by Frank Beddor
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 a
nd 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.
CHAPTER 44
THEY HAD reached the outskirts of the Doomsine camp without incident, had recovered Hatter’s top hat and coat and backpack from their buried hiding place without trouble. But to enter Wonderland, they would have to join the thousands clashing just over the border.
“We’ll fight the rest of the way to Talon’s Point,” Hatter said.
The Point offered the best chance of safety for Weaver and Molly. Hatter’s plan was to ensconce them there, then return to the war and Queen Alyss’ aid. He didn’t doubt that all-out war had begun. Seeing Glass Eyes and Boarderland tribes fighting together, he assumed Redd Heart was the likely cause, though from his present position he could see only her troops, no sign of the mistress herself.
He slipped his backpack from his shoulders and handed it to Weaver. She put it on and shrugged; daggers and corkscrews poked out, ready for use. Molly flicked open and closed the wrist-blades she was still wearing, made sure the quiver of mind riders was easily accessible. She nodded, and they started out from the shelter of dead trees in which they’d been concealed. Before them: the hindmost of Redd’s advancing army. No use putting off the inevitable, Hatter figured, so—
With an underhand snap of the wrist, he sent his top hat blades spinning into a thicket of Gnobi and Awr warriors. The blades sliced through four of the warriors as Hatter launched himself over the rest in a straight-bodied somersault. His wrist-blades coptering, he struck two Awr while in midair, landed, and caught his top hat as it boomeranged back to him, using its blades as a shield against the crystal shot and razor-cards and swords that came at him.
With Hatter attracting most of the enemies’ attention, Molly steadily and accurately flung mind riders at the Gnobi, Awr, Scabbler, Maldoids, and Doomsines, so that more and more of them turned on one another—darts protruding from their heads, angst serum pumping through their brains.
“Molly!”
In all the clank and clatter and air-searing gunfire, the girl hadn’t noticed the Gnobi death-ball rolling to a stop not a spirit-dane’s length away from her. Weaver leaped in front of her as the weapon burst, releasing a supernova of crystal buckshot.
Tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet-tet!
The death-ball spent itself and Weaver dropped limp to the ground. Unharmed, Molly lowered to one knee and bent over her mother, snapping shut her wrist-blades and leaving herself vulnerable, open to enemy fire.
“Mom! MOM!”
But the life had already drained out of Weaver’s body. A short distance away, Hatter had fallen still in the midst of fighting three Shifog, his eyes on his unmoving beloved, his blades held in front of him as if he hardly cared for their protection.
Molly’s bottom lip trembled, and—
“Aaaaagh!”
She ran straight at the nearest warrior, her wrist-blades hacking and slicing. She ran straight at Astacans and Glebog and Scabbler, the Milliner weaponry she wore never put to more efficient use while, with her free hand, she stabbed mind riders into any bodies fool enough to come within reach.
No cry of anguish escaped Hatter. His top hat blades ricocheting among the warriors, he activated his belt sabers and spun, cutting through Boarderlanders as if through a field of winglefruit, maintaining the silence of a master assassin, his expression as steely as his blades. What was left of the tribesmen quickly escaped into Wonderland—probably, Hatter thought, to connect with Redd’s other soldiers for a march on the capital city. Hatter folded closed his weapons, stepped over to Weaver’s body and lifted it in his arms.
“We need a crystal communicator,” he said.
Molly removed the keypad and ammo belts from a dead Four Card, father and daughter not yet daring to say more than was necessary, nor to look directly at each other, lest any word, any direct glance, let loose a grief neither felt strong enough to survive.
The wind carried the sound of explosions and hoarse cries—the military outpost on the second-highest peak in the Snark Mountains was raging with bloody battle. But in the cave near the top of Talon’s Point, all was solemn, quiet. Hatter laid Weaver’s body on the ground and cracked open a fire crystal for warmth. Molly covered her mother with blankets left from earlier days, and she and Hatter sat for a time, each absorbed in silent thought, gazing at Weaver’s stilled chest as if in hope of seeing it rise and fall again.
“It’s my fault,” Molly said. “Everything that’s happened. I was given a chance no halfer ever gets—to be the queen’s bodyguard—and…” she glanced at her mother’s body, “…I did this.”
“Arch did it,” Hatter said. “And Redd. Not you.”
The usual toughness, the defiant jaw-clench, were absent from Molly’s expression. “Dad,” she said, crying, for the first time not trying to prove herself an adult in need of no one.
Hatter went to her and held her close. “I didn’t know,” he said. He lifted her face to his: the watery eyes in which he saw so much of Weaver. “Your mother never wanted to leave you.” There was so much to explain, to try and make up for. But they didn’t have time. “Please stay here, Molly, and keep watch over your mom,” he said.
“Where are you going?”
“Up.” He was donning the Four Card’s keypad and the ammo belts whose inner circuitry comprised the crystal communicator. “I won’t be gone long.” He folded his top hat into a stack of blades and sealed them in the inner pocket of his coat. He removed two crowbar-shaped weapons from his backpack, which he left next to Weaver, and stepped out of the cave.
Thinking back on his last time here, he remembered nothing suspicious, nothing that hinted at why Arch and Ripkins had come to Talon’s Point the day they found Weaver. But there was still one part of the mountain that Hatter hadn’t considered before. Arch had wanted him to climb the tallest spire of Heart Palace; and Arch had been here, at the highest elevation in Wonderland. Why? Hatter stared up at the icy rock that narrowed to a point somewhere above the clouds. He slammed the short, chisel-like ends of his crowbars into the ice and rock and began to climb, placing his feet in crags and outcroppings for support whenever possible. Higher and higher he climbed, entering the cloud layer in which he couldn’t see even an arm’s length above him. But still he slammed the weapons into the rock, still he climbed.
At last, he pushed his head above the clouds. The summit was within view, but not until he nearly reached it did he sight what was beyond belief: a gigantic web made of different colored caterpillar thread stretching as far as he could see toward Wondertropolis. A yellowish thread had been wound around the point, its other end obviously secured to some other high spot in the land, just as the orange and green and red threads that crossed it must have been secured to the tops of volcanoes and skyscrapers.
Hatter pressed the dispatch button on his communicator’s keypad. “This is Hatter Madigan!” he shouted into the raw, whipping wind. “I must speak to Queen Alyss immediately!”
The generals’ voices came back at him through the crystal communicator, small in the vast space around him. “Hatter Madigan!”
They were unsure of his motives—he had disobeyed the queen, defected—and were inclined to deny his request, but Bibwit, sitting at his control desk in the crystal chamber, overheard the exchange and dialed in to Hatter’s frequency.
“Hatter,” the tutor said, “
what are you—”
Alyss stepped to the control desk. “Hatter?”
“I’m not a traitor, Your Majesty.”
“I know that.”
“When the fighting is over, if I’m still alive, I will welcome whatever disciplinary action you command for my disobedience. But right now, I need to show you this.” With another press of a button, he transmitted a visual of the immense web extending through the sky.
“Wha—?” Bibwit gasped.
“I have reason to believe this net extends over Heart Palace,” Hatter said, explaining how Arch had ordered him to return to the palace with a supply of green caterpillar thread, how he’d been instructed to scale the palace’s tallest spire and weave the thread onto the Weapon of Inconceivable Loss and Massive Annihilation in a certain pattern.
With her imagination, Alyss scanned the sky above the palace. Yes, it was there: the web, not attached to the spire but within reach, its mesh finer over Wondertropolis than over the queendom’s outer regions.
“Arch couldn’t have managed it alone,” she said. “Does Redd know?”
“I can’t say, Your Majesty.”
“We have to cut it down, Alyss,” Bibwit said. “Whatever it does—and I don’t think we want to find out—we must cut it down.”
But Alyss was remembering the images Blue had shown her: King Arch sewing a web that ensnared her; Hatter sewing one that gave her freedom.
“No,” she said. “Hatter, you are to sew the green thread where you are, exactly as it appears in the diagram Arch gave you. Contact me when you have finished all except the last thread.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” the Milliner said and signed off.
Alyss thought she had begun to make sense of Blue’s mysterious message, even though she could only guess at its meaning and hope that her guess was right. Or at least not disastrously wrong.
