The Shadow Dragons

by James A. Owen

  “Thank you, Warren,” she said.

  “Welcome, miss,” said the bird, bowing its head.

  They began by having Quixote relate the tale of the cave on Avalon, and what the Lady Guinevere had said to him regarding their enemies.

  “She said a great weapon was being brought to bear against the forces of the light,” he said somberly, “and that we would need a weapon of equal power to combat it. I asked where such a weapon could be found, and in reply she said to seek the Lady, that she may return what was given.”

  “The Lady of the Lake,” said Malory. “She cannot be summoned on a whim.”

  “Ah,” said Quixote, “that point of fact is exactly the reason I believe I am to play a role in this matter, and why the Frenchman believed I was the knight of the Prophecy.

  “Many years ago I was called upon to perform a service for the Caretakers.”

  “And a job well done,” said Cervantes. “You traveled to the Summer Country and to the edges of the Archipelago itself, and you brought back the Geographica”

  “Indeed,” said Quixote, “but what none of you knew, save for my partner Edmund, was that in the course of events I performed a service for the Lady of the Lake. And to this day, she owes me a boon.”

  “This wasn’t in any of the Histories,” Irving said with an irritated glance at Spenser. “Where was it chronicled, Caretaker?”

  “It’s in one of the appendices,” replied Spenser, “under the title ‘The Thin Man and the Queen of Stars.’”

  “Ah,” said Irving. “Your pardon, Edmund.”

  “If you are able to summon the lady,” said Chaucer, “what weapon do you believe she will give you?”

  “‘Return what was given,’” Jack said suddenly. “That can only mean one weapon. We saw it given to her ourselves, John.”

  “That’s right,” said John. “It’s in one of the, ah, less accurate chronicles written by Geoffrey of Monmouth. After the first battle with Mordred in Camelot, when we brought Rose to restore Arthur’s life, he called on the Lady of the Lake—his mother—and gave the shattered pieces of his sword to her.

  “The weapon we need to defeat the Winter King is the weapon he wanted for himself,” John finished, now visibly excited. “It’s the sword of Aeneas! It’s Caliburn!”

  “I concur,” Chaucer said, after all the murmuring and table thumping that had followed John’s statement had died down. “That must be the weapon mentioned in the Prophecy. But that still leaves us with many unknown pieces on the board. Even if Quixote should succeed in obtaining Caliburn from the Lady, it must still be repaired—and there is no one living who knows how it was forged.”

  “The Cartographer,” said John. “It may be worth consulting him.”

  “A possibility,” allowed Chaucer. “A better one may be the Ancient of Days—the shipbuilder Ordo Maas. He has knowledge of techniques long lost to the rest of the two worlds. He might be willing to help.”

  “And then what?” said John. “We wait for our adversary to make his plays and then respond in kind? You said the war had not yet begun in the Archipelago, while it’s been raging along in the Summer Country. What if he’s there already? What if he’s planning on turning it into the Winterland first—and then returning here?”

  “He hasn’t been in the real world,” Bert said. “We’d have known, or seen some aspect of his movements there. But we’ve seen nothing.”

  “He has to be operating somewhere,” said Jack. “Burton and the others of the Imperial Cartological Society are operating in both worlds—why can’t he?”

  “You’ve hit the problem on the head, boy,” said Twain. “They must have a base of operations, but we just haven’t been able to locate it. And believe me,” he added, tapping out his cigar, “we’ve looked. In both worlds.”

  “It isn’t there,” a soft, slight voice said from somewhere above them. “The place you’re seeking—it isn’t there.”

  As one, the assembly looked up to the figure standing at the railing above and gasped in unison.

  It was the master of the house.

  He stood to the right side of the landing, which was still steeped in shadows. His smallish frame seemed to implode upon itself as he stood there, moving his hands nervously, trying to decide what to do with them. His eyes glittered from under a deep brow and his hair was strewn about as if he’d just risen from a long nap.

  He finally gripped the railing to steady himself, then repeated the words he’d spoken: “The place you’re seeking isn’t there.”

  Edgar Allan Poe quietly descended the staircase and moved around the table to take his place at the head—a place John had assumed was reserved for Jules Verne.

  “Is Poe the Prime Caretaker?” he whispered.

  “You’ve already guessed that Verne has that title,” Bert whispered back, “but we can discuss that another time. Poe is something else altogether. He may have a mild manner and bearing, but believe you me—he functions on an entirely different level from the rest of us.”

  The regard the Caretakers Emeritis held for Poe was evident in their treatment of him. Not a one among them stirred or spoke. The slight man sat and moved some stray strands of hair out of his eyes; then he leaned back, clasping his hands together.

  “One of the reasons I shared my discovery of the Soft Places,” he began, “is because they are not just places of sanctuary, but may also be used as beachheads against us in the war. We have sent our agents out among the myriad dimensions not only to act as our messengers, but to serve as our spies. The enemy’s refuge must be somewhere.”

  “But most of the Crossroads end at taverns or inns,” said Jamie. “Even accounting for a portion of the lands around them, they just aren’t large enough. It would have to be a hidden village, like Brigadoon.”

  “Brigadoon is simply a story from the Encyclopedia Mythica,” Poe said, “but in principle, you are correct. There must be a township, or a village, or an island somewhere among the Soft Places large enough to contain the armies of the Winter King and his allies. If we are to gain an advantage, we must find that place.”

  “Whom do we have out?” Chaucer asked.

  “Hank Morgan, Alvin Ransom, and the Rappaccini girl,” said Twain. “And Dr. Raven. You know what happened to Arthur Pym.”

  “Yes,” said Poe. “Most unfortunate.”

  “They should be reporting in soon,” said Twain. “I’ve sent them messages via the Trumps, and their information may prove very useful, especially now that all the major players are here.”

  “I agree,” said Poe. “We shall adjourn for the evening, to rest and recharge, so that we are prepared for what is to come.”

  The Caretakers all stood up from the table with Poe and moved to various parts of the house to commiserate in small groups. Quixote sat with Spenser, Cervantes, and Brahe by the great fireplace, and in one of the anterooms, Defoe and Swift were showing Rose how to make treasure maps. “You see,” Defoe explained as he drew on a sheet of parchment, “you make any shape that seems right. Then you use the names of anyone around you to name the geographical details, like marshes, and rivers, and mountains. And then you make an X where you want the treasure to be. And I promise you, if you find an island that matches the map, you’ll also find the treasure.”

  “Or you’ll be shot by tiny people with tiny arrows,” said Swift. “And you don’t want to know about the talking horses.”

  “I swear, I thought they were centaurs,” protested Defoe.

  “Daniel, Jonathan,” Twain said in warning. “Watch your tongues when there’s a lady present.”

  “Sorry,” Defoe and Swift said together.

  Professor Sigurdsson was fascinated by Archimedes and retreated with the owl to the library for a game of chess before John could pull him aside.

  He had wanted to speak to the professor at length, but Bert tugged on his arm before he could follow them. “There’ll be plenty of time to speak to Stellan later,” Bert said. “The master of the house
would like a private audience with the three of you upstairs in his quarters.”

  “Poe wants to talk to us?” Charles exclaimed. “Wonderful!”

  “Just be careful,” Bert cautioned as they ascended the stairs. “He is most trusted, but he is very eccentric. He doesn’t always make sense—not at first, anyway. But he is always worth listening to, and he is responsible for everything we have. Even Jules defers to him.”

  “Lead on, MacDuff,” said Jack.

  “That bird is a bad influence,” Bert said. “On all of you.”

  Four flights up, Poe’s own space in Tamerlane House was a room barely sixty feet square. In one corner was a shabby little camp bed, under which a pair of shoes were neatly placed. In the opposite corner were a writing desk and a simple tallow candle. There was no other furniture, or indeed, decoration of any kind in the room. It was the one place in that entire exceptionally colorful house that seemed to have had the color leached from it. John thought it was the most melancholy room he’d ever seen.

  Poe was sitting at the desk, writing.

  “What do you think of utopias?” he asked without turning around.

  “I’m for them, myself,” said Charles.

  “It would depend,” said Jack. “I worry that we’d grow stagnant as a civilization if we truly lived in a utopia.”

  “Your mentor, Master Wells, had the same worry,” said Poe. He turned around and looked at John, his eyes huge in the dim light of the candle. “Do you know what kind of problem I have with utopias?”

  John blinked. “I’m sure I have no idea,” he said.

  “Pistachio nuts,” Poe said. “None of them mention pistachio nuts. I love them myself—but they seem to get left out of all of the perfect societies. Would you like a pistachio nut?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he held out his hand and dropped a nut into each of the companions’ hands. He popped one into his mouth and crunched on it, so the others did the same.

  “Follow me,” Poe said, rising from the chair, still chewing. “I’d like to show you something.”

  He led John, Jack, Charles, and Bert down a long hallway that became taller and narrower as they went. Near the end, they found they had to turn sideways just to squeeze through.

  “You all right, Jack?” asked John.

  “Yes,” Jack grunted. “Just regretting eating so many of Mrs. Moore’s meat pies.”

  At the end of the hall was a wide atelier lit by a massive chandelier, and at the far side of the room, near a window, sat a man, painting.

  “Basil Hallward, our resident artist,” Poe said in introduction. “Oscar Wilde discovered the young man at Magdalen and found he had a remarkable gift for portraiture. We brought him here and commissioned him to create the portraits of past Caretakers.”

  Hallward glanced over at the companions and nodded distractedly, then did an abrupt double take. He jumped to his feet and threw a sheet over the canvas in progress.

  “I say,” Charles remarked, “were you by chance painting a portrait of me?”

  Hallward choked, then looked to Poe, who calmly returned the artist’s gaze before looking up at Charles.

  “Ransom,” Poe said simply. “He was painting Alvin Ransom.”

  “You do look quite similar, Charles,” said Jack.

  “My word,” Charles exclaimed. “I hope nothing’s happened to the poor fellow.”

  “Oh, no, not at all,” Poe answered. “It’s just a precaution. What’s useful for us Caretakers is also useful for our apprentices.”

  Hallward nodded. “Useful, yeah. Useful.”

  “I agree,” a voice said behind them. It was Defoe. “Nothing like having someone handy who can—literally—paint the illusion of life,” he said cheerfully.

  Poe looked askance at Hallward. “You’ve painted pictures for some of the others?”

  “I’ve considered availing myself of his services once or twice,” Defoe said, smirking.

  “Now, Daniel,” said Bert, wagging a finger in warning, “we’ve cautioned you about that before. Caretakers only. It’s too dangerous to have others hanging around the gallery who might overhear our secrets without the oath of secrecy to bind them.

  “And you,” he finished, pointing at Hallward. “No freelancing.”

  “Yes, sir,” the painter said, chagrined.

  “Caretakers only?” Jack whispered to Charles. “But didn’t he just say that Hallward was completing a painting of Ransom?”

  “Poe said apprentices, too,” Charles reminded him.

  “May I have a word?” Defoe said to Poe. “I’d like to discuss the Kipling situation.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Bert. “I’ll see the lads to their rooms.”

  He led the companions back out of the atelier and closed the door. “Defoe and Kipling were close,” he explained. “This has got to be quite a blow for him.”

  “For us all,” said Jack. “I just wish we’d said something earlier.”

  “Not everything can be forecast,” said Bert. “Not even the things we already know will happen.”

  “Isn’t it risky that so many future events are known and being acted on?” asked Jack. “Won’t that disrupt the future—or worse, corrupt the prophecies?”

  “Jules and I decided some time ago to view everything as being the past,” said Bert. “That’s one advantage of having lived eight hundred thousand years in the future. If I view it all as history, then all we’re doing is trying to shape the best history possible. Sometimes that means keeping information, such as the prophecies, a secret. And other times it means sharing as much information as possible about the immediate future so that the right preparations can be made.”

  “Or so that you can pinch books of American presidential quotations from thirty years hence, so you can sound erudite and wise,” John said, winking.

  “Will you let that go?” said Bert irritably. “I tell you, if Milton had heard Kennedy speak, he’d have swiped it himself.”

  “What do you mean by ‘immediate future’?” asked Charles.

  “No more than a century or two,” said Bert, “but that’s one of the reasons we do use the knowledge. My own chronicle warned of that.”

  “The Shape of Things to Come” said John. “I read it, but it came out in the thirties and was written by our Wells, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes,” said Bert. “It was based on my own version, but with two major differences. While both predicted World War II, and both saw it as lasting for two decades and ending with a plague that nearly destroys the world, his ends with an eventual utopian society, and mine does not.”

  “What’s the other difference?”

  “His was fiction,” said Bert, “and mine is not; it is occurring as we speak.”

  “So the Winter King is trying to create the Winterland,” said Jack.

  “That’s why we hoped to start our countermeasures in 1943,” said Bert. “I fear he already has.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Adversary

  The night passed quickly, and when the Caretakers all gathered again in the conservatory for breakfast, the sun was still low on the horizon.

  “The Caretakers keep Oxford hours, it seems,” Jack said, yawning. “Early to bed, early to rise. I can’t believe we’re the last ones awake.”

  “I don’t think they have to sleep when they’re in the paintings,” said Charles. “Or if they do, it’s not because of exhaustion.”

  “Maybe we’ll be paintings here someday,” said John. “Won’t that be a nice thing to look forward to in our old age? The chance to do it all again?”

  Jack started to respond, but Charles scowled and walked away, waving a hand in greeting at some of the other Caretakers.

  “What’s gotten under his hat?” said John.

  “I think he’s just worried,” Jack replied. “There’s a lot to process, even for someone of Charles’s perception.”

  The Feast Beasts had once again served an extraordinary repast. Fresh fruit, of v
arieties both identified and not; vegetables of unusual shapes and colors, which nevertheless exuded fantastically saliva-inducing aromas; eggs Benedict; milk from eight kinds of cows, three kinds of goats, and one more animal—the pitcher of which no one would touch. There were green eggs and ham, hashed brown potatoes, and country-style omelets.

  Three . . . glided close, then landed smoothly on the

  deck.

  “I’m normally as carnivorous as the next man,” Jack said to Bert, “but we have lots of friends here in the Archipelago who are talking animals, and there are at least three dishes on the table featuring ham. It’s making me a little uncomfortable.”

  “Worry not,” Bert said as he sat at the table and tucked a napkin into his collar. “For one thing, there are certain dishes, such as my beloved eggs Benedict, that just aren’t the same without meat. And for another thing, it’s no one you know.”

  “Very comforting,” said Jack.

  The Caretakers were just finishing up the breakfast feast when Charles, Jack, and John pulled Bert into the corridor for a word in private.

  “I hesitate to bring this up too loudly,” Charles said, looking around almost guiltily, “but you’ll understand, considering the reaction everyone had when Kipling couldn’t produce a pocket watch.”

  Bert grinned. “You’re worried because you and Jack don’t have watches.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Understandable, my boy, totally understandable,” said Bert. “But you needn’t have worried. For one thing, you are current Caretakers. If we didn’t trust you, you would not have kept the job this long, especially given some of the, ah, hiccups of your tenure.

  “For another, we believe you three to be the scholars mentioned in the Prophecy. No amount of precaution would prepare us if you chose to cross over to the other side.

  “And lastly, it wasn’t until after 1936 that we realized we had to discover some way to identify our own agents—and we’d already used the watches to do so in a limited capacity. So in short, the reason you don’t have watches yet is because you disappeared for seven years, and we hadn’t had the chance to give them to you yet.”