Free The Palace of Glass by Django Wexler

to protest that she
did
understand, when the boy raised a hand for silence. A moment later she heard a grinding sound, quiet at first but quickly growing louder. Flicker turned his head in a half circle, then pointed to one of the arched doorways.
    â€œThere,” he said. “It’s coming.”

C HAPTER E IGHT
    THE BLUECHILL
    A LICE SQUINTED . I N THE tunnel on the other side of the room, something
was
moving. It looked like a constellation of fireflies, lights that twisted and slid weirdly, and it took her a moment to understand what she was seeing.
    Ice.
The bluechill looked as though it were made entirely of ice, great curved blocks of the stuff, twisting and reflecting the glow of the bonfire like a fun-house mirror. The reflected pinpricks shifted and slid across its slick surface as it moved, letting her get a better sense of the shape of the thing. It reminded Alice of a scorpion, a triangular body with three multi-jointed legs on each side. It had no claws, but a long, curving tail arched aboveit, three spear-like points gleaming at its tip. At the front, where its head should be, there was a chaotic jumble of crystalline shapes, spikes, and feathery fronds, like a hundred snowflakes grown huge and mashed together.
    Its body was a single, polished crystal of ice, light sliding across its curves, and its limbs were chunks of ice linked one to the next like beads on a string. The spikes on its tail were the tips of icicles, dagger-sharp. It moved with a disturbing fluidity, legs rising and falling in perfect unison, like they were powered by clockwork. Each shift of its body brought a grinding, squeaking noise.
    It
was
big enough to scrape the corridor ceiling, nearly the size of a car, each leg as long as Alice was tall. Her heart started to beat faster.
If the ward doesn’t work . . .
    â€œWell, Reader?” Flicker whispered. “What are you waiting for?”
    The bluechill stuck its ragged, chaotic snout into the flame. Alice would have expected the finer filigrees of ice to melt instantly in the heat, but instead it was the fire that diminished, flames swirling around the bluechill’s protruding crystals like they were caught in a strong wind. Where the fire touched the creature, it vanished, drawn inside that glassy skin.
    It really does eat the flame.
The bluechill took another step forward, deeper into the bonfire.
Perfect.
    Alice turned to the ward she’d left on the boulder, unfolded the parchment, and Read the words she’d Written there.
    It wasn’t quite like going through a portal-book—there was no feeling of dislocation, only a
twist
somewhere in her mind as the magic took hold. Lines of milky-white energy shot out from each of the three parchments, joining up with one another and stretching upward to form a triangular wall of light. Then, following the instructionsshe’d Written into the magic, the barrier began to shrink, glowing brighter as it contracted toward the bonfire and the bluechill at its center.

    For a few moments, the creature didn’t notice what was happening, basking in the pool of oil as the fire guttered and waned. Then the bluechill looked up and seemed to notice something was wrong. It stepped free of the pool, legs moving surprisingly delicately for such a large beast, and approached one of the walls of light. One leg came up, scratching at the barrier with a sound like a knife pulled across glass.
    Alice felt the scrape, not as pain but as a chilly sensation at the back of her mind. The energy to create and maintain the barrier came from her, just as it did when she summoned her creatures. The harder the bluechill pushed against the wards, the harder they had to push back to keep it contained. She gritted her teeth as the creature threw itself into the wall, slamming against raw magic with a burst of light and a crackle of sparks. The milky-white walls grew thicker as the barrier contracted, only a few dozen yards wide now,