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The First Dragon(62)

By:James A. Owen.txt


“I will kill you for that, Dee,” said Jack. “You know this. Believe it.”

“I kept my word,” Dee said as he crossed the bridge. “He hasn’t been harmed. Much.”

The Caretakers drew their swords and readied their weapons. “There are three of you and a multitude of us,” Twain said, leveling his katana at the former Caretaker. “We have you vastly outnumbered.”

“Appearances, Samuel, can be deceiving,” Dee countered. “You have numbers on your side, but this time I brought an ally whose loyalty cannot be questioned.”

With a gesture, he signaled to the cat, who suddenly became completely visible—and who began to grow much, much larger. In seconds, Grimalkin was the size of a good-sized truck.

“Now we can talk reasonably, like civilized men,” Dee said as he and his minions strode casually toward the house under the watchful gaze of the giant cat.

“I know you are bound,” John said to Grimalkin. “I know that’s why you serve him.”

“Yes,” Grimalkin said, with no trace of shame or embarrassment. “For a very, very long time now.”

Twain shook his head in disgust. “I can’t believe we’ve had a Lloigor here all this time.”

“Not Lloigor,” the cat insisted. “Echthros. A Lloigor is one who has given up or sold his shadow. But an Echthros is simply an Echthros.”

“Echthroi are Fallen angels,” said Twain. “Are you saying you’re an angel?”

“Was,” said the cat.

“A Binding is not the whole of your being, Grimalkin,” said John. “People have resisted Bindings before! And you resisted enough to warn us about Rose!”

“What?” Dee said, startled. He turned to the cat, scowling. “You caused me to move my timetable considerably,” he growled, “and there will be a price to pay, on that count you can be certain.”

“Enough chatter, Dee,” said Verne. “What is it you want?”

“There has always been one Imago and one Archimago on the earth,” said Dee. “You chose your candidate for Imago, and I chose mine—and now it seems both have been lost.”

“Ours is lost,” said Jack. “Yours abandoned you out of common sense.”

“Maybe,” said Dee. “But I believe that yours may yet succeed in restoring the keep and the Archipelago. And when that happens, I would like to be present. That’s why I have brought my house to the Nameless Isles—so that I can be here when the Imago and Archimago are together again in one place.”

“You’re out of your mind,” John said. “There’s no such person as the Archimago.”

“It is one of the great secrets,” said Dee. “One of the reveals the Prime Caretaker alone knows.”

Several of the Caretakers automatically turned to look at John, and the Chronographer of Lost Times slowly realized that something significant had changed in the Caretaker hierarchy. He smiled wickedly.

“I see,” Dee said, turning to look at Verne. “You haven’t told him, have you? He doesn’t know!”

“There are a lot of things I’m still learning, Dee,” John said, “not the least of which is whom I should trust, and when.”

“I was the Prime Caretaker before Jules was,” said Dee, “until the Caretakers and I had a critical difference of opinion.

“The most significant reason it is the job of the Prime Caretaker to seek out and train the Imago,” Dee continued with a flourish, “is because the Archimago resides here, with you, at Tamerlane House. He has been hiding in plain sight among the Caretakers ever since the first Imago was killed.”

The Caretakers, all except for Verne, froze in shock.

“That’s impossible,” said John. “We would have known.”

Dee shook his head. “It’s not impossible. He’s watching, and listening to all of us, right now,” he said, looking up at one of the balconies.

As one, the Caretakers turned to look, some already realizing, and all of them already fearing what they would see.

There, watching in the shadows from between the parted curtains at his window, was Edgar Allan Poe.

♦ ♦ ♦

“Rebuilding the keep,” said Rose, “is exactly what we’ve been trying to accomplish. We just have no clue who the Architect is.”

“You don’t need clues,” Telemachus replied, “because the answer you’ve sought has been staring you in the face all along.

“I was a good student,” he went on, turning to Madoc, “and I knew well the history of the Archipelago. And I know,” he continued, “that in your former life as Mordred, the Winter King, you once went to considerable lengths to try to destroy the original Imaginarium Geographica, am I right?”