Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle)

by Siana, Patrick

  Creating the third-dimensional spellform, however, was another matter entirely.

  Like the drawn spellform, the third-dimensional version required that the geometric forms were in perfect proportion. A single error or misdrawn line could result in utter devastation. Never mind killing the caster, a misfiring portal could flatten a small village, or worse, create a fissure that could warp both space and time in proximity to the fissure permanently, or even lead to a complete collapse of the timeline. And one timeline collapsing could very well create a domino effect that would collapse other timelines that were connected to it.

  Elias now understood fully why temporal magic was banned in the future, and why Rasen was so eager to ensure that the Grimoire not fall into the wrong hands. The Grimoire contained all of the spellforms and scripts, and the techniques to utilize them. Fortunately, Rasen had been allowed into the time mage’s cabal for the unique qualities of his mind, and it was that which would save them now. He possessed an eidetic memory, which allowed him to remember and recall any spatial or visual data he encountered with pristine clarity. Thus, all of the spells in the Grimoire were stored in Rasen’s mind. The spells contained in his mind had changed him in profound and irreversible ways, as he had told Elias.

  The three dimensional spellforms were crafted from the mage’s own magic or what he could channel from what Rasen called the Ido, which translated into the one field, or what Elias would call the tapestry. The time mage would draw the spellform in the air with threads of raw magic that manifested as opaque beams of energy. Once complete, the spellforms would create a kind of pump that would draw in yet more energy from the tapestry and open a portal.

  Learning time magic meant first a solid grounding in geometry and mathematics and then learning the strange scripted language of the time mage, whose characters had conceptual as well as numeric meanings. Rasen first taught and tested Elias in these subjects until he was sure his student had grasped them completely. Elias was not pleased to admit that this took some time, and it was slow-going in the beginning. Weeks, at least as Elias measured them by his sleep-wake cycles, had gone by before Rasen began teaching him how to work with the spellforms.

  When Elias proved himself ready to begin working at erecting the three-dimensional spellforms, Rasen had him do so in a dedicated containment field to protect them, and the isle, from mishap. Elias applauded the time mage’s foresight, for without the containment fields in place, Elias would have incinerated them dozens of times over. Elias could only wonder how Mordum had managed to grasp the complexity of the Grimoire by himself—a thought that often kept him up at night. Mordum was not a person possessed of mean power, or resolve.

  Despite Mordum’s success with decoding the Grimoire, however, his knowledge was incomplete, as Rasen had explained. While the Grimoire excelled as a spellbook it fell short as an arcane treatise. The Grimoire contained all of the spells necessary to move through time and space, to create gateways, temporal shields, and pocket dimensions. It presented detailed instructions on how to cast these spells and even had magic bound to very pages to help empower said spells, but it didn’t go into great detail on the scientific and metaphysic philosophy of time travel, like The Infinitum Model.

  “The Grimoire is a master’s instruction manual, and by that very quality assumes that the user has mastered the more basic texts,” Rasen had remarked. “It’s like skipping to non-linear algebra without first learning arithmetic. Mordum possesses the knowledge and the power, but not the wisdom and the understanding, and certainly not the discretion, to put it to effective use. I aim to see that the same is not true of you.”

  The time mage had surmised that this fundamental failing was the reason why Mordum had been able to open windows into many different times, but why he was unable to recognize that he was looking into a parallel timeline. A flaw that Elias was all too aware could very well lead to the ruin of all he knew.

  One night as they sat to dinner Rasen, without looking up from his meal, said, “You’re ready.”

  Elias swallowed. “You’re sure?”

  Rasen looked up and locked eyes with his student. “I’m quite sure.” His expression became sly. “Or have you forgotten that I can see the future?”

  “And what have you seen? Will I succeed?”

  “I see many probabilities,” Rasen replied. “Yet I am satisfied that the odds are tipped in your favor.”

  Elias leaned back. He knew that the day to enact the plan would come, but in a way he had come to enjoy his time with Rasen, learning how to utilize his magic in new ways. As the days passed, his sense of urgency had faded for he knew he was outside time. He had already decided to travel through time to challenge Mordum before he came to the isle, thus the temporal cycle would not close until he did so and completed the time loop. That was untrue the moment he stepped back into the flow of time and the temporal cycle that he began with his decision to return home was at long last closed.

  While Rasen could normally see many futures, he could only see a grey cloud when he tried to look into futures past Elias’s return to his own timeline. It would remain so until Elias stepped back into time. For his part, Elias feared that what Rasen saw was the nothingness that followed his failure. Still, Rasen must have seen something that led him to believe Elias was ready, and that would have to be good enough.

  “When?” asked Elias at last.

  Rasen returned his attention to his blue fin and potatoes. “Tomorrow morning.”

  Elias’s heart quickened. “So soon?”

  “We don’t want to give you too long to perseverate, lest apprehension turn to fear. Fear is the poison that will weaken your will. I have taught you the formulas, kopta, but the theorems are made actual by your will. There is an old warrior’s maxim where I come from: on an equal field, the stronger will shall prove the instrument of victory. You understand?”

  Elias’s thoughts turned to his previous trials. “Yes,” he replied, then his expression turned wry. “Where was it you said you were from?”

  Rasen returned his smile. “I didn’t. Now, finish your supper so that we can have one more game of chess before bed. You’ve a big day tomorrow.”

  Chapter 51

  Dark Elf

  “Will it hold?” asked the queen.

  Danica brushed chalk from her hands with an enchanted strip of cloth, remembering to take care, as the lead component of the chalk was poisonous. Fortunately, Ogden, who was no stranger to alchemy, was able to follow the instructions in the spellbook for creating the thamaturgical chalk. Danica looked up at the wizard, unsure how to answer the queen.

  Ogden cleared his throat. He studied the complex spellform they had drawn around the anomaly with the purpose of stabilizing it to prevent further disturbances. “I am reasonably sure it will contain the breach.”

  “Reasonably sure?” asked Eithne.

  Ogden shrugged. “The instructions the time mage left were very precise and we followed them exactly. Providing his theorems are sound, the spell will work. But in this, I am the student.”

  Bryn pushed herself from the wall she had been leaning against beside Lar while Danica, Ogden, and Phinneas had poured over the spellbook. “Never thought I’d see the day where Archmagus Ogden Vandrael admitted he didn’t know something.”

  “I don’t know many things,” Ogden said. “Like how to put a cork in you, for one.”

  Danica smiled, appreciating, as ever, Bryn’s penchant for injecting humor into grim circumstances. “Shall we begin?”

  “Are you sure about this?” asked Lar, not for the first time.

  “No,” said Danica. “But we have little choice. Let’s get this containment field up.”

  Ogden and Danica had agreed to do this together. They each stood on opposite triangles that formed the outer edges of the symmetrical spellform. The two arcanists exchanged glances. Ogden nodded and they began. As the time mage’s postulations had instructed, they fed their magic into the spellform with the thought of
erecting an energy field that would contain the anomaly. According to Rasen’s notes, they would have to wait until some unspecified future event to permanently seal the rift.

  The lines of the spellform began to glow at the apex of the triangles. As Danica and Ogden fed their power into the spellform, the lines that composed it lit up inch by inch. As they had agreed, they pushed their power along the form in tandem, as each half of the spellform was the mirror of the other. When their power met at the center of the spellform a tremendous force ignited and a hemisphere of pale red energy sprung up around the rift, which had become visible to the naked eye as an asymmetrical, hazy distortion in the air.

  “Well it’s done,” said Danica.

  Eithne inched toward the faintly humming energy field. “You’ve done well, Danni. Will it last?”

  Danica grunted. “Your guess is as good as ours, but it will hold for now and that’s enough.”

  Ogden studied the hemispherical shield. He held out a hand, as close as he dared, and encircled the containment field, probing for weaknesses. “The spell is stable, there seems not a flaw in its construction.” He shrugged his bushy eyebrows. “As to how long it will prove the equal of the rift, I cannot begin to estimate.”

  Phinneas too checked the containment field. “You’ve managed it, Danica. We would never have been able to develop a counter to the anomaly without you.”

  Danica wore her characteristic wry half-smile as she glanced at the doctor. “Had you any doubt, dear Doctor?”

  “Frankly, yes.”

  Danica waggled a finger at him. “It was your hypnotism practices that led me down this path. The path to dream magic, or whatever you call it.”

  “Arcalum history has long documented arcanists who claimed they could divest their consciousness from their bodies and send it roaming,” replied Phinneas.

  “Albeit such techniques were forbidden by the College centuries before I picked up my first spellbook,” added Ogden.

  Danica frowned. “But why?”

  “It is too powerful an art,” Ogden said. “You could potentially invade the mind of another person, spy behind closed doors with no one the wiser, or even become separated from your body and be unable to return. Take your pick.”

  Danica studied her two elders. “Yet that wasn’t the reason for your hesitancy. It was all that business with Slade. Still.”

  Ogden and Phinneas exchanged glances, as they were wont to do. “I won’t deny it,” said Phinneas. “I was concerned for you.”

  Danica’s features softened. “And I can’t fault you for that, but going forward let us forget that part of the past. It is done with.”

  “I think that I speak for us all,” said Eithne, “when I say that you have more than earned our continued faith.”

  Danica looked around the room and studied the others’ faces. From Bryn to Lar and everyone in between, she could see that the queen spoke true, and it gladdened her. Yet it was a happiness that slept with sadness, for she sorely missed her brother.

  “I for one say we leave this room behind for a bit,” said Bryn with a long step toward the door. “We’ve all earned some much deserved rest.”

  Danica held up the soft leather spellbook. “We must return this in three hours time.”

  “Remind us again why we need return this Godsend so soon?” asked Eithne.

  “The time mage told me that I needed the spellbook in an alternate timeline, whatever that means,” replied Danica. “That’s why the rest of the book is in some kind of cipher. Another me is the one to decode it.”

  Ogdgen’s face screwed up. “But how is such a thing possible? If alternate timelines do in fact exist, how would someone from one access the chest?”

  “I asked the same of the time mage,” said Danica. “He said that the chest occupies the same space, but is dislocated in time, or at least the interior of it is. The inside of the chest is outside time, or time doesn’t exist in it, so it can be accessed from multiple time periods, or something like that.”

  “That utterly defies logic,” said Ogden.

  “Nevertheless, his instructions have worked for us so far,” said Danica. “I see no reason to break with them now. He was very specific on this point. The spellbook goes back into the chest.”

  The queen cast a questioning look at Ogden who said, “Very well. Back into the chest it goes.”

  “I’m going with you,” said Bryn. They had left the seal to the vault open as only Leoman had the means to open up the Rook’s Nook, and the vault itself was locked with Danica being the only person who knew the spell to open it. Still, Bryn didn’t like the idea of Danica poking about down there by her lonesome. “We can’t be too cautious.”

  “Agreed,” said Ogden, “No one goes it alone until all this business is settled once and for all.”

  “Indeed,” said Eithne. “Lar, why don’t you go with them. Bring a couple of Marshals as well, in case anyone has heard of any unusual goings-on at Arcalum and wishes to take a closer look. We leave nothing to chance anymore.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” said Lar.

  With that said, Ogden posted guards on Bryn’s former rooms, and the party went about their business. Danica watched as the hours ticked by on her pocket watch and then went to get Lar and Bryn so they could return the spellbook.

  The trip to Arcalum was a solemn one, but Danica supposed they each had much to think on. They went afoot, for they feared a mounted precession might draw too much attention, and that was certainly not something any of them needed. As she walked, Danica kept one hand in her pocket at all times, clutching the spellbook fast. She didn’t know why she needed the book in another time, but she had a sinking suspicion that it had something to do with Elias, if she had inferred the correct subtext from time mage’s murky explanation. If there was any chance that simple action would serve to bring him home somehow, someday, she couldn’t let anything stop her.

  They gained Arcalum without incidence and found Leoman at work in his study. After inquiring about the success of their efforts, he let them back into the stacks, but the librarian decided that the uncovering of the vault was too sensitive a matter to be seen by common soldiers and so they left the Marshals in the hallway that connected the tower to the library proper. So it was that the three Sentinels from Lucerne made their way back into the vault with Leoman as their sole escort.

  As Danica spun the tumblers of the door lock into the correct position a fluttering tingle swept up her spine and broke over the crown of her head. She paused with a hand on a tumbler and listened, though not with her ears. She centered herself and activated her arcane sight, but instead of turning to look, she tried to reach out with her mind to see if she could feel anything unusual.

  “Danni, is everything alright?” asked Bryn.

  “I think so. But it’s the strangest thing—I just felt like someone walked over my grave.”

  “Probably just nerves,” said Lar, but he surreptitiously loosened his sword.

  “You’re right, of course,” Danica said and then began to recite the charm that would allow them entrance. As she finished the door swung open and someone clapped their hands.

  “Marvelous,” said an unfamiliar voice. “I’ve always wanted to know how to open that blasted door.”

  The sound of steel being drawn echoed in the subterranean stairwell as Lar drew his sword, and Bryn her Aradurian rapier and dagger. Danica spun about on her heels, cursing herself. In her haste she had forgotten her short-sword and had brought only the damned chain-whip that she had taken from the treasury on a whim. She barely knew how to use the bloody thing.

  A tall and lean man stood at the top of the stairs wearing an easy grin. His eyes were so pale a blue that they appeared almost colorless and a mane of golden hair was bound behind his neck. His waistcoat and breeches were cream colored and emboldened with golden filigree. He looked like nothing so much as a caricature of an elven prince from one of Elias’s dime-store fantasy novels. Yet Danica knew that he was
anything but.

  “I’m afraid I’ve come for the spellbook you carry,” he said with an apologetic expression. “Please don’t think to resist. Sadly, I’ve already killed you once today.”

  “I’m one for seeing that history doesn’t repeat itself,” said Danica.

  The elf smiled. “Your brother warned me you were clever, Danica.” He must have been pleased by the reaction he received from naming her, because his smile deepened. “And you must be Bryn. The lovely visage for which this whole mess was started. Yet, I must give to Elias, he does have good taste in women.”

  “Tell us what you know of Elias or die where you stand,” said Bryn, her voice dangerously low.

  “He is in another world, and I’m afraid that I mean to see to it that he doesn’t return. Now, please. Hand over the book.”

  Bryn exchanged glances with Lar, as Leoman brought his hands up and began to chant a spell. “Lock the door behind you Danica,” Bryn said and then she and Lar charged up the staircase.

  Danica threw herself through the door, but before she could wheel about to push it closed a distortion blossomed in the air before her, not unlike that created by the rift at Lucerne but this one was accompanied by a burst of white light. The elf stood before her, still wearing his insidious grin. He gestured and the door swung closed.

  “Well then,” said the elf, “it looks like it’s just the two of us now.” He drew a black dagger from a sheath hidden inside his waistcoat.

  Danica unfurled her whip. “I’d not have thought you’d resort to something as mundane as a dagger.”

  “Worry not, dearie. There’s nothing mundane about this weapon.” The elf made an expansive gesture. “But no, I dare not conjure offensive magic in the presence of so many wards and the Eldest knows what else may be down here.” He slid a step closer to her. “However, it would seem the wizards that built this place did not know of temporal magic.”