The Dragons of Winter

by James A. Owen

  John rose slowly from his seat. “How long?” he asked, his voice low and vibrant with restrained anger. “How long has Burton been working for you, Jules?”

  At this, several of the other Caretakers gasped in dismay, and Bert simply put his head in his hands. Chaucer, Spenser, and Cervantes clucked disapprovingly, while da Vinci gave a small smile of smug satisfaction. Poe, for his part, simply continued to observe impassively from above.

  “Since just after the Dyson incident,” Verne said, still looking steadily at John.

  “Chaos,” John muttered, shaking his head. “It’s all chaos, Jules.”

  “Entropy is life,” said Poe. “Chaos is life. Perfect order is stagnation, is death. Only in disorder is there the possibility of change.”

  “So what do we do now?” John asked. “Of what are we still Caretakers?”

  “We continue the work that we are doing,” said Verne. “We monitor the events of the world and ensure that Dee and his cohorts don’t manage to cause any trouble. We keep our eyes and ears open for young Telemachus, so that when the time comes, we might help him choose our side instead of theirs. We continue to develop the new mandate of the Imperial Cartological Society to seek out new apprentice Caretakers to further the spread of knowledge about the Archipelago with those who would help us protect it. And . . .”

  “And,” said Twain, “we wait.”

  “Yes,” Verne said, nodding. “We wait. And see if Rose manages to do the task she has been set to do since the moment she was born.”

  “And how long do we wait?” asked John. The frustration he felt was evident in his voice, if not his expression, which remained steadfast and calm. “Do we wait a year? Five? Ten? Twenty? How long a time do we wait for some sign of them before we make some sort of effort to find them and help them?”

  “Our part in Rose’s quest is done . . . at least for now,” Verne added quickly. “They will either find the Architect and the secret of the keep, or they will not. It’s now entirely out of our hands.”

  “Well,” John said, “I hope the angels are watching, and send them whatever help they need.”

  “I’ll drink to that,” Shakespeare said, lifting his glass and winking at Jack. “I was just thinking the exact same thing.”

  Rose opened her eyes to find she was no longer in the white space of Platonia. Instead she was standing on a gentle slope that overlooked a magnificent city.

  Gilgamesh had remembered the details of the First City far better than he believed he had, and Edmund had transcribed them as an illustration on the parchment with remarkable fidelity.

  There, in the near distance, was the City of Jade. It would have been impossible to mistake in any landscape, but here, in this time, it was all-dominating.

  “By Jove,” Charles said, hugging Edmund. “Well done, my boy. Well done!”

  “Take a deep breath, breathe it in,” Rose said. “That’s the air of a new world, a world that is whole and unbroken. A world,” she added with a note of relief, “that knows nothing of Shadows.”

  “It doesn’t really feel any different . . . ,” Edmund began to say, but then, as he spoke, he realized that wasn’t quite true. It was different, in the same way that the Night Land of Dys in the ancient future was different from 1946.

  Just ahead of them was a paved footpath. A boy was approaching, carrying a large, flat marble tablet. He looked like a normal child, except for two things: The expression on his face was one of someone far older than he appeared, and he bore markings on his forehead identical to those of the Winter Dragons.

  Involuntarily, Edmund took a step back. “More Lloigor?” he said, swallowing hard. “Are we back in the Night Land?”

  Charles shook his head. “Look around,” he said, sweeping about with his hands. “There is nothing of the Echthroi here. No darkness that isn’t natural, and no chains cover the sky. And the boy may appear strange, but he’s not a Lloigor. I’d stake my right arm on it.”

  The boy stopped when he saw the companions looking at him. He scrutinized them, puzzled. “You really are unusual creatures, aren’t you?” he said with unabashed curiosity. “You must be in the Book—but I can’t seem to remember you. What was it you were called again?”

  “I’m Rose, and this is Edmund,” she said, gesturing at the others, “and this is Charles.”

  “I am Nix,” the boy replied, frowning. “You should know me by my countenance.”

  Rose laughed. “By my body and blood,” she said, hands on her hips. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a mirthless child as you. Not in my whole long life. If she were here, Laura Glue would give you such a beating.”

  ‘I am not a ‘child,’” said Nix, “I am the second assistant Maker of the thirty-fifth Guild of Makers, of the nineteenth Host of Angels of the City of Jade.” He punctuated the statement with a huff. “And now, having conversed with you, I am thusly behind schedule, and with little regret, I must repair.”

  “Pardon me,” Edmund said pensively. “But did you say you were an angel?”

  “Of course I am an angel,” Nix said, so irritated he spat as he spoke. “How did you get Named if you aren’t even complete enough to know that?”

  It was only then that Nix really noticed Charles—in particular, his height.

  “Oh!” the angel said. “I beg forgiveness. I did not realize . . .” His eyes narrowed, and he looked Charles over from top to bottom, seeming to note the pale color of his skin and his burgundy hair as much as his features. “You carry no sigil,” he said at length. “Are you Nephilim?”

  Charles had been observing the angel’s reactions and sensed the loaded nature of this question. “No,” he said quickly. “Seraphim.”

  Nix visibly relaxed. “Ah,” he said, consulting his tablet. “I apologize. There are many powers and principalities whom I do not know arriving for the summit.”

  “Yes, the summit,” Charles said. “Can you tell us where it is? We’ve only just arrived and have not yet gotten our bearings.”

  Again Nix looked at them suspiciously, as if there were something amiss. But he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, and still, they were in the company of a Seraphim . . . .

  For emphasis on Charles’s request, Rose reached into her bag and withdrew the hilt of Caliburn, just enough to show that she carried a weapon. Nix nearly dropped the tablet.

  “I am already late,” the angel said, glancing down at whatever list was scrolling across the stone tablet, “and I would be later still were I to tarry any longer with you. But I can tell you how to find someone who can. He’s likely got nothing better to do.”

  “That should do nicely,” Charles said. “Thank you. Who is he?”

  “He is a minor Namer from a minor guild,” Nix continued as he began to immerse himself in his tablet once more, “but as I said, he is more likely to be able to help you than I. He is the eldest of us all, save for perhaps one or two of the original masters of the upper guilds, and therefore quite useless.”

  “And is he an angel as well?” asked Edmund.

  Nix snorted his disdain but didn’t bother even turning around to answer the question. “Of course he is,” the angel called back over his shoulder. “What kind of question is that for minions of a Seraphim? There are none here in the City of Jade save for the Creators and the Created, and even those who add little value to the work may still contribute. You will find him in the lower rooms of the tower just ahead.”

  “How will we know him?” Rose called out.

  “Ask for him,” Nix answered as he disappeared over the crest of the hill. “His name . . .

  “. . . is Samaranth.”

  “The rest of the household is sleeping, I take it?” John said to Jack as he entered the gallery at Tamerlane House and took a seat next to his colleague.

  “Yes,” Jack said, offering his friend a cup of Earl Grey. “It’s been a very, very long season, but it’s an old habit, I’m afraid, this working till the wee hours. I’ve just been working on some
notes for integrating more of the Little Whatsit into the curriculum for the ICS.”

  “That was an inspired choice,” John said, “renaming it as the International Cartological Society.”

  “All Warnie’s idea,” said Jack. “He never really approved of it being called ‘Imperial.’”

  The Caretaker lowered his head and sipped at his tea. “They haven’t failed, you know,” he said softly. “It isn’t over, John.”

  “How?” John murmured. “How do we know they haven’t failed? We’ve had no word at all, and it’s been months!”

  Jack gripped his friend’s arm in reassurance. “Because,” he said steadily, “we are still here. The world continues to turn. And the Echthroi have not defeated us.”

  “Will it all be worth it, in the end?” John asked. “All this effort, and all that we’ve had to endure?”

  “It’s worth protecting the stories,” Jack said simply, “when the stories are all we have left to protect.”

  “I miss him,” John said suddenly. “I miss Charles.”

  “So do I.”

  “Ah, well,” John said, rising. “It’s getting late. Thank you for the tea.”

  “Gentlemen,” a voice said from the far end of the gallery. “Before you retire for the evening, may we show you something?”

  The speaker stepped forward into the light. It was William Shakespeare. Laura Glue and the badger Fred were with him. “With your permission.” He said mildly, “I think we should move this discussion outside. I may have discovered a way to help our friends.”

  John and Jack followed the trio outside Tamerlane House, to see what it was that Shakespeare had built.

  “This hasn’t exactly been authorized,” Shakespeare explained, “so we’ve been working on it on the sly, just Laura Glue, Fred, and I. We wanted to make certain it would function before we showed anyone, and you two gents are the first.”

  The group traipsed across a rickety, fragile-looking bridge that had been hastily constructed to make Shakespeare’s latest creation, which he called the Zanzibar Gate, easier to reach. To build it, he had commandeered one of the smaller border islands to the west of the main island where the house stood, and had constructed it there, just past where the wooden bridge ended.

  The Zanzibar Gate was shaped like a Mayan pyramid and was about twenty feet high and half again as wide, with a fifteen-foot aperture in the center. It stood at one end of the small island, looming like an old monolith that had existed for ages—giving that impression in part because of the ancient stone of which it was constructed. There were symbols carved into the settings at several points along its radius, and on the right, a pedestal lined with colored crystals that could be used to activate the gate.

  “It is, I have reason to believe, truly representative of the best of both worlds,” Shakespeare said, beaming. “The technology I have integrated into it will allow us to travel into the future, and then it can be used in the same way as the keep to travel into the past. The design is, if I do say so myself, flawless.”

  Laura Glue suppressed a giggle, remembering how difficult it had been to get him to admit that he had any kind of proficiency at all, much less claim credit for his work. And now the opposite was true—he was good at what he did. And more, he reveled in it.

  “I don’t believe it!” John said, marveling. “You’ve repurposed the stone from the actual keep! Brilliant!”

  “The doors are gone, as Sir Richard had noted, as is the original bracing,” Shakespeare explained, “but the bracing was merely for support, and the doors were to create focal points. The power itself is located in the stones.”

  “How did you get these?” Jack said in amazement as he examined the flame-scorched stones of the gate. “When we set fire to the second keep, I assumed the remains were left in Abaton. And after the Archipelago fell . . .”

  “Abaton isn’t in the Archipelago,” said Fred. “It exists in one of the Soft Places, which abut this dimension. We had access to them the entire time—but, like you, we believed the power was in the doors. It wasn’t. Only Will figured that out.”

  “So the trip into the deep past you’ve proposed is possible?” asked Jack.

  “Yes, well,” Shakespeare said hesitantly. “In theory. There’s only one slight glitch to the gate I haven’t yet been able to overcome.”

  “Uh-oh,” John said, frowning. “Here it comes.”

  “It operates on the same principle as the doors within the original keep,” Shakespeare said with obvious melancholy. “Through the work I had been doing with Rose and Edmund, we can basically calibrate it, and point it at the time and place we need to go . . . . But we still can’t activate it, not without a power source—and the keep operated on a very . . . ah, unique source of power.”

  “How unique?” asked John.

  “The Dragons,” Shakespeare said. “Without a Dragon on one side or the other, there’s no way to activate the portal. The stones simply won’t work. And we’ve tried everything we can think of—but in truth, we really just need a Dragon. And unfortunately for us, there are no Dragons left.”

  Epilogue

  Somewhere beyond Elsewhere and Elsewhen, the last of the Dragonships waited.

  It had carried out the duties for which it had been created, including this, the last voyage into the Archipelago of Dreams. It had been many years since its creation, and it had grown accustomed to waiting, and serving. This was its purpose, its function.

  Those who had sailed the ship here to what was once a great island had not returned. So the ship waited on the long, lonely expanse of sand where it had landed, but no one came.

  Then there was an explosion of darkness at the center of the island, followed by a spreading shadow that covered land and seas alike. The island was slowly consumed, but still, no one came to take the ship away, to find safer waters or another sheltering harbor. The ship vibrated with restless energy, anxious for action, but it held its place and waited. Then, finally, when the darkness had nearly devoured the island and rose up to blot out the sun itself, the Dragonship decided to act.

  Gradually, almost painfully, it slid itself back into the waters from where the beach had begun to make a claim on the ship. Farther down, another of the ship’s siblings had not been as fortunate—but then, that ship no longer had a living Dragon on its prow.

  Somewhere within, the Dragonship felt a pang of shame and regret, then steeled itself against the distraction of the emotions to better focus on the task at hand as it turned from the island and headed for more open waters. The darkness sweeping across the horizon behind it was almost as foreboding as the darkness ahead.

  The Frontier was a living storm front, and the very air reverberated with the constant sound of thunder. From ocean to the limits of the sky, lightning flashed and exploded with violent energies, and the sea itself rose up into crushing waves that battered the ship as it crossed the threshold.

  The journey across the expanse of the Frontier seemed to take an eternity. In reality, it was only a thousand years. In times past, the transition was between worlds, from the Summer Country to the Archipelago of Dreams, and back again. But the Archipelago was no more, having been swallowed up by an evil from outside space and time—and what was hours or days on one side was centuries on the other. The ship was crossing the boundary between entropy and order, and it was not an easy passage.

  The stresses of the transition nearly ripped the ship apart—stresses that it bore because it was built by a Maker; and because it had will. Will to endure. Will to return. Will, because something greater had reached across the vast distances and spread of years and called to the Dragon within—and it was a call it could not deny, from someone it could not abandon.

  Someone to whom the Dragon had given its heart.

  Someone to whom the Dragonship it had become was determined to return.

  Someone who needed the help that only it could provide. And so it would not brook failure in this—it would, somehow, cross the uncros
sable barrier.

  And then, it was through.

  The ship slid roughly onto another beach, on an island that was of both the Archipelago and the Summer Country. In the distance were the familiar towers and minarets of the place that was its home—the one place the ship had sought to find.

  The last of the Dragonships had returned to Tamerlane House at last.

  The Black Dragon had come home.

  Author’s Note

  This is not the book I intended to write.

  In point of fact, it isn’t even the book I wrote—not at first. Between the initial draft of a book and the final revision there are often a lot of changes made, but I don’t think I’ve revised anything as dramatically as I did between the first two passes of The Dragons of Winter.

  There are challenges that are unique to writing series fiction, the biggest of which (for me) is making sure that each book is a standalone read while keeping the momentum of the overarching storylines going. It was difficult with Book Four, harder with Book Five, and darn near impossible to do with Book Six. I think the realization that the final volume was quickly approaching only added to the difficulty. I’d known for a few years now that Book Seven would be the conclusion of the story I began with Here, There Be Dragons, and so it was tempting to leave a lot of threads unresolved in Book Six. By now readers have become accustomed to my unusual mix of literature, history, mythology, and pop culture, and fully expect that the details (of which there are many) really matter, that story bits planted in one volume may not fully spring into bloom until a later book. But that wasn’t the reason for the change.

  I rewrote the book in its entirety to make certain that it fulfilled the primary goals—being a satisfying read while advancing the series storyline—while also augmenting the one thing I felt was lacking in the first go: hope.

  I rewrote the entire book in order to point everything toward these final pages of the epilogue, to those final lines, to the last line. Because to me, that last line is what ties together the entire series. It is what matters most to me, in both fiction and in waking life—the knowledge that when it seems everything is on the verge of utter disaster, someone will still step forward, extend a hand, and say, “Don’t sweat it. I’ve got this,” and be believed, and in doing so restore hope where before there was none.