The Search for the Red Dragon - James A. Owen [61]
None of them were aware of the eyes that watched them from inside the forest, nor did they notice that the birdcalls had changed.
Jack sat up, groaning. “I think I almost preferred life during wartime,” he said testily. “At least at the Somme, all I had to worry about was not getting shot.”
“Look here,” Charles exclaimed, pointing. “What in heaven’s name do you suppose those to be?”
The others looked to where he was gesturing and saw an extraordinary sight: massive white towers that stood on either horizon and stretched from beneath the surface of the water to beyond the clouds. The towers appeared to be some kind of stone but had an almost organic look to them. At such a tremendous distance, it was impossible to be sure. The sides of the columns were smooth and flowed upward with a graceful line that was practically sculpted.
John shaded his eyes with his hand and peered at the sky. “I can’t see where they end,” he said finally. “But there must be a ceiling to this place. We came through something, didn’t we?”
“It was Deep Magic,” said Bert, “Old Magic, that created that portal above. It was Old Magic that closed it again. For all we know, the sky above us here is the sea of the Archipelago.”
“Can any of you tell where the light is coming from?” Charles asked, turning around. “It’s almost as if we’re, well, inside a light-bulb.”
“I don’t know,” replied John, who had found the Imaginarium Geographica lying a few feet away against cargo boxes stenciled with the name ss timandra, and was busily dusting off the cover with his sleeve. “Maybe we’ve fallen into some sort of bowl-shaped world.”
“Hmm,” said Bert. “Now there’s an interesting thought.”
“That we’ve ended up in a bowl?” said John.
“May I?” Bert asked, indicating the Geographica.
John handed it over. “Be my guest.”
Jack went over to Aven and Laura Glue to make sure they were uninjured, then joined Charles near the promenade, where he was making an impromptu catalogue of the vessels that comprised the great wall.
“Amazing,” said Charles. “There must be hundreds, no, thousands of ships and aircraft here. Could all of these have come through the Chamenos Liber?”
“I doubt it,” said Jack. “For one thing, they’re spread out over an extremely wide area. I don’t think the portal we came through is mobile—it’s fixed in space.”
“Then these must have come through by other means,” Charles reasoned.
“Are there other means?” asked Jack. “We wanted to get here, and look at how much trouble we had.”
“These are all wrecked, abandoned,” stated John, coming up behind them. “I don’t think their arrival was planned or voluntary.”
“There are plenty of tales about the Devil’s Triangle in the western Atlantic,” said Charles. “Maybe the Underneath is what’s, ah, behind those accounts.”
“How they got here might be an interesting story,” said John, “but what worries me is that none of them went back in the other direction.”
At that moment, Bert came scurrying back to them, thumping the book in excitement.
“I think we’ve stumbled upon one of the greater mysteries of the Geographica,” he said. “There are some maps that have excellent descriptions of the lands they depict, but little if any cartographical or navigational information. That’s why we’ve had to make corrections and additions to the Geographica as the centuries passed—to try to make it more complete. And I think we already have maps of this place in the atlas!”
“And there’s a map of an island shaped like a bowl, with no sun?” asked Jack.
“The Cartographer said the Underneath was formed of circles within circles,” said John, “and that goes along with Dante’s descriptions, as well as the map of Autunno.”
“It’s worth a look,” said Charles.
John and Bert opened the Geographica