“You made dinner yourself?” Gabriel said as Vicaquirao sat down.
“I love to cook,” Vicaquirao said. “I hope you enjoy it.”
“You don’t have any servants?” Gabriel asked.
“No,” Vicaquirao said. “I prefer solitude. Fewer chances for betrayal. It is just you and me. So you will do the dishes.”
Vicaquirao served Gabriel the pasta and sauce, placing a small portion of salad on the side of his plate and handing him a piece of garlic bread. When he had served himself, he raised his glass of wine. Gabriel did the same. He was very conscious of the choice.
“To the future,” Vicaquirao said. Gabriel touched his glass to Vicaquirao’s and took a sip. It was very good, but it went straight to his head. He decided to avoid any more of it until he had a full stomach. He would need his wits about him to have dinner with Vicaquirao.
“It’s very good,” Gabriel said, between bites of linguini. It was always best to compliment the chef, especially when he was the jailer.
“Thank you,” Vicaquirao said. He had still not given any hint as to how he knew this was Gabriel’s favorite meal. Gabriel could only think of one possible explanation. Vicaquirao had spent some spying on him in the Primary Continuum before his near-death there. Which meant Vicaquirao might know as much about Gabriel as he knew about himself.
He could see that Vicaquirao would be a much more difficult adversary than Kumaradevi had ever been. She was cunning, but in a cruel and crude fashion compared to Vicaquirao. It would be best to try to steer the conversation in directions that might he might use himself, Gabriel thought, before Vicaquirao could steer them elsewhere.
“I was wondering something,” Gabriel said as he took another piece of garlic bread from the basket. “When I was brought to Kumaradevi’s world, did that create a bifurcation? Does she now have two worlds to rule?”
“Interesting and perceptive question,” Vicaquirao said, taking a sip of wine. “The simple answer is no, your presence did not create a new bifurcation.”
“But what happens to the people in the future of a branch that has its past changed?” Gabriel asked. “Do they suddenly forget things that have happened? Do they suddenly cease to exist?”
“Essentially, yes,” Vicaquirao said. “A change in the past of an alternate reality could mean that someone is not born or that someone does not meet their future spouse. The potentiality of the branch will reorganize to accommodate this new reality. Therefore, people will cease to exist or forget what they had known. Unless the alteration to the branch is too large to allow its reality to reorganize, in which case a new branch will be formed.”
“And that new branch will be even less stable and have an even more flexible reality,” Gabriel said, seeing it in his head like an endlessly tall tree of ever-branching possibilities.
“Exactly,” Vicaquirao said. “Very astute. You really are as bright as everyone says.” Gabriel felt his face warming and hated himself for it. That was the danger of Vicaquirao. He was so likable that the things he did and said almost seemed reasonable. Gabriel took a sip of wine to cover his face and tried to focus on the fact that he was a prisoner of the man sitting across the table.
The rest of the meal passed in idle conversation, Gabriel trying his best to glean any information he could with obscure questions. He had hoped that his original line of questioning would have given him some more information about Vicaquirao’s world, but the older mage proved very adept at being informative while revealing nothing useful. After dinner, Gabriel washed the dishes and set them to dry on a wooden rack near the sink. When he had finished, he returned to the main living area to find Vicaquirao reading in a large leather chair near a fire.
“I think I’ll go to bed,” Gabriel said.
“A wise idea,” Vicaquirao said, looking up from the book. Gabriel tried to get a look at the author, but could only see a title that said Thus Spake Zarathustra. “You will find your room on the right at the end of the hall upstairs. The bathroom is across from it, if you wish to shower. We will leave early tomorrow after breakfast. I have something I want to show you, and I like to get an early start. You should be used to that. I will wake you at dawn. And please, do not try to imbue any of the things you might find in your room. I will know of it if you do. Your bedside lamp is a little more cumbersome than a candleholder in any case.
“Beside your bed, you will also find your copy of The Time Traveler’s Pocket Guide to History. Your study of history was sorely neglected under Kumaradevi’s tutelage. I will not be so lax. Do not bother trying to use it as a means to travel back to the castle. The time shield that prevents the castle from falling permanently into the timeline of the Primary Continuum also prevents any objects created there from being used as relics for time travel. It is just a book. It will not take you from this cabin. Besides which, we will not be staying in any one place for very long. Make yourself comfortable in my homes and in my presence, but do not try to leave without my permission. While your time with me will be far more comfortable than it was with Kumaradevi, you no more want to cross me than you would her.”
Vicaquirao paused a moment to make sure his words had been heard. Gabriel said nothing in response.
“Good. We understand each other. Sleep well.”
Gabriel chose to say nothing. Instead, he climbed the stairs, walking down the hall to his room at the end. A large bed covered in a patchwork quilt of colored squares sat near the window. There was a closet, a dresser, a small desk against a window, and a table near the bed with an electric lamp. The dresser and closet held clothes similar to those that would have hung in his closet back in his bedroom at his parent’s house. Gabriel suspected Vicaquirao was trying to make him feel comfortable.
On the bedside table, Gabriel found his copy of The Time Traveler’s Pocket Guide to History. He sat on the bed and picked up the book. He flipped through the pages in the moonlight, not bothering to flick on the lamp. He had missed the book. It was like being reunited with an old friend. With all of his friends. The book was the only real connection to the castle and his life there.
Setting the book back on the nightstand, Gabriel lay down on the bed and stared at the darkened ceiling. Turning his head to look through the window, he could see the stars in the sky above the mountains. How had Vicaquirao known about the imbued candleholder? And more importantly, how much more did he know about Gabriel? And how had he come to have Gabriel’s copy of The Time Traveler’s Pocket Guide to History? Could it really be the same book? Gabriel had little time to contemplate these questions as sleep took hold of his thoughts and cast them into a dream world, a deserted island, shadows and shapes following him along the beach and into the jungle.
Chapter 21: Grace and Atrocity
Gabriel woke to a knock on the door. As he raised his head, he saw Vicaquirao entering with a wooden tray that held a bowl of fruit, a cup of tea, and a slice of toasted bread with a thin slab of butter melting in the middle of it. A dim light filtered through the window. He sighed. He hated getting up early.
“A light breakfast,” Vicaquirao said. “Eat and shower and meet me downstairs in half an hour. And I assure you, the sheets are clean.” Vicaquirao smiled and walked back down the hall.
Gabriel realized he had slept in his clothes on top of the quilt all night. He started to wonder what his dreams had been about, but his dreams had been unpleasant for so long that he had no real desire to relive them.
Gabriel ate, showered, and dressed exactly as instructed. As much as Vicaquirao liked to talk about choices, Gabriel realized that his were very limited. He dressed in a pair of faded jeans and a blue t-shirt covered by a long sleeve flannel shirt. Sliding on a pair of sneakers, he stuffed The Time Traveler’s Pocket Guide to History into his back pocket, picked up the serving tray, and carried it downstairs. Through the windows, he saw Vicaquirao sitting in a chair on the porch. Setting the tray in the kitchen, he joined Vicaquirao outside.
“Good,” Vicaquirao said, “yo
u look well rested. We have a bit of traveling to do today. There are some things I want to show you. To continue the conversation we started yesterday afternoon.” Vicaquirao took a concatenate crystal from his pocket and held it gently in his hand. “First though, I am afraid you will need to take a quick morning nap. The pathway into my world is a maze filled with traps, and I would not want to tempt you to retrace our way.”
“But…” Gabriel said, as he felt a cloud of insensibility roll over his mind. The last thing he felt were his knees buckling and two strong hands taking hold of him.
It could have been a moment later, or it could have been hours, when Gabriel opened his eyes to find Vicaquirao holding him upright.
“We have arrived,” Vicaquirao said. Seeing that Gabriel was steady enough to stand on his own, he stepped back. Gabriel looked around. They stood in some sort of jungle.
“Where are we?” Gabriel said, seeing houses and a village through the trunks of the jungle trees.
“The Primary Continuum,” Vicaquirao said. At Gabriel’s widening eyes, he continued, “but please do not see this as more than an educational excursion. Your freedoms are dependent upon actions, and they can be eliminated as easily as they are granted.”
“I get it,” Gabriel said with a frown. “Don’t try to run.”
“Precisely,” Vicaquirao said, as he began to walk from the jungle. Gabriel followed him, and in a moment, they walked through a small field of low grass and into the village. It was oddly quite. A mismatched collection of houses, some built of mud bricks, some of wood, some with thatched roofs, and some with roofs of tin, lined the streets of the village. The sun sat well into the sky, but Gabriel saw no people walking the dirt-packed central street. As they walked around the corner of a house, he saw why.
There were people in the village. Spread at odd angles along the ground, mangled and disfigured, some with limbs missing and a few with missing heads. Gabriel turned and retched his breakfast into the ditch at the side of the dirt road. Vicaquirao placed a comforting hand on his back. Gabriel shrugged it off and stood up, looking around again. The bodies of the villagers were clearly African. Some were in the road, some in their yards, some had died in an attempt to reach their homes.
“What is this place?” Gabriel said, spitting to clear the taste of vomit from his mouth.
“Rwanda,” Vicaquirao said. “A tiny central African country in the spring of 1994. A little after your own time, but I thought it might be instructive to see.”
“What happened here?” Gabriel asked.
“Genocide,” Vicaquirao said. “In the short course of three months, between April and July, between 800,000 and a million Tutsis will be slaughtered by their Hutu neighbors. Mostly by being hacked to death with machetes.”
“Why would they do that?” Gabriel asked, beginning to feel a powerful anger arise in his gut.
“Scarcity of land, ethnic grudges, imbalances of power,” Vicaquirao said. “The usual reasons people kill each other.”
“But how could the world let it happen?” Gabriel said. “Somebody stops it, right? The United Nations? Somebody.”
“Why would you think that?” Vicaquirao said. “Why should people risk their lives, or even the lives of their soldiers, just to stop one tribe on the other side of the world from killing another?”
“Because it’s the right thing to do,” Gabriel said, feeling the anger rise from his stomach into his chest.
“To you maybe,” Vicaquirao said. “And that is exactly why I have brought you here. To see why choices are so important. The people who did the killing were not forced to. They chose to. And their actions have cloaked this village, and villages like it all throughout this country, with Dark imprints.”
“I suppose you have a concatenate crystal linked to this place,” Gabriel said, the anger burning in his chest.
“I would be a fool not to,” Vicaquirao said. “But I will bet you that there are also concatenate crystals linked to the imprints of Light here as well. Sense it for yourself. You can feel the imprints here better than anyone can. Dark mixed with Light.” Gabriel extended his senses tentatively, fearing what he would encounter. The malignant imprints where just as overwhelming as he had supposed they would be, but there were grace imprints as well. Strong ones.
“You see,” Vicaquirao said, “there is always Light with Darkness. Darkness with light. Mothers sacrificing themselves to save their children. Hutu neighbors protecting their Tutsi friends. Right now, in a village not too far away, a Hutu minister is hiding six women in an unused bathroom, risking his life and that of his family. To save women he barely knows. Acts of grace and acts of atrocity side by side.”
“So?” Gabriel said, feeling the anger burning in his throat and threatening to burst into his head. “Why show me this? I can’t stop it. I can’t change it.”
“Because you still fail to see the connection between Darkness and Light,” Vicaquirao said. “The imprints of Light created when facing Darkness are stronger than imprints of Light otherwise. That is why it takes so long to imprint an object with only the will and the mind. Because Light must balance Darkness, but it is Darkness that drives the Universe forward, through action.”
“Evil does not determine the course of history,” Gabriel said, trying to believe his words.
“Neither do love and compassion,” Vicaquirao said.
“I’ll take love and compassion over killing and evil any day,” Gabriel said, the anger slipping up behind his eyes to become a burning coal in his brain.
“The Universe must have both or it stagnates,” Vicaquirao said.
“You sound like Apollyon now,” Gabriel said. “Creating a twisted philosophy to justify your actions.”
“What I am trying to show you is that…” Vicaquirao cut off and looked around. Gabriel didn’t need to ask why Vicaquirao had halted mid-sentence. He felt it too. A space-time seal had burst into existence around the entire village. Vicaquirao grabbed Gabriel’s arm and pulled him behind a small brick house with a tin roof. Peeking around the corner of the house, they could see black-clad men and women at the far end of the village road. Kumaradevi’s mages.
“That is not possible,” Vicaquirao said, his eyes squinting in concentration. “Not unless…Yes. I should have seen that.” Vicaquirao reached out and grabbed the chain of the amulet around Gabriel’s neck and pulled it roughly over his head.
“What’s wrong?” Gabriel asked, the anger having dissolved into fear and his voice showing it. Vicaquirao examined the amulet, a grim smile spreading across his face.
“The amulet has a magical trace on it,” Vicaquirao said. “It can be used to locate it anywhere in the Primary Continuum. I should have thought of that. I wonder who suggested it to her. Or did she have a flash of intelligence for once?”
“If Kumaradevi is here, what do we do?” Gabriel said, looking around as though there might be an escape route through the jungle.
“The space-time seal will keep us from jumping to another time,” Vicaquirao said, “as well as crossing it or jumping within it. But I think at least one of us will be able to escape.” Vicaquirao removed his own amulet and handed it to Gabriel. “Put this on.”
Gabriel took the amulet and slid the chain over his neck. “I don’t understand.”
“Always have a plan, and always have a backup plan when that fails,” Vicaquirao said. “But always, always, be prepared to improvise. Kumaradevi will be outside the space-time seal. She believes you are here with Apollyon, and she fears meeting him even more than she fears the Council. She will hold the seal while her mages hunt for you. And they will find you.”
“You’re going to give me back to her!” Gabriel said, the word ‘her’ making his mouth twist in disgust and fear.
“Of course not,” Vicaquirao said. “While an amulet can alter your appearance enough to fool all but a Soul Mage, a True Mage can alter their physical being in ways that cannot be easily detected.”
“Like the way Kumar
adevi pretended to be Nefferati?” Gabriel said, beginning to see what Vicaquirao’s plan might be.
“Who do you think suggested it to her?” Vicaquirao asked as he shimmered briefly. Suddenly Pishara stood before him.
“It was you all along?” Gabriel said, astonished, but realizing how Vicaquirao knew so much about his activities in Kumaradevi’s palace. It also occurred to him that Vicaquirao must have been a master at repressing his magical energy to remain undetected for so long. “But she’ll know it was you. Pishara vanished when you did.”
“There was a body left in the audience chamber,” Vicaquirao said as he shimmered and returned to his normal appearance, “sufficiently burned to be identifiable, but unrecognizable. Now for this to work, both you and Apollyon must be seen.” Gabriel watched in amazement as Vicaquirao’s body began to change shape and size, even his hair growing longer and darker. Moments later, Gabriel was looking at himself.
“You’re going back with her?” Gabriel said.
“Of course,” Vicaquirao said. “Do you think I would risk letting you fall into her hands twice? It was hard enough to get you away the first time. No, if I cannot influence your choices directly, I am happy to do it from a distance while the Council holds you. Now you must assume the appearance of Apollyon.”
Gabriel did as he was told, focusing on the amulet with a clear image of Apollyon in his mind. An image of Apollyon as Gabriel had seen him last in the piazza in Venice. “Good,” he heard Vicaquirao say as he opened his eyes.
“But won’t the Soul Mages out there in the street see through this?” Gabriel said, looking down at his hands, which now appeared to be Apollyon’s hands.
“Not likely,” Vicaquirao said. “It takes a moment to see through it, and they will have other things to think about.”
The Wizard of Time (Book 1) Page 24
