“I’m going to need your sword.” Gabriel reached out his hand and the weapon leapt from the grip of the man before him. Gabriel managed to snatch the hilt of the blade from the air, more from his practice with Akikane than his magical control of the sword’s flight.
The man screamed in fright and turned to flee, his companions following his lead, quickly mounting their camels and charging over the nearest dune, a miniature dust cloud trailing behind in their wake.
“I was looking forward to riding a camel again.” Teresa’s sarcastic tone said otherwise.
“Without an amulet to translate, I didn’t think introductions would go very well.” Gabriel knelt back down beside Teresa, placing the sword in the sand beside them. “Especially considering how we arrived.”
“How did we arrive?” Teresa sat up, crossing her legs as she leaned toward Gabriel. “How did you make the jump? Even with the spearhead, how did you manage it all alone?”
“While I was trying to gather enough inner energy to make the jump with both of us, I accidentally found a deeper power.” Gabriel frowned with the niggling suspicion that touching it again would not be so easy to accomplish. “With even a trickle of that energy, I could do anything.”
“You worked magic by touching the primal energy of the cosmos?” Teresa’s eyes widened in surprise. “I’d always assumed that was just a myth.”
“No, it’s real.” Gabriel remembered the overwhelming sense of delirious joy and effortless authority the energy conveyed.
“Can you do it again?”
“I don’t know.” Gabriel’s recent failed attempt came to mind. “I don’t think it will be that easy to duplicate. You have to see things in just the right way. I tried when I took the sword, but I couldn’t find it again. I had to use my own subtle energy.”
“It’s still amazing.” Teresa grinned and took his hands in hers. “And you brought me back from the dead. Again.”
“Don’t ever try to kill yourself to save me.” Gabriel clasped her hands so hard she yelped.
“Maybe I was trying to help you focus your mind so you could see the cosmic super sauce that would save us. Did you think of that?” Teresa yanked her hands back.
“You were trying to be a hero.” Gabriel considered what she had said. Possibly the clarity of mind necessary to see the primal energy of the cosmos had required the intensity of focus that only came in moments near to death, or moments near to losing someone you loved.
“You do not get to monopolize the role of hero.” Teresa raised her chin. “I did what I needed to make you leave me behind. If you had stayed and died with me, too much would be at risk. Had you bothered to mention the cosmic super sauce, I wouldn’t have needed to drown myself. Which, I have to admit, you were right about. It is not a pleasant experience.”
Gabriel stared at Teresa in silence, uncertain what to say and unclear of the emotions stirring in his heart. She had a point. He would have chosen to stay behind with her. By sacrificing herself, she had taken that option away, forcing him to save his own life. Moreover, he knew that if their situations had been reversed, he would have done the same thing. In the end, he decided that, however annoying she might be at times, having her around to be annoying far outstripped the alternative.
“Well,” Teresa looked at Gabriel expectantly, steeling herself for another argument.
“You’re right.”
“What?” Teresa blinked in surprise. “I’m sorry, can you say that a little louder? I not sure I heard you correctly.”
“I said you’re right.” Gabriel laughed as the emotions surrounding Teresa’s near death dissolved along with the tension in his shoulders. “You did the right thing, and I would have done the same thing in your position.”
“Now, see how easy that was?” Teresa smiled and gave Gabriel a quick kiss. “We’re both right and we both get to be heroes. We saved each other.”
“Hey.” Gabriel grinned at Teresa, a wave of emotion rolling through him. “I love you.”
“I’ve heard a rumor to that effect.” A wicked curve came over Teresa’s lips. “But then I wake up from the dead and there aren’t any flowers, no box of chocolates, not even a camel to ride, just miles of empty desert.”
“I hadn’t realized camel rides were considered romantic.” Gabriel feigned the tone of a wounded suitor.
“You haven’t had a romantic evening until you’ve shared a camel ride under the stars.”
“I’ll get you a camel as a belated birthday present.”
“Don’t you dare. Those nasty things always spit on me.”
“Then how about I find us a place where we can change clothes, take a real bath, have a romantic meal, and figure out how to get home?”
“What about the flowers and chocolate?”
“I can do either flowers or chocolate, but not both.”
“Well, then, clearly it’s chocolate.”
“Done.”
Gabriel picked up the sword as he stood to his feet, helping Teresa stand beside him.
“Hey.”
“What?”
“I love you too.”
Gabriel laughed and embraced the imprints of the sword. He had assumed that the desert nomad brave enough to challenge them would be the one with the most imbued sword. He had been right. The sword possessed more than enough negative imprints to use as a talisman. And even though it would no longer follow its original path through time into the future, remaining lost in the desert sands, it could still be used as a relic for a time jump into the past.
Gabriel scanned the sword’s path back through time and tried to select a moment he could use to his advantage. It did not prove easy. The inherent instability of a tertiary continuum created immense difficulties for time travel. The timeline of the continuum could change, not only from events put in motion by time travelers in the past, but through the natural plasticity of the alternate continuum itself. Events might alter simply because they could. This made finding a specific moment in time an enervating endeavor.
Finally, hoping he would actually take them where and when he wished, Gabriel let the inky darkness of time travel blot out the desert sun. As the bright, clear light signaling the end of the time jump faded, they stood in a large tent at night, the past version of the sword hanging from a hook on the central tent pole. A young woman slept nearby among a pile of cushions. A small, wooden box sat beside her on a rug. Gabriel quietly opened the ornately carved cover the box, scanning the contents with his time sense for a relic. Selecting a simple necklace of glass beads, he focused on where and when it would reside in the future, embraced the imprints of the sword, and warped space and time to go there.
Two hours later, as Gabriel and Teresa experienced it, they sat at a small table outside a café in 1930’s Paris, eating goat cheese smeared across pieces of bread, torn from a warm baguette, while sharing a glass of wine and watching the sunset. It had required ten jumps through time, using relics and imbued artifacts as they traveled, eventually collecting enough jewelry to trade in for cash and find a shop to purchase new clothes. As they happened to be in Paris, it seemed a shame to waste that pleasant coincidence and its proximity to Teresa’s birthday. They had sought out a vacant hotel to bathe and change into their new outfits before heading out to find a meal.
The hue of their skin set them apart from other Parisians, but did not prove uncommon enough in such a cosmopolitan city to draw unwanted attention. They found a café with a street-side view of a massive stone sculpture where the Eiffel Tower would have been and immediately began ordering most of the contents of the menu. A subsistence diet of prehistoric fish and lizard and fruit for months left them ravenous for modern cuisine.
While this Paris superficially resembled its sister city in the Primary Continuum, there were enough differences that Gabriel suspected it could take a while to find a relic that might exist in both timelines. Moreso, because no object from the alternate reality would actually exist in the Primary Continuum. The only obje
cts that might exist in the Primary Continuum and the tertiary reality would be fossils from before the bifurcation that the Apollyons used to create the first alternate reality. Finding such a fossil would take decades, or centuries.
However, objects similar to those in the Primary Continuum would still likely exist in the universe Gabriel and Teresa currently inhabited. Alternate and tertiary continuums could follow the general pattern of the Primary Continuum, the way a shadow naturally followed someone walking down the street. With the proper shadow relic, one that mimicked the existence of something in the Primary Continuum, Gabriel could theoretically establish a link between them and make a jump between the realities. Because the Apollyons would never allow a version of Gabriel to exist in their private reality, he could not use has own body as a relic. Without an established link between the continuums, making the jump using his body as a relic would be impossible.
Upon realizing they had jumped to Paris, he had initially been elated, assuming they would find an alternate Eiffel Tower he could use to cross back to the Primary Continuum. As he stared at the massive stone statue of a man he assumed to be Napoleon, or some alternate version of the French military commander and Emperor, he wondered how long it might take to find their way home.
“Now this is a romantic birthday present.” Teresa leaned back in her chair, folding her napkin on the plate.
“It is beautiful.” Gabriel stared down a broad avenue, watching the lights of the city randomly wink into life, gradually painting the metropolis with a vibrant tungsten glow. “But I don’t know how easy it will be to get back to the Primary Continuum from this city or this world. We may have to go back pretty far in history to find something that exists in all three universes.”
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think we need a history book.” Teresa made a sour face.
“A history book in English.” Gabriel’s face soured a little as well.
“I can always translate for you. It worked for the menu.” Teresa’s French had been similar enough to the language spoken in the city of this alternate world to order food, but little more.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but we should probably try finding a computer in the future and check the Interweb.” Gabriel picked at the remains of something similar to crème brûlée, sliding the last bite past his teeth.
“Internet.” Teresa laughed. “That assumes the future in this world has an Internet. Or computers.”
“I miss the library at the castle.” Gabriel sighed, expressing the nostalgia the memory of Windsor Castle evoked.
“We could see if this world has a Windsor Castle,” Teresa suggested in a playful tone.
“If it does, I suspect St. George’s Cathedral will not hold a library of history books and relics.” Gabriel considered their options. “Maybe you’re right.”
“When is that ever in doubt?” Teresa raised her hands in mock confusion.
“It can’t be that hard to find a relic that will take us to England or America so we can find a library.” Gabriel took a drink of water to clear his palette and his head. The few sips of wine had made him cheery but had slowed his mind. “We’ll have better luck looking for a building of some kind. Architecture can last a long time and is easier to track down.”
“Once we make it back to the Primary Continuum, how are we going to find our way back to the fort?” Teresa asked. “Without your pocket watch it will be hard to meet the team at the usual rendezvous spot in that old antique store.”
“That will be the easy part.” Gabriel straightened in his chair. “Are you ready to be impressed?”
“More impressed than waking up from the dead today?” Teresa cocked her head sideways with curiosity.
“Okay, not that impressed.” Gabriel slumped a little in his chair. “I have a special cache of relics and imbued artifacts that I hid near my house in my own timeline. I figured if I could make a jump using my own subtle energy, I could always use myself as a relic to get to someplace in my past. So I hid a box of things under the floorboards of the shed behind my house.”
“That is impressive.” Teresa smiled appreciatively. “It shows initiative and forward thinking. I may recommend you for a promotion.”
“I have enough people recommending me for promotions.” Gabriel unconsciously slid a little farther down into his seat. “At least while we were lost I could forget about the war and The Great Barrier and the Council and potential coupes.”
“We don’t have to go back right away.” Teresa leaned closer and held Gabriel’s hand. “We can hide here in the Paris of Bizarro World for a while longer.”
“No.” Gabriel took a deep breath, trying to permanently impress this moment upon his mind. He suspected he would need lovely moments to remember in the long and inevitably painful days to come. “We should get back. We have too many things to do and too many people counting on us. We can take a vacation later. Unless you want to rest. It has been a long day. We could spend the night in Faux Paris.”
“I’m sure there will be plenty of daylight where ever we go.” Teresa stood up from the table, pulling Gabriel to his feet. “Let go home.”
Chapter 15
After an hour of searching, they found a relic to take them to Alternate Cherbourg, where Gabriel used the hull of a shipping vessel as a relic to carry them to Alternate Portsmouth in England. From there, they located a car that had been in Alternate London, and Gabriel used it to bring them to the center of town where they found the main library of the city. The building did not sit where it did in the Primary Continuum, and therefore offered no use as a gateway home, but it did remain standing for many years.
Gabriel took them into the future of the library’s timeline to the year 2000, just before renovations turned it into a shopping mall. Teresa’s suspicion that computers and the Internet might not have been invented in this world proved unfortunately accurate. The library did, however, have a large collection of history books. With the sun and a clear blue sky filling the massive bay windows near the reading tables, Gabriel and Teresa spread out several volumes outlining the history of the alternate world.
“I found some cave paintings.” Teresa pointed to the page of the book resting in her hands. “Oh. Never mind. They’re in Bulgaria, not France. Actually, it’s not even called Bulgaria here.”
“I was hoping we could use the Great Wall of China, but it’s not so great in this world.” Gabriel swung the book around to show Teresa the photo in the book. “It’s more like a long pile of dirt.”
“They have Pyramids in Egypt, but none of them seem to be the right spot.” Teresa flipped a few more pages.
“What about ziggurats in Mesoamerica?” Gabriel stared at the ceiling trying to think of places and structures that might exist in this world and the Primary Continuum.
“I considered that. Same problem. The ones in the correct places don’t look the way they should.” Teresa closed the book and reached for another.
“We may have to start looking for smaller things,” Gabriel said. “Works of art, like statues and paintings.”
“I think I have something.” Teresa excitedly tapped the page open before her. “Hadrian’s Wall.”
“Really?” Gabriel leaned over to read the paragraph next to Teresa’s finger. “I got the impression that Roman history diverged too much from ours.”
“Well Hadrian’s Wall didn’t diverge.” Teresa grabbed another book and rifled through the pages. “Here. There’s even a photo.”
“It’s worth a try.” Gabriel smiled at Teresa. “Good work. Now we need relics that can get us there.”
“If there’s a British museum of history in this world, I guarantee you they will have relics from the wall. Possibly a piece of it.” Teresa grabbed another book from the pile. A tourist’s guidebook to the Alternate London.
She turned out to be right on both counts. Alternate London did have a museum of history, and it did have a piece of the alternate Hadrian’s Wall. Unfortunately, t
he chunk of stone wall on display showed no signs of linking back to the Primary Continuum.
Undeterred, Gabriel took them back through time and space to the actual wall itself. He used the wall as a relic to jump along its length, searching for the oldest section of the great partition that separated northern and southern ancient Alternate Britain. In the Primary Continuum, Roman Emperor Hadrian had begun building the massive stone wall in 122 CE to keep the British tribes of the northern regions from raiding and battling with the Roman outposts in that far-flung part of the Empire. The wall served a similar purpose in this reality.
Gabriel eventually located a stretch of masonry older than the others that held a tenuous link between the tertiary reality they inhabited, and the secondary reality it had split from, all the way through to the Primary Continuum itself. The connection felt weak, as though the stones in the wall were not properly aligned with their companions in the Primary Continuum. The wall did not provide a perfect conduit back to their reality, but it would work well enough.
On a whim, he tried once more to shift his perception to reveal the cosmic subtle energy behind all existence, but the vision eluded him, as it had with every attempt since their escape from the fire-covered river in the Paleozoic Era. Unsurprised and undaunted, he gathered the imprints of the artifacts they had collected in their sojourn through the timeline of the tertiary alternate reality — a dagger, a necklace of prayer beads, a small bear carved from bone — and focused his will upon the Time Magic to take them home.
“Hold my hand tight.” Gabriel wove his fingers between Teresa’s. “This won’t be like the trip we took to get here.”
“Dysphasic quantum correlation degradation,” Teresa said, nodding her head knowingly.
“If that translates as ‘bumpy ride’ then you’re right.” Gabriel grinned at her incomprehensible reiteration of his words. “The fossil that stranded us here existed completely in both alternate realities and the Primary Continuum. This section of wall exists in all three worlds, but there are subtle differences in each. I can’t follow the timeline of the wall the way I normally would. I need to use it more like a guidepost and push us between the three realities. Like jumping from one branch of time to another.”
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 74
