The Wicked Will Rise (22 page)

“You were right,” Lulu told me as she approached. The rest of her monkey guard was hanging back, watching silently. “You told me we couldn't just sit up there in the trees, waiting for bad things to come to us. We'd been ignoring the rest of Oz for too long—and now look what happened. When I heard there was trouble afoot in the city, this seemed like the best place to come. I had a feeling you'd turn up sooner or later. I guess you chose later.”

“What happened to Mombi?” Nox cut in. “Is she here, too?”

“Nope,” Lulu said. “She disappeared from her quarters last night. Don't know where she got herself to, but there's no time to worry about that.”

“What happened to the city?” I asked. “Where is everyone?”

Lulu let out a cackle. “Everyone? Everyone left, I figure. Or at least, everyone who hadn't left when you and yours attacked the place. With Dorothy gone, and the city ruined, wasn't much
reason to stick around. And it's not safe here. Doesn't feel right. There's something going on in the palace—something rottener than week-old herring.”

“I can see that,” I said.

“I don't know what it's all about, but I've sent in three separate patrols to check it out. Last I've seen any of them. But we have seen a
few
signs of life.”

My ears perked up. “Who?” I asked. “Who's been through here?”

“Dorothy and Glinda passed through a few hours ago—zipped right over the top of the yellow brick wall in a pink soap bubble. Not quite as impressive as blowing the whole thing to smithereens of course.”

My stomach dropped as I looked around for signs of them. “Where did they go?” I asked. “We have to find them. Now.”

Lulu bared her teeth and narrowed her eyes. “Honey, don't I know it,” she said. “But we monkeys haven't just been sitting around on our heinies. The sorceress has been . . . dealt with. For now.” She gave an oblique glance toward her pistol. “Dorothy got away. Took Ozma with her and headed straight for her old haunt. The palace.”

“Did she say what she wanted?” I asked.

“What, you think we were making small talk? If you want to know what she's up to, you'd better find out for yourself. You have a job to do, sweetheart. My people and I will protect the city. You'd better hop to.”

I clenched my jaw, with no idea where all this was heading.

“It's that way,” Lulu said, stating the obvious as she pointed toward it. “Wish I had more time to catch up, but if you want my opinion, time's already wasting. Good luck.”

I looked at Nox, who nodded back at me. The crowd of monkeys parted to let us pass, and we began to move on our way.

“If I were you, I'd head for the maze!” Lulu shouted after us. We were already gone.

“Now, I ask you,” Nox said. “What the hell is going on?”

I was pretty sure the question was rhetorical. Even if it wasn't, I didn't know the answer. All I knew was that something had brought us here, and that whatever was going on, the palace was at the center of it.

As we rushed through the abandoned city streets, the feeling of dread that was emanating from the center became more and more palpable. When I looked over at Nox, he looked almost sick.

“There's something evil in there,” he said. “I can feel it.” He didn't say it aloud, but he was staggering a little, slowing down, and I could tell that he was fighting with everything he had just to keep going. “It's like it wants me to turn back,” he said.

I could feel it, too. And I could tell that it was evil. But instead of repelling me, that same feeling was pulling me closer, like there was a party going on somewhere nearby, and I was following the music. Like someone was cooking a delicious roast and I was a starving woman following the scent.

I didn't mention that.

Nox put his head down and kept on moving.

Soon, we were there, and I saw exactly how grotesque the palace had become. It was covered in a slimy, filthy moss, and in place of the ornate, golden doors that had once served as the entrance, there was a kind of horrible sculpture: a gigantic, monstrous creature in bas-relief. Itlooked kind of like an octopus, but with more arms, and with a nasty, crowded mouthful of sharp, gritted teeth.

“What the hell is
that
?” Nox asked in disbelief.

I didn't answer, because I had just noticed something even more disturbing.

Lying on the steps like a broken, discarded rag doll, his arms and legs splayed out in every direction, was the Scarecrow. His head was hanging limply, lolling off to the side. He didn't look like himself.

“Shit,” I said. “It's showtime.”

I summoned my knife, hoping to make this a fast fight, and screamed in horror at what appeared in its place: somehow, from out of nowhere, a black, hissing snake was writhing in my grip. Before I could drop it, it had wrapped itself around my arm, where it pulled its head back and unhinged its jaw, ready to strike me.

Without thinking, I sent it away, the same reflexive way I had learned how to do when I didn't need my weapon anymore.

Nox was staring at me, his mouth wide open.

But I found that I wasn't exactly surprised by what had just happened. “It's this place,” I said. “The evil in here. It's screwing with everything.”

We didn't have the luxury to puzzle through it any more than
that, because the Scarecrow was now moving. He sat up and looked at me with his painted-on little eyes and gave a weak grimace.

“Hello there,” he said, without any of the sinister menace I was used to from him. Instead, he sounded like someone's weird, only slightly creepy uncle. “Do I know you?”

I saw immediately that there was something wrong with him, but it took a moment longer to actually see what it was. Then it dawned on me: his head looked misshapen and oddly deflated. Like there was something missing from it.

I was pretty sure I knew what that something was.

Without my knife to rely on, I felt a little bit unprepared, but I had other weapons to work with. At least, I
thought
I did. But when I tried to fire off a flame dart at him, all that came out of my fingers was a puff of noxious, green smoke that smelled like rotten eggs, and I realized with a sinking feeling that I wasn't going to be able to rely on my magic at all.

Luckily, for now at least, it didn't seem that the Scarecrow would be much of a threat. As I ran up the stairs toward him, he made no move to attack me or even get out of the way. Instead, he was just muttering something to himself. A spell, I wondered, reminding myself to keep my wits about me.

No, I realized as I got close enough to hear. It wasn't a spell at all.

“And so the imp says to the toadstool . . . ,” he was saying. “No, wait. Let me start that again. Two young harlots and a fish walk into a . . .”

When he saw me racing for him, he looked up at me again,
as if he was seeing me for the first time. “Did I already tell you this one?” he asked. His eyes rolled back, and his canvas head dropped to the side, where it flopped at his shoulder.

“I used to be very clever, you know! Everyone said so. I was even king, after a fashion. Now look at me.” With that, his painted-on face collapsed in a mask of grief and he began to weep silently to himself.

“Who?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Dorothy,”
he said. “My dear old friend Dorothy. How could she?”

It was pathetic to see him—the cruelest and most terrifying of Dorothy's companions—in such a state. But I didn't feel sorry for him. How could I?

I grabbed him around the throat and picked him up, squeezing tight. His cross-stitched mouth let out a gurgling sound as he gulped for air. I squeezed harder, and then harder as he let out a gurgling noise. He flailed his stuffed arms, but didn't really resist. If anything, he looked relieved.

Then, finally, his eyes popped open and he gave a final, high-pitched whimper as his stuffed body went completely limp.

However much he had been alive in the first place was a mystery and probably always would be. But whatever it was, that life was gone. I had killed him.

Before I tossed him aside, I grabbed at the loose fabric of his scalp, and yanked his head clean off.

Second beheading in one day. I guess you could call that a record, huh?

When I examined what had been his head, turning it inside out and dumping the stuffing onto the ground, my suspicions were confirmed. All that came tumbling out was some straw, a few cotton balls, and some loose change.

Just as I suspected, the Scarecrow's brains were gone. Dorothy had already gotten them. Now she had a full set: heart, brains, and courage. But why? What did she want with them?

I tossed the Scarecrow's head onto the ground like the trash that it was, and stomped on it for good measure.

“Whoa,” Nox said. At first I thought he was reacting to yet another act of brazen cruelty from me, but then he put a finger to his lips and said, “Listen.”

I didn't hear it at first, but then, in the distance, from deep in the palace, I detected a rumbling sound. The ground beneath my feet began to shake, and as it did, the octopus statue before us came to life; its arms began to wriggle and its eyes began to glow with a nasty green light. Slowly, its mouth slid open, revealing an entryway just big enough to step through.

I glanced sidelong at Nox. I'd never seen him look so terrified.

“I guess we can take that as an invitation,” I said.

Inside, the palace was nothing like the place I'd gotten to know by heart when I'd been posing as one of Dorothy's most loyal servants.

In fact, it was no place I'd ever been before, outside of a nightmare. At first, it was hard to even understand what I was looking at. The vast entry chamber we were in had been turned upside down and inside out. No. Scratch that—inside out and upside down implies a certain order to things, and here, it was like none of the normal rules of physics applied at all. Like something out of an M. C. Escher drawing, there were entire staircases that floated in midair, leading to nowhere, furniture suspended from the slanted walls, and, overhead, an entire jungle looked like it was growing out of the ceiling.

I had no idea what this was all about, but I knew, on instinct, that Lulu had been right about where we had to go. “The maze,” I said. It was the center of everything. It was where Oz had
started. And now it was fighting back. “We have to get there.”

Nox wasn't really listening. He appeared totally disoriented, like he didn't remember who he was anymore, and was looking around desperately, with wild eyes, as if searching for any way out. There wasn't one, at least as far as I could see. The door that we had just walked through had disappeared as soon as we'd stepped through it.

“Nox,” I said frantically, grabbing his hand. “Get yourself together. I know it's hard, but we have to find Dorothy and Ozma. We don't have a choice.”

“I . . . ,” he started to say. Then he just shook his head. He couldn't make the words come out.

“I need you,” I said. “I can't do this alone.”

Somehow, that seemed to have an effect. Nox bit his lip, nodded, and steeled himself. “Okay,” he said, taking a deep breath. “I can do it. It's something about this place. It just seems . . . wrong. It's messing with me.”

“I know,” I said, but I didn't quite get why it was affecting him so much more than me. It was true that it was disorienting—I could barely see straight, and, when I took a step forward, found myself moving backward instead, like I was on rewind. The main problem was that I didn't know how in the world we were going to find what we were looking for in all of this.

That is, I didn't know until a flash of red in the corner of my eye attracted my attention, and I spun around to find the source: Dorothy.

Across the room, Dorothy had Ozma on one of her
mind-control leashes and Dorothy was leading her up a moving staircase. They spiraled upward, toward a green door that hovered in midair what seemed like a mile above us. I wasn't even sure how it went so far up—the ceilings didn't seem all
that
high, but the way space seemed to be working in here, it obviously wasn't worth it to try to puzzle it out.

“There,” I said, pulling Nox with me as I began to run. Or tried to run: the faster I tried to go, the more the strange physics of this place slowed me down, until it felt like I was moving through Jell-O. At this rate, Dorothy would get away long before I was able to catch up.

“Do you think you can teleport?” I asked Nox. It was a risk—who knew whether teleporting would even work in here, especially the way my magic had been working ever since we'd entered the city—but it was one I had to take.

“I can try,” he said, looking uncertain.

“Are you sure?”

He gulped. “I think so,” he said.

I didn't believe him. But what else could I do? Dorothy hadn't noticed me yet, but she was already halfway up the stairs. “We'll do it together,” I said. Holding Nox's hand tight enough to cut off circulation, I held my breath and took him with me into the Darklands.

As soon as I entered the shadows, I knew I had made a mistake. His hand began to slip out of my grip. It was like trying to hold water. But through the hazy screen that separated me from the world above, I could see that Dorothy was almost to the door
that would take her out of here.

So I rose back up into reality. It had worked. I was only a few paces behind Dorothy now, and she still hadn't noticed me.

But Nox was gone.

Ozma was already through the door, and Dorothy was stepping through it. Panicking, I looked over my shoulder, and saw Nox, still back on the ground where we'd started, gaping up at me with a look of abject terror on his face.

“Go!” he screamed. “I'll catch up.”

I could have gone back for him. Instead, I dove through the green door after Dorothy a split second before it closed. I was standing on the edge of the palace's grand, formal garden, near the hedge maze where Pete had once told me was the place Oz had been born.

Dorothy and Ozma were walking toward the maze.

Long ago, Pete had told me that Dorothy was terrified to enter it: there was something about it that scared her, something that told her she would never survive if she tried to make it through to the center. But now, with brainwashed Ozma leading the way for her, she seemed dead set on getting in.

The maze didn't scare me. I had made it through before. I knew how to deal with it. But I also knew that if I tried to get through it again on my own, there was every chance that I'd get lost, or lose track of my targets for good.

I decided that right now, stealth was the best option. And so I shrouded myself in a misdirection charm so that Dorothy wouldn't notice me creeping behind her. I wasn't sure if it would
work, but it couldn't hurt. Ozma waved her scepter and opened up a gap in the hedges, and when she and Dorothy walked through it, I walked close behind them.

Ozma knew where she was going. She navigated the dark twists and turns of the maze without ever hesitating at which way to go. Every now and then, she paused at a place that didn't even look like a path at all, waved her scepter again, and opened up yet another hidden passage. As Dorothy followed her, I followed them both, and soon we had reached the center.

It was different from the last time I'd seen it. Instead of the tiny cobblestone sitting area, with a tiny bench and a modest, sort of dirty fountain, we stepped through the bushes onto a giant, deserted plaza. The fountain at the center was now ornate and stately, with gorgeous, twisting designs carved into a huge marble basin, from which jets of water poured forth.

Standing next to it was the Wizard.

“Right on time,” the Wizard said, seeing Dorothy make her entrance. He flipped his pocket watch closed and tucked it into his lapel. “I knew I could count on you, Your Highness. You've always had a way of getting what you want. The only trick is making you
think
you want it.”

“Shut up, you stupid old man,” Dorothy snapped. “I'm not here to play your games. Step aside, so I can finally do what I should have done years ago—destroy that horrible place once and for all.”

The Wizard just smirked. “But
can
you?” he asked.

“Enough with your insolence,” Dorothy said, slapping him
across the face so hard that the sound echoed across the plaza. “Do what I say and prepare the ritual you promised me, before I decide to stop being so kind.”

The Wizard rubbed his cheek, but didn't seem injured. “The thing is,” he said as Dorothy's scowl transformed into an unexpectedly complacent smile, “you're not the one in charge anymore. Not in here. Since you've been away from the city, I've been hard at work communing with the Powers That Be. Powers far greater than you, or Glinda, or any of the witches.” He gestured toward the palace, which, even deep in the center of the vast maze, was towering over the hedges. “You see what's become of the palace, don't you? It's not just for show, you know. It's a symbol of all that I've become, and of all that I'll be.”

Instead of arguing with him, or fighting, Dorothy regarded him curiously. “Tell me,” she said. “What do you have planned?”

She sounded so obsequious and smarmy that I thought it had to be sarcasm, but when she dropped the leash by which she held Ozma and took a step back, I got it. The Wizard was working some serious magic, and Dorothy, who had always enjoyed enslaving people so much, was now at the other end of her own torture: from the glazed, vacant look on her face, it was clear that he had her under some kind of hypnotic spell.

As Ozma stepped to his side, the Wizard looked around. “Just a moment,” he said. “There's something else, isn't there? Do I spy a witch lurking in the shadows?” he asked.

He fluttered a hand in the air, and, feeling strangely compelled,
I dropped my misdirection charm and moved forward, joining them.

“Ah,” the Wizard said. “How lovely to see you, Miss Gumm! Tell me, what have I done here to deserve not one but
two
of my favorite people on a day like today?”

“I . . . ,” I began to say. But I stopped. A certain kind of contentedness had come over me—not like my mind was being controlled, exactly, but more like I had been drugged, and nothing in the world could bother me now. “I don't know,” I finally said. “You tell me, I guess?”

“Yes,” the Wizard said. “I believe I shall.”

He gestured to a place at his feet, and two small stools materialized, each one upholstered in green silk with a golden filigree. I took a seat, and Dorothy sat down next to me. It was unnerving seeing her behave so pliably. But, then, I was behaving the exact same way.

The Wizard gazed at us with fatherly kindness. “Let's discuss some things,” he said.