He was surprised for a moment, and then he remembered that a Time Mage could only use a relic to move to places it had been while it was originally in the timeline of history. This was as close to the temple as the shard had ever been. He looked up the avenue at the Great Temple. There was no sign that there had been a magical battle at its pinnacle. The city still seemed mostly asleep.
“I’ll take us to the top of the temple,” Gabriel said, his hands still holding those of his companions. He looked at the temple top. He could see it clearly and knew it from memory. A swirl of blackness and blinding white and a moment later they stood on it, staring down at the city. The first thing he noticed was that the two guards were still asleep. That was good. Thanks to Sema’s Soul Magic, they had slept through the earlier battle. He saw that the others had reassumed the guise of Aztec locals, so he focused on the amulet at his neck and did the same.
They each broke the contact of their hands and moved in unison toward the sanctuary where Ohin and the others had disappeared. Gabriel found the inside of the sanctuary just as he had left it. He couldn’t tell how long it had been since the explosion of magic had sent Ohin and the others through time, but he didn’t think it was more than ten minutes.
“Let’s get on with it,” Marcus said, taking up a station at the entrance of the sanctuary.
“Yes,” Sema said. “We’d best hurry.”
“Before that bastard Apollyon shows his ugly face,” Ling said.
Gabriel placed the pocket watch and the pottery shard in his pocket and raised his left hand to touch the slanted wall of sanctuary. Reaching out with his time-sense, he sought the faded tendrils of the time-jump that had forcibly thrown Ohin and the others away through time. He could sense nothing, but he hadn’t expected to. He would need the added magical power of the temple to amplify the remaining signs of the time jump.
He stilled his mind and focused the energy within himself before reaching out to the imprints of the temple. The imprints of the temple were far greater than anything he had touched before. He had sensed them distantly before. Ohin had explained that buildings and places did not feel the same way as smaller objects did. Something as large and as old as the temple permeated the surrounding space with its imprints to the point where it became like background noise, like the many voices in a crowd creating a wall of sound. It was for this reason that Ohin had been able to block out any interference from the temple’s imprints when he had been attempting to sever the connections between the sacrificial daggers and the concatenate crystals.
When Gabriel reached out for the power of the tainted imprints of the temple, he was nearly overwhelmed. He staggered slightly. Concerned, Ling put her hand out to steady him. “I’m all right. It’s a little overwhelming, is all,” he told her.
“Remember to breathe,” Sema said from behind him.
He took a deep breath and focused his own magical energy into that of the temple, feeling it magnified beyond anything he had experienced before. The sickening taint of the negative imprints churned his stomach, but the power he held was immense. He used that power to focus on the slender threads of the time-trail that lingered after Ohin’s forced jump. He could sense them now. He willed them to take shape in his mind. He could feel them like fragments of a shattered glass spread across the room. However, try as he might, he could not make them take shape, could not make them take an intelligible form. He strained, but no image flickered into his mind. Frustrated and nearly ready to vomit from the psychic stench of the temple’s tainted imprints, Gabriel released the connection.
“I can’t find it,” Gabriel said, letting his arm fall to his side. “It’s been too long. Even with all the power of the temple’s negative imprints, I can’t get a clear image of where they went.”
“We should leave,” Marcus said, stepping over to join Gabriel. “Now.”
“Maybe if I moved just a few minutes closer to the jump,” Gabriel said, “I might be able to sense the time-threads.”
“Minutes closer to Apollyon, you mean,” Ling said.
“Marcus is right,” Sema said. “We should leave now. If not back to the castle, at least someplace safe.”
“The boy is correct,” a voice from the doorway said. “Even I could not sense the threads of time at this distance from the event.” Gabriel knew the voice, even though he had heard it only once. He spun to see Apollyon striding through the doorway. Sema instantly stepped in front of Gabriel to shield him, but he could easily see around her as Apollyon raised his hand.
“Do not be senseless,” Apollyon said, his voice deep and resonant. As he stepped out of the doorway, another man entered. One who looked exactly like Apollyon. Gabriel blinked in confusion and he heard Ling gasp. “We thought you might return.”
“Xiéè!” Ling shouted. “Abomination!”
“Worse than that,” Marcus said.
“No need for insults,” the duplicate Apollyon said with a silky smile.
Gabriel reached for the power of the temple’s imprints, but they slid away from him. He tried again, but he could not touch them this time.
“So you have learned to taste of the dark power,” the first Apollyon said. “Apparently your teachers failed to mention that only one mage at a time may hold the imprints of an artifact.”
“I am a much more learned instructor,” the second Apollyon said.
“Jump away, Gabriel!” Sema said.
“Gabriel,” the first Apollyon said. “A perfect name for the Seventh True Mage.”
“The boy cannot jump,” the second Apollyon said. “He has no relic at hand.”
It was true. While the pocket watch, chunk of amber, and pottery shard were still in his pocket, he was not yet adept enough to make a time jump without actually touching them. And he could not use the temple itself as an artifact while Apollyon held its imprints. Moreover, he could not just leave Sema, Ling, and Marcus behind.
“Which one of you is the real one?” Marcus asked, his voice dripping with contempt.
“Maybe neither of us is,” the first Apollyon said.
“You can’t have him,” Ling said, clenching her jaw. “You’ll have to kill us to first.”
“Do you honestly think that will be difficult?” the second Apollyon said.
“And then the boy will have to watch you die,” said the first Apollyon.
“Much better if you simply stand aside,” the second Apollyon added.
Gabriel suddenly noticed that while Marcus called him ‘boy’ all the time, it didn’t bother him, but instead felt affectionate, like a term of endearment. When Apollyon uttered the word, however, it filled Gabriel with loathing and anger. He wasn’t sure why there were two Apollyons, but he could guess. It had to mean that Apollyon was making copies of himself by creating bifurcations. How that could be done, he wasn’t certain, but what better way to create an army of loyal and powerful Malignancy Mages? The reason they were there was clear. They wanted him. He would be extremely valuable to them even if only as a hostage.
How could he get them all away?
“It’s okay,” Gabriel said. “I’ll go.” As he stepped forward, he placed his left foot so that it touched Ling’s right.
“No!” Sema said and turned to him.
“The boy is as smart as he is gifted,” the first Apollyon said.
“He knows this can end only one way,” the second one said.
“You have to promise to leave them alone and I’ll go with you,” Gabriel said, staring at the two Apollyons.
“You can’t do that, Lad,” Marcus said, grabbing Gabriel’s shoulder.
“You can’t trust them,” Ling said. “He only tells lies and if there are two of them, then that’s twice as many lies.”
“I won’t allow it,” Sema said, her cheeks flushed with anger.
“It’ll be okay,” Gabriel said as he gently raised his hand to calm her. He laid his hand on her neck, his fingers touching the glass pendant of her talisman. “I’ll go with him,” he said as he reached for the magic energy within himself even as he threw the full power of his time-sense into Sema’s pendant and focused his magical energy through her talisman. The blackness followed only a moment later. Lightning flashed around him, from one of the twin Apollyons he assumed, but then the white light filled all of existence and when it ceased, he stood in a large plaza, the moon full in the sky above. He looked around quickly.
Venice, he thought. He knew it from pictures his sister had shown him of her summer spent hiking through Europe. This was the Piazza San Marco, or St. Mark’s Square, as it was known in English. St. Mark’s Cathedral at one end. The canals behind the Doge’s Palace. The square tower of the St. Mark’s Campanile, rising over three hundred feet into the night sky. He saw a few people at the periphery of the piazza and felt Sema’s Soul Magic turning their attention away.
“Jump again, Lad,” he heard Marcus say, and he was already beginning to do so when suddenly the four of them were thrown apart by an invisible force, and Gabriel felt something odd about the fabric of space-time. A wall erected between him and the fabric of time and space within the Continuum. He knew what it was from a description Ohin had given him. A space-time seal. A shield that would prevent time travel.
Gabriel looked around to see that a least one of the Apollyons had been able to track him through time. He was too far from Sema and the others to make another jump even if he could manage to break Apollyon’s space-time seal.
Before he had time to think any further, the fighting began. Ling and Sema raised their arms toward Apollyon simultaneously as Marcus clenched his fists at his waist. Apollyon raised one hand toward them all and squinted his eyes slightly. Gabriel could feel the flow of magic passing between his fellow mages and he and was amazed not only at the power Sema, Marcus, and Ling wielded, but the ease with which Apollyon was holding them off.
“It is a shame you have such pitiful teachers,” Apollyon said. “I will be sure to better your instruction.” He flicked the open hand of the lowered arm and suddenly Ling was hurtling through the air.
“No!” Sema screamed, but no sooner had the sound begun to leave her voice than she and Marcus were lifted off their feet and thrown together.
Gabriel watched in horror as Ling crashed into the side of the Campanile tower with such a force that he could see a crack form along the outer wall of the structure. Ling fell to the ground thirty feet below, her body limp and lifeless.
Gabriel ran toward Sema and Marcus, thrusting his hand into his pocket and grasping at his grandfather’s silver watch. He could feel the rage within him as he ran. He wanted kill Apollyon. Wanted to engulf him in flame and destroy him. But he knew that was impossible. He knew that he was not nearly strong enough or experienced enough to defeat Apollyon in combat. But he might be able to distract him.
As he ran, he reached his arm out and a stream of fireballs erupted into the air, shooting forth from his palm and flying toward Apollyon. They were not large, but they were plentiful and the only offensive magic Gabriel knew. He could sense Sema and Marcus hurling magic at Apollyon with redoubled effort. It was not enough to defeat Apollyon, but it was enough to momentarily divert his attention.
Even as the fireballs sped toward Apollyon, Gabriel felt a flicker in the space-time seal. The fireballs winked out of existence, but it didn’t matter. By then Gabriel had reached Sema and Marcus. As he ran, his hand grasping for the watch had found something in his pocket he had entirely forgotten about. Something he reached out to with his time-sense as he threw his arms around Sema and Marcus. The blackness flowed around them and the white light flooded his existence as he heard Apollyon yell in rage, trying to re-establish the space-time seal.
Then they were on a beach, the white sands beneath them, the ocean rolling out beyond them for miles, white plaster-covered houses dotting the hillside. And then the blackness and the white light again. And again. And again. He kept jumping. Moving anywhere and everywhere the coin in his pocket had ever been. He would glimpse the scene only long enough to focus and jump again. A dock yard at a Greek port. An ancient city that he could not name. An open field of olive trees. A battlefield. An island again. Over and over, new places.
Finally, he felt Sema squeezing his arm and Marcus shouting. They came to rest on a deserted stretch of beach, a small Greek town in the distance. He knew the town. Samos. The Greek town that Councilwoman Elizabeth had told him about when she gave him the coin in the Upper Ward courtyard only a few nights past. He unclenched his right hand in his pocket and released the watch and the coin. Sema and Marcus knelt on the sand as they had in St. Mark’s Square moments ago.
“Ling!” Gabriel said in a strangled shout as he sank to the ground between Marcus and Sema. She placed her arms around him. He could feel her body shaking from the sobs of her tears.
“She’s gone, Lad,” Marcus said, placing his hand gently on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“We have to go back,” Gabriel said, tears streaming down his face. “She might still be alive.”
“She died the moment she struck the tower,” Marcus said, his eyes also filled with tears. “I could feel the life go out of her even from where we were.”
“But you could save her,” Gabriel sobbed. “You’re a Heart-Tree Mage. You could bring her back. You brought me back.”
“It’s different, Gabriel,” Marcus said.
“Even if he could,” Sema said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “Apollyon is still back there. And the other one could join him. We were very fortunate you were able to save us.”
“Which was too damn risky, boy,” Marcus said, his voice stern. “You get this through that thick skull of yours right now. We are all expendable if it means saving you.”
“You should have jumped alone if you knew you could,” Sema said. “Marcus is right. You are far more important than any other mage or any number of mages.”
“I couldn’t,” Gabriel said, tears still filling his eyes. “Apollyon placed a space-time seal around me as soon as he found us. It was only by distracting him that we escaped.” He paused for a moment, looking between the elder mages. “And I’m not more important than Ling.”
“You are,” Sema said. “And Ling knew that.”