The Indigo King

by James A. Owen

  “Yes,” John said with a smirk. “Jack does it too, and for the same reason—to show up his students.”

  “Well, I found something interesting,” Charles offered, taking a small paperback book out of his jacket. “I pinched it out of his hat when he was tangled up in the White Dragon’s rope ladder.”

  “You pinched it?” said John. “That settles it. I’m calling you ‘Chaz’ for the rest of the night.”

  “Har har har,” said Charles. “Take a look at this, John.”

  The book was called Great Quotes from the American Presidents, and it had been marked on nearly every page.

  “He’s quoting the American presidents?” John said, unsure whether to be shocked or impressed.

  “Why not?” said Charles. “Short, pithy, and designed to rouse the troops. And it makes him look smart. But that’s not the best part.”

  “What is?”

  “This,” Charles said, tapping on the copyright page. “This book won’t be published until 1976. And do you remember that quote from Milton we could never find? It wasn’t Milton at all—he was quoting a President who ends up getting killed on”—he checked the listing—“November 22, 1963. I wonder if we should find some way to warn him?”

  “That he’ll be killed, or that Bert is misattributing his quotes?” Jack said wryly, motioning for them to come inside. “After the adventure we’ve just had, I want as little as possible to do with time travel, and fate, and destiny. And besides, I don’t think any man should know the day he’s supposed to die—in any reality.”

  Together the three men entered the Eagle & Child and were shown to the room near the back where they would be assured of as much privacy as was possible in a neighborhood tavern.

  “The Rabbit Room, hey?” said Charles as they walked in. “We’ll have to tell Tummeler—” He stopped, stunned, as did John and Jack.

  At the mantel, gesturing to them with a glass of beer in hand, was a man John had once described as a “wild-eyed gentleman.” But that was before they’d met, which was long after the man was supposed to have died. Then again, if nothing else, Sir Richard Burton was resourceful. Maybe the most resourceful man they’d ever met.

  Five years earlier, the companions had found him in the Archipelago, where he had done his best to kill them, their friends, and Peter Pan—after which they rescued his daughter, an act which he repaid by stealing their Dragonship.

  “Gentle Caretakers,” Burton said cheerfully, “come, let us sup together.”

  Bert, wearing an angry and pained expression, sat at the far side of the long table, and a bewildered Hugo sat across from him. Rose, who was calmer than anyone in the room except perhaps Burton himself, was sitting next to Hugo, eating a cracker.

  John, who was behind the other Caretakers, looked around warily. Was this a trap?

  Burton laughed and took a seat at the table near the fireplace. “It’s no trap, John. Just a friendly meeting of peers. Or,” he added a bit more precisely, “respectful adversaries.”

  “Burton?” Jack exclaimed as he stepped into the room. “What are you doing here, you son of a—”

  “Now, Jack,” Burton admonished. “Language.”

  “Where is my ship, Burton?” Bert demanded, barely containing the fury in his voice. “Where is the Indigo Dragon?”

  “Where she’s been all along,” Burton replied. “Serving those who serve the true heirs of the Archipelago.”

  “Who, you?” John spat.

  “The Imperial Cartological Society,” Burton replied. “Have you forgotten already?”

  “The door,” said John. “You’re responsible for putting the door in the wood along Addison’s Walk, aren’t you?”

  Burton merely smiled and took a long swallow from his glass.

  “It didn’t do you any good,” Jack said. “We sorted it out, as we’ve always done.”

  “Whatever you say, Jack.”

  “You couldn’t even entrap one of us,” John said. “You tangled up Hugo instead.”

  Burton hesitated. The mix-up, apparently, had been an obvious flaw in his plan. “It wasn’t perfectly executed,” he admitted, looking into his empty glass and reaching for a second ale on the table. “I’ll tell you straight out, we were hoping to catch—and convert—you, Charles.”

  “Convert me?” Charles exclaimed. “To what?”

  “From your belief and support of the wrong heir,” Burton replied. “We at the society know the Histories as well as you. After all, we were all Caretakers too …

  “… almost.”

  “You wanted Mordred to win!” John said incredulously. “Why, Burton?”

  “You’ve been through the Histories,” he shot back. “You know what Myrddyn became, who he really is. He’s the one who set the path for all the Caretakers. Can you really tell me that is a man you would risk your lives for?”

  “Yes,” John said evenly. “I can.”

  “If you’d wanted to convince us the Cartographer was evil,” said Jack, “you shouldn’t have tried stealing the Grail book. It was one of your people who tore out the pages, wasn’t it?”

  Burton actually reddened. “Yes, well, some members of the society are being disciplined for that. When they tried to retrieve it, Monmouth surprised them, and one of them dropped it, tearing the pages. He could only bring back that part he’d torn. The fool.”

  “Harry,” said Bert. “You must mean Harry Houdini. He always was a butterfingers. Good for locks, not for espionage.”

  “Was he the one who put the door in the wood?” asked John.

  “He and Conan Doyle,” said Burton. “We hoped you’d go through and see what was taking place at Camelot—that Mordred had become a villain only because Arthur and Merlin made him so. We didn’t anticipate that you would be foolish enough to close the door. How did you get back, anyway?”

  “That’s a Caretaker secret,” Jack replied, knowing the answer, believed or not, would make Burton seethe.

  “If you just wanted to make Mordred’s case,” said John, “why did you need a door from the Keep?”

  “To put you in the position to see for yourselves,” explained Burton. “So you could see who Mordred and Merlin really were, and which was more noble.”

  “You didn’t benefit,” John stated flatly. “All that effort, and nothing came of it.”

  Burton tipped back the second ale and drained the glass in a swallow. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” He wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “We learned from our mistakes. And we may have found something that I once thought was lost. And it was in our hands the entire time.”

  “And you nearly caused the destruction of the world!” Hugo exclaimed. “Why, the Winterland that Mordred created—”

  “Hugo, please,” Jack said, squeezing his shoulders sharply. Hugo realized too late what he’d revealed—Burton had no idea what had been caused by the changes in time, because the Caretakers had managed to repair most of the damage.

  Burton smiled. “I think I understand,” he said, rising. “And now it’s time I take my leave of you. This has been entertaining, but as usual, you Caretakers ask all the wrong questions.”

  “How can the questions be wrong?” asked Charles.

  “You focus entirely on the past, on filling in the holes in events that have already happened,” Burton answered. “You are obsessed with what was and miss entirely what is. And that is why we shall control the future.”

  “What questions?” Charles insisted. “What haven’t we asked?”

  “All right,” Burton said. “Since it is just the six of us in here, all men of learning, I’ll give you a lesson you haven’t earned.

  “You ask why the door was in the wood—but not how we got it, or if there are others like it. You ask why we might want to convert Charles to our cause, without asking what our intentions are in doing so. And you have traveled in time and made choices based on what you experienced in the past—while ignoring the most important revelation of all …

  �
�… that time moves in two directions.”

  Burton took his hat and coat from the rack and bowed. “Farewell, Caretakers,” he said, smiling. “Settle my bill, will you?” And with that, he walked out of the tavern and vanished.

  “I wasn’t pleased to see him,” said John, “but at least we know. We know why this happened.”

  “Was that really Richard Burton?” asked Hugo. “He’s charming, but he smells.”

  Bert scratched his head. “There was something else,” he mused. “Something very, very interesting. I don’t think he was able to even see Rose. Not at all.”

  “What would that mean?” said Jack. “How could he not see her?”

  “It could be her unique bloodlines, or perhaps the fact she might be from an alternate dimension,” said Bert. “At any rate, it’s worth discussing with Jules, and it’s about time you met him anyway. This latest escapade proves that. We need to accelerate our plans. Soon. Very soon.”

  None of the companions broached the topic again to ask what Bert meant by this, and Hugo and Rose seemed to be more interested in ordering dinner than in more debates about Archipelago business.

  They ordered some food, and more drinks (noting that Burton had left a sizeable tab), and ruminated on what had happened just a few days earlier. One thing was clear—their adversaries were more aware of them than they had been. And they’d been much more active. And that would have to change, John promised himself. It was no longer good enough to simply react.

  “So everything Burton did was predicated on the belief Charles would be walking in the park with us Saturday night?” said Jack. “What a stroke of luck that you were detained in Paris!”

  “Not luck, but Jules Verne,” said Bert, “and the power of cause and effect.” He turned to Charles. “Jules deliberately had you detained so that you wouldn’t be at risk, then sent the Grail book to Jack.”

  “But Hugo’s warning was incomplete,” Jack stammered. “How did that help anything? Why couldn’t Jules simply warn us outright?”

  “Cause and effect,” Bert repeated. “By the time he stopped Charles, he discovered Hugo had to go, and in fact, had already gone.”

  “This is very confusing,” said Hugo.

  Bert nodded in understanding. “It gets worse. He got the first inklings of what was going on when Hank Morgan showed up at Sam Clemens’s house carrying the dragon watch. He told us where and when you were, and Jules began to prepare the room on Sanctuary with the Lanterna Magica. Jules arranged for Pellinor—who was meant to be the first Green Knight, incidentally—to be at the river where Hugo would appear, and persuaded him to take you to Camelot by promising him a chance to battle his ‘Questing Beast.’ You botched that up, Hugo, when you stabbed Merlin. Our concerns were realized and verified later, when Hank sent us a message that he’d indeed met Hugo Dyson.”

  “That was the message you got fourteen years ago, when you came back to London to find us,” said Jack. “But you—the you in Albion—told us that you’d been trapped there and had to wait for us. How is it you’re here now ali—unharmed and whole?”

  “That was the risk we took,” said Bert, “that you would change what had happened. And you did.”

  “I’d like to meet Verne for one reason more than any other,” put in Jack.

  “What’s that?” said Bert.

  “I want to show him his own skull,” Jack said as he took a drink of ale. “It’s on the desk in my study.”

  “It just occurred to me,” John said. “Did anyone ever get Pellinor out of the tree?”

  Bert pulled a copy of the Little Whatsit out of his bag and thumbed through to one of the back pages. “Ah, no,” he replied with a smirk. “They didn’t.”

  “We’re going to need to spend some time at the Great Whatsit on Paralon,” said Jack. “We have a lot of history that we’ll have to unlearn, beginning with the chronicles of Arthur, as the Cartographer was suggesting. We need to know what’s changed as a result of this little adventure, and what hasn’t.”

  “Jules has already begun tracking the changes,” said Bert. “There have been some discrepancies found here and there in the Histories. One in particular came to our attention fourteen years ago, as Jules began keeping a Chronologue of the various jaunts through time.”

  “Discrepancies?” said John. “With what?”

  “Oh, nothing attached to you, dear boy,” Bert said, turning to Jack with a Cheshire grin. “But you, lad, are another matter entirely.”

  “Me?” Jack exclaimed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Then how do you explain the apparently nonfictional, absolutely true, two-thousand-year-old tale that begat the story of Jack the Giant Killer?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said Jack. “Not all stories are true, are they? Not all of them really happened.” He paused. “Or did they?”

  “Time will tell, my boy,” said Bert. “Time will tell.”

  Epilogue

  Chancellor Murdoch entered the small room where the leaders of the world had gathered together to plan and play their little wars.

  The meeting proceeded as he had expected it to; each proposal was met with open enthusiasm and fully proffered support. It would be, he realized, the easiest conquest he’d ever planned, and the most successful, because it would be his last. When this was done, there would be no players on the board but himself.

  The rallying offensives of the past year had made his allies arrogant, especially the American president. He was the weakest of them physically, but he commanded the same sort of loyalty as others he had known in the distant past. And he was heading for the same great fall.

  If they had not been so concerned with the plans for the war itself, and so enthralled by any credible promise of an added advantage over their enemies, they might have noticed the gentle whirring sounds that the chancellor emitted as he spoke, or the slightly mechanical nature of his movements. But they had not, and so when they left the room, no one looked back at their strange new ally, for if they had, they might have noticed that his shadow had a will of its own and moved of its own accord.

  Of course, none among them would have known that it was the shadow that provided the motive power to the Clockwork Man that had been created by talking animals and a man called Nemo, and in another world had been known as the Red King. And if any of them had suspected, they did not care. All that mattered was that he had brought them the weapon that would see them to victory, when the time was right.

  It was ironic, he thought. To have sought the weapon once called the Lance of Longinus for so many years, only to discover that it had been in the possession of the Green Knight. Most if not all of their long line, especially the first, would not have entertained the thought of giving it up to one such as he, even if they had been unaware of his plans for it. But the last, Magwich, had been his own servant, and he gave it up for the asking. It had taken time, but the world was once again in flux, and he would have the chance to prove his worth.

  And time, the chancellor thought to himself as he cradled the Spear of Destiny in his hands once more, was what it was all about. Time, and how to use it. Because once that question was answered …

  … he would rule the world.

  Author’s Note

  In many ways, the chance to tell the story I created in The Indigo King is the reason the Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica exist. The heart of it is a very real event that took place on an evening in September 1931, when J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and Hugo Dyson took a stroll on the grounds around Magdalen College, and discussed the story behind Christianity in the context of its meaning as a mythology rather than a religion.

  Lewis had been if not a complete atheist, then something very close to it for most of his life, and although he had finally decided that there was “a” god, he could not wrap his head around the literal truth of the Christian mythology espoused by his friends.

  Until that one night.

  They walked, and talked, an
d as Lewis later wrote to his friend Arthur Greeves, “I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ—in Christianity. I will try to explain this another time. My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.”

  Considering how influential Lewis became as an advocate of Christianity, the chance to imagine possible events for my fictional Jack to experience, that might thematically fold into the real events of his life, was too good to resist.

  I had a great starting point for the book with the most-asked question about the other books: Who is the Cartographer? I knew I wanted to tell his complete story, and I’d been careful about dropping hints in the other books. I also wanted to bring my history of the Archipelago into sharper focus, tying it as I have to Odysseus and the Trojan War.

  We’d already established connections to Arthurian lore with the lineage of the Silver Throne—but I wanted to go back as far as I could, and it thrilled me beyond words to establish an origin and a pedigree for Arthur’s sword, Caliburn. And once I got into it, I decided that I wanted to mess with the conventions of the tales everyone knows.

  There are fathers and sons, and nephews and uncles, but they are not who you expect them to be. And the difference between good and evil is not always clear. Sometimes good people make bad choices, and vice versa. And that makes it harder to praise—or condemn them.

  The history of the Cartographer is in many ways the history of cartography itself; and the history of the Caretakers is the history of the world. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first great Arthurian scribe and the first “real” Caretaker. His Green Knight, Abelard, was a contemporary that suited the role I put him in.

  As to Chaz, I wanted a way to address Charles Williams’s very influential works, which had a great effect on Lewis in particular but are much less well known than either of his friends’ tales. His theories of many dimensions gave me a means to create a “what if” story inside my own book.