The First Dragon(57)
“There was a great battle between the first giants, who were the children of the angels called Nephilim and one of the Sisters of Eve called Lilith, and the Dragons. It culminated in a struggle between their greatest, Ogias, and the greatest of us, a she-Dragon called Sycorax, who finally subdued him with the help of the Imago, T’ai Shan.
“She was the youngest of a family of gods, who was judged to be weak and cast out of their house. What her name had been before no one knows, but she took her new name from that of an angel who saw her for what she was, and gave her introduction to the star Rao, who would give her his fire, and taught her to use it.
“But the angel Shaitan disappeared before the rest of his order descended to become the Dragons of this world; Rao betrayed his kind and was deemed Fallen; and T’ai Shan, after saving the world and returning it to the people she had loved and cared for, gave her armor and her power over to them for their use, and then left the world behind.
“First she crossed an uncrossable desert. Then she scaled an unclimbable mountain. And finally she reached an impassable sea, so she labored for the rest of her days to build a bridge of bone, so that others who followed behind her would find the path to heaven easier to walk.”
“A desert, a mountain, and a bridge of bone over the sea,” said Tummeler. “That sounds exactly like the path we’ve been walking.”
“Yes,” the Dragon said. “Exactly like that.”
♦ ♦ ♦
“That’s impossible!” Charles declared. “The island the keep is built on is a long journey away, deep in the Archipelago. There’s no way we’d be able to see it from here!”
“And yet, there it stands,” said Madoc. “That is the true keep.”
“Distance is less of an obstacle in this time,” said Enoch, “and it is not so long since meaning was divided from duration, and time itself took two paths. The longer they remain split, the further what is meaningful grows apart from all else.”
“If he in’t a scowler,” said Uncas, “he ought t’ be. He sure talks like one.”
“True that,” said Fred.
“Have you ever seen it up close?” Rose asked. “Is it damaged?”
“It is,” Enoch said, taken aback by the question, “although my father has told me stories passed down from the days of the Adam, when it was said the tower was whole, and unbroken. But no one living has ever seen it thus. I’m sorry I cannot help you find your Architect.”
“What do we do now?” Edmund asked.
“The Zanzibar Gate has one more trip left in it,” said Rose. “If we go home, we will be back at square one, or worse. But if we try to go out one more time, we may find what we need. I think it’s worth trying.”
“So those are our choices, then,” said Charles. “Either we go home, or we take one more shot in the dark—literally—to try to discover the Architect.”
“This is why we came,” said Rose. “All the sacrifices, everything we’ve been through . . . It’s all for nothing if we fail. And either we go home, or we take one more chance. I say we take it.”
“Agreed,” said Edmund.
“All right,” said Charles.
“Ditto,” said the badgers.
“In for a penny, night on the town,” said Laura Glue. “I’m up for it.”
Madoc turned to the Archons. “Is there anything you might tell us to help? We simply need to find out who first built the keep—and no matter how far back in time we go, we can’t seem to locate him.”
“Traveling in time is a difficult proposition,” said Seth. “It flows in two directions, you know.”
“This in’t our first time at the Sweet Corn Festival, you know,” said Uncas. “We’ve done this before.”
“My point,” Seth said, grinning at the badger, “is that time and history are two separate things. They have been since the time of the Adam. Before that, they were one, and mixed together freely. After that, they moved in divergent ways.”
“What happened that changed everything?” asked Madoc.
“The moment when the Imago was slain by the Archimago,” said Enoch. “That is the moment when history truly began.”
The companions all went still. “What Imago?” Madoc asked slowly, putting a hand protectively in front of Rose. “And what Archimago?”
“The first Maker, and the first Namer,” Seth said. “My elder brothers. That was the moment when time was divided. If meaning is what you seek, search out that moment above all others, and perhaps you will find what you need.”