Here, There Be Dragons Page 6

  She gestured brusquely at the Geographica. “Can you read that thing or not?”

  “Of course he can,” Bug said. “He just needs some practice, right, Sir John?”

  Aven snorted at the honorarium, but Bert voiced his agreement with the boy. “He’s had a rough time of it, daughter. But he’ll be up to the task in short order, of that we can be sure.”

  Wordless, Aven went back about her work, followed eagerly by Jack.

  “Perhaps you should spend some time in the cabin studying the Geographica,” Bert suggested to John. “Just to become better acquainted with it.”

  John nodded. “That’s not a bad idea. At least then maybe then I’ll look smarter if Phileas Fogg stops by to correct my navigation.”

  “Never happen,” said Bert. “Fogg hates sailing.”

  “Speaking of which,” said Charles, who was looking aft, “I daresay Nemo must have forgotten something—he’s coming back.”

  “What?” Aven said. “He’s ahead of us. He wouldn’t be approaching from the east.” She shoved Charles roughly aside and peered through a spyglass toward where he’d been pointing.

  “That’s not the Nautilus,” Aven said. “It seems our enemy has decided to step out of the shadows and make his intentions clear.”

  The fog parted, and a massive hull, broader and more forbidding than the Nautilus came into view.

  It was the Black Dragon—the ship of the Winter King. And it was pointed at the Indigo Dragon at ramming speed.

  “What do we do?” said Charles.

  “Find something that’s bolted down and hold on,” said Bert. “Let Aven do her job—there’s nothing the rest of us can do now.”

  “In London the ship pulled away from the docks against the wind,” said Charles. “Can’t it just, ah, twist out of the way and avoid being struck?”

  “She’s a ship, not a cat,” said Bert, “and the fact that she has a will of her own doesn’t mean she can pirouette on demand.”

  Aven was running back and forth across the deck and shouting orders, a frantic note in her voice. The ship of the Winter King was five times the size of the Indigo Dragon. The smaller craft would not survive a collision. But that, John surmised as he wrapped his arms around a section of rigging, was the point.

  The only chance to even survive the initial impact would be to turn the ship as the Black Dragon reached them—but there was no way to reorient the sails to do so. Not in the seconds that remained.

  This was apparent to everyone but Jack.

  In his youth he’d spent a summer with a tutor who sailed, and who loved to play just such a game of daring, only to tack into the wind at the last instant and avoid the collision.

  Easy with a skiff—not so easy with a galleon. Still, Jack thought it was worth a try.

  Leaping atop the cabin, he grabbed a short cutlass from a surprised crewman and began severing the lines that held down the starboard side of the sails.

  Aven looked on, incredulous. “Are you insane? If you cut those, the sails will…”

  She realized suddenly what he was doing and ordered all of the crewmen to help him.

  The gleaming black hull was bearing down on them with terrifying speed, but in seconds all the lines had been severed and the sails snapped around from the force of the wind. “Now!” Jack screamed. “Tack into it! Hit the rudder, hard as you can!”

  At once Aven, John, and Charles threw themselves onto the wheel and yanked it around. With a horrible groan of straining wood and metal, the ship wrenched around to face the Black Dragon just as it reached them—and passed by, with only inches to spare.

  “That was the stupidest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” Aven called out to Jack. But while her tone was harsh, she was smiling as she said it, and his heart soared.

  The companions looked up as the nightmare ship glided by, its deck populated with the worst sort of brigands and scoundrels—including Wendigo—all too surprised that the ship was still there to sling spears and fire arrows.

  As it passed, Aven’s stern countenance returned. “Jack saved us for the moment, but it’s going to take time to repair the riggings, and they’ll have wheeled about by then, even at that speed. Then they’ll have us.”

  “I’d hate to be wrong about this twice,” said Charles, “but now I’m quite certain that the Nautilus has indeed come back.”

  Approaching at a speed greater than that of the Black Dragon, Nemo’s ship had in fact reappeared to the north of them and was swiftly drawing alongside the Indigo Dragon.

  “I will never again disparage the work of Jules Verne,” said Charles.

  “Right there with you,” said John.

  “Were you this much trouble when you were first mate aboard the Nautilus?” Nemo called out to Aven, grinning.

  “No,” Aven shouted in response. “But it was only called the Yellow Dragon then, and neither of us had developed our delusions of grandeur.”

  “Get your crew working on the riggings. What happened to them, anyway?”

  Aven gestured at Jack. “That idiot cut the lines. It never would have occurred to me, but it saved the ship.”

  Nemo tipped his head at Jack. “Well done, young warrior. And now,” he concluded as, in the distance, the Black Dragon had turned and was regaining speed, “it seems I have a battle to fight.”

  “Nemo,” Aven began.

  “No,” he said, cutting her off. “You carry the Geographica. Get it and the Caretaker to Paralon. I’ll keep the Winter King occupied long enough to let you escape.”

  Nemo held a clenched fist across his chest—a gesture of respect, captain to captain.

  Aven returned the gesture and, shouting orders to her crew, turned the Indigo Dragon back with the wind. The ship, intuitive as ever, called upon her unique motive power and made full speed away from the fray.

  Several leagues away from the battle, the damage to the ship had been assessed, and to everyone’s relief, it was minimal. With the repairs underway, Aven turned her attention, and her fury, to John.

  “Enough of this! This is the second time I’ve risked my ship for you, and I’ve yet to see the reason why.”

  Bert tried to intercede, but she was having none of it. “Not this time, Father. You’ve made all the excuses for him I can stomach.

  “Every captain has maps of their own lands in the Archipelago, as well as of adjacent islands. Every captain, including the Winter King, can find their way around by trial and error. But only one atlas exists that contains them all, and only it can get us to where we need to be, when we need to be there. And only one person alive has been schooled and trained in the ancient languages and cultures that will allow him to interpret the directions in that atlas.

  “Well,” she said, thumping a fist on the Geographica, “this is that atlas. And you,” she said jabbing a finger at John, “are the Caretaker. So can you read it or not?”

  Defeated, John lowered his eyes in shame. “I can’t. I don’t know how.”

  …the members of the Parliament filed in and took their seats…

  Chapter Six

  The Tick-Tock Parliament

  “If that is true, then we may be lost,” said Bert. “Only a trained Caretaker can properly navigate a ship through the Archipelago of Dreams. The maps and notations are in a dozen languages, many of them long dead. There are very few people living who could make any sense of it at all.”

  The lines could not have been more clearly drawn: Aven, Bert, and, and surprisingly, Jack on one side; John, Charles, and Bug on the other.

  “Jack?” Charles said, a note of astonished surprise in his voice. “You can’t be siding with them. After all…” He began to say something, then seemed to reconsider, adding only a soft admonishment. “Bad form, Jack.”

  “But Aven’s right,” said Jack. “We were chased out of London, running for our very lives, all because of him and that book. His teacher was killed for it. The entire Indigo Dragon was nearly just destroyed for it. And this entire…wher
ever we are, may be going to war over it. And he’s supposed to be the only one alive who can read it, and he’s failed.”

  “Jack!” Charles said. “That’s quite enough.”

  “But he’s right,” said John. “I have failed.”

  Aven swore and reached for her broadsword, but Bert inter-ceded and held her arm. “There has to be an explanation, Aven. I’m the one who chose him.

  “John,” Bert said, unable to hide the pleading in his voice, “I have read your work. You have the gift, I know it. And Stellan knew it too. That’s why he agreed to take you on. Why, I’ve seen the correspondence myself—he was training you.”

  “Yes,” John said, “he was. But I wasn’t learning—not as I should have, at any rate.”

  He turned to Charles and Jack, resigned. “It never seemed to be important,” he explained. “Ancient languages that no one else could read…Who could have imagined there would ever be a need? My friends at home, even my wife—they all questioned the wisdom of spending so much time on what seemed to be impractical pursuits.”

  “Not so impractical now, is it?” Jack said.

  “For God’s sake, Jack,” said John. “There is a war on! I could hardly be expected to spend what little free time I had reading and translating manuscripts in Old Teutonic.”

  “Men will die because you didn’t,” Aven said. “And perhaps already have.”

  “He doesn’t care,” Jack said.

  “Yes, I do!” John shouted, grabbing Jack by the coat. “I do care, you fool! I have seen men die! I have felt the spray of their blood on my face as men I laughed with, ate with, sheltered with, died in front of me! Can you say the same?”

  They were both shaking. John’s face had broken out in a sweat, and his breathing was fast and shallow. After a moment he released Jack and dropped his head into his hands.

  “I’m sorry, Jack,” John said after a time. “I do feel as if I’ve failed all of you—but the professor most of all. Believe me, I didn’t know…I never knew what—”

  “Enough, John,” said Charles, putting his arm around his companion’s shoulder. “Let’s all take a little while to compose ourselves, and then maybe we can have a look and decipher it together. Three heads are better than one, and all that. What do you say, Jack?”

  But when they looked up, Jack and Aven had already moved to another part of the ship, commiserating. Bert stood in the doorway of the cabin, eyes downcast, caught in the middle of his hope and his fear. Only Bug remained with them, wanting to help, but obviously swept up in something bigger than his experience could provide for.

  The fellowship had been broken. And there was nothing any of them could do but continue sailing toward Paralon.

  Despite his positive demeanor, after an hour with the Geographica even Charles had to admit he was at a loggerheads with it. His editorial position at the Oxford University Press had allowed him a great deal of experience with Latin, so those passages and some of the Greek phrases were not totally undecipherable—not that it helped much.

  “I also get a smattering of Old English, and a few words of Hebrew, but the rest is dead impossible,” said Charles. “There are a great deal of annotations in modern English, but there’s no hierarchy to it, no order, other than a rough chronological one.”

  This pronouncement did little to assuage John’s melancholy mood, or Jack’s defiant one. Bert was still subdued, but hopeful. “Look,” he said, “since Paralon is the ‘capital’ of the Archipelago, its map has been extensively annotated in English.

  “I myself have added to the listing, so I can read most of it myself from past experience. Besides,” he added, “we’re already pointed in the right direction, so we should make it that far without incident. After we’re there, then perhaps we can locate a scholar, or appeal to the Parliament for access to the king’s archives and library for help.

  “Cheer up lad,” he finished. “We still have options.”

  “Maybe,” Bug offered from the nook in the cabin where he’d been observing, “the Council will decide on a new king, and you won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

  “Think good thoughts, lad,” Bert said as he left the cabin, closing the door behind him.

  The sun was nearing the apex of its arc across the sky when the crewman in the crow’s nest called out, “Land, ho!”

  They had arrived at Paralon.

  The island was far larger than Avalon, or any of the Shadowed Lands they had passed. In the distance a mountain range could be made out, as well as the dark greens of what could only be great forests. The vista was stunning enough that even the taci-turn fauns paused in their labors to watch as they approached.

  The harbor toward which they sailed was formed around a natural river basin that emptied into the sea, just deep enough for ships to moor. The ground beyond sloped up gently to a landscape of low rolling hills and fields, then abruptly shifted to a domineering ridge of plateaus that rose straight up from the valley floor.

  On the tallest of these stood a massive stone fortress, gray and forbidding: The Castle of Paralon, wherein sat the Silver Throne of the High King of the Archipelago.

  This was not Camelot, as they had suspected it might resemble, but something far more primal, which shimmered with the raw energies of living myth. It was the archetype of archetypes; Paralon was the reality that the legend of Camelot aspired to be.

  “Dear Lord,” Charles breathed. “It’s magnificent.”

  John and Jack both nodded in agreement. Even Mad King Ludwig had never imagined a castle such as this.

  “There are a number of ships in the harbor,” Aven noted. “The council may already have begun.”

  “So this Paralon,” Charles said as they began to disembark, “is the largest military power in the Archipelago?”

  “Why would you think that?” Bert said in surprise.

  “How else would it become the locus of power?”

  “See those forests in the distance?” Bert asked. “Apple orchards—hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. Military might is transferable, losable, comes and goes. But good produce,” he finished with a wink, “good produce is very difficult to attain.”

  Jack busied himself trying to be helpful to Aven, who did her best to ignore him without seeming to. His reckless but successful move during the encounter with the Winter King, as well as his sympathetic distancing from John, had emboldened him, much to her dismay.

  Bert helped a still downcast John secure the Geographica inside a sturdy leather case with straps that could be slung over his shoulders for easier carrying, which Bug offered to do. He took his role as John’s squire seriously and was attentive to any ways he might be helpful. Besides, there was no way to suggest that he stay behind—not when the prospect of seeing real knights and kings lay before him.

  Charles was already at the far end of the dock, where a small figure was cursing and banging at the insides of an odd contraption that appeared to be the offspring of a clockwork automobile and Cinderella’s pumpkin carriage.

  “Keep at it,” Charles said. “I’m sure you’ll get whatever the trouble is sorted out.”

  “I’ll do my best, which is all any of us can do, in’t it?” came the reply.

  Charles yelped and jumped back as he realized the creature that had answered him was not a man, or even one of the fauns.

  It was a badger. In a vest and waistcoat, walking upright, with a pince-nez in one eye and spats on both furred feet.

  Charles was still stammering in disbelief as the others came up behind.

  “A waistcoat, but no trousers?” John asked.

  “It’s very impolite to take notice,” said Bert.

  “Be ye royalty types, or officious emissaries?” the badger asked.

  “Scholars,” said Charles. “We be…ah, that is, we are scholars.”

  “Scowlers, are ye?” said the badger. “And whereabouts do you do yer scowlerin’?”

  “Ah, Oxford, actually,” Charles said.

&nbs
p; The animal seemed to take this as a matter of course. “Oh yes, Oxford. A place of scowlerly knowledge and Druidcraft. Lord Pryderi of the race of Man was an Oxford scowler.”

  “And you,” said Jack. “What’s your name?”

  “Pardon my manners, young scowler,” said the badger with a gesture that was halfway between a squat and a bow. “I be called Tummeler, and Tummeler is me.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Mr. Tummeler,” said Jack, who, to the badger’s delight, shook his proffered paw. “I’m Jack. These lot are my friends and fellow, ah, ‘scowlers,’ John, and Charles, and our captain, Aven. The fellow with the hat is Bert.”

  “Welcome, scowler Jack and all,” said Tummeler. “Be ye here for the Council?”

  “We are,” said Bert. “Has it begun?”

  “Not yet,” said Tummeler, “as a number of designates such as y’rselves are only just arrived, and the Council at Paralon asked ol’ Tummeler to escort any last-minute princely sorts and emissaries as may be expectin’ to attend.”

  He beckoned at them with a paw and turned away. “This way, if you please, young scowlers and company. The Council awaits.”

  In short order Tummeler had the vehicle running (with a discreet assist from Aven, who didn’t want to embarrass the small mammal in front of visitors by pointing out that a clump of badger fur was obscuring one of the contacts in the engine) and they started across the valley to the castle.

  “We calls ’em principles,” said Tummeler, referring to the steam-belching vehicle in which they traveled. “As in, ‘you can get from here to there, but it’s easier to do it with principles.’ That’s in general. This ’un,” he continued proudly, “I calls the Curious Diversity.”

  “Fascinating,” said Charles. “How does it run?”

  “Well enough for all practical porpoises,” said Tummeler.