To Walk in Shadow
(Worm/Chronicles of Amber)
by P.H Wise
2.2 - Pattern
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction. Worm belongs to Wildbow. The Chronicles of Amber is by Roger Zelazny. I own neither. Please support the official release.
Thanks to Cailin for beta-reading
I stepped out of the mirror and into another world where everything was just a little more. The colors were more vibrant, the sky a deeper blue, the sun brighter, the shadows darker. I was standing within a broad declivity at the bottom of which flowed a noisy stream in a broad curve, coming to us from the north and flowing away westward. Green grass spotted with puppy-headed flowers ran up the slope, and the flowers wagged their leaves and bounced on their stalks with such exuberance that their roots shook up the ground beneath them. Across the stream a riparian woodland rapidly ascended, and trees grew thick at the far slope's crown.
A breeze carried a sweet smell to me, and it felt good to breath it in. I made my way up toward the top of the slope I stood upon, and more of the surrounding land came into view. Beyond the woods across the stream, the land - mostly green meadows and little woods and small, rolling hills - was divided into huge, regular squares like a giant chessboard, and a medieval fortress stood at its southern end above which red flags were flying; at its northern end was another, but it was miles away, and I couldn't tell what standard it bore. To the south, a mushroom forest all in psychedelic colors; west the stream widened, joined by tributaries on its way to a dismal mire. To the east beyond castles and chessboards the hills built steadily toward a snow-capped mountain range; northwest, a woodland, dark and deep. And what of promises to keep? I wasn't sure. Why had I thought that?
Alec was waiting beside horses and wagon on a cobblestone path beyond the grass and puppy-headed flowers, and despite the mirror-gate having been too small to fit the wagon, it didn't seem strange to me that it was here. Aisha was on the slope seated beside a patch of puppies; she scratched their ears, and they licked her fingers and wagged their green petals excitedly. And Lisa? Lisa stood on the path looking at her surroundings with an expression I'd never seen before; not a smug smile, not a vulpine smile, not a smirk, but an honest smile, and happy.
It looked weird on her.
I joined the others on the cobblestone path, and I passed through a large patch of flowers on my way, these ones not puppy-headed, but vivid and blue and purple, pink, red and yellow and orange, and octarine, and shultrusent, and perfumed the air with a smell that tasted joyful and a little bit truculent; this was the source of the sweet smell.
Aisha came over to us, and between one step and the next, her smile vanished, and Lisa's followed.
"is something wrong?" I asked.
Aisha turned her head from left to right as if searching for something. Whatever she was looking for, she didn't find it. "My power's gone," she said. "So's the exit."
Exit? Had there been an exit? I could vaguely recall such a thing, but it didn't seem like something to get upset over. I giggled. "You know what they say," I said. "Easy come, easy go."
Lisa raised an eyebrow. "Are you high, Taylor?" she asked.
What a strange thing to say. "Do I look like a cloud to you?" I asked.
Lisa's eyes went to the flowers I'd walked through, and she put two and two together.
"She's high," Alec confirmed. "Shit."
"I'm serious," Aisha said, and the words tasted frightened, which was weird because usually words taste like vibrations in the air. "My power isn't there anymore.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder, and they guided me over to the wagon, and I saw when I climbed in and lay down that it had been Lisa's hand and not just a free-floating one. A light rainbow colored mist began to curl about my body, and I watched in rapt fascination as it began to spread.
"Shit," Alec swore again. "Distract her. If that spreads across her whole body, she'll disappear and we'll never find her again."
The sky began to melt like it was made of wax, and all its colors ran together. Someone screamed, or maybe squeaked. A voice buzzed in my ear, which was a strange place for a voice. Weren't they supposed to stay in people's mouths? Or was it throats? I tried to pay attention. The others were really worried about something, but I got distracted by how interesting the sky was. So many different shades of blue all swirling together to make the one up there, and there were little puffs and wisps of white clouds that looked like cotton candy, and occasionally a bird would pass overhead, and I'd get lost in the shimmering of its feathers and the beat of its wings.
"...stopped Trumping out, at least," someone said. I wasn't sure who.
The wagon began to move beneath me, and luckily it knew to take me with it. The others kept talking, but I had lost myself in stimulus, and I watched the clouds drift by as the wagon wheels turned and turned and turned.
I don't how much time passed before I came back to myself, but eventually my thoughts grew clear again, or at least clearer than they had been. I sat up and said, "Oh. So this wasn't just a weird dream."
"Not so much," Aisha said sullenly from her seat beside me. "Do you always hallucinate out loud, or is that a Wonderland exclusive?"
I blinked. "What?"
"We spent the last half hour watching flocks of LSD-birds pirouetting through a sky like Starry Night, except it was day time," Aisha informed me.
I had no idea how to respond to that. "Um. I don't think I've ever hallucinated before, so…"
"Right," Aisha said. "So maybe it's just this place and not you. But just in case it's you and not Wonderland? Don't do drugs."
"She's right," Alec called from the front of the wagon. "You got lucky and had a trip that was quick and harmless. But people with reality warping powers like us?"
Oh. I went pale as the implications sank in through the haze that still muddled my thoughts, and I realized just how bad things could have gone just because I'd landed downwind of a patch of hallucinogenic flowers and smelled the air a little. "Okay," I said. "Drugs are bad.*
The wagon kept moving, and Aisha's mood didn't improve. I tried to think of why she was upset, because it seemed like a grumpiness that went beyond just having to see some weird images, and I could remember something about a power outage. Power… failure. My thoughts continued to clear by degrees, and after a time I was able to figure it out. Oh. "Power still gone?" I asked.
"Yeah."
"I thought powers were part of you," I said. "I didn't know they could be taken away."
"Me too," Aisha said. "There's always some bullshit trump like Hatchet Face, but…"
It suddenly occurred to me that the girl I was sitting next to had fought the Nine. She and her friends had driven off Jack Slash. I wanted to ask about it, but it didn't seem like the sort of thing you could just bring up in casual conversation. For that matter, I barely knew Aisha. She was a tagalong, the alternate universe sister of a handsome boy I also barely knew, and she hadn't just lived through the Nine she'd lived through Leviathan, too. It felt as though a yawning chasm had opened between us with no bridge from there to here. "Maybe wherever powers come from has a range?" I asked, mostly as a way to avoid asking why she'd left her home behind to follow us back to our Earth Bet.
"Lisa still has hers," she said.
I looked to Lisa, who was riding up front with Alec and rubbing at her temples as if they hurt her. "You sure?"
Aisha nodded. "I don't know why mine doesn't work here," she said, "but the sooner we get out of here the better."
"How long was I loopy for?"
She shrugged. "Like I said, half an hour."
I remembered her saying so before, and I felt stupid for having asked.
The wagon rolled on, heading north. After a time the path split, and we turned east. We crossed a stonework bridge over the little gully with the noisy stream and passed into the chessboard lands.
"Where's this Dreaming Pool?" I asked
"The Red Queen's palace," Alec said. "We'll have to ask leave to use it. Try not to let her get to you."
"Will she give us permission?" I asked.
"Maybe," Alec said.
"You've been here before, though," I said. "You know these people, right?"
Alec smirked. "I know them," he said, and absently twirled his scepter.
"And they know you," Lisa surmised, "and that's why the Red Queen isn't going to just let us pass through, isn't it." It wasn't a question. "What did you…" she stopped mid-sentence. "They hate you. You did something that drew the hate of every single being in Wonderland."
"Like I said," Alec repeated, "don't let the Red Queen get to you. She's annoying even when she doesn't hate you."
We passed through a few of the huge chess squares without incident, watching the countryside of Wonderland go by. Another twenty minutes and we stopped to relieve ourselves one at a time behind some thick bushes, and when we had all walked back to the wagon, the horses, and the road, we were no longer alone.
Two figures were watching us. They were standing under a tree, each with an arm around the other, and though we both recognized them, the names were out Lisa's mouth before I could even finish opening mine: "Tweedledum and Tweedledee," she said.
They were identical twins, both fat, both in identical clothes except that one had 'DUM' embroidered on his collar and the other, 'DEE'. As I regarded them, it occurred to me that no description I had ever read of them had ever indicated that their teeth were quite so sharp.
"She knows our names," said Tweedledum. "Are we famous? I always wanted to be famous."
"Contrariwise," said Tweedledee, "Maybe she guessed it. If she guessed it, we needn't be. If she guessed it, maybe we ain't. What's your name, good guesser? Who are your friends? But I ain't asking you to introduce the Regent: he's nobody's friend."
"And Nobody's his," said Tweedledum. "Strange fellow, Nobody. Got a fondness for tyrants, he does."
Alec gave the pair a bored look. "These two aren't worth our time," he said.
"Come now, come now," said Tweedledee. "No cause for rudeness, your majesty." He mock-bowed with an insulting little flourish. "I see you've brought two figments along. Two figments and a real girl."
"Contrariwise," Tweedledum began, and Aisha immediately interrupted him.
"The name's Aisha. These are Lisa and Taylor." She indicated each of us in turn. "Watch who you're calling figments."
"Ain't we doing just that?" Tweedledum asked.
"We are," Tweedledee said. "That's what we're using our eyes for. You're not a very smart figment, are you?"
Aisha's grin faltered, and I wondered what she might have done if her power had been working. "I see what you mean," she told Regent. "They always like this?" she asked.
"Always like ourselves?" asked Tweedledee. "Can't hardly expect someone to be unlike himself."
"Contrariwise," said Tweedledum, "Can't hardly expect someone to be like himself every day. Some days you can't help being someone else."
"Afraid so," Alec said.
I shook my head, torn between a sort of star-struck amusement and annoyance on behalf of my companions. But we weren't lost; Alec knew the way, and there seemed little point in staying to talk to the pair. "Goodbye, Tweedledee and Tweedledum," I said, and the horses began to move.
"I'm getting a little tired of people telling me I'm not real," Aisha muttered. It wasn't pitched to carry, but the pair seemed to hear it anyway.
"Not our fault that you're a figment of the Dreaming King's imagination," said Tweedledum.
"We've offended them," said Tweedledee. "Wait," he called. "Stay. You haven't said 'how do you do' and shake hands! Do you like poetry? We know some poems we could recite for you."
"Now it's just getting sad," Lisa said as we continued to ignore them.
"What shall we recite?" said Tweedledee, as though we had stopped to listen and not continued on our way. "The Walrus and the Carpenter?"
"Too long," said Tweedledum. He and his brother began to raise their voices so we would hear them as the distance between us increased. "Something shorter. Jabberwocky, perhaps?"
"You'll call the beast with that!" said Tweedledee. "No. Something shorter. The Serpent and the Unicorn!"
"Yes, yes!" cried Tweedledum.
Then they both began to recite the words:
"The Serpent and the Unicorn were playing for the crown:
The Serpent fought the Unicorn all round the town.
Some men called them tyrants, but none could pull them down;
The game was rigged, and yet it was the only game around..."
My brow furrowed at that. Wasn't it supposed to be the Lion and the Unicorn? Whatever. I didn't care. Their words dwindled with distance to an unintelligible murmur, and then to silence.
We arrived at the palace that flew the red flags and banners thirty minutes later, and the guards at the gate recognized Alec at least. They led us within, and they brought us into the grand hall where the Red Queen was holding court. Two thrones stood side by side, and in his throne the Red King had a tall night-cap on, with a tassel, and he was slumped over, fast asleep.
A murmur went through the court at the sight of us. We approached the thrones, and the queen stood. She was tall, severe, and beautiful. Her skin was the color of mahogany wood, but not all a uniform shade; like wood it had a grain and variation. Some places darkened to a true brown, some lightened to a more reddish tone. Her hair was the same, and the overall impression was of a beautiful woman carved from wood and brought to life, though her form, her face, and her royal robes had as much give and flex as any other person's might. Upon her head was a golden crown set with three blazing rubies, and she held a scepter in her hands.
"So," she said, and her voice was a richly textured thing, "the Regent returns to Wonderland. And no army of heartless nightmares and darker reflections at his back this time. When I remembered this yesterday, I was angry enough to have you killed, but I'm a different me today. Why have you come here, my lord Regent? And why shouldn't I feed you to a bandersnatch?"
Alec said nothing.
"What do you have to say for yourself, murderous child? What answer do you give for your reign of terror?"
"Nothing," Alec said with great contempt.
"Nothing?" the Red Queen asked. "You come before my court to say nothing? I doubt that very much, child of Amber."
"We came to ask if we could use the Dreaming-" I hastened to explain.
"Speak when spoken to!" the Red Queen sharply interrupted.
My eyes narrowed. For all her royal bearing and beauty, the Red Queen suddenly reminded me of nothing so much as my second grade teacher, a stern disciplinarian named Mrs. Smith who had hated above all else a child who spoke out of turn. "Dreaming Pool," I finished.
The Queen's eyes flashed with anger, but she looked to Alec. "Is this true?"
"Yes," he said.
"No answer for your crimes, nothing to say for yourself, but you come to ask a favor of us?"
"That's right," Alec said.
Aisha was glaring at the queen but hadn't spoken up just yet, and Lisa had a worrying smile. "If you say yes, we'll be out of your hair," Lisa said.
The queen fumed and gnashed her teeth at yet another person who spoke out of turn. "You aren't in my hair. None of you! And never shall be. I don't normally like to take the example of the wicked Queen of Hearts, but-" she stopped and thought. "Yes, yes," she said. She pointed to Lisa. "Your next proposal, girl, speak it so I can answer. But think before you speak it."
"There must be something you want more than to kill Regent," Lisa said.
"And there is," mused the queen. "Yes, there is one thing."
Why wasn't Alec talking? Was he really going to let us do the talking when he was the one with the history here? Then again, considering how much these people seemed to hate him, maybe that was for the best. "Tell us," I said.
"Within the treasure vault of the Monarchy of Hearts there is an item, a bauble, a treasure which the queen of that land stole from me while I was giving her a proper examination of her claim to royalty."
"What did she steal?" I asked.
"I told you," the queen snapped. "An item, a bauble, a treasure. A thing which I valued. Pay attention or you'll never be worth anything, foolish child. Of what use is a child who doesn't pay attention?"
My cheeks flushed with embarrassment. "I meant, what was the specific item that was stolen?"
"The Hellflame," said the queen. "An artifact of power brought here from a distant world some years ago, and stolen by the Queen of Hearts. A fist sized ruby set in silver fire. Bring it to me, and all is forgotten. Bring me this, and you may use the Dreaming Pool provided you use it to leave."
"It's a deal," I said.
Later, when we had safely exited the palace and were beyond the earshot of the guards, I turned toward Alec and asked, "What was that?"
"Nothing," he said.
My anger finally hit its flashpoint. "Not nothing," I snapped. "I've been very patient with you. You said we couldn't just go to Amber because you'd be arrested, that your family wasn't welcome there, and you refused to explain any further. You said we were all in danger when you found out I'd met Pyewacket, enough danger that you broke us out of Coil's base, but when we asked, you said there wasn't time to explain. Then we had several fucking days of travel to tell us all about it, and you never explained it then, either. Now you lead us into the court of a queen who hates you and might have killed all of us just for being with you, you leave us to flounder out an agreement on our own, and you tell me it's fucking nothing? Like hell. Either explain what's going on, or-"
"Or what?" he asked.
"Or I'll assume you've been lying about everything, that even you seeming to help me is really just you using me, and that there really isn't a worthwhile person behind the asshole."
He looked at me in disbelief. "Your mother really didn't teach you anything, did she."
"Fuck you, Alec."
He shook his head. "No. I mean she really didn't. Why would you ever assume that a family member's help wasn't also them using you somehow? Why would you ever assume that family would tell you the whole truth?"
That wasn't what I'd expected to hear. "Excuse me?"
"Never. Trust. Family."
"What?"
"We're family. We are related. I don't know how exactly, but you're either a cousin, an aunt, or a niece. And you're trusting me to be on the level? Are you insane?"
I had no idea what to say to that. "Why wouldn't I trust my family?"
"Because they're your family. Never, ever trust family, Taylor. It's far more dangerous than trusting a stranger: with a stranger, there's a chance you may be safe."
What the hell kind of family life had Alec had to give him an attitude like that? My anger was mixed with pity, now, and he snorted when he saw it in my eyes. "Are you going to explain?" I asked.
"Fine," he said.
We mounted up on the front of the wagon with Lisa and Aisha sitting in the back. Lisa was at least making some effort not to look like she was listening to our conversation; Aisha made no such effort. The horses set off down the trail, the wagon began to move, and Alec started talking.
"I'm not going to tell you everything," he said.
"I didn't think you would."
"In fact, you should assume that I'm only going to tell you what's in my best interest to tell you."
I raised an eyebrow.
"Now, what do you want to know?"
Quite a bit, but I had to prioritize the most immediate problems first. "What did you do to make the people of Wonderland hate you?"
"I conquered them. I called up an army out of Shadow, some from places closer to Chaos, some from darker reflections of Wonderland, and I tore the place up. Then I changed them to make them less like themselves and more like what I wanted. Worse in the Monarchy of Hearts than here." There was no expression on his face, and his voice was as casual as if he were talking about the weather.
"Why?"
"I was eleven, right? I knew my sister loved Alice. She had a copy in Thari that was actually signed by the author. I was really angry with her, so I decided I'd go find a Wonderland and wreck it. That's all."
That was more than a little horrifying. "You raised an army and conquered Wonderland," I said. "At the age of eleven. Because you wanted to get back at your sister."
Alec shrugged. "It made perfect sense to me at the time."
"What did she do that made you so angry?"
"Almost blew my chance to run away from home," he answered.
"Why did you want to run away?"
He didn't answer, and by his dark expression, I guessed he wasn't going to.
I considered my next question, and along with it the additional question of whether or not I should have anything further to do with Alec. I tried to imagine myself in his place, doing what he had done and for the reasons he'd done it, and I couldn't.
"What is Pyewacket?" I asked.
"A demon."
"What do you mean by that?"
Regent shrugged. "Demon. Usually a spirit, often given to predatory or antisocial behavior, exists on the cosmic totem pole somewhere between god and mortal. People call us demons, sometimes, and they're not totally wrong. Far as I know, he's the larval form of a greater independent demonic species. You can call them Horrors."
"Horrors," I echoed.
"They're bad news. The adult versions are responsible for a semi-regular apocalyptic harvest of nearby Shadows. They gain power by forming connections to beings that catch their interest. As the connection deepens, so does their ability to influence the being they're linked to."
"Can they make a connection to anyone?" I asked. "How do they make them?"
"It depends," Alec said. "Usually it involves some sort of transaction. The speed they develop with varies, but once the connection is made, it's very hard to break."
"And you think he made a connection to me. That's the mark you were talking about, the one you said could be used to track me through Shadow."
"Yes."
"Could it have been placed by something else?"
He nodded. "Sure. There are a couple other ways it could have happened. None of them are very likely."
I considered what I had been told, and then I summed up the situation with two words: "Well. Shit." Another question occurred to me, then. "Okay," I said. "Last question. Why do you care? Why are you bothering to take me to Tir na Nog'th instead of just leaving? Where's the advantage for you?"
"You can work that out for yourself," he said. "Maybe Tattletale can give you a hint."
Little was said after that, and the wagon rolled on, and the horses walked, and Wonderland passed by around us. We crossed the bridge above the noisy stream and took the road's other fork toward the northern woodland, and our surroundings began to change. The light grew dimmer, the colors less saturated, the shadows darker still. Soon, the trees grew close around us, and only a little light seemed to filter through the dense, web-strewn canopy that crowded in above the road.
The air became close and warm, and no breeze came to ease it. The woods had gone eerily silent, no birdsongs, no breeze, only the clop clop clop of horse hooves on the path and the sound of rolling wheels. On the side of the road a sign showed the home of the Mad Hatter down one side trail and the home of the March Hare down the other.
Then came a high pitched animal bleat; a shriek, a scream of pain. It broke the stillness like a brick through glass, and flinches followed like shards.
The sound came nearer along with the rushing, crackling, stomping of a body fleeing through thick underbrush. It leaped out onto the path, a brown-furred humanoid rabbit-thing in the tattered remains of a tan and green suit. It was wounded; one arm hung limply, the top half of its left ear was missing, and whatever color the vest and shirt beneath its jacket, they were sanguine now. The thing seemed to recognize Regent, and it froze in horror.
In the branches above the path, something stirred.
I looked up in time to see a wide, wide grin with far too many pointed teeth.
A spectacular leap carried a lithe feline shape down onto what must have been the March Hare, and the hare screamed.
A large paw, claws extended, slammed down onto the March Hare's back, knocking him flat on his face, and he let out a sharp, mewling bleat before the air was driven from his lungs.
"My lord Regent," said the Cheshire Cat. Cat? He was more of a size with a Cheshire mountain lion, and the other half of the March Hare's ear dangled from the corner of his mouth. "Have you come to join my hunt? Slice his throat for me, and I'll set aside the liver for you and your consorts."
Consorts? It thought we were Alec's consorts? I almost opened my mouth to deny it, but then it occurred to me that if this creature was deferential toward Alec, letting it know that I wasn't under his protection might not be the best idea.
"That isn't why I'm here, Cat," Alec said.
"Oh?" asked the cat.
"Please," gasped the March Hare, his voice barely a hissing whisper as he struggled to regain his breath, "please don't let him eat me."
"We're only here on an errand," Alec said. "Don't let me interrupt you."
"Are we really going to…" Aisha began.
"Please don't let him eat me," the March Hare begged. "I don't want to die."
The Cheshire Cat's grin never slipped. "What's the life of a March Hare worth in any case?" he asked. "Surely it's not worth the trouble of making me your enemy. And it isn't like his life really matters. When I kill him and devour him, another March Hare will wake up in his home good as new, with no memory of this unpleasant affair."
"Perhaps some other March Hare will wake up in his home, good as new, but he won't be me," said the hare. "He won't share my memories, and my unique existence will be ended forever." He shook his head in denial. "It matters a great deal to me."
The cat's grin widened. "That's because you hold the world responsible for your own failings," he said. "You are born and you drift on the surface of events. Sometimes you feel as though you influence them, and that gives rise to striving and to desire. This is a mistake. It only leads to more striving, more desire, and inevitably, to more suffering when you are confronted with just how little you matter in the cosmic perspective."
"You're no better," hissed the March Hare.
"Maybe not, but you might find peace if you let go of desire. Surely it won't do you any good in any case, and if you are going to be eaten, you might as well find enlightenment before you're gobbled up."
"Cheap words from predator with his teeth to my throat," the March Hare replied. "I might be inclined to believe your argument if it weren't made in the service of your own appetite."
The cat nodded. "A legitimate point," he said, "and one I will think on while I digest you."
"That's enough," I said, and dismounted from the wagon.
The cat fixed his gaze on me. "Is it now?" he asked.
"Taylor," Alec said, "we don't need this."
A second feline shape moved in the branches above us, a second, smaller form with a more mischievous grin than predatory.
"What kind of hero would I be if I let him kill someone right in front of me without trying to stop it?" I asked.
"A living one," Alec answered.
"So eager to die for a good cause," purred the cat. "It won't help. Even if you drive me away, I'll only return for this fellow when you aren't here to save him and have my meal then."
In answer, I pulled out my can of pepper spray, pointed it at the cat's face, and let fly.
The Cheshire… Mountain Lion screamed. He howled and yowled and clenched his eyes shut and clawed at them and drew blood. Then he sprinted away into the woods making so much noise that I could hear the path of his retreat for a mile.
I capped the pepper spray and returned it to my pocket.
"Thank you," the March Hare said. "Thank you, thank you, thank you for my life."
"I might not be here to save you next time," I told him.
"I understand. I'll go away. I'll move to the chessboard lands, where Regent's power hasn't corrupted Wonderland so badly. Thank you." He kissed my hands, and then, tears in his eyes, he ran away down the path we had come by.
I smiled, and turned to the others. Aisha and Lisa smiled back; Aisha resheathed the wicked combat knife that I hadn't noticed her pulling out. Alec just shrugged. "He won't forget what you did," he said, "if you ever come this way again."
"Neither will the March Hare," I said, and feeling more human than I had in days, I climbed back onto the wagon.
"What a boor," said a smug voice from above. "It was good to see him run. Better to see him eat his own words."
A second grinning Cheshire Cat hopped down from the tree branches, this one the size of a normal cat. He vanished in mid-jump and then reappeared on our wagon. "Well done," he said.
"Are you the real Cheshire Cat?" Aisha asked.
"I am, and I am not," the smaller cat said. "We are both real. But I was first, and I, at least, have a sense of humor about things. I, at least, understand that even if from cradle to tomb isn't that long a stay," his grin grew wider, "life is a cabaret."
Lisa laughed. "You like Liza Minelli?" she asked.
"I adore Liza Minelli," said the cat. "And as it happens, I know a bar near here where we can discuss the matter further, and relax, have a drink, and watch a Victorian gentleman paint. You're all invited, of course, so long as the Regent behaves."
"I'm down," Aisha said.
"We don't have time for bar-hopping," Alec said.
"And I'm pretty sure we're all too young," I added.
Aisha gave us both a dirty look.
"Suit yourselves. I always like to offer an inviting paw to people who strike my interest. Maybe when you're older?"
"Maybe then," I said with a smile.
He began to vanish, then, everything fading but his grin, which lingered a moment in the air before it, too, was gone.
On. Distance shrank, and Alec guided us through with the deftest of touches on the world around us. I could feel him doing something, but I couldn't quite tell what. Then the path widened and the forest pulled back, and we came to the Palace of Hearts.
It was a huge, sprawling thing, spread over many acres of land. Topiary along the side of the road depicted mythological beasts of every sort. There was a sphynx and a hydra and a naga and a gryphon and a pegasus, and many more. The last two, standing just short of the gates, were a serpent with a single red rose serving as its eye and an empty hollow where the other should be across from a unicorn studded with white roses, rampant, and facing to the dexter.
The palace was a place of golden splendor, the gardens stunningly beautiful, the grounds immaculate, and above the gates, mounted on pikes, were thirty severed heads. Some were old and rotted, little better than skulls; some still dripped fresh blood; most were in between.
Alec turned us around, and where there had been forest now stood what looked like a small town of maybe a few thousand people. It was walled, but the gates facing the palace were open, and we went unchallenged as we rode through. We stopped at an inn, took the horses to the stables, ate and drank and refreshed ourselves, and then set out to rob the vault of the Queen of Hearts.
Night fell, and we crept in under cover of darkness, though the darkness covered far less than it should have; the sun set and the sky turned dark blue and then black and speckled with stars, but the land remained twilit. Through midnight gardens we crept, pausing and ducking back now and again to avoid patrolling guards, past roses and cherry trees and animate card-men bearing spears and swords.
When we reached the palace building, Alec whispered, "Stay close. Close as you can." Then he spoke the guide words of another spell, and the light grew dim around us.
"We're invisible," he said, "but only while you're close to me. Get more than an arm-length away and you'll start to reappear."
"Do you know where we're going?" Lisa asked.
He nodded. "Yes. Now no more talking until we arrive."
Lisa looked annoyed, but she shut her mouth. She hadn't actually said that much since we'd left Earth Bet, and I found myself wondering what her power was telling her about her surroundings.
We followed Alec, always staying closer than was comfortable, four bodies pressed in close and walking as a group, and it made me feel a little claustrophobic. Three times, a guard nearly discovered us. Three times, I held my breath and tried to think inconspicuous thoughts as the animate card-man stalked on. Then we came to a long, gilded hallway leading to the vault door, and my heart nearly stopped beating.
The Queen of Hearts threw open a door nearby and stalked out into the hall with a satisfied smile. Her hands were covered in blood, the room she had come from was drenched in it, and she was obnoxiously sexy. She was tall, and had long, luxurious red hair, a pin-up's bombshell body, and she was dressed in a black and red corset over a black and red skirt, and a golden crown rested on her brow. She had red heels, red gloves that went past her elbows, and the whole ensemble was almost preposterously skimpy, showing off her curves in ways that made me both jealous and a little offended. Like, she was less the Queen of Hearts and more "Sexy Queen of Hearts."
She licked some of the blood from her fingers as she stalked away down the hall, and she did it with one of those painful looking hip-rolling walks that girls always did in video games, and that I'd never even tried to pull off for fear of dislocating my hips.
Once she was out of earshot, Lisa, Aisha, and I all looked Alec's way.
"Really?" Lisa asked.
"That wasn't me," Alec whispered, shaking his head.
"Uhuh," Lisa said.
"It wasn't," he insisted. "These beings have lives and make choices of their own."
Nobody believed him. About the first part, not the second.
"I kind of want my own copy of that outfit," Aisha said.
I gave her an offended look, and Alec indicated Aisha as if to say, 'see?'
"What?" she asked with a grin. "I'd look damn sexy in that."
I tried not to sigh.
We approached the door to the treasury. It was locked, but Lisa produced a set of tools and set to examining it while the rest of us stood awkwardly pressed too close for comfort in order to continue sharing the invisibility spell. She had it open in short order, and her ensuing grin was more than a little smug.
"How did you do that?" I asked.
"I'm psychic," she said.
That didn't really answer my question. At all. What, had she read the lock's mind somehow? I bit back the almost instinctual retort I'd learned in parahuman history, that telepathy was impossible with a human-sized brain, that only the Simurgh was psychic. … then again, this was Wonderland. If Lisa really was psychic, maybe she had read the lock's mind. Maybe the locks here were all sentient.
I regarded the lock suspiciously, and then followed the others through the now open door. We shut it behind us but didn't relock it, and then descended a long stairway into the treasury of the Monarchy of Hearts.
It had high ceilings like a cathedral, and sound carried impossibly well. Alec let the invisibility spell fade and we all finally stepped away from each other as we came into the main chamber. An open door at the end of the room showed a gilded hallway leading off probably to more chambers like this one.
Fabulous treasures of every description were all about us. There were artfully arranged piles of gold, a literal fountain of jewels with a diamond basin, the fountain itself made of emerald, and countless sapphires pouring out of it, raining down into and filling the basin before being drawn up again into the fountain. There were paintings and sculptures and strange displays of every description. One display consisted of twenty blue shoes nailed to a board. Another was a living, beating, disembodied heart suspended in white crystal, pumping bright red blood into a large stone basin; the basin should have filled up long ago, or perhaps a minute from now, but the basin was never full. And there, the object of the Red Queen's desire: a slim urn made of time-barred silvery fire that held a fist-sized ruby in the uppermost tips of its blazing fingers. The silver fire held the ruby in an unbreakable grip, and the gemstone glimmered coolly just the same.
"Hellflame," I murmured. It was radiating heat and cold both; heat from the time-barred flame, cold from the ruby.
"Damn," Aisha said. "I wonder what that would sell for back home."
"Millions at least," Lisa said.
Alec began examining the stand on which the urn rested, checking for traps before he removed it. As he looked, I heard a peculiar noise that I couldn't place. It was soft and strangely tremulous, and whatever it was, its source was coming closer.
"Do you hear that?" I asked.
"Hear what?" Aisha asked, and then paused when she noticed it, too. "...huh."
Alec spoke several words in a language I did not understand, and there was a sense of pressure in the air. He began to reach for the Hellflame, his hands moving through air that quivered like gelatin.
Then Lisa heard it, too. She looked around, saw nothing approaching, and then asked, "Is that... whiffling?"
Another noise joined the first. A low, peculiar burbling beneath the tremulous whiffle.
The whiffling drew nearer, the burbling louder; a pungent animal smell was in the room now, and heavy, irregular footfalls were coming down the hall accompanied by the scraping of wicked claws across the floor.
Alec looked at us, the Hellflame now grasped in his gloved hands. "Okay," he said, "which one of you was thinking uffish thoughts?"
"Not me," Lisa said.
"Nothing uffish about my thoughts," Aisha said.
They all looked my way as I stood in uffish thought, and my cheeks flushed. "Shit," I said, and the vulgarity sounded strange and out of place, and I wasn't entirely sure that what I said was what I'd said.
The scraping, nearer. The whiffling and the burbling, nearer. The animal smell, all but unbearable; a shadow fell through the door.
"Oh, frabjous day," Lisa swore.
"What?" I asked. "What is it?" But I knew as well as she.
"The jaws that bite, the claws that catch..."
It crawled into the chamber, and its burbling grew louder when it saw us. Twin eyes of flame fixed upon us, and it made a soft chuffing noise that I took for a snarl.
Aisha stared at the creature in horrified fascination. "Bitch has a jabberwock guarding her vault."
"And me without my vorpal sword," I said.