Dragon Secrets

by Christopher Golden

  “Yes,” the Asura answered, “as well as some items that you did not ask for, but Sheridan suggested might be useful.”

  “Excellent,” the boy said, removing the lid from one of the crates to verify its contents. He grinned. “That Sheridan, always thinking.”

  “It is like a wholly new kind of magic,” Caiaphas observed, his voice a whisper as he studied the inventions, tools, and building materials brought from Patience.

  The navigation mage had been both startled and amazed by the few renovations Timothy had made to the mansion in the short amount of time he had lived there. He marveled at the oil lamps that illuminated the household with the light of what mages called hungry fire, and the system of metal piping that allowed non-magical access to the flow of water.

  “Wondrous,” Caiaphas had muttered over and over again, eyes wide above the blue veil.

  “Not really,” Timothy said in all modesty. “It’s just what I do to get by—what I need to do if I’m going to survive in a world of magic. I look at all the magical things that everybody else can do, and try to imagine how the same thing could be done without it, and then, most of the time, I make it happen.”

  Caiaphas had been gazing into one of the crates. Now he lifted his eyes to gaze at the boy. “They wrongly call you the un-magician. There is more true magic found here than in half the hands of Parliament.”

  “And it’s going to be this kind magic—my own special magic—that’s going to allow us to free Verlis,” Timothy said, opening the leather satchel that he still wore at his side and removing the folded notes and pages of drawings that made up his plans for the Wurm’s rescue. He spread them out atop one of larger crates, using it as a workstation, then gestured for Caiaphas and Ivar to come closer.

  “Forgive me, Master Cade,” the navigation mage said in earnestness. He shook his veiled head as he looked over the boy’s pages of scribbles and strange drawings. “But I cannot imagine how this will be possible. You have been to Abaddon. I took you there myself. It is far beneath the ocean’s surface, unreachable without the aid of magics that are not among my skills. I have neither the power nor the social station to possess such spells.”

  Timothy shuffled through his stacks of drawings, searching for one in particular.

  “Trust me,” he said, locating the design he was looking for and holding the intricate drawing out so that his companions could see. “We’re going to build this,” he told them. The excitement he always experienced when inventing was building inside him.

  Caiaphas took the drawing from Timothy’s hand and studied it.

  “Hmmm,” Ivar said, scrutinizing the drawing as well, standing alongside the navigation mage.

  “Wondrous,” Caiaphas said yet again. “Absolutely wondrous.”

  Chapter Seven

  Heavy fists pounded on the workshop door.

  Edgar ruffled his feathers, tilted his head, and glanced at Sheridan. He was perched on a pile of blankets laid out on the floor, and the mechanical man stood by the door, on guard. As the rook was Timothy’s familiar, he should have been with his master at all times. But the boy had been away from him far too often of late, and Edgar did not like it at all. He would do whatever was necessary to see that Timothy came back to him safely, and he knew Sheridan felt the same.

  “Looks like this it,” the rook muttered, crawling beneath the rumpled covers. “Give me a minute to make sure I’m hidden before you open the door.”

  Again the fists banged on the thick wooden door. “Timothy Cade, it is time for us to escort you to breakfast,” called one of the sentries from the corridor outside the room.

  “Are you ready?” Sheridan whispered, modulating the volume of his voice as he tentatively reached for the door latch.

  “When you are,” Edgar replied, his voice muffled under the bedclothes.

  Sheridan’s jointed metal hand closed on the door latch, his mechanical brain revisiting his master’s instructions. He didn’t want anything to go awry. This will be the tricky part, Sheridan thought, pulling open the door to reveal two annoyed sentries. He had not seen these two before, and wasn’t sure if he had ever seen such an obvious example of complete opposites. One guard was short and heavy, his shape practically round, while the other was very tall and impossibly thin.

  “It’s time for your master to go to breakfast,” said the rotund guard, peering past the mechanical man and into the room.

  “It’s terrible,” Sheridan said, and he shook his head worriedly, releasing a whistle of steam from the valve at the side of his head. “No matter how I try to wake him, he won’t get up. All he does is moan.”

  And as if on cue, Edgar began to moan from beneath the blankets, doing his best impression of Timothy in the grip of illness.

  The tall, thin sentry shot a nervous glance at his partner and then peered deeper into the room, but he came no closer. “What’s wrong with him?” he asked warily.

  “I don’t know,” Sheridan replied, swiveling his head to look back at the heaped bedclothes. “But he seems very, very ill. Quite sick.”

  “Sick?” both guards repeated, taking a step back into the corridor.

  “He has awful red spots on his face, his neck is swollen like a puff frog’s, and I do believe his hair has begun to fall out,” Sheridan told them, a tinge of panic in his metallic voice. This last he spoke in a whisper, as though he did not want the shape under the blankets to hear this unfortunate news.

  Again Edgar began to moan, moving about under the blankets.

  “I certainly hope it isn’t … contagious,” Sheridan added, bringing one of his segmented hands to his mouth.

  “Con-contagious!” the tall guard stammered, stepping back even farther, covering his nose and mouth with his hand. His heavyset partner did the same, stumbling over his own feet.

  “Well,” Sheridan said sadly, “he’s certainly in no condition to eat anything. If he had breakfast, he would only vomit it up, I should think. And if he is contagious… my, it might not be wise to parade him through the halls of SkyHaven.”

  The mechanical man stepped aside and lowered his head with a sigh. “But do as you must. Only please, if you cannot wake him and are forced to carry him, please be gentle with him. He’s in a bad way.”

  The sentries stared at him for a moment, exchanged a quick look, and then both began to shake their heads.

  “Probably best not to risk exposing everyone,” the rotund sentry muttered.

  “Right, right. Just as I was thinking,” said the other. “Matter of fact, might be wiser all around to consider the boy quarantined until he’s feeling better. Just to be sure. Bring him his food here.”

  Sheridan watched their conversation with fascination. He had never been fond of deceit, but observing its results turned out to be quite interesting. It was a good thing the sentries were unfamiliar with him and so could not tell that he was amused. At length, the two of them backed up one last step.

  “You’ve already been exposed—,” began the stout one.

  “Well, he’s metal, isn’t he?” his tall comrade interrupted. “I don’t suppose he can get sick.”

  The other nodded reasonably. “Right. In any case, you can see to the boy. We’ll let Grandmaster Maddox know that he is unwell.”

  “Yes,” Sheridan said, lacing his fingers together and glancing back at the moaning blankets in concern. “I think that’s a wise decision.”

  The sentries continued to back away from the workshop door, as if they were expecting the mystery illness that had infected the boy to storm from the room and attack them. Then they nodded to each other and hurried down the corridor, in a rush to get as far away from the workshop as possible.

  Sheridan slammed the door and leaned back against it, releasing a geyser of steam, the equivalent of a sigh. “We did it.”

  Edgar poked his head out from beneath the covers. “And it’s about time, too,” the bird croaked. “I thought I was going to suffocate under there. Caw! Caw!”

 
; “I do hope this charade will provide Timothy and Ivar with enough time to complete their task,” Sheridan said as he moved away from the door.

  The familiar flew out from beneath the blankets to soar about the workshop and stretch his wings. “Don’t you fret. They’ll have enough time,” he said as he touched down on the windowsill, ruffling his jet-black feathers. “Never underestimate the power of a contagious disease.”

  Caiaphas stirred the contents of the metal cauldron hanging over the blazing fire. The chunks of dried tree sap had been solid when he dropped them in, but were now melted to a golden, glutinous liquid, the thick aroma making the navigation mage feel lightheaded, as if he’d indulged in too much ale.

  “How’s the sap coming, Caiaphas?” Timothy asked from the other side of the room, where his latest invention was beginning to take form. He was glad of the navigation mage’s help. His injured arm was still quite sore.

  “I believe it’s ready,” Caiaphas replied, again peering in at the amber liquid.

  They had begun construction of Timothy’s latest creation almost immediately, moving all the items that would be needed for its fabrication to the solarium at the back of the Cade estate. The boy said that it would be messy work, and he did not want to cause any harm to the main body of the house.

  The coachman was fascinated by the boy’s activity as he darted about the room, assembling various aspects of the device. Timothy now stood within the framework of a sphere made from the flexible reeds of a marsh plant quite abundant on the island in the pocket dimension where he had grown up. The Asura, Ivar, was securing the joints with thick twine, also made from the leaves of a plant on Patience.

  “The frame looks good,” Timothy said. “Caiaphas, would you mind bringing the sap over here so we can begin to attach the outer skin?”

  Staring at the bare skeleton of what Timothy had called his diving sphere, the navigation mage could not yet see how it would enable the boy and the Asura to travel beneath the ocean. What the boy had explained to him was nearly incomprehensible, but he had seen what Timothy was capable of, what he could create with his imagination and his hands, and so he did not doubt.

  Sparks of icy blue leaped from the mage’s fingertips. Using a spell similar to one that he wielded to lift his carriage into the sky, Caiaphas levitated the heavy cauldron across the room to Timothy.

  The boy thanked him, then dipped a thick brush into the steaming liquid and used it to attach a patch of thin, transparent material to the framework. Timothy had told him that it was the skin of a whiskerfish, and Caiaphas marveled at the precise number of such fish that must have been caught in order to provide enough material for the boy’s invention. In addition to his other skills, he was clearly a remarkable fisherman.

  “When the sap dries, it’ll create an airtight seal,” Timothy explained, moving with deft speed. “The only water we want in here with us is what we let in through the valves for ballast.”

  “But are you certain you’ll be all right?” Caiaphas asked.

  Ivar was working with the fish skin as well. “The sphere is not so different from the huts my tribe once lived in,” the Asura told Caiaphas as he laid the skin on the framework in long strips. He bonded one end of the pliable patch to another with the supremely sticky tree sap. “The floors were sometimes raised off the ground on stilts. The sap sealed the skin so tightly that it could hold the weight of a small family and their possessions. We will be quite safe.”

  Caiaphas watched them for a few minutes to see how it was done, then he, too, began to paste the skin to the frame. The three worked diligently, and soon enough the framework was nearly enclosed, an opening at the top of the sphere created to allow access to its hollow center.

  They stopped for a brief rest, sharing a pitcher of water and some stale, yet tasty, biscuits they had found in the pantry.

  “So, what do you think of it so far?” the boy asked proudly, sipping from a goblet as they studied the sphere.

  The navigation mage lifted his veil to take a bite from his biscuit, his eyes upon the craft taking shape before them.

  Ivar grunted in amusement. “He is speechless, Timothy,” the Asura noted, peeling dried sap from his fingertips.

  “It fascinates me, and yet I have no understanding of how it will work,” Caiaphas admitted.

  He could see that the boy was frustrated by his ignorance, but at the same time there was an element of excitement, a twinkle in his eyes.

  “When this is done,” Timothy said, directing their attention to his hollow creation, “a breathable environment will be created inside by a device that will remain on the surface of the water, pumping air down a long hose made of tubes from the Lemboo plant. The Lemboo tubes will be sealed together with the same sap we’re using for the sphere.” He moved to kneel beside another of his machines, placed safely in the corner. “This is our pump. It’ll float along behind us at first, and then above us as we sink deeper.”

  On his hands and knees the boy crawled across the floor to a wooden crate filled with hollowed-out reeds about two feet in length. “And these are the Lemboo tubes we’ll use for our hose,” Timothy said, showing the flexibility of the plant by bending it in his hands. “We should have more than enough to reach Abaddon.”

  “If the sphere is filled with oxygen, how will you keep it submerged?”

  “Two ways,” Tim explained. “We’ll both be weighted down, of course, but we’ll also have tanks attached to the craft’s side that we can fill and empty by manipulating these valves. Filling the tanks will make our density greater and cause the sphere to sink.”

  Caiaphas climbed to his feet and walked around the craft, once more inspecting their work. “So much more complicated than the reciting of a spell,” he said, hands clasped behind his back.

  “But at this point, our only option,” Timothy replied.

  There was a spell-key that would open the workshop door at SkyHaven, but Timothy had added his own locking mechanism, a metal bolt that slid into the frame, to keep unwanted visitors away. Leander knocked several times on the heavy wood.

  “I’d think twice before going in there without some kind of protection, sir,” said one of the sentries Grimshaw had put in place, a heavyset mage named Yarnill.

  “If you ask me, the lad’s extremely contagious,” the other sentry added. “Protection is most definitely in order.”

  Leander despised having to deal with Grimshaw’s lackeys. The two were practically cowering with fear in front of the workshop door. Leander had to hand it to Timothy, the boy certainly had come up with a clever scheme to mask his escape. Sheridan would put off discovery of the boy’s absence for as long as possible.

  “Wise advice, gentlemen,” the Grandmaster said in his most authoritative tone. “Precautionary measures, then.”

  He pulled a spell of shielding from his vast memory of incantations and recited it, sketching at the air with his fingers to summon the magic he needed. An opaque veil of shimmering energy formed around the Grandmaster as he prepared to enter the supposedly disease-infested workroom. “I believe this will suffice,” he said, and reached out to rap briskly upon the door.

  The guards immediately stepped back, their hands covering their noses and mouths to keep any contagion from entering their systems.

  “Perhaps it would be wise if you two were to leave the area,” Leander suggested, as he heard the sound of movement from the other side of the door. “You can’t be too careful.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said the extremely thin sentry, who turned and bolted down the hallway, the rotund Yarnill trailing close behind.

  “It’s just terrible! Terrible!” Sheridan wailed as he opened the door a crack. His circular eyes glowed like warm heatstones as he stuck his metal head out to examine the hallway.

  “Oh, it’s you, Master Maddox,” Sheridan said. “Are you alone?”

  “The guards couldn’t get away from here fast enough,” Leander replied, dropping the magical shield.

&n
bsp; The metal man opened the door farther to allow him entrance. A low, painful-sounding moan filled the room, and the Grandmaster noticed a pile of bedclothes in the corner writhing, as if whoever was beneath them was in great discomfort.

  “It’s Master Maddox, Edgar,” Sheridan called as he firmly closed the door.

  The rook erupted from beneath the covers, fluttering his wings and ruffling his feathers. “So, how are we doing?” Edgar asked, his short, spindly legs giving him difficulty walking on the rumpled blankets. “Anybody suspicious yet?”

  “Word of Timothy’s illness is spreading through SkyHaven like hungry fire,” the mage said, tugging at the end of his scruffy beard. “And I sent the resident physician away yesterday under the pretense that he’d not taken a holiday in quite some time. People are keeping their distance from this wing, never mind this workshop. They’re terrified.”

  “Caw! Caw! Can’t be too careful these days,” Edgar crowed.

  The Grandmaster walked toward the room’s large windows and peered out at the early morning sky. It was breezy, wispy clouds being forced across the sky by a bullying wind.

  “I hope and pray to the bright ones above that this ploy will allow Timothy and Ivar time to accomplish their task.”

  A high-pitched hissing sound drew his attention, and he turned to see Sheridan approaching, steam escaping the valve on the side of the mechanical man’s head.

  “Don’t worry, Master Maddox. I’m sure that Timothy has more than enough time to secretly gain access to Abaddon, break Verlis free, escape the prison undetected, and accompany the Wurm back to Draconae to help his tribe.” Sheridan paused, reviewing what he had just said and counting the number of tasks on the fingers of one metal hand.

  “Oh, my,” he fretted. “That’s quite a list, isn’t it?”

  Edgar flew up from the blankets to land upon Leander’s shoulder. “He’ll pull it off,” the bird said, but he did not sound completely confident. “Don’t you think?” he asked the Grandmaster.