The Dragon’s Apprentice

by James A. Owen

  “Jules,” Morgan said, stepping to the door. “A word, if I may?”

  “Of course,” Verne said with a glance at Bert and Twain. “We’ll be back shortly. Carry on with the party!”

  When the dinner had concluded, the Caretakers and their guests retired to one of the great libraries of Tamerlane House to have a smoke, drink brandy, and generally catch up on the affairs of the two worlds. Fred, Rose, and Laura Glue decided to forgo the cigars, pipes, and brandy in favor of aged Vernor’s Ginger Ale and some warm Mexican pastries.

  The library was shaped like a star, with fireplaces at the center and at each point. This allowed for an expansive meeting space that at the same time offered the opportunity for smaller groups to congregate.

  For the first time, John realized that one of the Caretakers had not been present, either to greet them at the door, or at the banquet. “Samuel,” he said, pulling Twain aside, “Poe hasn’t come down yet. I know he rarely does, but for today I thought … Is everything all right?”

  “We’re trying to discover that,” Twain answered ominously. “At any rate, we’ll discuss it with you when Jules returns.”

  “I don’t remember being in this library before,” said Jack as he scanned the walls. “Of course, the last time I was here, we were rather preoccupied.”

  “This is the Library of Lost Books,” Twain said proudly. “I’ve assembled much of it myself.”

  “What kind of books are lost books?” asked Jack. “If they’re lost, who would know about them at all?”

  “Ah,” said Twain, “so you understand the challenge I had. Originally this was a repository of our own lost or unfinished works. Charles finished Edwin Drood, and I wrote a sequel to A Connecticut Yankee, among others, but mostly it contains books that were mentioned only once, in some obscure text, and never again.”

  He pointed with his cane at a leather-bound book just above their heads. “That one, there? It’s a defense of Christianity written by Origen, who wrote it as a rebuttal to an anti-Christian Platonist named Celsus.”

  “Ah,” Jack said, looking at Origen’s book. “A kindred spirit.”

  “Don’t relate to him too closely,” said Twain. “He also grossly misinterpreted a verse in the Gospel of Saint Matthew and castrated himself. It was a terrible way for him to learn about metaphor and allegory.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” said Jack.

  After an hour had passed, Verne came into the library still deep in discussion with Morgan.

  “It’s nice to see Hank in the flesh,” Charles whispered to John, “and still younger than us.”

  “That’s not so hard to do these days,” John whispered back as Verne and Morgan approached them.

  “Sorry I was late,” Morgan said again. “It couldn’t be avoided, I’m afraid. There’s been a lot to do to get ready for your return.”

  “If we hadn’t had obligations and family to return to,” said John, “we might just as well have stayed to help you out with things here, then gone back to our proper time later.”

  “No,” said Verne. “You couldn’t have.”

  “Why not?” asked John.

  As he spoke, Hawthorne and Fred came back into the library with trays of fruit that they set on the table.

  “Because you are still alive, in what we have come to call your, ah, ‘Prime Time,’” said Verne. He took an apple from one of the trays and began to munch on it as he explained further.

  “You have an allotted span within which you are meant to achieve certain things,” he said, sitting. “An allotted lifetime, if you will. You’ve already experienced how dangerous and difficult it is to go skipping around in time—and those occasions have been of brief duration. If you were gone for a more extended time, it would be even more so.”

  “The difficult part probably has to do with explaining one’s whereabouts to the wife,” said Hawthorne.

  “Actually, I was thinking that’s the dangerous part,” said John. “But why couldn’t we have stayed, especially if we could return to whenever we wanted, ah, whenever we wanted?”

  “Because,” said Verne, “you’d have started to burn more quickly through the years of your own Prime Time. And you can’t afford to spare even one.”

  “If we can’t, how is it that you can?”

  “Easy,” Verne replied as he began to devour the apple’s core. “We’re already dead. We have no more obligations to our natural span, and can therefore operate outside the bounds of Prime Time.

  “Come with me,” he went on as he grabbed a pear from the tray. “I want to show you something.”

  “For a professed dead man,” Charles said as the companions followed the Prime Caretaker out of the library, “he certainly can put away the fruit.”

  “You’d be surprised,” said Burton, “how much sweeter it tastes when you’re living on borrowed time.”

  Verne led them all into the center of Tamerlane House, to a room that stood under the tallest of the minarets. In the center of the room stood a massive clock of stone, wood, and silver. It reached high into the room, standing some four stories taller than the ground floor, and it fell away below their feet into a vastly deep subbasement.

  “How far down does it go?” John asked, leaning over the balustrade. “I can’t see the bottom.”

  “We don’t keep the lower floors lit, unless the clock needs maintenance,” said Verne, “but it goes down some dozen stories. The house was built around it, in fact.”

  “Poe calls it the Intuitive Clock,” said Bert, “although Jules added his own unique touch to it.” He pointed at a plate that had been mounted on the clock at eye level. It read:

  The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

  Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit,

  Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

  Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

  —Omar Khayyám

  “Ironic,” said Charles. “I think.”

  The face of the clock was twenty feet across and bore two elaborate overlapping dials—the inner one of silver, and the outer one of gold. From somewhere inside the mechanism, they could hear a steady thrumming sound.

  “The center dial represents Kairos—real time, of pure numbers with no measurement,” Verne explained, “while the outer dial represents Chronos, which is ordinary wristwatch, alarm-clock time.”

  “One mechanical, one metaphysical,” said Charles. “Fascinating.”

  “You all have similar mechanisms on your watches,” said Bert, “the ones that have been activated as Anabasis Machines, at any rate.”

  “The Summer Country is on Chronos time,” said Verne, “while the Archipelago is on Kairos time. Now at the moment, they should be in sync. But the longer you remained here, you’d see …” He stopped, puzzled. “Hank?” he asked. “What do you make of this?”

  Morgan looked up at the clock, and his jaw fell open. He looked at his watch, then back at the clock, and shrugged. “I have no clue what this means, Jules. I’ve never seen this before.”

  “What is it?” asked John.

  “The Kairos time should be behind Chronos time,” said Verne, “but it’s exactly the reverse. The Archipelago is moving faster.” He looked at Hank. “That explains why you were late.”

  “Maybe so,” said Hank. “But we should consult with Poe just the same.”

  “I agree,” said Verne. He turned to the others. “I’m sorry, but we’re going to have to cut our evening short,” he said, suddenly somber.

  As the group began to filter their way back to the main hall, John, Jack, and Charles pulled Verne, Twain, and Bert aside.

  “There’s something else we need to discuss with you,” John said quietly. “We didn’t want to discuss it openly in front of Burton, but it concerns Hank Morgan.”

  Briefly the companions explained John and Charles’s encounter with the ghost pirate at Magdalen Tower. When they finished, Bert turned to Verne with a puzzled expression. “An anomaly?” he asked.
>
  “It must be,” Verne replied, looking just as baffled. “I did recently send Hank on a mission to the seventeeth century, but as you saw, he returned just as he left. There must be some other answer. And as far as I know, Shakespeare never built a bridge in his life—or after.” He put a hand on John’s shoulder. “You were right not to discuss it openly—or mention it to Hank. Anomalies are my responsibility. I’ll look into it.”

  “We also have something we need to tell you,” Twain said to the companions, “and in just as much secrecy, I’m afraid.”

  The three men listened as the older Caretakers told them about Rose’s strange visitor.

  “A Dragon’s apprentice?” said John when Twain was done. “I didn’t know there was such a thing.”

  “Never mind that,” said Jack. “Why is this the first time we’ve heard about these … Echthroids?”

  “Echthroi,” Bert said, glancing at Verne, “and we have no good excuse, I’m afraid, Jack. We were waiting until you were ready, and—”

  “If you’d waited any longer, we’d all be dead,” said Charles, “but we know now. Do you think the Echthroi have anything to do with the ghost-Hank we saw?”

  “I don’t know,” said Verne, “but we’ll not get this figured out tonight. Come back tomorrow, and we’ll have a proper council to discuss everything.”

  “Good enough,” John said, yawning. “It’s always easier to fight primordial evil after a few hours’ sleep.”

  “Not for me, I’m afraid,” said Jack. “I have several papers to grade and two lectures to prepare. But yes, I’ll come back with John.”

  “Just the idea is going to be a weight off my shoulders,” said Charles. “This whole matter of not being able to travel to the Archipelago has had my sense of obligation all in a twist. I kept worrying that there was going to be some crisis I wouldn’t be able to help with—sort of like listening to a radio report about your brother’s house burning down. You might be able to do something eventually, but there, in the moment that you’re needed most, you can’t really do anything. Terribly frustrating.”

  “I know,” Bert said. “I know how hard it’s been for all three of you. But that’s all, erm, behind us now, so to speak. For now, let’s get you home, hey?”

  They rejoined the rest of the Caretakers and guests in the main hall, where final good-byes were said, hugs given, and hands shook, and at last the three companions were ready to return home.

  “Remember,” John said to Rose, “we want you to come back to Oxford as soon as you can arrange it. We’ve missed you terribly, and Warnie and Hugo would be terribly hurt if you couldn’t spend time with them as well—although your uncle Hugo is going to be merciless about your hair.”

  Rose kissed him on the cheek, then Jack, then Charles. “I shall, I promise,” she said. “That works both ways. If you find you have a free hour or two, you can always come here. This is home too.”

  “Indeed it is,” said Charles, “and you have my word, dear girl—I’ll be back here before you know it.”

  “All right, fellows,” said Ransom. “Let’s have a little walkabout.” He pulled a small leather case out of his jacket and untied the binding. Removing the stack of trumps from the enclosure in the back of the case, he shuffled to the one he wanted and held it out in front of him, concentrating.

  Nothing happened.

  “Hmm,” he said after a minute. “I must have had a bit too much to drink. I can’t seem to focus.”

  Hank stepped forward and extended his hand. “I’ve just gotten back from a visit to the seventeenth century,” he said with a half-concealed smile, “so I haven’t yet had the chance to indulge in as much brandy as you. May I?”

  Ransom scowled a bit but handed his colleague the card.

  Hank held up the drawing of the cottage where Jack lived with his brother Warnie—who could even be seen through one of the windows, reading and smoking his pipe—and began to concentrate. Again, nothing happened.

  “If this is all a trick,” Houdini said at length, “the setup has been astonishing so far. I only hope the payoff is just as good.”

  “It isn’t a trick,” Ransom snapped testily. “The card just isn’t working!”

  “Something’s wrong with the picture,” said Rose, looking closely at the card in Ransom’s hand. “With Uncle Warnie.”

  “Is he all right?” Jack asked, suddenly concerned. “What’s happening? Is he in danger?”

  “No,” said Rose. “It’s nothing like that. I’m looking at his pipe. The smoke isn’t moving.”

  John arched an eyebrow as he and the others moved in to peer more closely at the card. Rose was correct—there was smoke coming from the pipe, but it was frozen. In fact, nothing in the picture was moving.

  “How is that unusual?” asked Doyle, who had not seen the cards used very often. “It’s just a drawing, isn’t it?”

  “The drawings change with the passage of time,” Ransom explained. “It was Hank who first figured it out, after our escapade in 1936. They move along with us, and change as time advances. It isn’t usually noticeable, except when we’re using one. Then, the scene begins to move as we step through. But the card isn’t even expanding, so I don’t know what to think.”

  “So the one we used to get to the keep,” said John, “the one that jumped us from 1936 to 1943. What is it like now?”

  “It’s blank, save for the frame of runes,” Ransom said. “The last time I looked, where the Keep of Time had been drawn, there was only open, empty sky.” He shuffled the cards again and pulled one out. “See? It’s …” He paused, frowning.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Charles.

  “Something’s off with the trump,” Ransom answered. “Here, look for yourself.”

  Charles took the card and whistled. Ransom was right. The card was not so much blank as overfull with static. A pulsating gray crackle swept back and forth over the surface of the card.

  “Perhaps it looks like that because the keep is finally gone,” offered Jack. “A temporal flux of some sort, like the Time Storms.”

  “No,” Ransom replied. “I looked in on it just a few days ago, and it was fine. Water, sky, a few seagulls—but a normal trump, otherwise.”

  “It’s not just that card,” said John, pointing at the others on the table. Ransom spread them out and took a quick accounting. All the trumps that led to places in the Summer Country had the same problem as the one for the Kilns—they were frozen in time. But all the trumps that led to locations in the Archipelago were filled with gray static.

  “That’s really disturbing,” Morgan said as he examined his own cards. “Mine are the same way. And I just used one earlier to get here from London.”

  “How did that work?” asked Verne.

  Morgan shrugged. “It seemed to be fine, mostly. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but now that this is happening …” He frowned. “It was a bit difficult getting back. I thought I was just tired, but it took me more effort than usual, since I was also using my Anabasis Machine to travel through time. That’s why I was late arriving here.”

  “So were we,” said Ransom. “By several hours, in fact. I thought it was just a fluke, though. And the trump seemed to work fine—but now it won’t work at all.”

  “Oh, dear,” said Bert. “That’s going to present a problem.”

  “How so?” asked John.

  “There is currently no other way to cross the Frontier,” Bert said, hands spread apologetically. “If the trumps don’t work, there’s no way for you to go home.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Bridge

  “This is a fine how-do-you-do,” said Jack. Traveling by trump was so convenient, and so easy, that it had never occurred to any of them what might transpire if the trumps suddenly stopped working properly.

  “If only we still had a Dragonship,” said Charles, “getting back would be a walk in the park.”

  Bert and Verne exchanged nervous glances. “Yes, if only,” s
aid Bert. “Don’t worry, there has to be a reason this is happening. We’ll get you home, never fear.”

  “How about one of the principles?” Jack suggested. “The Royal Animal Rescue Squad would be more than eager to come and bail us out with a ride to Oxford.”

  “The vehicles are also unable to cross the Frontier,” said Bert. “The magic feathers that allowed them passage lost their power when the Dragons died.”

  “Samaranth has feathers,” said John. “Perhaps we should ask him for a few?”

  “You’re forgetting the first thing he ever said to us,” said Charles. “‘Will you drink tea with me, or plunder and die?’ Do you really want to go ask him if he’s molted any feathers we could borrow? Especially after that last speech he gave about the race of men being on their own?”

  “I agree,” said Ransom. “There’s our dignity to consider.”

  “I’m fine staying here, if it’s all the same to you,” said Magwich the shrub. “They really do treat me poorly in Oxford. Why, just watering time alone …”

  “Oh, do shut up,” said Charles, “or we’ll give you to Grimalkin. And if you thought Mrs. Morris had large claws …”

  “Sorry, sorry,” said Magwich.

  “All right,” said Twain. “So far we’ve got a stack of malfunctioning playing cards and our dignity. What else do we have to work with?”

  “Burton,” said John, “the Society has ways of traveling around expeditiously. Can you do anything here?”

  Burton’s eyes grew wide—he’d been enjoying the predicament the Caretakers were in, but only as an observer. He didn’t expect to be drawn in as a participant.

  “In time, yes, but not in space, and not across the Frontier,” he said in clipped tones. “That’s why I stole the Indigo Dragon, remember?”

  John could tell that Burton hated admitting he couldn’t do something. “Fair enough,” he said before anyone could probe any deeper. “It’s seems our work is cut out for us, then.”

  As the other Caretakers Emeritis began to discuss a plan of action, Rose noticed that William Shakespeare had been present throughout the entire discussion.