As they whispered back and forth, they moved stealthily out of the water, using the bulk of the Black Dragon as a blind. On the sand, Tummeler shook the water out of his fur and plopped down on his haunches, and Charles squatted down next to him, dropping the heavy shield to rest.
“There be just somethin’ I been wond’ring,” said Tummeler. “If it’s a big ol’ cooking pot, why does everyone call it ‘Aunt Dora’s Box’?”
“Pandora’s Box,” Charles corrected, “and it’s just the nature of things to change. That’s the nature of storytelling—a kettle becomes a cauldron becomes a crochan becomes a box, all depending on who’s telling the story. And since Pandora had it last, that’s the story—and name—everyone knows.
“Take your shield, for example,” he continued, turning over the shield and dusting off the sand. “It was probably used by a Roman soldier, or a legionnaire, or someone like that, and it was called ‘Polemicus’s Shield,’ or something like that—but I’ll always know it as ‘Mr. Tummeler’s…”
He stopped, mouth gaping.
“Master Charles?” said Tummeler. “What is it?”
Charles was looking at the surface of the shield. The pattern forged on it was a bit tarnished, but still gleamed with visible detail. It was a stylized depiction of the Medusa, from Greek myth.
“Tell me again what Samaranth said when he gave this to you, Tummeler.”
“Samaranth said it belonged to a famous hero in your world,” said Tummeler. “Pericles, or Theseus, or…or…”
“Perseus,” said Charles, as a connection clicked in his mind. “The shield belonged to Perseus.”
“That’s it!” Tummeler said excitedly. “Samaranth said that even th’ smallest o’ us c’n be a hero, if they have th’ chance—and he said this shield would give me th’ chance.”
“Did he now?” said Charles as a smile began to cheshire over his face. “I think he’s right—and I think we’re about to deal a nasty blow to the Winter King.”
“It only makes sense,” John said as he and Artus climbed the low rise of the ridge. “Arthur created the Silver Throne to rule in both worlds—our world and the Archipelago. If part of his power was the ability to summon the dragons, he would want to be able to do it no matter which realm he was in.”
Artus nodded, mute. It was beginning to be evident to him that John really believed he could make something useful happen—and Artus didn’t believe that himself. In the last few days, he’d seen a sharp line drawn between his boyhood fantasies about being a knight and the realities of living in a world where actions had real consequences.
It took only a minute for them to ascend to the rough circle of stones. As they stepped inside, a chill wind began to rise, concentrated within the circle itself.
“I think this was maybe a bad idea…,” Artus began.
John gripped him by the shoulders and spun him around. Artus expected a lecture, but John just smiled at him, as the wind grew in speed and intensity. “Think of it this way—if it works, it works. If it doesn’t, we tried. If knights only went on quests they were sure of, they’d never go at all.”
“Good point.”
The wind swirled about them as if it intended to rip them from the very Earth and fling them into the abyss. The roar of the falls echoed against the stone of the bluff, and the spray plastered their hair to their faces. The elements seemed to be conspiring to drive them back as John opened the Geographica and turned it to the page Artus needed.
“John,” Artus called out, “are you certain of this?”
“As certain as I can be of anything,” John called back over the violent storm.
“How can I do this, John?” Artus yelled. “I can’t! I’m not ready for this!”
John thrust the Geographica into Artus’s hands.
“You wished all your life to be a knight,” he said, his voice firm and his eyes clear. “Now claim your destiny, and become a king.”
Artus drew a deep breath and began to calm down. His eyes darted back and forth from the desperately earnest face of his friend to the near-holy book in his hands—a book that could create a king, that would create a king, if only he so chose.
Reading a few lines from a book to claim his heritage, his throne, and his destiny. As simple an action as drawing a sword from an anvil.
Artus looked over the lines a final time, then closed the book and began to recite:
By right and rule
For need of might
I call on thee
I call on thee
By blood bound
By honor given
I call on thee
I call on thee
For life and light your protection given
From within this ring by the power of Heaven
I call on thee
I call on thee
With the last word, the tempest around them suddenly began to fade.
Finished, Artus looked at the darkness, then at the book, then again out into the void. “Did I do it right?”
“You did just fine,” said John. “You certainly did something.”
“How long is it supposed to take?”
“It doesn’t say.”
They waited for five heartbeats, then ten.
Then twenty. Then twenty more.
Nothing happened.
Too much ground had been given in the effort to use Jack’s offensive. Charys and Eledir had trusted Nemo and Nemo had trusted Jack, and the line had been irrevocably moved. The allies had lost more than half of their soldiers to the Shadow-Born, and although the Wendigo had at worst killed only a small number of the fallen, it was going to happen to the rest sooner or later.
What remained of the elves, dwarves, animals, and mythbeasts had come together in a hollow just opposite the beach, where they were ringed in by Charys and the centaurs, who stood as the last line of defense.
The Shadow-Born had swarmed past, and for a few moments Aven and Bert thought that some miracle had occurred—but it was no miracle, just more strategy. The dark specters had cut off the path of retreat to the ships. There would be no escape.
At the command of the Winter King, a Wendigo sounded a hunting horn and summoned the Troll and Goblin armies back to the field.
The battle was over.
Artus and John had not seen the events of the battlefield. They had fixed their attention outward, toward the void.
Artus drew in a sharp breath, then glanced quickly at John, who held his gaze steady.
“Something’s wrong, John.”
“Have patience, Artus. I believe in you.”
Artus seemed to shrink inward. “I don’t know if I do.”
“That’s all right,” John said, gripping the younger man’s shoulder. “I believe enough for both of us.”
Then the world shifted. Something changed. The air was stilled, and even the eternal roar of the falls became muted, as if the world had begun to hold its breath.
The eye of the storm had opened up around the small, noble ring of standing stones, and it extended its pull into the distant reaches of eternity—and there, something entered the open doorway of the eye.
“Look!” said John. “Look to the void—there, in the darkness! Do you see it?”
Far above their heads, deep to the west, a single point of light had appeared, small, but sharp and bright.
A star.
“I see it,” said Artus. “But what does it—”
“Another one!” said John, pointing. “And there! Another!”
As they watched, the sky beyond began to fill with stars that flickered and flared into bright life. Then, unexpectedly, some of the stars grew brighter. And brighter. And then they began to move.
“John,” said Artus breathlessly, “those aren’t stars…
“…those are dragons.”
At last—at long last, the dragons had returned to the Archipelago.
Part Six
The Summer Country
“I still intend to
have my victory here and now.”
Chapter Twenty-One
The High King
The air above the Island at the Edge of the World echoed with the sound of a hundred thunderclaps as the great beasts dropped out of the sky.
Three dragons, elders by appearance and manner, came swiftly to rest in front of the stone circle, where they bowed in deference before Artus.
“I think they want instructions,” John whispered.
Artus looked at the magnificent creatures before him, then turned and pointed at the battlefield.
“Help them. Help my friends.”
It was apparently instruction enough. The dragons bowed their heads a second time, then stroked their wings and rose into the air.
Directly to the east, the Troll and Goblin armies had just marched back onto the battlefield at the center of the small valley and were expecting to participate in the wholesale slaughter accorded to overwhelmingly victorious armies. Thus, they were surprised to suddenly be themselves overwhelmed by a larger, stronger army of dragons.
Uruk Ko, whether through wisdom or cowardice, immediately signaled for his troops to lower their weapons and their banners. As many kings retained their thrones through diplomacy as through conquest, and it made more sense to acquiesce than to go through what would be a pointless loss of soldiers in the name of pride.
The commanders of the trolls did not engage in a similar burst of reasoning, and instead opted to fight the incoming dragons.
The conflict lasted all of three minutes, and that was only because the dragons kept having to move out of one another’s way as they proceeded to incinerate, chew up, or step on the soldiers of the Troll army.
The Shadow-Born would not fall so quickly, or easily.
Tummeler was very disappointed.
“Cheer up, old sock,” Charles said as they entered the tent of the Winter King. “I couldn’t have done it with a dozen cannonballs, let alone three blueberry muffins.”
“It would’ve been just th’ two,” Tummeler complained, “if that first Wendigo hadn’t turned ’is head just as I conked ’im.”
“Still,” said Charles, “when you got him with the third muffin, he was at a dead run—and that made for a much more impressive display of sportsmanship.”
“Really?” Tummeler said, brightening. “Thanks, Master Charles.”
Inside the tent, Charles lit the torchieres on either side of the door, and what their light revealed was unmistakable.
It was in the center of the tent, on a simple wooden platform that had leather handles for easier transport. As they’d expected, it was an iron kettle about three feet high and slightly less in circumference, giving it a somewhat elongated appearance. The exterior was decorated with bronze platings of cuneiform writings and stylized images of ravens.
They had found Pandora’s Box.
There was no cover or lid, just the remnants of wax around the edges.
“So,” said Tummeler, “what’s y’r grand idea?”
“We can’t look into it,” said Charles, “so transport is going to be a problem. So we have to go with our original plan and close it—and I think that Samaranth knew more than he was telling us. That’s why he gave you the shield.”
“Let me do it,” said Tummeler. “I can’t see into it at all—it’s an insufficiency of height, as my friend Falladay Finn would say.”
“Go ahead,” said Charles, handing him the shield.
With considerable effort, Tummeler hefted the heavy piece of bronze above his head and approached the open kettle. In one fluid motion, he slid the shield off his head and onto the top of the iron container—where it clicked into the raised lip, fitting perfectly.
Before Tummeler could move or speak, the kettle they called Pandora’s Box began to glow with an unearthly light.
“That’s either really good, or really bad,” said Charles. “But I expect we’re going to be finding out which sooner than we realize.”
When the dragons arrived, the Winter King had been facing the leaders of the bruised and battered allies, appraising them. Charys and Eledir were prepared to fight to the death—but Aven and Bert had all but given up hope. The death of Nemo had been a great blow, and the apparent loss of Jack an even greater one. Thus, the Winter King was expecting a complete submission when, in a few moments, his world turned upside down.
At first he attributed the dragons’ sudden appearance to his summoning, figuring the delay was due to the rotation of the Earth, or dragon inefficiency, or something he could get angry about, being that he now commanded them. It wasn’t until they started squashing trolls that he realized they weren’t there in service to him.
A shout of triumph rose from the ragged allies, which brought a snarl to his lips.
The Winter King spun about. “Cheer all you like,” he said bitterly. “You won’t be alive long enough to savor your victory—not while I still command the Shadow-Born!”
The timing could not have been better to render the Winter King utterly speechless—for as he spoke, the thousand-strong Shadow-Born wavered, and vanished.
“Well,” said Charys, stamping his hind legs and shifting his grip on the massive pike he held, “I would like to announce that the school of ‘Beating the Tar out of Wendigo’ is once more in session.”
Once more, the battlefield was a frenzy of activity, lit brightly by the flames of the dragons. The elves, dwarves, and centaurs formed a blockade around the Dragonships and their injured comrades and kept the Wendigo in a thick cluster with a flurry of arrows.
Staying together in a pack made sense when in combat against fauns; against dragons, not so much.
In the chaos of the fighting, the Winter King slipped away. Aven was making her way back into the valley to look for Jack, when she saw the Winter King scaling the embankment to the west. She paused for a second, uncertain of what to do, then turned and began to follow him.
The rest of the fray lasted only minutes, as the dragons were pretty much impossible to defend against, much less attack with any success. With the battlefield clear of combatants, the allies were free to return and tend to their fallen comrades, where they made a startling discovery.
All the soldiers who’d been struck down were still alive.
The opposing army had lost many of their soldiers. But it was the plan of the Winter King to harvest the stolen shadows of the fallen warriors to create still more Shadow-Born. So while there was damage, and blood loss, and the occasional missing limb, the bodies of the elves, dwarves, and mythbeasts were otherwise unharmed.
It was not a total victory: Most of the fallen had lost their shadows to the now-vanished Shadow-Born and were little more than rag dolls. But they still lived. And where there was life, there was hope.
“Extraordinary,” said Eledir. “The Winter King’s own greed gave us more than a victory—we’d have lost more if he’d simply planned for slaughter, rather than angling to use our fallen as his servants.” He shook his head in wonder. “When I saw the dragons arrive, I was hopeful of a victory, but to have no casualties…”
“You’re wrong,” Bert said sadly. “There were casualties—one dead, and one that may wish he had died.”
Charys had returned to the campfires with two bodies slung across his massive back. One, the fallen captain of the former Yellow Dragon, who had been the most valiant of them all; the other, the young man who wanted more than anything to go to war, to be in battle, and show the world his worth and mettle. The eyes of both were closed—but only one would ever open them again.
In the circle of stones, John and Artus watched with amazement as the dragons utterly transformed the shape, scope, and outcome of the battle that had been raging below.
“It’s no wonder that everyone swore oaths of fealty to Arthur,” said Artus, “if this was what happened when someone ticked him off.”
“I doubt he called on the dragons for every little dispute,” said John, “but the possibility would certainly have been an effectiv
e deterrent.”
“It was,” said a cold voice, approaching from below. “Why else would the other races have been held in check on merely the possibility of a human king who could summon them?”
It was the Winter King. He stepped inside the circle of stones, sword drawn and at the ready.
“That was very impressive, the way you switched the books,” he said. “I’d been torturing my chief navigator for nearly an hour before I realized why all of his incomprehensible coordinates involved mentions of blueberries.”
“Thanks,” said John. “I didn’t expect it to work myself.”
“Of course, you should have kept a better eye on it later,” said the Winter King, noticing the just-stirring Steward of Paralon lying some distance away, “or else that imbecile wouldn’t have been able to take it away from you.”
“True,” John admitted. “Still it seems to have worked out for the best—for everyone but you, anyway.”
The Winter King’s eyes blazed. “You think so? You’ve lost more than you know, boy—and I still intend to have my victory here and now.”
“Artus summoned the dragons when you could not,” said John. “If you’d had a better translator than that fool Steward, you might have too. But what victory can you have now? The ring you wear is meaningless, and even the Geographica won’t do you any good now.”
Hearing them talking about him, Magwich came fully awake. “Master!” he screamed. “Master, help me! That one, there—he hit me! On the head!”
The Winter King barely bothered to glance back at his hapless servant. “I told Magwich to burn it,” he said, giving the Steward a withering glare, “but it seems he’s unable to do even the simplest of tasks. But I don’t need the book or the ring to become the High King.”
“They will fight you,” said John. “All the races of the Archipelago will fight you. They’ll never let you take the Silver Throne—not while a true heir still lives.”
A wicked smile spread across the Winter King’s face, and John realized with horror that that was precisely what he had in mind.
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