manipulation of chemicals that went into the scent.

When Alice had bound her first creature, the Swarm, she'd found it difficult to control more than one of the little swarmers at once. Eventually she'd figured out that the trick was to
trust
them—she could control them, but trying to keep track of a hundred legs at once was a recipe for disaster. But the swarmers already
knew
how to run, and with practice she'd learned to leave them to it and only provide general instructions.

The tree
knew
how to make a flower. Helga had taught it, with years of breeding and care.
All I have to do is point
it in the right direction, not tell it what to do.
To ask for help, rather than command obedience.

Please,
she thought at the tree.
Grow. Like this.

Another bud began to form. Alice felt it burgeon and swell, layer after layer of delicate petals growing inside it. Colors welled up, a subtle pattern that formed of its own accord, like frost sketching ferns on a windowpane. A surge of energy, and the bud was opening, spreading its petals wide, the branch thickening beneath it to bear its weight. A sweet, crisp scent filled the air.

Alice let her eyes open again. The flower was almost the size of her head. It was nothing like she'd pictured—in a thousand ways, the tree had crafted it on its own. And it was beautiful, an elegant pattern of subtly refracted color, like a rainbow captured in ice. Alice let out a breath she hadn't realized she'd been holding, then looked up at Helga, keeping her face carefully neutral.

“I think,” she said, “that this is probably the best I can do.”

Helga blinked, her eyes shining. She swallowed hard.

“Leave us,” she said. Her voice was husky. “All of you.” When no one moved, the note of command returned. “Leave us!”

The other giants backed away. Helga held up a hand.

“Erdrodr.”

“Yes, Mother?” the giant girl said in a tiny voice.

“Bring our guests' things.” Helga swallowed. “And whatever you're going to need for your . . . journey.”

Erdrodr let out an excited squeak and hurried away. Alice found herself alone with Helga and Flicker in a suddenly empty courtyard.

“Do you know where these trees come from?” Helga said.

Alice shook her head.

“My grandmother brought the seed here, from our old home. Through the gate, across the world, and through
another
portal. The world beyond the world beyond. She gave the seed to my mother, who planted it here. She gave the trees to me when they were only sprouts. They suffered here, with only the stars for light, but I nurtured them and bred this strain.” She shook her head. “Mother told me about the flowers she remembered, back when she was at Grandmother's knee. No matter what I did, my trees never matched the beauty she told me about, not here. Until now.”

“The tree knows how to make the flower,” Alice said. “It just needed a little push.”

Helga nodded, staring at the huge flower as if hypnotized.

“What happened to your home?” Alice said.

“It froze,” Helga said. “It was always a cold place, but it grew colder, until not even my people could stay. We fled through the portal into the world beyond, and then here when we found it suited us better.”

Alice glanced at Flicker.
What was it he said? “The Heartfire began to weaken when they locked away the portals in their books and their libraries.”
Could these changes in the worlds be the fault of the Readers? When the portals are locked in books, does it weaken the worlds on the other side?
She pictured the Earth, her world, at the center of a vast web. Worlds linked to worlds by portals, spreading outward in an intricate tapestry, all nourished by power flowing from the true reality at the center. And then the doors slamming shut, the portals caught in a trap woven of words and magic, captured in libraries by the Readers and their labyrinthine servants. The lights of the web going out, bit by bit, the fires dimming.

It could be coincidence. Just because it happened to a few worlds doesn't mean the same thing happens everywhere.
She shook her head.
Maybe Ending knows something.
Or maybe we can get Geryon to tell us the truth, once we've caught him.

“Listen,” Helga said, shaking herself out of her reverie.
“I am Helga the Ice Flower, and let it never be said that I do not keep my word. But . . . Erdrodr . . .” She hesitated. “The world beyond is dangerous, and she is a foolish child. Is there no way you can leave her here, where she will be safe?”

“She wants a chance to prove herself to you,” Alice said. “I can't tell her not to go where she thinks she has to.”

“I suppose not.” Helga sighed. “You truly mean to visit the Palace of Glass?”

“I won't let her come inside with me.”

Helga shook her head. “Even Erdrodr knows better than to enter such a place. Is there no other way? Nowhere else you can find what you need? Our legends speak of monsters imprisoned there, horrors from beyond all the worlds. I do not know if I am worried that you will not return, or that you
will.
”

“It has to be the Palace,” Alice said. The Infinite Prison
is my chance to finally get revenge on Geryon. I'm not going to stop now.
“But I will keep your daughter safe and be as cautious as I can, you have my word.”

“Thank you, Reader.” Helga grinned, her scar making it lopsided. “I know well, now, what your word is worth.”

THE LAND BEYOND

A
LICE
,
F
LICKER, AND
E
RDRODR
stood in the basement room they'd so nearly reached the night before, with Helga and Byrvorda waiting in the empty doorway. Alice felt a touch of guilt at the sight of the demolished door.

“Sorry about that,” she said.

Helga waved a hand. “It's nothing. You're sure you don't want more food?”

Alice's pack, depleted by the days in the realm of the fire-sprites, now fairly bulged with provisions. The ice giants' food—mostly smoked meat and hard bread—was a considerably better match for human physiology than the fire-oil. Flicker's own supplies had been augmented
by a stash of kindling and dead leaves. Erdrodr had a much larger pack with supplies for herself, a collapsible tent made of hide and bone, and the sphere-boat.

“I don't think I could carry any more,” Alice said.

“We'll be fine, Mother,” Erdrodr said. She was bouncing in place, eager to be off. Her slate and a sack of charcoal hung from the side of her pack.

“Are you ready?” Alice said to Flicker. “And are you sure—”

“For the last time,” Flicker snapped, “I'm not going back. Pyros told me to take you to the Palace of Glass, and I'm going to deliver you right to the front door.”

“All right.” Alice faced the gate. “Here we go, then.”

The wild portal hung in the air. The ice giants called it a curtain, and Alice could see why; it looked like a cloth painted in shifting rainbow colors, flapping in an invisible wind. According to Helga, there was no special trick to passing through. You walked forward and . . . went.

Well. No percentage in hanging about.
Alice gripped the straps of her pack and strode forward. A few steps took her to the threshold, and then one more took her—

—across.

It was a strange sensation, both like and unlike what she felt when she used a portal-book. There was the same
moment of dislocation, as though she spent an infinitesimal time in a place
between
the worlds, neither on one side nor the other. But the portal-books had a sense of power, tightly controlled, waiting like a coiled spring, ready to serve the Reader who glanced at them. Here the power was diffuse, ragged, a wild surge of energy that rose as she stepped through and lapped around her like a wave. When it receded, she found herself blinking in bright light.

There was a proper sun here, she was glad to see, just edging away from the horizon. It was blessedly warm on her skin after so much time in the starlit world. She stood in a meadow, tall grass rising past her thighs, and ahead of her was a tree line that wouldn't have looked out of place back in Pennsylvania. She wondered, briefly, if the portal had somehow taken them back to Earth—somewhere in the southern hemisphere, perhaps, since it was mid-winter back at the Library.

But no. In the middle distance, a large animal raised its head. It looked a bit like a moose, but it had no
legs,
just a long body held in the air by hundreds and hundreds of tiny butterfly wings attached to its back. They fluttered in constant motion, each pair a different color.

“Oh!” said Erdrodr. “How wonderful!” She felt for
her slate with one hand, eyes fixed on the moose-thing, which stared back warily. “Just give me a moment—”

“I think we had better get moving,” Alice said. “Or at least
I
should. You don't have to stay with us, Erdrodr. You've done everything you said you would do.”

“And so have you,” the ice giant said. She let her slate fall back. “But I think I will travel with you a while longer. I suspect my mother would want me to.”

“We're happy to have you along,” Alice said. “Flicker, do you have any idea which way to go?”

“I think so,” Flicker said. He looked up at the sun, not bothering to shade his eyes, and stared at it long enough that Alice began to tear up in sympathy. “It's . . . going up. That's rising, yes?” When Alice nodded, the fire-sprite turned and pointed in the opposite direction. “Then we go that way for a while, until we find a wide river. And we follow it toward some mountains.”

That sounded awfully vague for Alice's liking, but she didn't have anything else to go on.
If we find anyone here, we can ask them.
Everyone seems to have heard of the Palace of Glass.
She let the fire-sprite lead the way, toward the trees.

“I want to draw that creature after all,” Erdrodr said, her slate already out. Charcoal crumbled in her fingers as
she sketched the form of the flying moose. “But go ahead. I will catch up.”

It turned out that she could manage this without much difficulty, with a stride twice as long as Alice's. Erdrodr more than made up for her advantage in speed, though, with distractions. She wanted to draw
everything,
every animal and bug that was willing to hold still, and quite a few of the more interesting plants. Alice and Flicker started grinning at each other every time they saw something new, waiting for the startled “Oh!” and the scrape of charcoal on paper.

“She's certainly . . . enthusiastic,” Flicker said as they strolled ahead of the ice giant girl. They'd passed through one belt of trees and emerged onto another grassy stretch, climbing up the side of a shallow hill. When they crested it, they saw the glitter of a stream winding its way into the middle distance, lined with scraggly bushes. “Though I hope she doesn't stumble into anything dangerous.”

“Is there anything dangerous to stumble into?” Alice said. So far, all they'd seen in terms of animal life was the moose, several brilliantly colored birds, and a few beetles. They'd all been a rainbow of colors. Everything but the vegetation here seemed to have sprung from the saturated canvas of some mad painter.

“I . . . remember a few. The bluechills, but they live in the mountains. Some kind of big cat, I think? It's a bit fuzzy.” He shrugged, glancing down at the stream with distaste. “I can see why my great-grandspark left this place behind.”

As far as Alice was concerned, after freezing in the dark, the gentle sunlight and meadow of soft grass were the next best thing to paradise.
But if there's a stream, it must rain here.
That probably made it less than an ideal habitat for creatures like the fire-sprites.

After reaching the top of the hill and starting down the other side in silence, Flicker looked at Alice out of the corner of his eye.

“What?” Alice said.

“I have to ask,” the fire-sprite said. “Could you really have fought your way through Helga and the ice giants, if you had to?”

“I don't know,” Alice said. “That's part of the reason I didn't try.”

“Part of the reason?”

“I told you. I don't hurt people if I don't have to.”
Being a Reader isn't
always
about hurting people.
She thought of Geryon.
Just people who deserve it.

“You
are
different,” Flicker said after another moment
of silence. He stared ahead, not meeting her eyes. “You're trying to be, at least.”

“I'm still figuring out what I'm trying to be.”

“Are there others like you? Other Readers, I mean?”

Alice hesitated.
Dex,
she wanted to say,
and Isaac, and Soranna, and even Ellen.
After what they'd gone through in Esau's labyrinth, she thought of them all as friends. But while they'd been friendly to
her,
they were all Readers—they'd all used the prison-books, and showed as little concern as Alice had for cutting their way through the vicious creatures that had swarmed them on the fortress bridges.
Would they be willing to sit and talk with Flicker?
She didn't know.

Isaac would,
she decided.
Even if I had to bash him over the head until he got the idea.

“Maybe,” she said. “I'm not sure.”

“But not Geryon.”

“No.”

His name gave Alice a twinge of renewed anger. Her rage had been buried under the worries and trials it had taken to get this far, but it was still there, a red-hot coal hissing under a shovel-full of soil. Soon or later, it would surface.

“And you're going to . . . what, fight him?”

“If I can,” she said.

“What happens if you win?” Flicker said. “To us, I mean.”

“No more tribute,” Alice said. “No more prison-books. I would never do that to you.”

“But will you protect us?”

“Does Geryon?”

“Not against things like the bluechill,” Flicker said. “I asked Pyros why we didn't hide from Geryon, or try to fight him, instead of giving him tribute. He said that if it wasn't Geryon, it would be some other Reader. Only the threat of Geryon's protection keeps the others from coming by and demanding their own tribute, or just taking what they want.” He looked at Alice. “So if you win, will you be able to keep them away? All of the others?”

“I . . .” Alice shook her head. “I haven't thought about it.”

Flicker shot her an unreadable look. “Maybe you should.”

When the sun went down, they made camp amid a copse of trees, at the top of another hill. Erdrodr pitched the tent, which turned out to be a spacious thing, intended
for several ice giants and more than big enough for her and two human-sized companions. Flicker built a fire in front of it, and Alice and the ice giant warmed their dinners over it while the fire-sprite picked up bits of the flame itself and licked them from his fingers. The stars here, Alice was pleased to see, stayed still like proper celestial bodies.

So far, they hadn't seen anything dangerous, which ought to have been reassuring. Alice couldn't put Pyros' and Helga's warnings out of her mind, though, and she kept a suspicious eye on the shadows around the camp. As she washed down some of the giants' hard bread with a swallow from her canteen, she felt suddenly, unutterably tired.

Five days left.
She stared at the face of the watch, willing the second hand to run slower.
And it'll take at least a couple of days to get back to the portal-book from here. I'm running out of time.
She shook her head wearily.

“Someone should stand guard,” she said. “If there are dangerous creatures around here, I don't want one of them sneaking up on us while we're all snoring.”

“I'll keep an eye out,” Flicker said. “Get some rest.”

“Don't you need to sleep?”

“I don't think we sleep the same way you do,” he said. “We rest, but we're not . . . you know.” He frowned. “Unconscious.”

Now that she thought about it, Alice couldn't recall seeing Flicker close his glowing red eyes. “You're sure?”

“Trust me.” He shrugged. “You actually scared me the first time you went to sleep and woke up again. For us, it's a bit like dying and coming back to life.”

Alice laughed. “Good enough for me. What about you, Erdrodr? Do your people sleep standing on their heads or something?”

“What?” The ice giant had been staring into the fire. “No. Why? It seems like that wouldn't be very comfortable.”

“Never mind,” Alice said. “I'm going to bed.”

She crawled in through the tent flap, dragging her pack behind her. Erdrodr had brought three sleeping rolls along—it wasn't much more than a strip of shaggy hide, but Alice collapsed onto it as though it were the softest featherbed. She felt ready to drop off instantly, and was deciding whether to bother removing her boots, when the flap rustled.

“Reader?” said Erdrodr.

Alice opened her eyes reluctantly. It didn't help much.
Only a few scraps of illumination from the fire outside snuck in through gaps in the fabric. Erdrodr was a shadow in the deeper darkness.