The Indigo King - James A. Owen [86]
He looked at Chaz, who patted himself down and then shrugged. Chaz was still Chaz.
“Reynard,” John said cautiously, “has anything changed in our absence?”
“Changed?” asked the fox. “In what way?”
As Reynard spoke, John realized he was bandaged—he still bore the fresh wounds he’d gotten trying to protect the Red Dragon from being destroyed.
“John,” Jack said tonelessly, pointing at the corner of the room. “The burlap bag. It’s still where we left it.”
John sat down heavily in a chair and began to shake. There was too much that had been overcome, at too great a cost. Even when the impossible had been needed, they had still managed, somehow, to prevail. And none of it had done them any good at all.
“It’s still Albion. Still the Winterland,” John said bitterly.
“We haven’t changed anything.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Sacrifice
There was no choice then but to explain to Hugo the complete story of exactly what had taken place after he stepped through the door in the wood. When the companions had finished, Hugo was shaken, but reciprocated with his own tale, looking askance at Chaz as he spoke.
After the Caretakers had explained who he really was, Hugo had accepted it with aplomb, but a feather’s uncertainty remained. If it were not for the scarring on his face, and the occasional lapse into vulgar language, Hugo might have thought it was another joke being played on him.
“The book was sent to Charles, and Pellinor had been instructed by someone to retrieve the man in the photo—you, Hugo,” Jack summarized. “Then, a time traveler who was working with Samuel Clemens, another Caretaker of the Imaginarium Geographica, appears at a tournament in fifth-century Britain. This is all being orchestrated by someone, somewhere.”
“I still think Mordred has everything to do with this,” suggested Chaz. “I know him—at least, the Mordred of the Winterland—better than any of you. And this is exactly his kind of scheme.”
“It wasn’t Mordred I heard scheming,” said Hugo. “It was Merlin—the Cartographer. He’s the one I wrote the message to warn you about.”
“I understand what you think you overheard, Hugo,” John offered, “but remember, we know what the Cartographer became. We’ve had several encounters with him through the slides in the Lanterna Magica, and we know his predilections. But we know where he ended up, too. And he’s an ally, not a threat.”
“Fair enough,” Hugo said, a bit nonplussed at the easy dismissal of his story. “After all, I share your concerns about Mordred. As a scholar of Arthurian lore, I knew I couldn’t allow him to defeat Merlin and become the Arthur. That’s why I did what I did. I’m just lucky you came along with the real Arthur.”
“Yes, lucky,” Jack said, rubbing his chin in thought. “But I’m not certain it was luck.
“Consider this,” he continued. “Verne and Bert did what they did in response to Hugo going through the door and altering time. They had no way of knowing what specifically had happened—just that something had. And so they responded, and then left us the means to resolve what had gone awry.”
“What are you getting at, Jack?” asked John. “Everything changed after Hugo went through the door and the badgers closed it. Of course the thing to do was to find him and bring him back.”
“That wasn’t what Verne directed us to do,” Jack insisted. “He gave us the mission of defeating our adversary. He never mentioned bringing Hugo back as a means for doing that.”
“So all this death, and destruction, and whatnot that happened,” Hugo said carefully, “it might not, in fact, be my fault?”
“Not all of it, anyway,” said Jack, “no.”
“Oh, I’m so relieved,” Hugo said.
“I know exac’ly how you feel,” said Uncas, patting Hugo’s knee. “Exac’ly.”
Reynard and the jackrabbit entered the room carrying trays of potato sandwiches and a hot drink that resembled tea and smelled of chile and cinnamon. “To revitalize you,” Reynard said as he passed out the cups. “It’s an old recipe, given