The Shadow Dragons

by James A. Owen

  “More often?” said the Cartographer. “You haven’t been back at all in at least seven years, if not more.”

  John glanced around at his companions with a dark expression. Ransom had been correct: Going through a card created in their future had transported them to that future. They were in 1943.

  “Don’t be so sour about it,” the Cartographer said, noting the expressions on the Caretakers’ faces. “I’m only having a go at you.”

  “It’s not that,” John began. “When Ransom sent us here, he—”

  “Ransom sent you?” the Cartographer said in surprise. “Alvin Ransom? I thought he’d gotten himself lost in the Southern Isles along with Arthur Pym.”

  “Ah, that would be me,” Quixote said, raising his hand. “And I was not lost—not precisely, in any regard.”

  “He sent us here through this,” Charles said, holding up the Trump. “It worked a bit differently than we’d expected it to, but it did work.”

  “That’s very interesting,” the Cartographer said, in a way that indicated he was not used to being interested. He folded his hands behind him and paced across the braided carpet. “Ransom . . . he’s Verne’s apprentice now, is he not? A very quick study in many ways. In point of fact, he was here very recently, making that selfsame card. But he does have his drawbacks, you know.” He stopped and looked at Jack. “Cambridge man, you see.”

  Jack started. “Why point that out to me?”

  “You’ll find out in around a decade or so, if there’s still a Cambridge by then,” the Cartographer replied with a wink. “Just don’t let the badgers know.”

  “What do you know about him?” asked John. “We’ve only spent a few hours with him, and we only went along because he had one of the pocket watches.”

  “Ah, he did, did he?” said the Cartographer. “That was one of my ideas, I’ll have you know. Something we used to do in the old days of the Mystery Schools, although I’m not really given to joining secret societies—not ones that would have me as a member, at any rate.”

  He held out his hands and waggled his eyebrows, but got only puzzled looks in return. “Does no one in Oxford watch the Marx Brothers? Never mind,” he said with a wave. “Ransom. Bright lad. Unusually adept with spatial perceptions, as you’ve no doubt noticed. I had him training with me here for a few months before he was seduced by the Frenchman. Not sure if it’s a loss or a gain, overall.”

  “What were you training him for?” asked John. “To be a Caretaker?”

  “To be a Cartographer, actually,” came the reply. “You don’t think I want this job forever, do you?”

  “I wasn’t aware that you could resign,” Charles said mildly.

  The Cartographer grinned wryly. “Resign, no, but retire, probably, and whether I like it or not, thanks to you,” he said, wagging a finger at Charles, who blushed. “Or hadn’t you noticed? I don’t have a retirement plan in place, but it would be nice to have a successor.

  “I don’t hold out much hope for that happening, though,” he continued, with a heavy exhalation of breath. “I understand that something’s been stirred up back in the Summer Country, and that’s causing chaos here in the Archipelago. No one really bothers to keep me updated on things unless they need something from me—but if it’s as bad as the wind seems to indicate, I won’t be useful to them for much longer anyway. All I do is make maps, and with that,” he finished, pointing to the Geographica sticking out of John’s pack, “you have all the maps anyone needs in this world.”

  “I think that’s part of why we’re here,” said John. “We have to get Rose to a place that isn’t in the Geographica.”

  The Cartographer made a sputtering noise, and his eyes bugged out. “If it isn’t in the Imaginarium Geographica, boy, then it wasn’t worth noting, or no longer exists. And there are even maps of places in the latter category still in it, so—”

  Jack interrupted him. “Ransom told us we needed to make our way to someplace called the Nameless Isles. Do you know anything about them?”

  “The Nameless Isles!” the old man exclaimed, eyes blazing with anger. In an unusual show of physicality, he actually stepped forward and grabbed Jack by the lapels. “Are you certain that’s what he called them? The Nameless Isles? Tell me, boy! Tell me now!”

  All three Caretakers were taken aback at this sudden flaring of emotion. They had seen the man known as the Cartographer at many periods throughout his life—but during his tenure in the Keep of Time, they’d never seen him express anything more than annoyance.

  “That’s precisely what he called them,” said Jack. “We don’t mean to upset you, Myrddyn.”

  At the mention of his true name, the old man was startled out of his anger. He let go of Jack, and with a few deep breaths, he composed himself once more.

  “I apologize,” he said haltingly. “It’s become somewhat of a joke, this ‘end of the world’ business, especially with the tower crumbling more each day. But the Nameless Isles were something to be hidden away, not named, not discussed, not shown, until and unless the actual end of the world was imminent.

  “Far to the north of the Archipelago of Dreams, past the domains of the Troll King, past the islands of the Christmas Saint, lies a circlet of islands that have never been named. No map has been drawn to locate them—well, none that could be duplicated, that is. And certainly none that could be included in the Imaginarium Geographica.”

  “Why couldn’t they?” John asked.

  “Because the islands themselves are alive,” came the response, “or at least as close to living creatures as large masses of stone are likely to get. They have a form of consciousness, and they have will. They are constantly on the move, so they can never be found in the same way twice. A map on paper or parchment would be useless.”

  John grimaced. “How can we find them if they’re always moving?”

  Archimedes let out a snort and sidled over to the Cartographer. “He really doesn’t listen well, does he?”

  “It’s been a constant problem,” the Cartographer admitted. “I told you the maps could not be included in the Imaginarium Geographica” he said to John, “not that the islands couldn’t be mapped at all.

  “Finding the route to a living island that is constantly moving,” the Cartographer went on, “requires a living map that may constantly change—and so every map I have ever drawn for the Nameless Isles has been drawn on the seekers themselves.”

  “You’re going to draw the maps on us?” Jack exclaimed.

  “Not all of you,” the Cartographer said in exasperation. “I do have other deadlines to meet, you know, and drawing one on each of you would take all day and then some. No, just one of you will do. So,” he finished, rubbing his hands together, “whose strong back shall we transform into a map?”

  John’s face took on a dour expression, and Jack stammered a moment, trying to decide what to say. In his younger days, he would have been the first to volunteer, but age and seasoning had made him much less rash. Still, one of them was going to have to do it if they were to make any progress at all.

  Quixote suddenly stepped forward and removed his helmet as he dropped to one knee. “If I may serve yet again in this humble way,” he said in his high baritone, “then I shall offer myself as the canvas for your quill.”

  The Cartographer looked startled for a moment, then made a clucking sound with his tongue and helped the knight to his feet.

  “Your self-sacrificing gesture is appreciated, and your honor and nobility are without question,” the old mapmaker said, “but to be most frank, while your spirit is willing, your flesh is wrinkled. I could do it, no question, but it would be akin to projecting a movie reel onto a shar-pei.”

  “Uncle Merlin,” Rose began as the others comforted the crestfallen Quixote, “I would be willing—”

  “Absolutely not,” he replied, holding his hands up defiantly.” For all I know you’ve already got a tattoo or three, and I’m not going to be accused of adding to your delinq
uency. Also, you’re still quite small, and an island is likely to slide off your back altogether.

  “No,” he said with finality, “If it’s to be any of you, it must be one of the Caretakers three.”

  “We could draw straws,” Jack began, when Charles let out a loud noise of exasperation.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” he said as he began pulling off his shirt. “I’ll do it, but when my wife starts asking prickly questions, I’m deferring to you fellows.”

  The Cartographer instructed Charles to lean himself over the drafting table to allow as even a working surface as possible. It was set low to the floor, so Charles’s legs dangled at an awkward angle until his companions propped them up with pillows.

  “Uncle Charles,” Rose said, hiding a giggle, “you look like a bear rug, stretched out to dry.”

  “More like a bare rug,” said John. “The press doesn’t let you out to get much sun, does it, old fellow?”

  “Do you want to trade places?” Charles shot back.

  “Looking good,” John said quickly. “Carry on.”

  The Cartographer rummaged around in the overladen shelves in the back corner of the room, muttering to himself, until he finally emerged with a long, gleaming black quill and a stoppered bottle of ink.

  “The quill is made from the tail feather of one of Odin’s ravens,” he explained as he took his seat behind Charles. “Hugin . . . or maybe it was Munin. I forget. It doesn’t matter, anyway. What makes this process work is the ink.”

  He set the quill aside and gently removed the stopper from the bottle, which appeared to be half-full. The cloudy liquid inside swirled about lazily in the glass and seemed to emanate a faint glow and a familiar scent.

  “Apple cider?” John said, sniffing. “The ink you use is apple cider? Will that even work?”

  “An unusual map requires an unusual medium,” the old mapmaker replied. “It only smells like cider because of its extreme age.”

  “Did it come from one of the apples on Haven?” Jack asked. “Those trees were quite old, I believe.”

  “Oh, it’s far, far older than that,” said the Cartographer as he dipped the quill point into the bottle. “If it didn’t come from one of the oldest trees that ever was, it certainly was in their forest. You who subscribe to these newfangled modern religions have a name for it: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”

  Charles nearly bolted upright. “Do you mean the juice you’re using to draw with may have come from an apple off the same tree Adam and Eve took an apple from in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Same tree?” the Cartographer said indignantly. “Pish-tosh. It’s from the same apple. They only took two bites from it, after all.

  “Now,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Hold still—I want to get this right the first time.”

  Slowly, with deft and deliberate strokes, the ancient man once called Myrddyn, then Meridian, and then Merlin, before at last becoming known only by his trade, began drawing the map that would guide the companions to the Nameless Isles.

  He began at the lower left, just under Charles’s rib cage, with a vast island large enough to have continental aspirations. Then, pausing only to dip the quill, he quickly worked his way upward, adding smaller islands in a variety of shapes and putting in navigational notations as he sketched. Another sizeable island was situated between the shoulder blades, followed by two half-moon isles that were obviously volcanic in nature.

  As he drew, the lines of the cloudy apple ink left only a shiny, moist indication that quill had touched skin; but as he sketched his way down the right side of Charles’s back, a curious transformation began to happen on the left.

  The lines wavered, faded, then solidified into a rich, reddish-brown color, much like the lines in the older maps of the Geographica.

  As the map was being created before the companions, all of them were transfixed by the mapmaker’s work—except for Rose. While the others watched the line work magically appearing, she remained focused on the maker.

  They had only ever met once before, in this very room, but she had known who he was instantly.

  She knew because her mother and grandfather had told her stories about him and about her father, who was called Madoc before he took the name Mordred, and through the stories she came to know them. She knew everything about them, including— or perhaps especially—the flaws that had made them who they became. And she learned something else: that when you know everything about a person, it becomes very difficult to hate them, and very easy to love them.

  And so there, in that small stone room near the top of a floating tower made of time, six personages watched the old mapmaker create his work on his living canvas. Two, the clockwork owl and the ancient knight, watched with a sense of duty for what was to come. Three, the Caretakers, watched with awe, reverence, and a small inkling of fear for what the map portended. But only one, the Grail Child Rose, watched with love—because she was the only one there who was more concerned with seeing the mapmaker himself than with obtaining what he might provide to them.

  The Cartographer halted to consider his work, then again leaned close and completed the circlet of islands that ringed Charles’s back. “Now,” he said softly, “for the final three.”

  He dipped the quill one last time, then stoppered the bottle. “Waste not, et cetera,” he breathed to no one in particular. Swiftly he drew one final island in the center and added several notations above and below.

  The old man leaned back and closed one eye, examining, appraising. Then, with a nod that indicated he was satisfied, he stood up and replaced the quill and bottle where he’d found them.

  “One of my better works, all told,” he said, wiping his hands on a cloth. “You’re quite a good canvas, young Charles. Patient, not fidgety, very few moles to work around. If I’d had a hundred of you I could have done the entire Geographica on the backs of scholars and done away with the parchment altogether. We could have kept you in a village somewhere, growing fat and happy on tea and cakes. Then, whenever a captain needed to go somewhere, we’d just call out your particular island and send you off with him.”

  “An interesting idea,” John said as Charles groaned and straightened up. “But what happens when you lose one of the, uh, maps?”

  “Interesting doesn’t always equal practical,” came the reply, “but being practical is always less interesting.”

  “How do you feel, Charles?” Jack asked as he helped his friend slip his shirt back on. “Does it itch?”

  “It’s not really too bad,” said Charles as he tucked his shirt into his trousers. “It does tingle a bit, but not unpleasantly so. A little like having some friendly ants roaming around searching for a picnic.”

  “Better you than me,” said John. “When you get back to London, you’ll just have to remember to sleep on your back to avoid explaining it to your wife.”

  “No worries there,” said the Cartographer. “The map isn’t visible in the Summer Country—only here, in the Archipelago.”

  “Well, if I’d known that,” Jack huffed, “I’d have volunteered myself.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Charles hummed skeptically. “I’m sure you would have, Jack.”

  “Thank you, for . . . for everything,” said John, offering his hand to the Cartographer, who paused, then took it at the wrist, in the old fashion. “We should leave. There’s no, ah, time to waste.”

  “We’ve overlooked one thing,” Jack said mildly. “We’re still stuck in the Keep of Time.”

  “It gets easier after the first thousand years or so,” said the Cartographer.

  “That is a problem,” John agreed, realizing they’d come via a one-way passage. “And we don’t have a Compass Rose with which to contact anyone either.”

  “Isolation clears the mind and sharpens the senses,” said the Cartographer.

  “Perhaps we could fashion some sort of rope and lower ourselves down,” Charles suggested.

  “And then what?” said Jack. “We swim
to the Nameless Isles?”

  “We could use the Opening to access the Underneath, and the islands below,” John suggested, rubbing his chin. “Autunno is the closest source of allies we have.”

  “That just creates a whirlpool,” Jack countered. “We’d only drop farther”

  “Why are they arguing about this?” Quixote asked the Cartographer. “Aren’t we just going to take the boat?”

  The Cartographer shrugged. “I think it’s the process they have to go through. They are somehow required to argue pointlessly about things that are completely irrelevant before deciding to do what was staring them in the face all along.”

  John looked at the old men. “You have a boat?”

  “Of course I have a boat,” the Cartographer shot back. “You yourselves sent me here in it. It hasn’t gone anywhere else since.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the chaotic shelves behind his chair.

  Sitting there on the edge of the uppermost shelf was a small glass bottle that contained a miniature Dragonship.

  “The Scarlet Dragon,” John said in realization. “I’ve never given it another thought.”

  “I’m not surprised in the least,” Archimedes said, preening.

  “So it turns into a boat when we break the glass,” Jack said. “We still have no way to escape the tower.”

  “I’m suddenly beginning to see why you’re professors,” said the Cartographer as he handed Jack the ship in the bottle. “Arguing about the problem instead of asking if anyone has a solution is the best way to ensure tenure. Cambridge is lucky to have you.”

  “I teach at Oxford,” said Jack.

  “That’s right,” the old mapmaker murmured. “I keep forgetting what year it is.”

  He rustled around in the far corner of the room, where things seemed to be organized in piles rather than piled on shelves. After a minute he uttered a triumphant “Aha!” and turned back to the companions with a wry gleam in his eyes. He was clasping several sheets of parchment as if they were fragile china dolls.

  “Here,” the Cartographer said, proffering the pages to John. “See what you can make of these.”