The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series)

by G. L. Breedon

  “No, we need to even the odds a bit more first.” Gabriel once again began scanning the deck above with his magic-sense. “The other Apollyons will feel the link being cut and know where we are. After what happened last time, we need to knock a few more out before it will be safe to try severing them.”

  “Where next?” Rajan asked, his eyes following the tip of the Sword of Unmaking.

  “Here.” Gabriel again used the blade of the sword to indicate the point of attack. “Two more right there. Get ready. Now!”

  The second attack followed the same pattern as the first, leaving two unconscious Apollyons below and a smoking hole above. A sense of confidence returned with the success of his plan, and Gabriel moved to selecting a third target from the many opportunities on deck. As he raised the blade of his sword to point out the next unsuspecting opponents, the gravity beneath his feet reversed itself, rocketing him and his companions toward the wooden planks above his head.

  Gabriel’s shoulder struck the underside of the deck as wood exploded upward. He tumbled into the open air as more forces of gravity assailed him and his teammates, slamming their arms and legs and heads together. A wall of water fell on them, driving their tangled mass of limbs down to the open deck as the inky darkness of deep unconsciousness began to pour over his mind.

  Gabriel’s lids fluttered as he struggled to open his eyes. Water dripped from his clothes and hair. The world did not look right. He hung upside down, suspended in the air by invisible magical forces. His teammates dangled, inverted, in the air beside him.

  Three Apollyons stood facing him. He suspected he had only been out for seconds. Although everything looked wrong side up, he saw that the contest to take control of the ship still raged around him. Nefferati and Akikane battled side by side near the main mast of the Spanish galley, their actions and magical assaults blending like the movements of two dancers anticipating each other’s every motion. Even struggling to regain his senses, he realized he should not have been surprised at the combined skill of the two True Mages. They had, after all, been fighting together for centuries.

  “That was an excellent…” one of the Apollyons said.

  “Plan of attack,” a second Apollyon finished.

  Gabriel looked at the men, their faces seeming bizarre from the reversed angle.

  “We hope you don’t mind…” the middle Apollyon said.

  “That we took it for our own.” The first Apollyon chuckled.

  Gabriel wondered why they had revived him rather than kidnap or kill him. What did they want? What advantage did they see in keeping him a prisoner in the middle of a shipboard battle?

  “Order the surrender of your people now…”

  “And we will spare your lives.”

  That answered Gabriel’s questions.

  “I can’t do that.”

  Gabriel saw the Sword of Unmaking, its blade driven into the deck twenty feet away. He had no idea where his pocket watch or the pouch of concatenate crystals might be. He tried to focus his mind on accessing the imprints of his own body, but his head throbbed too powerfully to make such a thing possible. He hung helpless before his enemies.

  “You can…”

  “And you will.”

  A small inferno began to circle the unconscious forms of Teresa and the other team members, licking at their clothes, steam rising as water evaporated from the fabric.

  “I’m not in charge,” Gabriel shouted.

  “They will follow your orders…”

  “Just the same.”

  Gabriel watched as the flames first dried then singed Teresa’s hair.

  “Maybe if they were…”

  “Conscious to feel the pain…”

  “You might reconsider.”

  Teresa’s eyes blinked open, and she let out a weak scream as the fire lapped against her cheeks.

  “Surrender now…”

  “Now, or you will all…”

  “All burn.”

  Gabriel’s mind froze as he watched the flames engulfing Teresa and his friends. The others woke from forced slumber and added their screams to hers. Those cries reverberated in Gabriel’s head as he tried to formulate a response, some action that might turn the desperate situation to his advantage. He could not order a surrender even if the Grace Mages fighting the Apollyons might follow his instructions. He had no doubt the Apollyons would kill them all and hold him prisoner until they mined every bit of information about the Great Barrier from his mind. There were no good options. There was no secret passageway out of peril.

  Gabriel cried out as the magical flames spread from Teresa’s body to encircle his own. As his own screams filled his ears and began to drown out those of Teresa and his companions, a blur of motion abruptly overtook his vision.

  Vicaquirao dropped from the smoke filled sky above to the deck between Gabriel and the Apollyons, thrusting forth both of his fists, striking the two nearest Dark Mages in the chest with the force of two crashing locomotives, sending them hurtling through the air to smash into the deck of the Grace Mages’ Venetian galley.

  The flames searing at Gabriel’s skin winked out of existence as he and his teammates fell to the deck in a painful heap. He looked up as the remaining Apollyon turned his magical arsenal against Vicaquirao. The elder True Mage countered the lightning and gravity and curses on his body and mind, pressing the Apollyon with a physical assault, striking at the man’s face and kicking at his legs. The Apollyon staggered back, attempting to recover from an unexpected hand-to-hand attack. Vicaquirao pressed the fellow Dark Mage hard, each blow landing like a wrecking ball. The Apollyon’s fist connected with Vicaquirao’s jaw, but the older mage shook it off, pummeling his adversary several times in the chest before a final punch sent the Apollyon sailing over the railing, out beyond the range of the space-time bubble and into the waters of the Gulf of Patras. Once outside the space-time bubble it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the Apollyon to return to the ship.

  Vicaquirao knelt beside Gabriel and Teresa, inspecting their burns.

  “We do not have time to heal you.” Vicaquirao looked around at the battle spread across two ships. “Our forces are too narrowly matched. We will lose more than this engagement if we do not find a way to force their retreat or mount our own.”

  “Thank you.” Gabriel stared up at Vicaquirao. “For saving us.”

  “It is becoming a habit with me.” Vicaquirao smiled briefly, then turned to the others still holding their burned limbs. “You must ignore your wounds and fight. We have little time to turn this tide. Find your talismans and then help protect Ohin and the other Time Mages.”

  “No.” Gabriel raised his voice as he pushed himself to his knees. “The opposite. You’re right. We can’t hold them, much less defeat them. But if Ohin drops the space-time seal and leaves the time bubble in place to hold us out of the Continuum, the Apollyons will run. They don’t want to risk losing any more duplicates.”

  Vicaquirao considered this a moment.

  “Yes. I believe you are correct. I will inform Ohin.” Vicaquirao looked at Gabriel’s teammates again. “Find your talismans and hide. Protect Gabriel. Once the time seal is removed, he will be a target again.”

  “We’ll keep him safe.” Teresa reached out and took Gabriel’s hand.

  Vicaquirao nodded to Teresa and then turned and leapt into the air, sailing through the smoke and landing on the deck of the Venetian galley near Ohin.

  “I’m sorry.” Gabriel looked to the others. “All of you. I’m so sorry.”

  “You did the right thing, lad.” Marcus checked the burns on Sema’s arms.

  “We need to get out of the open, fast,” Ling helped Rajan limp toward a hole blown into the lower chamber of the sterncastle at the aft of the ship.

  “What about our talismans?” Sema asked, getting to her knees and crawling after Ling and Rajan.

  “We’ll have to hunt for them slowly until the Apollyons are gone.” As the words left Gabriel’s mouth, two
Apollyons ran along the aisle between the rowing benches, pursued by Akikane and Nefferati.

  As the Dark Mages turned to make a stand beside the main mast in the center of the ship, Gabriel perceived the space-time seal around the two vessels disappear. He snapped his head around to search for Ohin and the other Time Mages. Vicaquirao stood beside them and two teams of Grace Mages, fending off five Apollyons. Gabriel smiled to himself as the Apollyons began to vanish into time, fleeing the attack on their ship. He had been right. They were more concerned with preserving their numbers for the impending assault on the Great Barrier than in risking their lives inflicting causalities on the Grace Mages.

  “Good call.” Teresa winced as Gabriel helped her to safety beside the others in the captain’s room beneath the sterncastle deck. They dared not risk being seen until they knew that no Apollyons remained on the ship.

  “A lucky guess.” Gabriel watched as the two Apollyons battling Nefferati and Akikane pulled relics from their pockets and vanished. The bone-like relics looked nearly indistinguishable. As Gabriel hid with Teresa behind a water barrel, he noticed one of the previously unconscious Apollyons struggling to his feet, holding his head as he took something from his pocket.

  Gabriel’s heart suddenly raced as he stared at the relic in the Apollyon’s hand. It looked exactly like the relics the other Apollyons had used to escape. It might be a piece of a larger artifact that led them all back to the same location in time. If Gabriel got ahold of that relic, he could strand the still-dazed Apollyon from retreating and potentially gain the key to finding yet another Apollyon base with one small magical act.

  With no talismans at hand, Gabriel quickly stilled his mind and focused on the imprints of his own body, acquired when he had given his life to save his former classmates stranded at the bottom of the river in that bus so long ago. He sensed the Apollyon beginning to warp space and time. As Gabriel united the subtle energy of his own body and mind, he concentrated on forming the Wind Magic he needed.

  The Apollyon looked up in shock as the small piece of pale bone fled from his hand before he could make the time jump away from the ship. The shard of bone soared through the air toward Gabriel’s outstretched palm. He squeezed Teresa’s fingers in his other hand and smiled, knowing he had managed to turn a near catastrophe into a minor success. His smile died and withered as the fragment of bone touched the flesh of his hand and the blackness of time travel enveloped him and Teresa.

  A sharp jerk pulled Gabriel’s mind followed by another even more powerful tug at his inner awareness. Then the blinding whiteness of the time jump stung his brain, fading to reveal not the deck of a ship, but the dense undergrowth of a primeval jungle. Gabriel stared at the bone relic in his hand and gasped as it rapidly disintegrated into gray dust. He looked up again, seeing the terror in Teresa’s eyes as she used her free hand to push a massive palm frond from her face.

  “What have you done?” Teresa looked at the ashy substance spilling through Gabriel’s fingers.

  “I don’t know.” Gabriel stared around at the jungle towering above them. As he took in his surroundings and tried not to meet Teresa’s gaze, a dreadful certainly filled his mind and leadened his heart. The booby-trapped relic had taken them somewhere far into the past before self-destructing. The potent jolts he had distinguished with his space-time sense told him something else, as well.

  “We don’t have our talismans.” Teresa swallowed.

  Gabriel thrust his hands into his pockets to find them empty. The relics he usually carried with him were likely scattered across the deck of the Spanish galley where he had hung upside down as the Apollyons’ captive.

  “Do you have a relic?” Gabriel’s voice sounded horse and constricted with fear, already knowing Teresa’s answer.

  “No,” Teresa said, patting her pockets. “Nothing.” She touched her chest. “Not even my amulet.” Gabriel had lost his as well.

  Teresa winced with the pain of her burns, tears filling her eyes. “We’re trapped with no way home.”

  Chapter 10

  Insects flitted through the air, wings an imperceptible blur as they buzzed and darted and hovered.

  Gabriel focused on his breathing.

  “These insects are big.” Teresa spoke between fire-blistered lips, head resting on a makeshift pillow of palm fronds spread across the thick vegetation that covered the jungle ground.

  A dragonfly the size of Gabriel’s forearm whizzed past his head.

  “We must be in the Paleozoic era. Maybe the early Permian or late Carboniferous Period.” Teresa panted as she spoke, coughing into her hand. “Insects can only get this big with enough oxygen. The oxygen levels dropped around 270 million BCE. We must be at least 300 million years in the past.”

  “Shush your big brain for a minute.” Gabriel closed his eyes and held his hands just above Teresa’s face where the worst of the burns had begun to blister. “You’re in shock from the pain. I need to heal you.”

  “You need to leave and get back to the others,” Teresa said, her head rolling to the side.

  “Quiet.”

  Gabriel concentrated on his breathing. He imagined his subtle energy as a pure, clear light pouring into his heart from above and below with every inward breath and radiating down into his hands with every exhalation. With each breath his subtle energy, the ultimate source of his magical power, grew slightly. His heart blazed with the energy as he pushed it into his hands, but he knew it to be a fraction of the power available with a talisman.

  Gabriel had been practicing this meditation for years, but there were limits to its effectiveness. He could use the imprints of his own body and consciousness like a miniature talisman to focus his subtle energy and perform magic, but it took great concentration and had imperfect results. He could manage enough magical power to make a time jump by himself, but not with someone else.

  Teresa understood this. He might be able to travel safely away through time at any moment, but not with her.

  However, he could muster the magical energy required to heal Teresa’s burns. It might take hours and several attempts, but he could repair her flesh. If he didn’t, she could die within days from her burns and infection.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Teresa’s voice cracked with the dryness of her throat.

  “Shut. Up. Now.”

  Gabriel focused his subtle energy on the imprints of his body and called forth the mental frame of mind necessary to bend and shape reality to his will, that special way of seeing and sensing the systems of life known as Heart-Tree Magic. As Gabriel deepened his concentration, Teresa let out a gasp, the flesh of her face and neck and shoulders rebuilding itself with a burst of cellular activity beyond normal biological processes. The blisters faded, and charred skin fell away as new dermis replaced it.

  Gabriel’s energy faded, and he redoubled his focus, visualizing the subtle vitality again as a clear, white light flooding his heart. In that moment, he detected something that had escaped him in his previous practice of cultivating his subtle energy. Another energy existed beyond it. Or around it. Or they existed together, distinct, but not separate. Like a drop of water that was part of a wave as well as an ocean. Gabriel sensed a vast sea of subtle energy inseparable from his own, yet somehow inaccessible.

  This insight intrigued him. Akikane had mentioned this energy once in a meditation session. The fundamental essence of all reality, Akikane had called it. Gabriel had never experienced it before. Knowing he lacked a mind skillful and sublime enough to touch this ever-present cosmic energy, Gabriel ignored it for the time being and concentrated again on Teresa’s burns, willing them to heal with Heart-Tree magic. As the fire-red flesh of her forearms turned pink, then white, then brown, she reached out a hand and placed it on Gabriel’s chest.

  “Stop. I’m fine. Don’t waist all of your energy on me. Save it in case something big and ugly and hungry shows up.”

  Gabriel released his concentration and opened his eyes to stare into Teresa’s. Her s
kin still looked raw, but she would recover with only mild scarring. She smiled, leaning up on one elbow and kissing him. He held her in his arms, his heart swelling as an anxious tension fled from his shoulders. She was alive and they were together. All other concerns were secondary.

  They parted from the kiss, Teresa cupping his jaw in her hand for a moment before they both leaned back against a tree.

  “So, the Apollyons used your trick to booby-trap their relics if anyone except them touched one, disintegrating after it took us here.” A look of annoyance clouded Teresa’s face. “We need to stop thinking of clever things they can use against us.”

  “I’m sorry.” Gabriel stifled an urgent sigh. “If I hadn’t grabbed the relic, we wouldn’t be here.”

  “How could you know it was booby-trapped?”

  “I should have guessed.”

  “It doesn’t matter.” Teresa tightened her grip on Gabriel’s hand. “The Apollyon you took it from probably got trapped and left behind on the ship.”

  “And we’re stranded hundreds of millions of years in the past.” Gabriel warily eyed another giant flying insect floating nearby that seemed intrigued by the size of the possible meal the humans represented.

  “I’m stuck here,” Teresa said. “You can get back if you find a relic. You can use yourself as a relic if you need to.”

  “I’m not leaving you.”

  “Don’t be stubborn.” Teresa reached her free hand up to pull his chin toward hers. “You can always come back and find me. We found Nefferati twice with relics. I might be a couple of days older, but so what?”

  Gabriel said nothing.

  “I can survive for a few days. You don’t need to worry about me.”

  Gabriel remained silent.

  “Even if you mess up completely and I become part of the Primary Continuum, we’re so far in the past that it won’t matter much if you pull me out. And you can always kill me and save me again.” Teresa smiled.

  Her smile gradually faded with Gabriel’s continued silence.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” Teresa’s eyes narrowed as she raised her chin.