The Fall of the Readers

by Django Wexler

  The message vanished, and another rapidly replaced it.

  “OF COURSE I CAN HEAR YOU.” The woman in the painting rolled her eyes. “I CAN SEE YOU, TOO. AND STAND ON MY HEAD! ALL SORTS OF TRICKS.”

  “Are you . . . What are you doing here?” Alice said.

  “I LIVE HERE,” the text replied as the woman put her hands on her hips. “A BETTER QUESTION WOULD BE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

  “Why?” Isaac said, eyes narrowing.

  “YOU’RE READERS, AREN’T YOU?” Her face had lost its smile, and she stared intently while the text wrote itself. “NO READER HAS COME HERE IN A VERY LONG TIME. BUT WE REMEMBER YOU.”

  “We’re lost,” Isaac said, glancing at Alice and raising an eyebrow. “And we want to leave your world. If you could direct us—”

  “YOU’RE A VERY BAD LIAR,” the text wrote. The woman covered a giggle with one hand. “BESIDES, I WATCHED YOU COME IN THROUGH THE GATE.”

  Isaac flushed, chagrined. Alice said, “The truth is that we could use your help. We’re looking for another gate that leads back to our world, in a different place.”

  “TO THE GRAND LABYRINTH,” the text wrote. “READERS WENT THERE ONCE, LONG AGO.”

  “Yes!” Alice said. “If you could show us the way—”

  “WHEN THEY CAME THROUGH, THEY DESTROYED MANY OF OUR PEOPLE,” the text went on. The woman’s eyes were hooded, her expression darkening. “OTHERS WERE TAKEN AWAY AND NEVER SEEN AGAIN. IT HAS BEEN MANY YEARS, BUT WE REMEMBER.”

  Of course. Wherever the old Readers had gone, they’d used their power to take what they wanted, without regard to the misery they left behind. Why should this be any different?

  The woman pointed to a distant band of dancing skeletons. “SHOULD I CALL MY PACT, THEN, TO KILL YOU?” the text wrote.

  Isaac raised his hands, a threatening gesture, but Alice waved him down. “If you knew we were Readers, why haven’t you done that already?”

  There was a long pause. The letters disappeared, leaving only the woman, looking contemplative. Then, slowly, the invisible painter wrote:

  “I WAS BORED. I HAVE HEARD STORIES OF READERS ALL MY LIFE, BUT I HAVE NEVER SEEN ONE. THERE ARE TALES OF STRANGE WORLDS BEYOND THE GATE, BUT WE CAN NO LONGER VENTURE THERE. I WANTED TO KNOW IF THE STORIES WERE TRUE.”

  Okay. Alice took a deep breath. “What’s your name?”

  “OSTRAVIKTRA-SUR-JORGHANSES FEDRE,” the text scrawled. The woman laughed at the sight of Alice’s expression, and the text added, “YOU CAN CALL ME OSTRA IF YOU LIKE.”

  “Ostra,” Alice said thankfully. “I’m Alice, and this is Isaac.” She reached down and picked up Ashes, who had been crouching suspiciously behind her legs, and put him on her shoulder. “This is my cat, Ashes.”

  “HELLO, ALICE, ISAAC, AND ASHES.” The woman bowed, the mountains behind her drawn in for just a moment of herky-jerky motion.

  “Probably most of the stories you’ve heard about Readers are true,” Alice said. “But Isaac and I, and some more people like us, are fighting against the others. We want to undo the power of the old Readers. Open up the portals trapped in books, and bring things back to the way they used to be.”

  “THAT SEEMS UNLIKELY,” the text wrote. “THE READERS ARE VERY POWERFUL.”

  “The Readers have been betrayed already,” Alice said. “The labyrinthine have imprisoned them and are spreading their labyrinths to cover the world. We have to stop them, or the portals will be under labyrinthine control forever.”

  “THE LABYRINTHINE?” The text paused again. “THEY HAVE FREED THEMSELVES?”

  Alice nodded.

  “THAT WOULD BE A GREAT CHANGE.” Ostra looked pensive. “BUT I DO NOT KNOW IF I CAN TRUST THE WORD OF A READER.”

  “Do you have any contact with our world at all?” Alice said. “Anyone who has been there recently?”

  “SOME OF THE PACTS SPEAK TO TRAVELERS MORE REGULARLY,” the text wrote.

  “Ask them,” Alice said eagerly. “Anyone who has been to my world can tell you. The labyrinthine are running wild.”

  Ostra’s expression became decisive. “I WILL ASK,” the text scrawled. “WAIT HERE.”

  She turned away from them, walking “into” the cliff and becoming smaller and smaller. As she did, the painting gradually faded, until the last traces of ochre disappeared.

  “That was . . . strange,” Isaac said. He looked at Alice. “I never would have thought of that.”

  “Thought of what?” Alice said.

  “Telling the truth.” He scratched the side of his head. “I was trying to come up with a good excuse for our being here.”

  “It’s something I learned when I went to the Palace of Glass, with Erdrodr and Flicker. The magical creatures hate what’s been done to the world, the way the Readers have chained the portals up in books or put them behind guardians. And they don’t like being abducted for use in prison-books either, obviously. If they believe us about what we’re doing, they should be on our side.” She smiled. “The truth can be useful, sometimes. Assuming you can convince people.”

  “That’s a big assumption,” Ashes said darkly. “She might come back with an army of skeletons.”

  “If she does, we’ll figure that out, too,” Alice said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  REVELATION

  WHILE THEY WAITED FOR Ostra to return, Alice took out the Dragon’s book, laid her hand on the cover, and closed her eyes.

  She could see the Writing of the book hanging in darkness in front of her. It was an astonishingly complex creation, a shell wrapped around the Dragon itself to contain it, connected to the magical machinery that siphoned a creature’s power and fed it to whoever had mastered the binding. Even the nature of the world inside the book was created by the nuances of the spell. Looking at it made Alice appreciate how much of the Reader’s arts she hadn’t even come close to learning—she felt like a primitive with a stone tool looking at the intricate inner workings of a Swiss watch.

  Fortunately for her, she didn’t have to replicate the spell—that would have been impossible—only manipulate what was already there. The section of it that contained the Dragon itself was relatively straightforward, although the tricky part would be tinkering with it without causing the whole structure to collapse. Alice toyed with the connections, feeling their relative strengths the way a musician might gauge the tension in a violin’s strings. I can do this. I hope.

  “Alice?” Isaac said. “She’s back.”

  Alice opened her eyes. Ostra had returned, “approaching” from the mountainous distance inside the wall. There was a distant sound, too, a clattering, banging, metallic noise, quickly getting louder. Looking over her shoulder, Alice could see a troupe of black skeletons getting closer, still turning and whirling in a complex circular dance but definitely heading generally in their direction.

  “Have you found anyone to confirm what’s happening in our world?” Alice said

  “I HAVE,” Ostra’s text wrote. “AND IT APPEARS YOU ARE TELLING THE TRUTH. TRAVELERS FROM SEVERAL WORLDS WHO HAVE PASSED THROUGH YOURS REPORT THE SPREADING LABYRINTHS. BUT THERE WAS SOME DEBATE AMONG THE PACTS ABOUT WHAT TO DO WITH YOU.”

  “Why is that?” Alice said, trying not to look at the approaching skeletons. She felt Ashes’ claws digging into her shoulder, and the thrill of power in the air as Isaac took hold of his threads.

  “SOME SAID THAT IF THE LABYRINTHINE HAD OVERTHROWN THE READERS, WE OUGHT TO ALLY OURSELVES WITH THEM,” Ostra’s text wrote. “BUT THE OLDEST STILL RECALL THE TIME BEFORE THE READERS, AND SAY THAT THE LABYRINTHINE WERE EVEN WORSE IN THEIR CRUELTY. THEY DOUBT, HOWEVER, THAT ANYTHING YOU CAN DO WILL STOP THEM.”

  “What did you think?” Alice said, looking Ostra in her painted eyes.

  “I SAID THAT WE MIGHT AS WELL LET YOU GO THROUGH,” Ostra’s text wrote. “IF THE LABYRINTHINE DESTROY YOU, I
T WON’T BOTHER US, SO WHY NOT?”

  “Not exactly a vote of confidence,” Isaac muttered.

  “I’ll take it,” Alice whispered back. She raised her voice. “And they agreed?”

  “YES,” Ostra wrote. “MY PACT IS COMING TO ESCORT YOU TO THE PORTAL.”

  Alice breathed out. She turned to face the approaching skeletons, who were quite close now. Seen clearly, they didn’t seem to be entirely human—they had elongated skulls, with snouts like lizards or dogs, and long pointed teeth. Their ranks parted, smoothly, as though it were part of the dance, and then re-formed with Alice and Isaac at the center. Their bones were made of the same black metal as the enormous ruins, though untouched by rust.

  “Thank you!” Alice said to Ostra, over the screech and clatter of metal that the whirling skeletons produced.

  “FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH, I HOPE YOU SUCCEED,” Ostra wrote. “I WOULD LIKE TO SEE YOUR WORLD, SOMEDAY.”

  The skeletons led them, always dancing their mad, capering jig, across the gray, smoky plain.

  In spite of the fact that they were dancing in circles, the group as a whole could move quite quickly, and Alice and Isaac, in the center, were forced to walk fast to keep up. Alice was fascinated by the skeletons—there was no one calling the steps for their dance, and it changed constantly, but every member of the Pact had no problem keeping up. She wondered if they had to practice when they were young, or if they ever even were young, and what their relationship to Ostra was. Were there other painting-people?

  What would I do if we win, if I had the chance? It wasn’t something she’d allowed herself to think about much. Now, though, she got a brief flash of it. There was so much to know, world after world of beautiful mysteries to discover. The Readers had hacked their way through that complexity, enslaving the creatures they met and taking treasures for themselves. Alice only wanted to explore, to find out where the iron bones that littered the plain had come from and map the tunnels of Flicker’s world. And the Enoki, Magda the bone witch, Lool the clockwork spider—each of them had come from a world just as rich in strangeness, too.

  It isn’t likely to matter. But, for a while, it was nice to daydream.

  After a few hours walking, they came to a shore. The water looked foul, swirling with specks of orange grit, waves of rust washing up on the gray shore. There was a small island, about a hundred yards from the beach, and even from this distance Alice could see the shimmering, twisting light of another wild portal hanging above its sandy beach. A line of the great iron ribs had been placed end-to-end to form a makeshift bridge.

  “Thank you,” she said to the Pact as its members split around them and brought their never-ending dance back the way they’d come. “And thank Ostra for us!”

  “They were pretty friendly, for dancing skeletons,” Isaac said, waving after them.

  “If I’ve learned one thing,” Alice said, “it’s not to judge by appearances.”

  They took their time climbing the ribs out to the island, moving carefully in single file. The metal bones were wide enough to walk comfortably, but Alice wasn’t eager to get dunked in that toxic-looking sea. Ashes was even less enthusiastic, maintaining a death-grip on her shoulder until she hopped off the last bone onto the orange-streaked sand of the beach.

  The island was tiny, home to nothing more than the portal and a few black rocks. Alice sat down, put the Dragon book on the ground in front of her, and motioned Isaac to sit as well.

  “Okay,” she said, trying to ignore the rapid beating of her heart. “There’s something I need to do, before we try this.”

  “Are you finally going to tell me why we had to get this thing?” Isaac said, settling down.

  Alice nodded. “I’m going to unmake it. Unpick the spell, and give the Dragon its freedom.”

  There was a moment of silence. Ashes jumped down from her shoulder and circled the Dragon’s book warily.

  “Is that even possible?” the cat said. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. If a prison-book is destroyed, then the prisoner is lost forever.”

  “I can do it,” Alice said, with a bit more confidence than she really felt. “Ending taught me enough about Writing to manage that. It’s a matter of opening a way out without tearing the whole structure apart.”

  “If you say you can do it, I believe you,” Isaac said. “You killed the Ouroborean, after all. But are you sure this is a good idea?”

  “The Dragon hasn’t always been the most helpful,” Ashes added.

  “I think it has been trying to do the right thing, in its own way. It’s always allowed me to make my own choices.” Alice brushed her mental grip over the Dragon’s unyielding obsidian thread. “It might be able to help against Ending. But even if not, this is something I need to do.”

  “Maybe it would be a good idea to wait until afterward, though,” Isaac said. “If you free the Dragon, won’t you lose your connection to the labyrinths? We might not be able to reach the Great Binding after we go through the portal without that.”

  “I won’t lose my connection.” Alice kept her grip on the Dragon’s thread, knowing it could hear her, too. “Those powers never came from the Dragon to begin with.”

  Isaac’s brow furrowed. “At first you thought they were a gift from Ending. Are you saying that’s what they’ve been all along?”

  She shook her head and took a deep breath.

  “They weren’t gifted to me or granted to me by anyone,” Alice said. “They’re a part of me, and always have been.” She turned her attention to the Dragon’s thread. “Because I am a labyrinthine. Aren’t I?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  ORIGIN

  FOR A MOMENT SHE thought the Dragon was going to remain silent, even now. Then it spoke, echoing deep inside her mind. She saw Isaac stiffen at the voice, and she put her hand on Ashes’ back, extending the thread to him so he could hear, too.

  “How long have you known?” the Dragon said.

  “I started figuring it out after I spoke to the First,” Alice said. “She told me how the labyrinthine were created, that she’d combined a part of her essence with many different Earth creatures. If Ending was made from a cat, and Decay was made from a centipede, then I was made from a human.” She shook her head. “I should have guessed sooner. You’ve been calling me ‘little sister’ since the very beginning.”

  “I could feel the power in you,” the Dragon said softly. “Even then.”

  “The First has a connection to me,” Alice said. “I saw her in the Palace of Glass, when I asked about my mother. She saved me there, and again when I was imprisoned in the void.” Alice hesitated. “Do you know how it happened, how I was born? Is my father . . .” Is he really even my father?

  “Your creation was the culmination of a great deal of planning,” the Dragon said. “Your father was a carrier, one where the Reader talent lies just beneath the surface. The children of such people often have the talent themselves. When he was on a ship, passing close to the Grand Labyrinth, my siblings abducted him, and combined his essence with the sleeping First’s to create you. Later the two of you were returned to his home, with his memory suitably altered.”

  “Why?” Isaac said. He’d been quiet up until now, and Alice hadn’t dared look in his direction. “Why would they do that?”

  “It was the keystone of Ending’s plan. The creation of a Reader-labyrinthine, a hybrid, who would be powerful enough on her own to maintain the Great Binding and who would help the labyrinthine rebel against the old Readers at last.”

  “I don’t think her memory alteration worked,” Alice said. “At least, not completely. My father remembered something about what happened. When Vespidian showed up and threatened to take me away, he got on the Gideon. I think he was trying to find my mother.” Her eyes filled with tears. “He didn’t know what had really happened, but he must have known there was a power somewhere along t
he path he’d taken, and he knew that it cared for me. He was trying to protect me.”

  “I believe you are correct,” the Dragon said. “After his death, Ending had no choice but to bring you under her protection directly, or else another Reader would have taken you for his own. It was sooner than she’d planned, but she had to hope your powers had grown enough to fulfill your role.”

  “So Alice and I are related?” Ashes said.

  “I think that makes us first cousins once removed,” Alice said, smiling slightly.

  “I don’t know how to feel about that,” Ashes said. “I’ve never been related to someone who wasn’t a cat before.”

  “What was your part in all of this?” Alice asked the Dragon. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  There was another long pause.

  “Many years ago,” the Dragon said eventually, “Ending and I had a disagreement. I had changed my mind, you see. We had made our bargain with the Readers and imprisoned the First and I began to believe that we had been wrong. The First wanted to take us home with her, and we were afraid. But she was right. This world would be better off without us.

  “I tried to convince the others of this. I wanted to undo the Great Binding, and let the First return the labyrinthine to where we belonged. Ending, instead, offered her plan to free us from the Readers’ domination. I challenged her, and I lost. When she told the Readers of my betrayal, they imprisoned me in this book.

  “When I met you, Alice, I was . . . uncertain. Perhaps Ending had been right all along. You were so strong, but not cruel, as the other Readers were. I saw that they would all do their best to manipulate you, Geryon and Ending and the others, to twist that bright potential to their own ends. I swore to myself that I would let you choose your own path.”

  Even the Dragon can be uncertain, Alice thought. She cleared her throat. “Why didn’t I hear from you after I imprisoned Geryon? You came to me in one dream, but that was all.”