“We were given a commission,” Clark said. Almost apologetically, he handed the baby back to his mother. “We must find a passage through the continent to the…to the great water on the other side.” He seemed unsure that Sacagawea had a concept of the ocean, or that there was more to the world beyond, but the young woman had lived with her European husband for two years and had picked up an enormous amount of information from Charbonneau, besides language.
“I know there is an ocean in the east, that now ends in nothing since magic came back,” she said. “My father and mother knew of the great sea through fur trappers, and they told us of it.” She shrugged. “And I understand that your people want to find a way back to the land of your ancestors.”
This brought a startled laugh from Clark. “No, our ancestors have been in the new world a long time. I don’t know if Meriwether still has relatives in the old country, but I surely don’t. Nevertheless, there is a huge world out there, and many people working to solve the problems of magic and natural science, all of them ready to share their knowledge. And there was commerce. We grow coffee in Virginia, but I miss tea from the east that was.”
“All your tribes had commerce?” Sacagawea asked with a weird light in her eyes. “Across the great seas? In boats like your pirogues? Or your large keelboat?”
Meriwether suddenly understood. Sacagawea truly couldn’t imagine a society that spanned the globe. Born of isolated and often warring tribes, she could not grasp the idea of many people joining, from tribe to nation, and from nation to empire, of free trade among very different people.
“Not quite boats like ours,” Clark said. “Much larger vessels that move with the use of sails. The entire world is…much bigger than what you know, and our tribes are very large coalitions of tribes, mostly at peace with other coalitions. They trade with them, using interpreters and travelers—people like your husband.”
A shadow passed over Sacagawea’s gaze. “And this is your mission? To find the way overland to the ocean that my husband called the Pacific?”
Meriwether nodded. “Yes, and maybe to connect again to the rest of the world, which the magic severed us from.”
Quiet, she took Jean Baptiste from Clark’s arms, and cooed at the baby as he fussed wanting to go back to Clark. “Would it be possible for you to join efforts with me, first? You might be able to help me free my husband from the den of the magical creature who imprisons him. You could help me liberate this land and all in it from the evil force. But I have no right to ask. You are the ones who helped me in my direst need, not the other way around. You helped save my life and little Pomp’s. I have nothing to offer you, in return, except a certain knowledge of paths and languages, as well as edible foods on the way. And that might not be enough.”
Meriwether felt a tightening in his chest. She was trying to bargain with them for the rescue of her husband, when simple human decency ought to suffice.
“I believe you have a right to our help, but I’m not sure we can give it,” he said. “We have withstood attacks before, from undead revenants to giant lizards, but we barely survived. I don’t know that we could fight back against such a thing as the dragon wizard you describe. I saw his fury once before in St. Louis, and he was driven off only by one of our greatest sorcerers. I am certainly no match for him.”
She opened her mouth and looked at him. For a moment he thought she was going to ask him about his fight with the dream dragon and what had brought her in search of him. But the look that passed between them cautioned her not to speak. She turned to the door. “I see.”
“I’m afraid Captain Lewis is right,” Clark interjected. “Any attempts at rescuing your husband would be met with force we couldn’t counter. Unless you have some way we could approach the dragon without alerting him to our presence?”
“Please sit, Sacagawea.” Meriwether gestured toward the single bed against the wall in the tiny room. “Tell us how you think we could get at this creature. He holds your husband and others in thrall? What other resources does he have? Who fights for him? What is his appeal, besides magic? And why does he oppose our expedition at every turn?”
He felt a chill, not sure he wanted to know the answer. Perhaps he himself was what attracted the dragon to the expedition, a wish to defeat a rival. The dark dragon had called him the son of Wales, an ancient place known for its dragons. But if he was the target of the evil force, he was sure he could never defeat the creature.
Sacagawea hesitated, remained standing as if she wanted to remain on a level with them, perhaps not a physical level but a moral one. She squared her shoulders after she put the baby on his board again, sound asleep. “I think, the creature is the land.”
“The land?”
“The sum total of the spirit of these lands that you call the arcane territories. It has become maddened, powerful, resentful.” She shook her head. “It is too simple to say the land is outraged by the presence of those who don’t belong here, people like you. But it is more complicated than that. From what I heard of Charbonneau, my husband, people are traveling creatures. They always move, explore. No land can belong only to one people. They come in, make themselves at home with the land, where other people were at home before. People merge, they blend their differences, like my husband and I.
“But after the great comet came and exploded in the sky, long before I was born, I think the magic awoke the land, and maybe drove the spirit of the land insane. My parents spoke of magic as something that never happened in their grandparents’ day, but now all the creatures are magical. Magical creatures who think and talk like men are common. Some spirit of the land awakened and found he was no longer worshiped or respected. So, that great power naturally blamed the intruders, those who came from elsewhere…those who didn’t believe in him.”
“But why does it appear as a dragon?” Meriwether asked. “The native tribes have no legend—”
“I merely use the English word for dragon, and maybe that is how you think of it. But my people had creatures like him in our legends, seven-headed, flying lizard monsters. Some people said that my tribe was the tribe of the snake people, that we could change into flying serpents.” She shrugged. “My husband, Toussaint Charbonneau, says that the dragon looks like a European idea of a dragon because the magic being took over the body of a European. It wanted a body closer to the land, which is why it wanted to possess the body of my son.”
She saw the skeptical expression in Clark’s eyes. “Feel free not to believe it, but if you believe in magic and revenants and monsters, you should perhaps also credit my heightened senses as well.”
Meriwether pressed, “Other than his terrifying form as a dragon, who else works for the creature?”
“Anyone it can capture, across all the land. It can reanimate the dead so that they do his bidding…except for the three drunken revenants of your men, possibly because the liquor protected them. Your Whiskey Revenants are still dead, and still animated, but they’re not tools of the dragon. But his other captives live in a waking dream, like my husband. I tried to get Charbonneau to come with me, but he didn’t have enough willpower to stay awake and escape. Neither did his other wife.” She looked very sad. “Some captives are ill, or otherwise taken over by him. He even possessed the Canoti, the little people from the mound. Now they also do his commands.”
Meriwether felt a chill. “We climbed the mound, but did not see the little people.”
“They are fearsome fighters even in a dream state.” Sacagawea looked at each of them in turn. “I cannot say that the dragon would be easy to overcome, should you try. But I believe you could do it, and that would rid the countryside of this terrible scourge, and free my husband to look after his family. He has never even seen his son.”