The First Dragon(51)

Madoc didn’t need to finish the statement. Every one of them knew Kipling was right. He would have to stay.

“Edmund,” Kipling said, “before you go, may I have a word?”

As the two men talked, the others readied the Indigo Dragon for the flight out and tried their best not to feel the despair that was all too present.

“All right,” Edmund said when they stepped back over to the ship. “We need to leave now.” This last he said with a wink at Kipling that only Madoc saw. The Dragon furrowed his brow but said nothing as the others all hugged Kipling and said tearful good-byes.

“One last thing,” Kipling asked. “Fly me up to the tallest tower still standing. The show is going to be spectacular, and I’d like to have a really good seat.”

♦ ♦ ♦

As the reunited companions took flight up and out of the doomed City of Jade, Fred and Laura Glue explained how they had traveled there using Shakespeare’s Zanzibar Gate, and also, less enthusiastically, explained what its limitations were.

“Three trips?” Rose exclaimed. “That’s all we get?”

“Two now,” said Fred. “We used up one to come find you.”

“Just one, actually,” Uncas said, trying to be helpful, “because now we have to go home before we can go out again. And whoever goes on that trip . . .”

“Will basically be in the same boat—so to speak—that Charles and Edmund and I were in the last time,” said Rose. “But we aren’t going to do that.”

“We aren’t?” said Fred.

“We aren’t?” Uncas and Quixote said together.

“No,” Rose said, a determined smile on her face. “After what you told us about Deucalion’s great-grandfather, Enoch, I’m convinced that he is the man we’re seeking. If we can get to him and restore the keep, then we won’t need to worry about how to manage a return trip.”

“One problem,” said Edmund. “According to Verne, the rules of time travel say we must take a trip into the future to balance every trip into the past. Won’t we be causing some kind of temporal problem if we don’t do just that?”

“Verne lies,” Rose replied. “I think the rules about time travel are more fluid than he’ll ever tell us, if he can help it. Besides, we came further back again getting here without a counterbalancing trip to the future.”

“Because we had help, remember?” Edmund said. “The old man in Platonia—the one who sent Bert back to Tamerlane.”

Rose scanned the sky as if waiting for help from above. “I wish he’d step in to help us now—or at least, let us know we’re moving in the right direction.”

“Couldn’t Edmund simply create another chronal map?” Quixote suggested. “That way, we wouldn’t be using up the power in the gate.”

“I tried it, back in the city,” Edmund said sheepishly. “It didn’t work. Whatever damage has affected the keep in this time is also affecting my ability to make chronal maps. If I have a machine to augment it, it could work. Hopefully.”

“We do have the gate,” Fred said helpfully, “and it’s designed to use a chronal map. That’s how we got here.”

“That’s the second problem,” said Edmund. “I can program the gate, but I have no clue where we’re going, since we don’t even have a vague description of the City of Enoch.”

“We have this,” Fred offered, holding up the bronze bas-relief of Enoch. “It’s a pretty good likeness, I think. You could make a chronal map to take us through the gate directly to him.”

“I really don’t know,” said Edmund. “I’ve always created maps to places and specific times. I really have no idea whether it will work if we try to use it to take us to a specific person.”

“I don’t think we have much of a choice,” Charles said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder at the city as they flew out over the desert. “Look.”

The wall of water was more massive than anything they had ever seen before, taller even than the Corinthian Giants, the children of the renegade angels called Watchers. As they looked, it enveloped the City of Jade and moved past with no apparent loss of speed or power.

“Now, Edmund,” Rose said, trying not to sound anxious, “I believe in you. This will work.”

“All right,” Edmund said as they approached the Zanzibar Gate. “I guess I’d better draw quickly.”

♦ ♦ ♦

“Well,” Kipling said as he watched his friends through the spyglass. “I guess that’s that, then.”