The Dragon’s Apprentice

by James A. Owen

  “Do you think the Watchmaker may have had a hand in it?” asked John. “Could Dee have coerced him, or somehow bribed him to modify them?”

  “I doubt it,” said Verne. “He may be above our petty little alliances with their shifting lines, but he’s also a good judge of character. And he can tell a Namer from an Un-Namer.”

  “At least we’re in the Summer Country now,” said Bert. “Our experiments would not have worked if we were still in the Archipelago.”

  “Why not?” asked Jack.

  “We have never been able to traverse time inside the Archipelago,” Verne explained, “only in the Summer Country. It’s the nature of Kairos time, you see. It’s more pure, more fluid—almost imaginary. Events there are given meaning only because of the connection to Chronos time, here in the Summer Country. That’s why residents there age slowly, or not at all, and why without the keep, time travel was impossible. There are exceptions to this, of course, but we have come to realize that this should be treated more as a rule than a guideline.”

  “We’ll have plenty of opportunities to practice,” said Rose, “but even with all of our successes, I can’t help feeling sad for all that we’ve lost. It seems too high a price to have paid.”

  “Maybe not so high as you think, dear child,” said Verne. He was smiling broadly. “We have a surprise for you—for all of you, in fact.” He pointed to the door of the banquet hall, where a tall, lanky man was just stepping through.

  “Hello, Rose,” he said warmly.

  Rose looked up, and her gasp of surprise turned into a squeal of glee as Charles walked toward her.

  Rose’s delighted reaction was echoed by John and Jack, both of whom were moved to hug their colleague several times while tears filled all their eyes.

  “Well done!” John kept exclaiming as he clapped his friend on the back, as if Charles not being dead was some sort of carnival award. “Well done, my man!”

  “Thank you, John, Jack,” Charles said amiably. “I’m only disappointed that when you needed me, I wasn’t ready to accompany you. So sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine, it’s fine,” Jack exclaimed. “We managed somehow, and your stand-in comported himself very well, very well indeed.”

  “Stand-in?” said Charles.

  “We recruited Hugo,” said Jack.

  Charles’s face froze in a mix of amusement and horror. “You’re joking! Ah, no offense, Rose.”

  “They are joking, and none taken,” Rose said as she chucked Jack on the shoulder. “It was Fred, of course.”

  “Right,” said Charles. “Where is the young fellow, anyway? I should quite like to see him.”

  “He’ll be down in a bit,” John assured him. “He’s upstairs assembling a lamp for our new Cartographer.”

  It was Charles’s turn to be surprised. “New Cartographer?” he sputtered. “I die and everyone starts rearranging things on me.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” said Jack. “But there’ll be time for that later. Tell us how …” He stopped. The initial excitement now past, they could finally take a good look at their old friend—who was no longer quite so old.

  “I say,” Jack murmured as he squinted at Charles. “Did you do something to your hair?”

  “Got it back,” Charles said jovially. “That’s one of the positive things about becoming a tulpa—the body you create is exactly the one that you think of when you think of ‘yourself.’ It’s the ideal you, so to speak—and mine happens to be around thirty.”

  “That’s about how old you were when we first met, back in 1917,” said Jack. “Remember, Bert?”

  Bert nodded. “I do very well,” he said, clearing his throat. “It was a good age for a Caretaker.”

  “The third alternative, they call it,” Charles said when they’d settled back in their seats. “Everyone dies eventually. And there’s also the course that almost all the Caretakers have chosen for ethical and moral reasons, which is to become portraits in the gallery and reside at Tamerlane House. But there’s also the third way, becoming a tulpa, which Jules and Bert both advocated to me after that meeting at the Inn of the Flying Dragon.”

  “Bert advocated?” John said, surprised. “I didn’t expect that.”

  “My personal feelings about it haven’t changed,” Bert offered, “and it remains a sore point between Jules and me. But something very significant happened that we’ve never had to deal with before. And that changed everything.”

  “What was that?” asked John.

  “Stellan,” said Bert. “We’ve always known the risks of leaving Tamerlane House, but never in our history had we lost a Caretaker in that way.”

  “We defeated the Shadow King only by the slimmest of margins,” said Verne, “and Stellan was key to that victory. But had the journey taken just a little longer, or had they been delayed …”

  “We’d never have reached the wall, or my father,” said Rose, “and we’d have lost everything.”

  Bert nodded. “None of which would have been an issue if Stellan had been a tulpa,” he said, not really enjoying the admission. “Charles is still vitally important to the work we’re doing now, and we didn’t want to risk the same thing happening to him. So we offered him the choice, and he accepted.”

  “Also,” added Charles, “I’m getting on amazingly well with Rudyard Kipling.”

  “It doesn’t make you immortal, you know,” Jack cautioned. “As we saw with Defoe, a tulpa body can still be destroyed.”

  “Oh, I’m completely aware of that possibility,” said Charles, “and if we see that coming, I can still have my portrait done by Basil, and join the others in the gallery. And if that happens, then I’ll have something really interesting to explore. I’m not terribly worried about it.”

  “After our discussion about his impending, uh, discontinuity,” said Bert, “progress on Charles’s portrait was halted while Jules and Rudy began to prepare him to create a tulpa.”

  “What did you do with the uncompleted portrait?”

  “We found another use for it, which didn’t require as much alteration as you’d think,” said Verne.

  “And I’m very glad you did,” said a familiar voice, “or else I’d have missed out on too much fun.”

  Jack pulled out a chair next to himself and waved Ransom over. He paused to shake hands with Charles, who, Jack noted, looked less like his other-dimensional counterpart now that he was younger. Ransom sat next to Jack and winked at Rose.

  “My days as a Messenger may be a lot more restricted now,” he said with undisguised melancholy, “but that’s better than not having any days at all.”

  “Doesn’t it take a long while to create a tulpa, though?” asked Jack. “When did you do it?”

  “It does take some considerable time, yes,” said Verne, “and more so in Charles’s case, because we weren’t there when he actually died. If he hadn’t begun the process in 1943, then there might have been no way to save him—except with a portrait.”

  “It’s an act of visualization, as much as anything,” said Charles. “The Buddhists were particularly adept. You simply create a spirit form in your mind, and then, at the time of your death, it takes on solid flesh as your, ah …” He scratched his head and looked at Verne. “Spirit? Soul? Aiua? Well, whatever it is that makes you ‘you’ moves into the new body.”

  “Even if I don’t fully comprehend it, I’m impressed,” said Jack. “Especially since you could do it so well on the first try.”

  Verne and Bert both reddened and pulled at their collars at the same time, in a gesture the companions had come to realize meant they were slightly embarrassed about something.

  “There was a practice run, so to speak,” Charles offered, glancing a bit nervously around the room as he tried not to tug at his collar, “sort of like a final exam before graduation.”

  “What was that?” Jack asked with a wry grin on his face. “Making a tulpa of the Queen?”

  “I, ah,” Charles stammered, �
�I made a tulpa of you, Jack.”

  “Me?” Jack exclaimed. “You practiced by making another me?”

  “Really, you ought to take it as a compliment,” said Verne. “If he didn’t respect you greatly, and have a good understanding of what makes you tick, he wouldn’t have been able to do it at all.”

  Jack was still frowning, and he looked distinctly uncomfortable. He glanced around the room. “So is he—ah, I mean, am I around here somewhere?”

  “No,” Verne said firmly. “As I said, it was only a dry run, to see if Charles could do it. One doesn’t have to make a tulpa out of himself—traditionally, it was done to create workers, or guardians of some sort. But those would fade after the death of their maker. It was Dee, and then Blake, who realized that by making a tulpa of oneself, the consciousness, the soul, if you will—”

  “Or intelligence, which I prefer,” said Charles.

  “Or intelligence,” Verne added, “could be transferred after death to the tulpa, and thus could live on indefinitely. But a tulpa of anyone else, be it a manservant or a colleague, would simply have to be ignored to make it fade back into the ether. A tulpa can only be maintained by a deliberate act of will—and when he was certain it could be done, Charles switched his attention to his own.”

  John ran his hand through his thinning hair and smiled crookedly at his now more youthful friend. “I can’t say I’m not slightly jealous,” he said, “but you do realize that in some respects you’re now more like Burton than us?”

  “I’ll learn to cope,” said Charles.

  “You don’t miss your old body?” asked Jack. “The, ah, deceased one?”

  “This is where I reside now,” Charles said with a touch of somberness. “Here in this body, and at Tamerlane House, and wherever else I might traipse around to with Verne and Kipling. I don’t miss what I was, because I’m still me. Still your Charles.”

  “So,” said Twain to the Magician and the Detective, “did you fellows learn anything on this trip, or were you just window dressing?”

  “Yes,” Houdini said with a hint of gloomy self-realization. “I found out that I don’t need to find everything out.”

  “Really?” exclaimed Twain. “I’m actually rather impressed, if that’s truthful.”

  “Oh, it is,” Houdini complained. “I’m not very happy about it, but it’s true. As a magician, I should have realized it all along—some secrets are better off remaining mysteries.”

  In that instant, the Serendipity Box suddenly reappeared on the tabletop in front of Houdini.

  “Oh, good Lord,” said Doyle. “Quick, someone take this thing away before he changes his mind.”

  There was still one reunion to be had, which Charles was a little less prepared for. Fred stopped in the doorway with crackers falling out of his mouth.

  “Hey ho, Fred!” Charles said, arms outstretched. “Aren’t you happy to see me?”

  Unexpectedly, the little mammal took a step backward, then another. “You in’t Scowler Charles,” Fred whispered, his whiskers trembling. “You in’t. You just in’t.”

  “Of course he is,” John offered, stepping forward. “He’s just been, ah, youthened, is all.”

  But the badger wasn’t having it. As far as he was concerned, this personage might be Charles in appearance, and in voice and mannerisms, but in one way he was sorely lacking—a way that was a crucial part of identity to the Children of the Earth.

  “He din’t smell right,” said Fred. “He din’t smell like Scowler Charles. I—I mean he does in some ways. But he in’t quite right.”

  Charles was utterly crestfallen. This was one reaction he had not anticipated in any way.

  “My memories are the same,” he said gently. “I remember finding Perseus’s shield with your grandfather. I remember meeting you for the first time, and how we could not have rescued Hugo without you. And I remember when I chose you to be my apprentice.”

  “If you’re back,” Fred said hesitantly, “and you’re the third Caretaker again, then what happens to me?”

  “You’ve read the story of the Three Musketeers, haven’t you?”

  Fred nodded.

  “Well then,” said Charles, “this will be like the sequel, when they became Four Musketeers. Just like that.”

  The little mammal’s whiskers twitched. “Four Musketeers? Can I be D’Artagnan?”

  “I’d be D’Artagnan,” said Jack, “obviously.”

  “You’re more like Athos,” said John. “Or maybe Porthos.”

  “I am not Porthos!” said Jack, self-consciously rubbing his stomach. “I’ll be Aramis. Charles can be Porthos.”

  “Look at him,” said John. “He’s maybe thirty. He should be D’Artagnan.”

  “I hate to interrupt,” Alexandre Dumas said, waving a turkey leg, “but Charles does make a better Athos.”

  “So who would be Lady de Winter?”

  “I vote Byron,” said Shakespeare. “Do any here dispute me?”

  “I do!” pouted Byron.

  “You don’t get to vote,” said Hawthorne. “Eat your soup.”

  “It doesn’t matter who gets to be who,” Charles said, “as long as we know we’re all for one, and one for all.” He knelt down and looked his old apprentice in the eye. “Are we, Fred?” he asked, holding out a hand.

  Fred looked around the room at the assembled Caretakers, and then back at Charles. True, he didn’t smell right—but then again, neither did badgers, most of the time. And he didn’t smell any worse than the rest of them, who mostly smelled of turpentine anyway.

  “All for one and one for all,” said Fred.

  “So everything that happened, everyone we met,” said John. “The McGees. Franklin. Madoc. Is that all supposed to have been coincidence?”

  “There are no coincidences, John,” Bert said, his eyes bright. “None. All things happen for a reason. You see it as coincidence, as mere happenstance, that unusual people meet under extraordinary circumstances, but those meetings are not random. Like attracts like, and those like us are drawn to one another, not just in space, but also in time.”

  “So for now,” John replied, “the means to remedy the discontinuity is still a mystery.”

  “Not a mystery,” said Houdini. “A secret. Mysteries are secrets that no one knows the answers to. But secrets can be found out. Someone knows a secret. And if someone knows, they can tell.”

  “To what end?” asked Jack. “Time in the Archipelago has continued to flow unchecked—and everything we knew and loved is already long gone. We can’t get them back, Harry.”

  “Yes,” a soft, ethereal voice answered from the landing above them. “We can.”

  Poe descended the stairs and took a seat next to Rose. “The Archipelago is not lost, nor are your friends and loved ones,” he said placidly, holding her hands in his. “Once there was no separation—Kairos time and Chronos time were one and the same. Unveil the secret that may reunite them, and all may yet be restored.”

  “No more secrets,” Rose said. “That’s what Mother Night and my father told me. All the secrets must be revealed.”

  “But what secrets?” asked Bert. “The greatest secret we knew was the identity of the Cartographer, and that was discovered. What else don’t we know that isn’t already in the Histories?”

  “There’s a great deal,” said Verne. “What we have to do is discover what among the mysteries of history are, in fact, secrets—including the most profound secret of all, which I think will be the key to saving the Archipelago and our future.”

  “What is that?” asked John.

  Verne smiled and arched an eyebrow. “Rose knows. Don’t you, my dear child?”

  Rose nodded. “Who built the Keep of Time?”

  The entire room went silent as they realized that she was right. Of all the mysteries, all the secrets, that was the one question that had eluded them all. No one had questioned it, not even the Dragons, because the keep had always been. Its origins were lost so deeply in time th
at no one believed it had an answer at all. But if it was indeed a secret, and not a mystery …

  “And if, by some miracle, we do answer that question,” said Jack, “what then? How will knowing help our terrible situation?”

  “Because,” Rose answered, “if we can find out who built it, we might be able to find out how. We can’t keep jumping through time and space trying to bandage the symptoms—not when what we really need is the cure. We need to repair what was broken. To mend what was torn. And to finally weave all the threads back together the way they were meant to be.”

  “What are you proposing, Rose?” John asked, although he already knew what her answer would be, and he could feel the electric crackle of the hair rising on the back of his neck.

  Rose stood, folded her arms, closed her eyes, and smiled. “We must seek out the Architect,” she said, simply and openly, “and rebuild the Keep of Time.”

  Epilogue

  Eventually the last embers from the fire at the mapmaker’s house on Craven Street were extinguished, and nothing remained but ash and memory. Scavengers, the kind that walked upright, picked through the charred remains seeking something to steal, or barter with, or sell, but found that nothing of value remained. All that had been worthwhile had been carried away on the winds of time.

  From the narrow townhouse across the street, the Chronographer of Lost Times watched impassively as a blind magistrate chased away the low-born rabble, who abandoned their scanty finds as they ran.

  “When Sir John appears, order cannot be far behind,” a voice said from the rear doorway. The Chronographer turned.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Defoe.”

  “Good afternoon, Dr. Dee,” Defoe replied as he entered the room and sat heavily in a chair.

  “It went as you expected?” Defoe asked.

  “Well enough,” said Dee. “You’ll be paid, as agreed. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am expecting visitors.”

  Defoe scowled but rose to his feet; then, with a bow, he walked out the door. In his place a Shadow arose, and soon formed into something solid. Something alive.