“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 . . .