The Fall of the Readers Read online

  The others nodded. Alice stepped forward, climbing the remaining stairs to stand before the monolith. It was taller than she was, so she had to crane her head back to see the top.

  “Well?” she said. “I’m here.” She leaned to the side—they were nearly at the top of the cliff, so it should be easy enough to scramble around the black stone if she had to—

  “You are the one to be judged?” The voice rang out, deep and sepulchral. “You speak for all?”

  Alice looked over her shoulder. Dex, at the head of the group, nodded encouragingly.

  “Very well.”

  The world flickered around her, and disappeared.

  After a moment of vertigo, Alice found herself in a vast, empty room. The floor beneath her was black marble, shot through with a brilliant crimson like a trail of fresh blood under the glossy surface.

  Directly in front of her was a hovering shape, an outline of tattered black cloth. It looked like a hooded cloak stretched over a human form, but nobody was visible, only the flowing, ragged end of the cloak as it whipped in an intangible wind. Something about it was off, the shoulders too broad and the empty sleeves too long for a man, giving it an almost ape-like appearance. In the depths of the cowl, two red lights glowed, their gleam hinting at eye sockets and a bony face that wasn’t quite a human skull.

  Alice swallowed, and reminded herself that she’d faced down stranger creatures than this. She straightened up and looked it in the glowing eyes.

  “Where am I?” she said. “And who are you? And where are the others?”

  “So many questions.” The voice issued from somewhere inside the hood, deep and booming. It sounded flat and bored. “I am bound by ancient contract to test your resolve, your willingness to sacrifice. I have brought you here, to this temporary space, for that purpose. If you wish, you may call me Reaper.” One empty sleeve gestured. “As for your companions, they are right behind you.”

  Alice spun on her heel. A row of eight-sided crystals hung in midair, one sharp point a foot above the ground. Inside the nearest one was Dex, arms raised, hanging limp as though she were dangling from her wrists. Her head lolled to one side, and her open eyes were gray and sightless. She was perfectly still. Beside her, another crystal held Soranna, similarly immobile. Then Michael, glasses slipped down his nose to dangle from his ears, and Flicker, his burning hair as dead and gray as coal. At the very end, a tiny crystal held Ashes, curled into a tight ball.

  “Let them go.” Alice spun, fury and fear rising inside her. She grabbed for her threads. “Let them go now.”

  “Put your tiresome magic aside,” Reaper said. “It will not avail you.”

  “I said—”

  “I heard you.”

  Alice closed the distance between them in a few strides, Spike’s power already filling her limbs. She grabbed for the edge of Reaper’s cloak, ready to pull and tear. With no warning, he was simply gone, as though he had never been. When she turned, she found him hovering beside the row of crystals.

  “You are the victim of a fundamental misunderstanding,” Reaper said. “This is not a real place. It exists because I will it. Here my power is absolute. If I wish you to be hurt, you will feel pain.”

  Alice doubled over. It felt as though something had uncoiled inside her limbs, barbed wire pressing outward from her bones and tearing her flesh apart. She wanted to scream, but her jaw was locked tight.

  Reaper floated closer. “If I wish you to die, you will die.”

  The pain vanished. Alice tried to draw breath, but it wouldn’t come, as though her throat had fused solid. She brought her hands to her neck, fingers tightening into claws, but there was nothing there, no noose to pull free. She tried to move toward Reaper, to strike him, but after a single step she fell to her knees, her vision fading to gray.

  “I trust I have made myself understood.”

  Her throat loosened, and she drew in air in a convulsive gasp. Tears filled her eyes, and for long moments all she could do was breathe.

  “Can we proceed?” Reaper said, his voice as bored as a train conductor announcing stops.

  “My friends,” Alice said, her voice wheezy. “What have you done to them?”

  “I have . . . stopped them. Temporarily.”

  “Bring them back.”

  “You are in no position to make demands of me,” Reaper said. “But I will, if you pass the test.”

  “What test?” Alice looked up, then climbed shakily to her feet. “What do I have to do?”

  “You must give up what you hold dearest.” Reaper turned in the air to face the line of crystals. “Simply choose one of them. You and the rest may proceed to the center of the labyrinth.”

  “And the one I choose—”

  “Will be lost. Forever.”

  Alice stood stock-still, heart pounding, her chest still aching. Reaper floated along the line of crystals.

  “Not such a difficult test. No monster to fight, no puzzle to solve. No tricks. Just a choice.” He rotated in place, red eyes glowing under his hood. “Are you ready?”

  “I won’t do it.”

  “Then you fail. You will never reach the center of the labyrinth.”

  “We’ll find another way!”

  “There is no other way.” The hood shifted as Reaper cocked his head. “You should be grateful. You all knew, before you came here, that some of you might not survive. Rather than leaving who perishes up to the luck of battle, you can decide for yourself. And they need never know, of course.”

  “What makes you think you know anything about us?”

  “Foolish. I can see into your mind as easily as you Read one of your prison-books. Choose.”

  “No.”

  “The cat, perhaps.” Reaper drifted behind Ashes’ crystal prison. “He is a lesser creature. And his blood is labyrinthine. Twisted and deceitful by nature.”

  The awful part was that those were Alice’s thoughts, the nasty voice at the back of her mind she couldn’t quite silence. She spoke aloud to drown them out.

  “Ashes is my oldest friend,” Alice said, facing him across the row of crystals. “He’s helped me more times than I can remember.”

  “He mocks you. He carps and complains.”

  “He stayed to warn us about the Ouroborean, when he might have tried to escape.”

  Reaper shrugged his huge shoulders and drifted on. “The fire-sprite, then. Not human, not even of your world. Why should you care about his fate?”

  “Flicker had every reason to hate me, when I went to his world,” Alice said. “But he helped me even so, because he’d made a bargain. And when he found out why I was really there, he managed to look past his hatred. He’s doing everything he can for his people.”

  Reaper gave a deep, irritable sigh, like the whisper of dank air from a freshly opened tomb. He stopped behind Michael. “The boy? A recent acquaintance.”

  “When the apprentices came to kill me, he listened to reason.” Alice shook her head. “And Jen is waiting for him.”

  “This girl.” The black shape moved to Soranna. “She would sacrifice herself for you, if you asked. I can see it in her mind. Surely, if she is willing . . .”

  It was true, of course. If Soranna were able to speak, she would have agreed, Alice knew it. But that doesn’t make it right.

  “She’s just . . . confused. She spent her whole life as part of something twisted and evil, and she’s still breaking out of that. But she is breaking out of it. I watched it happen, in Esau’s fortress.” Alice swallowed. “You can’t say it’s okay for her to die just because she thinks that I’m something I’m not.”

  “Then this one,” Reaper said, reaching the end of the row. Dex hung quiet and lifeless in her crystal, so unlike her usual, energetic self. “The eldest. The most responsible. It is only fitting. And you know she would agree to give her life
for any of the others.”

  “I know she would,” Alice said quietly. “That’s the sort of person she is. But that doesn’t mean she should have to. Dex is . . .” A sly voice, at the back of her mind. She would insist, wouldn’t she? If it meant saving everyone. She would smile, and say . . . Alice shook her head again, at a loss for words. “I won’t.”

  “You must.”

  “I won’t!” Alice shouted. “How many times do I have to tell you?”

  “Then you will abandon your quest? Condemn all your friends and those who depend on you, because you could not make a sacrifice when it was required?”

  “I won’t do that either.”

  Alice wrapped herself in Spike’s thread again. Then she swung her fist like a sledgehammer at Dex’s crystal. Tiny cracks webbed outward from the point of impact. She hit it again, sparks of pain shooting through her knuckles.

  “I’m going to get them out of here.” Smack. “And then I’m going to deal with you.” Smack. The cracks expanded only slightly. “And then we are all.” Smack. “Going.” Smack. “Home.”

  “Foolish. As though you have that option.”

  “There is always an option!” Alice shouted.

  “Is there?”

  Suddenly Alice’s feet felt as if they’d been glued to the floor. She looked down and was horrified to see that her boots had changed into black marble. As she watched, the blackness moved upward, past her ankles and up her legs, turning her flesh into cold, dead stone.

  She turned back to Dex and renewed her efforts, slamming her fists against her crystal as hard as she could. Pain shot through her arm with each impact, and she felt something pop inside her hand with a stab of agony.

  “Sometimes there is no other way,” Reaper said. “Sometimes the enemy is too strong.”

  “Never.” Alice pounded the crystal again. One of the cracks was almost two inches long. She tried pushing her fingernails into the gap. By now the marble had reached her thighs.

  “Sometimes,” Reaper said, “you must give in. Give up. Stop fighting.”

  “I won’t.” Alice drew back her throbbing fist. “I can’t.”

  “Then you will die. And your hopes with you.”

  “I can’t do that either.”

  She brought her right arm around in one final punch, a wild haymaker that landed with a crunch she was fairly certain was her own bones. The crack stretched out, another half an inch, but that was all.

  The numbing marble passed her waist, freezing her hips, and raced up her torso. When the cold invaded her lungs, she felt her frantically beating heart go still as it changed to dead stone.

  A moment of panic gripped her—the faintest doubt shooting through her mind like the crack spreading through the crystal. If I die here, then the rest of them will never get out of the Grand Labyrinth. If I could ask them, wouldn’t they agree that it’s better—

  If I had to choose one of them, then maybe—

  No! Her mind recoiled from the prospect. No, no, no! Never.

  “Choose.”

  “I won’t.”

  Alice brought her hand around, one more time. It wavered, halfway there, and froze into black marble. The transformation raced up her neck, freezing her throat. Even the pain was gone, replaced with dull, numb emptiness.

  “Choose.”

  She could no longer speak. But her lips shaped the word no.

  Darkness raced in from the corners of Alice’s vision, her eyes freezing into the blank, empty eyes of a statue. As the light faded away, she heard Reaper’s distant voice, and for the first time there was something more than vague disinterest there. Irritation, perhaps, mixed with respect.

  “I suppose,” he said, “you pass.”

  Everything went black.

  “Sister Alice?” Dex said. “What’s wrong?”

  Alice looked around, eyes wide. She stood at the top of the stairs, just where she had been before Reaper claimed her, but the black slab was gone, and the path to the top of the cliff stretched in front of her. She turned back, and found Dex and the others all free from their crystals, and all staring.

  “The obelisk just . . . disappeared,” Michael said. “Did you see anything?”

  It was all . . . a dream?

  No. Reaper’s voice came from the back of her mind. I was called to judge, and I have enacted my will.

  And if I had chosen?

  Then you would have lived with the consequences.

  “Sister Alice?” Dex stepped closer. “Are you in distress?”

  Alice wrapped her arms around Dex, pressed her face to her shoulder, and sobbed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE CENTER OF THE LABYRINTH

  YOU’RE SURE YOU DON’T want to talk about it?” Dex said, sometime later.

  They’d climbed to the top of the cliff and sat down on a gentle, sandy slope. Alice sat beside Dex, hunched over, arms wrapped around her knees. The others kept a respectful distance, except for Ashes, who was pressed against her side. She’d worked her fingers into his fur, gripping tightly, but he eschewed his usual complaints.

  “I don’t.” When she closed her eyes, she saw Reaper’s red gaze staring back at her. Every beat of her heart reminded her of how she’d felt when it had stopped. “I . . . can’t.”

  You didn’t give in, she told herself. You didn’t. But there had been a moment where she’d felt close. She’d wondered, just for a moment, if Reaper was right. If the sacrifice was worth it, if the ends did justify the means. Was I just lucky that I’m too stubborn to quit fighting? Her hand was uninjured, but tingled with remembered pain.

  “We can rest here for as long as you need,” Dex said, her arm around Alice’s shoulders.

  “We can’t.” Alice looked up. The setting sun had touched the horizon, and its light was blood-red. “I’m not sure a month would be enough. But we’re nearly there. It’s nearly over.”

  “Sister Alice . . .”

  Alice gently dislodged Ashes, who mumbled a sleepy complaint, and stood up.

  “Let’s do what we came here to do,” she said.

  The center of the island was a rocky plateau, atop cliffs towering over the surrounding seas and providing a commanding view of the rock-choked seas they’d come through. As Alice and the others hiked up the trail toward the top, the light drained from the sky and the first stars were visible on the eastern horizon.

  A ring of boulders, weathered and rounded with age, crowned the very top of the plateau. Alice expected to see a portal book on top of each one, like in the cavern of “front doors” she’d used to reach Esau’s fortress, but instead there were only a few lines of spiky characters hacked directly into the rock. She could feel the magic in them, but it was locked away.

  Beyond, in the center of the ring, was a standing stone twice Alice’s height, with one side worked into a roughly flat surface. The marks of the ancient chisels were still visible, crude and irregular. More writing spidered across it, the unfamiliar letters arranged in ways Alice didn’t understand. Nevertheless, the whole thing pulsed with meaning, the inherent pull of magic to the mind of a Reader. She could see beyond the surface to the spiderweb of connections underneath.

  “This is it,” she said. “The Great Binding.”

  She could trace the contours of it in her mind. Power pulsed through threads that ran off in every direction, stretching off into the unfathomable distance. Those were the connections to the old Readers that kept the binding in operation. Another set of threads went down, into the island, spreading out and weaving a tight net with something obscured at the center. The prisoner.

  Alice had never seen a ward so complex or so tightly woven. This was made by all the old Readers, working together. Ending had said it was the first and last time that they’d cooperated like that.

  Whatever the prisoner was, it was enormous, vast
in both size and power. The binding kept it quiescent. But even so, it slept lightly, its mind pushing constantly at the walls of its confinement. Alice let her own mind skate over the edge of the binding, feeling the regular waves of the old Readers’ power pushing the prisoner back, like the steady beating of a heart. She reached out, hesitantly, to touch the edge.

  An image appeared in her vision. A single huge eye, silver and cat-slitted. A voice.

  Alice.

  You? Alice blinked. But . . .

  “Alice!” Michael said.

  She opened her eyes.

  Standing directly across from her was a tall, dark-skinned man, with a tight-cropped frizz of gray hair and a beak-like nose. Alice remembered him from her visions in the Palace of Glass, playing chess with Geryon. He’s one of them. An old Reader. At his side, standing almost to his shoulder, was a four-legged creature Alice almost didn’t recognize. It was a goat, but nothing like the scrawny things she’d seen in farmyards. This one was powerfully muscled and jet-black, with long, curving horns ending in wicked spikes and weird, horizontal pupils like holes in its glowing yellow eyes. Labyrinthine.

  There was a flash of light in front of one of the other boulders. When it cleared, a woman was standing there, tall and imperious, draped in a flowing white robe. Perched on her shoulder was a night-black bird the size of an eagle. Dex let out a gasp.

  “Most Favored . . .” she whispered, gripping Alice’s arm.

  More flashes. One by one, the old Readers appeared. Most of them were men, and most looked as ancient as they truly were. But one appeared as a young man, blond and handsome as a god; another was a child of eight, wide-eyed and androgynous. One was hugely fat, so large, he barely seemed human, his face almost lost in the rolls and folds of his flesh. At the sight of him, Alice saw Soranna wilt, staring at the ground, her hands shaking.

  All the old Readers, together. Fighting even one of them would be impossible. We don’t have a chance.