ArchEnemy (8 page)

“I have asked myself why Boarderland’s tribal leaders would unite against me when, as king, I only ever strived for lasting peace among them!”

Redd tripped over a tree root and fell, hard. The Cat made a move to jump at Arch, but a stand of Doomsines—the king’s own tribe—stepped forward to defend him. Mr. Van de Skülle took hold of his whip, Alistaire Poole his scalpel. Ripkins flexed his fingerprints. Siren Hecht loosened her jaw, threatening a scream, and Blister tucked his long gloves in a pocket, leaving his hands bare.

“I’ve since learned the reason for the mutiny!” Arch said to the tribes, foisting his knobkerries down at Redd who, flat on her back, spun her scepter parallel to her body and knocked them away, somersaulted backward and regained her feet. “The late Jack of Diamonds claimed I kept you at odds to maintain control over you! But Jack was in Redd Heart’s service! He would have said anything to get you to join together under Redd’s command!”

“But he knew things that convinced us,” Myrval, leader of the Gnobi tribe, said. “Things he could only have known if—”

Arch felt how unused to physical exertion Redd was; her scepter was colliding against his knobkerrie with less and less force, her sallies slackening in pace. “Redd used her imagination to discover whatever she needed to convince you!” he said. “But where is that imagination now? Why is Redd Heart brawling with me like a common do-badder? And why are we
retreating
?”

“No one’s retreating!” Redd shouted, and went at him with renewed vigor.

“I’ll tell you why!” Arch said, countering Her Imperial Viciousness’s lunges with several of his own. “Because Redd Heart has lost her imagination and is afraid of Queen Alyss!”

“Lie!”

“My tribal brothers,” Arch urged, parrying easily with Redd’s increasingly manic attacks, “why conquer Wonderland only to surrender it to a selfish, malicious Heart? Why not do what’s best for our country and keep Wonderland’s mineral-rich lands for ourselves, to benefit all of us! We don’t need Redd Heart! United, I can lead you to success where she has failed! As one, to Heart Palace! As one, to—”

With the suddenness of a cannonball spider crashing to ground, Arch hit the dirt. The Cat stood over him, hissing, about to rip claws through giving flesh when—

Four Doomsine warriors jumped him. The Cat scratched and gouged, and even before his attackers fell to the ground, he was surrounded by more.

Every tribal warrior went at every Earth mercenary: Ripkins’ hands cycloned in from of him, sawteeth fingerprints shredding the skin of thugs Redd had recruited from England, hangmen she’d culled from Brazil; Sacrenoir led his skeleton-zombies against a swarm of Awr and Scabbler; Mr. Van de Skülle and Siren Hecht did their part against Maldoids and Fel Creel.

The Cat was clawing yet another Doomsine warrior when he sighted Blister in a scrum of mercenaries. They would finish what they had begun in the sparring arena. He started fighting his way toward the bodyguard, then—

A whistle. Redd’s whistle.

The Cat focused narrowed pupils on his mistress. With Vollrath, Redd was making her way to a narrow trail that led deep into the manic vines and gnarled, snarling tree trunks of Antic Arbor, Outerwilderbeastia’s most dense region. The Cat converged on the trail head with Sacrenoir, Siren, Alistaire and Mr. Van de Skülle, and engaged with them against Myrval and his Gnobi warriors as—

Boarderlanders took up surrounding positions, aimed orb cannons to annihilate them. But Arch was removing a knobkerrie from an unlucky mercenary when he saw it: Redd and her top assassins fighting through the Gnobi into Antic Arbor.

Unable to escape, outnumbered by the twenty-one tribes, the remaining grunts of Redd’s mercenary force gave up their weapons and dropped to their knees.

“You let Redd get away!” Arch said, turning on Myrval.

“I didn’t . . .
let
her,” the Gnobi leader protested. “She fought a—”

“Perhaps I failed to convince you? Perhaps you still believe the lies told you by the Jack of Diamonds?”

“We will convince you of our belief.” Myrval signaled to his warriors, who started down the trail into Antic Arbor, where trees were manic and dirt sentient.

“Stay where you are!” Arch ordered.

The Gnobi halted and the king stared out at the ranks of Boarderland warriors paused in various attitudes of attack, adrenaline making uneasy pacifists of them. He could not let Redd survive. She would plague him as long as she drew breath. But how much easier it would be to do away with her once he’d secured ultimate power.

“You
will
hunt down Redd and kill her,” he told Myrval. “Afterward.”

“Afterward?”

Arch held his knobkerrie aloft in a gesture of triumph. “After Wonderland submits to its first king!”

T
HE WALRUS-butler guided the tea tray into Heart Palace’s ancestral chamber, expecting to find, as he usually did at this hour, Queen Alyss silently communing with her foremothers and fathers, images of whom hung in marbled frames around the room.

The monarch, he was sure, would take much pleasure in the night’s tea selection. Indeed, so lost was the walrus in reveries of Alyss’ anticipated enjoyment that he tottered halfway into the chamber before realizing she was not there.

“She must be in the memorial wing. Come along,” he said, steering the tea tray to the rooms that were re-creations of Queen Genevieve’s private quarters in the former palace. Although the tea tray was inanimate, made mobile by its adverse reaction to body heat, the walrus-butler habitually treated it as a pet. “That’s very likely the frog messenger,” he observed to it when, at the foot of a tumbled stone staircase, a blur shot past him. “But to whom could he be delivering a message at this late hour, do you suppose? Well . . . no point in speculating, no point at all.”

After thoroughly canvassing the memorial wing without finding her, the walrus’s eagerness to witness Alyss’ satisfaction as she sipped her tea was still greater than any concern for her whereabouts. “It’s unlike the queen to retire without having at least one cup,” he mused. “Let’s try the sovereign suite.”

The sovereign suite, however, was empty of the queen.

With increasing alarm, the walrus checked libraries, salons, state rooms, even the briefing room. Failing to locate Alyss in any of these, he abandoned himself to anxiety.

“I don’t understand why things aren’t as they ought to be! With Queen Alyss—with the queen
especially
—things should
always
be as they ought!”

With no eye for the palace’s artworks or pearl-inlaid floors, the walrus-butler turned hurried flippers toward the war room.

“Please don’t be there,” he mumbled, the tea-tray bobbing before him, tea slopping from the kettle’s spout and the kettle itself dangerously close to falling off the tray. “Please, please, please. For nothing favorable ever comes from Queen Alyss having recourse to the war room.”

Arriving at the place in question, the walrus discovered Bibwit Harte pacing to and fro, his ears as scrunched as his vexed brow. Four General Doppels and an equal number of Gängers were ranged about the conference table, along with Hatter Madigan, the white knight and white rook. But Queen Alyss was not present. Everyone in the room was watching a holographic screen, on which, before a backdrop of some dusky attic, a Wonderlander with an oblong head and the bushiest sideburns the walrus had ever seen was holding forth.

“I by no means thought my imagination worthy of note,” the man onscreen was saying, “but when my friends, many of whom possessed more talent than I, were being rounded up by Club soldiers, I thought it prudent to go into hiding.”

“Prudent, Mr. Dumphy, but an unjust necesssity,” interjected the four General Doppels, to which the General Gängers grumbled their agreement.

“I’m a man of modest ability,” Mr. Dumphy continued. “But this has never been a source of resentment for me, as it often is for others who, minorly gifted, regret they’re not geniuses. Until recently, I’ve had talent enough to make a living. My wants are as modest as my abilities and I’ve had all that I’ve asked for and been comfortable. But when even my lowly imagination deserted me . . . I admit, it’s been frustrating.”

“Your frustration is ours as well,” said the four General Gängers, to which the General Doppels vigorously nodded.

“Since before Queen Alyss’ inauguration, I’ve been working on this little device.” The Wonderlander held up a tubular contraption for everyone in the war room to see—the kaleidoscope-shaped tool that had helped Dodge and Alyss escape the salvage lot. “I’ve never let a day pass without devoting some attention to its completion,” he said. “While in hiding, this mostly involved staring idly at its internal parts, but this morning I experienced a surge of inspiration and in a moment realized what had to be done to bring the invention to completion. As I believe the queen can attest, the Rearranger, as I call it, now works perfectly, and since this morning I’ve felt my imagination growing stronger.”

“We’re hearing similar reports from others,” the white knight acknowledged.

“Not as many as we would’ve hoped for by now,” said Bibwit.

“Some are probably afraid to come forward because of the Clubs,” the rook noted.

Bibwit stopped pacing and his ears bent forward once, as if to allow for the likelihood of this. “What about
your
imagination, Alyss? Do you feel . . . anything?”

The queen’s face replaced Mr. Dumphy’s on the holo-screen, and the walrus-butler, who had been standing unnoticed by everyone except Hatter and Bibwit, blurted, “Queen Alyss, I brought your tea!”

The generals and chessmen turned to him, surprised.

“Thank you, walrus,” Alyss smiled.

“Yes, I’ll just . . . I’ll place it here,” the creature said, setting the tea tray on the table and sweeping a fretful glance at the number of bodies in the room. “And I’d better get more cups.”

“Alyss?” Bibwit asked again, once the walrus had gone.

“I feel nothing,” said the queen. “I’ve conjured nothing, and I can’t even remote view into the next room.”

“We should not suppose WILMA’s effects will be the same for everyone,” Bibwit said, more thoughtful than disappointed, “since imaginations differ as much as Wonderlanders themselves. I suspect Mr. Dumphy’s imagination isn’t as modest as he claims, yet it makes sense to me that weaker imaginationists will be the first to recover. The less one had to lose, the less one has to regain; thus, the time needed to regain it should be shorter than it will be for, say, Queen Alyss or Redd.”

“In that case,” said the rook, “we’d better hope Redd gets hers back first, since it’d mean Alyss is the stronger of the two.”

“Mind you,” Bibwit added, “I posit this just as a theory, but the evidence supports it, as we’ve only received reports of small imaginative doings and have yet to hear of any great feats. On top of which,” the tutor flattened his ears in contrition, “when confronted with the unknowable, all we have are theories.”

“We should assume the Clubs are aware of imagination’s return,” Alyss said.

Dodge pushed his face into frame on the holo-screen. “And Redd.”

“And Arch,” added the rook.

“We’ve had to assume all of the above,” put in the General Doppels. “Redd’s forces are no longer retreating.”

“They’ve been fighting their way into positions around Wondertropolis,” the Gängers added. “We’ve officially commissioned the Spade decks to help in our defense.”

“Then Redd either already has her imagination back or she’s preparing her forces in anticipation of its return,” said the knight.

The rook stepped smartly over to the room’s crystal control panel, which had started to blink and beep. “We’re receiving a communication addressed to Queen Alyss. It’s from
Arch
.”

The chessmen looked at each other, then at the generals. The generals directed questioning eyes to Bibwit, who in turn consulted the faces of Hatter and Alyss.

“I’m unavailable,” the queen said. “But keep the audio line open. I want to hear what he says.”

The image of Alyss and Dodge faded from the holo-screen, replaced by a close-up of Arch. Seeing only Alyss’ advisers in the room, the king frowned, aiming a particularly hateful glare at Hatter.

“My transmission is intended for your queen.”

“If it’s not too unpleasant for you,” Bibwit said, “she has requested you make do with us.”

“I can make
nothing
of you. But how typical that Alyss absents herself when her queendom’s in peril. I expected a little more, even from a woman who, like her aunt Rose, is without imagination.” He paused to let the advisers fully comprehend: He
knew
. “Together with a great mass of nasty specimens that Redd left me, the Boarderland tribes are back under my command. I’m sure you’ve noticed they’re again closing in on Wondertropolis? I intended to give Alyss a chance to surrender Wonderland without violence, but as she’s off perfuming herself somewhere, it seems a bit of violence will be in order. So be it. Let her feel how an army commanded by a man contends against one that answers to a woman. I look forward to subduing you all.”

The holo-screen went white. The rook pressed a button on the room’s control panel and the visual of Alyss and Dodge came back on line.

“Alyss,” said Bibwit, “we need to get you out of that limbo coop. You should be with the Heart Crystal, in case—”

“My imagination returns in time to be of help?” Alyss raised an eyebrow in doubt. “That doesn’t strike me as likely, Bibwit. Nor should energy be expended on my behalf when as much effort as possible should go to defending the queendom from this foreign invasion. A clash of armies, without the support of imagination on either side, likely benefits Arch. Generals, chessmen, I must leave him to you for now. The Clubs’ rebellion must also be dealt with, which is why I’ll remain where I am. Dodge and I have a plan to bring down this insurgency. I will continue to test my imagination and contact you the moment I feel anything.”