Seeing Redd

CHAPTER 43

A LYSS HAD taken up position in the crystal chamber, standing on the viewing platform halfway to the floor and facing the pulsating glow of the Heart Crystal, reaching toward it every so often for a fresh surge of imaginative energy. Behind her, Bibwit sat at a control desk. By means of viewing screens and speakers and talk-back controls embedded in the desktop, he was able to monitor enemy progress, troop movement, and communications among Doppel and Ganger, the Ten Card lieutenants and chessmen. “The demarcation barrier!” the tutor called.

“Yes,” Alyss said, because she had already viewed it-a large segment of the barrier had been knocked out of commission, and Redd’s mercenaries were pouring into Outerwilderbeastia.

Redd was attacking with her usual intelligence, sending Glass Eyes at card soldiers and chessmen in a kamikaze-like first wave and immediately following it with a massive battering by orb cannons and cannonball spiders. Then came the tribes: the Astacans with their stick-legs and ability to negotiate steep, rocky ground as easily as the billy goats of Earth; the Awr with their gossamer shots and their

scutes-the hard, bony backsides impervious to blades and razors and crystal shot, under which their heads and limbs would retract whenever necessary; and the nineteen other tribes, each with unique

weapons, with physical traits that had evolved over generations of adaptation to Boarderland’s various terrains.

“Decks at crossings 32-a and 29-d are to converge!” Alyss heard the generals’ voices through the speakers on Bibwit’s desk. “Converge on the breach!”

But more of the barrier will be left unguarded.

“Chessmen fall back!” the generals shouted. “Tighten the lines around Wondertropolis!”

Alyss conjured a rainfall of orb generators to drop on the Glass Eyes and tribal warriors advancing through the defunct demarcation barrier, then turned her imagination’s eye on Dodge for the swiftest of glances. He was standing outside the palace’s front gate with his guardsmen, his hand on the hilt of his father’s sword, his face stonily alert.

He hates having to wait for The Cat to come to him, hates-

“Alyss!” Bibwit shouted, because her orb generators were, inflicting no harm whatsoever upon the enemy.

Kccrkchsshk! Pfoooghaashhh!

Redd had conjured orbs to collide with Alyss’, causing them to detonate uselessly above the heads of the warring soldiers.

“Another breach!” Bibwit reported. “And they’ve penetrated the Everlasting Forest!”

They were working their way toward the palace, Alyss knew, toward her. She reached out for the Heart

Crystal, stiffened with the influx of power that coursed through her, but the Boarderland tribes were

adept at blending in with their surroundings and she lost sight of them. Where the forest’s edge faded into Wondertropolis’ outskirts, she imagined finemeshed nets of blade-proof fibers-a mine field of camouflage nets resembling fallen foliage. The Boarderland warriors would have to pass this way in their push to the capital city. They would set foot in the nets, which would fold shut on them like the petal-jaws of a Venus flytrap.

Alyss redirected her imagination to the border battles. She sensed something: Redd watching her. With her scepter, Alyss tried to shoo away her aunt’s sight, to block it-once, twice, she tried, but Redd remained there, in her imagination’s eye, staring.

“One of the forest bases has been hit!” Bibwit called. “Our Snark Mountain post is outnumbered!” Alyss began to exert herself with greater effort, moving her scepter left, right, up and down, conducting

an orchestra of defensive cocoons, automatic cannons, low-drifting energy clouds that exploded with

Glass Eye-piercing lightning, and every form of weaponry she’d ever seen in Wonderland and on

Earth…

Clashing with Onu and Scabbler warriors in a quadrant of the Chessboard Desert, the white knight and his pawns were nearly surrounded, losing bodies and ammo fast, when an energy cloud unexpectedly dropped in front of them. Lightning bolts flashed out of it, struck dead enough warriors to create an opening, and as the knight and pawns fought their way to relative safety, unmanned bayonets formed in the air to aid their escape…

At a forest military base, Maldoids and Gnobi were driving the white rook and a hand of card soldiers into a dry-goods storehouse. The Maldoids’ kill-quills lodged into the storehouse’s front wall, the

warriors yanked hard on the coils extending from the quills’ butt ends, and down came the wall. The Wonderlanders let loose with all the firepower they had, but the Gnobi rolled a death-ball into the storehouse. The rook and card soldiers had no defense against the melon-sized weapon. If they moved, it would sense them, and the holes on every gwormmy-length of its surface would spray out crystal buckshot with such speed and force that they’d be killed. Too bad then that a Three Card breathed a little too heavily. The death-ball fired off its rounds. The rook closed his eyes, expecting death, but the projectiles altered course, flying toward the Maldoids and Gnobi as if preferring the heat and breath of Boarderland bodies…

Haze was emanating from the Heart Crystal, fogging Alyss’ vision. She tried to fan it away. Then she sniffed and realized: smoke. The blue caterpillar was at her side, toking on his hookah and basking in the crystal’s glow as if to tan himself.

“Extraordinary,” Bibwit gasped. “Unprecedented. A caterpillar showing itself now?”

“You will lose unless you court loss,” Blue said to Alyss. “Courting loss, though you still will not win, you may prevent victory.”

“What?!”

But Blue said no more, swallowed by a thick puff of hookah smoke. Projected on the smoke as on a screen, she saw Hatter unspooling luminescent thread for King Arch, who was sewing a web that held herself, Genevieve, and Theodora-three generations of Heart queens struggling fruitlessly to free themselves. Then Arch dissolved and Hatter was sewing the web, except that his intricate maneuverings

of needle and thread produced holes, gaps that enabled Alyss, her mother, and grandmother to step clear of their bonds, morph into white butterflies, and flit away.

“What’s it mean?” Bibwit asked when the images were gone, the hookah smoke drifting loosely toward the ceiling.

If he doesn’t know, how am I supposed to-

Voices screeched from the speakers on the control desk and Bibwit consulted its viewing screens. “She’s set the doggerels loose,” he said

But Alyss’ attention had been drawn to the palace gate where Dodge, impatient to engage The Cat, was leaving his men, venturing out alone into Wondertropolis toward the demarcation barrier.

No, Dodge, no.

The doggerels were galloping into the densest part of the Everlasting Forest, disappearing from view. “They’ll soon be gnashing at the guardsmen around the palace.”

Which just proves that even a tutor as learned as Bibwit could, at the worst possible times, not have a clue.

The Glass Eyes had been programmed and were massed on the Boarderland side of the demarcation barrier, their ranks extending nearly the length of Outerwilderbeastia, when Redd came trundling up, riding high in her three-wheeled vehicle. Arch, Vollrath, and The Cat were onboard, seated beneath her. Alistaire and Siren marched behind with the tribes.

“Alistaire, Siren, divide the tribes between you and spread out behind the cannons,” Redd said. “Wait for my signal.”

The Cat hissed.

Amused, Redd asked, “You want to risk the one life you have left in battle?” The feline assassin hissed again.

“I approve your lack of caution, Cat,” Redd petted, then spun toward Vollrath. “And how about you, Mr. Tutor? Don’t you want to bloody yourself in combat?”

“My weapon is my intellect, Your Imperial Viciousness, the library my front line.”

“How convenient for you.” She turned her attention back to The Cat, Alistaire, and Siren. “Each of you take seven tribes.”

The assassins hustled off to confer with the tribal leaders and Vollrath excused himself to oversee the loading of orb cannons. Redd, watching the preparations of her army from the vantage of her

three-wheeler, took hold of Arch’s arm in the manner of a lady enjoying the sights during a carriage ride with her beau.

“Cheer up, Archy. After I’m again looking dainty in my crown, life will be as it used to be-you, me, the entire queendom as our playground. Put on a happy face or else. Things could be worse for you. You could be dead.”

“Things could be worse for me,” Arch repeated, his happy face looking a lot like his glum face. Vollrath returned to the three-wheeler. “All is ready, Your Imperial Viciousness.”

“Then let’s not dillydally.” Redd hoisted her scepter aloft, its heart raised toward the heavens. She held it there a moment before, in a single, swift motion, she swung it down and-

The Glass Eyes charged, stampeding toward the barrier as if to sacrifice themselves in its deadly sound waves, to let their inert bodies act as shields for the rest to get through. But just before they reached the barrier, Redd conjured gobs of thick putty in the pylon vents that maintained the impassable energy mesh. The demarcation barrier went offline. With blades drawn, with crystal shooters and AD52s firing, Glass Eyes stormed into Queen Alyss’ domain, overwhelming decks of card soldiers.

Redd again lifted her scepter to the sky. She brought it down fast and sure, and hundreds of cannons burst into action. Orb generators blazed out over the front line to explode deeper within Wonderland, killing the support decks lying in wait.

On Redd’s third signal, the Boarderland tribes attacked. Her Imperial Viciousness, still on her

three-wheeler with Arch, followed behind her advancing forces with a caravan of attendants that she’d poached from Boarderland’s former king. What pleasure to see The Cat raking claws across the chests of Seven and Eight Cards! To see her favorite feline beast swat dead two pairs of soldiers with a single blow! What delight to watch Siren force enemy platoons to their knees with her screams, Alistaire going around to the soldiers, beginning autopsies on each but finishing none!

Feeling supreme, Redd focused her imagination on her niece, laughing aloud when Alyss tried to push off her sight, to cloak it in darkness.

“Bring me a pack of doggerels,” she said.

Arch winced. “Redd, can’t you leave me something to lord myself over?” “But Archy, I’ve always liked watching your little pets exercise.”

Doggerels of war were half the size of spirit-danes but twice as fast, canine in aspect but with claws and teeth rivaling The Cat’s. Redd heard them before she saw them, their usual chant whenever they sensed adventure: “To kill and to maim, that is our aim. Doggerels of war are we, best not to be our enemy.”

A keeper approached with twenty of the creatures on a common leash, reining them in before Redd’s three-wheeler. They raised their snouts to take in the scent of their new mistress.

“You are to travel through Wonderland’s Pool of Tears,” Her Imperial Viciousness told them. “Whichever of you lands in London, England, is to sniff out Sacrenoir at the Crystal Palace.” She projected images of Sacrenoir and the Crystal Palace on a smoke-screen that issued from her scepter. “Tell him war has begun and that I want him to bring all recruits. Alyss’ forces will be defeated. Do you understand?”

“Into the Pool o’ Tears we’ll go,” the doggerels chanted, “which of us to find Sacrenoir who can know? But of war begun we’ll inform, that he and recruits must come, the enemy to storm.”

“Unleash them!”

The doggerels’ collars snapped open, and as Redd watched the animals race into Wonderland, leaping over the dead and dying, she thought sneeringly that if they happened to kill or maim any of the piddling, incompetent enemy en route to the pool, so much the better.