“I'd had a cold that day and wasn't as powerful as usual, otherwise Alyss would never have done so well," Redd said as, in the alcove, the final image dissolved. She blew at the cloud and it drifted out into the crypt. "Has a malicious ruler ever suffered more? I think not.”

“My ministers have informed me that Alyss is ridding her land of Glass Eyes."Overriding the imperative that Redd embedded in them is harder than she thought," added Ripkins.In other words, they're designed to kill and nothing more."The bodygaurds bowed that this was so.Perhaps the trick is not the override their imperative," Arch mused, "but the reprogram them to acknowledge a differnent master. Everyone in Woderland--even the otherwise rebellious Redd Heart--is, was, or always has been occupied with inventing things. But what good are things if there no clever schemes in which to use them? I putthings to unexpected and imaginative use."--Seeing Redd”

“Redd's face contorted with a sudden realization. "How could I have been so stupid?"The Cat was trying to decide if this was a rhetorical question when she roared, "It's a construct!"With a dismiissive swing of Redd's arm, Alyss and her army began to shimmer, the billon points of engery that formed them monentarily visible before exploding apart into nothing. Redd scoped the queendom with her imagination's eye. "Where are you, Alyss? Where is my dear little niece?”

“I am more powerful than that disgustingly well-intenioned niece of mine!"--Redd Heart”

“To live only to suffer—only to feel the injury of life repeated and enlarged—it seemed to her she was too valuable, too capable, for that. Then she wondered if it were vain and stupid to think so well of herself. When had it even been a guarantee to be valuable? Wasn't all history full of the destruction of precious things? Wasn't it much more probable that if one were fine one would suffer?”

“She loved him, more than she could ever find words for, but this love he felt for her was not quite the same. It wasn't so much stronger, as more demanding, more insistent. As though he feared he would lose that which he had finally won.”