The Shadow Dragons (13 page)

There was more table thumping—but disturbingly, several pairs of eyes flickered toward Jamie as Chaucer spoke. Rather than ignore the glances, Jamie stood.

“I may be unique among this gathering as the only one among us who was once a full Caretaker, and then resigned,” he said amidst an undercurrent of grumbles. “But I think my presence here is proof of where my loyalties lie. I have never, nor will I ever, betray our secrets to Burton or any other enemy of the Archipelago.”

“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” asked John. “Burton feels exactly the same way. He believes he’s more loyal to the Archipelago by trying to bring all its secrets to light. He truly doesn’t understand what kind of havoc will be wrought.”

“The Imperial Cartological Society,” Dickens said darkly. “They have been a thorn in our side for too long, and Burton has seduced many of our former allies.”

“Have
you
been approached, Barrie?” Kipling asked. “Has Burton tried to recruit you?”

Jamie blushed and fumbled with his buttons. “I must admit that he has tried, but not in years,” he replied with a glance at the companions. “He believed I might be eager to join him because of my choice to abdicate my responsibilities, but after I explained that my reasons were not the same as his, and that I intended to keep my oaths, he left me alone. And then I died, and it became a moot point.”

“Good man,” said Kipling. “Would that others of our order had been as strong.”

“We should be looking to Jakob,” Hawthorne said brusquely. “After all, his own brother was a washout as a Caretaker, and we know he’s already sworn allegiance to Burton.”

“That’s a lie!” Jakob Grimm shouted, standing and placing his fists on the table. “He would not betray us, and never would he betray me!”

“What about Alexandre Dumas
fils?”
asked Defoe. “He made quite a show of leaving us, and was quite loud about his intentions to betray us all.”

“Forgive me,” Alexandre Dumas
père
said, “and my son. I hope that he would not have sold us out to Burton and his ilk, but I cannot say with certainty.”

“And would you betray us, for his sake, if he had?” Kipling asked.

“Never.”

“I’d be willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt, Jakob, Alexandre,” said Dickens. “I’ve been through similar situations myself, and I know how your loyalties have been tested.”

“Ah, yes,” said Charles. “Maggot.”

“Pardon?” said Dickens.

“He means Magwich,” Jack corrected. “We’ve had more than our share of difficulties with him.”

“I’m very sorry about that,” Dickens said. “It was an awful judgment call on my part to bring him in the first place. He was a very strange sort of fellow, but he had a good core—or so I believed.”

“It’s well and truly rotten now,” said Charles. “He betrayed us once to the Winter King, and I have no doubt that he would do so again.”

“I think he should be flogged,” said Shakespeare. “Posthaste. That will teach him the error of his ways, I think.” He looked around at the others, beaming, as if he’d just solved the world’s problems with a single remark—then deflated a little when he realized that no one was paying attention.

“Magwich has already been made the Green Knight,” Bert said mildly. “He’s paying his dues.”

“That’s just it,” said Charles. “He isn’t. The Green Knight isn’t on Avalon.”

There was a chorus of disbelieving remarks and more than a little grumbling at that.

“Charles,” Chaucer said skeptically, “the Green Knight cannot leave Avalon. It’s a binding of the Old Magic. Only the Dragons themselves might break such a binding, and they would hardly be inclined, since it was they who bound him in the first place.”

“What if he’s just faded into dust?” suggested Jack. “That’s what happened to his predecessor, isn’t it?”

“Charles Darnay had fulfilled his calling and was therefore released,” said Dickens. “Do you really think Magwich has fulfilled
anything?”

“You make a good point,” said Jack. “He did prove helpful once, uh, in his own fashion. I don’t know that I’d say he could be trusted, but I’d begun to think better of him.”

“Extending trust to those who have already proven themselves untrustworthy,” Twain remarked, “is a bit like cutting off the end of a rope and sewing it to the other end to make it longer.”

John explained briefly the circumstances that had resulted in their arrival in the Nameless Isles, omitting only their suspicion of Kipling as an ally of their still unknown adversary.

“So Quixote is here?” Spenser said with a joyous expression. “My old partner! I would love to see him!”

“I’ll pass, if it’s all the same to you,” Tycho Brahe muttered. “I’m sure he feels the same.”

“It’s all right,” said Cervantes. “The past is the past—I’m sure he’s forgiven you by now.”

“I would hope so,” said Brahe. “If you can’t get some leniency after you’ve died, when can you get it?”

“Hank told us what had happened,” said Twain, “and Ransom filled in the holes after. So we knew that seven years hence, you’d try to make your way here.”

“That was the plan,” said John. “It was a risk to use Ransom’s Trump, but we felt that once we had removed Rose from danger and had moved past Verne’s zero points, we’d have a better chance of preventing the war.”

“Prevent the war?” a quiet voice said. It was Franz Schubert— and it was the first words he had spoken all evening. “Prevent? I’m sure I misunderstand you, young man. You cannot prevent something that has already begun.”

“Already begun!” John exclaimed. “You can’t be serious!”

One look at Bert’s face confirmed that it was true. “The war in the Summer Country has been raging for four years now,” the old traveler said, “exactly the same length of time we’ve been preparing for it here, although they may have fared the worse for it, since our war in the Archipelago has not yet begun.”

“But I thought taking Rose away from danger was supposed to stop the war from happening!”

“Stop? No,” said Chaucer. “Protecting the Grail Child was of the highest priority, and we are all grateful for your wisdom and diligence in doing so. But her survival was never meant to stop the wars—our adversary was going to see those begun regardless of the safeguards we put into place.

“Her survival was important, because it was the only way to ensure that the wars would
end.”

Chaucer signaled to one of the ravens, who flew across the room and removed a book from a nearby bookcase. The raven laid it on the table and snuck a grape from one of the platters before it flew off again.

The book was roughly the size and shape of one of the Histories. The covers and binding were steel gray leather, and the pages themselves were so white as to appear cold. For leather and parchment to be so bereft of color, the book had to be ancient. More ancient than anything else the Caretakers had ever seen.

In contrast to the
Geographica,
which bore the Greek letter
alpha
on the cover, this book was embossed with an
omega
—the same letter Bert used as his personal emblem.

“This is the only book more dangerous than the
Imaginarium Geographica,”
he said, his voice heavy with responsibility. “It is filled with notations, and formulas, and stories, and even maps. But it is also as close a record as a book can be to a History of the Dragons. It has notes on the first time any dragon has ever appeared in any land, and it lists every one of their True Names. But even more importantly, it contains the prophecies that may yet save the Archipelago.

“In the past, it has been called the
Telos Biblos,
according to the Greek. We simply refer to it as the Last Book. It is one of a set of books—we don’t know how many. It was obtained only through great sacrifice, and it is the reason why we have come together today.”

“It was taken from the library of the first Caretaker to go rogue,” Chaucer continued. “John Dee. Very little is known about him save for rumors and whisperings, but we know that he recorded the True Names of the dragons—and he also planted the seeds for the Imperial Cartological Society, which blossomed under Burton.

“Because of this book, we know many of our enemies who were once friends. Milton. Kit Marlowe. De Bergerac. William Blake. Coleridge. Lord Byron.”

“I almost took him out of the game,” Percy Shelley commented, “if Mary hadn’t thrown the portrait into the tide pool to put out the flames.”

“What separates us from them is our belief in order,” Bert said sternly. “George Gordon, Lord Byron, was a Caretaker, and his portrait still hangs here, albeit turned over. He’ll never participate in a Gatherum, but he’ll not aid the enemy, either.”

“I knew Kit Marlowe,” put in Shakespeare. “He was quite a fair writer—for a traitor, that is.”

“The Last Book has remained here in the care of the Prime Caretaker for many years,” said Chaucer, “and through it we have learned many things about time, and space, and our own Histories. We also know that our adversaries have gleaned enough knowledge from this, and other books like it, to develop their own methods of moving in time and space, and that makes them more dangerous than ever.

“Because of this book, we know that there is going to be one last great conflict with the Winter King, but not what guise he will take. It may be his Shadow in disguise again, or Mordred himself risen from the endless deep, or both. We know that the three current Caretakers are the key to defeating him. And we know that he has acquired a terrible weapon with which to defeat us.”

“How does Rose figure into this?” asked John. “Why was she so important that she was to be killed? And how does her being here now help our cause?”

“Verne can answer you more fully as to the destiny we suspect is ahead of the girl,” Edmund Spenser said, leaning over the table to better be heard. “But what little we do know also comes from the Prophecy.”

Chaucer turned to a page near the front of the Last Book and scanned it until he found the passage he wanted. “It said that in the final conflict with the King of Shadows, three scholars from the Summer Country will stand united against him. An ageless knight will deliver to them the means to defeat the Shadow King, which will be wielded by a daughter of the Houses of Troy and Aramathea. Rose Dyson, the Grail Child, is the only person in all of history who has that specific heritage. And we believe that she is the key to his final defeat.”

“Dear God,” said Charles.

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it?” asked Twain.

“That’s why we’ve taken the steps we have,” said Bert. “We needed to make sure you were here, now, under the right circumstances, to see that Prophecy fulfilled.”

“I think I need a drink,” said Jack. “Or five.”

“We should adjourn for brandy and a bit of air,” suggested Irving. “We’ve been at this so long it might be a good time for a break.” He looked at his watch and frowned. “Drat. I think my watch is running a bit fast. What time do you have, Rudyard?”

Kipling blanched. “I’m not sure,” he said, craning his neck. “Do we have a clock in here, Bert?”

“Just check your watch,” said Irving. “You
do
have a watch, don’t you?”

Kipling went pale. “I, uh, I seem to have left it elsewhere,” he said with a weak laugh. “Sorry—no watch.”

The room went still.

“A Caretaker is never without his watch,” Spenser said coolly. “Where is yours, Kipling?”

In response, Kipling turned out his pockets like a circus clown and grinned sheepishly—then shoved Irving off his chair and leaped onto the table.

“Hell’s bells!” Twain exclaimed. “What the devil are you doing, Rudyard?”

Kipling ignored the question and the shouts of the others and instead threw over the candles on the table. Then, amidst the confusion, he bolted from the room.

“Someone stop him!” Irving shouted. “He’s heading for the gallery!”

Jack was closest to the doors, and the most able-bodied of the Caretakers—or so he thought. He had exited the room and was racing after Kipling when Jakob Grimm passed him by.

Kipling wheeled about and pushed open the doors to the gallery anteroom, then threw them shut just as Jakob caught up to him. Jakob was struggling with the doors as Jack and then the rest of the Caretakers ran down the corridor.

“He’s locked it!” Jakob exclaimed. “I can’t get it open!”

“Stand back,” said Hawthorne. He took the measure of the doors, and then smashed into them with a powerful, well-placed kick. They didn’t budge.

“You thought one kick would do it?” asked Jack.

“Well, I
am
Nathaniel Hawthorne,” he answered, gesturing to the others. “All together now!”

Hawthorne, Jack, Irving, and Jakob threw themselves against the doors, which cracked open in a shower of splintered wood.

“There!” said Jack. “He’s going back inside the painting!”

At first glance, that seemed to be precisely what Kipling was doing—until the Caretakers rushed forward to capture their colleague and suddenly realized that the portrait of Kipling . . .

. . . was
shrinking.

“What kind of enchantment is this?” Irving declared.

Whatever was happening, it was too late to catch the Caretakergone-wild. The image was the size of a playing card now, and there was no way to reverse or halt the process. In seconds the image would disappear completely.

“Be seeing you,” Kipling said with a wink. And then he was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Master

“
It wasn’t a portrait
at all!” John exclaimed. “It was a Trump, just like the ones Hank and Ransom use!”

“You’re right, young man,” Twain said, examining the painting. “A rather ingenious ploy—creating a Trump that opens on top of a painting of the same image.”

“He must have used a similar one to come into the gallery,” said Jamie, “and merely pretended he was being summoned from his portrait as the rest of us were.”

Bert moved over to the painting and tapped on it lightly with his fingertips. “No,” he said. “This was an actual portrait done with Pygmalion resins, as all the rest have been. He only needed a means of escape that we couldn’t easily duplicate.”

“Can we follow him?” asked John. “Through the painting?”

Bert grimaced and shook his head. “They’re meant to be one way, and they don’t actually go to a place,” he said resignedly. “When the Caretakers go back, they aren’t somewhere—they’re just in a painting.”

“He’s going to report to his masters,” Jakob cried. “We’ve got to do something! He must be stopped!”

“I left the doors to the gallery unlocked,” said Bert. “How was it that Kipling locked them so quickly, since I have the only three keys, and one of
those
is imaginary?”

“The place you’re seeking . . . isn’t there.”

“I don’t know,” Jakob said. “He closed them behind him, and as I caught up, I found I couldn’t get them open. But believe me, I was pushing as hard as I could.”

Defoe stood behind Jakob and closed his hands into fists. “Perhaps we have another turncoat in our midst,” he said with obvious menace in his tone. “Where’s
your
watch, Jakob?”

With a few fumbles born of fear and haste, Jakob rummaged around in his pockets and finally, with a great sigh of relief, produced his watch.

“You’re good, then,” Defoe said. “I’m sorry I doubted you, Brother Grimm.”

“Thanks,” said Jakob, still visibly shaken. “I’m sorry about the doors. Wilhelm would have been smart enough to do it the right way.”

“So Kipling knows all our secrets,” said Defoe.

“Not all of them,” Bert said in admonishment. “He was only a part of the whole. We have the books, and we have the three Caretakers of Prophecy. They will see this through, regardless of Kipling’s betrayal.”

“This may be the worst possible time to bring this up,” said John, “but we had already suspected Kipling was a traitor. We just didn’t tell anyone.”

Quickly he related the rest of the details about their flight from the Inn of the Flying Dragon, and the fact that Jack believed Kipling had been leading their pursuers.

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?” asked Hawthorne. “We might have found him out all the sooner.”

“He didn’t tell,” Twain said, lighting up a fresh cigar, “because he is not an ass, and neither are his two compatriots. They came here today and have listened to a great many impossible things without blinking. But they also saw us turning on our own like a pack of hungry dogs.

“We questioned Charles Dickens’ loyalty because two of those he trained turned out to be traitors themselves—never mind the fact that he also trained our Prime Caretaker. We questioned Alexandre Dumas, not for what he chose to do, but because of the choices of his son. And we were one minute away from lynching poor Jakob because we know his brother to be allied with Burton, and he couldn’t produce his watch quickly enough.

“No,” Twain said with finality. “Young John did exactly the right thing. He watched, and waited, and when it was time to act, he used his best judgment. And that’s all anyone can ask of a Caretaker.”

“Thank you, Mr. Clemens,” said John.

“You don’t have to thank me, boy,” said Twain as he stepped out into the corridor, puffing on his cigar. “I’m deceased, remember? At this point, I’m just here for the entertainment.”

“I am sorry,” Jakob said again. “Not just for myself, but for . . . for my brother.”

“He made his own choices,” said Bert, “but of the two of you, we got the better man. Come,” he called to the others, gesturing broadly. “Let us retire to the conservatory for drinks and more discussion. Our schedule has just taken an unexpected leap forward.”

The conservatory was in the very center of Tamerlane House, and the ceiling inside the room rose to an impossible height. It had to be ten stories high and was capped by a glittering, translucent dome.

Windows rose along two sides, above a second-floor landing and stairway, with massive tapestries hanging in between. Below were a walk-in fireplace and several shelves lined with busts and sculptures amid a number of chairs, which surrounded a long table much like the one in the dining room. As before, John noted that none of the Caretakers took the seat at the head of the table.

“There’s nothing outside that’s this tall,” John said wonderingly as he looked up at the dome. “Have we gone down somehow, below ground?”

“Oh, no,” said Bert. “The earth here is impossibly hard. Just putting in a basement was a trial and a tribulation. This room was built specifically to house the tapestries”—he pointed at the explosions of color that were draped on the walls—“but Marco Polo had underestimated their size when we acquired them from him, and we had a dilemma. So we installed a tesseract, and that’s made all the difference. Isn’t the dome lovely?”

“Nice, very nice,” said Charles. “Egyptian?”

“Hittite,” said Bert. “But you were close.”

Once drinks were poured and all of them had again settled down from the commotion Kipling had caused, Bert called for silence, and Chaucer stood to address them.

“It has been many years since one of our number has turned,” he began, “but we must press forward. Kipling’s betrayal changes nothing.”

“Perhaps he should be flogged,” put in Shakespeare.

“Changes nothing?” Hawthorne exclaimed. “He knows about the girl!”

“They already knew about Rose,” Twain corrected. “What they didn’t know was that there were other players in the game. They didn’t know that John, Jack, and Charles are to play a key role in the final defeat of the Winter King. And they didn’t know that Quixote would deliver the weapon of his downfall. So in my opinion, our mission has not changed—we must protect the girl. She is the endgame.”

“They may not have known all those things,” said Charles, “but we’ve given them something else: We’ve confirmed that we know who our adversary is. The Prophecy itself has confirmed it. In some form, we will be facing the Winter King.”

“And now that they know we know,” said Jack, “he will be making his move.”

“I concur,” said John. “The war in the Archipelago begins right now.”

“I think, given this turn of events,” Chaucer said, “we should bring in the Grail Child and her guardian. We need to have all the players on the board, and we all need to know what everyone else knows.”

Bert signaled to the ravens, and they flew out of the conservatory, returning a few minutes later with Rose, Quixote, and Archimedes in tow.

It took most of an hour to make introductions. Rose was unusually timid, but polite. Quixote was typically formal in his greetings, except when he got to Edmund Spenser. The two men gripped each other’s forearms and laughed. It was a reunion of true friends and colleagues.

“It has been far too long, you old Riddle Master,” said Spenser. “How are you?”

“Riddle Master?” answered Quixote. “Pish-tosh. Without your detective skills, the Sphinx would have defeated me.”

“Hello, Quixote,” said Cervantes.

“Miguel!” Quixote said, shaking his hand. “How goes the new book?”

“I’m almost finished,” Cervantes told him.

“Which new book is that?” John whispered to Bert.

“It doesn’t really matter,” Bert replied. “He always says he’s almost finished.”

When Quixote came to Tycho Brahe, the best they could manage were polite, if curt, nods at each other. Room was made for Quixote to sit next to Spenser, and Rose went to sit between Jack and Charles. A raven flew in and placed a glass of milk in front of her.

“Thank you, Warren,” she said.

“Welcome, miss,” said the bird, bowing its head.

They began by having Quixote relate the tale of the cave on Avalon, and what the Lady Guinevere had said to him regarding their enemies.

“She said a great weapon was being brought to bear against the forces of the light,” he said somberly, “and that we would need a weapon of equal power to combat it. I asked where such a weapon could be found, and in reply she said to seek the Lady, that she may return what was given.”

“The Lady of the Lake,” said Malory. “She cannot be summoned on a whim.”

“Ah,” said Quixote, “that point of fact is exactly the reason I believe I am to play a role in this matter, and why the Frenchman believed I was the knight of the Prophecy.

“Many years ago I was called upon to perform a service for the Caretakers.”

“And a job well done,” said Cervantes. “You traveled to the Summer Country and to the edges of the Archipelago itself, and you brought back the
Geographica”

“Indeed,” said Quixote, “but what none of you knew, save for my partner Edmund, was that in the course of events I performed a service for the Lady of the Lake. And to this day, she owes me a boon.”

“This wasn’t in any of the Histories,” Irving said with an irritated glance at Spenser. “Where was it chronicled, Caretaker?”

“It’s in one of the appendices,” replied Spenser, “under the title ‘The Thin Man and the Queen of Stars.’”

“Ah,” said Irving. “Your pardon, Edmund.”

“If you are able to summon the lady,” said Chaucer, “what weapon do you believe she will give you?”

“‘Return what was given,’” Jack said suddenly. “That can only mean one weapon. We saw it given to her ourselves, John.”

“That’s right,” said John. “It’s in one of the, ah, less accurate chronicles written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. After the first battle with Mordred in Camelot, when we brought Rose to restore Arthur’s life, he called on the Lady of the Lake—his mother—and gave the shattered pieces of his sword to her.

“The weapon we need to defeat the Winter King is the weapon he wanted for himself,” John finished, now visibly excited. “It’s the sword of Aeneas! It’s Caliburn!”

“I concur,” Chaucer said, after all the murmuring and table thumping that had followed John’s statement had died down. “That
must
be the weapon mentioned in the Prophecy. But that still leaves us with many unknown pieces on the board. Even if Quixote should succeed in obtaining Caliburn from the Lady, it must still be repaired—and there is no one living who knows how it was forged.”

“The Cartographer,” said John. “It may be worth consulting him.”

“A possibility,” allowed Chaucer. “A better one may be the Ancient of Days—the shipbuilder Ordo Maas. He has knowledge of techniques long lost to the rest of the two worlds. He might be willing to help.”

“And then what?” said John. “We wait for our adversary to make his plays and then respond in kind? You said the war had not yet begun in the Archipelago, while it’s been raging along in the Summer Country. What if he’s there already? What if he’s planning on turning it into the Winterland first—and then returning here?”

“He hasn’t been in the real world,” Bert said. “We’d have known, or seen some aspect of his movements there. But we’ve seen nothing.”

“He has to be operating somewhere,” said Jack. “Burton and the others of the Imperial Cartological Society are operating in both worlds—why can’t he?”

“You’ve hit the problem on the head, boy,” said Twain. “They must have a base of operations, but we just haven’t been able to locate it. And believe me,” he added, tapping out his cigar, “we’ve looked. In
both
worlds.”

“It isn’t there,” a soft, slight voice said from somewhere above them. “The place you’re seeking—it isn’t there.”

As one, the assembly looked up to the figure standing at the railing above and gasped in unison.

It was the master of the house.

He stood to the right side of the landing, which was still steeped in shadows. His smallish frame seemed to implode upon itself as he stood there, moving his hands nervously, trying to decide what to do with them. His eyes glittered from under a deep brow and his hair was strewn about as if he’d just risen from a long nap.