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.
CHAPTER 45
O N A suburban street where Wonderland children frequently played, outnumbered and outgunned card soldiers were saved from a bombardment of razor-cards by a shield that repelled the projectiles back upon the Glass Eyes who fired them…
In an Outerwilderbeastia safari park where families often vacationed, a platoon of pawns was able to defend itself against several Boarderland tribes with the help of orb cannons that automatically reloaded and launched generators…
Along hiking trails in the Everlasting Forest, Fel Creel warriors on the verge of routing two full hands of card soldiers suddenly found themselves being routed by the ground upon which they stood, as it crumbled beneath their feet and sucked them down into unknown depths…
Supporting her troops from the crystal chamber, Alyss had been able to hold Redd’s forces in their current positions for more than a quarter of a lunar hour. But she could feel fatigue overtaking her, even with the Heart Crystal so close. Redd’s invasion of Wondertropolis seemed as inevitable as the seasons.
Can’t keep this up. Can’t be at all places at once. “The Pool of Tears, Alyss!” Bibwit shouted.
She turned her imaginative gaze upon the pool: Two and three at a time, figures were splashing from its surface.
Are those…skeletons?
They were. Innumerable skeletons swimming to shore along with Master Sacrenoir and others of flesh
and no good intent. They scrabbled onto dry land and attacked any card soldiers and chessmen within sight: yet another battle, an ambush upon Alyss’ senses and strength.
Pointing her scepter at the Heart Crystal, she surrounded the Earth mercenaries with a barrier exactly like the one that had so recently separated the queendom from Boarderland-the pylons, the sound waves that could fry a trespasser’s internal organs. But as she did, the scorpspitters that had cornered Catabrac warriors in a dark quadrant of the Chessboard Desert disintegrated into nonexistence. The warriors blasted their way through a spread of Five Cards and advanced toward the capital city.
Redd, informed of Sacrenoir’s arrival and rolling toward Wondertropolis in her three-wheeled vehicle, guffawed when she remote-viewed the barrier meant to contain Sacrenoir and the others. The closer she got to the Heart Crystal, the more she felt her powers increase. She stopped up the barrier’s pylon vents; the sound waves flickered and went out. Alyss conjured another barrier, but Redd stopped up its vents just as quickly. Alyss conjured a third barrier, but this time, sensing Alyss’ gaze upon her and wanting a distraction, Her Imperial Viciousness said aloud, “Let’s see how my guardsman friend is doing.” She then directed her energies to a particular Wonderland farm, where Dodge, having commandeered a
spirit-dane, was speeding through a gobbygrape arbor to the Everlasting Forest, it having been reported to him that The Cat was last seen there, decimating card soldiers with tremendous swings of his paws.
Since the fighting began, Alyss had taken comfort in the fact that Dodge and The Cat were nowhere near each other. But Redd’s ploy worked. Alyss let herself be distracted, focused her imaginative sight on Dodge, who had climbed off his spirit-dane and was unsheathing his father’s sword, stalking toward-
“Bibwit,” Alyss yelled, “tell Dodge The Cat he sees isn’t real! It’s a construct!”
The tutor repeated the message several times into his desk’s audio intake, but Dodge didn’t respond. If The Cat were a construct, he would find out for himself. The Cat grinned and stood his ground as Dodge ran toward him with a sword aimed at his throat and-
Bonk!
A pail flew up and hit the guardsman in the shoulder, and before he could recover, another came at him from his opposite side. Clonk! Off balance, he swung his sword to defend himself against a hoe that had been thrown at him by some unseen hand.
Redd.
Alyss conjured pails and farming tools of her own to smash against her aunt’s. But more than a few of Redd’s conjurings made it through, hitting Dodge in the head, arms, legs and stomach, frustrating him, angering him, all while The Cat stood untouched and laughed. And in trying to protect Dodge, Alyss lost sight of what she’d been doing, imaginationwise, on other fronts. Sacrenoir and the rest of Redd’s Earth army passed between her barrier’s gobbedup pylons with ease. Elsewhere throughout the queendom, Redd’s hordes punished Alyss’ forces and closed in on Wondertropolis.
Alyss realized her mistake. But it was then, as she was beginning to think Redd unstoppable, that she truly understood Blue’s message.