The Shadow Dragons - James A. Owen [32]
He set the quill aside and gently removed the stopper from the bottle, which appeared to be half-full. The cloudy liquid inside swirled about lazily in the glass and seemed to emanate a faint glow and a familiar scent.
“Apple cider?” John said, sniffing. “The ink you use is apple cider? Will that even work?”
“An unusual map requires an unusual medium,” the old mapmaker replied. “It only smells like cider because of its extreme age.”
“Did it come from one of the apples on Haven?” Jack asked. “Those trees were quite old, I believe.”
“Oh, it’s far, far older than that,” said the Cartographer as he dipped the quill point into the bottle. “If it didn’t come from one of the oldest trees that ever was, it certainly was in their forest. You who subscribe to these newfangled modern religions have a name for it: the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.”
Charles nearly bolted upright. “Do you mean the juice you’re using to draw with may have come from an apple off the same tree Adam and Eve took an apple from in the Garden of Eden?”
“Same tree?” the Cartographer said indignantly. “Pish-tosh. It’s from the same apple. They only took two bites from it, after all.
“Now,” he said, adjusting his glasses. “Hold still—I want to get this right the first time.”
Slowly, with deft and deliberate strokes, the ancient man once called Myrddyn, then Meridian, and then Merlin, before at last becoming known only by his trade, began drawing the map that would guide the companions to the Nameless Isles.
He began at the lower left, just under Charles’s rib cage, with a vast island large enough to have continental aspirations. Then, pausing only to dip the quill, he quickly worked his way upward, adding smaller islands in a variety of shapes and putting in navigational notations as he sketched. Another sizeable island was situated between the shoulder blades, followed by two half-moon isles that were obviously volcanic in nature.
As he drew, the lines of the cloudy apple ink left only a shiny, moist indication that quill had touched skin; but as he sketched his way down the right side of Charles’s back, a curious transformation began to happen on the left.
The lines wavered, faded, then solidified into a rich, reddish-brown color, much like the lines in the older maps of the Geographica.
As the map was being created before the companions, all of them were transfixed by the mapmaker’s work—except for Rose. While the others watched the line work magically appearing, she remained focused on the maker.
They had only ever met once before, in this very room, but she had known who he was instantly.
She knew because her mother and grandfather had told her stories about him and about her father, who was called Madoc before he took the name Mordred, and through the stories she came to know them. She knew everything about them, including— or perhaps especially—the flaws that had made them who they became. And she learned something else: that when you know everything about a person, it becomes very difficult to hate them, and very easy to love them.
And so there, in that small stone room near the top of a floating tower made of time, six personages watched the old mapmaker create his work on his living canvas. Two, the clockwork owl and the ancient knight, watched with a sense of duty for what was to come. Three, the Caretakers, watched with awe, reverence, and a small inkling of fear for what the map portended. But only one, the Grail Child Rose, watched with love—because she was the only one there who was more concerned with seeing the mapmaker himself than with obtaining what he might provide to them.
The Cartographer halted to consider his work, then again leaned close and completed the circlet of islands that ringed Charles’s back. “Now,” he said softly, “for the final three.”
He dipped the quill one last time, then stoppered the bottle. “Waste not, et cetera,” he breathed to no one in particular. Swiftly he drew one final island in the center and added several notations above and below.
The old man leaned back and closed one eye,