The First Dragon(49)
Samaranth leaned closer, exhaling hot breath into the Caretaker’s face, and his eyes narrowed.
“To ask one’s true name is to try to have power over them,” the Dragon hissed, “and it is not advisable that you ask anything further.”
“I don’t mean to offend,” Charles sputtered, slightly terrified but unwilling to let the opportunity pass. “I am a scholar of heaven, and angelic doings, and I know many of the names of the angels, uh, I mean Dragons,” he corrected quickly, “but I never heard of any angel named Samaranth. And I know that that is not your true name.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because,” Charles said, “in another place, and another time, someone who serves the Shadows does something . . . something terrible, to your kind. And you are spared, because your name is not in the book. I don’t want any power over you, of any kind. I just want to know. You don’t know me now, but someday you will—and you will trust me. In the name of that trust, I—I just want to know.”
Samaranth reared up on his hind legs and looked at the man before him. The Caretaker was afraid, but only because the aspect of the Dragon was terrifying—not because he feared Samaranth himself. There was trust, somehow.
“I will tell you,” Samaranth said, again leaning close, “and with the name, a small Binding, so that it cannot be shared with another.”
Charles nodded. “Fair enough.”
The Dragon whispered into the Caretaker’s ear, and Charles’s eyes widened in surprise. “You—you . . . ?” he stammered as the Dragon moved back and prepared to take flight. “You are that angel?”
“I am not the eldest of the Host, but I am the eldest among those here, on this world,” said Samaranth, “and my name has not been spoken since the dawn of creation. Even then, it was only to summon me to do my first task, which was necessary to do before anything else could be created or Named.
“Since that time, I had simply been known as the Lightbringer to those of my kind, and as Samaranth to those younger races of the earth. And now, as a Dragon, it is Samaranth I shall remain . . .
“. . . until the end of time itself.”
With no further farewell, the Dragon beat his mighty wings and lifted into the air. In moments, he was gone.
Chapter FIFTEEN
The Maker
As the Caretakers at Tamerlane House watched the great red Dragon soar away with the hundreds of newly born Dragons into the darkness of the newly made Frontier, the whirling pages of the Last Book began to darken and crumble apart. In moments, the images they had been watching so keenly faded completely, and once more the room went dark.
John turned to Poe, who had not moved from the doorway the entire time they had been watching the visions of Atlantis and the Dragons. “What happens now?” he demanded. “We need to keep watching!”
“We cannot,” Poe replied. “The book gave us a window into the events that were witnessed by its author, and this was the end of his record. Thus, there is no more to observe.”
“The author?” asked Jack. “But I thought the Last Book was written by—”
“The Telos Biblos,” said Poe, “was written by Samaranth himself, in the days after the founding of the Archipelago, when one by one, he named all those from the Host of the City of Jade who followed him and became Dragons, but it is not the oldest history. There is one older still, which John Dee never acquired nor stole, because it was never given to the safekeeping of anyone else other than him who wrote it.”
. . . everything around them glowed with pulsing, vibrant, living lights . . .
“An older history?” John said, confused. “But I want to know what happens next! We know that our friends are safe—or at least, they were—but how can we discover what’s become of them with an older history?”
“Because,” said Poe, “their journey is not yet finished, and their quest to find the Architect must lead them deeper into the past before they can come back to the future.”
“Hmm. All right,” John said. “Is this book in the Repository, then? I don’t remember ever seeing it.”
“It has never been in the Repository,” Poe said as he reached inside his breast pocket, “because it has never left my person.”
The other Caretakers rose from their seats to look at the curious, small book that Poe was holding. It was very, very old, compact but thick, and resembled nothing so much as it did . . .
“The Little Whatsits.” Twain chortled. “It looks like those bloody annoying books of genius and wisdom the badgers refer to all the time.”