“Bloody foolish leaving the best team in the castle behind on a mission like this.” Marcus rubbed his hand over his bald head in annoyance.
“We always get stuck with guard duty.” Teresa kicked at a rock. It tumbled through the grass, landing on Ohin’s foot. Teresa blushed.
“We can find a way to be useful here.” Ohin kicked the rock back to Teresa with a frown.
“There’s useful,” Ling spat, “and then there’s useful!”
“It does seem like a sensible plan.” Sema looked at the bracelet of small stones around Gabriel’s left wrist. “We only narrowly escaped our last encounter with the Apollyons.”
“But we know his weakness now.” Rajan laughed aloud. “He can’t swim.”
“We’ll meet at the usual time.” The serious tone in Ohin’s voice ceased any desire to bicker or complain. “If we are not part of the mission, we can at least continue training for other operations.”
The team dispersed to continue on with their normally assigned tasks. Gabriel would usually have spent the rest of the morning training with Akikane. To keep himself occupied, he wandered around the castle grounds, trying to burn off his nervous energy. He always felt like a kettle boiling over with excitement before a mission. Even though this wasn’t really a mission involving him directly, it might turn into an important day and a turning point in the war.
While walking along the path in the Upper Ward, he came across a man sitting on a bench beneath a maple tree. The man looked much healthier than the last time they had met.
“Aurelius.”
The former ruler of the Roman Empire looked down from the cloud he stared at. “You?”
“Gabriel.” He sat down beside Aurelius, leaning the Sword of Unmaking against the bench. It was unusual to meet famous people from history. The possibility of creating an alternate branch of time usually forbid any sort of interaction with people in the past. Occasionally, though, a famous person also turned out to be a mage. It was rare, both for Grace and Malignancy Mages. There were only a few dozen people living in the castle who history books had recorded in some fashion. Marcus Aurelius turned out to be most famous person ever identified as a Grace Mage.
“They tell me you saved my life.” Aurelius stroked his chin. The gray-and-black curly hair of his beard matched exactly the short hair on his head. “I owe you a debt of gratitude. I suppose.”
“You may change your mind about thanking me.” Gabriel knew something of the inner turmoil and pain Aurelius felt. He hadn’t been an emperor, but he had left behind his family to become a mage in an endless war. “It will get easier as time goes by. The first days are the worst.”
“I hope you are right.” Aurelius folded his hands in the lap of his gray tunic. “I was an emperor of a vast nation. A leader of millions. My laws and edicts shaped people’s lives and defined justice. I led campaigns with tens of thousands of soldiers at my command. I died knowing I had done my duty and fulfilled it to the best of my ability. I died in peace, with the knowledge that my successes outweighed my failures, both as an emperor and a man.”
Aurelius looked at his hands in his lap as if contemplating what they had become.
“Now I am a foot solider in a war I could never have imagined possible, surrounded by people from history and the future, wandering a fortress so far in the past I cannot recognize the wondrous beasts outside its walls, and all of us led in our struggles by a woman. A woman who, if I am honest with myself, frightens me more than a little.”
“You don’t need to fear Councilwoman Elizabeth.” Gabriel nearly laughed at the thought, then thought of something else. “But if you ever meet Nefferati, I’d proceed with caution.”
Gabriel tried for a moment to consider how odd everything must seem for a man who had been the focal point of an empire where women were considered unworthy of rights. An empire that not only condoned slavery but subsisted upon it. An empire expanded over centuries by war after bloody war of conquest.
Gabriel felt almost envious of Aurelius’s sudden relegation to the sidelines of life in the castle and the war. Gabriel’s journey had been the reverse. From oblivious obscurity to the center of the raging fire of at the heart of the War of Time and Magic.
“Where did you get that bracelet?” Aurelius pointed to the beads wrapped around Gabriel’s wrist.
“I made it, actually.” Gabriel held his wrist up so Aurelius could examine the stones more closely.
“A craftsman as well as a magician.” Aurelius touched one of the beads with an outstretched finger. “I once gave something similar to my daughter, Lucilla, when she was a child.”
Aurelius lowered his hand and sighed.
“I have learned she was executed by my son, Commodus, for attempting to overthrow his rule a few years after my death. Of all the mistakes I made in my life, insisting that my son become emperor was the most misguided. When I first learned of my second life, my rebirth, I felt possessed with the desire to know what had befallen my friends, my family, and my empire after my death. Now I wish I could forget everything I learned and live instead in ignorance. How long will that desire last, my young friend?”
“I don’t know.” Gabriel had researched Aurelius’s life before the extraction and knew most historians considered his son Commudus’s twelve-year reign to be one of the three worst in the entire history of Roman Empire, alongside Nero’s and Caligula’s. Depressing news to add to all the knowledge that came with a mage’s rebirth.
“I’m lucky. I was no one when I died.”
“It seems you are very much someone now.” Aurelius breathed deeply and his mood seemed to brighten. “They tell me you are something rare.”
“I can do things other people can’t.” Gabriel thought about all those things for a moment. “It doesn’t make me special the way most people think it does.”
“In my experience, character is what separates great individuals from people who are merely talented.”
Aurelius looked into Gabriel’s eyes as though searching for something. Seeming to find what he sought, he nodded, then turned away to stare back up at the clouds. “I do not envy you. I may have traded one burden for another, but mine is trivial in comparison to the weight you must carry.”
“How did you bear that weight in your other life, back when you were an emperor?”
“All things are not as separate as they seem.” Aurelius waved his hand. “The clouds, the sky, the sun, the castle, the trees, you, me, all the people throughout time. They are all connected. We each have a part in the grand design of the universe. And we all must play our parts. If I had abandoned my duty when my people needed me, I would have been neglecting my role in the cosmic pattern.
“In a better world, I would have been a scholar, a philosopher. I have no doubt that I would have been a better philosopher than a ruler. But that was not my part to play. My responsibilities extended beyond my own desires. I had a duty, and I could not have been true to myself if I did not discharge it, even if it meant I made choices and took actions I personally disliked. My duty was more important than my own feelings. No one thread is central to the pattern of the cosmos, but one’s unraveling can unravel all the others.”
“But what if, in trying to do your duty, you unravel the pattern by accident?” This was another question Gabriel often wondered about. How could he know his actions had helped rather than harmed the war?
“A leader cannot know the future.” Aurelius laughed suddenly. “Well, maybe you can know the future, but you cannot know your own future. The best we can do is act upon our convictions with the hope that the results will benefit the world. Sometimes this means waging a war when you would rather sue for peace, or accepting peace when war might seem justified.
“Again, I am glad our roles are not reversed.” Aurelius reached out and patted Gabriel’s arm, a familiar, grandfatherly gesture that caused Gabriel’s heart to clench in remembrance of the grandfather he would never see again.
“Sometimes, I wish t
his all had never happened to me.” Gabriel held that thought a moment. “But then again, there are days when I get to sit and talk to one of the most famous men in history.”
“And were I still dead, I could not sit and talk with a boy as unique as yourself. And I would not be able to do this.” Aurelius pointed his finger at a fallen leaf in the lawn. It quivered and then floated into the air, hovering for a second before gradually floating down to the grass.
“That’s great for your first week of training!” Gabriel smiled at the old emperor’s newfound skill.
“I’ve always been good at focusing my mind single-pointedly on a task.” Aurelius lowered his hand. “That seems to help.”
“It helps a great deal.”
As Gabriel looked up from the leaf, his eyes rested on the clock of the Curfew Tower. Nearly an hour had passed since his surreptitious meeting with Elizabeth and Akikane. The teams, all thirty of them, would be readying to leave. He concentrated on his space-time sense, extending it as far as he could. He felt gentle tugs at the fabric of space-time and knew the teams had begun their departures. If he had not known what to look for, and when, he would have noticed nothing. It was unlikely that any of Apollyon’s potential spies would be able to warn him or his duplicates of the surprise counter-attack.
“Well, it’s begun,” Gabriel said out loud.
“What has begun?” Aurelius gave Gabriel a quizzical look.
“Nothing, I was thinking out…” Gabriel stopped. His time-space sense rang in his head like a fire alarm. Multiple time-space jumps erupted throughout the castle grounds. Could the assault teams be back already?
An explosion rocked the Curfew Tower. Screams and shouts filled the air. Gabriel looked around, catching sight of someone standing atop the nearby Garter Tower.
His breath froze in his lungs. How could that be? He knew then what the many space-time jumps meant. What the jumps still happening meant.
The war had come to Windsor Castle.
“What can I do?” Aurelius’s eyes went to the sword beside Gabriel.
Gabriel grabbed the Sword of Unmaking, swinging the strap over his shoulder with the same motion he used to unsheathe the blade. He turned to Aurelius.
“Hide.”
A nearby tree exploded in flame. Gabriel looked overhead to see three Apollyons floating above the King Henry VIII gate.
He took one step forward, claimed hold of all the imprints available to him, and launched himself upward into the sky.
Chapter 6: Capture the Castle
Gabriel soared through the air, heading straight for the three Apollyons hovering above the castle.
He did not fly often. Although slower than simply teleporting through space, it might give the advantage of being unexpected. The Apollyons did seem momentarily surprised by his arrival in the sky, but they swiftly began their simultaneous attack, nonetheless.
A wave of Malignant magic assailed Gabriel. Streams of fire from the three Apollyons’ fingers wove around him as curses battered his body and mind. A space-time seal fell around him while some invisible hand tried to crush him like a frail leaf. Gabriel focused on the power of the imprints at his disposal and dissolved the magical assaults arrayed against him. The three Apollyons blinked in unison from astonishment.
Gabriel found himself surprised at how easily he had overpowered the three Dark Mages. The source of his own now considerable strength lay in the bracelet around his left wrist. The beads of the bracelet, each a miniature concatenate crystal, connected to a string of six full concatenate crystals, linked back in turn to powerfully imprinted relics and artifacts in the vast store rooms of St. George’s Chapel. The resulting bracelet linked him to forty-nine objects imbued with Grace imprints and another forty-nine imbued with Malignant imprints.
The size of the tiny concatenate crystals rendered them useless beyond the confines of the castle grounds, but they bestowed upon Gabriel a massive amount of magical power within its boundaries. The idea of creating the links to both negatively and positively imbued objects in the castle had been Gabriel’s, but Ohin’s skill proved invaluable in making the crystals as small as possible. Teresa had helped him paint the crystals to look like stones and presented him the bracelet with some fanfare one dinner so no one would suspect its true nature.
Gabriel fought down a powerful wave of nausea from the Malignant imprints he held. They were easier to endure when balanced with Grace imprints, but it still felt like he had ingested a bucket of putrid swamp water. He relished the looks of confusion on the faces of the three Apollyons as he regained his internal equilibrium.
“It seems you have learned a few things of use in this castle, after all,” the middle Apollyon said.
“A shame it won’t be here for long.” The Apollyon on the right scowled.
“But then again, neither will you.” The Apollyon on the left glared.
Gabriel could sense them beginning to form another attack. The three of them floating before him reminded him of the last time he had faced three Apollyons. Magical energy followed his thoughts even before the idea had fully formed in his mind. A space-time seal clamped down around the three Apollyons while the air around them rushed away, leaving them trapped in a vacuum bubble.
The Apollyons gasped and struggled, combining their magical energies to attack the space-time seal Gabriel held in place. As they panicked and their mental defenses slipped, Gabriel could hear their thoughts calling to their twinned brothers for assistance.
“Help.”
“Above.”
“He’s killing us.”
Gabriel felt the bending of space-time, signaling the arrival of several Apollyons to rescue their brethren. He released the space-time seal and vacuum of air, letting the Apollyons plummet to the ground as he leapt through space to a point high above the castle grounds. The vertigo of suddenly being half a mile above the castle made his head spin, but he steadied himself and studied the scene below.
He could see five Apollyons halting the decent of their three falling companions near the castle gate. From his vantage in the sky, the castle seemed overrun with ants. Vicious, dangerous, black-clad ants intent on destroying the castle and the mages within it. With all the chaos created by the magical battle being fought, Gabriel found it hard to follow the events below.
He estimated at least fifty Apollyon twins were involved in attacking the castle. He could see no other Malignancy Mages. Maybe the Apollyons felt they were strong enough on their own. Maybe they didn’t trust the other Dark Mages. Maybe the other Dark Mages were all involved in the attack on Dresden…if there was an attack. It seemed clear that the information on Dresden had been a double-layered trap, intended to both separate the castle forces and attack the castle itself. But why? Why take the risk?
The upper floor of the state apartments exploded in flame, bringing Gabriel’s thoughts back to the fighting below. He couldn’t afford to waste more time. He needed a plan. Akikane’s training concentrated on learning how to unify thought and magic in battle, but he always emphasized the importance of strategy.
Gabriel watched as the castle defenders beneath him took heavy losses. A team of six Grace Mages normally proved barely a match for a single Apollyon, even when they had time to prepare and could access concatenate crystals. Caught by surprise, the teams remaining in the castle stood little chance of survival. Gabriel scanned the castle grounds for his own team, but found it impossible to discern them from his altitude. He fought back against a rising sense of panic as he watched the battle for the castle. If only he could do something about all those vile little ant-like Apollyons killing his friends and fellow mages.
Ants.
A memory bubbled up in the back of Gabriel’s mind — a summer afternoon spent in the company of distant cousin intent on introducing him to a favorite cruel pastime.
Gabriel looked above to the noonday sun blazing in the pale cerulean sky. Magic formed even as he looked back down. Ling had taught him how to manipulate gravity t
o create a lens capable of warping and magnifying light. She used it like a massive telescope to see things at a distance. But a magnifying glass also had other uses.
Gabriel spotted five Apollyons standing atop the Round Tower casting bolts of lightning, streams of fire, and waves of other devastating magics against fifteen or so Grace Mages trapped in the yard of the Middle Ward. Uncertain how big to make the lens, or how much to bend and concentrate the light that would flow through it, Gabriel elected the most reliable option — making it as large and powerful as possible. As the magic creating the gravity lens coalesced, he estimated it stretched nearly a mile in diameter. A wave of anger rushed through him as he focused the gravity lens on the five Apollyons attacking his fellow Grace Mages.
Unimaginable brightness blotted out the landscape below, centered on the Round Tower. An explosion of stone and light followed for a second before Gabriel released the magic of the gravity lens. The whole top half of the tower had been vaporized. Stone, melted to magma-like rivulets, streamed down the side of the structure’s remnants. No sign remained that the Apollyons might have escaped.
Shocked by the level of destruction he had wrought, as well as the potential deaths of the five Apollyons, Gabriel barely noticed the bending of space-time around him as a swarm of eight Apollyons appeared in the nearby air to attack him. He leapt through space himself as they arrived.
He had a strategy now. He might have to destroy the castle to save it, but the alternative would be worse.
Gabriel appeared in the middle of a magical skirmish between two Apollyons and a team of six Grace Mages in the Upper Ward courtyard outside the state apartments. The Apollyons spun to redirect their attacks toward Gabriel but found him already focusing his anger and magical energy as he materialized and raised his hand. The two Apollyons flew backward as though struck by a giant baseball bat, hurtling a hundred feet through the air like small black missiles before hitting the walls of the Prince Wales Tower with a painful sounding crunch. Even as the two unconscious Apollyons fell to the ground, Gabriel bent space around himself, catching the astonished looks of his fellow Grace Mages before he appeared again, high above the land.
The Sword of Unmaking (The Wizard of Time - Book 2) Page 6
