The Dragons of Winter (30 page)

Rose went pale and touched the circlet that hung on the chain around her neck—the Dragon’s heart her father had given her. “My apprentice?” she said in disbelief. “But that would mean . . .”

“Yes,” Charles said. “When your father gave you his heart, he marked you as his apprentice. You were meant to become the next Dragon, Rose, if you chose to be—and if in turn you made Lord Winter your apprentice, then he could learn to become a Dragon too. And that’s what he wants.”

“I’m a little unclear on the power structure,” said Burton. “He’s practically the absolute ruler of the entire planet, and he has the soul of an Echthros. So what would he have to gain by becoming a Dragon?”

“The one ability that has only ever been invoked by one Dragon I know of,” said Bert. “The choice that is all-encompassing, and for which an impossible price must be paid. But still the only thing a Dragon can do that an Echthros or Lloigor cannot.”

“What?” asked Rose.

“Heaven,” Bert said grimly. “He wants to become a Dragon so that he can storm the gates of heaven itself.”

Before any of them could remark on Bert’s words, there was a tapping at the door, which opened. They all expected it to be the ever-polite Vanamonde, but it wasn’t Lord Winter’s chief Dragon—it was Arthur Pym.

“Oh, my stars and garters!” Bert exclaimed. “Am I ever so glad to see you, Arthur!”

“Quickly, quickly!” Arthur exclaimed, eyes darting back and forth in fear. “Distracted the guards, and there’s no one in the corridors! To escape, it must be now!”

Hastily the companions gathered up their belongings, including the broken sword Caliburn, and the books they’d come back to retrieve in the first place.

“That’s everything,” said Burton. “Let’s go!”

“What about Archie?” Edmund said. “We can’t just leave him here!”

“Lad,” Bert said, as gently as he could manage. “That isn’t the Archimedes we know. Not any longer.”

The young Cartographer backed away and shook his head. “I don’t believe that. They may have been able to change around some of his parts, but what made him our Archie is still in there somewhere. I know it.”

Bert looked at Rose, then at Charles, who shrugged.

“I’m here now because my soul, my aiua, my . . . whatever it is that makes me
me
, didn’t need my old body to go on,” he said. “So I found a new one. So who am I to tell Edmund that Archie’s soul isn’t still there, somewhere, buried under all those cogs and wheels and wires?”

“I can carry him,” Edmund said, ending the discussion. “We
won’t leave him behind. Maybe Shakespeare can fix him.”

“I’ve got him,” Burton said, putting the compliant clockwork into his own bag. “We aren’t leaving anyone behind. Not today.”

At the gates, Pym’s anxiousness eased visibly, and swiftly they made their way back through the canyon of ships and toward the entrance of the Last Redoubt.

“What is it?” Burton asked Charles, keeping his voice low so the others couldn’t overhear them. “You’re chewing on something, I can sense it.”

Charles nodded. “It’s Pym, the Messenger. Before, he wouldn’t go anywhere near the doors to Dys. Was absolutely terrified just at the prospect of it. But suddenly, to rescue us . . .”

Burton tipped his head in agreement. “I see where you’re going. Somehow he overcame his fear, made his way deep into a city he’d never been in before, snuck into the tower where Lord Winter lives, located us, and is now leading us to . . . safety?”

“Wherever this leads,” Charles whispered, “be prepared for it to go terribly wrong.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Burton said, glancing ahead at where Pym was animatedly chatting with Bert and Charles.

I hope so too,
Charles said silently to himself,
but I’m not.

As they moved along the paved pathways, Rose, Bert, and Edmund were scanning through the Little Whatsit and the
Imaginarium Geographica
for clues to the riddle of the Sphinx.

“What I don’t understand,” Rose said, “is why Lachesis called
it the last Dragon’s riddle. What would the Sphinx have to do with my father?”

“Technically you’re the last Dragon,” said Edmund, “in waiting, as it were.”

“You’re letting your own notions guide you, rather than the riddle itself,” said Bert. “Obviously, the Sphinx was a Dragon once. So she has to be who the Morgaine was referring to.”

“I think that’s what Lord Winter brought the Dragonships here to do,” said Edmund. “He was trying to find a Dragon to make him its apprentice.”

“And one was here, in the only place he couldn’t get to,” said Rose. “No wonder he wanted to get into the pyramid.”

“If the Dragon’s heart is what he needs,” said Edmund, “why didn’t he simply take it? Rose even tried to kill him and couldn’t, so he obviously could have overpowered all of us anytime he chose to.”

“It’s a matter of free will,” said Bert. “It’s an office that must be conferred, then accepted—not taken by force. She had to choose it—that’s why he needed Charles’s help to persuade her.”

“I never would have—,” Charles began.

“I never doubted, Uncle Charles,” Rose said, hugging him. “You’d never let me fall.”

“Here,” Edmund said, pointing to a map in the
Geographica
. “This looks like the Sphinx, doesn’t it?”

The map was one that Bert had seen before—and he knew the drawing well. It depicted a chariot being drawn by two Dragons, one scarlet, the other the greenish-gold of the Sphinx.

“Oh my stars and garters!” Bert exclaimed. “I think I know what her name is. Rose,” he said, eyes wide, “I want you to look up the Little Whatsit’s entry on Samaranth.”

“You think the Sphinx is Samaranth?” asked Charles, who was listening in with one ear.

“No,” Bert replied, “I think the Sphinx is Samaranth’s
wife.”

The companions crossed the plazas inside the wall and entered the passageway to the chamber of the Sphinx.

“I’m guessing that Jules left something inside for us,” said Charles. “Maybe something we can use to reestablish a connection to another zero point.”

“They wouldn’t even know what had happened,” Burton said, looking up at the sleeping Sphinx, “so how could they know what we needed to come home?”

“The Sphinx knows—,” Pym started to say before Burton finally lost his temper and clocked the Messenger upside his head. “We know that, you cretin! That’s why we have to solve the riddle!”

Pym, in a rare moment of assertion, actually shoved Burton and spun away, pressing his back to a wall. He took a deep breath. “No,” he wheezed, “not ‘knows.’ Nose. The Sphinx
nose
. Look at the nose.”

They all looked at the Sphinx. The nose, and places along the wings, were more worn than in other spots, allowing the underlying material it was made of to show through. “It needs a little plaster,” said Charles. “Why is that significant?”

“Because,” Bert said as the realization suddenly dawned on him, “underneath the centuries of paint, and soot, and dust, the Sphinx’s nose—in fact, the entire Sphinx—is made of cavorite. Including the structure—and the arch.”

Rose suddenly beamed. “They knew a machine would never
survive all those centuries,” she said brightly, “but something made entirely of cavorite
would
.”

“Here,” Edmund said, indicating an entry in the Little Whatsit. “There’s not much about Samaranth or his wife, just that they pulled a chariot for the legendary Jason, of the Argonauts. It also says that she was punished for betraying the Archipelago,” he finished, “but that’s about all.”

“Her name is here in the
Geographica
,” Bert said, handing the atlas to Rose. “It can’t hurt to try.”

“It will work,” Rose answered. “Somehow, I know it.” She looked up at the Sphinx and laid a hand on the cool stone. “Azer,” she whispered, hardly daring to breathe. “You’re Azer.”

For a long moment, the Sphinx did not answer. Then, slowly, she opened her eyes.

“Greetings, Moonchild,” Azer said in a voice that sounded of silk and ancient gardens in a long-ago place. “What do you desire?”

Before Rose could answer, there was a terrible noise outside—the sounds of combat, and screaming, and suffering.

“Oh no,” Charles exclaimed. “What’s happened now?”

The companions rushed out of the chamber and into the amphitheater—which was in flames. The Unforgotten were running away from the center of the chaos: a dozen masked servants of Lord Winter, who was standing at the top of the steps, where the dark geometric shapes of the Echthroi hovered in the air above him.

He was holding one of the old Caretakers’ books in his hand. One of their future histories—a book that would have turned to dust long ago, were it not for the Lloigor’s eldritch magicks running through it.

“This was once a prophecy,” Lord Winter said, “that warned
of what might happen if the Echthroi were to finally conquer this world in full. And now I’m going to turn prophecy . . .

“. . . into
history
.”

The companions’ minds raced to try to figure out what could be done. There were too many Lloigor to fight, and the Unforgotten were already scattered.

“I think,” Bert said, mostly to buy them more time, “that you are not completely in the thrall of the Echthroi. I think you are not wholly Lloigor.”