“Hatter and Bibwit have gone ahead to clear the emergency portal,” General Doppelganger 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 Doppelganger, 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 Doppelganger 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 Doppelganger.
“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 Doppelganger.
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 Doppelganger 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