The First Dragon

Chapter ONE


Ancient Promises



“I miss Samaranth,” the young Valkyrie Laura Glue said as she descended the ladder, arms laden with ancient books and scrolls. “In fact, I miss all the Dragons. They may not have always been there when you wanted them . . .”

“But they were always there when you needed them,” the Caretaker named Jack said, finishing the expression all of them had said at one time or another in recent weeks.

“That’s only because,” Harry Houdini said, raising his finger to emphasize his point, “none of them ever threatened to roast and eat any of you.”

Jack’s colleague John, the former Caveo Principia and current Prime Caretaker, chuckled and clapped the magician on the arm. “You did ask for it, Ehrich,” he said, using Houdini’s given name. “Both you and Arthur. You should have known better than to step on the Dragon’s tail, even metaphorically.”

“I’m sure Conan Doyle did know better,” said Jack, “but he was swayed by . . . Other influences.”

“I resent that,” said Houdini.

“I meant Burton,” Jack said, feigning innocence. “Perhaps your conscience heard differently.”

He took the bundle of documents from Laura Glue and handed them to John, who winked at him, not necessarily out of agreement, but just to give Houdini a tweak. The former members of the Imperial Cartological Society might have rejoined the Caretakers, but some of the old divisions were still present in every conversation. “These are pre–Iron Age,” John remarked as he peered more closely at the topmost parchments. “They’re in surprisingly good shape.”

“Everything here is,” Jack agreed. “Unfortunately, we’re still no closer to finding anything useful.”

“We must persevere,” John replied. “If there is anything that can give us a clue as to how to find our friends, it will be here.”

The Repository of Tamerlane House was located in the centermost room, accessible only by the master of the house, who rarely involved himself directly in the affairs of the other Caretakers, and by the Prime Caretaker, who until very recently had been Jules Verne.

There were several libraries within the walls of Tamerlane, including one that contained all the unwritten books of the world, but the Repository was different: It held the books that were the most rare, the most sacred, to the Caretakers and all those who came before who tried to make better worlds out of the ones they had been given. The Histories, written by the Caretakers during each of their tenures, were there, as were the Prophecies, which were future histories that had been compiled primarily by Verne and his immediate protégé Bert, also known as H. G. Wells, the Caretaker who had chosen John, Jack, and their friend Charles to become Caretakers themselves.

There was also the Telos Biblos, the Last Book, which was both history and prophecy. It contained the names of all the Dragons, which the Caretakers’ enemies had used to capture their shadows and compel them to service—which led to the destruction of all the Dragons save for the oldest one. Unfortunately, since the incident that severed the connections between the Archipelago and the Summer Country, time itself had become more and more erratic. Might-have-beens and alternate histories were taking the place of pasts and futures that previously, Verne had relied on as being set in stone. But that stone, it seemed, was fluid, changeable; and so the Last Book was no more helpful to them than the books in the last case: the Imaginarium Geographicas of other worlds yet to be explored.

Jack looked wistfully at the case with the other Geographicas and chuckled ruefully when John smiled and shook his head.

“I understand, old friend,” John said, not for the first time. “I want to explore them too, but our first responsibility must be to the restoration of the lands from the Geographica we’re already Caretakers of.”

“I’m just feeling the weight of it all, John,” his friend replied. “No one is going to suddenly appear with a magic solution to fix everything, are they?”

“We have only ourselves to rely on, I’m afraid,” John said with a heavy sigh. “We can only hope that we will prove to be a fraction as effective at keeping the evils of the world at bay as the Dragons were.”

♦ ♦ ♦

In the centuries since the Imaginarium Geographica was created, it had been entrusted to many Caretakers for safekeeping—all of whom had the same reaction to the legend inscribed on the maps. It read, Here, there be Dragons, and to a man, every Caretaker had at first assumed this was a warning. In time, they came to learn it was not.