The Dragons of Winter (46 page)

John turned and looked at where the other Caretakers were standing protectively around Aristophanes, who had gone pale from the wound, which was bleeding profusely.

“That’s Defoe taken care of,” said Hawthorne, “but what’s to be done with the unicorn here?”

“We’re taking him back to Tamerlane House,” Verne said. “I owe him a payment, and I think he’s more than earned it.”

“But the armor is gone!” the detective exclaimed. “I didn’t fulfill—”

“Earned it,” Verne said again, looking at Uncas. “Armor or no, you’ve earned it.”

“Let’s go,” John said, suddenly weary. “There’s nothing more to battle over here now.”

“No,” a voice said from somewhere behind them. “Not here. And not now. But soon, Caretaker.”

It was Defoe’s shadow speaking—with the voice of someone else they thought was a friend.

The shadow twisted and spun on the ground, assuming first Lovecraft’s silhouette, then Dee’s, and Defoe’s, and finally it coalesced into the shape . . .

. . . of a cat. A Cheshire cat.

“Grimalkin?” John said in disbelief. “Surely you haven’t betrayed us too?”

“Not betrayed, boy,” the cat answered, licking at its fur as if entirely unconcerned that it had just revealed itself as an enemy agent. “I am simply doing what I must, what the Binding compels me to do.”

“The collar,” said Verne. “I never realized it, but it must be the collar. Dee has had a spy with us all along.”

“There are greater Shadows than I in the House of Tamerlane,” Grimalkin said as he began to fade in the twilight, “and they are no less prisoners of fate, for as surely as this ring around my neck binds me, so are they also bound.”

“But why reveal yourself to us now?” Blake asked, suspicious. “We would never have known.”

“There are Bindings, and there are covenants,” Grimalkin replied. “I was bound to serve Dee, but I did not choose it. Long ago I made a covenant, which I am only now able to fulfill by giving you a warning.”

“What warning?” said John.

“The girl,” said Grimalkin, as he continued to vanish. “The Grail Child. Her shadow is not her own, but an Echthros, and everywhere she has gone, or will go, the Cabal can also go. She carries with her the seed of your destruction. Do with this what you will.

“Farewell, little Caretaker,” the Cheshire cat’s grin said as it vanished into the rising light. “And fear not. We will meet again—and sooner than you think.”

And then the cat was gone.

“All right,” John said to the other Caretakers. “Let’s get Aristophanes home and tended to. I’m done with all this business today.”

It took some time for the Caretakers to sort out who would be responsible for dispersing or attending to what parts of the Wendigo-Yorick-goat army, so it was late in the evening when John finally pushed open the doors of the great hall at Tamerlane House to collapse into a chair with a tall, tall ale. However, he had
one more shock to experience before the day was over.

“We tried to summon you sooner,” said Jack. “Someone is here to see you.”

The other Caretakers, who were crowded around the table, parted, and John saw who was sitting in the chair opposite Jack.

“Hello, my boy,” said Bert. “It’s . . . good to see you again.”

Joyfully, John rushed forward and embraced his mentor. “Bert! You’re back!” he exclaimed, looking around. “Where are the others?”

“It’s just him, John,” said Jack. “But the others are fine, as far as we know. Bert’s just been telling us about it all now.”

Bert clapped John on the shoulder, then took Jack by the hand. “I wish Charles were here,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just how I had hoped it would happen.”

“How you hoped what would happen?” asked John.

Almost as if answering his question, Bert’s watch began to ring with a strange chiming—a noise John had never heard it make before.

Bert’s eyes grew wide, and he looked up at the other Caretakers, several of whom had moved closer to him. “Oh dear,” he stammered. “I’ve forgotten. I needed one more sitting with Basil . . . .”

His eyelids fluttered, and he grew pale. Twain and Dickens moved around the table and gently helped the Far Traveler sit back down into his chair, where he immediately slumped into the cushions.

“What is it?” John whispered to Verne. “What’s happening to him, Jules?”

“Not him,” Verne replied quietly. “Well, not just him, I should
say.” He checked his own watch and nodded as if in confirmation. “That’s it, then,” he said to the others. “H. G. Wells has died.”

The house at 13 Hanover Terrace, in Regent’s Park in London, had no runes carved in its doors, nor along its hallways, or in the room where the aged author took his last breath. But even though those attending to the body could not see those who had come to pay their respects, he was not without friends.

“It was a good death,” said Baum.

Franklin nodded. “Agreed.”

“Do you think he’ll join us?” Lewis Carroll asked. “I mean, join us as, you know, a spirit?”

“No, I think not,” said Macdonald, looking around the room. “I think he did the things he needed to do, and that was enough.”

“He also knows,” Franklin added, “that he has a brother elsewhere to continue the work. So there’s no need for him to stay the way that . . .”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to finish the sentence, nor did he need to. And for a brief moment, the thirteen ghosts gathered around the bedside of H. G. Wells felt a twinge of regret, and the slightest envy.

Then, murmuring words of blessing and personal prayer, the members of the Mystorians took their leave of London.

In the portrait gallery of Tamerlane House, the Caretakers Emeriti gathered closely around the new portrait that had just been hung at a place of honor in the center of the west wall, among the portraits of the greatest and most distinguished members of their group.

“That really should have been my spot, you know,” grumbled da Vinci, “instead of over in the corner, next to George Gordon.”

“Oh, shut up, Leo,” said Irving. “Someone had to be next to him.”

“I resent that,” said Byron.

“Hush, all of you,” said Twain. “He’s waking up.”

It was a slow rise back to consciousness. The light around him came up gradually, but when his vision finally cleared, Bert could see the gathered Caretakers all beaming up at him.

“Let me,” Verne said, placing his watch into the frame just out of Bert’s field of vision. “Here,” he said, extending his hand as the frame blazed with light. “Come join us, Far Traveler.”

Bert stepped out from the portrait on the wall and into the midst of his colleagues, who burst into spontaneous applause.

“Basil finished,” Bert said, a bit dazed by all the attention. “He finished my portrait.”

He wheeled around to Verne. “What if I’d changed my mind and decided I wanted to be a tulpa instead?” he said. “I thought there’d be more time to choose.”

“Bert, my old friend, my old sparring partner,” Verne said, clapping a large hand on the smaller man’s shoulder. “You chose long ago, and we both know it. This was the path you preferred. And so we’d had it prepared for some time.”

“Humph,” Bert snorted indignantly. “You could have prepared a tulpa, too, if you’d wanted.”

Twain puffed on a cigar and blew a plume of smoke into the air. “Certainly we could have,” he said, “but then if you’d chosen not to take it, someone would have had to spend a lot of time dispersing it. They don’t just go away on their own—not right away, that is. And
it wouldn’t have done to have another you wandering around where just anyone’s will could step in and mess with his—your—head.”

“Ah,” Bert said. “So you figured it out. The Cabal did steal the wisp of a shadow of—”

“We’ll deal with that later,” Verne said quickly, glancing at Jack.

“It also means,” Bert said with a heavy sigh, “that I’m restricted to Tamerlane House. Forever.”

“Forever may be just long enough,” Dickens said with a wink at Twain, “and I think staying at Tamerlane House will be your preference from now on. Turn around.”

“What the blazes are you talking about, Charles?” Said Bert. “I’m not—”

“Bert,” John said, grasping his mentor by the shoulders. “Trust us. Just turn around.”

Still complaining under his breath, the Far Traveler did as he was told—and what he saw left him without words or breath.

There, hanging next to his own portrait, was a full-size portrait of a woman. She was lithe, and simply dressed, and had the innocent beauty of one who had only known trust and love in her world.

Bert reached a trembling hand out to touch the portrait, but he stopped an inch short of it, as if it were a gossamer dream that might disappear if it were disturbed. “Jules,” he whispered softly. “How . . . ? How did you . . . ?”

“Using young Asimov’s psychohistory, the Mystorians had calculated a high probability of the might-have-been future you and the others traveled to,” Verne replied, “and with each passing day, the percentage grew higher. So I took a risk and took your
machine into your future. Into
her
future. I knew that someday you would try to return, if you found the means to do so. But my messengers found more and more future timelines were
changing
. And I didn’t want to risk that this future would change, and take with it any hope of finding Weena again.

“Because you’d been there, you had already made it a zero point, so I knew I could get there. I was a little more concerned about having the same trouble you did in getting back.”

Something clicked together. “Your missing year,” Bert said. “The year we thought you’d been lost, right after John, Jack, and Charles became the Caretakers.”

“Yes,” Verne answered, nodding, “and just as I founded the Mystorians. I didn’t want to risk making an anomaly out of myself—being a tulpa, I had no clue what that might do to the timestream—so I pulled back and returned a year after I’d started. But I accomplished what I went there to do.”

“I explained to her why you hadn’t been able to return, and I got her permission to take this.” He pulled a small cube out of his pocket. “I took along one of my optical devices and took a remarkable image of her that I could bring back.”

Bert reached out again but still didn’t dare touch the picture. “So . . . this is a photo, then?”

“Not at all,” Verne said, smiling broadly. “A portrait. One of Basil’s best.”

“There was a concern,” said Twain, “that you wouldn’t be able to bring her back, the way you had Aven. But only the one machine had ever gone that far into the future, and having used it once, you had no way of going back—until young Rose and Edmund came to us.”

“But Jules could go, using my machine,” Bert said. He spun
and looked at Verne, then the other Caretakers, all of whom were beaming. “You were all in on this?”

“Some of us knew,” said Dickens, “but you know Jules—he likes to keep his own counsel. This is the first time we’ve invited a non-Caretaker to have their portrait done, and so this was hung only a few moments before yours was.”

“So she’s never come out of the portrait?”

Twain stepped forward and gave Bert a push. “No,” he said with a grin, “we figured that’d be your job, young fellow. So,” he added, “what are you waiting for? Bring her out!”