There came a dull thumping sound behind me, and I turned to see Canterbury enter the gallery, his hooves now safely muffled by rubber cuffs. “I see you’re checking out your boyfriend’s family tree,” he commented dryly.
The Curator gave me a speculative look, as if sizing me up for a display case, then motioned for us to follow her. “Come this way, please.”
As we entered yet another exhibition hall, this one called the Hall of Sufferance, we paused in front of yet another diorama, this one depicting a Kymeran with a forked cerulean beard holding a platinum scepter entwined by a golden and a black winged dragon. Arrayed before him were representatives of all the major supernatural races found in Golgotham, each of them wearing a crown. These royal figures were forever frozen in an attitude of ritual obeisance, with either their heads lowered or knees bent.
The plaque attached to the diorama read: In the Year 1036 C.E. (Common Era), Lord Vexe accepted the fealty of King Chiron IX of the Centauri, King Omester XII of the Satyrisci, King Koukakala of the Leipreachán, Lord Tasson of the Dwarves, and Queen Tallemaja of the Huldrefolk, thereby granting their peoples eternal protection and asylum within his kingdom.
A polite cough from the Curator drew my attention away from the tableaux. “This is where the exhibit will be installed,” she said, motioning to a large alcove off the main gallery. “This section is dedicated specifically to the Dragon Rebellion and will feature a re-creation of the battle between Lord Bexe and his brother, General Vlad.” She pointed toward the ceiling. “As you can see, Vlad’s mount is already in place.”
I looked up and gave an involuntary gasp at the sight of a fierce black dragon, its wings spread wide and claws extended, directly over my head. It was easily twenty feet long, from snout to tail, with a wingspan to match. Once my heart slowed back down, I was able to marvel at its workmanship. The attention to detail, from its glowing red eyes and razor-sharp teeth to the barb at the end of its tail, was amazing. The thought of the skies having once been filled with such glorious monsters was both awe inspiring and terrifying.
“Nice work,” Canterbury admitted grudgingly. “Who fabricated it for you?”
“It’s actually a piece of taxidermy,” the Curator explained casually. “It’s a juvenile, of course. There’s no way we could display an adult battle-dragon indoors, much less two of them.”
“Speaking of which—what’s keeping those damned drovers?” Canterbury scowled as he fished his pocket watch from his waistcoat. “They should have been here by now!” He tapped the Bluetooth headset in his right ear. “Fabio! You better not be taking a break on my dime—and no, I don’t care what the Union has to say about it. If you and your team want to get paid, get your horses’ asses up here.”
As Canterbury continued to argue into his headset, I returned to the main hall and sat down on a large marble bench. As I did so, a trio of monitors arranged in a semicircle flickered on and the fourth movement of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique swelled from hidden speakers. As I watched, a series of woodcuts and engravings of Witchfinders skinning werewolves, cutting off the extra digits of Kymerans, and burning nymphs and satyrs alive flashed across the flat screens.
“And so the war between the human and nonhuman populations of Europe and Eurasia raged for the better part of a century,” intoned a deep, authoritative, and decidedly British voice, “until the sacred groves were dyed red and the skies grew black with the ashes from the autos-da-fé. Then, on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eleventh year of the twelfth century C.E., there came a sign from on high. . . .”
Suddenly images of the three holiest sites in Judeo-Christian-Islamic culture appeared, one to each screen: the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher; the Wailing Wall; and the Kaaba. Without warning, there came a thunderclap so loud it made me jump in my seat as fiery words written in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic miraculously appeared on the walls of all three shrines at the very same moment.
“And so it was commanded by the God of the Christians, YHWH of the Hebrews, and Allah of the Muslims,” the narrator intoned solemnly, “in words of fire, which still burn today, for all to see: ‘Suffer the witches to live, and those who come unto them, for they, too, are precious in My sight. Judge them not, lest ye be judged accordingly; and with what measure ye mete, shall I return measure to you a hundredfold.’”
The photographs of modern-day Jerusalem and Mecca dissolved, to be replaced by Leonardo DaVinci’s most famous painting: The Divine Truce. As I looked at Lord Bexe, surrounded by his former enemies, I was struck by how much Hexe resembled his ancestor. The only real difference between the two was the color of their hair—and the look of haunted sadness in the Witch King’s golden eyes. But perhaps that was merely artistic license on Leonardo’s part, since he re-created the famous meeting three hundred and eighty-seven years after the fact.
“Following what is now called the Divine Intervention, the Holy Roman Emperor Henry V, Pope Paschal II, Sultan Mehmed I, Patriarch John IX of Byzantium, Rabbi Ibn Megas, and Lord Bexe gathered in Constantinople, and with the signing of the Treaty of 1111, the Sufferance finally came to an end.”
“I see you’ve found our new multimedia exhibit. We recently updated it in order to make it more immersive.” The Curator had, once again, ghosted up behind me without my being aware of it. I had to hand it to the old girl—she had some mad ninja skills.
“Is that Sir Ian McKellen doing the narration?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” she said proudly. “Royal Shakespeare Company actors work best as the Voice of God, in my experience. The previous narration was by Sir Ralph Richardson, but we decided to record a new version when we upgraded from analog to digital sound.”
As I turned away, a flash of bright yellow caught my attention. It was a length of police tape wrapped about a display case. “Is that the exhibit you mentioned earlier—?”
“Yes, it is,” she sighed sadly. “We lost an entire collection of authentic Witchfinder devices: finger-cutters, witch-hammers, spell-gags—that sort of thing. The finger-cutter was particularly valuable, as it is rumored to be the same one Lord Bexe used to take his own magic upon surrendering the throne of Arum.”
I grimaced in disgust. “Why on earth would anyone want to steal stuff like that?”
“There is a brisk business in antique witchbreaking devices, not unlike the underground trade in Nazi memorabilia,” she replied. “Although it was part of the Treaty of 1111 that all such devices be destroyed, a few have managed to survive the centuries in private collections.”
The Curator fell silent as the brace of horse-legged ipotanes came clattering into the hall, lugging the welding equipment and heavy crates as if they were made of balsa wood. The head drover, Fabio, set his burden down with a loud thud that resounded throughout the gallery.
“Here is your delivery, Master Canterbury,” the ipotane announced sarcastically. “Please sign at the bottom, to verify that the items have been delivered in satisfactory condition. And I will be filing a complaint with my shop steward regarding your use of a racial slur.”
“You go ahead and do that,” the centaur grunted as he scribbled his initials on the paperwork.
Once Fabio and his team were out of the way, Canterbury and I opened the crates and set about connecting leg bones to hip bones, wing bones to shoulder bones, tailbone to butt bone. When I finished the final weld connecting the head bone to the neck bone, I stood back and gazed upon the fully assembled clockwork dragon.