The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The) (23 page)

A bright chime suddenly rang out from all the Caretakers’ watches: once, twice, and then a third time. As one, they all stopped to look at the time, to see why the watches had made such an unusual sound, and that was when they all realized what had happened.

The watches were resetting themselves.

“What is this?” asked John. “What is happening here, Jules? Bert? They’ve never done
that
before.”

“There is a new zero point,” Bert said in amazement. “The Anabasis Machines have reset themselves to it. All of them. At once.”

“That’s not just any zero point,” Verne said, peering at his watch. “They’re resetting because it’s
the
zero point. The prime zero. The moment in history when everything was connected, and the Keep of Time was built.”

“Does that mean they’ve succeeded?” asked John. “Can this really be over?”

“I don’t know,” said Verne. “We should ask Poe about it immediately, though. This may preclude whatever he was planning to share.”

“Not just yet,” John said, holding up both his hands. “We’re still waiting on a few fellows to arrive, and I think everyone should be here.”

“I think they’re coming now,” Twain said, lifting a curtain to glance out the window, “and at top speed, apparently.”

Hawthorne and Irving blew through the front doors with a bang, rounded the corner, and skidded into the room. Both their faces were ashen.

“Jack, you must come, quickly,” Hawthorne said, ignoring all decorum in favor of urgency. “You, and everyone! Something’s happened at the bridge.”

“What?” Jack implored as the Caretakers all rose to rush outside with their colleagues. “What’s happened, Nathaniel?”

“It’s Warnie,” Irving answered. “Dr. Dee has your brother, Jack. And he’s going to kill him unless we give him access to Tamerlane House and the Nameless Isles.”

♦  ♦  ♦

It was dusk in the place and time where the
Indigo Dragon
emerged from the Zanzibar Gate. As they passed through, the glow that signaled it was functioning properly waned and died.

“Well, that’s that,” said Fred. “I really hope this works, or we may as well start building houses.”

“I don’t think it worked,” Edmund said, unable to hide the trace of bitterness in his voice. “Look.”

In the distance, dark against the fading light in the sky, was the
swirl of clouds that made up the Barrier around the Garden of Eden. “We’re still in the same place.”

“But not in the same time,” said Madoc. “The trees are different, as far as I can see. And those stones were not here.”

In the center of the clearing, similar to the one where they’d met the Archons, was a small ring of stones, with a stone table in the center.

“It’s like a small Ring of Power,” Charles said, barely daring to breathe, “except for the table in the center. That’s different.”

Uncas and Fred both sniffed the air, as did the goats. “That’s blood,” Fred said with a shudder. “Fresh blood. Recent blood.”

The companions all held their breath when they realized Fred was right—and that the dark stains covering the stone table still glistened in the waning light of day.

“Seth was right,” Rose said, choking as she spoke. “We can’t go back further in time than this moment, no matter how much older the keep is.”

“A paradox,” a young man said as he stepped around from behind one of the stones. “The keep is what binds the two worlds together, even though they are growing further and further apart.”

Uncas, Fred, Quixote, and Laura Glue recognized him immediately. They had seen him in a battle on Easter Island only a few months earlier.

The others didn’t know his face, but the Ruby Armor he wore was instantly recognizable.

“To restore what has been broken, you must travel beyond the point where the worlds have been split,” he continued, “but to do so is impossible without the presence of the keep. It is, as I said, a paradox.”

“If we can’t go beyond this point in time,” Edmund said slowly,
not certain of the wisdom of speaking to this mysterious man, “then how are we possibly going to restore time? We’ve had two last chances to find the Architect, and now we’re out of options.”

The young man turned to Rose. “What do you think? Is your quest hopeless? Is it over?”

“There’s got to be a way,” Rose said, her voice low. “There is always a way. Always.”

“Ah,” said the young man. “
That’s
what I was waiting for.”

“Waiting for to do what?” asked Fred.

“Help you,” the young man replied. “One last time.”

In a trice, the young man in the Ruby Armor was replaced by someone Rose had seen twice before: a very ancient man, wearing a flowing robe. He nodded at them as if this were an entirely anticipated turn of events, then looked at Rose, smiling. “Hello, my dear,” he said. “I have been waiting for you for a very long time, but I knew you’d show up again . . . eventually.”

Without hesitation, Rose simply asked him the first question that came to mind. “Are you him?” she said. “Are you the Architect?”

“No,” the old man said firmly. “I am
not
the Architect.”

“Who are you, then?” asked Rose.

“You know, Moonchild,” he replied gently. “You have always known.”

“Coal,” she said, her voice soft. “You’re Coal.”

He nodded. “I was. Am. Although I think I prefer the name I chose for myself. It suits me best, when I need a name, that is. You may call me Telemachus.”

The Caretakers of Tamerlane House
gathered en masse at their side of Shakespeare’s Bridge. There, just on the other side, they could see Dr. Dee and two tall men in black, who wore dark glasses and bowler hats. In between them was Jack’s brother, Warnie.

“These are my colleagues, Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs,” said Dr. Dee. “They have been trained to do many things, but what they most excel at is following my orders—and I have told them that unless you do exactly as I ask, they are to tear Major Lewis into pieces.”

“Sorry, Jack,” Warnie said. His military reserve and strength of character gave him the appearance of fortitude, but Jack could tell he was properly scared.

“You know me well enough, Jules,” Dee said. “I’m not bluffing. And if need be, my colleagues can also kill Caretakers—no matter what form they’ve taken.”

“What is it you want?” Verne asked, casting a quick glance at John to see if he would object. John nodded his head faintly, giving Verne the go-ahead to keep speaking. If Dee wasn’t aware there was a new Prime Caretaker at Tamerlane, then John certainly wasn’t going to correct him.

“These are my colleagues, Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs.”

“There are guards set in these stones, and in the bridge,” said Dee. “Runic wards. I want you to cancel them.”

“I see,” Verne said, stalling for time. “We use silver rings to bypass the—”

“I don’t want a ring, Jules!” Dee all but shouted. “I want you to drop all the protection you have built up around these islands! Now!”

To punctuate his request, Mr. Kirke twisted Warnie’s arm backward and up, dislocating his shoulder. Jack’s brother let out a yelp of pain, then gritted his teeth and bore it.

“What if we decline?” asked Verne, trying not to look at Major Lewis. “What if we simply say no?”

“Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs are very, very strong,” said Dr. Dee, “and we have silver sledgehammers that can shatter even cavorite.”

“And?”

“And,” said Dee, “as far as I know, this bridge is the only thing keeping Tamerlane House tethered to the Summer Country. If we smash it—and we will—then you suddenly get hurled into the heart of the Echthroi’s domain. Forever. And then,” he added, “we’ll still kill Jack’s brother.”

“All right!” John shouted, realizing Verne was more likely to sacrifice Warnie than give up any tactical advantage. “We’ll do as you ask.”

Dr. Dee’s eyes glittered as he looked from John to Verne and back again, processing this apparent breach of Caretaker protocol. “Good,” he said, gesturing for Mr. Kirke to ease up on Jack’s brother. “I see you are going to be reasonable men. Lower the wards.”

“And then what?” John demanded.

“Then,” said Dee, “I’m going to go
home
.”

♦  ♦  ♦

“You were taken from us, you know that,” said Rose. “We’ve tried everything we could to find you!”

“I believe you,” said Telemachus.

“So you’ve chosen?” asked Fred. “You decided to help the Caretakers after all?”

“I wasn’t sure, not completely,” he answered, “until I put on the Ruby Armor—and realized that I had more in common with T’ai Shan than I did with John Dee, or the Echthroi.

“T’ai Shan was born into a family of gods, but she was crippled, and so was cast out. She had to make her way in the world as a beggar, or perish. She survived in part because she was an adept—like you and I, Rose—but she thrived because she saw it as her purpose to serve others.

“She was given the power of a star, who then betrayed her. But she fought him and won. The giants, who were the children of angels, were subdued by her and made to serve the cause of the Dragons. She was betrayed, terribly and often, by those closest to her—and still, her purpose was to serve. And then, somehow, I was brought to this world through improbable circumstance, and given this miraculous armor, and with it, a choice. Do I serve the Echthroi, or do I serve the Light?”

“Is this one of those remoracle questions?” asked Uncas. “Because if it in’t, I’m really afraid of what his answer is.”

Telemachus smiled at this. “Don’t worry, little fellow,” he said. “With great power comes great responsibility, and an even greater awareness. I’ve made my choice, and I’m going to do what I can to help you set things right.”

“That is exactly why I came to the end of time,” said Charles.
He looked at Edmund. “Or is it the beginning? I keep losing track.”

Edmund shrugged. “Where he’s from, I don’t think it matters.”

“Wise boy,” said Telemachus. “In Platonia there is no Chronos time, only Kairos time.”

“Seth, the Namer, told us something similar about Eden,” said Rose. “He told us time was different there, because it had only just been separated, and so both kinds of time still mixed freely, but I didn’t really understand him. What did he mean?”

“Chronos time is merely about the progression of moments,” said Telemachus, “but Kairos time is about the meaning held within those moments—and the meaning of a single moment can last an eternity.”

“The killing,” Charles murmured. “When Chronos—Cain—slew Kairos—Abel—it split the two kinds of time, because that murder was the first act of true meaning in the world.”

“Yes,” Telemachus said, glancing down at the stone table. “This is the moment when it all began, and so this is the moment when the keep must be built.”

“But the doors,” said Madoc. “I’ve been inside them, and time goes back much further than this. Eden, even the time of the Adam, is not the beginning.”

“You’re right, and wrong,” said Telemachus. “The keep, once restored, will persist in time in both directions, forward and back. But history, and true meaning, began here, with this murder. The keep is what connected the Archipelago with the Summer Country, and Chronos time with Kairos time. It was not necessary before, because nothing was divided.”

“So what happens now?”

“Now,” Telemachus said, “the Architect must build the keep,
restore what was broken, and redeem the murder that split the world in two.”

♦  ♦  ♦

Nathaniel Hawthorne and William Shakespeare were in charge of the security of the bridge. It took only a few minutes to completely disable all the runes and lower all the wards.

“All right, Dee,” John said. “Now what?”

“Watch and learn,” Dee said, smiling. He was not looking at any of the Caretakers, but was instead looking past them. All of them willing to take their eyes off Dee turned to see what he was looking at.

There, on the largest of the easternmost islands of the Nameless Isles, the Nightmare Abbey, the dark, gabled house of John Dee, suddenly shimmered into view, solidified, and settled with a whisper into place.