The Looking Glass Wars (22 page)

Annoyed, Alyss clicked her tongue. ―Is that why you danced with me at the masquerade? Was that to defeat Redd too? Did you do that for The Cat?‖

Dodge didn‘t answer.

Alyss turned from him and examined her reflection in a sliver of looking glass, the only fragment left in the frame of the large decorative mirror that had once hung on the east wall. ―If you no longer care for me, why did you bring me here?‖

―I never said I don‘t care for you.‖ But Dodge didn‘t trust himself to say more. He held his tongue, began again. ―I brought you here to remind your heart of what Redd‘s done. To spark your vengeance. You‘re the agent by which I‘ll have my revenge. That‘s what you mean to me now. That‘s all you must mean.‖

―Touching.‖ Her fingers toyed with the jabberwock tooth at her throat. Take it off. Take it off and show that if it means nothing to him, it means nothing to—

Her reflection in the looking glass suddenly rippled and morphed into an image of Redd. ―So glad you could visit us. Now off! With! Your! Head!‖

Dodge snatched Alyss‘ hand and pulled her away as the glass broke into sharp piercing pieces—

tiny daggers meant for the princess. The floor shook beneath them, the walls shivered, the thick ceiling beams creaked and cracked, and mortar dust and skull-sized stones began to fall. They ran, each with an arm over their head to protect themselves from falling debris. They hurdled smashed wall stones and ducked fallen beams as the old palace collapsed around them, sending stinging pellets of rock into the backs of their legs. They barely managed to make it outside to safety.

Alyss stood bent over, coughing from dust and wiping her mouth. Where Heart Palace had stood only moments before: a pile of rubble.

―She‘s destroyed everything,‖ Dodge said.

Resignation to the past, defiance of the present, hope for the future—Alyss felt them all at once.

―Not everything,‖ she said.

Not if she had hope.

CHAPTER 38

S OMETHING WAS wrong in the Everlasting Forest. Tuttle-birds were shrieking, jabbering, making a din. In a moment the problem became clear: trees and shrubs had been hacked, clubbed, chopped, cracked in half, or ripped from the soil. Flowers lay stamped into the ground, silent. What foliage happened to still be alive warned, ―Don‘t enter! Don‘t enter!‖ An unfamiliar sound filled the forest, a steady, mechanical beat: endless columns of Glass Eyes marching toward the Alyssian headquarters. The bodies of Alyssian guards were scattered pell-mell on the ground, the looking glasses that had once camouflaged the headquarters smashed, some cracked and left half standing, others completely destroyed.

―Bibwit and the others,‖ Alyss breathed.

She took a step forward, but Dodge grabbed her arm, stopping her.

―We can‘t go any closer. It‘s too dangerous.‖

They were already too close. A Glass Eye shot clear of a nearby thicket, deadly blades sticking forward from the back of its hands, and flew at Alyss. Dodge tackled her. Missing its target, the Glass Eye smashed headfirst into a dead tree. But more of its kind were already upon them.

Dodge fought with a sword in each hand. Alyss focused her energy on imagining the Glass Eyes…What? Dead? Forever inactivated? Can they be killed like ordinary Wonderlanders?

Concentrate, concentrate. She focused on Dodge, imagined him with increased strength and skill, but the Glass Eyes had been engineered for this sort of combat. Dodge was overpowered; a few moments more and he wouldn‘t be able to protect himself, let alone her.

A weapon. I need a weapon. Alyss crawled to the Glass Eye lying motionless in a shatter of tree bark. Must be a weapon on it somewhere. She reached for the avocado-like object hanging from its belt—a whipsnake grenade, one of Redd‘s newest inventions. She pulled the ring at the top of the grenade, threw it at the Glass Eyes, and it blew open, releasing a nest of snakelike coils, alive with electricity and whipping through the air. Dodge dropped to the ground and rolled.

Swaap!

A coil whipped a Glass Eye‘s cheek, short-circuiting it.

Swaap! Swaap-swaap! Swaap!

The Glass Eyes fell. Dodge and Alyss were up and running before the coils of the grenade lost their power and sizzled on the forest floor. A fresh pack of Glass Eyes stepped free of their marching column and darted around smoldering tree trunks and broken, low-hanging branches after them.

The rapid thunder of their approach…

Dodge raised a sword to strike, was bringing it forward with all the strength left in him when, out of the surrounding foliage, burst—

Not the Glass Eyes, but Generals Doppel and Gänger on galloping spirit-danes. Dodge tried to check his swing. Too late. General Doppel instinctively raised his sword in defense and it clanged with Dodge‘s.

―Dodge!‖ cried General Doppel.

―Alyss!‖ exclaimed General Gänger.

The white knight, the rook, and a platoon of pawns hustled up behind them.

―We‘ve been casing the perimeter in hopes of finding the princess,‖ the rook explained to Dodge. ―Though we feared the worst.‖

The Glass Eyes converged and Dodge and the chessmen lost themselves in the urgency of battle.

The generals took up positions at Alyss‘ flanks, their spirit-danes affording her momentary protection.

Concentrate, Alyss. Imagine.

With a war cry that sounded like ripping metal, a Glass Eye knocked aside the pawns and sprinted toward her, but General Doppel, leaping from his spirit-dane onto General Gänger‘s, shot a cannonball spider at it. On impact, the oversized spider bit an unhealthy gob of synthetic flesh off the assassin and chomped at its vital circuitry. Spooked, the riderless spirit-dane reared and took off. Dodge, entangled with a Glass Eye, kicked it in the groin. The Glass Eye looked down, confused, because it didn‘t have anything sensitive in that area. The assassin‘s confusion lasted only half a moment, but it was enough time for Dodge to reach out and grab the reins of the frightened spirit-dane as it hurtled past. The animal ran, dragging him alongside until he managed to climb onto its back.

―Princess! Catch!‖

Alyss turned, caught the weapon tossed to her by the white knight—the Hand of Tyman, five short sword blades rising from the handle grip. She raised it as a Glass Eye leaped toward her.

One of the blades lodged into the assassin‘s left ocular opening and stuck there. The Glass Eye fell to the ground and, as the rook finished it off, Dodge galloped over on the spirit-dane and lifted Alyss up behind him, into the saddle.

―Go!‖ the rook shouted. ―We‘ll hold them off again!‖

Even with the fighting raging all around, Dodge had to smile. ―Again‖: a little joke among battle-scarred warriors.

Generals Doppel and Gänger merged into one as they spurred their animal away from the fight.

The spirit-dane carrying Dodge and Alyss galloped alongside.

―Hatter and Bibwit have gone ahead to clear the emergency portal,‖ General Doppelgänger panted.

But no matter how fast they traveled, their escape would be as fleeting as a wisp of smoke in a fog. More Glass Eyes were already after them.

CHAPTER 39

T HEORETICALLY, IT was possible for inexperienced Continuum travelers to discover the rebels‘ emergency portal; they could have been inadvertently reflected out of it. But the portal was connected to the Continuum by such an unlikely arrangement of crystal byways (courtesy of strategically placed looking glasses) that no traveler who wasn‘t Alyssian had ever determined its location or even learned of its existence.

Hatter Madigan and Bibwit Harte hurried to clear the dried brush from the portal entrance—a thick, ancient-looking glass with bevelled edges located in a part of the forest rarely frequented by Wonderlanders. Hatter pressed his face through the glass, peering into the Continuum, and pulled it out as General Doppelgänger, Dodge, and Alyss raced up on their spirit-danes.

―It‘s clear,‖ Hatter said.

―I‘ll go first,‖ Dodge said and, without another word, he jumped into the glass.

―Be quick,‖ Bibwit said, his ears trembling. ―I hear our enemies approaching.‖

The tutor guided Alyss through the portal‘s liquid-crystal surface and into the Continuum.

General Doppelgänger followed, and Hatter brought up the rear. It was only the second time in her life that Alyss had been inside the Continuum. For a moment, wide-eyed and entranced by the beauty of the luminous surfaces surrounding her, she navigated it as well as anyone, zooming through this kaleidoscopic lifeline at pace with Dodge and the others. But as soon as she realized that she‘d only been in the Continuum once before…Whoa!…She lost control, floated up and back, bumping into General Doppelgänger.

―Focus your will and think heavy thoughts,‖ shouted the general, ―or you will be reflected out!‖

Heavy thoughts? What are…?

The general let go of her.

Uh-oh.

Again Alyss lost speed, would have been sucked up out of the Continuum if Hatter hadn‘t caught hold of her. With the princess in tow, he steered his body toward Bibwit.

―Hold on to him,‖ the Milliner instructed.

So she did, traveling through the Continuum piggyback.

―Glass Eyes incoming!‖

Without slowing, Hatter flicked his top hat; it morphed into deadly spinning blades and he flung them at the Glass Eyes racing up fast at his back. The blades cut into one after another, ricocheting among them, then returned to him.

Still the Glass Eyes closed in, firing orb generators. Hatter deflected them into crystal byways by spinning his top-hat blades so quickly that the force of their wind sent the orbs reeling. If he‘d been alone, he would have reversed directions and attacked the Glass Eyes, but his duty required him to stay close to Alyss. He would have to fight them nearer to her than he liked. He slowed his pace. The saber blades of his belt snapped open and he twirled, letting the Glass Eyes come at him. Sliced and batted by his sabers, they became disorientated. Unable to maintain their equilibrium inside the Continuum, they were sucked from its main artery and reflected out of looking glasses.

―More coming!‖ Dodge shouted.

From in front of them this time.

―Out of the way!‖ warned General Doppelgänger.

Dodge steered his body to the Continuum‘s edge and the general shot a cannonball spider at the attacking Glass Eyes. Mid-shot, the cannonball cracked open and the emerging spider latched on to the entire pack, holding each of them fast with a sticky leg while its pincer-mouth pecked at them in rapid fire, reducing them to lifeless husks. Shoosh! They were reflected out of the Continuum.

The cannonball spider now came careening up fast toward the Alyssians. Dodge threw himself at it to prevent it from targeting Alyss. The spider held Dodge‘s arms and legs, and though it wasn‘t designed to live long—would soon fold into itself and die—it had time enough to end Dodge‘s life. Its pincers opened and moved in toward Dodge‘s stomach.

Concentrate, think, imagine.

A muzzle formed out of nowhere—a rust-colored contraption that covered the spider‘s pincers, rounding their pointed ends.

―Ha!‖ Alyss shouted, ecstatic.

Frenzied, the spider tried to shake the foreign object from its mouth. Dodge managed to free an arm and, with a single wide, circular swipe of his sword, chopped off the spider‘s legs, then plunged the weapon into its vitals.

―Did you see that?‖ Alyss cried, holding on to her tutor‘s back. ―I imagined that!‖

―I saw it,‖ said Bibwit Harte. ―Very impressive.‖

But it would have been a whole lot more impressive, thought the tutor, if Alyss had conjured a happy end to this nightmare. Glass Eyes were again coming at them, simultaneously closing in on them from in front and behind, and General Doppelgänger was out of cannonball spiders.

CHAPTER 40

―H OW COULD she not have been there?! Where else would she be?!‖

Banging the end of her scepter on the floor with every other word, Redd sent long-stemmed, flesh-eating roses slithering around the feet of Jack of Diamonds and the thick-padded paws of The Cat, both of whom had to keep moving to prevent the flowers from climbing up their legs.

―Maybe the Jack of Diamonds isn‘t as loyal as you supposed?‖ said The Cat.

Redd turned on Jack. ―Yes, perhaps.‖

―My queen—I mean, Your Imperial Viciousness—the most important Alyssians were there and could have been done away with if The Cat hadn‘t been concerned solely with Alyss.‖

―I demanded that he be solely concerned with her!‖

―But I don‘t think she‘s as dangerous as—‖

―Who asked you!‖ Redd bellowed. Her scepter lifted into the air, its pointed end poised at the pulsing hollow of Jack of Diamonds‘ throat. ―You don‘t, by chance, have nine lives?‖

Jack swallowed, hard. ―I have only one, which I devote to you, Your Imperial Viciousness.‖

―Hmmph.‖ Redd twirled her scepter like a baton and stood it at her side. ―Cat, why is there an empty box of orb generators in the hall?‖

An ammunition container slid into the room, moved by Redd‘s imagination.

―Oh, that?‖ The Cat had been waiting for her to ask. Jack of Diamonds was in for it now. ―We found it and many more at the Alyssian camp. I checked their manufacture codes. They were stolen from your factory three and a half lunar cycles ago. The thieves were interrogated and punished, but the twelve containers of stolen weapons were not where they informed us they‘d be.‖

―Get to the point, Cat, or you will feel one in your guts.‖

The feline assassin bowed in acknowledgment. ―Your Imperial Viciousness, you captured the thieves because of intelligence received by Jack of Diamonds. You allow the pudgy lord to have dealings with the Alyssians. How could the Alyssians have come into possession of these weapons if not from him? He knew where to find the thieves, he must have known where to find the weapons.‖

―Interesting,‖ said a thoughtful Redd. ―So, my well-fed informant has been taking advantage of the freedoms I grant him by supplying weapons to my enemies?‖

―No! Absolutely not!‖ declared Jack. ―Your Imperial Viciousness, this is ludicrous.‖