The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [29]
“You really think so?” said Magwich. “I don’t understand.”
“Look,” Charles explained. “You know I despise you, right?”
“You’ve made it very clear, yes,” said Magwich.
“Well,” Charles continued, “whenever we’ve met, you’ve demonstrated all the qualities I don’t want to have. And I try to better myself so I don’t become like you. So in a way…”
“My bad example is making you a better person?” finished Magwich.
“Something like that,” said Charles. “If it wasn’t for people like you, I don’t think I would try so hard. And honestly, you’re the worst I’ve ever encountered.”
“Oh, you’re just saying that,” said Magwich.
“No, I really mean it,” said Charles.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Jack declared. “Charles, it’s time to go.”
Charles stood and clapped the Green Knight on the back. “All right, then?” he asked. “Good. Don’t ever change, Magwich.”
“Oh, I won’t,” said the knight, glancing backward across the island. “So, ah—d’you think the three ladies in the cave would like some company?”
Charles frowned. “Ah, I can’t say, Magwich. Wouldn’t hurt to ask,” he said, climbing up the ladder. “I think.”
“Farewell, Caretakers,” Magwich called over his shoulder as he clanked his way up the hill.
“What do you think will happen to him?” asked John.
“They’ll probably turn him into a toad,” said Charles. “But I don’t think he’ll notice.”
“We must get to Paralon immediately,” Bert said as the Indigo Dragon moved away from Avalon and toward the dark, roiling clouds that formed the Frontier. “Artus must be told all of this. The Morgaine do not often offer information so freely. The situation must be very dire for them to have said as much as they did.”
Jack had moved to the rear of the deck, away from the others, thinking about the prince.
The High King’s son.
Aven’s son.
A son who, in other circumstances, might have been his own.
Whatever course John, or Bert, or Charles might decide, Jack’s direction was clear. The others could pursue the missing Dragonships and find the children—but Jack would not let another night pass without doing everything in his power to find the missing son of his one great love….
Or perish in the attempt.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Great Whatsit
The journey to Paralon was uneventful—too much so, in Bert’s estimation. He kept scuttling back and forth from port to starboard, peering over the edge, and making worried clucking sounds with his tongue. “It’s like the calm before the storm,” he confided to John.
“The weather is beautiful,” John said, looking around at the nearly cloudless sky.
“It’s not the weather I’m concerned with,” replied Bert. “It’s the fact that we’re almost to Paralon, and we’ve yet to see a single ship on the water below.”
“That’s right,” put in Charles. “There ought to be trade ships full of apples going to and fro—or at the least, several fishing vessels.”
“And yet not even a dinghy,” Bert said. “This bodes very ill, I’m afraid.”
The extent of Bert’s worries was confirmed as they approached the island kingdom itself. Smoke ringed the harbor ahead of them, and a haze in the distance indicated that other fires had been set elsewhere on Paralon.
In response to his call, an enormous black crow dropped down…
“You know,” said Charles, “I’d really like to visit this place when someone hasn’t set it on fire. Just once, mind you.”
Below, it was starkly obvious: There were no ships of any kind in the harbor or at the docks. There had been a few—but those were the source of the smoke. They’d been set ablaze. Far beneath them, they could see crews of workers and sailors trying vainly to staunch the flames on vessels that were already lost.
“What the devil?” exclaimed Bert. “I haven’t been gone a day. What can have happened in a day?”
“A lot,” Jack said darkly, “if the day in question happened seven hundred years ago.”
Bert piloted the airship past the smoke and headed into the city proper, which was built around and against the great tower of rock upon which the great castle of the Silver Throne stood.
He found a broad cobblestone plaza that was nearly devoid of people,