by Frank Beddor
“I’ll find them,” Alyss said. Directing her imaginative sight to the outcropping of rock where the enemy had just been, she scanned the surrounding Boarderland terrain. When she located them, they were farther away than she would’ve thought, speeding headlong in a vehicle unfamiliar to her, as it had been freshly conjured by Redd—a three-wheeled machine built to cover rugged land, in which her aunt sat above and behind the others in a throne-like seat, a staff topped with a long-dead heart in her hand.
“I see them,” she announced. “Redd’s with them. She has her scepter.”
“We should attack before she attacks us,” Dodge urged.
“Attack Boarderland?” The general looked doubtful.
“We’d have Redd and Arch to contend with,” said Bibwit.
“We already do, I’d bet.”
“She’s traveling away from Wonderland?” Alyss murmured.
Racing deeper into Boarderland, her steel-wool hair buffeted by the wind, Redd turned and seemed to stare right at Alyss, as if she could sense her niece’s imaginative eye upon her. The corner of her lips curled in a sneer, she swung her scepter and, in Heart Palace’s war room, Alyss jumped, startled; her imaginative sight had gone black.
“What is it?” Bibwit asked.
“She blocked my sight.”
“Not good,” the general fretted, splitting in two. “Not good at all,” said Generals Doppel and Gänger, each entering coordinates on their crystal communicators, ordering troop deployments to the demarcation barrier.
Alyss tried again to settle the eye of her imagination on her aunt. She flashed on images of Redd in a valley and on a hill. Then she realized, there were hundreds of them: Redd in her three-wheeled transport trundling across an open plain; Redd in her three-wheeled transport bouncing up a rocky escarpment; several Redds spread out on the Glyph Cliffs; an untold number of Redds along the banks of the Bookie River; innumerable Redds marching along Boarderland’s side of the demarcation barrier.
“We’re getting reports!” Generals Doppel and Gänger cried.
“She’s conjured doubles of herself,” Alyss said. “Hundreds of them, if not more. From this distance, there’s no way for me to know which one is real. I’ll have to attack them all at once.”
She conjured a spikejack tumbler for every Redd she saw. The tumblers would pass harmlessly through the constructs, but the legitimate Redd would have to counterattack to survive. The weapons went hurtling toward their targets—and through all of them.
“I don’t understand. Not one of them is real?”
“How can that be?” Dodge steamed. “Where could she have gone?”
Alyss had no answer and Bibwit’s ears shrugged in apologetic ignorance. Generals Doppel and Gänger were shouting into their crystal communicators:
“The demarcation barrier itself is the front of the front line!”
“Our border soldiers are the back of the front line!”
Bibwit hopped to his feet. “We need to get you to the crystal chamber, Alyss. Your imagination will be strongest there.”
“Great,” said Dodge. “So if Redd happens to remote view her, she’ll know where the Heart Crystal is.”
“If Alyss cannot defeat Redd while standing next to the crystal—a necessity Redd’s apparent strength is calling into question—it won’t matter if we try to hide it from her.”
Whether this convinced Dodge or he had simply resigned himself to the worst, he turned toward the door. “I’ll be with my men.” He was already halfway to the hall when—
“Wait!”
Alyss was standing, a pleading, concerned look in her eyes. But for what was she pleading? She could say nothing to keep him from going—she should say nothing—and she knew it.
He returned to her, but only for a moment. “I forgive you, Alyss. For lying to me. That’s something, isn’t it—a guardsman forgiving his queen?” He kissed her. “Please stay safe. I’ll try to do the same.”
He spun on his heels and was gone, and Alyss allowed Bibwit to lead her from the room.
CHAPTER 42
THE ARMS dealer was a scurrying creature, a former Glebog who kept his merchandise beneath false drawer bottoms, behind artwork that popped out of frames, and inside clocks and cooking appliances whose mechanical workings had been removed. Hatter waited outside his tent while Weaver purchased as much as she was able with the gems he had given her. She emerged carrying a duffel, inside of which were a couple of AD52s with several additional projectile decks, a quiver of mind riders, and a scorpspitter.
Hatter armed himself in a nearby alley, latching the quiver and scorpspitter to his belt so that his laborer’s coat hid them from view. He pocketed the projectile decks, strapped one of the AD52s to a thigh and reached for the other.
“I’m keeping this one,” Weaver said.
“I don’t think you should.”
“I know.”
The luxury of arguing was not an option. “At least wait until I’m inside,” Hatter said. “We only have a chance if I get to Molly before the worst of the fighting starts.”
As they entered Arch’s street, Weaver drifted off alone, loitering at a propaganda stall while Hatter slipped around to the back of the wives’ tent. He peered in through the cut in the canvas he’d made earlier. Nothing had changed inside: still just the thirteen wives, two ministers, and Molly.
From the distance, a rumbling approached, growing in volume.
Hatter pulled the scorpspitter out from under his coat and dropped it into the tent. Sploink! Splish! Bullets of poison splattered against the inside walls, and before the last of the wives ran screaming to the street, Hatter flicked open his wrist-blades and rammed them hard against the tent’s canvas. He stepped through the shreds. The ministers on either side of Molly unloaded their shooters at him, but he moved toward them, his blades deflecting the onslaught of their deadly crystal. He had gone just a step or two when the guard posted outside the tent’s entrance ran in, and behind him, Weaver.
“Hey!” Weaver shouted, and when the guard turned, she dealt a quarter-deck of razor-cards into him.
Shwink! Hatter snapped open his belt sabers, twirled and sliced the life out of the ministers. Weaver was rocking gently on her knees, holding her daughter.
“Your homburg?” Hatter asked.
“I don’t need it anymore,” the girl answered, ashamed.
This wasn’t the time to ask what she meant or to look for it. “We should hurry,” Hatter said.
“I can’t move in this.”
With her eyes, Molly indicated her outfit. Hatter slashed the tight-fitting material with his wrist-blades and it fell in tatters without a single knife edge so much as scraping her skin. Weaver ferreted out something for Molly to wear from among the wives’ things. Hatter folded shut his wrist-blades, unlocked one of the bracelets and tossed it to his daughter along with the quiver of mind riders.
“I shouldn’t…” she said, looking glumly at the weapons. “I can’t be trusted. I’ve already messed up enough.”
Hatter stepped over and snapped the bracelet onto her wrist. “No more than any one of us,” he said, then unstrapped his AD52 and—
Fi-fi-fi-fi-fith! Fi-fi-fi-fi-fith!
He spun 360 degrees, dealing razor-cards at the surrounding tent, severing it in two—the wind blowing away the top half, the bottom half dropping to the ground.
Arch’s warriors were filling the street and adjacent tents. Hatter slammed projectile deck after projectile deck into his AD52’s ammo bay, dealing razor-cards at them until the last of his limited supply was gone and the weapon clicked empty. He used his one set of wrist-blades as a shield, their high-powered rotary action knocking the kill-quills, crystal shot, poison bullets, and razor-cards of his enemy toward unsoughtfor targets. Molly, wearing his other set of wrist-blades, apprehensively shielded their backside, and Weaver kept snug between them, firing her AD52.
“Follow close behind me!” Hatter yelled.
He charged straight
at the Doomsine warriors in the street, his whirring wrist-blades held out in front of him. Doink! Patingk! Ping! The enemies’ missiles ricocheted off his blades, which stuttered and slowed when one of the warriors failed to get out of his way. But now they were on the move, he and Weaver and Molly hurrying down the street, and the Milliner might have considered this an improvement in his family’s situation if enemy fire hadn’t been coming at them from every direction, blasting out of heavily covered positions.
A flash of light: An orb generator came rocketing toward them.
“Take cover!”
Father, mother, and daughter dove to the ground as one.
Krachboooooooooooooooooooooooffffsh!
The quiet that settled after the explosion might have belonged to the grave, but soon they heard the thump of debris raining down around them. Every tent in the camp had collapsed. The Doomsines they’d been battling just a moment before were standing in stupefied silence, looking off at the horizon.
Hatter motioned for Weaver and Molly to crawl under the nearest tent and he crawled in after them. Whatever was going on outside, if it lasted long enough, they might be able to slip from one tent to another, unnoticed, and escape to the edge of camp.
Arch was being entertained by wives numbered nine, sixteen, twenty-three, and thirty-two when a minister rushed in and—
“Your Majesty,” the minister said, the rest of his words lost in the roar and rumble of an engine that grew increasingly louder until it was directly outside the tent. The minister finished speaking, the engine cut off, and Redd flounced in followed by The Cat, Vollrath, Siren Hecht, and Alistaire Poole.
“What, back already?” Arch said, not quite hiding his annoyance.
“Grouchy because I interrupted your family frolic, Archy?” Redd smirked. “I think I feel a pang of jealousy.”
“They’re my wives, Redd. They mean nothing to me.”
“Really? Then you won’t mind if I…” Redd made as if to throw her scepter as she would a spear. Boils and hairy cysts and mustaches shot out from its shriveled heart and lodged on the faces of the four wives, spoiling their pretty looks. “There, that’s better.” Redd turned back to Arch and wiggled her scepter. “Do you know what this is?”
“It looks like a rotten bedpost that should have been incinerated long ago.”
“Close. It’s the scepter meant for me as queen, retrieved from my Looking Glass—”
Gunplay erupted outside. Arch whistled for Ripkins and Blister, but they were not at their usual posts.
“Looking for these two?” Redd asked, and in rolled the bodyguards, contained in a ball of clear, impenetrable glass she had conjured. “I assume they have special talents if you’ve made them your personal guards, Archy. I’m going to keep them secure until I know what these talents are and how I can exploit them to my own purposes.”
The battle outside was gaining momentum: the warrior calls, the overlapping grunts of the dying.
A bloodied minister stumbled into the tent. “My liege, Homburg Molly has escaped.”
“What do you mean escaped?” Arch shouted. “How could she have escaped when her every movement sent her dizzy to the floor?”
“Pardon, my liege,” said the minister, “she didn’t escape so much as she was rescued. By her mother. And Hatter Madigan.”
“Hatter Madigan is here?” Redd asked.
But Arch was too busy railing and cursing to answer. He stomped and punched the air, and after a particularly forceful flogging of his invisible foes, Redd said, “Your rage is impressive, Archy, but the pressures of ruling are clearly too much for you. I think I’ll take control of Boarderland and let you get some rest.”
Arch’s tantrum was gone in a moment. When he spoke, he had the tone and manner of an indulgent uncle. “Redd, I ask this with utmost respect to your imagination, but…” He made a show of counting The Cat, Vollrath, Siren, and Alistaire. “…I see only four supporters. Even with your imagination, you can’t defeat my forces.”
“Quite right,” Redd said, and with a dip of her scepter, the tents of the entire Doomsine encampment fell to the ground.
They were surrounded. Armed warriors from all twenty-one of Boarderland’s tribes had encircled the camp and stood awaiting their orders.
Redd raised her voice loud enough to be heard by all. “Arch, I introduce you to my army! Army, this is your former king!”
“With Redd at our head, we are all equal!” the tribes called in unison.
“This isn’t possible,” Arch breathed. “It’s one of your imaginative tricks.”
“Is it?” With the speed of an orb generator exploding from a cannon, she shot a black and thorny rose vine from the raisin-heart crowning her scepter. Seeking a victim at random from amid her new army, the vine wrapped around an Onu and strangled him.
“Constructs of my imagination are not able to die,” she said. “So you see how wrong you are, Archy.”
“But how?” the king whispered. “How did you—”
“You have me to thank,” said a voice, and out from under a collapsed tent crawled Jack of Diamonds.
“You?” Arch said.
Jack bowed. “I’m ecstatic to be the instrument of your ruin, Your Former Majesty. It’s the least you deserve for betraying my family.”
“Yes,” Redd sighed, “as much as I like to take credit for other people’s accomplishments as well as my own, in this instance, Archy, I have to admit, it was Jack’s idea to convince the tribes to fight for me and his efforts that brought it about. But all annoying fops must come to an end. I have no more use for Jack, and so—”
“No more use?” Jack of Diamonds said in disbelief. “But I’ve always been useful to you, Your Imperial Viciousness! I can and always will be! I’ll—”
Without a twitch of exertion, Redd sealed his lips with glue. “Who wants to kill him?” she asked.
The Cat raised his paw. Siren and Alistaire raised their hands.
“Mmmmm mmm mmm,” protested Jack.
Arch was breathing as heavily as an overworked spirit-dane, the glint of hatred in his eye directed at Jack. Redd noticed this and said, “In view of his recent demotion, it seems appropriate to let my friend Arch have the honors.”
In desperation, Jack started to run, but Redd conjured a thick black rose vine that tripped him and bound his wrists and ankles.
An assortment of weapons appeared before Arch: AD52, scorpspitter, Hand of Tyman, whipsnake grenade, basket of mushrooms. Arch recognized a deadly fungus when he saw it. He could sate Jack’s appetite once and for all. He took a mushroom from the basket and stood for a time over the squirming Wonderlander.
“Any last words?”
“Mmm!” Jack begged, eyes wide. “Mmmmmmm!”
Arch knelt down and pressed the mushroom against his mouth. “Good. Because I didn’t want to hear them anyway.”
The roots of the fungus forced Jack’s lips open. Fed by his saliva, they worked their way down his throat and strangled his heart. Arch stood and wiped his hands. A mushroom cap poked out of Jack of Diamonds’ mouth: his heart had stopped beating.
“And now,” Redd said, “for war.”
CHAPTER 43
ALYSS 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 Gänger, 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.
