ABOUT THE BOOK

Alice is out for revenge.

Her uncle Geryon has been keeping a terrible secret from her – he is responsible for her father’s death.

Now she must journey through strange worlds of fire and ice to find the Palace of Glass. There lies a book with great power – a spell to trap Geryon and help her discover the truth.

The trouble is, anyone who goes there is driven mad. If they return at all . . .

Title Page

Dedication

This one is for your cat!

Prologue

PROLOGUE

IN HER NIGHTMARES, Alice looked into the magic mirror and watched the steamship burn all over again.

Her father had been on that ship, the Gideon, rushing to South America for reasons she still didn’t understand. When his ship had sunk with no survivors, Uncle Geryon had taken her in, giving her a place to live at his Pittsburgh estate with its fantastic library. When she’d fallen inside a book, it was Geryon who’d explained that this made her a Reader, like him, able to wield magic. To summon fantastic creatures out of books, to use their powers and even take on their forms. He’d introduced her to Ending the labyrinthine: a creature with the form of a great black cat who could manipulate space and distance and control the endless labyrinth of his library.

It was Geryon who’d saved her life, when she might have died fighting one of those creatures. And it was Geryon who’d sent her to the fortress of the Reader Esau-of-the-Waters, where she’d fought the labyrinthine Torment and his mad apprentice. Deep in the maze-demon’s sanctum, she’d found the magic mirror and called up a vision of what had happened to her father.

And it was Geryon she’d seen in the mirror, Geryon who’d let the Gideon burn.

He’d been lying to her all along, claiming to know nothing about her father’s fate, when he’d been responsible for his death.

When she woke from the latest nightmare, she lay in her small bed, beside the pair of stuffed rabbits she’d rescued from her former life, and shouted her rage into her pillow. She thumped the mattress, imagining it was the old Reader’s face.

He can’t get away with it. He won’t get away with it.

Alice would have her revenge.

CHAPTER ONE

THE SIEGE

THE DISTANT BUZZING grew louder and louder.

“Isaac!” Alice shouted. “They’re coming over the wall!”

“You have to keep them back!” he called. “If they get to the flower, this is all for nothing!”

That’s not very helpful. Alice bit back a caustic remark. She could hear Isaac’s summoned creatures fighting, the sleep-inducing song of the Siren and the whoosh of the salamander spitting flames, and she guessed he had his own problems.

They were in a little courtyard on an alien world, surrounded by a crumbling stone wall. Overhead, three suns, each touching the edge of the next like beads on a string, descended slowly through a violet sky. In the center of the yard was a squat stone hut that protected an ancient stone well.

In that well there was a flower, a huge white-and-purple thing, which would—Alice had been told—soon produce a crop of fruit. Geryon had instructed her in no uncertain terms to wait until the flower opened and then bring those fruits back to him. He had somehow not mentioned that an army of angry insects were intent on getting it for themselves.

The first of the enemy came over the wall: stick-thin legs hauling a bloated yellow-and-black body across the jagged rock. It looked like a wasp, with a segmented torso, gossamer-thin wings, and six legs, but as big as a good-sized dog. Its compound eyes, glittering like mirrors, were the size of Alice’s clenched fist. A stinger like a butcher knife jutted from its hindquarters, and wide jaws held two pairs of long fangs.

The creatures were, she and Isaac had discovered, smarter than they looked.

Alice grabbed the Swarm thread and started calling swarmers into existence. As each one—an apple-sized ball of black fur with beady eyes and a long, sharp beak—dropped from nothingness to perch on her hand with a quirk, she tossed it up to the top of the wall. The swarmers scrabbled for purchase when they landed, hopping agilely from rock to rock, manning the ramparts of the fortress like a defending army.

The wasps could fly, but not higher than the level of Alice’s head, so they needed to climb to get over the wall. That gave the swarmers a chance to attack, beaks slashing at the eyes and legs of the wasp-things. The first enemy to gain the top of the wall lost its grip and fell back under the blows of several swarmers, and the second had one eye punctured with a gush of black ichor. Alice stood in the courtyard below, the commanding general directing her forces.

The wasps were nothing if not single-minded. They ignored the swarmers, pushing the little creatures aside. One wasp, trailing a broken leg, lurched over the wall and flopped into the air like someone falling into a pool, the noise from its wings rising to a fast drone. It came at Alice, fangs bared, drifting through the air with the stately grace of a blimp.

Alice left the swarmers to fend for themselves and grabbed her club. It was a piece of wood about the length of a baseball bat, spreading to a wide paddle at the end. A flyswatter, Alice thought, for very large flies.

She wrapped Spike’s thread around her, giving her the dinosaur’s strength, and her body was suddenly as light as a feather. She swung the swatter at the oncoming wasp, the end whistling through the air, and hit it so hard that its broken body splattered against the wall in a splash of goo. The next one got the same, and the next, while the swarmers sliced and poked at the flanks of still more as they came on.

Behind her, she caught a glimpse of Isaac fighting beside his own creatures, guarding the single gateway into the courtyard. The Siren, a barely visible wisp of a ghost-woman, held the gate, her hypnotic song keeping a good dozen wasps asleep at her feet. The iceling was nearby, a slim figure all in white like a statue made of packed snow. She directed bursts of icy air at the wasps as they tried to climb over the walls on that side, driving them back and shredding their wings with tiny splinters of flying ice.

Isaac himself attacked anything that got through. The salamander’s fire jetted from his palms, producing a hose-like roar, and any wasp caught in it blackened and withered. Isaac’s long, battered gray coat flapped around him as he moved, scorched here and there by stray sparks. Little grass fires burned merrily all around him.

Three wasps came at Alice at once, coordinating their attack to strike from all sides. She mashed the first one into paste, and dodged the second as it swiped at her with its stinger, but the third darted in and sank its teeth into her side. Alice gave a yelp and bashed it on the head with her elbow, Spike’s strength smashing its chitinous hide with a crunch. As it fell away, she ducked the third wasp again and fell back, toward the stone hut.

She released the swarmers and wrapped the Swarm thread around herself, imbuing her skin with the little creatures’ rubbery toughness. Thus reinforced, she met the next wave of wasps without flinching, sweeping left and right with her swatter as they slashed and bit at her. Her clothes were ripped and torn, but the skin underneath was too tough for fangs or stingers, and the smashed bodies of her assailants piled up at her feet.

One of them landed on her back, gripping her with all six legs, fangs desperately trying to close on her neck. Alice spun, hand stretched over her shoulder, but couldn’t get a grip on it.

“Hold still!” Isaac said.

She stopped, and a moment later felt a wash of heat as a precisely targeted burst of flame blew the creature into crispy bits. Alice turned, looking for a fresh target, but there were no more wasps in the air. She could see a few of them retreating the way they had come, over the wall.

“Looks like they’ve had enough for the moment,” Isaac said. He patted his coat where it was smoldering, then came over to Alice. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” Alice shook some of the gunk off the end of her swatter.

Isaac frowned. “No, you’re bleeding!”

Alice looked down. There was a red stain on her ruined shirt where the wasp had bit her, and now that her adrenaline was fading, the wound started to hurt. She winced and peeled her shirt up to have a look.

“It’s not deep,” she said, poking the cut gingerly. “I’ll be okay.”

“We ought to wash it out and bandage it,” Isaac said. “As long as we’re waiting for them to come back.”

“I said I’ll be—” She stopped when she saw his expression and sighed. Isaac could be very stubborn. “All right. There’s water inside.”

They had to push their way into the stone hut through a spray of wide green leaves that blocked the doorway. Inside, the flower sat on the side of the well, as big around as a car tire, several petals at its center still tightly furled.

They went to the opposite rim of the well. The water was only a few feet down, close enough that Alice could reach down with an empty canteen and hold it below the surface, watching the bubbles blub up until it was full. She sat down on the soft mulch of dead leaves, with her back to Isaac, and grit her teeth as he let a little water trickle across the wound.

When he peeled the bloodied fabric of her shirt away from the skin, Alice couldn’t help letting out a little hiss of pain. Isaac flinched.

“Sorry,” he said.

“I’m fine,” Alice said. “Just get it over with.”

“I’ll try to be careful.”

To distract herself, Alice nodded toward the huge flower. “Did your master tell you why he wants this thing?”

“No,” Isaac said, pouring cold water from the canteen over the stinging cut. “Just that I wasn’t to touch the flower until it opened, and that I should bring him four of the fruits inside. What about Geryon?”

“The same.”

“And . . .” Isaac hesitated. “Are you still . . . working on what you talked about before?”

“Am I still going to get Geryon for killing my father, you mean?” Alice snapped.

Isaac winced, as though speaking the words aloud made them more real. “Yeah.”

“Of course,” Alice said. “Were you hoping I would give up?”

“No!” Isaac said. “I just—I worry about you.”

Alice closed her eyes. The anger that had been born three months ago in Esau’s fortress, when she’d watched the Gideon sink in Torment’s magic mirror, had lodged like a hot coal behind her breastbone. It could be banked and quiescent, or flare to sudden, painful life, but it was always there, as impossible to ignore as a broken tooth. Now it burned bright, and her chest felt tight and hot.

“He has to pay for what he did,” she said. “And I’m the only one who can make him. If I give up, he’ll just get away with it.”

“I know!” Isaac said. He sounded miserable. “I know. You think I don’t hate Anaxomander for what he did to my brother? But . . .”

“But what?”

“What can you actually do?” Isaac said. “Geryon’s too strong to fight.”

“I’m not just going to attack him,” Alice said, anger flaring a little hotter. “Ending is helping me learn Writing, so I can craft my own magical books. She says that’s where a Reader gets her true power.”

In truth, it was something Alice had worried about herself, alone in her bedroom at night. Writing was all well and good, but it went so slowly. No spell she’d tried to Write had ever worked properly, although she thought she was finally getting close. More to the point, even if she mastered the rudiments of it, she couldn’t see how that would help her make Geryon answer for his crimes. He’s been building his power for thousands of years. How can I catch up?

“Ending.” Isaac’s thoughts had gone in a different direction. “Do you trust her?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“She’s a labyrinthine,” Isaac said. “Who knows why they do anything? Torment tried to kill us all.”

“You don’t have to remind me,” Alice said, a little more harshly than she’d intended. “But Ending has always helped me.”

“That doesn’t mean she always will.”

The Dragon had warned Alice against Ending as well, before it had gone to sleep. She shook her head. “What else am I supposed to do? She’s the only ally I’ve got.”

There was a pause.

“Against Geryon, I mean,” Alice said. “I’m sorry. I know you’re on my side too. But—”

“It’s all right.” Isaac stood up, dug in one of his coat’s many pockets, and handed her a roll of clean white bandage. “Here.”

“Thank you.” Alice stood as well. She tried to catch his eye, but he avoided her gaze. “I shouldn’t have—”

“I said it’s fine,” Isaac said, a little too quickly. “I understand. I’ll go check on the walls.”

Before she could answer, he left, sliding out between the leafy branches. Alice pulled her shirt up and wound the bandage around her midsection a few times, then tied a knot to hold it in place.

What’s he so sensitive for, anyway? she thought as she got out her knife to cut the rest of the roll free. It’s not as though he volunteered to help. All he ever tells me is “be careful.” Anger pulsed, hot and bright, and her lip twisted. Isaac had been the first other apprentice she’d met, her first real friend; they’d fought the Dragon and survived the terrors of Esau’s fortress together. But he still thinks he needs to protect me.

“Alice!” Isaac’s voice came from outside. At the same time, she felt a surge of alarm from the tree-sprite, who was still on guard in the maple tree.

“Be right there!” she shouted back, sheathing the knife. “Are they coming?”

“I think so,” Isaac said. “But you’d better get out here.”

CHAPTER TWO

THE CENTURY FRUIT

“WHAT IS THAT thing?” Isaac said.

“It looks like a daddy longlegs,” Alice said.

“With about a hundred wasps riding it,” Isaac said.

They stood atop the stone wall, looking toward the three setting suns. Here and there, a wasp was visible in the grass, but they were all still, watching the progress of the gargantuan spider. Eight long, multi-jointed legs the size of steel girders supported a gray oval body, flecked with tiny black spots like hundreds of eyes. As Isaac had said, dozens of wasps were clinging to the bottom of the thing, which was considerably taller than the courtyard walls. It moved slowly but inexorably, and every footfall shook the rocks like distant thunder.

“If that many get inside the walls, we’re not going to be able to keep them away from the flower,” Isaac said. His earlier peevishness, Alice was glad to see, had been forgotten in the face of this new threat.

“Yeah,” Alice said. “I think we have to try and stop it before it gets here.”

“How? All we can reach are its feet. You don’t have anything that can fly, do you?”

Alice shook her head, then looked at him speculatively. “Not exactly. But I might have an idea . . .”

It took a few moments to explain the plan, and a few more for Isaac to admit that he didn’t have anything better. They slithered down from the wall into the grass outside the courtyard, Alice dragging her flyswatter behind her.

“Can’t you clean that thing off, at least?” Isaac said. “It’s covered in wasp goo.”

“We’re both covered in wasp goo,” Alice said. “Get on with it.”

Isaac sighed and thrust his hands in his pockets. He closed his eyes, and his form began to change. He grew slimmer, and color drained out of him, like he was becoming a black-and-white sketch of himself. Finally his features softened and changed, and instead of a boy standing in front of Alice, it was the snowy figure of the iceling.

“Here,” Alice said, setting the flyswatter down.

“I can’t help but feel this is a bit undignified,” he said, his voice like a winter wind.

“You sound like Ashes,” Alice said. “Hurry up. Some of those wasps are taking an interest.”

Isaac squatted on the wide end of the flyswatter, hugging his knees, and flurries of ice and snow sprang up around him. The lines of his body blurred, melting into one another, rounding off the edges and filling in the gaps with snow. In a few seconds he had become, essentially, a snowball. Alice tried hard to stifle a giggle.

“I heard that,” Isaac said, his wind-voice whistling from nowhere.

“Sorry.”

“Just don’t miss.”

Alice nodded, called on Spike’s strength, and lifted the flyswatter, careful not to tip Isaac off. She hefted it, feeling the weight of his snow-body, and turned to face the oncoming spider-thing. A loud drone nearby indicated that several wasps were getting close, but she focused on the length of wood in her hands.

Here goes nothing.

She ran forward a few steps, picking up momentum, and swung the flyswatter over her shoulder with all of Spike’s strength, like a lacrosse player chucking a ball into a net. Isaac soared into the air, gleaming in the light of the three setting suns, and Alice held her breath as he started to descend. She couldn’t help an excited shout when the snowball impacted squarely on the side of the lumbering behemoth, a good thirty feet above the ground, smashing against it in a spray of snow.

The snow shifted, briefly flickering through the shape of a boy in a long, tattered coat before changing again into something long and lizard-like. The salamander was a brilliant, glowing crimson, red-hot claws digging into the side of the giant daddy longlegs, mouth gaping wide to spew liquid fire over the wasps that clung to the huge beast.

Then Alice’s attention was drawn by more immediate problems. Half a dozen wasps were closing in on her, and she wrapped herself in the Swarm again just in time to let a stinger glance off her side. The wasps clustered in, buzzing furiously, and for a few minutes she had to devote her full attention to the fight, dodging and swinging and smashing the vicious insects into goo.

She looked up again as she fought her way clear. One of the spider’s legs, as thick as a telephone pole, had been severed near the base, and it crashed to the ground in a cloud of dust. Isaac, still a salamander, went to work on the next leg. The wasps tried to rush him, but when they got close, he raised his head and breathed a cloud of fire, sending them falling away engulfed in flames.

The second leg went just as the insects tried again. This time, one of them dodged the billowing flames and got a grip on Isaac’s back. He bucked, trying to dislodge it, but it clung tenaciously. The spider groaned, six remaining legs splayed, but it had lost its balance. It started to tip, falling with the slow inevitability of a great tree coming down.

Oh, no. Isaac, fully occupied with the wasp, didn’t notice the collapse of the spider until it was too late. His claws scrabbled at its hide but couldn’t hold on, and he started to slip.

Alice moved fast. She hurled her flyswatter aside, splattering one last wasp, and pulled the Swarm thread around her. Her body dissolved into hundreds of tiny, rubbery swarmers, bouncing through the grass. A kaleidoscope of images whirled around her, the world as seen through hundreds of beady little eyes, but Alice was used to this by now. She kept herself together in a single pack, racing over the ground toward the collapsing spider, trying to gauge the distance.

Isaac lost his grip and fell. He was shifting back into a boy, but he didn’t have time for another transformation. He didn’t have anything like the Swarm, Alice knew, something to toughen his body or soften the landing. She pushed herself, tiny legs blurring, flowing around roots and rocks like a stream.

She got her tiny bodies underneath him just before he hit the ground. Isaac landed heavily on the swarmers and bounced back into the air, arms windmilling wildly, before landing again in the dirt a few feet away. Alice let the Swarm thread go, drawing herself back together, and found herself sitting in the grass. Her boots stood back by the wall where she’d left them. Try as she might, her transformations always left her footwear behind.

“Are you okay?” she said, hurrying over to Isaac in her socks. But he was already sitting up, rubbing his head.

“I think so.” He winced, and gingerly touched the top of his skull. “I’m going to have quite a bump, though.”

“Next time,” Alice said, “I’ll make sure to bind some sort of pillow-monster.”

Behind them, the mammoth spider hit the ground in a spray of dirt and grass.

The wasps had evidently decided they’d met their match, because they didn’t bother the two apprentices on their way back to the wall. Alice retrieved her boots as they went.

In the central hut, the huge flower had only one petal still closed, curled tightly at its very center.

“Thanks,” Isaac said. “Did I say thanks?”

“Several times,” Alice said.

“Sorry.”

“Look,” Alice said. “It’s opening.”

The last petal quivered, and with a slow sigh unrolled itself. The sweet scent of the flower filled the room. In the center of the mass of white-and-purple petals, six purple fruits, each about the size of an apple, hung from a long, drooping stem.

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