The Dragons of Winter (34 page)

“Damn straight I am,” said Burton.

The air vibrated around him, almost as if it were responding to his will and expanding his presence; and perhaps it was
doing just that. He resonated with the countenance of a Dragon, a true, living Dragon—and suddenly the Echthroi that attended Lord Winter trembled themselves—and began to withdraw.

For the first time in many millennia, Lord Winter felt a thrill of fear run through him.

“No, wait!” he called out to the ascending geometric shapes. “Stop! Grimalkin! Loki! Do not abandon me!”

“What,” Burton hissed, eyes narrowing, “did you just say?”

Lord Winter’s only response was to howl in despair. He was losing—had lost. And he knew it, and so did his masters.

“Name me!” Burton roared. “Name me, Jack!”

“
You are Dragon!”
the Echthroi screeched, as much from the darkness that enveloped Burton as from the throat of the Lloigor Jack.
“Dragon!”

“Yes,” Burton said, almost as a whisper. “And I have made the right choice at last.”

When the doors of the Sphinx closed behind them, none of the time-lost companions knew what to expect. Certainly, that they might be transported to another time, at least. Edmund and Rose were hopeful that they would end up back at Tamerlane House, although that was longer odds than they could really expect. Bert harbored a secret hope that they might actually end up in the future they were aiming for—with Weena. And Charles simply wanted to get away from Lord Winter.

“So, uh,” Charles stammered. “Is it on?”

“Not yet,” said Rose, who had been examining the interior, “otherwise there’d be too much risk of someone else using it.” She didn’t need to say more.

“This panel,” said Edmund. “The symbols on it match some of those in the
Geographica
!”

“It’s how we activate the Sphinx,” Rose said, running her fingers across the engravings in the stone. “I’d bet my life on it.”

“Actually,” said Bert, “I think we have.”

“Are there any, ah, instructions?” asked Charles.

“No,” she replied, “just these markings.” Among them was a crescent moon, set in an indentation within the panel. She pressed it, and instantly they were surrounded by a glow of radiant light.

“Excellent, Moonchild,” Bert murmured. “You are less and less the student, I see.”

The light lasted only a few seconds, and then as quickly as it had risen, vanished.

“Now what?” said Charles. “Is it over?”

“Only one way to find out,” Edmund said. He stepped to the doors and slipped his fingers between them. Then, with a great effort, he slid them open, and at once the companions were blinded by bright, golden sunlight.

“Well, Toto,” Charles said in relief, “I don’t think we’re in Camazotz anymore.”

They stepped out onto a low, grassy hilltop that overlooked a broad, sandy beach. The structure they emerged from was the same as it had been in the future, but there was no sign of the Sphinx.

“It doesn’t smell right,” said Charles, sniffing. “Not like England smells. But it smells . . . familiar.”

“I agree,” said Rose.

“I must confess my ignorance,” Edmund said, “being that my education in these things is more limited than I’d have liked
it to be, but aren’t those runic columns over there?”

They were—and not ancient ones, but freshly constructed, newly painted columns. And farther back, they could see larger structures.

“Greek temples?” asked Charles. “In 1946?”

“This isn’t 1946,” said Bert. “I think we may have overshot our mark.”

“Not really,” Edmund said as he consulted his chronal maps. “We did go back approximately eight hundred thousand years . . . give or take. My chronal map might have taken us back to England in 1946, but it was designed to do that. We came through a different device that couldn’t be set for a specific time, because they had no way of knowing when—or if—we’d use it. And we’ve moved in space as well as time, so something else had to determine why we came here now.”

“But then how . . . ,” Bert began before the realization struck him and his face fell. “Oh . . . oh, my stars and garters.”

Charles groaned and put his face in his hands. His shoulders started to shake, and for a moment the companions were concerned for him—until they realized he was laughing.

“Not determine,” he said, clapping Edmund on the back. “Choose. Someone chose to bring us here. You are correct, Edmund. I don’t even have to see your maps to know that.”

Rose sat on a boulder, her shoulders slumping forward in misery as she realized what the others all meant. The Sphinx had done precisely as she had asked—she had taken them home. But to
her
home, her time and place—not theirs.

“Can’t we simply go through it again?” the young mapmaker asked, his face eager with hope.

“Even if we could reuse the Sphinx,” said Rose, “I don’t know what else we’d use to barter with her for passage. We’d also be risking ending up stranded in the future again. And anyway,” she added, looking around at the dunes, “she’s gone.”

“Look at it this way,” Edmund said, “at least we’re not still in that awful might-have-been future. We’re much closer to home here.”

“Indeed!” said Charles. “Instead of being stuck a million years from home, we may only be trapped a few thousand years from home. Luck is definitely with us.”

“Have you ever noticed,” Edmund said to Rose, “that these Caretakers’ view of reality differs widely from pretty much everyone else’s?”

“All the time,” said Rose.

Edmund made a few calculations on one of his chronal maps and confirmed that they were approximately somewhere around the era of 2500 BC.

“If we’re at that point in the past,” Rose asked, “wouldn’t the keep itself still exist? Could we use that to either go home, or maybe even go farther back to find the Architect?”

“You spent more time there than any of us, Bert,” Charles said, thinking. “Would that work?”

“It doesn’t have a basement, if that’s what you’re asking,” Bert retorted. “When the Dragons created the doors, it was already standing. I don’t know that there’s any way to use it to go back to a point before its own making. And besides, it burned from the ground up—meaning the passages to the oldest times were lost
first
. So it may not actually be here at all anymore.”

“Great,” Charles groaned. “I not only botched up the future, but I’ve retroactively messed up the past.”

“I want to go home too,” said Bert, “but if we returned now, we’d simply have to come back this way again anyway. Or,” he added with a bit of a catch in his voice, “someone would, at any rate.”

“If we’re somewhere in Greece,” asked Edmund, “where would we go to find the keep if we did look?”

“In this era,” Bert said, turning to look at the ocean, “it would be . . .”

His voice trailed off as his jaw dropped. The others looked out over the water and were similarly shocked by what they saw.

Far in the distance, with the bearing of thunderclouds, and the slow, steady movement of tectonic plates, giants were striding through the ocean. They were pulling islands behind them by great chains, much like the ones the companions had seen circling the Earth in the ancient future.

These were the giants of old, not the misshapen, mythological creatures. These were Titans, and they were awesome to behold.

“What are they?” Edmund asked, his voice trembling with awe.

“The Corinthian Giants, of course,” a voice said as they gawped. “They are almost finished here, and will soon move on to other climes.”

It was a woman, tall and regal, and speaking with the bearing and manner of a queen. She was dressed in a simple tunic, but her belt and jewelry were equal to the cost of entire cities.

She was speaking in ancient Greek, which Rose understood easily, and Charles less so. Bert and Edmund would have been
completely out of luck—but somehow they understood her.

“What are they doing?” Edmund said, motioning to the giants.

She seemed taken aback by the question, as if she expected they would already know. “They are taking the rest of the lands through the Frontier and into the Archipelago, as was agreed at the—” She stopped and examined them more closely. “You are not the Watchers. And you are not of Corinth. Who are you?”

Edmund was the most startled to be spoken to in Greek and to realize he understood it completely, being the companion with the least amount of experience with magic. “How is it that I can understand your words?” he exclaimed in openmouthed astonishment. “Or that you can understand mine?”

“A minor incantation,” the woman said haughtily, “and if you do not know even that much of me, then it is a waste of my time to be conversing with you at all.”

“We beg your pardon,” Rose said. “We are strangers to your land, and meant no offense.” As she spoke, she bowed deeply and took one knee to the sand—a gesture of deference and respect. As she did so, the woman noticed Rose’s bracelets, which her grandfather had given to her. They were golden, ornate, and the mark of royalty. Not something worn by someone bowing to a stranger.

The woman took a step backward. “Why are you here?” she asked. “Has my husband sent you? I have broken no laws. My children are my own, and if I choose to hide them among the islands of the Archipelago, it is my own business. He will wander an eternity before he sees them again.”

“By Zeus,” Bert whispered to Edmund and Charles. “She means Jason! This is Medea!”

“And the sons she is talking about are William and Hugh,” Charles whispered back.

“That’s terrible!” whispered Bert, remembering the wraith that Jason became after searching for his lost sons. “If there was ever a man who needed a hand, it’s him.”

“But we have the
Geographica
!” Charles exclaimed. “We can take him right to the island where she abandoned their sons!”

“At what risk?” Bert said with a touch of surprise. “We could irrevocably damage the future in the process.”

“Haven’t you already done that?” asked Edmund. “The Archipelago has already been swept away. Can anything we do here really make it worse?”

“The Archipelago is not what I’m worried about,” Bert replied, casting a glance at Medea, who was still conversing with Rose. “In this time, the Summer Country is still very much connected to the Archipelago. And everything that has happened, did happen. Every moment that we spend here risks derailing that, and possibly changing our futures.”

“When the rest of the islands of the Mediterranean are taken across,” Medea was saying in answer to something Rose had asked, “then the Corinthian Giants will return for Autunno—this island.

“The last remnant of old Atlantis, the Silver Throne, sits in my temple,” she said, “and when Autunno is taken through the Frontier, it will be the seat of power of both worlds.”

Bert and Charles looked at each other, confused. The Archipelago was not built overnight—they knew that much from the old shipbuilder, Ordo Maas. It had taken centuries. But this was the first they had ever heard about Medea becoming Queen of the Silver Throne.

“Begging your pardon,” said Bert, “but you
are
Queen Medea, are you not?”

She tilted her head slightly in acknowledgment. “I am. Since the death of my father, Aeetes, I have become queen of Corinth.”