The First Dragon (Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, The) (14 page)

“What are you doing, Dee?”

“I am a scholar, on a scholar’s quest,” Dee answered, “and as much as it pained me to inconvenience you, I cannot have you interfering.” He paused and furrowed his brow. “How did you get here, anyroad? You were not traveling with the Grail Child and her cohorts.”

Kipling ignored the question. “Why are
you
here?”

“This is the only place and time in history where I could find a codex to the language of the angels,” Dee said as he walked back toward the door and swung it open. “There are runes and markings and even a manuscript written in their manner of speech, but nothing that remained after this time that could tell me how to translate them. And that was essential.”

“Why do you need to understand the angelic languages?” Kipling asked. “What possible use could that be to you?”

“If I understand the language,” said Dee, “then I can speak it correctly. And if I can speak it, then I can call an angel by his name. And,” he added as he closed the door behind him, “if I know an angel’s name, then that angel . . .

“. . . can be
bound
.”

♦  ♦  ♦

The notes inside Deucalion’s box were taken just as seriously as the one he had been given that had instructed him to build the ark. The companions watched somberly as he called his family together and instructed them to begin gathering the animals together in preparation for the long-anticipated flood. It was to their credit, Madoc thought, that not a one among them hesitated or questioned their patriarch in the slightest. He had raised them to believe what he told them, and they trusted him implicitly.

“You are not of this world, are you?” the old shipbuilder asked
the companions as they left his tents to make their way back to the
Indigo Dragon
.

“Of this world, yes,” Quixote said primly. “Of this era, ah, no. Not exactly.”

Deucalion nodded. “I could tell as much. You have the smell of Kairos about you.”

“Sorry,” Uncas and Fred chorused. “We got a bit wet when we were watering the goats,” said Fred.

The old shipbuilder smiled. “I think the smell of wet badger fur is more pleasant than the smell of a rose garden,” he said.

“Y’see?” Uncas said to Madoc. “
That’s
why ev’rybody loves him.”

Madoc laughed. “I’m starting to understand that.”

“Uh-oh,” Fred said as they approached the spot where they had left the airship and the Zanzibar Gate. “You know that whole ‘don’t meddle with history’ thing the Elder Caretakers are always nattering on about? Well, I think we’ve just meddled.”

The airship, which resembled a boat enough still that everyone who looked at it completely ignored it as another one of Deucalion’s desert follies, was still sitting in the sand where they had left it. But the Zanzibar Gate was drawing a considerably larger amount of attention.

Craftsmen from all the tribes had formed a perimeter around the gate and were constructing their own replicas of it. Even just a cursory glance among the works-in-progress showed that pyramid-like structures from all the great cultures of the world were being sculpted: the Egyptian, and the Maya, the Chinese, and even the latecomers of Mesopotamia.

“Maybe it’s just a coincidence,” said Quixote.

“Not likely,” said Madoc. “This is the First City. No one else on
earth has built anything like a pyramid before, and suddenly one just appeared out of thin air in the middle of the desert. That’s too significant a happening to be ignored.”

“Well, at least we finally know the answer to the question as to why there are nearly identical pyramids in every culture around the world throughout recorded history,” said Fred. “They were all inspired by the work of William Shakespeare.”

♦  ♦  ♦

Observing from the circle of Caretakers seated at Conan Doyle’s table in Tamerlane House, John tightened his grip on his colleagues’ hands when he saw a child moving among the sculptors who were making the replica pyramids.

“There,” he said, hardly daring to breathe. “That boy—isn’t he . . . ?”

“Yes,” Verne said, his voice barely more than a whisper. “In this time he was Enkidu, friend of Gilgamesh. But when he grows older, we will know him as the End of Time.”

“Theo,” Jack whispered. “It’s good to see you again.”

Almost as if he had heard, the boy stopped and cocked his head. He wiped the sweat from his brow and then ran back the other way, moving closer to the companions and the Zanzibar Gate.

♦  ♦  ♦

Deucalion had moved past the others to examine the
Indigo Dragon
. He knelt next to the hull and ran his hands along it. “A fascinating vessel,” he murmured, “of impeccable construction.”

“Don’t let’s be patting ourselves on the back too hard,” said Laura Glue.

“What?”

“Never mind her,” said Fred, frowning at the Valkyrie. “It’s a good ship, and she’s taken good care of everyone who’s sailed on her.”

“She’s been through a lot,” Deucalion said, noting the scars in the wood, “but I have no doubt she’ll continue to serve you well.”

He turned to Madoc. “Something you ought to know,” he said as the companions reharnessed the goats to the airship. “This is not, in fact, the First City.”

That froze all of them where they stood.

“It
isn’t
?” Quixote said, dumbfounded. “But isn’t this
Atlantis?
”

Deucalion chuckled again. “Atlantis is among the oldest cities, and it is certainly the grandest, but it is not the first. My own city, in my own kingdom, predated it by several centuries. It was far humbler, but older nonetheless.”

“Oh, dear,” said Uncas. “That in’t good.”

Deucalion knelt, a look of concern crossing his features. “If your friends are in the City of Jade, does it matter if it is the oldest?”

“It might,” said Fred. “That will affect what it is they came here to find. If this isn’t the First City, then there’s little chance they will find the identity of the first architect.”

“Is that all?” Deucalion said in surprise. “I can tell you that right now.”

Again, all the companions stopped doing whatever they were doing and focused their full attention on the old shipbuilder.

“Seek my great-grandfather,” Deucalion said to Fred. “He left this world long before I came into it, but if any man was ever the kind of architect whom you are seeking, it would be him. He built a city. . . .” He paused, glancing around in sorrow as the enormity of the imminent destruction hit him once again. “He built the
first
city,” the shipbuilder continued, “and in the beginning, before the names the younger races ascribed to it, before anything in this world had a name, it was named for him. Seek him out, and perhaps you will find the answers you seek.”

He rummaged around inside his robe and withdrew a bronze disk that bore the likeness of a man on it. “Here,” he said, handing it to Fred. “This was made long ago, and is said to be the best likeness of him, made by someone who knew him in his youth, before the city was built. If it will be of some help to you, you are welcome to it,” he said, scanning the horizon with a visible anxiety. There were no clouds, no signs of rain, but it was clear the notes to the badgers had unnerved him more than he had let on.

“One way or the other,” he said with finality, “I will have no more use for it myself.”

With no farewell but a head scratch for the goats, a squeeze to the neck for the badgers, and a polite but curt nod to all the companions, Deucalion strode away to his ship.

“I don’t know my mythology, uh, my history as well as you do,” Quixote said to Madoc. “Who are we going to look for?”

“Enoch,” said Madoc. “The city Deucalion mentioned was called the City of Enoch, and if it truly was the first, then I think he’s who we have to find.”

“First city, second city, or fifth city, this one is about to be covered in water,” said Laura Glue. “There’s no more time to waste—we have to go.”

♦  ♦  ♦

“Will the gate be safe while we go into the city?” Uncas asked. “Maybe one of us should stand guard.”

“It’s a pyramid built of almost indestructible stone that is older
than dirt,” said Laura Glue. “What can possibly happen to it?”

“The mechanisms are breakable,” said Madoc, “but I would trust in Shaksberd’s construction. It’ll be fine.” He turned to Fred. “All right, little Namer,” he said. “Name me.”

“Okay,” Fred said. He’d been thumbing his way through the Little Whatsit, looking for the proper way to Name a Dragon as a Nephilim, but incredibly, that bit of knowledge was nowhere in the book. He shrugged and tucked it away. “You’re a Nephilim,” Fred said bluntly. “Congratulations.”

“There’s something to be said for ceremony, you know,” Quixote said as the goats took a running start and the ship lifted into the air.

“Sorry,” said Fred. “I’ll work on that.”

♦  ♦  ♦

The airship rose into the sky, and a great hue and cry rose up from the thousands of people living in the encampments. It was not unprecedented in a world where angels walked among men and animals talked and gods rose and fell with the seasons, but it was a thrilling sight nonetheless. As the
Indigo Dragon
flew closer and closer to the impenetrable line of Corinthian Giants, every human within sight was watching its progress. Every human, that is . . .

. . . save for
one
.

Enkidu was standing away from the throng, not watching the flying ship but instead staring directly at the Prime Caretaker sitting in the circle at Tamerlane House.

“This is as far as I can take you, O spirit guides,” the boy said. “I have tried to be where I felt you needed me to be, so you could see the things you hoped to see, but I can go no further. I must prepare for what is to come. And so must you.”

With that the images projecting from the table vanished, and the room was plunged into darkness.

♦  ♦  ♦

“Good Lord!” John exclaimed, jumping up from the table. He was almost choking on his own words. “Wh-what was
that
, Arthur? What just happened here?”

“I’m sorry,” Conan Doyle said as he and the others also rose. “I thought you understood—it’s not simply remote viewing. We are almost physically with him. That’s not a hard, fast rule—none of this is set in stone—but he knew we were present the whole time we were watching. And somehow, he understood it was necessary.”

“And, it seems, done,” said Jack. “How are we to follow them now? We don’t even know if Rose, Edmund, and Charles are in the city!”

“Yes, we do,” said a voice from the doorway. It was Poe, the master of Tamerlane House.

In the hierarchy of Caretakers, Poe occupied a unique position somewhere above that of Caveo Principia, and even above Jules Verne when he was the Prime Caretaker before John took over the role. According to Bert, Poe had a unique understanding of space and time, and supposedly could manipulate both when it suited him to do so—but in John’s experience, he rarely involved himself in whatever the Caretakers were dealing with unless it was a serious crisis. His appearance here was both good and bad.

“The
Telos Biblos
was written in Samaranth’s own hand, from the time before the Archipelago itself was created, and there are accounts in it we have never understood until now.”

He held up the book, so devoid of color that the pages appeared cold, and promptly ripped it in half.

Before any of the shocked Caretakers could react, Poe continued to tear the pages loose from the binding, then threw them into the air. They swirled about him like leaves in a storm, and then they began to slow, emitting a strange, unearthly glow.

Gradually the pages flowed past Poe and over to the table, where they reassembled themselves in order, and then began to expand until they filled the entire impression inset within the table. The light emanating from them grew stronger, and as the Caretakers again took their seats, images began to form in the light, and faint sound could be heard coming from the pages.

“Look and listen,” Poe said, still standing near the doorway, “and see how the world you have cared for came into being.”

“The Jade Empress,” Samaranth said . . .