The Indigo King - James A. Owen [25]
“That sounds awfully familiar,” said Jack.
“More than you know,” said Bert. “You’ve met him. Killed him, actually, more or less.”
“That’s impossible,” said John.
“Improbable, but clearly not impossible,” Bert corrected. “In the world you came from, the Winter King fell to his death in the year 1917. But here it is the one thousand four hundred and fourth year of the reign of our Lord and King, Imperius Rex, Mordred the First.”
It took some time for the reunited friends to explain what had been happening to them, and Bert listened to their accounting of the situation with Hugo Dyson without comment. When they at last had finished explaining, he nodded sadly.
“I begin to understand, at long last,” he said, still unwilling to look at any of them directly. “If Hugo went back to the sixth century, then he changed history. And everything proceeded apace from there to what we see now, today. Something that happened in the past gave Mordred the means to conquer and rule and emerge victorious against all opposition—if there ever was any.”
“Why do you still know us, Bert?” asked Jack. “Chaz is obviously what Charles became in this timeline where he never knew us—but you’re still our Bert.”
“Jules and I left Paralon right after the War of the Winter King,” said Bert. “He had come across a passage in a future history that mentioned the reemergence of Mordred, and so we returned here to England to warn you. When we arrived, we found things as you see them now, and we were trapped.”
“We’ve seen you since then,” said Jack. “Many, many times, in fact. How is that possible if you’ve been here all these years?”
“Where is here?” Bert asked. “‘Here’ wasn’t created until Hugo went through the door. And once that happened, everything forward changed.”
“I still don’t see how that would affect your return to England,” said John. “Our past hasn’t changed. Why did yours?”
“Jules and I travel via means that take us outside of time and space,” said Bert. “If we’d simply come back on one of the Dragon-ships, we’d never have noticed a difference. Jules has always kept his own counsel, though, and insisted that we needed to travel by his usual method, so we did.”
“You’ve mentioned time travel before, Bert,” John said, “but you’ve never gone into detail about how you really do it. It never came up as a factor in our roles as Caretakers until the problems with the Keep of Time, so I never asked about it.”
“And those problems are the very ones that caused this, aren’t they?” Bert said, his voice harsh. “If you’d paid closer attention to your responsibilities, then maybe we wouldn’t be here now.”
“That’s hardly fair, Bert,” Jack exclaimed. “You were there with us when Charles led us out of the Keep, before Mordred set it aflame.”
“Don’t bring me into this,” put in Chaz, “even if it’s the other me.”
“Jack’s right,” said John. “There were things you and Verne could have told us—about time travel, for example—that might have prevented this. But you always seemed to be playing your own cards close, Bert.”
“You weren’t ready yet,” the old man replied. “At least, in Jules’s estimation you weren’t. We had focused on you, John, as the one with the most potential to learn about the intricacies of time as well as space. But then we realized it might be Jack who possessed the greater capacity. We were wrong on both counts, it seems. No offense.”
“I can’t be offended,” Jack said, “when I don’t even understand what you’re talking about.”
“So you get my point,” said Bert. “Excellent. No, we realized it was Charles who had a bent for not only time travel, but also for interdimensionality. So we came back to England specifically to warn him.”
“Same with th’ Royal Animal Rescue Squad,” Uncas put in. “We were gived our instructions by th’ Prime Caretaker fourteen years ago.”
“That’s what I find intriguing,” said John. “Verne obviously knew more than he was telling you, Bert, to set a plan into motion that involved a rescue effort on the very day that these events would be set into motion in your own