“No potatoes yet.” Gabriel’s mouthed watered at the thought of a big baked potato with melted cheddar cheese and sour cream. “Potatoes come from Peru. They don’t end up in Europe until the 1700s.”
“Thank you, Mr. History.” Teresa nudged Gabriel playfully with her elbow. “So, to continue with the litany of our predicament, we’ll be lucky to steal some old parsnips. Those are parsnips that woman over there is cooking, right?”
“They smell like parsnips.” Gabriel swallowed to keep from drooling as his stomach rumbled.
“So, food will be hard to come by, and we need to find a place to sleep that’s out of the cold but where we can watch that chapel in case the rogue Apollyon leaves, and we need to spy on him often enough to figure out how to steal the notebook back before he decodes it but without using magic, and we have to escape before he can kill us both.” Teresa’s plastic smile melted into a scowl.
They sat together in silence for a few minutes. Gabriel contemplated all the points in Teresa’s list. The hardest part would be getting the notebook from the rogue Apollyon. But none of it would be easy. When he had imagined spending time alone with Teresa, it had been under circumstances more amorous than arduous. He suddenly found himself aware of how close she sat to him. He could feel the heat of her arm where their shoulders touched.
“What’s he up to?” Teresa put her chin in the palm of her hand, staring the chapel doors.
“Plotting to take over the universe?” Gabriel could not keep himself from noticing how lovely Teresa looked, her hair falling down around her shoulders, across her cheek…
“No, why is he here?” Teresa tilted her head in curiosity and squinted.
“He’s hiding from the others?” Gabriel found he could not manage to have distracting thoughts about Teresa’s many attractive qualities and hold a conversation at the same time. He stared at the old chapel and tried to concentrate on the problem at hand.
“But why hide in this place?” Teresa crinkled her brow in frustration. “Why this castle at this time? Is it random? Was he planning this all along? He went right for the chapel when he arrived. He must have been here before.”
“You’re right.” Gabriel’s eyes went wide as he thought about Teresa’s words. “He’s not merely a rogue, he’s a defector. He’s been planning his escape from the others for some time.”
“But why?” Teresa said. “Why now and why here?”
“This must be someplace the others wouldn’t think to come.” Gabriel placed his chin in his palm in unconscious mimicry of Teresa as he thought about the question. “It’s a place where there are imprints he can use, but not many. Not yet, at least.”
“If there aren’t many imprints, the other Apollyons wouldn’t be interested.”
“No, they wouldn’t. But their minds are connected. That’s how I managed to get them to abandon their attack on Windsor Castle. This Apollyon would have needed to keep this place a secret while he was plotting his escape.”
“How could he do that?”
“He’d have to suppress the connection. I’ve been learning how to do something similar with Sema. But the rogue Apollyon would have to do it all the time.”
Gabriel suddenly realized what that might mean. “He can’t sleep for fear the connection will return and the other Apollyons will find him.”
Teresa turned to Gabriel. “So, we need to get the notebook before he goes crazy from sleep deprivation, or before he falls asleep and his brothers come for him.”
“Exactly.” Gabriel’s stomach rumbled as much to protest the lack of food as the constant stress of the day. He heard Teresa’s stomach growl in friendly response to his own. Ignoring the seriousness of their dilemma, he laughed aloud. “We should do something about that.”
“Yes,” Teresa said, laughing lightly. “I’ll find us a hiding place while you rustle up some dinner. It looks like it’s going to be a long, cold night.”
“Deal,” Gabriel said as he stood to his feet and offered a hand to help Teresa up. “I’ll see if I can find something hot that the Primary Continuum won’t miss much.”
It took Gabriel longer to round up sufficient supplies for the night than he expected, but the process turned out to be easier than he’d feared. Village men, guarded by castle soldiers, distributed food twice a day to the villagers trapped by the siege.
He had considered trying to steal the food, but while he could escape casual notice by controlling his subtle energy, he lacked the skills of a true thief. If he were caught, it could cause trouble in a number of ways. More than once, he wished Marcus and his deft hands were there to help.
While waiting in line for the food, he tried his best to avoid attracting attention and listened to the conversations around him in hopes of better ascertaining how long the siege had been in place. A half-hour in line brought him within ten villagers of the food.
“Hi.”
Gabriel turned to see a young girl about his age with long, stringy black hair and ice-blue eyes.
“Thanks for saving me a place.” The girl grinned wide, her white teeth a stark contrast with her soot-smudged face.
Gabriel glanced around, eyes wide, unsure what to do. He tried to push his subtle energy down into the ground. Across the courtyard he could see Teresa staring at him, a look of curiosity falling across her face.
“Sure.” Gabriel assumed she had mistaken him for some other young boy in the castle.
“I hate starting at the back of the line.” The girl stepped even closer to Gabriel. He considered stepping away, but didn’t want to attract attention from the men and women in line behind them. “Do you think the Lord will toss us out? That’s the rumor. There isn’t enough food to last, and the Lord will throw us to King Philip’s wolves.”
Gabriel’s mind teetered between fear and panic as he tried to figure out how to respond to the girl’s question. Interacting with people could be very dangerous to the timeline, easily creating alternate branches of time by throwing off the person’s own timeline. He reached out with his space-time sense but could find no impending danger from speaking with the girl. He settled on something bland that might discourage further conversation.
“Maybe.”
“You don’t talk much do you?” The girl laughed and nudged him with her shoulder.
Gabriel could feel his face warming from the casual affections of the strange girl. Her attractiveness only helped amplify his discomfort. Something about her reminded him of Justine back at the castle. He risked a glance across the courtyard. Teresa still stared at him. The look on her face had changed from curious to incredulous.
“My name is Agrace.” She stared at him until he couldn’t help but return her gaze.
“Gabriel.” He wanted to kick himself for using his real name, but he and Teresa hadn’t had time to come up with a cover story of who they were in case they had to talk to people. The whole point was never to talk to people.
“Like the angel.” Agrace grinned again. “We could use some angels now. We’re next. You go first. For saving me a place.”
“Thanks.” Gabriel smiled back at Agrace, feeling like an idiot for thanking her.
The men handing out food gave him dried meat, cheese, bread, and apples. The cheese looked hard, the apples soft, but the bread seemed fresh and still felt warm against his hand. He even managed to convince the men that he had a sick sister too ill to join the line but in need of rations all the same. His space-time sense told him taking the food posed no risk of changing the time line. He assumed the castle still had enough provisions to support two extra mouths without endangering the Primary Continuum.
They handed him the food in a small piece of cloth and he turned to walk away.
“I hope your sister gets better.”
Gabriel looked back, seeing Agrace waving at him.
“Thanks.” He turned and walked even quicker, wandering through the crowd a bit before heading toward Teresa, checking over his shoulder to make sure Agrace couldn’t see h
im. She left the line and disappeared onto the sea of villagers milling about the castle bailey. He hurried to find Teresa standing beside a stable not too far from the church entrance.
“Who’s the girl?” Teresa asked as Gabriel handed her the rag-wrapped food.
“She came out of nowhere and wouldn’t stop talking.” Gabriel’s frustration elicited a poorly timed squeaking of his voice.
“She’s very cute.” Teresa opened the cloth and inspected their supplies.
“Her name’s Agrace.” Gabriel regretted mentioning it when he saw the frown on Teresa’s face.
“No signs of a bifurcation being created from your little chat?” Teresa took one of the apples and sunk her teeth into it.
“No.” Gabriel also grabbed an apple. “Which is weird. I would have thought I’d feel something, even if a bifurcation wasn’t likely.”
“Not so weird if you think about it.”
The sudden sadness in Teresa’s eyes gave Gabriel pause. He considered the situation for a moment and felt a wave of sorrow well up within him, twinned with a painful understanding.
“Oh.”
Gabriel took a sullen bite of his apple. Talking to Agrace wasn’t likely to cause a bifurcation because Agrace wasn’t likely to survive the siege. That knowledge gave him yet another reason to hope he didn’t need to talk to the beautiful, blue-eyed girl again.
“I found a place for us to hide at night.” Teresa pointed to a narrow alleyway between the stable and a small storage shack. From the scraps of broken bark on the ground, Gabriel surmised it had been used to store wood, another scarce commodity within the castle walls during the siege.
“It’s perfect.” Gabriel stepped inside the thin passage and turned around. They would be able to keep their backs to the castle wall and still see the front of the chapel across the bailey yard.
“It’s going to be a little cold.” Teresa scowled. “What’s the point of being a Fire Mage when you can’t create a fire to keep warm?”
“I’ll see if I can find us a blanket.” Gabriel took another bite of his apple and felt his mood lighten. It felt like they were making some progress in their stakeout, even if they didn’t have a clear plan yet.
As shadows draped the castle courtyard and the stars began to awaken in the evening sky, he saw a number of villagers with blankets, but none who seemed to have a spare they might be willing to offer, or one he could pilfer when they weren’t looking.
His search took him as far as the Outer Bailey, across a thin drawbridge above a water-filled moat twenty feet below. Eventually, he admitted he would need to use magic to get a blanket. It was too risky to access the imprints of the pocket watch, much less the Sword of Unmaking, so he settled on the imprints on his own consciousness, those he had acquired when risking his life to save his classmates in that bus at the bottom of a river. It seemed so long ago.
Gabriel had been practicing meditations with Ohin and Akikane to concentrate and amplify his own imprints and subtle energy. He would never be as strong as with his pocket watch, but after months of steady work, he could manage a time jump with nothing but his own imprints. He couldn’t take anyone with him, but it gave him a modicum of peace knowing that if he were ever held captive by Kumaradevi again, he might be able to escape.
He used as little magic as possible, fearing any magic at all might alert the rogue Apollyon to his presence. He found a soldier with two blankets and, after thoroughly scanning the man with his space-time sense to make sure no bifurcations might erupt, he used of a subtle bit of Soul Magic to convince the man to hand over a threadbare bedcover.
When Gabriel returned to Teresa, he found her sitting with her back against the castle wall staring at the chapel entrance, her arms around her knees, chin resting between them. She accepted the blanket eagerly, and even more so, Gabriel’s added heat beside her. They huddled close, and Gabriel ate what remained of the food, gnawing on a lump of heavily salted, dried meat while watching the chapel door and trying not to think about how warm Teresa felt beside him, or how much he wanted to put his arm around her, or how nice she smelled. How could she smell nice after the day they’d had? Could she smell him? He doubted he smelled good.
Why was he having these thoughts at all? Why was he always having these thoughts lately? Well, not lately. For months. Teresa was like a sister. The whole team felt like his family. He loved them like the family he had lost. But Teresa wasn’t his sister. Not really. She was certainly a friend. A friend he kept thinking about kissing. He glanced at her, seeing her dark eyes reflecting the dim, shifting light from a nearby fire in the courtyard. She looked angelic.
Gabriel turned away. Looking at her didn’t help cease the thoughts of kissing her. And what would happen if he did kiss her? Would she want that? She didn’t seem to. But then, how did you know when a girl wanted you to kiss her? And wouldn’t she rather be kissing Jan? Jan, the handsome, older boy.
Gabriel sighed.
“I’m bored, too.” Teresa sighed, as well. “You’re not the exciting company I thought you’d be on a stakeout.”
“Sorry.” Gabriel squinted through the darkness at the chapel door as he rephrased the question he had been asking himself — why would Teresa want to kiss the boring boy she probably thought of as a little brother?
“Let’s go check up on our rogue Apollyon.” That wasn’t boring.
“Excellent idea.” Teresa shifted sideways, excitement flickering in her eyes alongside the reflected firelight. “If he’s asleep, we can sneak in, steal the notebook, and be in our nice warm beds in the castle in no time. Assuming you didn’t destroy my bedroom while you were saving the castle.”
“It’s probably still there.” Gabriel rose to his feet. “It might have some smoke damage, though.”
“Everything has been so crazy since we left the castle.” Teresa stood up, letting the blanket fall to the ground as she held Gabriel’s eyes. “I should have told you this before, but you were amazing. You’re the only reason we’ll have a castle to go home to. It was very impressive.”
Gabriel couldn’t help himself. He fidgeted under Teresa’s stare. The look in her eyes was both grateful and…and what? What was that look?
“Thanks.”
“Now let’s see if I can impress you with my abilities by sneaking into a church full of sleeping villagers.” Teresa walked out of the alleyway.
“What makes you think you’re going alone?” Gabriel hastily stuffed the blanket in a corner and hurried after Teresa.
Chapter 9: Waiting Game
Getting into the church proved far easier than crossing its inner expanse in near darkness while avoiding the dozens of sleeping villagers strewn about the straw-covered dirt floor. Gabriel and Teresa proceeded at a glacial pace, stepping gingerly over legs and arms and snoring heads, often feeling gently with their toes to make sure their feet would land on packed earth rather than soft flesh. By the time they reached the far side of the altar they were both dripping with sweat, even in the chill air of the chapel.
Relief filled Gabriel’s mind as he discovered that the short corridor behind the pulpit and altar held no sleeping villagers. Gabriel wondered if it might not be due to the volume of the priest’s snoring rumbling from behind his chamber door. Gabriel pointed to the opposite wall and beckoned Teresa to follow him as he leaned closer to listen. He cleared his mind of the Soul Magic the rogue Apollyon used to camouflage the little room and placed his ear against the door. Teresa did the same, although he knew that, to her, it would seem her head rested on a cold stone wall.
Gabriel had hoped to hear snoring noises similar to the priest’s to indicate that the rogue Apollyon had fallen asleep. An opportunity to try and sneak in and steal back the notebook. Instead, he heard something far more disconcerting.
“Word, words, what do the words mean? What language? Is it a language? A code, yes. But what language in code? And the symbols? Have we seen those before? No. No. Have I seen those before?”
Gabriel sa
w the concern he felt mirrored silently in Teresa’s eyes — it was past two in the morning, and their rogue Apollyon couldn’t sleep for talking to himself.
“Can’t see. Not enough light. No not the light. Can’t see past the darkness. Yes. The light reveals. The darkness conceals. The darkness within conceals what? What am I concealing from her? What are they concealing from me? I should rest. No. No. No. No sleep. Mustn’t sleep. They can find us in our sleep. No. No. They can find me. Me. They can find me in my sleep. No sleep. Words. Symbols. Patterns. That’s what he always said. Look for the patterns. See the patterns and see the whole in the part of the whole that is part of the whole. Yes. Patterns.”
Gabriel slowly stepped away from the door and into to the nave of the church. Teresa followed him as they warily made their way across the church floor, out through the courtyard, and back to their hiding spot. Neither spoke until the blanket once more wrapped them and their backs rested against castle stone.
Teresa cupped her hands and blew into them slowly, rubbing them together. “You’ve been alone with him more than anyone else. Is he always that crazy?”
“No.” Gabriel imitated Teresa’s strategy, using it to warm his own hands. “I think being able to hear each other’s thoughts is driving them mad. Even more mad than they were before.”
“And this one more mad than most.”
“He’s trying to escape them for a reason. But if he’s turned against them, why would he want the notebook?”
“Leverage against them? To pay them off? To blackmail the Council?”
“If he does fall asleep, the other Apollyons may find him. But if he doesn’t fall asleep, he might become even more unstable.”
“And then the real fun will begin.” Teresa yawned. “How long do you think he can go before he collapses into unconsciousness?”
“A lot longer than me.” Gabriel could not resist answering Teresa’s yawn with one of his own. He realized how heavy his eyelids felt. His body, mind, and heart ached with progressively deeper intensity. He closed his eyes. He might have said goodnight. Or he might not have.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 40
