The Palace of Glass
Read The Palace of Glass Online
Authors: Django Wexler
KATHY DAWSON BOOKS
PENGUIN YOUNG READERS GROUP
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
375 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
Text copyright © 2016 by Django Wexler.
Illustrations copyright © 2016 by Alexander Jansson.
Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.
eBook ISBN 978-1-101-60429-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters. places and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Jacket art © 2016 by Alexander Jansson
Jacket Design by Irene Vandervoort and Maria Fazio
Version_1
This one is for
your
cat!
ONTENTS
C
HAPTER
F
IVE
: Making Your Own Chances
C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN
: The Frozen Fortress
C
HAPTER
T
WELVE
: Erdrodr of No Name
C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN
: A Subtle Entrance
C
HAPTER
F
OURTEEN
: Helga the Ice Flower
C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN
: The Land Beyond
C
HAPTER
S
IXTEEN
: Turtles Are Jerks
C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN
: Hitching a Ride
C
HAPTER
E
IGHTEEN
: The Palace of Glass
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
ONE
: Cards on the Table
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
TWO
:
The Infinite Prison
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
THREE
: Lighting a Beacon
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
FIVE
: Negotiations
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
SEVEN
: The Ouroborean
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
EIGHT
: Rolling the Dice
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-
NINE
: Declaration of War
I
N HER NIGHTMARES
,
A
LICE
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.
HAPTER
O
NE
THE SIEGE
T
HE DIST
ANT 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 wouldâAlice had been toldâsoon 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 oneâan apple-sized ball of black fur with beady eyes and a long, sharp beakâdropped 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 beâ” 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 justâI 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. Butâ”
“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 haveâ”
“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.