The Palace of Glass (8 page)

“Quick!” Alice said, crouched against the boulder. Flicker gave the bonfire a last, longing look and jogged across the room to squat beside her. Heat rolled off him in waves.

They waited for a while, listening to the steady crackle of the bonfire. Whatever the fire-oil was, it burned remarkably evenly, producing tall, hot flame without much smoke. Alice could feel the warmth all the way across the room.

“How big is the bluechill?” Alice whispered.

“I've never seen it,” Flicker said slowly. “But the men in the village said it was as tall as the corridors.”

Another pause. Alice stared into the hypnotic shifting of the flames.

“Pyros told me about your . . . spark,” Alice said carefully. “I'm sorry.”

Flicker snorted. “Don't pretend you understand me, Reader. Or that you care.”

Alice was about to protest that she
did
understand, when the boy raised a hand for silence. A moment later she heard a grinding sound, quiet at first but quickly growing louder. Flicker turned his head in a half circle, then pointed to one of the arched doorways.

“There,” he said. “It's coming.”

THE BLUECHILL

A
LICE SQUINTED
.
I
N THE
tunnel on the other side of the room, something
was
moving. It looked like a constellation of fireflies, lights that twisted and slid weirdly, and it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.

Ice.
The bluechill looked as though it were made entirely of ice, great curved blocks of the stuff, twisting and reflecting the glow of the bonfire like a fun-house mirror. The reflected pinpricks shifted and slid across its slick surface as it moved, letting her get a better sense of the shape of the thing. It reminded Alice of a scorpion, a triangular body with three multi-jointed legs on each side. It had no claws, but a long, curving tail arched above
it, three spear-like points gleaming at its tip. At the front, where its head should be, there was a chaotic jumble of crystalline shapes, spikes, and feathery fronds, like a hundred snowflakes grown huge and mashed together.

Its body was a single, polished crystal of ice, light sliding across its curves, and its limbs were chunks of ice linked one to the next like beads on a string. The spikes on its tail were the tips of icicles, dagger-sharp. It moved with a disturbing fluidity, legs rising and falling in perfect unison, like they were powered by clockwork. Each shift of its body brought a grinding, squeaking noise.

It
was
big enough to scrape the corridor ceiling, nearly the size of a car, each leg as long as Alice was tall. Her heart started to beat faster.
If the ward doesn't work . . .

“Well, Reader?” Flicker whispered. “What are you waiting for?”

The bluechill stuck its ragged, chaotic snout into the flame. Alice would have expected the finer filigrees of ice to melt instantly in the heat, but instead it was the fire that diminished, flames swirling around the bluechill's protruding crystals like they were caught in a strong wind. Where the fire touched the creature, it vanished, drawn inside that glassy skin.

It really does eat the flame.
The bluechill took another step forward, deeper into the bonfire.
Perfect.

Alice turned to the ward she'd left on the boulder, unfolded the parchment, and Read the words she'd Written there.

It wasn't quite like going through a portal-book—there was no feeling of dislocation, only a
twist
somewhere in her mind as the magic took hold. Lines of milky-white energy shot out from each of the three parchments, joining up with one another and stretching upward to form a triangular wall of light. Then, following the instructions
she'd Written into the magic, the barrier began to shrink, glowing brighter as it contracted toward the bonfire and the bluechill at its center.

For a few moments, the creature didn't notice what was happening, basking in the pool of oil as the fire guttered and waned. Then the bluechill looked up and seemed to notice something was wrong. It stepped free of the pool, legs moving surprisingly delicately for such a large beast, and approached one of the walls of light. One leg came up, scratching at the barrier with a sound like a knife pulled across glass.

Alice felt the scrape, not as pain but as a chilly sensation at the back of her mind. The energy to create and maintain the barrier came from her, just as it did when she summoned her creatures. The harder the bluechill pushed against the wards, the harder they had to push back to keep it contained. She gritted her teeth as the creature threw itself into the wall, slamming against raw magic with a burst of light and a crackle of sparks. The milky-white walls grew thicker as the barrier contracted, only a few dozen yards wide now, corralling the icy thing into the remains of the bonfire.

“Is it working?” Flicker asked, shouting over the sound of another scintillating discharge.

“I think so!” Alice said, but she wasn't certain. She was starting to feel light-headed, power flowing out of her like blood from a wound.
This can't be how it's supposed to work.
She ought to be able to maintain the wards with energy to spare, but her heart was hammering as though she'd just finished a sprint, and Flicker's voice was distant through a rising hum in her ears.

The barrier was only a little bigger than the bluechill now. The trap was almost finished.
Just a little more.
Alice clenched her fists.

The ice-thing screamed, a high, keening sound like shivering crystal. It reared up on its back legs and came down heavily on the barrier, slamming its three-spiked tail forward at the same time. The impact drove Alice to her knees, her vision going gray for a moment. She tasted blood in her mouth, and realized she'd bitten her tongue.
Just a little more . . .

Something behind her gave a weird ripping sound, like a wire
twanging
under high tension, and then broke with a
snap
like a gunshot. It was followed by a spitting, crackling shower of sparks, which lit up the darkened room and fell all around Alice like tiny fireworks. She turned to look at the ward she'd laid on the boulder, but only for a moment. The magical script was glowing brighter than
the sun at midday, and Alice had to slap her hands over her eyes. She could see the bones of her fingers, outlined against the orange flesh, and her vision was full of purple and green afterimages.

Then, with another
twang
and crackle of sparks, the light show ended as suddenly as it had begun. Alice gasped with relief as the power stopped flowing out of her, though she was still breathing hard and shivery with fatigue. She lowered her hands to see thick black smoke pouring up out of the ruined ward, pooling under the ceiling.

“Reader!” Flicker said.

Alice turned. The barrier was fading, the last few scraps of white light disappearing as she watched. Behind them, the bluechill stretched itself out, legs kicking through the extinguished pool of oil, then turned slowly until it faced in their direction.

Just once,
Alice thought as it gave that keening crystal cry of rage,
it would be nice if something went according to plan.

Alice wrapped the Swarm thread around herself and pulled on Spike's thread in a single, practiced mental motion.

“Find somewhere to hide!” Alice shouted to Flicker. “I'll draw it away.”

She couldn't tell if the fire-sprite heard her. The bluechill thundered toward them, rippling legs a blur as it went into a sprint, the sound of ice on ice rising to a tortured shriek. Alice tensed, then threw herself sideways with all of Spike's strength, tucking into a tight ball and rolling like a swarmer until she bounced off the
wall and
popped back to her feet.

She'd expected the creature to follow the motion, but instead it went straight for the boulder where she'd laid the ward, shoving the weird collection of feathery icicles at the still-smoking parchment.

The heat,
Alice realized belatedly. When the ward had broken, the writing had briefly glowed white-hot. For the bluechill, that heat was food.
It won't last long, though, compared to the bonfire—
Oh, no.
The creature backed away from the boulder, moving slowly, and turned directly away from Alice.
Flicker.

She'd miscalculated badly. In Esau's fortress, she'd saved her friends by drawing Torment's attention. But as the Dragon had told her, that had worked because Torment was half
wolf,
with a full set of lupine instincts. The bluechill, icy and alien, was operating on an entirely
different set of priorities. Compared to the blazing fire-sprite, Alice wasn't certain her own fleshy body was even visible.

She could see the glow of Flicker's hair halfway around the room as he picked his way through the rock. The bluechill zeroed in on him, ignoring Alice entirely. Its legs once again became a blur, startlingly fast for such a large creature.

“Flicker!”

She was running, the dinosaur's strength in her legs turning each stride into a leap, but it wasn't going to be fast enough. Flicker braced himself, spear in both hands, but the point slid off the bluechill's icy shell as it closed in. The fire-sprite spun away just as the tip of the monster's tail came down, stinger slashing through the space where he'd been. He slipped into a narrow gap between a boulder and the wall, ducking under another sting. It was too tight a spot for the bluechill to enter, but it could still lash out with its tail, and there was no way Flicker could get past it to escape.

Alice let go of the Swarm thread and pulled on Spike's, harder than she ever had before. The transformation came over her in mid-stride, a moment of nauseating uncertainty as her body thickened and expanded into
the dinosaur's stumpy, four-legged form. She stumbled, briefly, but managed to maintain her momentum, picking up speed as she broke into a gallop.

Being Spike was, Alice imagined, like driving a motorcar. The dinosaur could build up a solid head of steam, but he wasn't agile, and turning could be a serious problem. But the bluechill was dead ahead, and too occupied with Flicker to notice her. Spike was heavier than he looked, giving him the momentum of a cannonball, and his head was crowned with four vicious horns. She aimed these right at the center of the bluechill's body and let the dinosaur's instincts take over.

Alice-as-Spike slammed into the bluechill, lifting it off the ground and smashing it against the wall of the chamber. The noise was terrific, a grinding, crunching cacophony of ice and the snorting, grunting breath of the dinosaur. The impact hurt less than Alice had expected—Spike's body was built for this sort of thing, with a thick skull and muscular neck. One of her horns had skidded on the icy surface and snapped off, but the other three had punched into the bluechill's body, sending a web of cracks through the ice. The monster gave another shriek, legs flailing.

When Alice tried to back away, however, she found
that her horns were stuck. Before she could shake herself free, the bluechill recovered itself, and reached around to grab hold of her. Icy claws dug into Spike's tough, pebbly hide, drawing blood while they scrabbled for purchase. The thing's arching tail stabbed down, punching into the thick plating along Alice's back. It hurt, but only for a moment; then her flesh went numb, as though the bluechill had injected the essence of cold into her veins. Alice tossed her head, trying to break free, and the stinger struck again and again.

She realized that if she didn't do something, she was going to
die
. After facing down a labyrinthine, she'd been overconfident here on Flicker's world. The bluechill terrified the fire-sprites, but she'd taken it for granted that she could handle it. Now she could feel the venom spreading through her body, chilling Spike's tough flesh as it reached for her heart.
Do something!

Alice let go of Spike's thread, letting the transformation slip away. The bluechill lurched as she returned to her real body, smaller and lighter than Spike's, spread-eagled and clinging to her opponent. The poison was still in her, spreading faster now that she was only a girl, and Alice felt as though she'd been tossed into a pond in mid-winter. Her teeth began to chatter.