The Search for the Red Dragon

by James A. Owen

  “Huh,” said Jack. “Whatever’s casting that is a great deal bigger than the Indigo…”

  Jack stopped and swallowed hard. He and Aven looked at each other as a sudden realization occurred to them. Then, together, they looked straight up.

  “Oh, shades,” said Jack.

  Charles was just starting to collect himself when Jack and Aven rejoined the others. They were both grinning like Cheshire cats.

  “What?” said John. “What are you two smiling about?”

  “Good news,” announced Jack. “Charles didn’t destroy the tower after all.”

  “Not all of it, anyway,” said Aven.

  “I’m confused,” said Bert.

  As if on cue, the Indigo Dragon circled around to a point opposite the island and the risen sun—and the broken shadow that split the sea to the northern horizon fell across the airship.

  The companions and crew all looked upward and saw what was casting the shadow.

  High above them, like a great gray comet frozen in its descent to Earth, was the Keep of Time.

  “Oh, thank God,” said Charles.

  As the airship began to ascend, it occurred to the companions more than once that what they were attempting would have been impossible with any of the other Dragonships—including the original Indigo Dragon.

  In terms of distance, the tower was only perhaps two miles above them. But if that measurement were applied to the portion of the keep that had been consumed by fire, then it represented thousands, perhaps even millions of years of history.

  The Indigo Dragon approached the lower part of the floating tower and confirmed their supposition. It was jagged and charred, and the damage rose several hundred feet higher, then stopped. At some point, something had stayed the advance of the flames, but the damage done was inconceivable.

  Aven guided the ship higher, to a point considerably past the charred portions, and at Bert’s direction threw an anchor line through one of the windows that opened into the stairway. Once secured, they maneuvered close enough to tether a rope ladder fashioned from the old ship’s riggings (“We kept some of it out of nostalgia, you know,” said Bert), and one by one they began to climb across.

  Inside, the keep was exactly as they remembered it, save for the haze that obscured what remained of the lower levels.

  “Watch your step,” Bert warned. “Wouldn’t be advisable to slip off the stairs.”

  “You’re a master of the obvious,” said Jack.

  “You’re the Caretaker Principia,” Aven said to John. “Lead on.”

  Together, the companions began to climb.

  It took sustained climbing for most of the day to reach the uppermost doors. The tower was silent except for an occasional rumbling noise that emanated from below.

  “Forgive the sentiment,” said Charles, panting slightly, “but I almost wish the fire had burned up more of the place, so we wouldn’t have quite so far to walk.”

  “I’m with Charles,” said Jack. “I still don’t understand why we couldn’t just fly the ship higher and enter a window closer to the Cartographer’s room.”

  “Because,” Bert said, “the Keep of Time is also a judge of character. Remember how the last time the descent seemed to take less time than the climb up? That’s because it did. And do you recall the door we stepped through for our escape?”

  “Right,” said John. “When we went through, it opened up down below only an hour earlier from when we’d entered.”

  “It took us where and when we needed to go,” Bert affirmed, “because we earned it by our efforts. We could have flown higher, true—but I suspect it would not have shortened the distance we needed to climb.”

  As if on cue, the ceiling seemed suddenly closer, the stairway ended, and the next door bore the keyhole that marked the room where they would find the Cartographer.

  “You’re welcome,” Bert said to no one in particular.

  As before, the door was locked—but Aven, as queen, had a ring that bore the seal of the High King. A touch was all it took. There was a soft click as the lock disengaged, and the door swung inward.

  The Cartographer of Lost Places was sitting at his desk, concentrating on a very elaborate map.

  “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you thrice,” he said, irritated, “I haven’t the faintest idea who killed Edwin Drood, so you can just stop asking. You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t started that dratted serial.”

  “Edwin Drood?” John inquired, stepping forward into the densely cluttered room. “I haven’t asked you anything about Edwin Drood.”

  The Cartographer frowned and peered at his visitors over the top of his glasses. “Really? Aren’t you the Caretaker Principia?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  “Hold on a moment,” the Cartographer said. He hopped off his chair and strode over to John. “You’re not Charles.”

  “Ah, that would be me,” said Charles.

  “Really?” exclaimed the Caretaker. “How extraordinary. You used to be much more handsome.”

  “What?” Charles sputtered. “But…but I’ve only seen you the one time.”

  “Nonsense. You’ve been here plenty of times,” said the Cartographer. “Although I wish you’d get rid of that apprentice of yours. He’s a bad egg, that one. What was his name? Maggot something?”

  “Magwich,” said Charles. “And that’s the first thing you’ve said that’s made sense.”

  “Hmm,” said the Cartographer. “You really aren’t Dickens, are you?”

  “None of us is,” Jack put in.

  “It’s for the best,” the Cartographer said. “He was a clever fellow, but he had terrible judgment when it came to apprentices. First Maggot, then that explorer fellow who snuck into Mecca. Just asking for trouble, the whole lot of them.”

  Bert moved in front of the others to try to get the mapmaker to focus. “Do you remember me, at least?” he asked.

  The Cartographer tilted back his head. “Hmm. The Far Traveler, unless I’m mistaken, which is seldom. Yes, yes…I do know you. What year is it, anyway?”

  “It’s 1926,” said Charles.

  “Excellent to hear,” said the Cartographer. “It’s helpful to know Time keeps moving forward, even as the past vanishes into smoke and ash.”

  “Um, about that,” Charles began before Aven stomped on his foot. She scowled and put a finger to her lips.

  “We noticed there’d been a situation,” said Bert.

  “Situation?” the Cartographer exclaimed. “More like a catastrophe, if you ask me. Someone set fire to the keep and burned up an awful lot of history. It burned for nearly six years, you know.”

  “How did you finally manage to put it out?” asked Jack.

  “Put it out? Me?” said the Cartographer. “Hello—didn’t you notice the lock on the door? I couldn’t lift a finger. Just had to wait it out.”

  “How did it go out?” asked Bert.

  The Cartographer sat cross-legged on the floor and indicated that the others should sit as well. “I think it went out when it reached the doors that opened up to the end of the Silver Age, or the beginning of the Bronze,” he said. “Around 1600 BC or thereabouts. That would have done the trick.”

  “What happened at the beginning of the Bronze Age?” Charles whispered to John.

  “Deucalion’s flood,” John replied.

  “Yep,” said the Cartographer, winking at Charles. “Water out the ying-yang. It also put out the Thera eruption, so it could certainly douse a little tower fire.”

  “Well,” said Charles, “at least it stopped the damage before it could take the whole tower out.”

  “Stopped?” the Cartographer said in surprise. “Slowed, maybe, but not stopped. The entire base of the keep is missing, or hadn’t you noticed? The fire may be out, but the foundation is gone, and the structure is fatally weakened. Stones continue to fall into the sea, and door by door, the tower is still vanishing. What remains is only here because it’s in the futur
e—but our past catches up to us. It always does.”

  “What happens when it finally gets to the top?” asked John. “What will happen to you?”

  “Well, only one thing is certain,” said the Cartographer. “I’m finally going to get out of this damned room.”

  He stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. “Now, you didn’t come up whatever stairs are still remaining to talk about my health,” he said wryly, “but anyone who’s indifferent to the fate of Edwin Drood is okay in my book. So what can I do for you?”

  The companions took turns relating the story until all of the events had been laid out for the Cartographer, who sat at his desk and listened without comment. When they had finished, he simply turned away and began to work on his map.

  John, Jack, and Charles looked at one another, bewildered, but Aven stepped to the desk and tapped the mapmaker on the shoulder.

  “Excuse me,” she said. “But you might just be the rudest person I’ve ever met.”

  The Cartographer put down his quill. “Really? What a boring life you must have led. I’m sorry—it was a lovely story—but was there a question?”

  “About a million of them!” cried Jack. “Where have all the children been taken? And the Dragonships? Who’s burning all the other ships? And what happened to change history seven hundred years ago?”

  The Cartographer sighed heavily. “No doubt you came to see me because of the nature of the keep, but my knowledge and understanding of it is rudimentary at best. I make maps. I make very good maps. I am the best mapmaker who ever lived. So if you need maps, I’m your man. But it isn’t my fault or responsibility that someone ruined a tapestry on Avalon, or wrecked history, or did whatever they did that has the Morgaine’s knickers in a twist.

  “I also don’t have the slightest idea where the children are, or who is burning your ships. Sorry. And as to the missing Dragonships—the Morgaine already told you where they are, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the answers to some of your other problems come to light when you retrieve them.”

  Even Bert looked puzzled at this, and the Cartographer let out an annoyed groan. “And you call yourselves Caretakers. The Morgaine said they were in the Underneath, guarded by the Chamenos Liber, did they not?”

  “Sure,” said John. “But—”

  “But nothing,” said the Cartographer. “The last time you paid me a visit, how did you find the Keep of Time to begin with?”

  John blinked a few times, then his eyes grew wide and his face turned a deep crimson.

  “I’d forgotten,” he said.

  “So,” said the Cartographer. “The other shoe drops again.”

  “We don’t have to go looking for Chamenos Liber,” John told the others sheepishly. “We’re already there. This chain of islands here was called Chamenos Liber in the notes in the Geographica.”

  “I remember!” declared Charles. “You’d set it aside as unimportant because it was a mishmash of Latin and ancient Greek, and all the notes about it were otherwise in Italian.”

  “Alighieri,” said the Cartographer. “Now there was a Caretaker. Even came back from the dead so his sons could finish that little poem. You’d never catch him whining about Drood this and Drood that.”

  “So why did you call it that?” Jack asked the Cartographer. “Why Chamenos Liber?”

  The mapmaker shrugged. “It wasn’t named by me. It was named by someone much older—actually a granduncle of sorts, now I think about it. But if your Caretaker Principia had paid just a bit more attention, half of your problems might be over already.”

  “Why half?” asked Charles.

  “As you’ve already noted, Chamenos Liber is mixed Latin and ancient Greek, and the meaning of Latin words can change with specific usage. Liber doesn’t mean ‘book’—it means ‘boy.’ Translated properly, Chamenos Liber means ‘Lost Boys.’”

  At the revelation, Aven stiffened, although no one noticed but Jack—and he couldn’t tell if it was from dismay, or from shock like the rest of them.

  “So the islands themselves guard the Underneath, whatever that is,” said John.

  “You’re getting your wind, philologically speaking,” observed the Cartographer. “The rest should be a breeze.”

  “The rest?” John said.

  “And you were so close to having my respect,” said the Cartographer. “The Underneath is an extension of the Archipelago—another chain of islands formed of circles within circles beneath the surface of the Earth. It’s not recorded in the Geographica because no one really goes there anymore, so I never got around to making any maps for it. The Underneath is very, very old. Some of the islands even predate the Drowned Lands. And the last time I was there, I hadn’t yet learned cartography, and I even had a name.

  “Thus, most of what is in the Geographica that concerns the Underneath was added later, by various Caretakers. Only three traveled there with any frequency—although I know others from your world have made their way to it now and again.”

  “Who were the three?” asked Charles.

  “Dante Alighieri, of course, and that Frenchman…what’s-his-name, who planned that foolish trip to the moon…”

  “You mean Jules Verne?” Bert guessed.

  The Cartographer snapped his fingers. “That’s the one. Verne. And the third was that young boy…a whelp. Can’t have been more than twelve, at most. Awfully young for a Caretaker if you ask me, but you lot seldom do anymore.”

  “A twelve-year-old Caretaker?” exclaimed John. “That sounds pretty unlikely.”

  “That’s what I told him,” said the Cartographer. “But he had the Geographica, after all, so I had to take him at his word. I think his name was ‘Barry’ something.”

  Aven went white. “Barrie,” she said, her voice breaking. “His name is James Barrie.”

  “What it is, what it is,” said the Cartographer, waving his hands dismissively. “I can’t keep you all straight anymore.”

  “How do we get to the Underneath?” asked Jack.

  “That’s simple,” replied the Cartographer. “The portal is straight down, through the center of the volcanic cone, and the phrase that opens the passage is inscribed in the Imaginarium Geographica, so accessing and opening the portal should be no problem.”

  Reflexively, Jack, Charles, and Bert all looked at John, whose face began to turn several shades of red again.

  Aven’s eyes narrowed, and she took an accusatory stance as she realized why John was suddenly so embarrassed.

  The Cartographer sighed. “Oh, bosh and bother, bother and bosh,” he said, exasperated. “Now I remember you. Sigurdsson’s student. The soldier who fancied himself a scholar. Misplaced it again, have you?”

  John began stammering out an explanation about the Geographica, and Laura Glue’s wings, and his car, and how they did have copies of the atlas that had been transcribed by a badger, which might have the information they need, and had started in on a halfhearted apology when the Cartographer held up his hands.

  “No offense, but I don’t care,” he said matter-of-factly. “I can’t really be more helpful here, and considering that there are four Caretakers present and no Geographica, I’d say the criteria for choosing Caretakers is rather more lax than it used to be.”

  “In a fashion, it actually is in the possession of a Caretaker,” reasoned John. “The automobile is just down the street from James Barrie’s house.”

  “Is that a defense?” said the Cartographer. “That you left it a world away, near the home of a Caretaker who actually walked away from the job?” He looked at Aven and raised his eyebrows. “Who are these people, the Marx Brothers?”

  Aven smiled, resigned. “Anything you can offer us would be helpful,” she said. “Anything at all.”

  The Cartographer regarded her carefully. “I remember you, too. You’re the angry one. But not so much anymore, I think. Why is that?”

  Aven looked startled by this sudden focus on her. “I—I couldn’t say,” she stammered. “Pe
rhaps I just grew up.”

  “Maybe,” said the Cartographer. “I think there’s more to you than most people give you credit for. And I’ll bet my last drachma that you’re not through growing.”

  Aven didn’t respond, but simply met and held the mapmaker’s gaze. After a moment, he looked away.

  The Cartographer went to his window and looked out at the passing clouds. It was his solitary view, and changed only with the onset of nightfall. When he spoke again, it was more somberly than before.

  “I am truly sorry. I cannot be of more help to you. What you need is beyond my means. I can offer only this: What has happened to the Keep of Time was the sum of all the events that have gone before. It wasn’t set into motion merely a thousand years ago, or seven hundred, or even nine, whatever any of you think.”

  This last was said with an understanding look at Charles, who nodded in acceptance and no small relief.

  “There may yet be other consequences, other effects springing from the cause. The tower is failing, and it was the loss of the lower part that has permitted crossings into the past where none were possible before. The doorways were focal points, nothing more—and the pathways to which they led are now drifting freely throughout the world. That something has already been changed seven centuries ago means that someone, somewhere, has learned how to make use of this fact. And I tell you this now so that you are forewarned, O Caretakers of the Geographica and the Archipelago. Be wary. Be watchful. For Time is now in the hands of your enemy.”

  Charles moved around the desk and offered his hand. “I do want to apologize. Whether it was my fault or not, someone should tell you they’re sorry.”

  The Cartographer hesitated, then shook the younger man’s hand. “Thank you, Charles. But do not think too badly of Mordred, either. The course of his own history may have gone very differently if only one time, long ago, someone close to him had apologized, or at the least, stood by him when it would have cost little to do so. But no one did. And we shall all pay the price for that error, I’m afraid.”