Prince of Time

by Tara Janzen

  “Arc they leaving us?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Avallyn said. “Rovers are not usually allowed this close to the tower. They’re too easy to track. They’ll wait for us beyond the ridge we came over two miles back.”

  “I don’t like it,” Aja said.

  Neither did Morgan, but he continued on.

  He had climbed the parti-colored stairs a few times in his other life, but never with more misgivings. Aja’s fretful grumbling at his side did nothing to alleviate his dread of what they might find awaiting them within the tower walls.

  “By the Bones, Morgan, I swear no good can come of your being here. I’ll watch your back, milord, but you must stay sharp!”

  “ ’Twas the home of my friend for many years, a man who saved my life.” He mounted the first black stair and felt a tremor of reminiscence. A white stair followed, then another black, the whole curve winding upward into darkness. Barely a trace of the dawn’s light penetrated the narrow arrow loops.

  “As no doubt I will have to do before we are free of this block of stone,” the boy mumbled, his lasgun drawn and cocked with its trigger unlocked.

  Christe. The boy was serious to the point of trouble.

  “Lock down, Aja,” he ordered. “If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that we don’t want to shoot anyone who might be in this tower.”

  He was rewarded with a narrowed gaze and a scowl, but the boy locked the trigger on his lasgun.

  For a moment, Morgan breathed easier, then Avallyn reached the Druid Door. The sight of the crystal-eyed gargoyle and its blood-rust fangs was enough to chill him to the bone.

  The princess pushed through the door without hesitation, which was more than Morgan could manage. It took a steadying breath for him to walk past the leering beast. Aja gave the gargoyle as wide a berth as possible, scooting by close to the opposite doorjamb.

  “ ’Tis called Llynya’s Oak,” Avallyn said, indicating a gnarled, desiccated trunk pushing up through the floor of what had once been Dain’s main solar. None of the furnishings remained, but even with the room dominated by the dead tree, it was painfully familiar.

  As for the tree itself, it seemed perfectly in keeping that the elfin sprite would have planted such an unruly acorn and conquered the tower with her deed.

  Morgan forced himself to walk deeper into the room. The windows were the same, with stone embrasures set into the walls and the eastern window catching more of the rising sun with each passing minute. The floor had been rebuilt to accommodate the great tree. He couldn’t imagine what had kept the Hart standing for all these thousands of years, until he was close enough to see that the trunk had been turned to stone, petrified in a palette of oranges and browns and becoming a support for the very building it had undermined.

  He put his hand on the trunk and turned to look around the room. The walls in the chamber below were incised with all manner of alchemical formulae, many of which Dain had never deciphered. The current occupant had undoubtedly surpassed all the previous ones and achieved the alchemist’s quest—the art of transformation through the mastery of time.

  With that realization came a disconcerting thought. Tamisk could have time worms lurking beneath the tower, their serpentine forms winding through the roots of the ancient tree.

  Morgan sniffed the air and smelled naught, and he heard naught. For certes the beasts seemed to recognize him as one of their own. If the tower had become a time weir, they wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to torture him with their keening cry.

  “What do you call this place?” he asked Avallyn.

  “ ’Tis the Hart Tower, Tamisk’s desert abode.”

  So the name had not changed, Morgan thought, only the sorcerer who ruled it.

  “You’ve been here before?” he asked.

  “Many times. If we are successful in the past, our journey will end here, in the Hart of Wydehaw Castle while it was still new and whole.”

  “So the tower does have power, as Dain thought?”

  “Enough power to save the world from Dharkkum,” she told him grimly, “if we can but deliver the energy source.”

  “Which is locked in Kryscaven Crater.” He’d seen the place in his night of dreams, a cavern sealed by an amethystine wall, the deep purple crystal stretching in a jagged, sharp-edged expanse across the stone face of an underground mountain—the home of darkness.

  “Aye,” she said, her expression growing even more troubled. “Dread lord... whatever happens here, remember that even without magic, you hold an edge over Tamisk. You are the Prince of Time. You have strengths he does not.”

  “And you saw these strengths in my cells?” he asked, wondering at her renewed formality. She hadn’t spoken of what she’d discovered with her deep-scenting, but she’d been keeping her distance from him ever since their time in the tent. ’Twas what he’d expected—that she would see him for what he was and lose heart—but it still pained him. For a brief time, she could have been his, and he’d spent most of that time trying to get rid of her.

  “Aye, that and more.” She turned away, and he reached for her, taking hold of her arm.

  “Was it so very terrible, then? What you saw of me?” He’d long thought that he harbored no illusions about himself, but she had seen something beyond his worst imaginings if it made the very sight of him unbearable.

  “Terrible and terrifying,” she admitted, avoiding his gaze. “I fear it means our doom.”

  “My strengths will be the death of us?” Now he was truly confused.

  The scrape of wood on stone brought his head around before she could answer. A door with words carved on its lintel was opening in the far wall, seemingly of its own accord. The trick had been one of Dain’s favorites, but Morgan didn’t think what he was seeing had anything to do with trickery. A mage capable of dispersing items and animals into the cosmos could probably just as easily manipulate the atoms in a door.

  Aye, ’twas time to meet Avallyn’s father and hope the man had more need of him than not.

  Without releasing her, he started forward, only to be brought up short by a scent he had not known since he’d been lost to the past. ’Twas the smell of a forest, a rich, lush forest, and it was coming from Dain’s eyrie.

  He closed his eyes and let the green redolence wash over him, filling his senses.

  Avallyn. Her name soughed through his mind. ’Twas her scent, only intensified, and it took him home more surely than any cup of Carillion wine. He’d lived in the wild forests of Wales, and was ever used to waking up to the smell of pine and dew-wet grass. ’Twas what he’d longed for so many nights in the future.

  “I bid you welcome, Morgan ab Kynan.” The voice came from above, rippling through the open doorway like the gentle waters of a stream. ’Twas soothing and harmonious, and utterly enchanting.

  Reason enough to beware, he told himself, opening his eyes. Sliding his hand down Avallyn’s arm, he entwined his fingers with hers and walked toward the door.

  “Aye, come then,” the voice beckoned, “and see your destiny.”

  The man remained hidden from view, but as they neared the doorway, the source of the scent became abundantly clear. Leaves, thousands of them, every one a sylvan shade of green, hung from richly brown branches and filled the stairwell leading up from the door. As they mounted the steps, the leaves reached out to caress them, quick light touches like butterflies landing and taking off again.

  “Aja?” Morgan said.

  “Here, milord. Not a half-step behind.” And sounding far more intrigued than cautious.

  Morgan didn’t blame the boy. For someone who had never seen a forest, this one tree must seem like a whole woodland. Tamisk truly was a mage to have made a stone tree blossom with such greenery.

  At the top of the stairs, Morgan realized Tamisk had conjured much more than a tree. The interior of the Hart’s eyrie was lush to the point of unbelievability. No forest of home had ever been so chockful of vines and plants. Layer upon layer of vegetation
covered the walls and spilled toward the oak, giving the illusion of an endless wood.

  He closed his eyes again, breathing deeply, and a pang of longing went through him, so sharp, his heart ached. ’Twas much of what he’d lost, now found again, the ancient forest where he’d lived, traveling from one end of Wales to the other, the mission changing with each traverse but the landscape always welcoming, be they camped in a snowbound valley in the north or winding along an overgrown track in Wroneu Wood. The scent of leaves, and sap, and loam had permeated his days, along with the sharper smell of new cut wood for their fires and the sounds of wild rivers cascading through mountain gorges. ’Twas all here in this lost place.

  The eyrie was full of branches and leaves, yet there was a trail of sorts leading around the trunk. Morgan followed it, and in a surprisingly brief passage of time—hardly a minute, and certainly not two—realized he was lost, if such was possible in a tower that measured no more than thirty feet across.

  “Aja.” He turned to question his captain, but Aja was gone, disappeared.

  He swore and turned in the other direction.

  “Have no fear for the boy, dread lord,” Avallyn said. “ ’Tis you Tamisk wants, not him.”

  “Where is he?” Morgan demanded, cursing himself for not taking more care. They were in a sorcerer’s tower. He’d known the truth even thousands of years ago.

  “I’m sure Tamisk has him tucked up in a branch somewhere, safe enough for now, wandering through the forest of his dreams.” She looked up and, after a moment of searching, pointed to a branch high, high above them. “See. There he is, safe and sound, and sleeping.”

  And so he was. Morgan saw the bright shock of red hair nested on a pillow of leaves, the relaxed curve of the boy’s spine as he slumbered on a branch, entranced, and something inside him turned cold. Aja was not so easily overcome; nor could he have been moved so quickly by any mortal means. Magic was thick in the tower, potent and adverse, a far cry from the alchemist’s conjuring in Dain’s time.

  “Tamisk,” he called out, keeping a tight rein on his anger. “Release the boy. He has nothing to do with this.”

  As if proving his thoughts on magic, a small copper orb came out of nowhere and floated over his left shoulder. Ten thousand years ago, he would have quickly made a warding sign. In the future, his lasgun usually took the place of superstition—but not in this instance. Blasting the mage’s conjuration to smithereens was unlikely to get them the help they needed against the Warmonger.

  “Even on first glance, I would have been disinclined to agree,” the most mellifluous voice informed him, sounding closer with every spoken word. “After a second, deeper look, I can assure you that the boy is quite involved. And so you both arrive here cloaked in mysteries where I would have preferred to find none.”

  A man appeared on the shadow-darkened trail, his form barely distinguishable from the leaves and branches overhanging the path. Long brown hair fell to his shoulders and beyond, with an intricate braid twisted into the gray stripe that marked him as a time-rider. His clothes were in shades of green and brown. A thin silver coronet graced his brow. The bracelets coiled around his wrists were also silver, a matched set of snakes. Or worms, Morgan thought.

  “Why did you have us brought here?” he demanded.

  “To give you gifts,” Tamisk replied, continuing forward.

  Before Morgan could retort, his gaze was drawn to the elaborate blue tattoos swirling in runes and curves over the right side of the mage’s face, and to the ears as gracefully shaped and pointed as Avallyn’s. The mage’s features bore a marked similarity to the priestess-princess’s, though they were not so feminine, and like her, he was slender, but not slight.

  Nay, there was substance to the Ilmarryn, especially to his presence.

  “Lady Avallyn,” Tamisk said. “Priestess of Claerwen.”

  “Magia Lord.” She bowed her head and touched her fingers to the middle of her chest, speaking the title with due reverence.

  For himself, Morgan decided to forgo any gesture of respect.

  “Prince.” Tamisk addressed him with a brief lowering of his gaze. His eyes reminded Morgan of Aja’s, except Tamisk’s were much greener, preternaturally green, almost glowing.

  And his bracelets were moving.

  God’s blood. Morgan went perfectly still. The movement was subtle, but definite, a fluid rippling that quickly subsided, so that the bracelets looked to be solid silver.

  “Come. I have gifts.” Tamisk walked by them, and Avallyn turned to follow.

  Leery of leaving Aja, but damned if he’d leave Avallyn, Morgan hesitated. “The only gift I want is my captain back.”

  “In time,” the mage said, continuing on without so much as a backward glance. “After you receive what else I have to give.”

  As promises went, the mage’s words sounded more like a threat. Morgan looked up into the tree where Aja slept, and though he perceived no immediate danger, he wanted the boy back, and sooner rather than later. Before Tamisk and Avallyn could disappear in the thicket of branches, Morgan took off after them, reminding himself that he and the mage were supposedly on the same side.

  Tamisk kept to the trail, though how so much trail could be enclosed inside one room of the Hart was beyond Morgan’s reckoning. ’Twas more enchantment, of course, as was all the lush flora. Now and again he could see the stone wall behind the greenery, but for the most part, Tamisk’s conjuration was complete, especially when the audience was willing.

  “You have the Sonnpur-Dzon dragon?” the mage asked as they walked, though ’twas more a statement than a question.

  “Aye,” Morgan answered.

  “The High Priestess of Claerwen would be grateful for its return,” the mage suggested, though, in truth, it sounded like a command.

  They came to a small glade beneath an opening in the oak’s branches, where the floor beneath his feet was loam and grass. Another copper orb drifted by, brushing through leaves and winding its way around the eyrie. A stone pedestal stood in the middle of the glade, surrounded by saxifrage and supporting a broad, maple-rimmed bowl of purest silver, a mazer full of water.

  “Come and look in the scrying pool,” the mage directed, stopping next to the pedestal and running his fingers across the top of the water. Ripples blossomed from the middle of the bowl to its edge and rolled up the sides in waves of mist.

  ’Twas enough to keep Morgan in his place.

  “Come,” the mage cajoled. “The first gift is one much to your liking, prince. ’Tis the past. I give it to you free of the complications of Carillion wine.”

  Crikey bastard, Morgan thought, not forgetting it had been Tamisk’s potion that had saved him from the wine fever.

  “You can keep the friggin’ past and your—” He came to a startled halt.

  Tamisk’s snake bracelets were on the move again, gliding like quicksilver around his wrists and sliding off into the water. The serpents swam to the rim and began circling ‘round and ‘round, growing longer and thinner with each lap, until each could take the other’s tail in its mouth.

  Cold sweat broke out on Morgan’s brow, and he glanced up at Tamisk. Christe. The mage had time worms at his command, but smaller worms and silver, not golden like the worms in the weir. He looked back at the pool, captivated in spite of himself. Faster and faster the serpents swam, until they were naught but an undulating ribbon beneath the small waves set in motion by their efforts, a silver ribbon streaking around a silver bowl.

  Avallyn had called her father a Magia Lord, and indeed he was a lord of magic. No scientist or mechanic, however skilled, could conjure marvels with such ease. Nay, a higher power was needed than science, and Tamisk knew the way of it well.

  Well enough, Morgan wondered, for the worms to suck him into the vortex?

  “No,” Tamisk said. “The pool is only for viewing, not for traveling.”

  “You can read my mind?” Morgan jerked his head up, grateful for the spark of anger he felt, for
it helped assuage his growing fear.

  “Not exactly.” A fleeting smile curved Tamisk’s lips. “And what need, really, when the expression on your face tells me so much?”

  Perfect, he thought with disgust.

  A flash of yellow light streaked out of the pool, drawing his attention back to the bowl. He fixed his gaze on the water, and as he watched, a nightmare vision floated up from the shallow depths.

  Chapter 16

  The nightmare was Caradoc, lying on a beach with a dreamstone-encrusted sword thrust through his chest, his blood pooling in the sand. Caradoc the betrayer. Caradoc, his murderer.

  Morgan stiffened.

  “Ah, so you recognize the man,” Tamisk murmured, sounding pleased.

  Morgan did naught but stare into the water, a thousand emotions flooding through him, dragging a thousand memories in their wake.

  In all his drunken journeys he’d never seen the Boar of Balor, the man who had nearly cut him in two with his blade. The power of that last stroke had pushed him into the time weir. He’d relived the fall more than once while under the influence of Carillion wine, but mostly he’d seen Dain and Llynya and the agony on their faces as they’d watched him slip from their world into the next.

  He’d never seen Caradoc—until now.

  The Boar is dead.

  In truth, he’d been dead for thousands of years. Morgan had thought about that more than once. But this was fresh death, the blood still pumping out of him.

  And whose hand had wielded the blade?

  He saw someone reach down and take a gold ring from Caradoc’s finger. The band was incised with a circle, the four lines of a square, and inset with a reddish triangle, the same symbol as on Avallyn’s amulet.

  Deeper and deeper, he thought, feeling a creeping edge of panic seep into his veins.

  “Has any part of my life been untouched by magic?” he asked.

  “Mayhaps.” The mage seemed unconcerned, though the question burned a hole in Morgan’s mind.