If Vicaquirao could lead them to Kumaradevi’s alternate domain, then they could sever it from the Primary Continuum upon their departure. But they did not have weeks or days to find and rescue Teresa. The alliance with the Apollyons, coupled with the information Teresa had surely been forced to surrender, would leave a limited window of time for action. The Apollyons would immediately begin an attack on The Great Barrier, and Kumaradevi would no doubt aid them by assaulting the Grace Mages with the full might of her army. They gave themselves no more than twenty-four hours from the time of Teresa’s capture to affect her release, or retreat and sever Kumaradevi’s world.
Gabriel cupped his pocket watch in his hand, droplets smearing the glass that shielded the slender metal hands beneath it. They had a little more than six hours left. The hike through the forest had taken nearly an hour. Far too long. Unfortunately, they had no choice. Vicaquirao had protected his discovery with what he referred to as ‘exceptional force.’ If space-time near the area was disrupted in any way, the relic they marched toward would magically disintegrate. The location could only be reached on foot.
“Vicaquirao.” Gabriel tried to keep the anxiety and impatience from his voice but largely failed.
“I know.” Vicaquirao pointed ahead, just beyond a small outcropping of rock. “When I laid down the magic to protect this place from intrusion, I had not anticipated needing to reach it so swiftly.”
“Normally I would be comforted by the fact that you failed to anticipate something,” Gabriel said. “It’s nice to see some cracks in the façade.”
“There is no facade,” Vicaquirao said. “However, the cracks are real enough. Over here.”
Vicaquirao climbed over a boulder and reached down to help Gabriel up. Gabriel took his hand and jumped up to the top of the large rock. Beneath them, he saw that the side of the mountain had long ago given way in a mudslide. A massive set of bones protruded from the dirt, resting high along the edge of the open pit of earth.
“A Sauroposeidon,” Vicaquirao said as he and Gabriel helped the others up. “It took me years to find it, but perseverance paid off.”
“When in time are we?” Ohin asked as the group began to climb across the giant fossilized skeleton.
“Around 50,000 BCE,” Vicaquirao said. “Fortunately, Kumaradevi is lazy. She created the bifurcation to spawn her alternate reality in around 10,000 BCE, right at the birth of human civilization. She took the people who existed there and made them her own. To secure the world, she hid it with magic on this side, in the Primary Continuum, and systematically destroyed all relics that might link back to it from her side.”
“That seems like a lot of work to me,” Gabriel said.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “But not as much work as creating a bifurcation before humans existed and then trying to build a kingdom with people kidnapped at the moment of their deaths. It would take years and years to find so many people and generations for them to multiply into a nation she might enslave.”
“Exactly.” Vicaquirao looked back at Akikane with a wary eye. “That constant smile is deceptive.”
“I have seen the worst that humans can do.” Akikane’s smile did not falter. “I did much of it myself once.”
“How do we get to the future in Kumaradevi’s world after we reach it?” Ohin slid down the embankment, coming to a stop at the edge of a massive hipbone. “How do we even know when in the future to appear?”
“Kumaradevi’s paranoia works to our advantage there,” Vicaquirao said. “She never allows anyone to cross personal timelines, especially hers. I suspect she doesn’t trust herself to meet herself. She certainly doesn’t trust her soldiers to cross her timeline. The soldiers who attacked your fort will have returned to her world after exactly the amount of time they were personally gone. From what you’ve told me, they would have been back in less than an hour. That gives us a fairly precise window for your arrival, which is helpful considering how much time remains for you to complete your mission.”
“The sooner we leave, the quicker we’ll be back.” Ling said, her voice sounding like a growling jungle cat as she stared at Vicaquirao.
“There are details to attend to in your departure.” Vicaquirao bent to touch a jagged, cream-white femur bone. He turned his gaze from Gabriel to Ohin and Akikane. “In Kumaradevi’s world, I have covered this dinosaur skeleton so it will not be found. The only part exposed is the small end of this bone. It is hidden under a hollow tree trunk. You should be able to place yourself near it easily while still remaining in touch with it.”
“What time frame are we jumping to?” Ohin skeptically looked between Vicaquirao and the skeleton.
“This is where things get a bit tricky.” Vicaquirao smiled and pointed to a nearby rock. “There will be a blue flower growing from a crack in that stone. I planted the flower there, and it will bloom for thirty days, and only once. Go to the very end of its bloom.”
“How did you find a flower that blooms only for thirty days, and only once?” Marcus seemed professionally intrigued by the notion.
“I had some free time on my hands,” Vicaquirao replied. “So I made one. Now, when you arrive, you will need to go to the tree standing directly behind the rock with the flower. At the base of that tree you will find a box buried two feet beneath the soil on the west side of the trunk. Within the box there are several pieces of brick. Any one of them will take you where you need to go. Unfortunately, the box is protected with certain enchantments. You’ll need to look inside the box with your space-time sense and teleport one of the pieces out. I’m sure Akikane can manage that.”
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “Once we have a piece of brick, where will it take us?”
“To a cellar in the city outside Kumaradevi’s palace,” Vicaquirao said. “And here’s where you must pay attention. You’ll need to go to a time when you see a lantern in the room that is always lit. The lantern casts light on a chalkboard with numbers written on it. The number on the right is the year. You’ll go to year twenty-one. The middle number is the month. Go to the ninth month. The set of numbers on the right indicate the day. Go to the tenth day. Finally, there is an hourglass near the lamp. It takes a day for the sand to drain once. The top glass bowl is marked from one to twenty-four on the side. Go to the point where it marks off the number ten.”
“You’ve known about Kumaradevi’s world for twenty-one years?” Rajan shook his head in wonder.
“The better question is…how often have you been going there?” Ling asked, placing her hands on her hips.
“And to what purpose?” Sema brushed her rain-sodden hair from her face.
“I have gone as often as possible.” Vicaquirao addressed his answers to Gabriel rather than his interlocutors. “And my purpose in doing so will be clear upon your arrival.”
“We should get to arriving.” Gabriel leaned over to touch the ancient tusk protruding from the muddy soil.
“Not yet. There are still a few things to explain. And you’ll need these.” Vicaquirao took three small concealment amulets from his pocket and handed them to Ohin. “I only have three, so distribute them as you feel necessary. They will invert the appearance of magic.”
“Invert how?” Ohin asked, looking at the amulets in his hand, their slender silver chains dripping between his fingers.
“They will make Malignant Magic appear as Grace Magic, and the reverse.” Vicaquirao seemed pleased with the slight gasp from Sema.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane reached out to touch one of the amulets. “This clarifies much.” It explained how Vicaquirao had managed to infiltrate Windsor Castle more than once while pretending to be a Grace Mage.
“Thank you.” Ohin handed the three amulets to Akikane, Ling, and Sema, the three most likely to have need of magic on the mission.
“Now, the last thing is a password.” Vicaquirao looked directly at Gabriel. “There is always someone in the cellar with the lamp. Always. You need to give them the pass phrase. Otherwise, they ar
e likely to kill you.”
“It’s sounding more and more like a typical mission.” Marcus looked skyward as he spoke, running his hand across his rain-sopped bald pate.
“What’s the pass phrase?” Gabriel squinted through the rain at Vicaquirao, unable to escape the intuition that he had become a pawn in yet another of the man’s intricate strategies.
“Rejoice. Your day of liberation is upon you.” Vicaquirao clasped Gabriel’s arm. “Tell the person there that Istol has instructed him to take you to a man named Gerrad. Repeat the pass phrase to him and tell him what you need. He will help you. You must also ask him for the key. That is a relic that links back to the bifurcation that created Kumaradevi’s world. It took the two of us years to find it. Now, you must go. Time is short.” He glanced at his watch. “I will meet you at the bifurcation point in 9823 BCE in exactly six hours. If you do not return, I will sever the world as we agreed.”
“You’re sure you don’t want to come with us?” Ling’s voice had a teasing note to it.
“Someone must ensure that the world is severed if you fail,” Vicaquirao said. “Among other things.”
Gabriel noted the tone of Vicaquirao’s reply and suspected he knew what those other things might be. If Gabriel failed to return to the Primary Continuum before Vicaquirao sealed Kumaradevi’s world safely away, he and the reformed Apollyons might represent the best hope of saving The Great Barrier of Probability.
“You should go.” Vicaquirao stepped back.
As the others placed their hands on Gabriel’s shoulder and he reached out for the imprints of the pocket watch, a question that had been nagging at him slipped out.
“If you’ve known where the branch that created Kumaradevi’s world was for over twenty years, why didn’t you sever it?” Gabriel noted a moment of hesitation before Vicaquirao replied.
“That will become obvious to you, I suspect,” Vicaquirao said. “I assure you, I had good reasons. Now go. I’ll see you in six hours. I hope.”
Gabriel nodded and expanded his space-time sense, scanning the timeline of the colossal dinosaur skeleton for a blue flower. He saw it bloom in his mind and then wither and fade. He picked the day before its final discoloration and warped space-time to go there with his companions.
Chapter 21
Finding the box beneath the tree near the blue flower in Kumaradevi’s alternate world proved easy enough, and Gabriel watched with rapt attention as Akikane used a subtle blend of Soul, Wind and Fire magics to determine the location of a shard of brick within the box before teleporting it to his open palm with Time Magic. A wave of sadness mixed with Gabriel’s curiosity. He controlled a great deal of magical power, but he still had so much to learn about how to use it.
The piece of clay brick took them to the cellar as Vicaquirao had said it would. Gabriel counted off the years and months and days and hours until they arrived at exactly the correct moment. As the blinding haze of time travel faded, Gabriel noticed a woman with long blond hair standing beside the old oil lamp, a large revolver in her hand pointed directly at his head.
“Who are you?” The woman hissed, raising both hands to hold the gun.
“Rejoice. Your day of liberation is upon you.” Gabriel stared along the barrel of the firearm, hoping he had gotten the phrase correct. It had not occurred to him to write it down until he saw that cold steel cylinder aimed at his skull.
“Who are you?” The woman lowered the pistol, her eyes going wide as she looked at Gabriel more closely.
“I am Gabriel Salvador.”
The woman’s eyes lit up with a sudden wild excitement. “You’re younger than I thought you’d be.”
Gabriel didn’t know what to make of that statement. “Istol said I should ask for a man named Gerrad.”
“It really has begun.” The woman held two fingers to her heart moving them in a circle. She holstered her gun and looked around the room at the others. “Is this all of you?”
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “We are few but mighty.”
“Yes,” the woman smiled. “That makes sense. I am Hevra.” As she ushered the team out through a small wooden door and into a narrow stairwell, she turned to Gabriel again. “I had lost faith that this day might come in my lifetime. Thank you.”
Gabriel didn’t know what she might be thanking him for, but as he brought back to mind Vicaquirao’s parting words, a vague notion of her meaning began to form in his mind.
“I will take you to Gerrad.” Hevra picked up a second lamp from the table and lit it with a match.
As she turned and walked to the brick wall of the circular chamber, Gabriel realized for the first time that the room had no exit. Hevra pushed three random bricks into the wall and a metallic click rang throughout the cellar. She leaned against the wall and it pivoted inward, creating a doorway into darkness.
“This way.” She raised the oil lamp and stepped into a narrow tunnel of stone and reddish clay mortar.
Gabriel and the team followed Hevra in silence as she led them along the curving corridor and through another secret door into an adjacent cellar. She paused a moment to close the concealed door of wood and stone before opening another just like it on the opposite wall.
Wooden crates of various odds and ends filled the room. Chipped vases sat with rusted daggers beside dusty necklaces on top of grime-caked bracelets. A room of relics, Gabriel guessed. He had little time to ponder the meaning of the room before they crossed into the next passageway.
They followed Hevra’s lamp, its light casting twisted shadows back along the stone walls. The next cellar they came to appeared to function as a pantry. Bottles of wine filled a rack next to small casks of whiskey. Sacks of grain sat beside crates of apples and burlap bags of nuts.
“Stay here.” Hevra hung the lamp on a hook near a set of steep stairs. She ascended the stairs and pushed open a trap door, exiting into a brightly lit room. Smells of roasting beef and boiling vegetables escaped down to the cellar before she closed the hatch. Gabriel’s stomach rumbled with the scents. Even though they had eaten rations on the hike through the forest with Vicaquirao, he had discovered over the last year that he could nearly always ingest another meal.
“Odd greeting, but at least they are providing refreshments.” Marcus ran his hand idly along the edge of a bottle of wine.
“We have better things to do just now.” Sema shook her head.
“Don’t tell me you’re not thirsty after that march through the rain?” Marcus said.
“Eat an apple.” Ling plucked a yellowish-red apple from an open barrel and tossed it to Marcus.
“Should we be stealing their provisions?” Rajan gave Ling a skeptical look.
“This world won’t exist in six hours.” Ling took an apple and bit into it. “What does it matter?”
“We should keep that knowledge to ourselves.” Ohin frowned as Ling pitched Gabriel an apple.
“I’ve been wondering about…” Gabriel’s sentence halted as the trap door above swung open again. He resisted the urge to bite into the apple, holding it at his side instead.
A man with bright red hair and ocean blue eyes descended the stairs. When his feet reached the packed earth of the cellar floor, he stopped and took in the sight of Gabriel and the team. He brushed flour from his hands, rubbing them against the side of his woolen breeches. Turning to Gabriel, he extended his hand with a smile.
“I am Gerrad. It is a pleasure to finally meet you.”
“Thank you.” Gabriel gripped the man’s hand firmly, returning the powerful pressure against his palm as best he could. Gerrad stood a good six feet tall and had the build of a man used to hard labor with heavy objects.
“You wish to tell me something?” Gerrad maintained his grip on Gabriel’s hand.
Gabriel observed that Gerrad’s other hand rested behind his back in what might have been a formal pose…or a means of concealing a weapon. He expected something. It took Gabriel a moment to realize what.
“Rejoice.
Your day of liberation is upon you.”
Gerrad relinquished his grip and brought an empty hand from behind his back. “We have waited many years for this day.”
“Yes.” Gabriel thought a vague statement best, since he had no idea what the proper response might be.
“How may we help you as you help us?” Gerrad continued to stare only at Gabriel.
Gabriel glanced to Ohin and Akikane, but neither made as though to speak. He wondered again how wise it had been to assume the role of leader so soon. Surely the mission would have a better chance of success with one of his mentors in command. Fortunately, he’d have their advice, whether he wanted it or not. Just then, he wished he could have openly requested their help. Instead, he plunged ahead on instinct.
“A friend of ours is being held captive by Kumaradevi in the palace,” Gabriel said. “We intend to rescue her. We need your help to gain access to the palace and any information you have on her location.”
“A young girl about your age?” Gerrad asked.
“Yes.” Gabriel’s throat went dry.
“We have informants throughout the palace. We heard of her arrival. It caused a great deal of commotion among the palace hierarchy. I will try to find where she is being held.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “We must hurry, however. We have less than six hours to locate her.”
“So little time.” Gerrad looked thoughtful. “I had expected more. Six will have to suffice. I will return momentarily. Stay here.”
Without waiting for a reply, Gerrad turned and retreated up the stairs and through the trapdoor. Gabriel turned to the others, unable to mask his confusion.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 79
