Seeing Redd Read Online Free PDF Page A

outermost quadrants of the Chessboard Desert, with its alternating squares of ice and black rock. Only the Valley of Mushrooms and the Volcanic Plains had been spared an influx of military personnel. General Doppelgänger had ordered bases to be erected around the valley, on various peaks of the Snark Mountains, so that the caterpillar-oracles’ habitat could enter a period of new growth after being cleared of the mushrooms hacked to virtual mush by Redd’s forces. As for the Volcanic Plains, the belching heat of the place was so inhospitable to all life save jabberwocky that General Doppelgänger considered it a buffer zone or no-man’s-land between the queendom and any opposing force.
    But, thought the Four Card, even supposing that enemies did attack this outpost and somehow managed to fight their way into the thick of the Everlasting Forest, they would still be confronted with the Wall of Deflection—a series of looking glasses unconnected to the Crystal Continuum that spanned the entire breadth of the forest. Just as the glasses around the rebel Alyssian headquarters used to overlap one another at countless angles, these were aligned in such a way that, as you approached them, you saw not your reflection but what looked like dense, impassable arborage and so were deflected away from Wondertropolis.
    â€œTo attack the queendom from here would be suicide,” muttered the Two Card.
    Funny, but what the Two Card most despised about life on this post was precisely what the Four Card appreciated. It was the least likely ever to be attacked. He had seen enough of battle and death.
    â€œI wish you’d stop that humming,” said the Two Card.
    The Four Card was about to explain that he wasn’t humming when all at once the forest trees began to whisper—troubled, hoarse whispering. Then he heard it too, a steady hum, approaching fast and growing into a great swell of—
    â€œIncoming!”
    He dove to the ground as a cannonball spider smashed into the wall behind him.
    The Two Card fumbled with his weapon, unable to get off a single shot before the giant arachnid pricked him with its pincers and he crumpled to the ground, dead.
    Not about to become food for some artificial spider, the Four Card scrabbled to his feet and ran, spraying razor-cards from his AD52 in the direction of incoming fire. Whoever his attackers were, they had begun to launch whipsnake grenades; electric coils crackled, hissed, slithered all around him. In the frenzy of the eye-burning explosions and ear-stabbing squeaks of cannonball spiders, he saw the enemy rise up out of the gorge with amazing agility—ordinary-looking Wonderlanders except for the colorless crystal embedded in their eye sockets.
    â€œHow’s it possible?”
    The Glass Eyes, a breed of fighters manufactured by the maliciously inventive Redd Heart, were supposed to have been destroyed. Their return could mean only one thing: Redd had survived the Heart Crystal and was back in Wonderland.
    â€œI fought her armies once and survived. I’ll do it again,” the Four Card vowed.
    He emptied his AD52 at the Glass Eyes. Thwip thwip thwip, thwip thwip thwip thwip . Razor-cards shot out into the fireworks of battle, slicing through the enemy, dealing death. He dropped behind a bulwark to reload, was slamming home his last projectile deck into the AD52’s ammo bay, about to take aim, his finger on the trigger, when—
    The Glass Eyes swarmed him.

C HAPTER 5
    H EART PALACE’S inaugural gala had drawn to a close and the verdict was unanimous: The event had been a success, a sparkling gemstone in the crown of a queen still new to the complexities of party planning. Alyss herself, however, was not pleased, too prickled by her meeting with King Arch to have enjoyed the festivities as thoroughly as her guests.
    Why did he have to mention my father?
    Indeed, she had never heard her father mention him . But then, why would Nolan have