The Shadow Dragons - James A. Owen [26]
“Know of it?” said Quixote in surprise and mock chagrin. “Why, in all modesty, if it had not been for me, there would be no Imaginarium Geographica to take care of. It is one of the greatest, most important books in history—but even great books may, on occasion, be lost. And when that happens, it falls to heroes such as myself to find them again.”
“It’s hard to imagine a Caretaker losing the Geographica,” said Jack, winking at John. “The height of irresponsibility, if you ask me.”
“Accidents happen,” John said, reddening. “People do misplace things, you know.”
“Exactly so,” said Quixote. “That’s one of the reasons there are three of you, did you know?
“The book known as the Imaginarium Geographica has passed through a number of Caretakers,” he went on. “Dante, and Chaucer; Giovanni Boccaccio; Petrarch. But sometime in the sixteenth century—my century,” he added with a bit of wistful pride, “a Caretaker managed to lose the Geographica —and at the precise time when a terrible conflict was brewing in the Archipelago.”
“What kind of conflict?” asked Jack.
“Let me ask you this,” replied Quixote. “Have you ever read about a tyrant who called himself the Winter King?”
“Once or twice,” John deadpanned. “So to speak.”
“At that time, there were rumors of his arrival in the Archipelago,” said Quixote. “The first concern was that the Geographica be kept safe, and there seemed no safer place than within the halls of Paralon itself. So it had always been kept in the Archipelago. But somehow the book was stolen, and the worlds were plunged into a shadow of fear. No one knew where it had gone, nor what use the thief would put it to. All that was known was that it had been taken across the Frontier, into the real world.
“The Caretaker, Miguel de Cervantes, was summoned to a meeting of the Parliament in Paralon, where all the races of the Archipelago had come together to debate the matter. His guide and messenger, a tall, thin Spaniard, agreed to venture out into the real world to search for the Geographica.”
“You,” said Charles. “That was you.”
“Just so,” the knight said, bowing his head in acknowledgment. “In my search, I encountered a scholarly detective named Edmund Spenser, who helped me to discover that the Geographica was not lost, but had indeed been stolen. The thief was Tycho Brahe, who was a scholar of Ptolemaic geography and had heard of a marvelous book that contained maps said to be created by Ptolemy himself.”
“That’s mostly true,” Archie piped up from the corner, “although he did have some help—and some of his students actually did all the real work.”
“While Spenser and I pursued the Geographica, Cervantes had an adventure of his own, wherein he met an ethereal creature called the Lady of the Lake. He gave her a kiss, and she gave him a bracelet in return and also the secret of passage between the worlds.
“On Cervantes’s return to England, he was reunited with myself, Spenser, and Brahe, whom I’d brought to London. I had found the Geographica once more, and it was determined that there must always be three Caretakers, to avoid such a catastrophe ever happening again.”
“We know about that,” John said, opening the book and turning to the endpapers. Below the names of those who had come before, Cervantes, Brahe, and Spenser had signed their names in the front of the Geographica with the same quill and the same ink.
The old knight nodded and beamed at the sight of the book. “I witnessed the signing myself,” he said proudly. “It was one of the great moments in a life full of such moments.”
“Why didn’t you sign?” Charles asked. “You had every right to become a Caretaker, and more than enough reason to justify it.”
Quixote shook his head. “I am a messenger at worst, and a knight with noble ambitions at best. I am inquisitive, but it was not my destiny. Also, I asked, but was not chosen.”
“Chosen by whom?” wondered Jack.
“By the Prime Caretaker,” Quixote replied. “He said that at that time, those three must needs be the Caretakers—that I had