The Shadow Dragons - James A. Owen [107]
“How long have we been gone, Professor?”
“It took less than a day for Bert to fly us to Terminus,” he said matter-of-factly, “but more than a day to descend the falls. And from the time we discovered the Aurora, we have traveled for two full days. All told, we’ve been gone for just over a hundred hours.”
Rose closed her eyes as she realized what that meant. They were past the halfway mark that would allow the professor to return to Tamerlane House and the safety of the Pygmalion Gallery.
The professor reached an arm around her shoulders and gave her a comforting squeeze. “No time to worry about the trip back when we’ve yet to reach our destination, hey? Let’s see to that first, and we’ll worry about the rest when we have to.”
“Wall ho,” Quixote called out.
“Land ho, you mean,” said Archie.
“Land is land and a wall is a wall, and I know the difference between them,” Quixote retorted. “Look.”
In the near distance, what they had assumed to be storm clouds on the western horizon was now revealed to be more substantial than clouds, and taller besides.
It was, as Quixote said, a wall.
As high as the waterfall at the world’s edge had been, the wall was tall, and it stretched away in both directions, north and south, to the vanishing point on each horizon.
“I wonder what’s on the other side?” Professor Sigurdsson mused, squinting as he looked up for a glimpse of the wall’s summit. “I wonder if there’s a way over?”
“This is how people are chosen as Caretakers of an atlas like the Geographica,” Quixote said to Archimedes. “They can’t escape it. It’s in their blood.”
The wall was so massive that even once they had sighted it, it took another two hours to reach the base. It stood on a narrow beach that was perhaps thirty feet wide and, as far as they could tell, ran the length of the wall. It was as if an infinite barrier had been placed on an equally infinite sandbar.
They pulled the Scarlet Dragon into the shallows and clambered out to examine the wall. It was made of stones that were placed so closely and precisely that Quixote could not get his sword point between any two of them.
“Impressive,” he said with grave sincerity. “I would not have believed such a wall was possible.”
“I can’t find a top,” called Archie, who was spiraling back down to the others. “I could fly higher, but the air was getting too thin to keep me aloft.”
“Is this the end of our journey, Professor?” asked Rose. “If we can’t get over it or through it, then how do we go on?”
“It is the end of all that is,” a voice said from farther down the beach. The words were spoken calmly, but were tinged with menace, and perhaps . . . fear?
The companions turned around to see a man standing about twenty feet behind them. In one hand he held a hammer. The other was not a hand at all; his arm ended in a hook, which was tarnished and rusty. He was heavily bearded, and his clothing was in tatters. And on his face was a look that was almost indescribable, a mix of fury and what might be relief.
“Hello, Father,” said Rose. “It’s nice to finally meet you.”
There was none among them, other than the professor, who might say how the fall over the water’s edge had changed the man called Madoc.
Rose had seen him only once before. At the time he was known as Mordred; he had just tried to kill her uncle Merlin, and had lost his hand to her cousin Arthur. Quixote had also never seen him, but knew of him only through stories about the Winter King, as his enemies had called him. Archimedes had known him when he was still called Madoc, but that had been many centuries earlier. Only Professor Sigurdsson had seen him as the man he was now—and that was moments before Madoc, Mordred, the Winter King, had killed him in his study.
Madoc’s hair and beard were long and greasy. His arms were thick and corded with muscle, and he watched the new arrivals with suspicion. Slowly he paced back and forth across the width of the sand,