The Dragons of Winter (4 page)

He was hooded, but his face was clearly visible . . .

As he spoke, they rounded a corner to the Cartographer’s Lair that had been set up by young Edmund McGee. There were maps and diagrams scattered around the main room, which was decorated in accordance with Edmund’s late-eighteenth-century upbringing, but the space was dominated by a large construct that stood in the center of the room. The Cartographer was standing amid the tangle of rods and wires, making some sort of adjustment to the mechanism, when he looked up and saw his visitors.

“It’s a tesseract,” he said, answering the question that was on all their minds. “Diagramming the different trips through time and space that Rose and I have been experimenting with on paper was becoming too tedious, so I thought I’d try to build a working model of it all instead.”

“Impressive,” said Jack. “How’s it coming?”

“It’s been a struggle, I’ll admit,” Edmund said as he stepped gingerly out of the tesseract, “but a few of the new apprentice Caretakers—especially the young woman, Madeleine—have been very helpful.”

He shook hands with each of the Caretakers in turn. “I take it you’ve come because of the burglary?”

“Burglary?” John said, surprised. “I hadn’t been told anything about a burglary. We were summoned to a council of war.”

“It’s all part and parcel of the same thing,” Edmund said as they stepped out of his lair and back into the corridor. “A number of things at Tamerlane House have come up missing—and my
great-grandfather’s maps were almost among them.”

He pointed at the door as he closed it behind them. The handles were tied together with string, and the locks had been pried out entirely.

“Nothing else was touched,” he explained, “but the maps were scattered around on the floor. If Archimedes hadn’t been rooting around in the rafters where he could hear the intruder, they might have gotten them, too.”

“Hmm,” said John. “That’s quite unthinkable, to invade Tamerlane House! Those maps must be more important to someone than we realized.”

“They are important to me,” said Edmund, “and they have some historical significance, I suppose, since they were drawn by my great-grandfather. But I don’t know what use they’d be to anyone else—not so as to make them worth stealing.”

“I agree,” said John. “If anything, I would have thought it was all your own more recent maps that were most valuable.”

“That’s true,” Twain said. “They probably are more valuable—but only to those who can use them. And as far as we know, there are only two groups on Earth who have the ability to travel in time.”

John sighed heavily and nodded in agreement. When the Keep of Time fell completely, the connection between Chronos time, which was real, day-to-day clock time, and Kairos time, which was pure, almost imaginary time, was completely severed. This had several effects on both the Archipelago and the Caretakers. In the Archipelago, time fell out of sync with the Summer Country, and it began to speed up until thousands of years had passed, destroying anything familiar that was left there. It was only because of Aven’s sacrifice, and her willingness
to stay behind, that the Caretakers learned that somehow, the great Dragon Samaranth had taken the rest of the Archipelago someplace beyond the world itself. Someplace where it could be safe, until the Caretakers figured out how to restore the proper flow of time.

Unfortunately, the fall of the keep had also handicapped the Caretakers, rendering their Anabasis Machines, their time-traveling watches, almost useless. The doors of the keep had created focal points, called zero points by the Caretakers, that allowed them to align and utilize their watches. But when the keep was lost, so were all the reference points—and one of their own, a Messenger named Hank Morgan, paid the ultimate price to learn the truth.

It was only with the discovery of the McGee family, and particularly young Edmund, that the Caretakers found that time could be mapped; new zero points could be created. And with the help of Rose, Edmund could reestablish the Caretakers’ ability to traverse time at will. But according to Edmund, none of those maps, which he kept in a book he called the
Imaginarium Chronographica
, had been touched. Only the maps made by his great-grandfather, Elijah McGee, had been disturbed, and those only depicted a handful of places in the Summer Country.

“I guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Twain said as he threw open the doors to the great hall where the war council was to take place. “It’s time.”

In the year since the fall of the Archipelago, the last vestiges of World War II had drawn to a close—but the War of the Caretakers had barely begun. It was a passive war, fought in small
skirmishes on the outskirts of history, but that fact made it no less a war, nor its effects any less potent.

It was a war of ideas, and the battlefields were the smoke-filled taverns, and libraries, and stages, where stories were whispered with an urgency that gave them the ring of truth. Stories that were believed more and more as time passed. And that belief was what allowed the darkness in the shadowed corners to creep closer and closer, crowding out the light.

For many years the Caretakers had believed their greatest enemy was the one called the Winter King, and more than once they fought and defeated aspects of him. But his rise to prominence had been fostered by a coalition of rogue Caretakers who formed the original Imperial Cartological Society, which had even darker goals than establishing the Winter King. Many members of the Society, including Richard Burton, Harry Houdini, and Arthur Conan Doyle, realized that a greater evil had permeated their group, and so they left, defecting back to the Caretakers. But that evil, which had formerly operated in secret, was now becoming bolder and bolder. And in the last year, the Caretakers were finally able to give it a name: Echthroi—the primordial Shadows. The original Darkness. And through the Lloigor, corrupted agents recruited by the Echthroi, they had taken over the Archipelago—and now threatened the Summer Country.

A war of stories was still a war—even if the only ones who knew it was being fought were a group of storytellers, gathered together in the house of Edgar Allan Poe.

The Caretakers took their customary seats around the great table. At the head sat Geoffrey Chaucer, who, as an Elder Caretaker,
often presided over their meetings. The other Elders, including Edmund Spenser and Leonardo da Vinci, took their seats to his left and right, with the younger Caretakers seated at the far end. The other guests of the house who were not Caretakers, such as Edmund McGee, Laura Glue, Rose, and the clockwork owl Archimedes, took up positions along the walls where they could watch and, when invited, participate.

Rudyard Kipling, away on assignment for Jules Verne, attended the council via trump, as he usually did. Being one of the only other Caretakers who was actually a tulpa gave him exceptional freedom to travel with none of the constraints the others had, and so he was their de facto eyes and ears in the world.

Burton leaned close to John. “What happened to Charles’s head?” he whispered. “He looks as if he’s been dipped in a boudoir.”

“He colored it burgundy,” John whispered back, “because Chaucer told him that was the exact color of Queen Victoria’s throne.”

Burton’s brow furrowed in puzzlement. “But it wasn’t . . . Ah,” he said, as the realization dawned and a smile spread across his face. “Geoff’s having a bit of fun, I think.”

“Probably,” said John.

Chaucer saw the two men conversing, and sussed out what subject they were discussing from their covert glances at Charles. He gave them a quick wink and a grin before shifting his expression to a solemn one and rapping on the table to bring the meeting to order.

“As the current Caretakers have joined us,” Chaucer said with a nod to John, Jack, and Fred, which thrilled the little badger
immeasurably, “we may now begin this council of war.” He paused and looked around the table—one seat at the opposite end was empty. “Where is the Prime Caretaker?”

“He’s, ah, indisposed at the moment,” Bert said suddenly. “I’m sure Jules will be here as quickly as he can manage.”

“Ah,” Chaucer said in understanding. “He’s with his goats again, isn’t he?”

“This is behavior unbecoming of a Caretaker,” da Vinci sniffed. “Especially for the Prime Caretaker.”

“Oh, be quiet,” Charles Dickens said, scowling at da Vinci. “This has been a difficult time for all of us, and each of us needs a way to blow off some steam before our boilers explode. Give the man his goats.”

“I agree,” said Spenser. “After all, Samuel there has his butterfly collection, and Dumas loves to cook.”

“True,” said Alexandre Dumas. “And Tycho over there steals things.”

“I do not!” said Tycho Brahe. “You can’t prove that I do!”

“Tycho, my young moron,” said Twain. “We live on an island. Everyone knows you stash the evidence of your crimes in the north boathouse. Nathaniel gathers it all up and replaces everything each Thursday.”

“Oh,” Brahe said, crestfallen. “Uh, thanks for that, Nathaniel.”

“My pleasure,” said Hawthorne. “It’s easier than cleaning up after the things George Gordon, our Lord Byron, does to de-stress.”

“I resent that,” said Byron.

John, Jack, and Charles had long become accustomed to the fact that a meeting of the Caretakers Emeriti never went
straight to the business at hand. There was always a breaking-in period when the various personalities traded brickbats with one another until things finally settled down enough to discuss the real issues.

“Who is the fellow in the west alcove?” Jack whispered to Charles as the other Caretakers continued to argue. “I don’t recognize him. Is he one of Burton’s people?”

Charles and John glanced up to where Jack was looking. There, some ways back in the alcove, but still near enough to comfortably observe the whole room, was a man in a sand-colored cloak. He was hooded, but his face was clearly visible, and he had taken note of the fact he was being observed.

“Well, don’t look right at him!” Jack said, blushing.

“It’s all right,” Charles said, grinning. “He isn’t one of Burton’s. He’s one of Verne’s. That’s one of the Messengers—Dr. Raven, I believe.”

“A Messenger,” Jack said, now glancing back up against his own will. “Interesting. I thought Jules usually had them traipsing about on errands.”

“Apparently he thought this was worth sitting in on,” said Charles, “although I must admit, it is a bit unusual.”

“Unusual?” John said. “I should say so. This is the Caretakers’ war council. Outside of Laura Glue, Edmund, Rose, Archimedes, and maybe Houdini and Conan Doyle, I wouldn’t have thought anyone else would be allowed.”

“You trusted Ransom and Morgan, correct?” Charles asked. “He’s no different. We just know him less well.”

“I don’t know . . . ,” Jack said doubtfully. “What do you think, John?”

Before the Caveo Principia could reply, Chaucer rapped on the table again to try to bring the meeting to order. But John had noticed that the whole time they were discussing the Messenger, Dr. Raven had not been watching the other Caretakers . . . .

He’d been watching
John
.

“There has been a burglary at Tamerlane House,” Chaucer said somberly. “Verily, we have been burgled. The Cabal has brought the war to our very doorstep.”

“The Cabal!” Jack said, shocked. “Are you certain?”

“As certain as we can be,” Dickens said in answer. “The Echthroi themselves have no need of common burglary, so it can only be their agents who have done this.”

“John Dee may have been a renegade Caretaker,” Burton said gruffly, “and the other members of the ICS might have disagreed with your beliefs about the Archipelago, but I hardly think that means they’re Lloigor.”

“They may not know whose cause they serve, Richard,” said Chaucer. “You yourself know that better than any else here.”

“Harrumph,” Burton growled in response. “Still, how would they have even found Tamerlane House?”

“The bridge,” Jack said simply. “Shakespeare’s Bridge, which connects the house to the Kilns. We’ve trusted that secrecy has been enough—but the location, and where it leads to, could be found out, I suppose.”