The Dragons of Winter (22 page)

Blake had to suppress a shudder at the memory of Dee’s response to that fiasco—which was that it wasn’t a total loss, because they’d managed to destroy all the Dragons in the process.

All but one, as far as they knew. And a second, about which the Cabal knew nothing.

But the main reason that Dee had become more secretive, even to the point of abandoning their cover of the ICS, which allowed them to operate in semi-secrecy, was that his true goals were finally coming to the fore.

It had never been about the misguided goals of the Caretakers, or the secrets of the Archipelago, or even about the injustices done to the man who became the Winter King. For Dr. Dee, it was about knowledge, and power—both of which had been promised to him by the Echthroi. They had offered to reveal the secrets of creation to Dee, and in doing so, make him Shadows’ agent of hell on Earth.

If Dee’s plans succeeded, the entire world would be open to the Echthroi. That could not be allowed to happen. And that reason alone had been motivation enough for Blake to continue to help Dee and the Cabal, even to the point of doing things that were reprehensible to him.

Someone once said that it was sometimes necessary to commit small acts of evil, if those acts were in the service of a greater good. Blake knew that if he didn’t believe that, on some deep level,
then he wouldn’t be able to bear sitting at this table, among these men, putting these plans into motion.

But he also knew, with some regret, that this was a reason he was not comfortable being among the Caretakers. Perfect knights, who saw the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, were very difficult to argue with. But he understood that living that way to begin with made them far stronger—and far better—men than he.

Dr. Dee, as usual, took his seat at the head of the table. The three Blakes sat to his left, and the inventor Nikola Tesla sat on his right. Next to Tesla were Aleister Crowley, the occultist, and the original discoverer of the House, William Hope Hodgson.

To the Blakes’ right were the writers James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, and, three seats farther down, G. K. Chesterton, who preferred a bit more personal space than the others—perhaps because other than Blake, Chesterton was the only member of the Cabal who had retained his own shadow.

At the far end of the table sat a very fidgety and disgruntled Daniel Defoe. He had been recruited into the ICS by Burton when he was still a Caretaker—but by then, he had already performed several services for Dee. And during the battle with the Winter King’s shadow, when he overstepped his mandate and tried to seize power for himself, he was captured and imprisoned by the Caretakers.

He’d been left there, mortared up behind a wall, for several years—and as far as Dee was concerned, could have been written off completely as a minor casualty in the Caretakers’ War, except for one salient fact.

The boy whom Defoe had hidden in the future was not trackable
by any means known to the Cabal—which meant that only Daniel Defoe knew when and where he could be retrieved. And so Defoe himself had to be retrieved from the Caretakers’ fortress. Fortunately, Dee also had other reasons for ordering the burglary, so the effort, which nearly failed, was worthwhile.

“It took you long enough,” Defoe complained. “Don’t think I don’t know that the only reason you broke me out of that dratted wall was because you need me to find the boy.”

“No,” Dee said coolly. “We broke you out because it was convenient. And it will be just as convenient to put you back, if you don’t hold your tongue.”

Defoe glowered, but wisely said nothing.

“What do you have to report?” Dee asked the Cabal.

“Aristophanes is not looking for the boy at all,” said Crowley. “They approached him, just as we expected, but to ask him to find something else. Not the child.”

Dee’s eyes narrowed. “What, then?”

“The Ruby Opera Glasses.”

A murmur of consternation rippled through the group. “If they sent him looking for the glasses,” exclaimed Tesla, “it won’t be long before he offers to seek out the rest of the armor for them, if he hasn’t already.”

“They do have someone looking for the boy,” Chesterton said. “Or several someones, in point of fact. They call themselves the Mystorians.”

A chill ran up Blake’s spine, and it was a testament to his self-control that neither he nor his other tulpas reacted visibly to Chesterton’s remark. Apparently, Verne’s secrets were not as well kept as they believed.

“They have nothing,” said Tesla. “Some fiction writers, a few students, a few women, Newton, and Lord Kelvin. Their technology will be not only out of date compared to ours, but functionally useless. We have nothing to fear from the Mystorians.”

Dee turned to Blake. “Monitoring Verne’s activities has been under your purview, William. Do you know anything about these ‘Mystorians’?”

Blake wasn’t sure whether he was being tested. “I do,” he said finally, “but since none of them are actually Caretakers, I didn’t see any import in addressing the matter. They are no threat to our plans. The Caretakers can enlist whomever they wish. But our devices, and our knowledge of how to use them, are greater. I think these Mystorians are merely a distraction.”

“Indeed,” said Dee. “Interesting that the Caretakers have chosen to recruit outside of their fortress in the Nameless Isles. And more interesting,” he added, pointedly glancing at Blake, “that these allies, these Mystorians, are only now coming to our attention.”

“We got all that we needed, even without the maps,” said Tesla. “We won’t need to go back.”

“I beg to differ!” Defoe exclaimed, pounding his fist on the table for emphasis. “If they’re watching too closely, I can’t get back into Tamerlane House!”

“And this is a problem, how?” asked Tesla.

“You know good and well how it’s a problem,” Defoe shot back. “I’m limited to seven days without going back across that threshold.”

“This would not be a problem if you hadn’t gotten yourself
crushed, Daniel,” said Lovecraft. “That this problem has fallen at your feet is entirely your own fault.”

“Actually, you owe the Caretakers a debt of gratitude,” said Crowley. “If they hadn’t created a portrait of you, you’d simply be dead now.”

“Yes, well,” Defoe said. “You brought me back for a reason, I assume, Nikola?”

“It’s time to bring the boy back into our Prime Time, Daniel,” said Tesla. “We cannot wait any longer. And,” he added, swallowing hard, as if reluctant to make the admission, “so far, none of us have been able to, ah, locate the precise time in which you have him hidden.”

Defoe smiled and slouched in his seat. “I’m cleverer than you give me credit for,” he said, preening in his rare moment of prominence. “I didn’t just hide him in the
future
—I hid him in an
imaginary
one.”

“A might-have-been?” Dee said slowly. So that was the reason that despite their collective skills, they had been unable to locate the boy on their own. The idiot Defoe had basically hidden him inside a living
fiction
. If the boy had Defoe’s original watch, they could still possibly track him—without Daniel Defoe—but someone would have to physically retrieve him. Even with a means to do so, which the Cabal had, it was still almost impossibly dangerous and risky to even attempt.

“If you know his physical origin point,” Dee said to Tesla, “could you track the boy?”

Tesla nodded. “The number of zero points Daniel had access to are limited. If we know where the boy was left, we should be able to ascertain when.”

“The boy,” Dee said, eyes glittering, “is in London.”

Defoe sat up with a start. “Uh, how did you . . . ?”

“There’s only one means of travel back from a might-have-been to the real world,” said Dee, “and it’s in the subbasement of the British Museum. You left him in London because you wanted easy access to your means for returning here.”

Defoe swallowed hard. “There’s no need to search for him,” he said, a frantic tone creeping into his voice. “I can retrieve him for you, no problem.”

Blake and the others watched Dee’s face as he debated what to do. Finally, and to Defoe’s relief, Dee nodded at him.

“Do it, then,” he said. “Bring him back. Don’t show your face here again until you do.”

Defoe removed the ebony watch he’d been given as a replacement for his own, twirled the dials, and disappeared.

Dee looked at his own watch. “This meeting is adjourned. You all have things to be doing. Attend to them.”

Without further discussion, each of the Cabal removed their own watches and disappeared. The three Blakes went last, leaving only Tesla and the black bird in the meeting hall with Dee.

“William didn’t react to the mention of the Mystorians,” Tesla said. “Impressive.”

“Maybe,” said Dee, “but we cannot let him interfere with our endgame—not until he’s finished with the new tulpas.”

“Do you really think he’ll finish them?” Tesla asked. “At some point, he’ll realize that one of them is—”

“We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Dee said, rising from his seat, “but for now, we must take the next step. We must close their ears and cover their eyes.”

“Then the word is given?” said Tesla.

“It is,” said Dee. “Destroy these Mystorians. And then, when that has been accomplished . . .

“. . . we’re going to cut off the head of the Dragon and kill Jules Verne.”

P
ART
F
OUR

The Winter World

“Call me Jack.”

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTEEN
The Dragons of Winter

The castle that stood
on the shores of Lake Baikal was as gray as the surrounding mountains, and nearly as timeless. It had been built for functionality, not vanity, and when, at long last, Mordred had been summoned to compete in the Gatherum, he had closed the castle doors with no intention of ever opening them again.

He reflected bitterly on the memory, and the second betrayal at the tourney, and the twenty lost years that only resulted in another, final betrayal, and worse, the loss of his right hand.

This, he thought coldly, was the result of believing too strongly in the nobility of men—and in the Dragon who had promised him a reward that was now as insubstantial as a dream.

The Dragon had been waiting for him when he arrived, and stoked a fire in the long-cold hearth. It had burned down to glowing embers before Samaranth chose to speak.

“Your brother has been exiled,” the Dragon said.

“Exiled?” Mordred answered, a glimmer of interest rising in his eyes. “To where?”

“Solitude.”

Mordred’s face fell. “You mean in the Archipelago. You’ve let
him
return . . . . But not . . .” The words trailed off as the expression on his
face hardened once more into an inscrutable mask. “And his son, the Arthur?”

“He is king,” Samaranth answered, “and has claimed the Silver Throne.”

Mordred’s shoulders slumped forward, and a bit of the craziness that had possessed him when he lost his hand seemed to have returned.

“So,” he said, giggling, “my brother betrayed me, more than once, and his punishment is to return home, where we have been trying to go for centuries. And his son, who betrayed me utterly, and took this,” he said, waving the still-bloody stump of an arm, “is punished by being made the High King and steward of two worlds.

“And I,” he continued, his bitterness adding sanity as he spoke, “have done nothing but honor my obligations, love my family, accept unjust exile, and spend my life being schooled to become the last Dragon, and for what?”