The Dragons of Winter Read Online Free PDF Page A

coercion.”
    “What he means,” said Burton, “is that we tried our level best to torture it out of him, even to the point of setting fire to the portrait. But he held his tongue. Apparently, he’s made of sterner stuff than others among us.”
    “Rude,” Byron sniffed.
    “We know that whoever broke out Defoe’s portrait also wanted Elijah McGee’s maps,” said Chaucer, “although they failed to claim those.”
    “So other than Defoe, what was stolen?” asked John.
    “A key, which was important but not irreplaceable,” said Verne, “a statue of Jason’s wife, Medea, which is irreplaceable but not important, and,” he added with a slightly puzzled look on his face, “every pair of eyeglasses in Tamerlane House.”
    “That’s a very strange laundry list for a burglar,” said Jack. “Any idea why those things were taken?”
    “Not particularly,” Verne said, giving Bert an odd look, “but it’s the escape of Defoe that we’ve focused on—because it’s the only theft that includes a timetable.”
    “How do you mean?” asked John.
    “Defoe’s a portrait,” said Verne. “He can leave the frame outside of Tamerlane House, but only for seven days.”
    “Yes,” Bert said, nodding. “And we believe that the Cabal is planning some sort of initiative in that time, which is why I called for this council. We have spent a year reestablishing the zero points in time to allow our watches to function, but if we are truly to be able to defeat our enemies, we must resolve once and for all the question of how to rebuild the Keep of Time. And we must do it now.”
    “I understood that such a leap in time as that would require is not yet possible,” said da Vinci.
    “Rose believes that it is,” Bert said, gesturing to the girl, “and I believe her. She is ready. It’s time.”
    “It’s time to pursue your personal agenda, you mean,” said Burton. “Going to the past means going to the future first. Andonly an idiot couldn’t guess when you want to go to, and why.”
    “It’s not just for personal interests of my own that we’re doing this,” Bert shot back. “Ask Poe. He knows.”
    The reclusive leader of the Caretakers Emeriti nodded impassively from his post at the landing high above the room. “He is correct. In order to attempt a crossing of Deep Time into the past, to discover the identity of the Architect of the keep, a journey into the future must be made. It is the only way to balance out the chronal energies. And to go to a point that has been traveled to before only increases the odds that it will become a zero point. What Bert suggests is the only wise course of action.”
    “Crossing back to the present from eighteenth-century London is one thing,” said Jack. “This seems like it will take more than a map and a piece of string.”
    “Machines have always been required to go into the future,” said Verne. “That was one aspect of the Keep of Time that we realized from the start: It was recording time as much as anything else. The fact that it continued to grow, but somehow also continued to keep its connections to the past, was forever a mystery to us. As a means of travel into the past, however, it was both consistent and reliable. That ended once it fell.”
    “It had its own link to the future, though,” said Charles. “The last door, up at the top.”
    “The door the stairs couldn’t reach,” said Bert, “but it did exist. The future was tangible, behind that door. That’s how we knew traveling to it was possible.”
    “Anything within recorded history was reachable,” said Verne, “through the means we developed here at Tamerlane House. Backward and forward within around twenty-five hundred yearscould be done with reasonable fidelity and accuracy. But that was when the tower still stood, and the doorway to the future still existed.”
    “Hah!” Burton laughed. “If we’d thought about this sooner, perhaps we could have salvaged that door. But it’s a