The Dragons of Winter (31 page)

“Really,” Lord Winter said with an amused smile. “Do tell.”

“All this power,” Bert said, gesturing widely with his arms, “and such absolute domination for so many centuries, and somehow you never managed to overcome the Unforgotten until
we
arrived?”

“Oh, on occasion I captured and killed or converted a few,” Winter said. “Those who strayed too far, or for too long, from their haven. I still have the skull of The Golden Compass 519 on my wall. But,” he went on, “until you came, I didn’t have
this
.”

He was holding Bert’s watch. A terrified Arthur Pym stepped out from behind one of the servants. He looked overcome with sorrow—but he was standing behind Winter, not the Caretakers.

Charles and Burton glowered, but Rose and Edmund held them back as Bert continued to talk.

“Speaking of Pym,” he said, gesturing at the terrified Messenger, “he’s been here, what? A decade? And he aided us. He’s been running freely around this world of yours, and yet you never managed to stop him, either. And it’s not because you couldn’t—I think it’s because you wouldn’t.”

“He betrayed us, Caretaker,” Burton said coldly. “It was his choice.”

“No,” said Pym. “It wasn’t.”

Trembling, he held out his arm and pulled back his sleeve. There, tattooed on his forearm, was the mark of Lord Winter—a circle, surrounded by four diamonds.

“Not useful enough to be a Dragon, I’m afraid,” said Lord Winter, “but useful enough, when the time came.”

“What did he promise you?” Charles asked.

“Freedom,” said Pym. “I get to go home.”

“And I always keep my promises,” said Winter. He lowered his glasses, and dark bolts of ebony fire leaped from his eyes and in a trice had consumed the hapless man.

“Arthur!” Bert screamed. “Oh, dear me, Arthur!” He dropped to his knees, scrabbling after the drifting wisps of flame-singed cloth that were all that remained of the Anachronic Man.

“I kept him around far longer than I should have, anyway,” Winter said dispassionately. “He had begun to bore me.”

As one, Burton and Charles both stepped protectively in front of Rose and Edmund, who scowled and moved forward to stand shoulder to shoulder with them. Charles also kept a steadying hand on Bert, who was trembling with anger.

“Don’t worry, I have no intention of destroying any of you,” Winter said blithely. “You’re all very interesting, and you will make excellent Lloigor.”

“We’ll find out how we failed, and we’ll make things right,” Bert said. His voice was trembling, but his face was a mask of defiance. “We’ll find a way to defeat you, Lord Winter.”

“Mmm, all formal now, are we, old friend?” Lord Winter said with a trace of sarcasm. “You should just call me Jack.”

He shook his head. “You aren’t Jack. I’m not sure who you are, but you’re not him.”

“I thought you wanted to become a Dragon,” said Charles, “to get past your masters’ chains.”

“Pym told me about the Sphinx,” said Winter, “and that she may, in fact, be a time travel device. And if that’s true, I can use her to go back and correct my own mistakes—and I can make sure that this place,” he added, gesturing at the pyramid, “will never be built, and all the books destroyed.”

“What if I accept your offer?” Rose said suddenly. “What if I become a Lloigor and make you my apprentice Dragon?”

“Rose, no!” Charles cried. “Don’t!”

“Hmm,” said Winter. “That’s an interesting proposition. I might even consider sparing your friends, just for old times’ sake.”

As the others cried out in protest, the Winter Dragons parted and allowed Rose to approach Lord Winter.

“Just take my hand,” Winter said, “and kneel.”

Instead of taking Lord Winter’s outstretched hand, Rose picked a shard of flint off the ground and jabbed it into her thumb, drawing blood. She stepped to one side and spun around, too quickly for Lord Winter to respond. Rose locked her arm around Winter’s neck and warned the servants to back away. Then, she reached up and swiftly marked the Lloigor’s forehead with blood.

“What are you doing?” Winter screeched. “What—”

“Silence!” Rose commanded, with the full confidence and
authority of her heritage. The Lord of the Night Land went instantly quiet. “I am the Grail Child Rose Dyson, daughter to Madoc the Maker, apprentice to the Black Dragon, and I thus bind thee.”

Lord Winter trembled and shuddered, but stood stock-still as Rose continued to speak:

By right and rule
For need of might
I thus bind thee
I thus bind thee

By blood bound
By honor given
I thus bind thee
I thus bind thee

For strength and speed and heaven’s power
By ancient claim in this dark hour
I thus bind thee
I thus bind thee

Rose released her hold on Lord Winter, who remained frozen in place. The Winter Dragons kept a discreet distance, waiting to see how this would play out—but the shapes floating overhead were vibrating madly enough to make the air buzz with their anger.

“That won’t hold him long,” Rose said, panting with the effort
of the binding, “but it’ll hold him long enough, I think. Now,” she declared to her companions, “we must run for our lives, and for the sake of the world we left, and all we hold dear. Now! Run!”

Without a backward glance, the friends gathered up their belongings and ran into the pyramid.

P
ART
F
IVE

The Corinthian Legend

. . . the Goblin Market was a cacophony of ornate wagons, huts, tents . . .

C
HAPTER
S
EVENTEEN
The Goblin Market

Of the many notable events
that marked the Victorian age, the most significant was one witnessed by only three people.

The creation of the
Black Dragon
was attended only by Mordred, the Winter King, who summoned the Dragon that was to become one with the ship; Argus, the shipbuilder, who was compelled by a Binding and an ancient promise to perform the task; and Mordred’s mentor, Dr. John Dee, who watched from a nearby rooftop as Mordred and Argus went about their work.

It wasn’t until the shipbuilder was done, and dismissed, and Mordred had sailed the newly christened
Black Dragon
out of the harbor on the Thames and into the open sea that the great red Dragon, Samaranth, spoke to the doctor.

“Ill met, Dee,” the Dragon growled, not bothering to cover the rising anger in his tone. “You should not have done this.”

“I,” said Dr. Dee, “have done nothing—nothing except teach the student that you betrayed and abandoned.”

“You have corrupted his spirit,” the Dragon rumbled.

“His brother did that when he betrayed him,” Dr. Dee spat back. “I have simply shaped what was already there.” He turned and faced the great beast with no trace of fear. “You had your chance, Old Serpent,”
Dee said. “Now I am going to shape him into the great man he was always meant to be.”

“He is not the Imago,” Samaranth said. “Once, perhaps, he might have become such. But that time is past.”

“The Imago, if he exists, will be made, not found, Dragon,” said Dee. “We have differed on that point before.”

“Regardless, he is not now worthy, even if he has the skill. And now you have given him a Dragonship—the means to cross through the Frontier.”

“Yes. I have.”

“To what end?”

“Order,” said Dee. “To bring order to two worlds that have fallen into chaos under your stewardship.”

“You are not seeking to create the Imago at all,” the Dragon concluded, more to himself than to Dee. “This cannot be permitted to continue.”

“There are many streaks of white in your beard, Dragon,” said Dee. “You are getting old.”

“Your services are no longer needed, Dee. There are others better suited to the task. I only hope,” Samaranth said with a hiss of melancholy, “that it is not too late to undo what you have done.”

“There are none qualified to replace me,” said Dee. “Whom would you have, Old Dragon? Will Shaksberd? Or that old fool, Alighieri?”

“I have all of history to choose from,” Samaranth replied, “and choosing wisely is the one thing that I must take the time to do, whomever it is that I choose.”

He stopped and drew in a breath, as if intending to exhale on the Scholar—but stopped, as he realized Dee was completely unconcerned.

It was only then that the Dragon noticed Dee’s shadow was moving about completely independently of its owner.

Samaranth took a step backward and hissed. “You have fallen,” he said, his voice laced with sadness. “You have joined the enemy, John Dee. And that choice will result in nothing but suffering for your protégé.”

“The Winter King may surprise you yet, Dragon,” said Dr. Dee. “It took me decades to choose to give up my shadow in the cause of order. It took Mordred far less time to do the same.”

The Dragon stretched out his wings and shook his head. “He will never sit on the Silver Throne,” Samaranth said as he took flight. “The Caretakers will see to that. And he will never,” he added as he vanished into the clouds, “be the Imago.”

The Scholar watched until the Dragon disappeared from view, then took a small pocket watch out of his coat.

“Perhaps,” he said to no one in particular. “But if not him,” he finished as he twirled the dials on his device, “then certainly another of my choosing will.”

The rain on the Welsh mountainside lasted only three-quarters of an hour and was sufficient to settle the dust, and little more. When Don Quixote and his squire, the badger Uncas, awoke during the morning’s sunrise, the Zen Detective Aristophanes was already busying himself with breakfast. His bedroll seemed untouched. Quixote couldn’t tell whether the detective had slept much, or at all, and decided it was the better part of knightly decorum not to ask.

After a surprisingly delicious meal, during which Quixote reversed yet another judgment he’d made about the gruff detective, the three companions set about determining their plan of action.

Uncas carefully opened the vellum folder Verne had entrusted to him and spread out the fourteen maps of Elijah McGee.

“There really aren’t too many of them, you know,” said Quixote. “We could practically go about locating the armor by trial and error.”