The Fall of the Readers

by Django Wexler

  “I’m sure you would have figured something out,” Soranna said, in her soft voice.

  “It can’t have been an easy thing to do.”

  The girl ducked her head. “My master sent . . . things, after me.” Her hand went to her leg, where she’d been bandaged. “And I had to come some of the way in the real world. By . . . taxi.” She pronounced the word carefully, as though it were unfamiliar. Alice recalled that unlike Isaac and herself, most of the other apprentices didn’t have much experience with the modern world.

  “I told you, you were braver than you give yourself credit for,” Alice said.

  Soranna’s eyes fell, but her cheeks went red. “It was nothing. I just . . .” She hesitated.

  “Just what?”

  “I just tried to imagine what you would do.” Soranna’s hands tightened. “I’m sorry. I need . . . something to drink.”

  She moved off. Alice watched her go, bemused, and then saw Dex coming over.

  “Did you hear that?” Alice said quietly. When Dex nodded, she went on, “Is she mad at me, do you think?”

  Dex laughed. “Quite the opposite. I believe Sister Soranna is quite taken with you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What you did in Esau’s fortress left a deep impression on her, I think. You are her hero, Sister Alice.”

  “Hero?” Alice looked at her feet, which left slight dents in Cyan’s spongy deck.

  “You doubt it?” Dex said.

  “I just don’t feel like much of a hero,” Alice said. “Or much of any kind of leader, to be honest. I keep trying to help, but it never works out right.”

  “Speaking for those of us who would have died at Torment’s hands if not for you,” Dex said, “I would say that it sometimes works out very well.”

  Alice looked sidelong at her. Dex smiled, in her usual sunny way, as though discussing her near-death was something she did every day. “You never give up, Alice. That is the important thing.”

  The confidence in her eyes did not improve Alice’s mood.

  Cyan provided fresh water as well, it turned out, through a small fountain in the center of his deck/body. Alice drank several cups’ worth, and ate a late lunch of turkey sandwiches and apples, which made her feel a little better. She would have felt better still if Soranna hadn’t insisted on fetching the food for her like a servant, but Alice didn’t have the heart to tell her not to.

  Afterward, she sat down beside Flicker and Ashes, who was stretching luxuriantly in the hot sun of the Azure Sea’s world. Flicker was contributing by rubbing his belly.

  “Ashes has been explaining to me how important this activity is to his people,” Flicker said.

  “That’s right,” Ashes said. “If we don’t get to lie in the sun for a nice belly rub at least once a day, we wither away to nothing.” His purr was audible even from a distance.

  Alice caught Flicker’s eye, and the fire-sprite winked. She had to smile.

  “I’m glad Flicker has agreed to supply your daily ration, then,” she said.

  “He’s also been telling me a little bit about their history,” Flicker went on. “Apparently something called the Pyramids was built just to honor a famous cat?”

  “’S right,” Ashes murmured sleepily. “An’ the big statue thing they’ve got in the harbor in New York. ’S for cats. Everyone knows cats like to climb up high . . .”

  He trailed off, eyes closed, but continued purring. Flicker looked up at Alice.

  “What are the Pyramids, anyway?”

  “Sort of . . . artificial mountains, I guess?” Alice said. “I’ve only ever seen pictures.”

  “And the humans built them without magic?”

  “I assume so,” Alice said. “Most humans don’t even believe in magic. I didn’t.”

  “But it’s everywhere,” Flicker said. “That’s like not believing in air.”

  “Not in the human world.” Alice remembered that Flicker had inherited memories of the old days, before the Readers, when creatures from beyond the portals had been free to roam the real world. “The Readers have kept all the magic locked away for centuries.”

  “Poor humans,” Flicker said.

  Alice felt like she ought to stick up for her species. “It’s not all bad. They—we—have accomplished a lot, even without magic. We can fly, and there’s trains and cars and steamships. Telephones.”

  “What’s a telephone?”

  “It’s like . . . a box that lets you talk to people who are far away.”

  He glanced at her skeptically, but before he could say anything, there was a yip from the front of the boat. Michael shouted, “Portal, ho!”

  “What?” Alice shouted back.

  “Portal—”

  “I understood that part,” she said, walking toward the bow. “Why ‘ho’?”

  “It’s just what you say when you see something,” Michael said. “Like ‘land, ho!’ Right? Jen and I once read a book about pirates.”

  Pirates had not featured heavily in Alice’s education, so she felt obliged to concede the point. She shaded her eyes with her hand. “Where?”

  Michael pointed. Following his finger, she could see a distortion in the air, a shimmering curtain where the light was bent and edged with soap-bubble colors. A wild portal. She’d seen one before, in Erdrodr’s home. This one, if Ending’s directions were correct, would lead them close to the edge of the Grand Labyrinth.

  “Can you get us there?” Alice said.

  Michael nodded and leaned over the rail. “Cyan’s ears stick up, see?” Two large blue ears were indeed protruding from the hull, on either side of the bow. “If you stroke one of them, he’ll turn in that direction. But you shouldn’t need to; he knows where he’s going.” His voice rose into the high squeak that people inexplicably used to address infants or dogs. “Don’t you, boy? Yes you do!”

  The portal was definitely getting larger. It was hard to get a sense of its scale, but Alice thought they’d be through in a few minutes at most. She turned back to the rest of the boat.

  “We’re coming up on the portal out of the Azure Sea!” she said. “I’m not sure how things will be on the other side, so everyone might want to hold on to something in case it gets rough.” Alice herself had never been on a boat at sea, but she had read stories.

  She took a position beside Michael, watching the curtain get closer and closer. It moved, rippling through the air, so it was hard to pinpoint the exact moment they were going to pass through. There was a breath of cold wind, as though she’d opened the door to an icebox, and then—

  —an enormous wall of water was poised to crash down on them.

  CHAPTER NINE

  EDGE OF THE LABYRINTH

  ALICE’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS that they’d come through the portal in the middle of some kind of disaster, like a tidal wave. Or that it was an ambush, perhaps, by some kind of water creature, sent by the old Readers to stop them. Or—

  Cyan’s bow dug into the wave, sending a wash of foam and spray across the deck. Someone screamed. Alice lost her vision momentarily as freezing, salty water blasted her, ringing in her ears and getting up her nose. She kept her balance only by gripping the spongy rail as hard as she could.

  When they were through, she opened her stinging eyes, struggling to peer through the sudden gloom. The sky overhead was dark with clouds, and she couldn’t tell if it was day or night. What light there was came from bolts of lightning, which slashed almost continuously from cloud to ocean out to the horizon. By their intermittent glow, she could see another wave rising in front of them already, and another behind that, and another, an endless serrated surface of crests and troughs whipped to a fury by the shrieking wind.

  Cyan yipped enthusiastically, and his tail churned the water. They started moving, climbing the surface of the wave, and this time made it past the top
with only a small spray over the side. Then they were descending again, down into the trench between one wave and the next.

  “Everyone”—Alice coughed for a while, until she could breathe again—“everyone all right?”

  Someone said “Whee!” which could only be Dex. Michael was still beside her at the rail, holding on to his glasses with one hand and the ship with the other. Alice fought her way rearward, following the rail as the deck pitched back and forth. She saw Soranna gripping several of the wicker baskets of food—the rest of them were gone, swept overboard by the first wave. Behind her, Flicker was curled into a ball, pressed into a corner of the rail with his face against his knees, his hair almost completely dark. For a moment Alice couldn’t find Ashes, but then she spotted his frantically lashing tail alongside Flicker’s arm; the fire-sprite had curled up around the cat.

  “Where are we?” Dex shouted, clinging to the rail on the opposite side. Looking for her was a mistake; the horizon shifted sickeningly with every rise and fall, and Alice’s stomach gave a nauseous lurch. She hurriedly dropped her gaze to the deck.

  “Somewhere in the South Atlantic, if Ending got things right!” Alice shouted back.

  “Are we still going the right way?”

  That was what was concerning Alice, too. Cyan’s tail was whirling as fast as the fox-boat could manage, but it was impossible to tell if they were being driven backward or sideways by the endless waves and the wind.

  “We may have to wait for the storm to die down!” Alice shouted. “It has to pass eventually!”

  “No it doesn’t!” Soranna put in. “Not if the Readers put it here to defend the Grand Labyrinth!”

  That, unfortunately, made a lot of sense. A constant storm would be an excellent way of keeping curious humans out of the area without tipping them off that something strange was going on. If we’re that close, though, then maybe . . .

  Alice closed her eyes and reached out for the labyrinth fabric. As she expected, they weren’t yet inside, and the space under them was flat and untwisted by labyrinthine magic. But there was an echo, a sense that pulled her in one direction. Her eyes snapped open again, and she found herself staring out past the starboard rail.

  “We’re not getting any closer!” she shouted to Dex, gesturing to where she’d felt the edge of the labyrinth. “It’s pushing us away!”

  Michael reached down and touched the fox-boat’s ears. Cyan yipped frantically, almost lost in the storm, and tried to turn, but the next wave came over the rail like another solid wall, submerging the entire surface of the deck. Alice came out of it coughing, the salty taste of the sea burning where water had gone up her nose.

  New plan. She felt anger rising up inside her. A bunch of Readers are not going to lose to a little storm.

  “Dex!” she shouted. “I need rope, something nice and thick.”

  Dex got the idea at once. As Cyan mounted another enormous wave, silvery moon-stuff poured out of Dex’s hands, forming into coils of thick cord. Alice waited until they went over the top of the wave, the boat coasting down into the trough, before she edged back along the rail toward Dex. As she went, Alice pulled off her boots, leaving them wedged under the rail.

  “You’ll need to attach one end of this to Cyan somehow,” she said to Dex, who nodded frantically. Her normally frizzy hair hung bedraggled around her neck in long, soaking coils.

  Alice grabbed the other end of the rope and bit into it. The moon-stuff felt strange, like liquid metal, and had the tang of copper. Making sure the rest was spooling out behind her, she ran to the rail just as Cyan began laboriously climbing toward the crest of the next wave.

  No time to think about it. Alice vaulted the rail in a single bound and went over the side.

  She was pulling on her threads before she even hit the water, wrapping them tight. There was a moment of shocking cold, and then she was changing. Her body blurred and shifted into the long, powerful shape of the devilfish, an aquatic predator nearly as large as Alice’s real body. The moon-stuff rope was now securely trapped between hundreds of tiny, needle-sharp teeth.

  It took her a moment to orient herself. Cyan was overhead, a vast dark shape on the surface of the water. What had been cold a moment ago now felt comfortable, and the salt water sluiced over her gills in a rhythm that felt as natural as breathing. She moved with a flick of her powerful tail, pushing herself deeper, steering with her fins.

  Below the surface, things were strangely calm. The storm that hammered above with such fury barely penetrated a few feet into the water, and the waves that threatened to swamp Cyan were merely gentle swells. Alice reached out for the labyrinth again, to get her bearings, then pointed herself in the right direction and started to swim.

  For a few seconds, it was easy. Then the rope went taut, and all of Cyan’s weight was on the other end. Dex had clearly attached the rope securely. Alice felt like her teeth were going to tear from her mouth—it wasn’t the best arrangement for towing, but with no hands, it was the best she could do—and her tail whipped at the water without producing much of a result.

  Drawing on the power of a second thread while keeping the devilfish securely wrapped around herself wasn’t easy. She hadn’t practiced calling on her powers in her alternate forms; it was a bit like trying to tie both shoelaces at once, one with each hand. If she let the devilfish thread go now, she would probably drown before she got back to the surface, so she hung on like grim death.

  Spike’s power surged through her, the dinosaur’s considerable strength augmenting the devilfish’s own. Alice’s fishy heart surged in triumph. The next stroke of her tail felt like the water had turned as light as air. The strain on her teeth grew, but she ignored it, putting all her strength into moving Cyan against the pounding of the waves.

  It’s working! The edge of the labyrinth was getting closer. Alice felt tireless, almost mechanical, her tail pumping like a steam engine. Just a little more. A little farther!

  The boundary was ahead of them. But as they came forward, it retreated, drawing away from them. Frustrated, Alice reached out for it, dragging the edge of the labyrinth closer by sheer force of will. Ordinarily, the fabric of the labyrinth was like infinitely thin silk, twistable and foldable in any direction. This labyrinth felt thick and hard, like it was made of car tires, giving only slightly under her mental grip. The boat pushed against it, and the boundary bent inward, refusing to provide an entrance.

  You . . . can’t . . . keep me out. Alice’s thoughts felt sluggish, her energy draining rapidly. Open . . . up!

  She gripped the fabric of the boundary and pulled, as hard as she could. For a moment, she felt a presence, someone else touching the same fabric, and its vibration was familiar. An image flashed through her mind—a single, enormous eye, slitted like a cat’s . . .

  The boundary gave way. Cyan shot forward, propelled by his tail and Alice’s, sending up spray in suddenly calm water.

  Like someone shoving on a door and finding it suddenly open, Alice lost her mental balance. Her hold on the fabric and her own threads slipped through her grasp, and she felt her body twist and change. Her fins became hands, slapping uselessly at the water instead of driving her confidently through it. Her clothes returned, waterlogged and weighing her down. Her gills vanished, and Alice suddenly realized she was drowning.

  CHAPTER TEN

  PEBBLES ON THE BEACH

  SHE NEVER QUITE LOST consciousness, but it was a near thing. Water pressed at her nose and mouth, and the need to breathe was a clanging, clawing pain in her lungs. Every ounce of strength went into keeping her jaw closed, against her body’s frantic instincts. Her hands scrabbled lamely, and her legs kicked, but it wasn’t enough to get her to the surface. Alice’s vision started to go black at the edges, and she felt herself weakening.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t bear it any longer, slim arms wrapped around her, and hands lodged under her arm
pits, pulling her to the surface. She took a convulsive, gasping breath, getting a mouth full of spray along with the sweet fresh air.

  “Alice?” Soranna’s voice, right in her ear. “I need you to grab the rope. Just hold on.”

  Dex’s moon-stuff rope was right in front of her. Alice locked her hands around it, and found herself hauled upward, over the rail. More hands grabbed her and laid her flat on the deck, breathing hard, water seeping from her soaking clothes.

  “Keep back,” Dex said. “Let her breathe.” Her face came into view. “Sister Alice? Can you hear me?”

  We made it. Alice tried to speak, coughed, and tried again. “Everyone . . . okay?”

  Dex nodded. “Flicker and Ashes are both very wet and unhappy, but they will survive. The rest of us are fine.” She shook her head. “I’m afraid most of our supplies went overboard.”

  “What happened?” Michael said, from out of view. “One second we were climbing another wave, and then . . . this.”

  “We made it inside the Grand Labyrinth,” Alice said. She sat up slowly, so she could see what “this” was.

  Cyan was coasting slowly through clear, still water. All around them were little hummocks of rock, barely breaking the surface. Some were large enough to support tufts of grass or small trees, and dozens of white-and-black gulls watched the boat with beady eyes and issued the occasional squawk. Below the surface, Alice could see other shafts of rock, floating curtains of seaweed, and a few darting fish.

  Cyan was too big to fit between many of the rocks, restricting them to the larger paths. Navigating would certainly be difficult, which she supposed was only natural. It was a labyrinth, after all.

  Soranna pulled herself back aboard and sat on the rail, water running off her in torrents. Alice turned to her and gave a shaky smile.

  “Thanks,” she said. “I had no idea you were such a good swimmer.”

  “My master insisted I acquire the skill,” Soranna said. “He would toss us in the moat in the middle of the night.” She shook her head, as though to chase away bad memories. “You pulled the boat!”