ArchEnemy (14 page)

G
OOD DEMARCATION barriers make good neighbors, which matters not in the least when your neighbor is yourself. Arch no sooner conquered Wonderland than he ordered the barrier between his new realm and Boarderland permanently offline. Gone were the official immigration points, gone the soundwaves that fried would-be illegals from the inside out. All along what used to be the border, the soundwave-producing pylons were being dismantled.

Enticed by the novelty of the Wonderland landscape, Boarderland’s everyday tribesfolk flowed into the former queendom. The Awr and Gnobi and Scabbler persisted in their nomadic ways, camping everywhere from Outerwilderbeastia to the Snark Mountain foothills, while the Doomsines and Fel Creel opted for a sedentary way of life and took up permanent residence in Wondertropolis. The Maldoids, Astacans, and remaining tribes found the initial flush of Wonderland’s attractions already fading and were returning to the country of their birth to live as they always had—Wonderland, they judged, being a nice place to visit but not to live. And the last of the Astacans were still crossing back over what used to be the demarcation barrier when—

“Citizens of Wonderland, I introduce myself to you as your new king.” An image of Arch, in Heart Palace’s public address studio, materialized on holo-screens throughout the queendom. “You may have heard that you now reside in a kingdom. I congratulate you upon it and wish to invite you all to my festive coronation ceremony, which is to take place on Heart Boulevard, just outside the palace. Come see for yourselves what a well-intentioned sovereign I intend to be. Come celebrate the fact that you need not value imagination so highly, as you were forced to do during Alyss Heart’s reign, nor live in fear, as you did during Redd’s. I give you Minister Krill, who will inform you of the time of my coronation and the entertainment you’ll find there.”

On screen, an intel minister stepped into view. Thanking His Majesty, he began to read from a long list of amusements, which included interactive cultural shows performed by Boarderland tribes and bobbing for dingy-pear contests, but even before he mentioned the spirit-dane stunt riders, His Majesty had left the public address studio. With Ripkins and Blister, he was entering one of the great halls, where Boarderland’s twenty other tribal leaders waited for him around a table.

“We agreed to fight under your command for purely selfish reasons,” the Maldoid chief said once Arch was seated.

“I wouldn’t believe anything else,” the king answered.

“Now that Wonderland’s fallen, how will the Maldoids benefit from the increased mineral resource at our disposal?”

“Who are
you
to ask first for what you’ll get?” the Fel Creel leader protested. “My tribe lost more warriors than yours and we were far more brutal.”

“Lies!” cried the Maldoid chief. “Propaganda!”

Arch allowed himself a faint smile. He would have no trouble controlling the tribes as he always had, antagonizing them against one another to prevent their banding together against him. “Friends,” he said, interrupting the Maldoid and Fel Creel leaders. “I propose equal shares for every tribe, although of course I’ll then have to take a bit more for administering the shares and for auditing output of the numerous mines.”

The Astacan leader started to protest, but—

“What I want to know,” the Scabbler burst out, “is why the Awr are still encamped at the old Five Spires of Redd site when they know we’re waiting for them to leave!”

The Awr chief accused the Scabbler of only wanting the site because his tribe occupied it and negotiations devolved into a general bickering. Arch pushed himself from his chair and went to a window at the far end of the room, staring out at the banners that fluttered from the roof of nearby Wondronia Grounds. He kept his back to the tribesmen. They were too easily manipulated for it to give him much pleasure anymore. He wanted to let them fight, argue till they’d exhausted themselves of breath forever.

The leaders’ voices abruptly ceased. Arch smelled moist earth. A tendril of smoke wafted up from behind him.

“I’m sure you know I’ve been expecting you,” the king said, still staring out the window. “You offered to help Redd reclaim the crown.”

“And you took advantage of what I neglected to tell her.”

Arch turned to see the green caterpillar puffing at his pipe. “As you knew I would. You wanted me to plot against Redd. You want the two of us striving against each other so that you’ll get the best from both of us.”

“Let us not waste time discussing what we already know.” The caterpillar twisted himself around, looking this way and that with a mixture of hope and disappointment. “For such a plotting specimen, Your Majesty, I wish you’d plot to have a platter of tarty tarts around whenever I’m here.”

“We don’t all have your ability to see into the future, caterpillar. I never know when you’re going to visit.”

The tribal leaders hadn’t moved from the table, watching as the king engaged with the oracle but not venturing closer. Arch spoke softly so they wouldn’t hear.

“You told Redd that you scheme for the safety of the Heart Crystal, but you let me gain the crown, knowing, as I assume you must, what I intend to do with it. What’s your real game?”

The caterpillar’s hookah burbled, and as Arch waited for something more than smoke to emerge from the great worm’s mouth, he was reminded not for the first time that he knew extremely little about Wonderland’s oracles.

“My game?” Green smiled. “I do not know that I have one, exactly. You of all people, Your Majesty, can have no idea how mind-numbingly boring it is, sitting on a giant mushroom for thousands of years, doing hardly more than watching others go about their active lives. The motive for my actions is simple: I am tired of being on the sidelines of history, an observer rather than a participant.”

“I was under the impression caterpillars were powerful enough to
make
history,” Arch commented.

“I have heard it said that we are powerful. But I have never felt it. I act merely to discover how much power I have.”

“What about the Heart Crystal?”

Again, the caterpillar smiled. “When it amuses me to do so, I still claim I act only to ensure the Crystal’s safety, but it is not true. I am, and have been, a prisoner to this great energy source. What little I have done these past millenia has centered on the Crystal. When it is gone, I foresee for myself futures not only of more action and less observation, but more
freedom
.”

“There are things you’re not telling me,” Arch said.

“Are there?”

The king asked himself the same question. Did he truly believe the oracle was withholding vital information? Did it matter? “I expect something from you,” he said at length, “to prove to me we’re working toward the same ends—the destruction of the Heart Crystal.”

“You need a fresh supply of silk from the six oracles,” said the caterpillar.

Arch nodded. “I need a fresh supply of silk from the six oracles.”

Without another word, the caterpillar exhaled a tremendous lungful of smoke, which gathered underneath him and carried him out the open window and out over Wondertropolis.

Not sure a deal had been struck, Arch replayed the conversation in his head as he walked slowly back to the tribal leaders to conclude negotiations.

“Whatever you propose, we accept it,” the Maldoid leader said once His Majesty had regained his seat.

The other leaders promptly voiced their acceptance as well.

Being on familiar terms with a caterpillar, it seemed, had no end of advantages for a king.

“
I
T’S BEEN confirmed by witnesses,” General Doppelgänger said. “Redd caused the disturbance at Mount Isolation. She
has
her imagination.”

In the alley between the limbo coop’s tenements, Alyss frowned at the static-laced faces of Bibwit and the general, which were being transmitted on to the air before her by Dodge’s crystal communicator. “Do we know when she got it back?” she asked. “Because if Bibwit’s theory is accurate and my imagination returned first . . .”

“Alyss,” Bibwit interrupted gently, “I wouldn’t worry whether you or your aunt recovered imagination first. I’m no longer sure that strength alone is enough to defeat you. Other attributes are equally important, perhaps more so if taken together—such as intelligence, discipline, maturity, and patience. I may be just an overly pale tutor who’s lived through his share of generations, but I’ve learned that Wonderlanders with tremendous powers often fail to achieve their ambitions if they don’t know how best to control and direct those powers. I place Redd in this category, but not you.”

“Considering our current situation, Bibwit, I don’t understand how you can think that,” Alyss said, her glance sliding to Dodge, who was being unusually quiet.

Indeed, since his initial outburst—opening his jumpsuit to reveal his weapons—Dodge had been growing more and more circumspect, withdrawing into himself and leaving Mr. Dumphy to distribute the AD52s and crystal shooters to imaginationists as he deemed fit. Even now, the tinker was coming and going, stopping into the alley to hide weapons under his clothes and then shambling off again, visiting flats in a seemingly random fashion that had, so far at least, not attracted the Club soldiers’ notice.

“The military remains loyal to you, Queen Alyss,” General Doppelgänger said. “I have your coordinates and will ready a battalion of chessmen to support your escape as soon as you give the command. But when you
do
command it, I hope your escape will be imminent, since any such move by the chessmen could alert the king of your whereabouts.”

An all-out escape, Alyss knew, would require immense strength and unblinking focus. The AD52s and crystal shooters she’d conjured were, at best, to be exploited only if she lacked the necessary concentration for success. The imprisoned imaginationists might be extraordinary citizens, but they were not soldiers. She could not expect them to perform like a trained military in the frenzy of battle, nor to witness the death of innocents with professional reserve. Notwithstanding the chessmen’s help, a coop-wide escape depended largely on her imagination. She would be pushed to the utmost—imagining an attack on Club soldiers in every limbo coop she remote-viewed while simultaneously keeping imaginationists from harm with deflective energy shields. Her strength would be tested. Yet again.

“Listen,” Dodge said in the tone of a man tired of arguing a point in his own head. “Everyone knows we want to get out of this place as soon as possible, but Arch has control of the Crystal, right? So why has he let Alyss and Redd recover their imaginations? If he figured out how to disrupt the Crystal’s influence before, he can do it again. And he would’ve done it by now if he didn’t have a reason for wanting Alyss and Redd to be imaginative . . . a reason that benefits
him
.”

The veins in Bibwit’s head pulsed faster, his ears alternately moved up and down as he considered the notion.

“Arch has revealed nothing to us,” General Doppelgänger said.

“I’m not surprised,” Dodge answered. “But we have to think as he does. Several moves ahead.”

“Yes.” Bibwit noticed that the queen had taken on the unfocused gaze of a remote viewer. “What do you see, Alyss?” he asked.

What do I see?
The eye of her imagination glimpsed the halls and suites and ballrooms of Heart Palace.
I see magnificently embroidered tapestries, plush floating sofas and chairs, glistening marble floors and onyx balustrades. I see luxury and opulence to such a degree I once couldn’t believe I was to live surrounded by it. But now that it’s all in the possession of an intruder, I want to scream, “It’s mine! It’s ours! It belongs to Wonderland!”

The muscles of Alyss’ upper cheeks went suddenly lax, her mouth hung open; she had sighted the king. “Arch is in a great hall with tribal leaders and . . .”

“And?” Bibwit prodded.

“. . . the green caterpillar. Arch is talking privately with the caterpillar, as if they have business that doesn’t involve the tribes.”

“Arch and a caterpillar-oracle?” General Doppelgänger repeated, dividing into the worried figures of Doppel and Gänger.

Blue’s conspicuous absence had, until now, seemed just another in a long line of the oracle’s frustratingly mysterious behaviors. Could the true cause have been more menacing—that he had abandoned them?

“There must be a reasonable explanation,” Bibwit offered unconvincingly.

“Perhaps one of us should travel to the Valley of Mushrooms—” began General Doppel.

“—to confer with the caterpillar council?” finished General Gänger.

“If a caterpillar’s meeting with
him
,” Dodge said, “how do we know Blue or any of the oracles will meet with
us
?”