“You mean, you’re going to start a fight if we talk about it.”
“I’m sure there will be plenty of opportunities in the future for you to save my life.”
“Only if I’m near you when they happen.”
“Did you hear me suggest that you shouldn’t be near me?”
“But you were thinking it.”
“I don’t read your mind, so don’t pretend to read mine.”
Teresa didn’t respond. Not with words. Instead, she let go of Gabriel’s hand, pulled her leg free from his, and leaned back, falling from the tree limb and plunging toward the ground.
Gabriel spun around, grasping the imprints of the pocket watch in his pants and wrapping Teresa’s plummeting body in a cocoon of Wind Magic, arresting her descent, her hair hanging down to brush the blades of grass. Gabriel set her upright before using Wind Magic to lower himself to stand beside her.
“Are you crazy?” Gabriel asked before his feet even touched the ground.
“I’m making a point.” Teresa brushed her hair back behind her ears.
“That you’re crazy?” Gabriel tried to keep his voice from sounding hysterical. Seeing Teresa fall from the tree had set his heart to hammering in his chest and his blood banging in his ears.
“I’m making the point that you can do things I can’t. That you can save me from things that I can’t save you from. That there may come a time when I need to save you and I can’t.” Teresa’s lip quivered as she held back the tears gathering in her eyes.
Gabriel didn’t know what to say. He didn’t even understand Teresa’s comment. Against all better judgment, he decided to be honest.
“I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Teresa frowned and sighed.
“That wasn’t the perfect thing to say.”
“I haven’t memorized the whole book yet.”
“I think I mean that…”
“There you are.”
Teresa and Gabriel turned to see Sema and Marcus stepping from the back door of the infirmary.
“I knew we’d never keep you in bed for more than an hour.” Marcus laughed as he and Sema walked to the tree.
“You look flush.” Sema raised the back of her hand to Teresa’s forehead.
“We were up in the tree.” Gabriel tried to compose his face, relieved that Sema and Marcus seemed oblivious to the tension between himself and Teresa.
“I’m fine.” A thin smile crossed Teresa’s lips. “I could do with a nap, though. Climbing the tree wore me out.” She kissed Gabriel quickly. “See you later.”
“I’ll walk you in.” Sema followed Teresa. “I want to check your mind again for any residual effects of the magic that vile woman used against you.”
Gabriel tried to ignore the sudden discomfort in his stomach and the tightness in his chest. He couldn’t guess what Teresa might have been about to say, and he didn’t really want to know. She wasn’t making sense. Maybe it had to do with her time spent as Kumaradevi’s play-thing. He knew what that could do to a person’s thoughts. Maybe she’d feel better tomorrow. Maybe she’d feel better about them tomorrow.
“She’ll be fine.”
Gabriel jumped. He had been so consumed with his thoughts that he had forgotten Marcus stood right next to him.
“She’s strong.” Marcus gently patted Gabriel on the back. “Might take her a while, but she’ll be back to her usual self. And the two of you will be back to normal as well.”
“You heard what we said?” A vague wave of embarrassment warmed Gabriel’s cheeks.
“No, but I can guess,” Marcus said. “And, at my age, I’ve learned to recognize when a woman is upset about something. Not that I usually have any idea why, but I’m assuming that skill will come with advanced age.”
Gabriel studied the wrinkles of Marcus’s face and sighed. “That’s not as comforting as you probably meant it to be.”
“No, I suppose not.” Marcus chuckled. “I also doubt it will be any comfort to tell you that you did the right thing by risking yourself to save her. You didn’t need to. You could have stayed back and sent the team in without you. And the Council, for all its faults, is right about how important you are. But sometimes, being right is the best way to be wrong. If we don’t risk ourselves for those we love, it can weaken us in strange ways.”
Gabriel noticed Marcus had fixed his eyes upon the window at the back of the infirmary. Sema stood next to Teresa’s bed. Marcus took a deep breath and sighed.
“I was engaged to be married once.” Marcus winked at Gabriel’s obvious surprise. “This was a long time ago. A few years after I had died and joined the castle. A lovely Fire Mage named Jazzel. My death had begun my reformation from rogue to physician, but she confirmed it. Surely no women so beautiful and intelligent and loving would have anything to do with me if I had not truly changed my ways.”
“What happened?” Gabriel regretted that question as he saw the look in Marcus’s eyes.
“She died.” Marcus raised his wounded eyes up to the leafy branches of the tree. “There is a war on, after all. We were on a mission. Four teams acting as a unit. She and I were members of different teams. This was before I joined Ohin’s team, of course. Things went wrong, as they usually do, and the teams got separated. And then events turned from bad to tragic. I knew where she was. I could see the Fire and Wind Magic hitting her position. But I couldn’t see her or her team. Couldn’t tell if they survived. All the teams were hit hard. Ours as well. Our leader ordered a retreat. He insisted the other teams were dead or had already escaped. My three surviving teammates said the same.”
Marcus stopped and leaned against the solidity of the tree trunk behind him. He remained silent for so long that Gabriel began to suspect he might not finish the story. It clearly pained him to speak of his memories.
“I had a choice. I could disobey direct orders, ignore the experience of my commanding officer, and stay behind to try to find out if the woman I loved had survived. If I had stayed to locate her, I’d have stayed for good. I wouldn’t have had a way back. The location in time made it impossible to send a team back later to look for survivors. My team leader, a Time Mage with twenty years in the field, had a point. Her team might already have fled, and, if not, they were most likely dead. It made sense.
“So I followed my orders. We returned to the castle. We were the only team to make it back.”
“So she died in battle.” Gabriel wasn’t sure what else to say or how to phrase it. How did one console another human being for the loss of their loved one with mere words? Words seemed completely inadequate to the task.
“Oh, she died, I’m sure.” Marcus’s voice sounded anguished. “What I have no way of knowing is if she died there in that battle before I followed my orders to retreat, or if she died later of her wounds, or if she died years after that, abandoned by the people she had depended upon. Abandoned by the man she loved. You see, I followed my head and not my heart, and I will never know what happened. I managed to forgive myself only because I knew she would have wanted it. But it took years and years. Dark years. You made the right choice, whatever the risks. It’s better to follow your heart and know for certain the fate of someone you love than to follow your head and wonder forever.”
Gabriel said nothing. There were no rational arguments to counter the grief and self-loathing evident on Marcus’s face. He placed his palm on Marcus’s shoulder in comfort, hoping a simple human touch could say more than any words.
“I’ve become quite maudlin in my advancing years.” Marcus patted Gabriel’s hand and leaned away from the bark of the tree trunk. “Thank you for listening to an old man ramble.”
“Thank you for helping to ease any doubts I had.”
“Oh, I don’t think you had any real doubts about what was right and what to do.” A broad smile creased Marcus’s face. “That’s why we’re following you and not the Council. Now, I should join Sema. We’re supposed to be responsible for helping to organize dinne
r. I’ll see you later.”
Marcus clapped Gabriel on the back and headed into the infirmary. Gabriel watched him go, unsure of what to do next. There were plans to be made, options to be discussed, chores to be attended to, a fort to establish, and a battle plan to form. He knew he should seek out Akikane, Nefferati, and Ohin to discuss how to proceed now that the Apollyons had all the knowledge they likely needed to destroy The Great Barrier. He found he couldn’t. Beyond the emotional turmoil aroused by his fight with Teresa, he had too many things to consider before thinking of the future.
Was it even a fight?
He put that notion aside. He needed to concentrate on the future.
Wasn’t Teresa part of the future?
He looked up in frustration at his inability to focus his mind. His eyes came to rest on the southeast guard tower of the fort.
Sighing, then chiding himself for sighing, Gabriel grabbed the imprints of the pocket watch and jumped through space to the rooftop of the guard tower. He needed someplace to sit and think without being disturbed. The top of the guard tower also gave him a good vantage point to observe the fort and people manning it. He had been surprised upon his return from Kumaradevi’s world to find that Nefferati had gathered nearly fifty Grace Mages from the various forts who were willing to follow Gabriel as their leader. She assured him more would arrive soon. As he looked down on the people rushing from one task to the next, fulfilling errands to complete the establishment of the fort, he considered what they had each sacrificed to follow him and what more he might require them to surrender of themselves in the coming days.
How many of these people would die under his leadership? Could he ask them to risk their lives in the hope that he knew what he was doing? What was he doing? What should he be doing? Stopping the Apollyons and protecting The Great Barrier, obviously. But how? And, assuming he accomplished that, would he then lead the people who had followed him and managed to survive back to face the punishment of the Council? Would the Council of War and Magic even be needed at that point? Might some other form of governing themselves arise? Might some other way of living their lives become possible?
Gabriel brought his mind back to the needs of the present. There were more than fifty people below who needed to believe that they had made the right decision. They needed to be reassured that their choices to follow Gabriel had not been a mistake. They needed to feel a sense of purpose when the chores of completing the fort were finished. They needed to trust him to lead them in the desperate days ahead. They needed to know he would have their backs as he asked them to have his.
He looked to where the sky met the earth, the sun sinking slowly toward the horizon. He felt the weight of his decisions beginning to pile up within his heart. He could not protect all of them. Seventh True Mage or not, it simply could not be done. Some would be wounded. Some would perish. Nearly all would lose friends and loved ones. Knowing this, he realized he needed to make his leadership, his judgments, worthy of those sacrifices and sorrows.
Was this the sacrifice Teresa had decided to make?
How did she come back to his mind so easily?
Was that what her words had tried to imply? That she could not protect him as he could protect her? That her best means of protecting him would be to keep him from risking his life to save hers? Did she think that not being together would be the best way to protect him? The irony made his stomach sour. These had been his exact thoughts once.
He needed to talk to her. He needed, it occurred to him, to talk to the people whom he proposed to lead into an uncertain fate. He needed to convince both Teresa and the mages of the fledgling fort to believe in him.
Shortly after sunset, Gabriel stood at the head of one of ten tables spread throughout the small common square in the center of the fort. The outpost’s inaugural dinner consisted of simple staple foods — roasted vegetables, fresh bread, and chicken grilled over open flames. The warm midsummer breeze carried the smell of hot charcoal and the soft chatter among friends.
He breathed deeply and listened closely. It all reminded him of the Fourth of July picnic his childhood town held every year. The mayor of the village always gave a short speech before the meal to set the mood and remind everyone of the reasons for their coming together. To emphasize what their ancestors had given for independence and the birth of a new country.
He cleared his throat loudly to draw everyone’s attention. When the eyes of the mages who had assembled for the first meal in voluntary exile were on him, he coughed again to cover his nervousness.
Gabriel briefly looked at the faces nearest him — those of his own table: Nefferati, Akikane, Ohin, and the rest of the team. He let his gaze linger on Teresa’s face a moment before turning back to the other tables. She looked as tense as he felt. He had not told anyone what he planned to say, only that he wanted to speak before the meal.
“I want to say a few words. This may be the only opportunity to speak to everyone together before things get complicated. And things will get complicated. And dangerous. So, before all that begins, I want to thank you. You have all come here because you believe, as I do, that stopping the Apollyons and saving The Great Barrier of Probability is an essential task that must be accomplished.
“While I would be setting out to pursue this goal, even if no one else believed in it, in all honestly, it would be impossible without all of you. You have risked a great deal to be here. Your presence here is a silent agreement to follow me into whatever dark future we all share. While I appreciate that, while it fills me with confidence to see you all here, it is not enough. I am going to be asking you to risk your lives and the lives of those you love. Some of you will die. All of us may die. This is what we face, and to face that, I need to you to follow me, not simply because of some prophecy or because I am a mage who can use Grace and Malignant imprints. I need you follow me because you believe in me, and in the mission I have set for us. More than that, I need you to believe that I will do everything in my power to see that we all succeed.
“Most importantly, I need you to understand, in your bones, that any sacrifice I ask of you is a sacrifice I would bear myself. If I ask you to risk your life to protect our future, you must know that I have risked the same in the past, and will do so again and again until I am either dead or there are no more threats against us. You have all volunteered to be here, but that was before you heard what awaits you. If you wish to change your minds, you need to do so before morning. In the morning, I assume command of you. After that, there will be no turning back. For any of us.
“Thank you.”
Gabriel nodded to the gathered mages, seeing for the first time the tears in Teresa eyes. He bent to sit when Marcus pushed back from the table and stood.
“You have my allegiance now, and always.” Marcus placed his hand to his chest in a simple gesture of solidarity. A salute that felt more like a prayer.
A Fire Mage from the table nearby stood next, placing her hand to her chest, repeating Marcus’s words. Others joined rapidly, by twos and threes and fours. He saw Paramata stand. Then Justine. Finally, Ohin stood with Sema, and Rajan, and Ling. Nearly last, Nefferati stood with Akikane.
Finally, with everyone else on their feet, Teresa rose to hers. The expression on her face suggested that she did not stand last to be defiant, but to add emphasis to her actions.
Gabriel raised his hand to his chest and swallowed the emotions threatening to make his voice crack. “You have my allegiance now, and always.”
A cheer, led by Marcus, rose from the crowd and sailed upward into the star-filled night, carrying the hopes and fears of all assembled skyward to the heavens. When the toasts and merriment had faded and the dinner tables were cleared, Gabriel found a moment to speak with Teresa. He had asked the team and Akikane and Nefferati to remain after dinner to discuss their plans. He had a few moments before he needed to attend to matters of the state. He hoped it would be enough time to tend to matters of the heart.
“That was an
impressive speech.” Teresa stood several feet away from him, creating an invisible, but palpable, physical and emotional barrier between them.
“I thought it went okay.” Gabriel restrained himself from stepping closer to her.
“Modesty is not as attractive as people think,” Teresa said.
“I wanted to talk before things got too crazy,” Gabriel said. “To finish what we were saying earlier.”
“Ithinkweshouldtakeabreak.” Teresa’s rushed syllables seemed all one word.
“That’s what I was thinking too.”
“Really?” Teresa’s eyes widened in surprise.
“That’s what I was thinking you would say.”
“Oh. That’s still what I think.”
“You think that if you can’t save me that I shouldn’t be risking my life to save you.”
“Well, yeah.” Teresa’s eyes shifted from surprise to suspicion.
“And you think if we’re not together I won’t be as likely to be in positions to risk my life for yours.”
“Are you using Soul Magic to read my mind?”
“No.”
“You’re not usually this perceptive.”
“I don’t usually spend time thinking about how other people will need to risk their lives on my orders.”
“Ah.”
“Do you really think I wouldn’t risk my life to save yours, no matter what the circumstances?”
“I think you’d put me ahead of everyone else.” Teresa seemed torn between keeping her distance and stepping closer. “If you had failed while trying to save me from Kumaradevi it would have left no one to defeat the Apollyons and save the Barrier.”
“Vicaquirao would have led the fight against the Apollyons.” Gabriel knew this counter argument didn’t carry much weight with Teresa. “And Nefferati would, as well. And the people who joined us here would have joined her.”
“I’m not saying I don’t care about you.” Teresa dabbed at her eyes with the back of her sleeve. “I’m saying I care too much to let you die trying to save me instead of everyone else.”
“I understand what you’re saying.” Gabriel crossed the distance between them in a single step. Teresa flinched as he reached out to take both her hands in his. “I want you to know that you are wrong. Not that I think you are wrong. This isn’t an argument. I can no more decide not to save you than you could decide not to save me.”
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 83
