Bargain price

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.

Aunt and niece stood in a cyclone of Black and White Imagination, the winds of both scudding around them, popping and sizzling with electrical charges and lightning fragments shooting every which way.

Give me strength, Heart Crystal. Give me…

One of Alyss’ cannonball spiders must have completely missed its target, because Dodge and The Cat were visible through a large, jagged hole in the wall to her right. She hardly took her eyes off Redd for a millisecond, but when she turned back, a large orb was coming toward her. She conjured one of her own and the two orbs collided.

Wuuumpf!

The impact sent shockwaves of displaced air reverberating throughout the room. Redd stood her ground but Alyss was thrown back and slammed to the floor. How had things gotten so turned around? One moment she was on her feet, holding her own against her aunt; the next she was laid out, looking the picture of defeat. One moment Dodge was fighting The Cat as an equal; the next The Cat was rearing back to lance him with a claw through the gut, Dodge defiantly facing his demise as-

“Dodge!” Alyss shouted, and in a reflex, she conjured an AD52 into his hand, just as something knocked her on the head. A black shroud fell over her vision and she lost consciousness, giving Redd the only advantage she needed to put an end to the upstart princess.