Gabriel shielded Teresa with his body, encasing them in a barrier of Fire and Wind Magic, pushing it out to cover his companions until the wave of blistering brilliance faded. He raised his head to see Vicaquirao, fallen to his knees near the crumbled wall of a stone hut, trying to fend off an attack by the Apollyon ambassador. The Apollyon, his leg bloodied but healed, must have ghosted their trail through time. The two men fought, exchanging malicious magics, oblivious to all else around them.
Gabriel released his protective shield of magic as he rolled away from Teresa. His quick thinking had protected her from the worst of the Apollyon ambassador’s attack, whatever it had been. Akikane and the others had not been so fortunate. Their clothes smoked and smoldered, blisters covering their faces and the exposed flesh of their arms.
A nearby tree shattered into flame, splinters raining down on Gabriel’s head. Vicaquirao stood on his feet now, wounded, but still attacking the Apollyon ambassador, drawing him away from the others. Gabriel made to stand, intending to help Vicaquirao defeat the Apollyon.
Akikane moaned and stretched out his hand, the charred statue of the bull cupped in his blistered palm. Gabriel understood. They needed to dissolve Kumaradevi’s world above all else. They had always planned for their return to coincide with the creation of Kumaradevi’s alternate reality. Had they returned an hour earlier, they would have had sixty minutes to prepare to sever the world, or jump through time to accomplish it. Gabriel looked at the pocket watch, still in his fingers. They had only seventeen seconds to sever Kumaradevi’s alternate world from the Primary Continuum.
He took the bull statue from Akikane and sat on his knees in the hardened dust. Embracing the imprints of the pocket watch, he reached out with his space-time sense to the small statue. They had chosen a place near where Kumaradevi had hidden the original bifurcation in time that created the alternate reality of her kingdom. Close enough to make severing possible but far enough away to avoid ever attracting her attention should she look.
Gabriel pushed the noises of Vicaquirao and the Apollyon ambassador’s battle from his mind, casting away his concern for Teresa and Akikane and Ohin and the team. He concentrated on the seconds passing as he scanned the statue and its timeline, waiting for the moment he needed to strike out with his Time Magic. He calmed his breathing and tried to focus on gathering his own subtle energy imprints to add to the power of the pocket watch. It would impossible to try and use the imprints of the negatively imbued daggers and concatenate crystals from Kumaradevi’s world to performing the severing.
Focusing his power as the moments passed, he sensed an elusive disturbance in the space-time continuum begin to build. The magic cloaking it would have made it imperceptible from any other place or time. So close to the origin of the bifurcation, the unique signature of the rent in space-time grew with each passing second in Gabriel’s mind, an inner image slowly coming into focus.
As Gabriel waited for the moment to strike, his mind filled with thoughts of Gerrad and Hevra and the rebels fighting for their freedom in Kumaradevi’s palace. He still did not understand how Vicaquirao could so callously ignore their sacrifice. These people, whom he had groomed for decades in order to overthrow Kumaradevi’s tyrannical rule, would cease to exist when Gabriel severed their world from the Primary Continuum. All that they had worked for, the future they were bleeding and dying to forge, would be eradicated in an instant as the world ceased to have a past, making any present, much less any future, impossible.
Gabriel mourned their lost dreams and lost lives as he closed his eyes, expanding his space-time sense while the last moments before the bifurcation passed. He heard Vicaquirao scream something as the air filled with the sound of crashing trees. Gabriel found it ironic that Vicaquirao had fought so hard to ensure the destruction of a world he had struggled so long to save.
The bifurcation looming seconds away, something obvious occurred to Gabriel — Vicaquirao always thought through the possibilities and contingencies, and he always had a plan to alter his plans when the need arose. He would never have worked for decades to oust Kumaradevi from power if his work could be ended simply by severing her world from the Primary Continuum. He must have had another plan.
As the moment of the bifurcation blossomed in Gabriel’s mind, he remembered Vicaquirao’s offer to witness the severing of the alternate branch of time. As he thought about the act of severing an alternate world, he recalled something else — the Void between realms. A sea of infinite impossibilities burgeoning with potential possibility. Impossible possibility that might allow for the survival of a branch of time sliced free from the trunk. A branch that would become its own new continuum. A continuum that would still need a past. A past that might be fashioned by peeling a thin, bark-like layer of the original trunk right down to its roots.
Gabriel slowed his perception of space-time to a near absolute absence of temporal unfolding, suspending the moment of the bifurcation’s creation in his mind, fashioning a mental blade of Time Magic to cleave the alternate branch of time from the Primary Continuum. He forced the separation back through time, a slender remnant of the original continuum improbably stripping away, clinging to the alternate world, a stable shadow-past solidifying as the alternate world broke free into the great Void.
Kumaradevi’s world would survive. Its past, grafted from the Primary Continuum, would allow it to possess a future. Time Mages from that new universe would never be able to travel back before the day of its creation, nor could they likely ever leap across the Void between worlds to return to the Primary Continuum, but they would live.
Gabriel noticed the silence and opened his eyes.
Vicaquirao stood before him, a bloody gash across his forehead. The Apollyon ambassador, unconscious but still breathing, lay on the ground behind him. Akikane had healed himself and helped Marcus begin healing the others. Teresa breathed slowly in deep slumber.
“You severed the world?” Vicaquirao’s tone sounded concerned.
“I did.” Gabriel reached out to place a hand on Teresa’s forehead.
“I made a mistake.” Vicaquirao looked back at the fallen Apollyon, his voice rasping in anger. “I wanted to take him alive. I should have killed him. If I had, there would have been time for me to sever the world.” He turned back to Gabriel, his eyes sad.
“I figured it out.” Gabriel raised his head to look at Vicaquirao. “The world is safe. They’ll still need to deal with Kumaradevi, but Gerrad and the others will have a future.”
“Thank you.” A smile broke across Vicaquirao’s bloodied face. “I thought I was the only one who had discovered that trick.”
“I almost didn’t,” Gabriel said. “It took me a while to realize you aren’t as awful as I assumed.”
“Few people ever realize that.”
Gabriel looked to where Akikane and Marcus sat healing the rest of the team of their burns. He turned back to Teresa before speaking again.
“The Apollyons probably know everything now. They will know about the anchor points. It will only be a matter of time before they find them all and strike at the Great Barrier. We need to do something soon.”
“I’ll see what I can learn from this one.” Vicaquirao gestured toward the unconscious Apollyon. “You know how to contact me when the time comes.” Vicaquirao turned to go but then stopped, looking back over his shoulder at Gabriel. “You did well today. There are more hard days ahead, but you saved an entire universe. And you rescued Teresa. And your friends are all alive. As are mine. You should be pleased.”
“Thank you.” Gabriel experienced an odd sense of pride flush over him, realizing as it did so, that Vicaquirao had become a mentor to him in some ways. Still an adversary, but one he respected, and one who admired him. The confusion wrought by that thought and the sentiments surrounding it crashed against the hard emotions of fearing for Teresa, and his friends, and all that had happened in the past day. Before Gabriel could consider an additional response, Vicaquirao disappeared thr
ough time with his captive Apollyon.
“Is it done, is it done?” Akikane knelt beside Gabriel and Teresa as Ohin and the others gathered around them.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “But not the way I had expected. I’ll explain later.”
“Hello Bubbles.”
Gabriel looked down to see Teresa smiling up at him.
“Are you stalking me again? How far does a girl have to go to get away from you?” Teresa offered a thin smile with her words.
“The ends of time.” Gabriel stroked Teresa’s cheek.
“We should all be getting away from here.” Ohin helped Gabriel to his feet. “Kumaradevi may still have agents in the Primary Continuum.”
“Where are we headed?” Ling asked, leaning on a branch as she favored a wounded leg. “We aren’t going to be welcomed anywhere by the Council.”
“They should give us a bloody medal for today.” Marcus held an arm around Sema to steady her.
“We’ll be lucky if they don’t try to arrest us.” Sema ran a hand through her disheveled hair to clear it from her face.
“They may not arrest us, but I don’t see Councilman Romanov being grateful no matter what we have done.” Rajan helped Gabriel pull Teresa to her feet.
“Ling is right.” Gabriel put his arm around Teresa’s waist as she leaned into him on unsteady feet. “We need a place to operate from. A new base.”
“Yes, yes.” Akikane’s smile seemed more cunning than usual. “The thirteenth fort.”
“What thirteenth fort?” Ohin asked.
“Ours, ours,” Akikane said. “The one Nefferati and I have been building for the last month.”
“What are you all talking about?” Teresa turned to Gabriel. “What have you done now?”
Gabriel’s sly smile filled his own lips as he stared into Teresa’s eyes.
“It’s not so much what I’ve done as what I’m going to do.”
Chapter 23
The fort had no official name, but names abounded for it nonetheless. The Hidden Fort, Fort Inevitable, Fort Rebellion, Fort Desperation, and the Fort of Last Resort. This last appellation originated with Teresa and became Gabriel’s private designation for the outpost nestled 100 million years in the past.
The thirteenth fort proved larger than Gabriel had expected. Nefferati and Akikane’s clandestine construction had produced a structure capable of housing at least a hundred people with barracks, a meeting house, a kitchen with functioning wood stoves, storehouses filled grains and dried goods, and even a small, well-stocked, two-room infirmary for Elizabeth in her perpetual coma.
Gabriel sat beside one of the beds of the infirmary, Teresa tucked beneath its crisp, cream-colored sheets. Marcus and Sema had been adamant that she remain in bed until she had time to recover from her captivity and abuse in Kumaradevi’s palace. Like Sema and Marcus, Gabriel worried more about her mental recovery than the physical wounds that magic might heal. Heedless of their concerns, she insisted on giving a full report of her internment and interrogation. Akikane, Nefferati, and Ohin sat in chairs assembled around her bed and listened intently to her story.
After her capture, Teresa had been taken by Kumaradevi’s soldiers directly to the alternate world. Although two Apollyons remained present, Kumaradevi had insisted upon conducting the examination herself. This seemed to have annoyed the Apollyons. Teresa tried being defiant, but the three Dark Mages had ignored her while they argued. In the end, Kumaradevi led the questioning via Soul Magic while the Apollyons used their own Soul Magic to observe Teresa’s thoughts. Gabriel assumed that one of the Apollyons had eventually departed to inform their brethren of the information gleaned from Teresa’s interrogation while the other had remained as ambassador to Kumaradevi.
Teresa had tried to hold off against the invasive magic Kumaradevi used to probe her mind. She tried to think of complex mathematical equations to limit Kumaradevi’s ability to read her thoughts. These acts of insolence were met with unspeakable agony that made it impossible to concentrate. As the magic swayed her mind, she came to believe that Kumaradevi was her friend, her savior, preventing the pain wracking her brain, offering her the only solace available — a true confidant to whom she could, and should, share all of her secrets.
“I told them everything. Every last thing I know about the Barrier and how we learned it. Everything from the notebook. Everything we discovered and guessed from examining the anchor points. Everything we suspect about how the Barrier was created. Absolutely everything.”
Teresa wiped the tears of remembrance from her eyes and coughed to steady her voice.
“The worst part of it was that I wanted to tell her. I felt like I needed to tell her. It’s not that I couldn’t stop myself, it’s that I didn’t even want to.”
“There is nothing you could have done differently.” Ohin reached out to pat her hand, squeezing it firmly, his voice gentle and reassuring. “You should be proud to have survived.”
“I survived because she wanted a trophy to replace Nefferati hanging above her throne.” Teresa’s face tightened as she remembered the pain of the magical cage.
“She also likely wanted you as a hostage against Gabriel.” Nefferati’s face mirrored the anger of Teresa’s. “Something to lure him to her.”
“That worked a little differently than she had planned.” Gabriel tried to put as much cheer as possible into his voice to lighten the mood. Listening to Teresa recount her ordeal proved more painful than he had anticipated. His own captivity in Kumaradevi’s hands seemed pleasant and carefree in comparison. He had been abused, but never tortured.
“Yes, yes.” Akikane leaned forward for emphasis. “You were very brave. Now you must be brave enough to let go of what has happened. Remember, pain is like a snake — if you hold it too tight, it will bite you. Better to set it back in the grass and walk on.”
“Better to stomp the little creature with your heel.” Nefferati snorted in derision at Akikane.
Teresa laughed, and the others joined her until the mirth faded from her eyes.
“There was something else. Something odd.” Teresa drew her knees to her chest and stared at the ceiling in concentration. “Toward the end, Kumaradevi seemed convinced that I was holding something back. That there was some secret I had not yet divulged. Ultimately, she decided I knew nothing more. After that, things got bad, and I couldn’t think about anything except the pain in that cage of lightning.”
“She won’t hurt you ever again.” Gabriel reached out to brush a tear from her cheek.
“Maybe she’s right, though,” Teresa said. “Maybe I do know something I don’t even know I know.”
“If there is something rattling around in that brilliant head of yours, I’m sure it will make enough noise and eventually get your attention,” Gabriel said. “Try to think of something else.”
“You mean like how we can stop the Apollyons from destroying the Great Barrier now that they know about the anchors points and how to find them?” Teresa filled her voice with chipper despair.
“Exactly, exactly,” Akikane said.
“We’ll all be thinking of that,” Ohin added.
“Among other things that need thinking about. And doing.” Nefferati stood up, stretching the kinks from her back. “We should let these two spend some time alone while we get this fort up and running.”
After Nefferati, Akikane, and Ohin made their goodbyes, Gabriel and Teresa sat in silence for a long time. He looked at her, at the sheets, at her hand in his, out the window at the tree in the back of the infirmary. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know precisely what he felt. Relief that she lived, that she sat next to him instead of trapped in whatever might become of the alternate world where she had been held hostage. Regret that she had been drawn into the trap that resulted in her captivity in the first place. One thought came to him again — that she would be safer if he did not love her, if he did not want her near him all the time.
“Let’s get out of here.” Teresa’s
voice brought Gabriel back from the inner reaches of his thoughts. “I can’t sit in bed anymore. Let’s go outside.”
“There’s a nice tree out back.” Gabriel gestured with his chin toward the window. “It looks like the great-great-great-grandfather of oak trees. The branches seem really strong.”
Teresa smiled. “How do you always know what to say?” Her mood lightened considerably at Gabriel’s suggestion.
“I’ve memorized a book of prepared lines for every occasion.”
Teresa laughed as Gabriel helped her out of bed. She changed out of the nightgown she had been wearing and slipped into black pants and a simple blue tunic. She slid on a pair of slippers, took Gabriel’s hand, and led the way to the tree in the small square behind the tiny infirmary. A few minutes later, they sat on the widest, highest branch of the tree, holding hands as they interlocked their dangling legs.
“I don’t like the way our ledger is working out,” Teresa finally said after several minutes of silence. “You’ve saved me twice recently, and I haven’t had the chance to balance things.”
“You may be too competitive.” Gabriel watched a small, acorn-like nut fall twenty feet from a nearby branch to the ground. “It’s not a contest.”
“You’re the one always talking about balance in the universe,” Teresa said. “I don’t want our personal universe to get out of equilibrium.”
“I could jump out of this tree and let you save me,” Gabriel offered.
“And how would I save you from falling with Fire Magic?” Teresa dug her elbow into his side.
“Oh. Right. I could set the tree on fire and you could put it out.”
“Stop being ridiculous. I’m serious.”
“This is going to start a fight if we talk about it.”
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 82
