"You've spoken to Samaranth?" John exclaimed. "Did he say anything else?"

"All that he would volunteer was to say that as he has already given you the means to solve this problem, he is not obligated to do anything further. A Son of Adam put these events into motion, and only a Son of Adam should put them right."

"He isn't going to help us, then," said John.

The only response the Watchmaker gave was a steady, almost sorrowful gaze, and silence.

Jack's shoulders slumped. "What are we to do now?"

"Find a way to create zero points," the Watchmaker said. "Find a way to give meaning to Chronos again. And then you will be able to use the watches."

"We have traveled through time without the watches before," said John, "when we used a trump from the future, remember?"

"Except that didn't really work out so well the last time," said Bert. "Needed a bit of a push to get through. And you lost seven years of Chronos time. We can't risk another loss like Hank-not when the trumps aren't working properly anyway."

"We never discovered who your mysterious benefactor was either," said Verne. "The old man in the white room."

"People have a way of becoming their own benefactors," said the Watchmaker. "That may be the case here."

"Not the future," Jack said, thinking about the trumps. "That won't help. We need to go into the past."

"The Histories?" asked John. "Can we use those?"

"They're just books," said Bert, thinking. "No spatial or temporal properties to them."

"But," said Jack, snapping his fingers, "we do have something with those properties. Remember the map that Hank brought with him? He said it was what brought him to Tamerlane House. He used a map to go through space and time. And he made it using one of the spare pages from the Geographica."

"I'd almost forgotten!" Bert exclaimed. "I have the rest of those extra pages, back at Tamerlane House."

"If we can use those to create zero points," said Jack, "then we'll have something to attune the watches to. We can create a sort of chronal Geographica."

"A sort of Archipelago of Lost Years," the Watchmaker said as a thoughtful expression flashed across his face. "It could be done in such a way. Yes, exactly so. In fact, one of your own tried such a thing many years ago. He even came to be called by a name that reflected this: the Chronographer of Lost Times."

"He went renegade," Verne said with a careful look at Bert. "We haven't seen him since, and have no idea how to find him."

"Ah, that's right," the Watchmaker said. "I did hear about that. There's no way to contact him, then?"

Verne shook his head. "Not that we know of."

The Watchmaker spread his hands and tipped his head. "It seems simple then," he said. "You need to find another Cartographer. Another Cartographer of Lost Places. You have apprentice Caretakers," he added, gesturing at John and Jack. "Surely there were also apprentice Cartographers?"

Bert sighed heavily and traded resigned glances with Verne. "There were, in fact, a number of individuals who trained with Merlin, but replacing him isn't going to be anywhere near that easy," he said wearily. "To do what the Cartographer did, to attain his skill and intuition, would take generations. Centuries, perhaps. And no one I know who studied with him possesses either. Not to the degree we would need."

Verne pursed his lips and nodded tersely at John and Jack in answer to their unspoken question. There had been one apprentice and one only who might have taken the Cartographer's place: Hank Morgan. But he had been drawn away by his escapades through time with Verne. Ironically, his experiences with time travel would have made him an even more ideal choice to do what the Watchmaker said was necessary. And now, just when they discovered he might be the one man they needed most, it was too late.

"Remember what Samaranth said," the Watchmaker reminded them. "You have the tools you need to fix this. All you need to do is believe that you can, and then do it." He turned back to his workbench. The audience with the Caretakers was over.

"Thank you for all you've told us," Verne said, bowing. "Hopefully, much good will come of it."

"All good things happen in time," the Watchmaker said. "Trust in that wisdom, as I have."

"A chronal Geographica?" John murmured to Jack. "Do you really think we can create one?"

"Someone already has," the Watchmaker cautioned without pausing in his work or glancing up. "The watches still work, so time is flowing. Someone's found a way to begin mapping time, and unless you discover who is doing so and why, your race may already be lost."

It occurred to John that the Watchmaker's last remark may have referred to the human race, and not the ensuing conflict to somehow fix the flow of time in the Archipelago, but by the time he had the presence of mind to ask, the old Maker was already engrossed in his work, and Verne was closing the door, a finger to his lips.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Black Dragon

The march back to Tamerlane House was largely silent, as each of the Caretakers pondered what they had learned from the Watchmaker. The visit had birthed almost as many questions as it answered, but still, it seemed there was no way out of their dilemma. If there was no way to traverse time, then there would be no way to fix it. And worse, it seemed that far from reuniting the two worlds, they had lost the Archipelago of Dreams completely.

"We move into the future one second at a time," John murmured to no one in particular. "It seems it would be an easy enough thing to move a few days into the past."

"I know what you wished to ask him, John," said Verne as they began their crossing to the central island. "It would not have aided you to know."

"Sometimes information is a comfort," John countered. "I'd like to have known if it was possible."

"To make Charles's death into a zero point?" Verne answered. "I don't know that he could answer that. Or would."

"It would have been a start," said John glumly. " Can you tell me," he went on, suddenly switching direction, "why Charles chose not to have Basil finish his portrait?"

Bert inhaled deeply. "He didn't want to have the limitations that the others did," he said consolingly. "After what happened to Stellan, Charles saw that as more of a living death than a chance to carry on as a Caretaker. I disagreed with him, but it was his own choice."

"I only wish," John said to Verne, "that he had chosen your path. That you had been able to be with him before his death and create a tulpa. I keep feeling that if he were only with us, he'd know exactly what must be done-and it would be a plan too outrageous for any of the rest of us to think of."

Jack quickened his pace and put his arm around his friend, whispering words of comfort to him as they walked.

Bert started to approach them both to say something, but Verne held him back, shaking his head sternly. "Not yet," he said softly. "We can't say yet. Later, when it's sure, we'll tell them. But not now."

Bert stared at his mentor, struggling to form a response, but finally nodded in agreement and turned away.

"We have to return to the Archipelago," John declared firmly. "That's the only way to discover what's caused all this."

The report of the meeting with the Watchmaker had not gone over well at Tamerlane House. The Caretakers split into factions, all arguing over what they thought should be done, and why everyone else's plans were impossible. Fred, Laura Glue, and Rose did their best to mediate, while it was all Burton and his colleagues could do not to make things worse by venturing any opinion at all. Only John's pronouncement ended the arguments. The room went silent so they could hear what he had to say.

"We have to recreate a map of the zero points in Chronos time," he said calmly, "but time travel here is impossible at the moment. So we must go to the source of the problem. This all began when the keep fell. We caused that to happen. Samaranth said we have the means to repair what is broken, and I don't think that can be done here, in this world.

"There's another reason to restore the zero points. I don't think Rose being visited by the Morgaine-or one of them, anyway-was a coincidence. I think she was giving us a warning. 'The threads of history are undone,'" he quoted. "That's exactly what has happened.

"And Mother Night said to seek out the apprentice of the Dragon," he reminded them. "Samaranth is the last Dragon. Where else should we seek his apprentice if not in the Archipelago?"

"Well reasoned, young John," said Twain.

"But how will you cross?" asked Chaucer. "The Nameless Isles are connected to the Summer Country now."

"We might try modifying the bridge," Dumas suggested. "It did shift us forward in time."

"But at what cost?" asked Twain. "What happens to Tamerlane House if the bridge is severed, or reset?"

"He's right," said Verne. "We can't risk that. It's the only stability we have."

"Where did the orbs come from?" John asked Will Shakespeare. "The Dragon's eyes you used in the bridge?"

"The Indigo Dragon," Will answered. "In the south boathouse."

"Could we use another Dragonship?" asked Fred. "I'd be willing to risk it."

"There aren't any more. When the Shadow King corrupted all the Dragon shadows, we also lost the use of the Dragonships," lamented Jack. "As living ships, anyway."

"And when we were ripped out of the Archipelago," said John, "you left all the other Dragonships there, so we don't even have any extra eyes to experiment with."

"Ah," said Verne, rising. "But we just might have an extra Dragonship."

"What?" John exclaimed. "Even with the golden eyes, they're still just ships, and may not be able to cross."

"Not all of them," Bert said with an unusual twinkling in his eyes. "There's one left that is still a true Dragonship."

"I'm sure the Shadow King made particularly certain to get the Dragons who became our ships," said Jack, "just to keep us from being able to voyage back and forth across the Frontier."

"A plan that worked, for the most part," said Bert, "but recall, he was going by the History of Dragons in the Last Book, using their true names to seize their shadows. That's where he missed one-a Dragon who was never named, because he was never known. A cipher, a mystery ..."

"An enigma, a conundrum, yes, yes, yes," Houdini said in exasperation. "How is that possible? Whose Dragonship did he overlook?"

Bert smiled. "His own."

The south boathouse was large enough to hold several ships within two enclosures. One contained the Indigo Dragon and several smaller boats. The second enclosure, which was double-locked and safeguarded with runes, spells, and the seal of both the house of Arthur and the Caretakers, housed the Black Dragon.

During the companions' first encounter with the Winter King, he attacked them and the much smaller Indigo Dragon with this dark, foreboding warship. It was only in the heat of battle, when the Black Dragon shifted course of its own accord, that they had realized it was a Dragonship in more than name alone. It was a true Dragonship-one that had melded the heart and living soul of a flesh-and-blood Dragon with the hull of a ship.

Ordo Maas, the great shipbuilder of ancient days gone by, knew of it, but not who built it. The Winter King claimed to have done so, but only Ordo Maas and the Dragons themselves ever knew the secrets of passage between the worlds-or so they had believed.

The ship was sleek and undamaged, and the chest of the great Dragon on its prow heaved with restrained energy and life.

When it was first captured, Ordo Maas had taken possession of it, but because of its mysterious origins, he relinquished it to the Caretakers' stewardship. It had been locked in the boathouse ever since.

"We can only assume that the Shadow King thought we had destroyed his ship, Dragon and all," said Bert, "or else why wouldn't he have sought her out?"

"It makes sense," said Burton. "Destroy what you do not use. It's standard tactics. It's what I would have done."

"Lucky that it wasn't you, then," said John, "or we'd be out a resource now."

"Even a stopped Caretaker is right twice a day," said Burton. "If he wins the coin tosses."

"Can it be controlled, is what I want to know," asked Jack. "Not to sound too prejudiced against Dragons, but I was scared enough of the ones I knew of, and even more of the ones who actively liked me. I'm not sure I want to trust my life to one who has tried to actually kill me."

"I think it can," said Bert. "The Winter King was its master, but I don't think it was a willing servant. Not completely."

"All right," Jack said. "I think we have the means. Now we just need to decide on a plan of action."

The Caretakers reconvened in the great meeting hall to call for a consensus. The vote was unanimous, even including Byron and the Society members. Only Magwich and Grimalkin weren't permitted a vote, and likely wouldn't have voted if they had been. Or at least not quietly, in Magwich's case.

"It's decided then," Chaucer said, thumping on the table for order. "We must discover what has happened in the Archipelago. The Dragon Samaranth must be sought, so his apprentice may be named. And somehow the zero points must be mapped so that time itself can be repaired."

He turned to John. "Caveo Principia," he said with respect and reverence, "this is under your purview."

"We'll sort it out," John said, glancing quickly at Jack, who winked in agreement. "We may not be the young Turks we once were, but we're still the Caretakers. It shouldn't be anyone else's responsibility."

"And risk," Jack added. "The two of us-"

"Ahem-hem," Fred interrupted, clearing his throat. "That would be three of us."

"My apologies, Caretaker," said Jack. "Three of us."

"As you wish," said Chaucer, to a round of table thumping by the others.

"Hold on," Burton said suddenly. "I see three-make that two and a half-Caretakers planning to go, but no representatives of the Imperial Cartological Society?"

"Pardon me?" said Jack, who was slightly offended. "I can represent both."

"I'll keep my pardons for myself," Burton replied. "You may represent the ICS to the outside world, but in matters of the Archipelago, we all know what the reality is. I'm going along as well."

"The Caretakers and Sir Richard-," Chaucer began.

"Three and three," Burton interrupted, gesturing to Houdini and Doyle. "They come with me. More witnesses, better reportage."

"He has a point there, Geoff," Twain said, tapping out his pipe. "And Richard is the most experienced among us for reporting on odd cultures and unusual scenarios."

"It will be dangerous ...," Dickens began.

"If anyone else has the scars to match mine," said Burton, stroking his cheek, "I'll listen to their arguments. But I think I'm beyond contestation in this."

"I have some bad scorch marks," said Byron, raising his hand.

"Oh, do shut up," Shakespeare said, "or I'll ask the faeries to give you the head of a donkey."