The Indigo King

by James A. Owen

Chaz reached inside and removed a small photographic slide. In it they could see the projection room back at Sanctuary, and even a miniature depiction of Reynard, still watching for them.

  Jack removed the disk from the projector. “It has a sixth slot,” he said with a trace of surprise, “almost as if it had been left open for a reason.”

  Hank and Uncas fitted the slide into the slot, then replaced the disk. “Here goes nothing,” Hank said, firing up the generator again.

  In a moment, the image of the projection room sprang up on the tent wall. The image was coarser than the others they’d gone through, but this one seemed no less viable.

  “Only one way to find out,” said Jack, and he stepped from the tent into the house on Sanctuary.

  “Come on!” he implored, waving them over. “It’s a bit more like moving through soup than air, but I’m here just fine.”

  “I think I can duplicate that trick with the lenses,” Hank said to John, “so you can take it back through with you.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  The engineer shook his head. “Not my place or time,” he said. “Thanks for the offer, though. Just get a message to Verne.”

  “I will,” John said, and he stepped through the portal, with Uncas and Fred close behind. Hugo gave Hank a warm, two-handed handshake and, swallowing hard, threw himself through the portal, landing in a sprawl in the room, much to the delight of everyone there.

  Only Chaz remained in the tent. He made no move to go through.

  “Chaz?” called John. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t … I don’t want t’ go back,” he said.

  “But why not?” exclaimed Jack. “We’ve got Hugo back and assured that Arthur has the throne he’s supposed to have. When we get back to Noble’s Isle, everything will have changed back to the way it’s supposed to be!”

  “You mean,” Chaz replied softly, “everything will have changed back t’ th’ way it’s supposed t’ be … for you. If everything else changes,” he continued, “will I just become ‘your’ Charles? Will I even remember who I was before?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” offered John. “I hadn’t thought much about it—no offense,” he added quickly. “It’s just that you’ve become so much like …”

  “So much like him that you hadn’t noticed I wasn’t him?” Chaz said with a trace of bitterness. “Well, I’d noticed,” he said, jabbing his thumb at his chest, “and I don’t want to go anywhere if it means I’m not going t’ be me when I get there.”

  “I don’t think it’ll work like that,” said Jack. “I think you’ll stay ‘you’ no matter what. You’re one of those implementing the changes in the timelines. So I think you’ll remain unaffected—stay Chaz-like, as it were.”

  “I agree,” John said. “Bert mentioned that he and Verne traveled outside the timelines somehow, and despite going to times and places they’d already been, they always kept a memory of events. I think it’ll be the same with you.”

  “There is another thing to consider,” Hugo put in. “If you stay, you will probably affect the timeline for us. After all, isn’t that why you all came back? To bring me home, so I don’t mess up whatever I, ah, botched in history? What if you stay there, and the same thing happens?”

  Chaz looked at each of them through the projection, considering, then stopped at Hugo. “That’s really th’ best reason, isn’t it?” he said. “Whatever else goes wrong, I don’t want t’ be th’ cause of Mordred taking over th’ world. So let’s just pull me over and be done, hey? Before I change my mind?”

  “Mordred taking over the world?” Hugo said to Jack. “What’s happened while I’ve been gone?”

  “We’ll explain later,” Jack told him, “hopefully back in my rooms at Magdalen.”

  Chaz put his hands through the projection, and John and Jack pulled him through. Then, with some coaching from Reynard, Hank adjusted the lenses on the Lanterna Magica and moved it closer, until the men in Sanctuary could touch it, grasp it, and pull it through its own projection. Hank waved a last farewell as he pulled the cord and tossed it through. An instant later the wall went blank. They were back in the room on Sanctuary.

  Jack started to cheer, but John held up his hands. “Wait,” he said. He didn’t know if Reynard, or the room, or the entire island would have been affected by the change they made in the past by returning with Hugo.

  He looked at Chaz, who patted himself down and then shrugged. Chaz was still Chaz.

  “Reynard,” John said cautiously, “has anything changed in our absence?”

  “Changed?” asked the fox. “In what way?”

  As Reynard spoke, John realized he was bandaged—he still bore the fresh wounds he’d gotten trying to protect the Red Dragon from being destroyed.

  “John,” Jack said tonelessly, pointing at the corner of the room. “The burlap bag. It’s still where we left it.”

  John sat down heavily in a chair and began to shake. There was too much that had been overcome, at too great a cost. Even when the impossible had been needed, they had still managed, somehow, to prevail. And none of it had done them any good at all.

  “It’s still Albion. Still the Winterland,” John said bitterly.

  “We haven’t changed anything.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Sacrifice

  There was no choice then but to explain to Hugo the complete story of exactly what had taken place after he stepped through the door in the wood. When the companions had finished, Hugo was shaken, but reciprocated with his own tale, looking askance at Chaz as he spoke.

  After the Caretakers had explained who he really was, Hugo had accepted it with aplomb, but a feather’s uncertainty remained. If it were not for the scarring on his face, and the occasional lapse into vulgar language, Hugo might have thought it was another joke being played on him.

  “The book was sent to Charles, and Pellinor had been instructed by someone to retrieve the man in the photo—you, Hugo,” Jack summarized. “Then, a time traveler who was working with Samuel Clemens, another Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica, appears at a tournament in fifth-century Britain. This is all being orchestrated by someone, somewhere.”

  “I still think Mordred has everything to do with this,” suggested Chaz. “I know him—at least, the Mordred of the Winterland—better than any of you. And this is exactly his kind of scheme.”

  “It wasn’t Mordred I heard scheming,” said Hugo. “It was Merlin—the Cartographer. He’s the one I wrote the message to warn you about.”

  “I understand what you think you overheard, Hugo,” John offered, “but remember, we know what the Cartographer became. We’ve had several encounters with him through the slides in the Lanterna Magica, and we know his predilections. But we know where he ended up, too. And he’s an ally, not a threat.”

  “Fair enough,” Hugo said, a bit nonplussed at the easy dismissal of his story. “After all, I share your concerns about Mordred. As a scholar of Arthurian lore, I knew I couldn’t allow him to defeat Merlin and become the Arthur. That’s why I did what I did. I’m just lucky you came along with the real Arthur.”

  “Yes, lucky,” Jack said, rubbing his chin in thought. “But I’m not certain it was luck.

  “Consider this,” he continued. “Verne and Bert did what they did in response to Hugo going through the door and altering time. They had no way of knowing what specifically had happened—just that something had. And so they responded, and then left us the means to resolve what had gone awry.”

  “What are you getting at, Jack?” asked John. “Everything changed after Hugo went through the door and the badgers closed it. Of course the thing to do was to find him and bring him back.”

  “That wasn’t what Verne directed us to do,” Jack insisted. “He gave us the mission of defeating our adversary. He never mentioned bringing Hugo back as a means for doing that.”

  “So all this death, and destruction, and whatnot that happen
ed,” Hugo said carefully, “it might not, in fact, be my fault?”

  “Not all of it, anyway,” said Jack, “no.”

  “Oh, I’m so relieved,” Hugo said.

  “I know exac’ly how you feel,” said Uncas, patting Hugo’s knee. “Exac’ly.”

  Reynard and the jackrabbit entered the room carrying trays of potato sandwiches and a hot drink that resembled tea and smelled of chile and cinnamon. “To revitalize you,” Reynard said as he passed out the cups. “It’s an old recipe, given to us long ago by the wife of the shipbuilder.”

  The companions drank the tea, and ate the sandwiches hungrily. Despite the camaraderie of Hank Morgan and the interest they had in young Arthur, they were relieved to be able to rest, even temporarily, in a place where they felt civilized.

  “The other slides,” John said suddenly. “We still have two slides.”

  “Like the one Charles got out of the box?” asked Hugo, rising and walking over to John’s pack. “I didn’t realize there were others in here.”

  “Hugo, wait!” Jack shouted, leaping to his feet and scattering cups and saucers as he did so. But he was a fraction of an instant too late. Hugo flipped open the lid of the Serendipity Box and peered inside.

  “Huh,” Hugo exclaimed, holding aloft a flower. “It’s a purple rose. Was this in here before?”

  “It’s not purple. It’s indigo,” said Jack, sitting back down in one of the chairs. “And no, it wasn’t. It was there just for you, because it’s apparently what you needed the most.”

  “Strange little whatchamacallit,” Hugo remarked as he handed the box to John, then inserted the rose in one of his jacket pockets. “It’s pretty, but I’m not really in need of a flower.”

  “You may be,” said John. “It doesn’t give you instructions. And each person can open it only once. We’d expected to save your turn until we were in trouble.”

  “You just finished explaining to me how the entire world is under Mordred’s thrall, our only transportation was a ship, now destroyed, and there are giants waiting to kill us if we go outside. How is this not the appropriate time to open the box?”

  John looked to Jack and Chaz, who both shrugged. “He has a point,” said Chaz.

  “It seems to me,” Hugo said, sniffing the rose, “that we should follow the mandate of Jules Verne. He gave you five slides. Two remain. We should use those to see if what’s been broken can, in fact, be mended.”

  All the others considered this, then nodded in agreement and got to their feet to start preparing for another trip through time.

  Fred and Uncas assured the companions that there would be no mishaps with the cord, and they promised that it would stay put where it belonged on Sanctuary. As before, the companions took supplies to sustain them throughout the day, but they briefly debated whether or not to leave the Serendipity Box behind.

  “The ‘imp’ may not appear for any of us again,” Jack said as he and Reynard placed the box in a bag, “but I’d rather keep a hand on the ‘bottle,’ if you follow my meaning.”

  “Fair enough,” John declared. He turned to the badgers. “Okay, Uncas. Let’s see when we’re going next.”

  The badger turned on the projector, and for a moment it seemed as if the image was unable to focus. It shifted and blurred, and finally clarified to a clear but dark scene in a very familiar setting.

  The projection on the wall was almost identical to the one they had gone through last: an image of Grandfather Oak, in the center of the hill not far from Camelot.

  “Did we use the same slide again?” Jack asked Uncas. “Is this the burned one?”

  Uncas shook his head. “The other one’s all used up, Scowler Jack,” he said. “This is slide four, as y’ requested.”

  “It isn’t the same,” Chaz said suddenly. “Look—the tree. It’s taller, older. And the trunk is split.”

  Looking more closely, they realized Chaz was correct. The tree was the same shape, but taller and stouter, and there was a wicked gash along one side, as if it had been struck by lightning. It was a bad enough split that ultimately the tree would not survive.

  Chaz flipped through the pages of the Little Whatsit to the entry on Grandfather Oak. “It says here that the tree is still standing,” he said, indicating a passage in the book. “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” John reasoned, “that whatever caused the changes to the world that resulted in the Winterland already happened. Maybe when we were there, in the fifth century. Maybe after. But whatever happened to the tree might be happening everywhere.”

  “Is this what Verne meant for us to do?” asked Jack. “Are we supposed to find the exact cause of the change and fix it? Can we do that, if it’s already happened?”

  “I don’t know,” said John, “but I’m going to go with Hugo’s assessment. These slides aren’t redundant. They’ve all been left for a reason. We’ve got Hugo back now, thanks to the last one. Perhaps this one will bring us closer to the finish.”

  “I hope so,” Jack said as he stepped through the projection. “I need something to believe in.”

  * * *

  The tree, Grandfather Oak, was indeed dying, and the rest of the countryside looked no better. It was bleak, stricken, as if it was diseased. A thick odor hung in the air, an odor of death and decay.

  “What’s happened?” Hugo exclaimed. “How long have we been away?”

  “Years, certainly,” said John. “Decades, perhaps, judging from the size of the tree,” he added, stroking the bark. “A shame we won’t see it again after this.”

  “This must be a different timeline,” Chaz said. “Different from yours, I mean. This looks more than familiar t’ me.”

  They started walking the same route they had taken before, but other than the topography of the land, nothing was familiar.

  There were scattered houses and a number of crumbling and broken walls. There were fires in some of the structures, and a few carcasses of horses and cattle that looked as if the animals had died of consumption rather than in a conflict.

  Far off in the distance, they could just make out through the smoke and haze the crenellated towers of a castle.

  “Camelot,” John said dully. “Or what’s left of it.”

  “Let’s make haste,” Hugo urged, beckoning them on. “We need to get to the bottom of things as quickly as we can. It’s early in the day, from the position of the sun, so we can be there in a few hours if we hurry.”

  The companions ran as long as they could, finally slowing to a walk to conserve their strength for any unexpected surprises. The closer they got to the place they had known as Camelot, the more barren the landscape had become. It had been stripped bare of trees, stones, and anything else that could have been useful in a siege. And a siege was exactly what was taking place.

  From the hilltop where they were, the companions could see the fields in the shallow valley where the tournament had taken place. Massed along the valley floor were thousands of warriors, many bearing banners they’d seen at the competition. There were battering rams, and trebuchets, and various machines of war that were completely unfamiliar in design, but evident in their use. Destruction was their purpose, and they were being used by warriors willing to smash everything in their path.

  The armies were circled around the castle that had been built on the hill where the stone table stood. It was a motte-and-bailey castle of raised earth and wood that had been fortified with stone. The traditional courtyard that enclosed the town below had been obliterated by the invaders, who were now pressing their attack with fire and steel up against the walls of the castle itself.

  The castle and its defenders would not last the night.

  “This is it, isn’t it?” Jack whispered, awestruck by the spectacle in front of them. “This is the beginning of the Winterland.”

  “No,” John replied. “This is just the result. Whatever set things on this path has already happened.”

  “But how can we fix this?” Hugo asked, si
tting on the ground and clutching his knees. “This is war!”

  Hugo had lived through the Great War—but unlike John and Jack, he had never witnessed the kind of savagery that permeated every aspect of a battle that turned on blood and steel. Hand-to-hand combat with spears and swords was a different kind of warfare, and it was frightening Hugo into a stupor.

  “Hey, Hugo,” said Chaz, pointing at the Little Whatsit, “give me a hand here, will you? I can’t make sense of some of this.”

  John started to remark that Chaz hadn’t had a problem with reading it before, when he glanced at Chaz and Hugo and realized that Chaz still needed no help. He’d asked Hugo to assist him to break the professor’s coma of fear. And it worked. With his attention drawn away from the battlefield before them and focused instead on the unusual academia of the Whatsit, Hugo was getting his color back.

  Chaz looked up at John and gave him a half smile and a nod, then went back to examining the book.

  It occurred to John that it had only been through necessity that they’d brought Chaz with them. But just that degree of contact had changed him, perhaps permanently. He would never be the same Chaz they had first met. Perhaps never Charles—not their Charles, at any rate. But not the same as he’d been.

  Jack interrupted John’s reverie with a squeeze of his arm. “Someone’s coming,” he said. “But I think he’s a friend.”

  “Why do you say that?” asked John, already stiffened in expectation of a row.

  “Because,” Jack replied, “he’s carrying a sword, a shield, and a baseball bat.”

  The figure of the knight trudging toward them finally realized that the men in front of him were not fleeing, but merely watching. He took a defensive stance, and then looked more closely at their clothing.

  “Who goes there?” the knight called out. “Identify yourselves, and state your allegiances.”

  “Hank?” Hugo exclaimed. “Is that you?”

  The knight straightened up and lowered the sword, then after a long moment, removed his helmet, which was streaked with blood. His gauntlets and breastplate were similarly stained, but his face was welcomingly familiar.