The Clockwork Dragon

by James R. Hannibal

  A quiet moment to chat? She was losing it. “Archivist, we—”

  “We never talked about that incident in the Ministry of Dragons Collection.”

  Maybe she wasn’t losing it. Jack wanted answers about that night, but not like this. “Did you open the cages?”

  “Yes. Of course.”

  “Of course,” Jack repeated, not understanding how the phrase applied. Her actions had almost cost him and Gwen their lives. “Um . . . Why ‘of course’?”

  “How else would you have learned who you really are?”

  That night was the first time Jack had heard a dragon’s thoughts, the first time he had created fire out of nothing—with brutal consequences. “You wanted me to know that I’m a drago.”

  “Has anyone ever told you where dragonite comes from?” The Archivist turned his hand over and pressed it down on the stone so that he could feel the heat. “Dragon eggs. Shells crushed and pressed together for eons. Dragonite is like a yolk, from which a dragon draws nourishment, all through its life.”

  It draws nourishment. Like drawing heat. Jack hesitated before asking the next question. “And . . . dragos draw from it too?”

  “Not all. But the strongest, yes. Dragons and dragos are bonded, Jack, linked together in the order of creation. In that, the long wushi are correct.”

  Jack remembered what Liu Fai had told him. “Man controls the fire.”

  “And the dragons serve and protect him in return. This is an idea that the knights of the Ministry of Dragons forgot long ago. But the bond between dragon and drago is not formed entirely of flame. That bond also requires . . . It requires . . .”

  The Archivist’s voice faded. Her fingers went limp in Jack’s hand.

  “Archivist?” Jack passed his hand up her arm until he found her neck, feeling for a pulse. He couldn’t find one. “Archivist!”

  In that moment, it occurred to him that he had never learned her name. She had to have one. Why had no one ever told him her name?

  “Archivist!”

  She made no response.

  Jack shouted in a raging effort to lift the slab that pinned her down. “Aghh!” It moved, which kind of caught him off guard. From what Jack could tell, the thing was six feet long. It must weigh a ton. “How—?”

  The Archivist’s voice came back to him. This stone is like a yolk, from which a dragon draws nourishment. And if what she said about dragos was true, Jack could draw from it as well. Had lying in dragonite rubble given him the strength to move a six-foot slab?

  Slowly, carefully, he pressed himself up to his knees. Jack’s back ached. His head still throbbed. He couldn’t see a thing. None of that mattered. “I’m getting you out of here.”

  Their little hollow within the rubble was tighter than Jack had first imagined. He couldn’t stand all the way up, but he had enough room to get some leverage. Jack slipped his fingers under the rough edge of the slab and bent at the knees, drawing heat through his arms. “Aghh!”

  The slab rose an inch, then two. “Come . . . on!” With sudden acceleration, the giant chunk flipped over and fell away with a tremendous crunch.

  “Great.” Jack dusted off his hands. “I have super strength, but only when I’m completely surrounded by dragon eggs. It’s the complete reverse of kryptonite.”

  Still, Jack could not see. No light—none at all—seeped through from the well into the crumbled vault. He sighed, then caught his breath. Crumbled. He remembered the poem. When castle crumbles, forms your grave, the fire inside will light the way.

  The rubble made seeing the room through echoes impossible, even for Jack. But if he could create his own light, he and the Archivist stood a chance.

  Lady Ravenswick had told Jack that dragos telekinetically excite the air to create fire.

  Her son, Liu Fai, had told him dragos draw in dust for fuel.

  “I’m a drago. I can do this.” Jack held a palm out into the black and concentrated. “Excite the air. Pull in dust. You’re a drago.”

  He felt the air molecules above his palm, soft and malleable. He felt the dust, fine and gritty. “Excite the air. Pull in dust.” Jack concentrated on stirring the molecules, whipping his concoction up to a blinding speed.

  Heat.

  Jack stared at the spot where he imagined his palm to be, begging the air to ignite.

  A spark.

  “Yes.” He kept stirring, grinding dust against dust for friction. A flash. Heat.

  Flame.

  A yellow tongue of fire rested in Jack’s palm, and he laughed out loud, until the light showed him the Archivist’s limp form.

  It took an agonizingly long time to locate an exit from their chaotic cave. Finally, Jack spotted a hole—a path leading upward through a jagged tunnel of rock. He had no guarantee of an exit on the other side, but it was his only chance. Thankfully, the Archivist wasn’t heavy, especially with the dragonite boosting his muscles. Jack lifted her up to his shoulder, and began the long hard trudge.

  The journey wasn’t pretty. At times, he had to set her down and drag her over the rocks, apologizing the whole time. Once he had to snuff out his light and use both hands to climb. He breathed a huge sigh of relief when he managed to light it again. After what felt like miles, he heard shouting in Chinese.

  He shouted back.

  No response—none that he could understand, anyway.

  Jack pressed on. The tunnel brightened with a light of its own. The voices grew closer. He cupped his hand and called out to them. “Hello?”

  “Jack!” Liu Fai appeared ahead of him, gripping the rock as if peering down through a hole.

  Was Jack going straight up? Maybe. “The Archivist is hurt. She needs help!”

  Liu Fai disappeared. More shouting. More hands than Jack could count reached down to take her from him, and Jack found it hard to let her go. “Be careful!”

  The hands returned, lifting him out into the light. He was in the well, on the stairs, still far from the top. Someone pressed a leather canteen into Jack’s hands. That same someone hugged him tight, wrapping him in the pinkish-purply haze of strawberries.

  “You’re all right. I can’t believe you’re all right.”

  “Gwen?”

  “Sadie is up top. She said she could feel your heart again. She told me I would find you.”

  A few steps above, two long wushi in green uniforms laid the Archivist on a stretcher. A woman in scrubs said something to Liu Fai, and from the look in his eyes—the way he bowed his head—Jack knew what she had said.

  I’m sorry. She’s gone.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE CLIMB UP THE stair felt like a funeral procession. The long wushi guards carried the Archivist like a fallen princess on a bier, with Liu Fai and the doctor at the head and Gwen and Jack lagging behind.

  “I can’t do this alone,” said Jack, watching the dragonite steps pass beneath his sneakers as if moving on their own.

  Gwen took his hand. “You don’t have to.”

  He knew what she meant. She would stand by him. But Jack couldn’t allow that. He was alone. And that was a fact he couldn’t escape. “You don’t understand.” Jack pulled his hand away. “I thought he had come for you.”

  “For me?”

  “I was so glad when you got out of the vault. I still am glad, even though . . .” Jack glanced up at the stretcher. The Archivist’s hands were folded peacefully at her waist.

  “I know. It’s the same for me, after watching you come out of that rubble and—”

  “It is not the same.” Jack locked eyes with her. “Gwen, this is about my nightmares.”

  He told her everything—the reason he had called her name in his sleep, the way she had died before his eyes night after night. “It was more than a dream, Gwen. I saw the clockwork dragon before we knew he existed. What if—?”

  “What if you saw our future? What if you have some Merlinian in you, like Sadie?”

  “Promise me you’ll make yourself scarce the next time tha
t dragon comes around.”

  Gwen snorted. “I’ll do no such thing. We’re talking about the Clockmaker. I’m not letting you face him, or whatever he’s become, alone.”

  Jack paused on the steps, letting her walk ahead of him. “I have to.”

  The procession was getting farther away. Gwen came back and took his arm. “Come on. If we’re too far behind, it will worry Sadie half to death.”

  The dragons—the real dragons—seemed to sense the sadness. The trio with the pearl ceased their game and crept to the front of their cave to watch. Up in the garden, Laohu fell into step beside the procession. Xiaoquan plodded along behind him, as if he no longer felt like flying.

  The guards and the doctor took the Archivist through the door beside the brook while Liu Fai led Jack and Gwen up to the top of the high dragonite wall. Sadie and the long wushi minister waited for them there, on wide battlements that looked west through the pillar mountains.

  Sadie threw her arms around her brother.

  The minister offered a short bow. “You have suffered a great loss. I am sorry. But now we must deal with this murderer. I understand the metal dragon took two more artifacts, the Immortal Key and the emperor’s fan. What else can you tell me?”

  Jack tried to answer, but Gwen elbowed his ribs and made a pointed look at Liu Fai. He got the gist. They were not at the Keep. This was Liu Fai’s ministry, his father, and his time.

  Liu Fai squared his shoulders. “The metal dragon was created by the Clockmaker, a madman that attacked London a little over a year ago, at the behest of Ignatius Gall.”

  “Gall.” The minister narrowed his eyes. “From the Ministry of Secrets. So this is an attack by a rival agency.”

  “No, Father. Gall is acting for his own interest.” Liu Fai glanced at Gwen and she gave him a nod. “He is seeking to complete the work of the First Emperor. He is seeking immortality.”

  “Preposterous. Immortality is a fantasy of the past.”

  “That is not what Gall believes,” interjected Jack. “And he has bigger plans. He’s been experimenting with mind transference, for control as much as for immortality. That is the secret of the clockwork dragon. The machine was not merely built by the Clockmaker. It is the Clockmaker.” He shrugged. “Unfortunately, I don’t know how to track him.”

  Sadie turned, looking out at the late afternoon. “You won’t have to. He’s coming back.”

  The other four rushed the battlements and stared. Jack thought Sadie had imagined it, until he picked up a hint of shadow within the orange fireball of the sun.

  The minister saw it too. “Shèjí ta! Shèjí ta!” he shouted at his guards. “Shoot it down!”

  Long wushi in blue appeared on the pagodas and bridges, firing crossbows. Their bolts plinked off the dragon’s blue-green armor.

  Jack lifted Sadie into the arms of a guard waiting at the stairwell. “Gwen! Time to go!”

  “Not a chance.” She stood her ground, wrapping one end of her scarf around her knuckles, and glaring at the incoming beast. “Bring it.”

  Red eyes flared.

  Steel jaws gaped open.

  “No!” yelled Jack, lunging for his friend.

  As Jack shoved Gwen into Liu Fai and his father, the creature smashed into him, knocking him off the wall. He felt the sickening sensation of a somersaulting free fall. He saw the ground coming up to meet him.

  Ash Pendleton had taught Jack how to tuck a shoulder and roll. But a roll couldn’t save him this time, not after such a long fall. He would hit the grass at breakneck speed. Literally.

  “Excite the air. Pull in dust.” He spoke the mantra out loud, the way he had spoken it in the darkness of the crumbled vault.

  Jack spun the air molecules over both palms and slammed particles of dust together, fighting to keep them tracking with his own accelerating fall. A spark flashed and fizzled in his right hand, then his left. He felt the air compress between his body and the grass.

  Fffoomp.

  The explosion cushioned the impact, but it still hurt. A lot. Jack rolled out across a blackened patch of grass and wound up flat on his back beneath the dangling, carplike whiskers of a yellow-gold dragon.

  Laohu bent his dragony nose down until it nearly touched Jack’s.

  The boy lied.

  The boy carries the flame.

  Jack jerked his head out from under the dragon and struggled to his feet. “I didn’t lie. I couldn’t do it before.”

  He saw a stream of flame coming in his mind. The sound of it formed into blue crystals tipped with gold, bursting one from another. Jack knew he wasn’t fast enough to get out of the way.

  Laohu was. The dragon coiled around him, dragging him out of the fire’s path, and the clockwork beast flashed by a fraction of a second later.

  “Jack!”

  Jack and Laohu skidded to a stop side by side at the edge of Xiaoquan’s pond. Jack searched for meaning in the treasure dragon’s coal-black eyes. Laohu wanted fire—yearned for it—that much was clear. He could have ignited his own flame during the clockwork dragon’s attack, but he chose to save Jack instead. White vapor spilled out between his platinum teeth.

  The flame, boy.

  Now.

  “You got it,” breathed Jack. What did he have to lose? He whipped open his palm to reveal a tongue of fire and pointed. “Go long.”

  Laohu leaped into the air and Jack tossed the fireball, lighting the dragon’s trail of vapor like a wick. With a mighty whoosh, the flame rocketed up to Laohu’s jaws and flared from his nostrils. Molten platinum poured down behind the once coal-black eyes.

  The flame!

  The clockwork dragon wheeled for another attack, and Laohu ducked his golden head through a serpentine turn to face the oncoming threat.

  Now, boy! Fight!

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  RED-ROBED LONG WUSHI FLOODED the yard, while others in blue robes ran out on the walls. Those in red dipped their hands into pouches as they ran, smothering the steel studs at their palms with globs of metallic gel. With the flick of a thumb, each struck a spark and hurled the resulting fireball at the clockwork dragon. It seemed they had developed a replacement for the lost telekinetic art of making fire.

  Their target, however, beat the fireballs back with its giant blue-green wings.

  The blue-robed warriors fired flaming arrows from the walls. A few stuck in the monster’s joints, but did little to slow it down. Steel jaws clamped down onto an arrow stuck in its wing, snapping it in half. The creature turned on the soldiers below and sprayed them with flame.

  The long wushi covered themselves with cloaks. Two caught fire. These quickly shed their burning garments and retreated. The others closed ranks to protect them.

  Fight, boy! Fight!

  Laohu glared at Jack with platinum eyes.

  Knowing what the gold dragon wanted, Jack conjured a flame the size of a volleyball. With both hands he thrust it at the metal dragon.

  The fire disintegrated in flight. The enemy, occupied with its assault on the long wushi, did not even notice.

  Jack could almost hear the disappointed sigh in Laohu’s next thought.

  Weak.

  The dragon coiled and launched himself at the clockwork dragon, shooting a jet of white-hot flame. At the last second he veered off and whipped the monster with a heavy flick of his tail, sending it tumbling sideways, its blue-green armor dented.

  As the monster struggled to regain stability, a stream of water pelted the back of Jack’s head. He turned to see Xiaoquan hovering over the pond. The blue dragon snapped his jaws and wiggled his tail like a puppy waiting for a treat.

  “You too, huh?” Jack formed a new fireball in his palm and tossed it sidearm over the water.

  Xiaoquan made a bid for the ball and missed. The dragon behind him did not.

  Biyu, lying on her favorite bridge, opened her great mouth and swallowed the fireball whole, the way she had swallowed the carp. Glistening emerald liquid replaced the black of her eyes.
Her lavender scales brightened to a red. Her emerald-green swirls darkened to black. Biyu rose, curling over herself as if using the slow, coiling roll to climb through the air.

  Xiaoquan let out a rasping whimper, wiggling his tail, still waiting for his treat.

  “Right. Sorry.” Jack conjured a small yellow-orange ball and lined up for a proper overhand pitch. This time the fireball flew straight.

  Xiaoquan caught it with a backward flip and dropped into the pond.

  Jack waited for him to shoot skyward, trailing a glorious fountain of water.

  Nothing.

  “Okay . . . ,” Jack said out loud.

  “Lucky Jack!”

  He heard a deep voice booming behind him. In Jack’s tracker brain, he could see the air breaking before the huge metal wings. He saw the blue-gold spikes of fire, and dove to his left.

  The clockwork dragon pulled up for another attack. “Jack!”

  Jack rolled to his feet. It had an extremely limited vocabulary.

  Laohu rocketed toward his metal rival, but the monster was ready for him. A line of thrusters fired along the base of each wing, spitting blue flame. It hovered, using its wings as a shield, and swung a plated metal tail to smack Laohu into the trees. It turned toward Jack.

  Across the grass, Biyu curled over herself, snaking through the air on her way to defend him, but she was too far away.

  Red fire glowed behind the clockwork dragon’s jaws.

  Jack’s dodge had put him on open ground, no cover in sight. Then the pond behind him began to boil. Steam rose. A liquid hill formed at the center, and a big fat dragon broke the surface. Great wings, light blue at the roots fading to pure white at the tips, surged out of the water and thrust downward with one giant beat. In the new dragon’s pale blue eyes, Jack recognized a mischievous smile.

  “Xiaoquan?”

  The enemy bore down from above. Adrenaline fueled the next fireball, a miniature sun glowing blue-white in Jack’s hands. He pushed it away with all his might, and hit his target square.