The Dragons of Winter (44 page)

“This is why she brought us here, to her home on Autunno,” Burt murmured to the others. “This was the day she became the Sphinx.”

Rose looked up at the goddess. “What of Gilgamesh?”

“We shall bear his body to the Elysian Fields,” the Hecatae said, dropping closer to gather up the old regent’s body, “where
he shall rest until such a time as he may be called upon to rise, as great heroes are needed to do.”

“I’m sorry,” Rose said. “I’m sorry we couldn’t stop them from killing him.”

“Daughter,” the Hecatae said as they bore the body of Gilgamesh up into the clouds, “you have ever pleased us with your choices, and you please us still. Go now, and do the work you have set to do, and be not troubled. For your path is just.”

With that, the Hecatae disappeared. The clouds cleared, and the moon was rising. And once more, the companions were alone.

They spent the night on the beach, if for no other reason than that the Ring of Power was familiar and gave them a measure of security. Although after what had happened with Azer, none of them was quite so sure summoning Dragons would ever be such a good idea again.

“Samaranth always did mention,” Charles said, “that he wasn’t a tame Dragon. The same apparently went for his wife.”

“What are you doing?” Rose asked Edmund, who had been busying himself with his drawings all night.

“I’ve tried using the old trump to Tamerlane House,” he replied, “but we’re simply too far away from any other recorded zero points for it to work across space and time. It still isn’t working well enough. And anyway, if we try to go back, whether by trump or by trying to find the keep, we’ll be going in the wrong direction.”

“Wrong direction?” Charles exclaimed. “Don’t you want to go home?”

“What I want,” Edmund replied, “is to put an end to all this
and restore what’s been broken. But it’s not my choice—it’s yours.” This last he said not to the Caretaker, but to Rose.

“Mine?” she exclaimed, blushing slightly. “We’re all making these decisions together, I thought.”

“Yes,” Bert said, “but it’s been obvious all along who is the true factotum. Rose, you are the true fulcrum of history, and we will do as you feel best. It’s your choice. Decide, and we will follow.”

“Then I say yes,” Rose answered. “We should keep pressing into the past. What are you thinking, Edmund?”

“While Gilgamesh told us about the First City,” he explained, “I was making a drawing on one of the trump sheets in the
Geographica
. I think we can use it to go there and learn more about the Architect.”

“And this one?” Rose asked, picking up a copy he had made on a sheet of bronze. “What is it for?”

“The Caretakers.”

“So they can try to rescue us somehow?”

“No,” said Edmund. “Not to rescue us. We can’t risk anyone else interfering with the course of Chronos time. We’ve done too much already.”

“What’s happened had to happen, because it did happen,” Bert said, “and it could not have happened any other way.”

“So if we aren’t going to ask someone at Tamerlane House to attempt a rescue,” said Charles, “what is it you’re thinking of, Edmund?”

“He’s thinking of a legacy,” said a voice behind them. “That’s the only reason to craft something in metal.”

It was the shipbuilder, Argus.

“I heard rumors that the queen had disappeared,” he said,
“along with her Dragon. And in their place, the Corinthians have found a Sphinx. They have asked me to stay and help them create a temple around it, as a tribute to the gods.”

“If you want,” Charles said, “there’s a nice, sturdy little building about a mile that way that would be perfect for the Sphinx.”

Argus nodded. “And what of Medea?” he asked.

Rose looked at her friends. “She got the immortality she was looking for.”

The shipbuilder smiled and sat, leaning back against the rock to soak in the sun. “No one lives forever, my young friend.”

“Maybe not forever,” said Rose, “but long enough for all practical porpoises.”

“Hmm?” Argus raised his head. “What do you mean?”

“It’s a badger joke,” Rose replied, grinning. “It means you will live long enough to do what we want to ask of you.”

“Ah,” Argus said, bemused.

“The Corinthians asked you to construct the temple of the Sphinx?” Edmund asked.

Argus inclined his head in answer.

“Would you do something for me?” Edmund asked. “Just a small, simple request?”

“What is it?”

Edmund handed him the drawing on the sheet of bronze. “When you’re done,” he said, “simply place this inside the base of the Sphinx.”

Argus frowned. “When the structure is finished, it will be considered sacred,” he said. “It isn’t meant to be used. No one will ever go inside, not without some extreme compulsion to do so.”

Now it was Edmund’s turn to smile. “That’s what we’re counting on. Will you do it?”

Argus smiled. “I am here in the sun today because of your good will,” he said. “I will do as you ask.”

After breakfasting together, the companions bid Argus good-bye and began to gather their things together. All except Bert, who had rolled up his trousers and waded out into the ocean.

Rose waded out of the surf and toward Bert. The Far Traveler had been consulting his watch, with a grim expression on his face. As she approached, Bert hurriedly snapped the watch closed and adopted a halfhearted smile that failed miserably to conceal his turmoil.

“What is it, old teacher?” Rose asked him. “That’s the third time this morning you’ve checked your watch and not been pleased with what you saw there.”

Bert sighed. “I didn’t realize that anyone had noticed.”

“I think we’ve all noticed,” she said, looking over to where the others were, near the rocks. “I’m just the one who lost the draw about which one of us would mention it to you.”

“As Argus said,” Bert remarked with tears in his eyes, “no one lives forever.”

“Your time isn’t up yet,” said Rose. “Come and see—our young Cartographer has a plan.”

“Verne sent us the only object he knew would survive eight thousand centuries,” Edmund was saying to the others, “namely, the Sphinx. So at some point in the future, he is going to have to open it, and when he does, he’ll find the bronze I made of the drawing and know where we’re going to go—because I’ve tested it, just a little,
and I think we can use the drawing I made as a chronal map.”

“That’s a tall order,” said Rose. “According to Gilgamesh, it was thousands of years ago.”

“We’re going to have to try it,” Edmund said. “I believe in you, Rose. And I think that I’ve drawn it accurately enough. We can see this through. We just have to believe.”

She took his hand, and the others stood next to them inside the Ring of Power as Edmund concentrated on the drawing he held.

The young Cartographer’s hand trembled, and he bit his lip, hoping the pain would steady his hand before the others noticed. In response, Rose squeezed his arm supportively, then added her own concentration to the drawing. But still, nothing happened.

And then, deep inside the drawing . . .

. . . a leaf fell from a tree and floated gently on a breeze in the faraway place, coming closer and closer until it brushed past Edmund’s fingers before drifting out of the frame.

The trump shuddered, and then, much to the companions’ relief, it began to grow and expand, until it was more than a dozen feet across, and nearly as high.

“Well done!” Charles exclaimed, applauding respectfully. “I doubt the original Cartographer could have done any better.”

“Well,” Bert began.

“Hush that,” Charles admonished. “He did very well.”

“Shall we?” Edmund said, beaming at the others.

“Absolutely,” said Rose.

On the broad field in front of the house on Easter Island, the two armies faced each other, waiting, each wondering what this new defection meant to the Great Game.

“I am the true heir of this armor,” said Dr. Raven, “and I always have been.”

“Dee’s plans do not serve reality,” Verne said cautiously. “They serve the Echthroi.”

“This is not the only reality there is,” Dr. Raven said, his voice even and clear. “There are other places and times where a man may reinvent himself, even if that reinvention is a fiction.”

“Is that what he is?” John said to Verne. “Is he a fiction, like Henry Morgan?”

“No,” Raven said, answering John’s question. “Not like that. I am as real as you are, Caveo Principia. But sometimes, reality gets in the way of what’s really important. And the only way you can learn what you need to learn is to practice being fictional for a while.”

“There is no time for this, boy!” hissed Dr. Dee. “We must—”

Dr. Raven cut him off with a glare. “There is time enough for everything, Dr. Dee,” he said, as if it was a command. Dee opened his mouth to respond, but Dr. Raven had already turned back to face the Caretakers.

A thought passed among several of the Caretakers, which John and Twain confirmed with a glance—that exchange with Dee was significant. Not only was Raven not cowering before Dee, as the other members of the Cabal did, but he had in fact put him firmly in his place—which seemed to be subservient to Raven.

Was it possible? John wondered in amazement. Was Raven the true leader of the Cabal, or had Dee actually created a paladin he couldn’t control?

“Even now,” Raven continued, “we’re creating new fictions
where we all play our parts. But it’s all just a continuation of an old tale, already begun.”

He nodded to the members of the Cabal, who scrambled up the hillside and into the House, where they closed the doors behind them. After a moment, and a last glance at Verne, Dee followed.

Verne took a few steps toward the armor-clad Messenger, hoping that with Dee gone, the younger man might be more open to reason, but Raven held up a hand, stopping him.

“This part of the story is ended. It’s time for us to go away, to lick our wounds and rewrite the fiction that is to come.” He turned to John. “We will meet again, Caveo Principia, on a different battlefield.”

Something clicked in John’s mind, and he moved in front of Verne, who was at a complete loss for words.

“You know me, don’t you?” John asked Raven. “Somehow we know each other, from before Jules introduced us.”

For the first time since he had donned the armor, Raven smiled—and it was a brilliant, charismatic smile.

“We do, Caveo Principia,” the young man replied. “Long ago, and also, not so long ago.

“I am the age you see now because I choose to be. It was the age when I was brought back into this story by Dr. Dee and his Cabal. It was when I had lived through another fiction, in another time, and I had leaned to make my own way in the world.

“In that fiction, I chose my own names. There were times I was known as Jude, and others as Obscuro, the Zen Illusionist. At one point I thought I might be Saturn, but it turned out I was mistaken. At some other point in my future, I become Dr. Syntax, and
then Dr. Raven, and it was as Dr. Raven that I made myself known to the Caretakers and began my work as one of the Messengers for Jules Verne. But,” he continued, “before that, you and I met, and I was known by a different name.”

With a thrill of fear, John suddenly realized what that name might have been, but he wasn’t sure he should ask it, for fear the young man would vanish altogether.