The Dragons of Winter Page 14

  Blake had to suppress a shudder at the memory of Dee’s response to that fiasco—which was that it wasn’t a total loss, because they’d managed to destroy all the Dragons in the process.

  All but one, as far as they knew. And a second, about which the Cabal knew nothing.

  But the main reason that Dee had become more secretive, even to the point of abandoning their cover of the ICS, which allowed them to operate in semi-secrecy, was that his true goals were finally coming to the fore.

  It had never been about the misguided goals of the Caretakers, or the secrets of the Archipelago, or even about the injustices done to the man who became the Winter King. For Dr. Dee, it was about knowledge, and power—both of which had been promised to him by the Echthroi. They had offered to reveal the secrets of creation to Dee, and in doing so, make him Shadows’ agent of hell on Earth.

  If Dee’s plans succeeded, the entire world would be open to the Echthroi. That could not be allowed to happen. And that reason alone had been motivation enough for Blake to continue to help Dee and the Cabal, even to the point of doing things that were reprehensible to him.

  Someone once said that it was sometimes necessary to commit small acts of evil, if those acts were in the service of a greater good. Blake knew that if he didn’t believe that, on some deep level, then he wouldn’t be able to bear sitting at this table, among these men, putting these plans into motion.

  But he also knew, with some regret, that this was a reason he was not comfortable being among the Caretakers. Perfect knights, who saw the world in terms of black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, were very difficult to argue with. But he understood that living that way to begin with made them far stronger—and far better—men than he.

  Dr. Dee, as usual, took his seat at the head of the table. The three Blakes sat to his left, and the inventor Nikola Tesla sat on his right. Next to Tesla were Aleister Crowley, the occultist, and the original discoverer of the House, William Hope Hodgson.

  To the Blakes’ right were the writers James Branch Cabell, H. P. Lovecraft, and, three seats farther down, G. K. Chesterton, who preferred a bit more personal space than the others—perhaps because other than Blake, Chesterton was the only member of the Cabal who had retained his own shadow.

  At the far end of the table sat a very fidgety and disgruntled Daniel Defoe. He had been recruited into the ICS by Burton when he was still a Caretaker—but by then, he had already performed several services for Dee. And during the battle with the Winter King’s shadow, when he overstepped his mandate and tried to seize power for himself, he was captured and imprisoned by the Caretakers.

  He’d been left there, mortared up behind a wall, for several years—and as far as Dee was concerned, could have been written off completely as a minor casualty in the Caretakers’ War, except for one salient fact.

  The boy whom Defoe had hidden in the future was not trackable by any means known to the Cabal—which meant that only Daniel Defoe knew when and where he could be retrieved. And so Defoe himself had to be retrieved from the Caretakers’ fortress. Fortunately, Dee also had other reasons for ordering the burglary, so the effort, which nearly failed, was worthwhile.

  “It took you long enough,” Defoe complained. “Don’t think I don’t know that the only reason you broke me out of that dratted wall was because you need me to find the boy.”

  “No,” Dee said coolly. “We broke you out because it was convenient. And it will be just as convenient to put you back, if you don’t hold your tongue.”

  Defoe glowered, but wisely said nothing.

  “What do you have to report?” Dee asked the Cabal.

  “Aristophanes is not looking for the boy at all,” said Crowley. “They approached him, just as we expected, but to ask him to find something else. Not the child.”

  Dee’s eyes narrowed. “What, then?”

  “The Ruby Opera Glasses.”

  A murmur of consternation rippled through the group. “If they sent him looking for the glasses,” exclaimed Tesla, “it won’t be long before he offers to seek out the rest of the armor for them, if he hasn’t already.”

  “They do have someone looking for the boy,” Chesterton said. “Or several someones, in point of fact. They call themselves the Mystorians.”

  A chill ran up Blake’s spine, and it was a testament to his self-control that neither he nor his other tulpas reacted visibly to Chesterton’s remark. Apparently, Verne’s secrets were not as well kept as they believed.

  “They have nothing,” said Tesla. “Some fiction writers, a few students, a few women, Newton, and Lord Kelvin. Their technology will be not only out of date compared to ours, but functionally useless. We have nothing to fear from the Mystorians.”

  Dee turned to Blake. “Monitoring Verne’s activities has been under your purview, William. Do you know anything about these ‘Mystorians’?”

  Blake wasn’t sure whether he was being tested. “I do,” he said finally, “but since none of them are actually Caretakers, I didn’t see any import in addressing the matter. They are no threat to our plans. The Caretakers can enlist whomever they wish. But our devices, and our knowledge of how to use them, are greater. I think these Mystorians are merely a distraction.”

  “Indeed,” said Dee. “Interesting that the Caretakers have chosen to recruit outside of their fortress in the Nameless Isles. And more interesting,” he added, pointedly glancing at Blake, “that these allies, these Mystorians, are only now coming to our attention.”

  “We got all that we needed, even without the maps,” said Tesla. “We won’t need to go back.”

  “I beg to differ!” Defoe exclaimed, pounding his fist on the table for emphasis. “If they’re watching too closely, I can’t get back into Tamerlane House!”

  “And this is a problem, how?” asked Tesla.

  “You know good and well how it’s a problem,” Defoe shot back. “I’m limited to seven days without going back across that threshold.”

  “This would not be a problem if you hadn’t gotten yourself crushed, Daniel,” said Lovecraft. “That this problem has fallen at your feet is entirely your own fault.”

  “Actually, you owe the Caretakers a debt of gratitude,” said Crowley. “If they hadn’t created a portrait of you, you’d simply be dead now.”

  “Yes, well,” Defoe said. “You brought me back for a reason, I assume, Nikola?”

  “It’s time to bring the boy back into our Prime Time, Daniel,” said Tesla. “We cannot wait any longer. And,” he added, swallowing hard, as if reluctant to make the admission, “so far, none of us have been able to, ah, locate the precise time in which you have him hidden.”

  Defoe smiled and slouched in his seat. “I’m cleverer than you give me credit for,” he said, preening in his rare moment of prominence. “I didn’t just hide him in the future—I hid him in an imaginary one.”

  “A might-have-been?” Dee said slowly. So that was the reason that despite their collective skills, they had been unable to locate the boy on their own. The idiot Defoe had basically hidden him inside a living fiction. If the boy had Defoe’s original watch, they could still possibly track him—without Daniel Defoe—but someone would have to physically retrieve him. Even with a means to do so, which the Cabal had, it was still almost impossibly dangerous and risky to even attempt.

  “If you know his physical origin point,” Dee said to Tesla, “could you track the boy?”

  Tesla nodded. “The number of zero points Daniel had access to are limited. If we know where the boy was left, we should be able to ascertain when.”

  “The boy,” Dee said, eyes glittering, “is in London.”

  Defoe sat up with a start. “Uh, how did you . . . ?”

  “There’s only one means of travel back from a might-have-been to the real world,” said Dee, “and it’s in the subbasement of the British Museum. You left him in London because you wanted easy access to your means for returning here.”

  Defoe swallowed hard. “T
here’s no need to search for him,” he said, a frantic tone creeping into his voice. “I can retrieve him for you, no problem.”

  Blake and the others watched Dee’s face as he debated what to do. Finally, and to Defoe’s relief, Dee nodded at him.

  “Do it, then,” he said. “Bring him back. Don’t show your face here again until you do.”

  Defoe removed the ebony watch he’d been given as a replacement for his own, twirled the dials, and disappeared.

  Dee looked at his own watch. “This meeting is adjourned. You all have things to be doing. Attend to them.”

  Without further discussion, each of the Cabal removed their own watches and disappeared. The three Blakes went last, leaving only Tesla and the black bird in the meeting hall with Dee.

  “William didn’t react to the mention of the Mystorians,” Tesla said. “Impressive.”

  “Maybe,” said Dee, “but we cannot let him interfere with our endgame—not until he’s finished with the new tulpas.”

  “Do you really think he’ll finish them?” Tesla asked. “At some point, he’ll realize that one of them is—”

  “We’ll deal with that when it happens,” Dee said, rising from his seat, “but for now, we must take the next step. We must close their ears and cover their eyes.”

  “Then the word is given?” said Tesla.

  “It is,” said Dee. “Destroy these Mystorians. And then, when that has been accomplished . . .

  “. . . we’re going to cut off the head of the Dragon and kill Jules Verne.”

  PART FOUR

  The Winter World

  “Call me Jack.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The Dragons of Winter

  The castle that stood on the shores of Lake Baikal was as gray as the surrounding mountains, and nearly as timeless. It had been built for functionality, not vanity, and when, at long last, Mordred had been summoned to compete in the Gatherum, he had closed the castle doors with no intention of ever opening them again.

  He reflected bitterly on the memory, and the second betrayal at the tourney, and the twenty lost years that only resulted in another, final betrayal, and worse, the loss of his right hand.

  This, he thought coldly, was the result of believing too strongly in the nobility of men—and in the Dragon who had promised him a reward that was now as insubstantial as a dream.

  The Dragon had been waiting for him when he arrived, and stoked a fire in the long-cold hearth. It had burned down to glowing embers before Samaranth chose to speak.

  “Your brother has been exiled,” the Dragon said.

  “Exiled?” Mordred answered, a glimmer of interest rising in his eyes. “To where?”

  “Solitude.”

  Mordred’s face fell. “You mean in the Archipelago. You’ve let him return . . . . But not . . .” The words trailed off as the expression on his face hardened once more into an inscrutable mask. “And his son, the Arthur?”

  “He is king,” Samaranth answered, “and has claimed the Silver Throne.”

  Mordred’s shoulders slumped forward, and a bit of the craziness that had possessed him when he lost his hand seemed to have returned.

  “So,” he said, giggling, “my brother betrayed me, more than once, and his punishment is to return home, where we have been trying to go for centuries. And his son, who betrayed me utterly, and took this,” he said, waving the still-bloody stump of an arm, “is punished by being made the High King and steward of two worlds.

  “And I,” he continued, his bitterness adding sanity as he spoke, “have done nothing but honor my obligations, love my family, accept unjust exile, and spend my life being schooled to become the last Dragon, and for what?”

  He spun around before the Dragon could answer.

  “I’ll tell you,” Mordred said. “It’s to become educated—and I have learned my lesson, oh yes, I have. And I know, Samaranth, who has betrayed me the most.”

  The Dragon did not answer, but merely regarded his apprentice with an expression closer to sorrow than pity.

  “I’m through as your apprentice,” Mordred said. “And you can leave now.”

  The Dragon growled in response. “You are still the apprentice,” he said sternly. “And as poor a student as you have been at times, it is a calling, not a cloak to be dropped on the floor when you grow too hot. You may refuse my teaching, but you will remain a Dragon’s apprentice until the end of your days.”

  “Then I’ll be what you made of me, Samaranth,” Mordred said, turning back to the fire, “and the next time I see you, we shall see if one Dragon may kill another.”

  He said nothing more, and after a time, the great Dragon gave a sigh, and with a stroke of his wings, lifted silently into the night.

  It was not an hour later when the Scholar appeared, quietly, unobtrusively, in the corner of the room, just out of range of the firelight.

  “Greetings, young Madoc,” he said, his voice quiet but firm. “Well met.”

  “My name,” Mordred spat, not bothering to turn around, “is Mordred. And you have chosen a poor time to introduce yourself, whoever in Hades’s name you are.”

  “Wrong twice,” the Scholar said. “I have neither chosen poorly nor introduced myself.”

  Mordred spun about, reaching for his sword, then flushed with both anger and embarrassment when he realized he’d reached with his missing hand.

  “You have been the victim of a grave injustice,” the Scholar said. “I have come to right that wrong.”

  “I’ve heard that before,” Mordred said, hiding his stump under his cloak as if it were naked.

  “From the Elder Dragon, yes,” the Scholar replied. “But his agenda is not mine. And I am not going to ask you for anything. I am merely here to serve.”

  “Serve?” Mordred barked. “Whom do you serve, here, in this place?”

  The Scholar bowed. “A king, my lord. I serve you.”

  Mordred’s face grew tight. “I am no king,” he said brusquely. “Especially not here.”

  “You are a king with no country,” the Scholar said, “but you remain a king, nevertheless.”

  Mordred hesitated—the Scholar’s soothing words were doing the job they were intended to do.

  “Winter is approaching,” he said, turning to stoke the fire and add tinder to it. “A poor time to become a king.”

  “Winter’s king now,” the Scholar said persuasively, “and king of all else in time.”

  “Do not promise that which you cannot give,” said Mordred.

  “I never do,” said the Scholar. “May we sit, and speak further . . . my lord?”

  Mordred regarded the Scholar warily. His manner was not imposing, and his words dripped with honey . . . . But somehow, this strange, slight man who wore a monk’s robe and called him lord understood what he needed to hear. And, Mordred realized, it had been a very, very long time since anyone had understood that, much less spoken the words.

  “All right,” he said, gesturing to the chair opposite his seat by the hearth. “Whom am I conversing with?”

  The Scholar took a seat and extended his hand. “Dr. Dee,” he said firmly. “But you can call me John.”

  “Call me Jack.” Hearing those terrible words, spoken by this pale man who called himself Lord Winter, was like stumbling into the Styx and feeling the cold death of the water splashing against one’s soul.

  Lord Winter noted the companions’ shocked reaction with a wry expression, then walked across the terrace to where a long table had been set up for a feast.

  The geometric shapes and the attendants marked as Dragons stayed where they were, watching silently.

  The settings at the table were familiar, as were the dishes the food was served on—it was patterned after the Feast Beasts’ dinner table at Tamerlane House. Except none of the foods were recognizable, and the details of the plates were not quite right.

  They were made of bronze rather than silver, and the designs were imprecise, as if they were being viewed through
a fuzzy lens, or had been made of wax that had softened over time. Or, thought Rose, as if they had been remade from old, imperfect memories of what the real dishes looked like.

  Lord Winter took his seat at the head of the table and gestured for his guests to join him—but none of them moved. A look of irritation flashed across his features, and with a gesture, he signaled to his Dragon aides to escort each of the companions to their seats around the table. Winter watched as each of his “guests” pulled out their chairs to sit, giving each one a thorough once-over, but paying particularly close attention to Rose.

  When everyone was in their place, Burton broke the tension by blurting out the first question that was on all their minds: “Your servant, Vanamonde, said that everyone on this world is Lloigor. Are you also a Lloigor, ‘Jack’?”

  “Right to the point, eh, Sir Richard?” Lord Winter said, unruffled by the question. “The answer is yes, I am. But the larger question is, why aren’t all of you?”

  “Why would we be?” asked Charles. “If you were truly Jack—”

  “I am,” Lord Winter replied, “just as much as you are who you are, Charles.”

  “You haven’t answered me,” Charles said, his voice reflecting the misery in his face. “Why would we be Lloigor?”

  “On the rare—exceedingly rare—occasions that we encounter someone who has not chosen the path,” said Winter, “their shadows are severed, and they are assigned new shadows, from those of the Echthroi who are still waiting for hosts.” His eyes flickered up to the geometric shapes in the air, which vibrated slightly with the attention. “It is a condition of living in Dys.”