“Get up!” Dodge shouted. “Get up, get up, get up!”
It felt as if he waited nine lifetimes for The Cat to regain consciousness. He saw the beast’s eyelids tremble and again sank his sword into that furry chest. He didn’t know that Genevieve and Hatter had each already taken one of The Cat’s lives and that Redd herself had taken three more. Now that he’d begun it, now that he’d tasted the revenge for which he’d waited so long, he was in a frenzy of rage and impatience for it to be over.
“Come on! Get up!”
Dodge understood that a soldier’s reflexes were fastest when he was relaxed, but his emotions were getting the better of his training and he failed to anticipate The Cat’s cleverness. He stood over the creature, watching for the slightest movement. But upon again regaining life, The Cat held himself as still as death, so that his first move wasn’t a flicker of eye muscle but the swipe of a claw across Dodge’s thigh, inflicting the deepest wound yet.
“Aaaagh!”
Dodge fell back. Blood pumped through his shredded trousers and down his leg.
Slowly, almost leisurely, The Cat stood. His wounds were healed and he grinned. He appeared revived, stronger than ever, while Dodge’s injuries were beginning to make themselves felt-his reactions slower, his shoulder and leg and chest pulsing with pain. The Cat stepped toward him and, for the first time in the fight, Dodge moved backwards, a whisper of defeat in his head, as-
Alyss at last came upon the ballroom where Redd waited. I send you wishes and hope for survival, Dodge, since you won’t let me send anything else. Please try not to let your darkest urges overtake what’s good in you. She was about to enter the ballroom when a horde of Glass Eyes ambushed her soldiers, and suddenly Hatter, Molly, the knight, and chessmen were fighting for their lives all around her. Redd wants me to face her alone.
Clangk! Skrich-onk!
The way Hatter and Molly fought, the particular manner in which they spun, kicked, twirled, punched, and used their Millinery weapons, was very similar. She fights more like a full-fledged member of the Millinery than a halfer. But the thought was as fleeting as thoughts can be, and as Alyss entered the ballroom, she left the Alyssians to fight for themselves, her entire being focused on her aunt, with whom
she was about to come face-to-face for only the second time ever.
CHAPTER 53
R EDD HAD watched her niece’s progress through the fortress with mounting intolerance. The interloper-for that’s all Alyss was to her, just a once-coddled brat playing at a sovereign’s game-had some nerve. How could Alyss possibly believe herself the crown’s heir? By what twisted reasoning had she convinced herself? If Genevieve should never have assumed the throne in the first place, then how could the daughter be queen? No, thought Redd. She herself was and had always been the rightful monarch and on this day she would prove it for all time!
Alyss stepped into the ballroom. Finally: Alyss Heart in the flesh. The problem was, there were eight of her, eight Alyss Hearts. Which was the real one?
“Do you think your little games will save you?” Redd spat, and from her scepter a bouquet of flesh-eating roses on a long vine shot toward one of the Alysses. It passed through her without effect. A second vine of roses, their toothy mouths gnawing the air, flew at another Alyss-but again, no harm done.
The real Alyss stood third from the left in the row of Alysses, thinking it lucky that she’d conjured her doubles, because she found herself momentarily paralyzed, unexpectedly affected by the sight of Redd. I can’t be angry. Won’t be. I conquered my anger in the maze. Must control myself. But the heat of her temper was rising, the old feelings of abandonment after her parents’ deaths, the unfairness of just about everything.
“I don’t have time to dillydally,” Redd said. “Let the real Alyss Heart step forward.”
The queen sent enough bouquets of thorny-vined roses to attack all eight Alysses at once. The roses passed through seven of them without effect. The real Alyss tilted her head in a certain way and the attacking bouquet wadded up, strangled itself, withered, and died.
“We’re family,” Alyss said.
Redd snorted. “Is that supposed to mean something?”
“Family,” Alyss said again, trying to convince herself more than Redd.
“Don’t talk to me about family! You were never disowned by your parents!” “I’d rather have been disowned by them than seen them murdered.”
“Goody for you!”
Redd opened her mouth and exhaled a jet of flame, out of which stomped two jabberwocky, breathing shoots of fire directly at Alyss. The princess diverted the flames to either side of her and, wielding the white crystal scepter, scattered the jabberwocky into countless particles of energy. As the particles were floating and eddying in the air, fading from sight, Alyss fired a series of orb generators at Redd, who was not yet committing too much of her power to defending herself in order to draw Alyss out and discover her strengths and weaknesses. With the attitude of a grouchy governess extinguishing candle flames, she snuffed out the orb generators before they reached her, repeatedly pinching her thumb and forefinger together in the air. Each time-zzz!-an orb fizzled into nonexistence.
Alyss could feel the Heart Crystal’s energy radiating out to her, infusing her. It’s behind the far wall. Redd, by staying close to it to realize her full strength, had ensured that Alyss’ powers would also be
increased.
Alyss shot two orb generators at the quartz and agate mosaic and-kerboosh!-it fractured apart. The red glow of the Heart Crystal filled the room.
Redd shed caution like an outgrown skin. “It’s mine!” she shouted. “The crystal’s mine!”
She sent X-shaped blades cartwheeling toward Alyss, and it was all the princess could do to avoid getting sliced or run over by them; she darted left and right and back again, but as soon as she safely avoided one batch of X-blades, more came at her: an army of weapons not needing soldiers to man them. She conjured a cocoon of White Imagination around her as protection. An X-blade cartwheeled
into her and knocked her to the floor. She tried blunting the blades’ edges, but that didn’t stop them from cartwheeling toward her.
Have to get on the offensive.
Still dodging the X-blades, she dealt decks of razor-cards from her sleeves, and a couple of cannonball spiders, but she was too taken up with defending herself to see if they had any effect. She made a fist with one hand and brought it down in the palm of her other. The cartwheeling blades fell flat on the floor, harmless. But now she had another problem because the room was alive with enormous, heavy, black, spike-covered wheels rolling rampant. Alyss wasn’t so slow this time. She imagined the nightmarish wheels turned into squares and they locked in place, anchored by their floor-gouging spikes.
Can’t let Redd bombard me. Must do more than retaliate.
She conjured a curious bomb-one that didn’t destroy but create. It burst at Redd’s feet and a shimmering cage of White Imagination-enforced alloy built itself around the queen.
“You think you can contain me?” Redd laughed and stepped out of the mini-prison as if it weren’t there. Behind her, the Heart Crystal no longer glowed uniformly red but changed color constantly, from pink to white to red to a marbled red and white.