The First Dragon(59)

A bright chime suddenly rang out from all the Caretakers’ watches: once, twice, and then a third time. As one, they all stopped to look at the time, to see why the watches had made such an unusual sound, and that was when they all realized what had happened.

The watches were resetting themselves.

“What is this?” asked John. “What is happening here, Jules? Bert? They’ve never done that before.”

“There is a new zero point,” Bert said in amazement. “The Anabasis Machines have reset themselves to it. All of them. At once.”

“That’s not just any zero point,” Verne said, peering at his watch. “They’re resetting because it’s the zero point. The prime zero. The moment in history when everything was connected, and the Keep of Time was built.”

“Does that mean they’ve succeeded?” asked John. “Can this really be over?”

“I don’t know,” said Verne. “We should ask Poe about it immediately, though. This may preclude whatever he was planning to share.”

“Not just yet,” John said, holding up both his hands. “We’re still waiting on a few fellows to arrive, and I think everyone should be here.”

“I think they’re coming now,” Twain said, lifting a curtain to glance out the window, “and at top speed, apparently.”

Hawthorne and Irving blew through the front doors with a bang, rounded the corner, and skidded into the room. Both their faces were ashen.

“Jack, you must come, quickly,” Hawthorne said, ignoring all decorum in favor of urgency. “You, and everyone! Something’s happened at the bridge.”

“What?” Jack implored as the Caretakers all rose to rush outside with their colleagues. “What’s happened, Nathaniel?”

“It’s Warnie,” Irving answered. “Dr. Dee has your brother, Jack. And he’s going to kill him unless we give him access to Tamerlane House and the Nameless Isles.”

♦ ♦ ♦

It was dusk in the place and time where the Indigo Dragon emerged from the Zanzibar Gate. As they passed through, the glow that signaled it was functioning properly waned and died.

“Well, that’s that,” said Fred. “I really hope this works, or we may as well start building houses.”

“I don’t think it worked,” Edmund said, unable to hide the trace of bitterness in his voice. “Look.”

In the distance, dark against the fading light in the sky, was the swirl of clouds that made up the Barrier around the Garden of Eden. “We’re still in the same place.”

“But not in the same time,” said Madoc. “The trees are different, as far as I can see. And those stones were not here.”

In the center of the clearing, similar to the one where they’d met the Archons, was a small ring of stones, with a stone table in the center.

“It’s like a small Ring of Power,” Charles said, barely daring to breathe, “except for the table in the center. That’s different.”

Uncas and Fred both sniffed the air, as did the goats. “That’s blood,” Fred said with a shudder. “Fresh blood. Recent blood.”

The companions all held their breath when they realized Fred was right—and that the dark stains covering the stone table still glistened in the waning light of day.

“Seth was right,” Rose said, choking as she spoke. “We can’t go back further in time than this moment, no matter how much older the keep is.”

“A paradox,” a young man said as he stepped around from behind one of the stones. “The keep is what binds the two worlds together, even though they are growing further and further apart.”

Uncas, Fred, Quixote, and Laura Glue recognized him immediately. They had seen him in a battle on Easter Island only a few months earlier.

The others didn’t know his face, but the Ruby Armor he wore was instantly recognizable.

“To restore what has been broken, you must travel beyond the point where the worlds have been split,” he continued, “but to do so is impossible without the presence of the keep. It is, as I said, a paradox.”

“If we can’t go beyond this point in time,” Edmund said slowly, not certain of the wisdom of speaking to this mysterious man, “then how are we possibly going to restore time? We’ve had two last chances to find the Architect, and now we’re out of options.”

The young man turned to Rose. “What do you think? Is your quest hopeless? Is it over?”

“There’s got to be a way,” Rose said, her voice low. “There is always a way. Always.”

“Ah,” said the young man. “That’s what I was waiting for.”