The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The)

by Owen, James A.

  “I just didn’t want to be alone,” the bearded man said. “I have been here a very, very long time.”

  “I can tell,” Jack said, looking more closely at the man. “Someone hurt you, didn’t they? Hurt you badly.”

  “I don’t think he meant to,” the man said. “He was my brother. I think he was just sad, and I think it was my fault. I’ve waited here, in case he comes, so I can tell him I’m sorry.”

  Jack didn’t respond, but instead reached out and gave the man a hug, which, after a moment, he returned.

  “Oh . . . oh no,” Uncas wailed, looking at Tummeler and suddenly understanding the meaning of the empty hourglass in front of Samaranth. “Does that mean . . . ?”

  The old badger nodded. “It’s all right, young one. I did good, helping Mr. Samaranth. And I got t’ see you, and Fred, and Scowler Charles. That’s a lot. In fact, that’s everything.”

  “Not everything,” Dee said as he stepped out the door, “as everyone in your precious Archipelago is about to discover.”

  Before anyone could stop him, Tummeler let out a loud howl and threw himself at Dee.

  Samaranth jumped to his feet. “Tummeler, don’t! Don’t cross the threshold!” But it was too late.

  The little badger fell to the ground, just outside the door. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his breathing stopped.

  As the companions all cried out and moved to attend to Tummeler, Dee walked across the front of the island to where the black ship waited. Outside the inn, he returned to his usual appearance, but his face was still a mask of hatred.

  At his approach, Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs stood and lifted the shipbuilder Argus roughly by the arms.

  “Now,” Dee said to the shipbuilder, “do as you did with the Black Dragon, and release the Cherubim from the vessel. And then we will unlock the Archipelago and reshape two worlds in the image of order. In the image . . .

  “. . . of the Echthroi.”

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  By the time the companions who had arrived on the Indigo Dragon approached Dr. Dee to reclaim the Amethyst Box, Argus was nearly finished with his task.

  When the shipbuilder bonded him to the hull of the Black Dragon, Grimalkin had still resembled a Cheshire cat. But when the process reversed, Grimalkin emerged, shaken but whole, as a very different sort of creature.

  In the same way that releasing Madoc had reverted him to a more human state, the way he had been before he became a Dragon and then allowed himself to be bonded to the ship, releasing Grimalkin reverted him to being what he had been before he was bound by Dee to serve the Echthroi.

  Standing atop the rocks before them, drinking in the energies of the storm swirling above, was a Cherubim—one of the oldest angels from the City of Jade. And he was not happy.

  The Caretakers and the companions who had been in the city and witnessed the transformation of angels suddenly realized that the aspect of children, of youth, that angels like Samaranth wore so easily was simply so they could more easily commune with mortals. Here, now, Grimalkin had shed that aspect of himself completely.

  Around his neck was the collar he had worn as a cat—but everything else had changed. He stood nearly twelve feet tall, and had four feathered wings that stretched out behind him like a wall of steel feathers. He had great claws and wore armor that was stretched tight over muscles that rippled with the power of heaven itself. But most significantly, he now had four faces: the face of an ox, the face of an eagle, the face of a lion, and the face of a man, which bore some of the aspects of the Cheshire cat that so many around Tamerlane House had seen so often.

  “Fear me, little thing,” the angel rumbled, looking at Dee. “You have summoned your own doom.”

  “I’m not afraid of any Dragon who ever was,” Dee said menacingly, “or of any angel. And I am prepared for you . . . Shaitan.”

  Shaitan, far from being cowed as Dee expected, merely smiled and spread his arms. “I am not a Dragon, as you can plainly see,” he said, his voice a soft purr that nevertheless carried echoes of thunder in it. “I never descended, and so I am still an angel, still Cherubim, exactly as you intended for me to be.”

  “And still able,” Dee said, “to do everything that a Dragon could do here, in this place. That is why I have released you now. To do my bidding one last time.”

  “Stop!” Rose shouted as she drew Caliburn from its scabbard. “Stop, Dee! You know what I can do with this.”

  “Little Imago,” Dee sneered. “It is far, far too late.”

  He turned back to the angel, arms spread. In one hand, he held what looked like a green crystal. It was glowing, just like the buildings in the City of Jade. “Shaitan! The time is now!” Dee proclaimed, his face a mask of triumph. “Take the Master Key, so we may release the Archipelago and deliver both worlds to the eternal rule of order—so we may deliver them both to the Echthroi.”

  “Excuse me,” Edmund said, raising a finger, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

  Everyone turned in surprise to look at Edmund McGee. He seldom took point in a battle, and none of them could understand why he would challenge Dee in such a manner.

  The young Cartographer was holding up a trump. It depicted the towers of the City of Jade, along with a familiar face.

  “Hello there,” Kipling said. “I was beginning to wonder if you’d get around to saving that world before this one meets its doom. I can see the water from here.”

  “Save the commentary,” said Edmund. “Do it!”

  “Grimalkin, called Shaitan, called the Cheshire cat,” Kipling said, “I release you from your Binding. Thrice I bound you; thrice I release you. I release you. I release you. I release you.”

  There was a clap of thunder, and a rending of the sky as the angel’s collar flew apart and shattered into fragments of light.

  “Impossible!” Dee cried. “He was bound to me! To the Echthroi! He is all but Echthros himself!”

  “Bound by you?” Kipling asked through the trump. “That’s what he thought too. But a creature who is bound to one cannot be bound to another. And I got to him first.”

  Dee looked dazed. “B-but all these years, he has served us!” he said, confused. “He has been a spy in the House of Tamerlane! He has killed agents of the Caretakers!”

  Kipling’s expression darkened at this, but he merely nodded. “All at my direction, I’m afraid. When I bound him, that was the one thing I ordered him to do—to serve John Dee, and follow his orders as if he were bound to him, until the day when I released him. Which,” he added, smiling more broadly now, “I just did.”

  “Over?” Jack snorted. “It’s never over until you win . . .”

  Chapter TWENTY-THREE

  The Last Battle

  The angel Shaitan looked down at John Dee, who suddenly seemed a lot smaller. “Little thing,” Shaitan said, “you have caused my countenance to be darkened. You denied me the opportunity to serve the Word by becoming a protector of this world. And there is a price to be paid.”

  “Not me!” Dee shrieked, pointing at the trump in Edmund’s hand. “I never bound you! Kipling! He’s the one!”

  “Intention counts,” the angel replied, “and I can see past his countenance into his heart, just as,” he said, moving closer, “I can see into yours.”

  Dee shrieked as the great angel moved down to embrace him with wings and arms and eyes of fire. “I’m sorry!” the Chronographer of Lost Times cried out as he burst into flame. “Forgive me! Please forgive—!”

  The angel began to glow, brighter and brighter, and suddenly Dee burst into a thousand shards of shadow, all scattering in an effort to escape the purifying light—but it was impossible. For an instant, the island glowed like a star, and the shadows evaporated in Shaitan’s light.

  When the companions could see again, the great and terrible creature that had been the angel had been replaced by a young man, dressed simply in a tunic, who had curly black hair and a look of horrible sadness.

 
“It’s over, isn’t it?” he said, to no one in particular.

  “No,” Samaranth said from the doorway of the inn. “It is just beginning, my friend Shaitan.”

  The young angel’s expression changed from one of sadness to joy, and he ran to his friend. When Sycorax explained the price of entry, he didn’t even hesitate.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Quickly,” Edmund said to Kipling. “The flood hasn’t hit the city yet. I can still pull you through!”

  But to the surprise of all the companions, the Caretaker refused.

  “I’m done, I think,” he said. “This was my last mission, my last hurrah for the Caretakers. It’s time for the—what did you call them, Jack? The Young Magicians? It’s time for you to take over now.”

  “But why?” Rose exclaimed, suddenly understanding where Kipling was, and what kind of price he paid and was paying still to give them this opportunity. “You can still save yourself!”

  Kipling smiled. “I think I already have, dear girl,” he said, stepping back, away from his own trump. Charles saw it first. “Your shadow!” he exclaimed with relief. “It’s come back! Good show, old fellow.”

  “That’s why I’d like to stay,” Kipling said. “I lost my shadow by doing a terrible thing for the best of reasons, and then I earned it back by giving you a chance to save the world.”

  “Also, you got to stick it to John Dee,” said Laura Glue.

  “Yes.” Kipling chuckled. “That too.

  “Regardless,” he went on, “I’ve lived two good and worthy lives now, and I get to finish this one watching the destruction of Atlantis. And when that’s done,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye, “I’ll get to see my boy again. Can’t say fairer than that.”

  He turned away from the trump. “I can hear it now,” he said. “Time to go.”

  “Thank you!” Rose shouted over the increasing noise of the approaching flood. “Thank you, Caretaker!”

  Kipling winked at her and turned away as the card faded and went black.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “Oh no,” Laura Glue exclaimed. “My hourglass! It’s almost run out. We have to go!”

  “I’d love to,” Quixote said, “but our transportation seems to have disappeared.”

  The companions’ hearts sank as they realized what must have happened—while the angel was dealing with Dee, his henchmen Mr. Kirke and Mr. Bangs had taken the Indigo Dragon.

  “It’s worse than that,” said Rose. “I think they took the Amethyst Box as well.”

  “We still have the Master Key, though,” said Charles. “And we have Madoc. We just don’t have any way to get back.”

  “The Black Dragon?” Laura Glue asked. “It might work!”

  They rushed over to the ship, but all they found was an unconscious Argus, and a massive, gaping hole where the masthead of the angel had been.

  “It’s no use,” Madoc said. “We’ll never be able to repair it enough to fly. Not so quickly.”

  “We should have left a guard,” Jack moaned. “What happened to Archie?”

  “They must have done something to him,” said Madoc. “He would have alerted us otherwise.”

  “Still,” said Jack. “We should have taken more precautions.”

  “We’re at the end of all things, Jack!” Charles sputtered. “Heaven itself is a stone’s throw out the back door! Why would we possibly have worried about someone stealing the Indigo Dragon? Where would they possibly go with her?”

  “Back to the Archipelago, for one place,” said Laura Glue.

  “You are not helping things,” said Charles.

  The Valkyrie turned to make a sarcastic comment to Fred, and for the first time they realized that the two badgers and Quixote were still close to the inn, sitting with Tummeler. Even during Dee’s confrontation with the angel, they hadn’t left him.

  Suddenly Tummeler inhaled a massive breath, and then began to speak. “I am a commander, first class, in the Royal Animal Rescue Society,” he said, exhaling as hard as he could, “. . . retired.”

  “He’s still alive!” Charles shouted, half in astonishment and half from joy. “Come quickly! We have to help him! Tummeler is still alive!”

  “How?” Jack asked, looking at Samaranth, who shook his head in response. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do, Don Quixote,” the Caretaker said softly.

  “A portrait?” Uncas said. “At Tamerlane?”

  “There are no portraits of . . . well, any animals in Basil’s studio,” Jack said, casting a sorrowful, apologetic glance at Tummeler’s son and grandson. “Uncas, Fred . . . I’m so sorry.”

  “A tulpa!” Fred exclaimed, clutching at Charles’s coat. “Y’ did it once before, with someone else, t’ make th’ tulpa of Jack!”

  “And look how that turned out in the future,” Charles answered bitterly. “He became Lord Winter and turned the whole world over to the Echthroi. No,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m partly to blame for what’s happened here, because I did that foolish, foolish thing—and I cannot countenance doing it again, for anyone.”

  “It only went badly because Jack was still alive,” said Rose. “Can’t you make one for Tummeler, for his aiua to enter?”

  Charles shook his head. “There simply isn’t enough time. It would take a miracle to save him now.”

  Uncas leaped to his feet. “Brilliant, Scowler Charles! That’s it exactly!” The little badger dashed away to where Rose had dropped her bag when she drew her sword, and returned bearing a box.

  It was the Serendipity Box. And he presented it not to Charles . . .

  . . . but to Don Quixote.

  Uncas trembled as he proffered the box to the wizened old knight, who knelt to receive it.

  “I know I’m just a squire,” Uncas said, voice quavering with emotion, “an’ squires is supposed t’ help their knight, not ask for boons. But . . .” The little badger risked a glance at the barely breathing Tummeler. “He’s my pop. Will you . . . Will you please make a wish, and open th’ box?”

  “Of course I shall,” said Don Quixote. And with no hesitation, he opened the box—but all that was within was what looked like an oversize playing card.

  “A trump,” said Jack. “It’s a trump! And look,” he said, gesturing at the illustration on the card. “It’s the waterfall, at Terminus. We can escape before the sand in the hourglass runs out!”

  No one else was listening. Instead they were watching in sorrow and disbelief as the Serendipity Box fell to pieces in Uncas’s paws. There was nothing else inside, and now the box itself was crumbling to dust before their eyes.

  “There has t’ be something else!” Uncas cried inconsolably. “There’s no time t’ take him back for help!”

  “No,” a very weak voice answered. “But there is time for you to go catch the Indigo Dragon and save our world. The box knew. It gave you what you needed most. And that wasn’t t’ save me.”

  Tummeler lifted his head, trembling. His strength, his life, were nearly gone. Charles clung to him more tightly as tears streamed down his face.

  “I did what I was asked,” the old badger said, “and Samaranth and I saved the Archipelago. . . .”

  “Balderdash,” Charles said. “We know it was really you who did all the work.”

  “But it will all be lost,” Tummeler continued, “if you don’t go, now, and do what y’ have t’ do.”

  Uncas knelt next to his father. “But you . . .”

  Tummeler shushed him. “I got what I wanted, my boy,” he said, looking at his son and grandson, and up at Charles. “I got t’ be a hero, at last.”

  “You were always a hero, Tummeler,” said Charles, but his old friend didn’t hear him. Tummeler was dead.

  “We will mourn him after,” Madoc said, “but he was right—the hourglass is nearly empty, and we have to leave now.”

  Quickly Rose and Edmund focused on the trump, and it began to expand. In minutes they could clearly see the rocky outline of Terminus above the great
waterfall, and soon it was large enough for all the companions to step through.

  Fred and Uncas were still reluctant to leave Tummeler, but Samaranth assured them that he would not leave his friend alone. “Where he went, I’ll soon follow,” the angel said. “He is not alone.”

  “That’s all I needed to hear,” Fred said, wiping the tears from his face. “Let’s go.”

  With one last farewell to the two angels, the reunited friends standing in the doorway at the inn on the shores of heaven, the companions stepped through the trump just as the last grain of sand circled the neck of the hourglass and fell.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  “All right, what now?” Rose asked.

  “Now,” a voice said from above, “we are going to change history.”

  The companions all spun about as the Indigo Dragon rose up behind them. Mr. Kirke was at the wheel and held the reins.

  “Curse it all!” Charles spat. “With the airship, they have the high ground!”

  “Not all of it!” Laura Glue exclaimed as she spread her wings and leaped into the air. No one was surprised by the Valkyrie taking to the air—but all of them were surprised when Madoc beat his wings and rose into the air next to her.

  “That won’t help you,” Kirke shouted over the din of the waterfall. “I still have the advantage.”

  “That’s what you think,” said Fred. He stuck his paws in his mouth and whistled shrilly, twice, then again. “Coraline! Elly Mae!” he shouted. “To the moon!”

  Instantly both goats shot straight up into the air, pulling the airship with them.

  “Good girls!” Fred shouted. “Left rudder! Right rudder!”

  At the commands, the goats spun about and flew in opposite directions, flipping the airship upside down and releasing their harnesses at the same time.

  “Oh, hell,” said Mr. Kirke.

  The airship crashed to the ground and exploded into shards of wood and metal, which sent the companions flying for cover and threw Kirke and Bangs into the rocks at the edge of the island.

  Instantly Dee’s henchmen were on their feet and rushing at the companions, who were still regaining their composure after the crash of the Indigo Dragon.