The Shadow Dragons

by James A. Owen

  “I don’t think it’s important right now,” Jack replied. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Bert moved into the next room, and John swiftly pulled Jack and Charles aside. “What do you think that was all about?”

  “I’ve no idea,” said Jack, “but he didn’t act like a man who had just been hunting us.”

  “He wasn’t, remember?” Charles said. “That was seven years ago.”

  “Does it really matter to these people?” John asked as Bert reappeared at his side. “They treat things like time, and space, and life and death as if they were playthings.”

  “Not playthings,” said Bert, interjecting himself back into the discussion, “but certainly more flexible than the men of science would have us believe. Come along now, lads. We’re about to take our places for dinner.”

  There were many ... the companions knew by name

  and reputation ...

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Cuckoo

  Everything in Camerlane House was evidence of two philosophies: that of excess, and that of quality. Whatever there was of any given category of object, be it china or clocks, was represented by hundreds of examples of the highest caliber. Room after room was filled to overflowing with rare and exquisite objects and items that might have been the plunder from a hundred very cultured pirates. It was, with no embellishment needed, a veritable treasure trove. But the most valued among its contents were just sitting down to what John, Jack, and Charles were certain was destined to be the most extraordinary dinner in the history of history.

  The great banquet hall was lit by brass lamps hung high in the air, and had been decorated with silk tapestries that seemed to be a visual representation of every story from every culture that had ever existed, living or dead. The details were such that an entire tale, start to finish, could be depicted in a few square inches, and the stories themselves frequently overlapped.

  The table was oak and ash, and fully sixty feet long and ten feet wide. It was set with flawless silver trays and crystal bowls, which promised a great feast to come.

  There were many Caretakers the companions knew by name and reputation, if not for their work, but several were entirely unfamiliar to them by appearance. Bert gladly acted the part of host and made sure that introductions were given all around while the preparations were being finished for the feast.

  On the left, Mark Twain and Daniel Defoe sat in deep discussion with Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. Charles Dickens, Mary and Percy Shelley, and Alexandre Dumas père sat directly across from them, arguing about some arcane poem and the meaning of life.

  Next to Dickens, on his left, sat Jakob Grimm, who was pouring wine for Jonathan Swift and, disconcertingly, a smiling Rudyard Kipling.

  At the far end of the table were those Bert referred to as the Elder Caretakers—which basically meant everyone who had performed in the role prior to the seventeenth century.

  Da Vinci had taken the first chair on the left, opposite Chaucer. Next to them were Sir Thomas Malory, who was dirtier than the companions would have imagined, and the Frenchman Chrétien de Troyes, whom Bert said had to be kept a distance away from Malory.

  Tycho Brahe, Miguel de Cervantes, and Edmund Spenser, the first trio of Caretakers, sat together on one side, and across from them, ravishing the fruit plates, were William Shakespeare, Kepler, and the philosopher Goethe. Next to him, Franz Schubert sat with his head down, talking to no one and just twisting his napkin into knots.

  “Schubert doesn’t socialize,” whispered Bert. “There aren’t enough women here to suit his tastes, and confident men make him uncomfortable.”

  “Are there any women here other than Mary Shelley?” John asked, looking up and down the table as he and his companions took seats adjacent to Mark Twain. “We certainly are a boys’ club, aren’t we?”

  “There have been one or two considered as apprentices,” Twain offered as he gestured at John with his cigar, “but Mary alone was chosen, I’m afraid.”

  The Feast Beasts, which were identical to the ones the Lost Book had imagined on Haven, entered the room with silver trays laden with roasts, and dumplings, and all manner of exotic delicacies. The companions had seldom seen such a repast, and it was only then that they realized how hungry they were.

  “I suppose it’s been days,” said Charles, “although in more practical terms you might say we haven’t eaten in years.”

  As they ate, Jack kept a wary eye on Kipling, whom he was still certain he’d seen at the Inn of the Flying Dragon. John, for his part, was itching to know why no one had taken the chair at the head of the table. He’d come to the conclusion that it had been reserved for the Prime Caretaker, and he knew without a doubt that Jules Verne was that man.

  Bert excused himself to go move Malory to a different chair. He’d been making comments about the French spices, and de Troyes was getting red in the face.

  After Bert got up, John realized that there was an uneasy truce being negotiated at this end of the table as well. Professor Sigurdsson had not looked up from his plate except to ask for the gravy boat; and across from him, James Barrie was trying desperately to look in any other direction. John decided that if anyone were to break the ice, it would have to be one of the current Caretakers.

  He elbowed Charles. “Say something,” John hissed.

  “What?” Charles hissed back. “I don’t want to be stuck in the middle.”

  “Anything. Just get one of them talking.”

  “So, Jamie,” said Charles jovially, “what happened to your dog? When you died, that is.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said John.

  “What?” said Charles. “You said anything.”

  The professor and Jamie looked at each other, then burst out laughing. When they caught their breath again, the two old colleagues regarded each other with baleful looks and held them, unblinking, until finally Jamie broke the trance and lowered his head.

  “You didn’t have to cross out my name,” he said without looking up. “In the Geographica. That was quite painful to me, Stellan.”

  “As your choice was painful to me, Jamie,” the professor noted. “Of them all, you had the most open mind. You understood the Archipelago better than any of us before or since—no offense, John,” he added quickly.

  “That may have been the problem, Stellan,” Jamie admitted, looking up again. “I would have given myself over to it too fully. And I knew that I had to make a choice, so I did.”

  “If it will help, yours wasn’t the only one, Jamie,” said the professor. “We crossed out Houdini and Conan Doyle’s names too, and one or two others as well.”

  “That doesn’t really help, no,” said Jamie.

  “So what did happen to your dog?” asked Charles.

  “The boys are taking care of him,” Jamie answered. “He’s in good hands.”

  “What?” Charles said again as he noticed Jack and John’s expressions of exasperation. “I was really worried about the dog, is all.”

  From the front of the table, Bert signaled for silence by tapping a spoon against one of the crystal glasses. “We’ve supped and feasted, and had more than a few drinks,” he announced with a conspiratorial wink at Percy Shelley, “among other things. And now it is time to call the Gatherum of Caretakers to order. We have business that urgently needs our attention.”

  He bowed to Chaucer and returned to his seat as the older man rose. “The floor is yours, Geoff.”

  “As Senior Caretaker,” Chaucer began.

  “Humph,” snorted da Vinci, who then muttered a curse in Latin.

  “As Senior Caretaker” Chaucer repeated more solidly, “it falls to me to present the dilemma presently facing the two worlds. It is only the gravest of circumstances that require us to meet, in the flesh, to determine a course of action.

  “Centuries ago, an evil man called the Winter King attempted to conquer the Archipelago by slaying his nephew Thorn, also called the Arthur, and in doing so, he nearly dest
royed our world.

  “Our world and the Archipelago are inseparably linked. What happens in one influences the other. And the Winter King’s war in the Archipelago plunged our world into the Dark Ages.”

  “They weren’t all that dark,” said Malory.

  “Now, Tom,” said Spenser.

  “After a terrible battle,” Chaucer continued, “the Winter King was defeated and went into hiding, somewhere on the edges of the world. A new High King, Artigel, was crowned, and the Imaginarium Geographica was made available to him to help unify his rule of the Archipelago.

  “The strength of Artigel and of all the High Kings who followed came from the Ring of Power, which allowed them to summon the great Dragons, who have always been the guardians of the Archipelago and all who reside within. But there was also a Prophecy that one day the Winter King would return, and bring darkness to both worlds.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Charles.

  “Shush,” said Jack. “He’s just getting to the interesting part.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of,” said Charles.

  Chaucer went on. “The Prophecy said he could be defeated only by three scholars, men of imagination from our world. But as the years passed, the Prophecy, and the warning, was forgotten.

  “Then, after centuries of hiding, the Winter King reemerged just as the Prophecy said, leading an army of terrible creatures from all the dark corners of the world. He once again sought to wreak havoc on the two worlds, and would very nearly have succeeded, had it not been for the three Caretakers of Prophecy: the successors of Bert and Stellan.”

  He gestured to John, Jack, and Charles, and as one the Caretakers Emeritus began a round of vigorous table thumping, punctuated by cheers, whistles, and “Well done’s.”

  John beamed, as did Charles. Jack, however, had learned to be more cautious, and he suspected that the story was not yet finished.

  “If we are the three of Prophecy,” Jack said when the applause died down, “then why was it necessary to keep it a secret for so long? Especially from us? Why not tell us, before all those events had become history?”

  “There are Histories, and then there are Prophecies,” Professor Sigurdsson explained. “Histories tell us of what was, and are dangerous only in that they contain secrets that might be cautiously shared. Prophecies tell us of what may be, and thus are full of mysteries that may be spoiled in the sharing.”

  Several of the others nodded and thumped on the table in agreement.

  “A History shared only expands knowledge,” said Chaucer, “which may then be used for good or evil. But to share a Prophecy too soon, or in the wrong company, risks a cascade of complications that may change the Histories themselves.”

  John, Jack, and Charles reddened with shame, each thinking of different situations but with the same cause: Are we here to be reprimanded? Did we do too poor a job?

  “Every one of us has made mistakes,” Bert said, correctly reading the expressions on his friends’ faces, “but that wasn’t why we couldn’t tell you.”

  “We didn’t tell you,” the professor continued, “because that would have compromised what was most important to your performance as Caretakers—your own point of view and natural judgment. If you knew there was a Prophecy about you, then you might start tailoring your responses to fit what you thought was supposed to happen, rather than doing what you believed in your hearts was the best course of action.”

  “If it helps,” added Bert, “we never knew which three Caretakers would be the ones referred to in the Prophecy—not until it came to pass. We realized you were the right three, because you were the ones on the job when the Winter King reemerged.”

  “Excuse me,” Charles said, raising his hand. “May I ask a question?”

  Chaucer smiled. “No need to raise your hand, Caretaker. We are all equals here.”

  “Some of us are just more equal than others,” said Defoe.

  “Hear, hear,” said da Vinci.

  “I was just wondering,” Charles continued, “what the point is of revealing the Prophecy to us now, when we battled the Winter King so many years ago?”

  “Ah,” said Chaucer. “So we get to the meat of it. Do you want to answer that, Samuel?”

  “Certainly,” Twain said, tapping out his cigar on a plate. “You are, of course, referring to your first encounter with the Winter King, are you not?”

  Charles gulped. “I suppose so.”

  “We discovered after the crisis wherein all the children and Dragonships were taken that the King of Crickets was actually the Winter King’s Shadow in disguise,” said Twain, “and for his Shadow to survive, he must also still be alive.”

  “That constituted your second conflict with him,” said Chaucer. “We believe the third is yet to come; the Prophecy speaks of three battles with the Winter King—who, despite your victories, remains our great adversary.”

  “But we destroyed the Shadow,” said John, “or at least, Peter Pan did. And we’ve come to believe in recent years that our true enemy is actually Richard Burton.”

  “Where choosing new apprentices was concerned, I had a very shallow learning curve,” Dickens said apologetically. “First Burton, then Magwich. We’d all have been better off if I’d never been chosen at all.”

  “That isn’t so,” said Kipling. “You yourself were a stellar Caretaker, and other than those two nonstarters, you’ve demonstrated exceptional judgment.”

  “Well, thank you, old fellow,” Dickens replied, “but when Burton is one of our primary adversaries, I can’t but regret all the training I did impart to him.”

  “Should we say anything about Kipling?” Jack whispered.

  “And look like idiots?” answered John. “He’s not said a foul word since we got here and hasn’t so much as looked cross-eyed at any of us. If he’s playing for the other side, he’s hiding it well. But if he isn’t, we’ll have just made a new enemy in our own camp.”

  “On the whole,” said Chaucer, “our record has been one with more victories than defeats, and we have more allies than enemies. And while our enemies are resourceful, and have much knowledge, they do not have it all. We have the Histories, and the prophecies, and the Imaginarium Geographica. And most vital to our cause, we also have the Grail Child. The odds are in our favor, regardless of those who chose to turn traitor.”

  There was more table thumping—but disturbingly, several pairs of eyes flickered toward Jamie as Chaucer spoke. Rather than ignore the glances, Jamie stood.

  “I may be unique among this gathering as the only one among us who was once a full Caretaker, and then resigned,” he said amidst an undercurrent of grumbles. “But I think my presence here is proof of where my loyalties lie. I have never, nor will I ever, betray our secrets to Burton or any other enemy of the Archipelago.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it?” asked John. “Burton feels exactly the same way. He believes he’s more loyal to the Archipelago by trying to bring all its secrets to light. He truly doesn’t understand what kind of havoc will be wrought.”

  “The Imperial Cartological Society,” Dickens said darkly. “They have been a thorn in our side for too long, and Burton has seduced many of our former allies.”

  “Have you been approached, Barrie?” Kipling asked. “Has Burton tried to recruit you?”

  Jamie blushed and fumbled with his buttons. “I must admit that he has tried, but not in years,” he replied with a glance at the companions. “He believed I might be eager to join him because of my choice to abdicate my responsibilities, but after I explained that my reasons were not the same as his, and that I intended to keep my oaths, he left me alone. And then I died, and it became a moot point.”

  “Good man,” said Kipling. “Would that others of our order had been as strong.”

  “We should be looking to Jakob,” Hawthorne said brusquely. “After all, his own brother was a washout as a Caretaker, and we know he’s already sworn allegiance to Burton.”

  “That’
s a lie!” Jakob Grimm shouted, standing and placing his fists on the table. “He would not betray us, and never would he betray me!”

  “What about Alexandre Dumas fils?” asked Defoe. “He made quite a show of leaving us, and was quite loud about his intentions to betray us all.”

  “Forgive me,” Alexandre Dumas père said, “and my son. I hope that he would not have sold us out to Burton and his ilk, but I cannot say with certainty.”

  “And would you betray us, for his sake, if he had?” Kipling asked.

  “Never.”

  “I’d be willing to give you both the benefit of the doubt, Jakob, Alexandre,” said Dickens. “I’ve been through similar situations myself, and I know how your loyalties have been tested.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Charles. “Maggot.”

  “Pardon?” said Dickens.

  “He means Magwich,” Jack corrected. “We’ve had more than our share of difficulties with him.”

  “I’m very sorry about that,” Dickens said. “It was an awful judgment call on my part to bring him in the first place. He was a very strange sort of fellow, but he had a good core—or so I believed.”

  “It’s well and truly rotten now,” said Charles. “He betrayed us once to the Winter King, and I have no doubt that he would do so again.”

  “I think he should be flogged,” said Shakespeare. “Posthaste. That will teach him the error of his ways, I think.” He looked around at the others, beaming, as if he’d just solved the world’s problems with a single remark—then deflated a little when he realized that no one was paying attention.

  “Magwich has already been made the Green Knight,” Bert said mildly. “He’s paying his dues.”

  “That’s just it,” said Charles. “He isn’t. The Green Knight isn’t on Avalon.”

  There was a chorus of disbelieving remarks and more than a little grumbling at that.

  “Charles,” Chaucer said skeptically, “the Green Knight cannot leave Avalon. It’s a binding of the Old Magic. Only the Dragons themselves might break such a binding, and they would hardly be inclined, since it was they who bound him in the first place.”