The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (16 page)

He saw fishermen in boats near the shore, but they did not seem to notice the mages. Sema again, he assumed. As time went on and Gabriel concentrated more, he could sense the ways that Marcus was manipulating Ling’s life-energy. Bones were being set back right and mended together. The internal bleeding stopped and Ling’s spleen seemed to begin functioning again. The blood vessels in Ling’s brain contracted and her concussion disappeared. An hour later, Marcus finally stopped. Sweat dripped from his bald head and ran down his face. He sat back and leaned against the thin trunk of the nearest tree, slumping with exhaustion.

“She’ll recover,” Marcus finally said after a long pause. “But she needs rest. She should have at least the night to recover before we try a jump. A jump would be a tricky thing in her state.”

“I’ve made sure she will sleep until morning,” Sema said. “But we should try to find some shelter for the night.”

“I can look down the beach,” Gabriel said.

“I’ll go with you,” Sema said, but she made no move to stand. She and Marcus stared at Gabriel. He avoided their gaze. The silence stretched on. Gabriel didn’t want to be the first to speak. What was there to say? He knew what he had done. But as he watched Ling sleeping in the wild grass, he could not feel that that what he had done was wrong. Risky, yes. Impetuous, certainly. But how could it be wrong when she was alive and safe with them?

Finally, Sema spoke. “We understand why you did it,” she said, speaking slowly as though choosing her words carefully. Gabriel sensed her anger at what he had done, as well as her relief that he had succeeded. “But I do not think you understand the implications.”

“It’s not that we are not grateful to have Ling back,” Marcus said, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “But what you have done has placed us all in even greater jeopardy than before.”

“I assume you created a bifurcation,” Sema said, “but tell us exactly what you did.”  Gabriel took a deep breath and then carefully recounted his rescue of Ling. What he had done and how. He had wanted to simply snatch Ling without creating a bifurcation, a new branch of time, but since he knew that Marcus had sensed her death, taking her before she could die in the Primary Continuum would have created a bifurcation anyway. One that Apollyon was more likely to notice. Gabriel finished recounting his actions and waited. There was more silence. When Sema spoke, she sounded weary.

“You have a good heart, Gabriel,” Sema said, “but you must learn to think with your head as well. Do you not see that you have created another reality where there is a second Sema, a second Marcus, and yet one more Apollyon?”

“To hell with another Apollyon,” Marcus said, spitting into the sand. “He’s created another one of him. You’ve created a second Seventh True Mage who can use the powers of both Grace and Malignancy.”

“You have given Apollyon exactly what he would hope for,” Sema said.

“But it was the best I could do,” Gabriel said, feeling defensive and sickened. He had known he was creating a new reality, but he hadn’t really taken the time to think through the implications of doing it. By doubling back on his personal timeline, as well as that of Sema, Marcus, Ling, and Apollyon, he had created doubles of all of them when he had formed the bifurcation. He had known that a new reality meant new versions of himself and the others, but he hadn’t stopped to think through what that would mean. What it would mean to him. What it would mean to the war. What it would mean for Apollyon and what it would mean for the other Gabriel, the one he had created by splitting the reality of the Primary Continuum.

“The best thing you could have done would have been to do nothing,” Marcus said, his voice more gentle.

“There is only one course of action open to us now,” Sema said. “We must return to the castle and inform them of what you have done and then the branch of time you created must be severed. It must be cut at the root. The very moment you created it.”

“That will insure the other versions of us are trapped in the severed branch,” Marcus said. “If the cut is made at the same moment as the branch was created, there will be no chance of anyone crossing back. Wait a moment too long after the branch was created, and the other Apollyon could take the other you backward into the Primary Continuum.”

Gabriel considered this in silence for a moment. “They will all die,” he said. “All of them will cease to exist.”

“Maybe,” Sema said. “Most likely, even. I don’t claim to understand it all, Teresa might be able to explain it, but even if the branch manages to survive being severed and does not immediately collapse, that could potentially be worse than if it simply winked out of existence. We have no way of knowing what horrors could arise in such a reality.”

“What can I do?” Gabriel said.

“For now, nothing,” Sema said. “Help me find a place for Ling to pass the night.”

They left Marcus with Ling beneath the trees and walked along the beach away from the town. The sun was nearing the horizon. It would set in another hour or so. They walked in silence for a long while.

“I’m sorry I took your necklace,” Gabriel said finally. He had been thinking about the look on Sema’s face when her pendent had flown into his hand.

“You did what you thought was right,” Sema said quietly. She was silent for a while before she spoke again. “You saved Ling, but at a terrible price. What you did was unforgivable to the Council, but I can’t say that a part of me isn’t glad you did it. A large part. But if you should ever be faced with such a choice again, no matter who it is, especially if it is me, you must not repeat your actions.”

“I won’t,” Gabriel said. He wondered if that was a promise he could keep. They walked in silence again for several minutes.

“When I was a girl,” Sema said, breaking the silence, “not much younger than you, I stole some fruit from a vendor in the local market in Istanbul. My family was poor, and we had been eating scraps and begging for weeks. I showed my mother the fruit and she questioned me about where it had come from. I lied and said I had found it. But I could never lie to my mother. She was very sad when I told her the truth.

“When my father found what I had done, he marched me back to the fruit vendor and made me confess. The vendor was stern, but fair. He accepted the fruit I returned without comment, but I had eaten some dates and these I would have to pay for. So every day from then on, I went to work for the fruit vendor. Once I had repaid the cost of the dates, he kept me on. Eventually, I married his youngest son and we opened our own fruit stand. Ultimately, we had children and prospered to become one of the most successful merchant families in the city.”

Gabriel said nothing. He wasn’t sure what he should say.

“Do you see why I am telling you this?” Sema asked, looking down at him.

“Well, because…” Gabriel began and then decided on the truth. “Not really.”

“Because even if we have done things that we know are wrong,” Sema said, “if we set them right, if we make amends, then sometimes the end can turn out for the better.” She said no more and Gabriel added no words to hers. He hoped his actions worked out for the better, as well.

After about a mile, Gabriel spotted a cave in the rocky hillside near the beach. It was far enough away from the shoreline and high enough in the rocks to avoid the tide, although it seemed a very precarious climb to get up to it. Gabriel jumped them to the entrance of the cave and they peered inside. It was small and filled with the bones of some long dead animal, but it would do.

Gabriel stepped back, stilled his mind, and gathered his magical energy, focusing it through the pocket watch and willing gravity and the wind to do as he wished, causing a gust of air to burst into and out of the cave, cleaning it as best as possible. Sema nodded and took his hand.

A moment later, they stood beside Marcus. Gabriel used his magic to float Ling along as they walked down the beach together toward the cave. The sun was nearly down, and there seemed little likelihood of people spotting them. When they reached the place where they could see the cave, Gabriel took Marcus by magic to the entrance and then went back down to Ling, guiding her gently up toward Marcus. Then he took Sema’s hand and jumped through space to join them.

Gabriel gathered some wood and started a small fire using magic. The air had begun to cool as the sun went down. Sema suggested that the two of them take a quick trip to the small town down the beach and see if they could procure some supplies.

Leaving Marcus to tend to Ling, Gabriel and Sema jumped instantly to a point a hundred yards down the beach from the edge of the town. As they walked into the town, Gabriel could see people heading home for the night. The town was not large. Maybe a few hundred people in all. By the looks of their dress and the manner of the tools they carried, Gabriel suspected that they were far in the past. Sema thought it must be nearly 300 BCE or more. They both used their amulets to change their appearance and blend in.

“Now watch closely,” Sema said. “You may need to do this yourself one day.”

Sema walked over to where a fruit vendor packed his goods away for the night. He didn’t seem to notice them at all. Gabriel could sense the way Sema deflected the man’s attention from recognizing he saw them. She took a small canvas sack from near the pile of fruit and began filling it. Gabriel watched as the man helpfully opened a sack of pears he had just closed so that she could take some.

Gabriel reached out with his consciousness and could feel how Sema had made the suggestion to the man’s mind. Then they were walking along the street again. Sema performed a similar magic twice more, a man sorting his fish by the last light of the setting sun put two of the largest aside. Gabriel picked up the fish without notice. Next came a bottle of wine from the owner of a shop who brought it to the door and left it on the stoop as they passed by. Gabriel could tell that the suggestion had not been specific. Sema had simply planted the idea that someone might need whatever could be provided and spared.

Suddenly, a small boy of eight or so came running across the street carrying a large melon that was clearly too big for him. He had bright eyes and grinned widely as he struggled to get the melon to what seemed to be his house. Sema laughed as she watched the boy. Once the boy was in the house, they continued on their way. Within a few minutes, they had enough for dinner, breakfast, and maybe even lunch: dates, olives, bread, and grapes. They had even procured two small blankets of thickly woven wool.

“This is how a Soul Mage goes shopping,” Sema said, looking down at Gabriel, his arms full of the bounty she had acquired.

“But what if someone needed these things?” Gabriel said. “Couldn’t it create a bifurcation?”

“If they were items in short supply or likely to be missed,” Sema said. “The key is to acquire things that are plentiful so there is some other object to replace them. If there had been only two fish, we would be a little hungrier tonight as I could not have taken them without risking it creating a bifurcation when the person who was supposed to eat the fish could not.”

Gabriel nodded. Small changes. They turned a corner and Sema placed her hand on his shoulder. He took this as a cue to jump back to the cave and reached out with his space-time sense to find it. A second later, they stood beside the fire Gabriel had made. Marcus looked up with a tired smile.

“I was hoping you’d think of some wine,” he said as he licked his lips.

“Even I am tempted to drink after this day,” Sema said, setting the bottles down near the fire. “It seemed cruel to deny you something so small.”

They set about making some dinner, debating whether waking Ling to partake of the food would help her condition. After carefully checking her vital signs, Marcus decided that she needed rest more than nourishment. Gabriel helped clean the fish and cut some fruit with a dagger that Marcus slipped effortlessly from his sleeve. Marcus roasted the fish, skewered by sticks, over the fire, and they ate while watching the stars come out in the sky.

“Epicurus would have been proud,” Marcus said of the meal as he licked his fingers.

“I think we saw him in the town,” Sema said.

“When?” Gabriel asked.

“That small boy who ran in front of us with that oversized melon,” Sema said. “I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”

“Councilwoman Elizabeth said that Epicurus lived on this island when he was young,” Gabriel said.

“He’ll leave in about ten years to begin his studies,” Sema said.

“So you’ve met him before?” Gabriel asked.

“In a manner of speaking,” Marcus said. “It was in an alternate branch of time. We spent a day together, later in his life.”

“You don’t get a chance to meet many famous people with the work we do,” Sema said. “There’s too much risk of creating bifurcations. So you tend to remember the ones you do meet close-up.”

“Particularly if they are handsome Greek men with pretty eyes,” Marcus said, casting Sema a teasing glance. Gabriel thought he could see Sema blushing, but it might have been the warm light of the fire. “This night, the fire, the cave, it reminds of a night I spent years ago hiding from the Queen’s Guard. They were looking for a man who had been robbing noblemen along the main road from London to Cambridge, and he bore an unfortunate resemblance to me. I had a great deal more hair then. It was not an easy time. The poets were far more romantic about it.” Marcus cleared his throat and recited:

“The wind was a torrent of darkness upon the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight looping the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding,

Riding, riding,

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

“Of course, Alfred Noyce was born a good one hundred twenty years later, so what did he know? No young Bess for me. Just tending to a companion who had the bad luck of catching a crossbow bolt in his leg. He was always catching some manner of armament. Had more scars than freckles, which says something for a redheaded Irishman. Donovan. Great drinker and a better singer. He had a voice like warm whiskey. Clumsy as a drunken ox in a tea shop, though. I thought for certain his moans would bring the Queen’s hounds down upon us, but by sunrise he was back to cursing and bragging about a new scar, and drinking the last of the brandy. That was a fine night.”