The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (17 page)
“It sounds terrifying,” Gabriel said, staring at the wide grin on Marcus’s face.
“Oh, it was,” Marcus said. “But it ended well. That’s what makes a fine night. If the sunrise finds you still alive when you thought you’d be dead.”
“This night is fine,” Sema said, catching Marcus’s gaze and holding it.
“Yes, and the company isn’t bad, either,” Marcus added with a laugh. “This cave isn’t much, but it at least we’ll be comfortable tonight.”
“Particularly Ling,” Sema said.
Comfortable? Gabriel cocked his head as he looked up at the stars. Why did that sound familiar? What was that nagging feeling at the back of his mind? Like there was a word on the tip of his tongue that he couldn’t remember. Like he had left the house and forgotten something. Something he would remember only as he was too far away to go back. Go back. Back to where? Back home? Ah, yes. That was it. Comfortable.
“I know where Ohin is,” Gabriel said in a voice so loud it startled Sema and Marcus, who had both started to doze. “I know where he is and I can take us there.”
The following morning, Gabriel was the last to wake. He stepped out of the cave, blinking with the sudden shift from sleep as much as from the light of the sun, now well above the horizon. Ling sat at the edge of the rocks eating a slice of cantaloupe. Gabriel could see Sema and Marcus walking at the water’s edge along the beach. Ling looked up at him, but said nothing. She took another bite of the melon, sucking the juice from the rind. Gabriel sat down beside her.
From the look of the remains encircling her, Ling had eaten at least two melons, all the remaining olives, the leftover fish from the night before, and half a loaf of bread. She threw down the well-chewed rind of melon and wiped the juice from her mouth with the back of her sleeve. Teresa had said once that Ling’s name meant ‘delicate’ in Chinese. She cleared her throat, spat, and looked at him. Gabriel wondered if the name had been intentionally ironic on the part of her parents.
“You put Sema and Marcus in one hell of a tight spot,” Ling growled. “When you risked your damn fool life to save them, they felt indebted to you.”
“But…” Gabriel began.
“But they were responsible for you,” Ling said. “You are still only an apprentice, and it is not your place to question the decisions of those who are in charge of the mission, particularly when they have far more experience than you may ever have. Do you think I like every decision Ohin makes? Well, I don’t. But I follow orders. Why? Because he knows what he’s doing and he’s in charge. Get this through that rock you call a brain right now, this is a war, and people die in wars, and if you don’t follow orders, more people will die.”
“I know that.”
“Well, you certainly don’t act like it,” Ling said, her voice filled with anger. “What the hell were you thinking, anyway?”
“I thought…”
“I was dead. I was already dead.”
“But…”
“Do you know what you’ve done? Do you what we have to do now?”
“I know. I just…”
“Do you think Ohin would have gone back for you? Do you think he would have gone back for any of us?”
“I don’t know. I…”
“Well, he wouldn’t have,” Ling shouted and turned toward the water and the sunrise. She was silent finally and so was Gabriel. He didn’t know what reaction he had expected from Ling, but this wasn’t how he had imagined things would go at all.
“He wouldn’t have,” Ling said again. “None of them would have. But you did.” She stared at Gabriel. “Why would you do that? You barely even know me. Barely even know any of us. Why risk yourself for Sema and Marcus? Why risk so much to save me?”
Gabriel didn’t have to think about it. “Because it seemed like the right thing to do. Because I like you.” And then he spoke aloud what had been his real motivation. The one he had been afraid to admit to himself. “Because you’re all the family I have now.”
Ling moved with the same swiftness and fluidity as she did when fighting, and Gabriel found himself with her arms locked around him in a powerful motherly hug. His head felt like a clay pot trapped in a vice as she pressed him to her chest and held on. He could feel her sobbing. Feel the tears on his neck. And it brought tears to his own eyes. After a long minute, she let go of him and clasped both hands on either side of his head, staring at him fiercely.
“Damn you!” Ling said, her eyes blazing, struggling to speak as though the air in her chest could not rise to become words. She let go of Gabriel and seemed to collapse in on herself. When she spoke, it was in a near-whisper. “My first child, my son Win, he died of fever. We were a fishing family. He caught a chill one day. Too long in the rain. My husband Gu blamed himself. The boy was only ten. Old enough to fish, but not in the rain for that long. I blamed my husband.
“Win died after a week of chills and sweats. He couldn’t eat anything. And then he died. And I blamed myself then. Because I couldn’t save him. I would have done anything to save him. Anything. No matter what the cost.” She fell silent again. When she looked up into his eyes she spoke loud and clear. “Thank you. Thank you for my life. Thank you for saving me, Dìdi Érzi.” Ling grinned and Gabriel grinned back. “Do it again, though, and I’ll bust your head.” She rustled his hair.
“But if I did it again…”
“Don’t argue with me. I’m no pushover like Sema and Marcus.” Gabriel’s head reeled trying to contemplate that statement as Ling offered him the last slice of melon. “Sorry. I ate everything. I’m starving. I could eat a horse. And I love horses. Beautiful creatures. But I’d eat one whole. Raw.”
“I’d settle for eggs and bacon,” Gabriel said.
“And a goat cheese and mushroom omelet,” Ling said. “Marcus said you know how to find Ohin.”
“I think I know where he is.”
“Then let’s find him and get back to the castle,” Ling said. “If we time it right, we can arrive for brunch.”
Sema and Marcus came back a few minutes later.
“Everything been said that needed to be said?” Sema asked.
“Yes,” Gabriel said.
“I made my views clear,” Ling said.
“She has a way of saying thank you you’ll not likely to forget soon,” Marcus said, rubbing his elbow. “Damn near broke my arm.”
“You startled me,” Ling said. “I thought I was dead. Again.”
“And this was the face you thought you’d see in heaven,” Marcus said. “I’m flattered.”
“Who says I thought I was in heaven?” Ling said, tossing a fish bone at Marcus.
“You’d think you’d have more gratitude,” Marcus said with feigned indignation.
“I’m just annoyed that I was finally in Venice again and didn’t get to see the Gallerie Dell'Accademia,” Ling said. “We were blocks from one of my favorite museums and all I saw were the bricks of the Campanile. The best part of traveling through time is seeing art I’ve never seen before.”
“If Ling is well enough, we should go," Sema said.
“She’s healthy as a bear,” Marcus said. “And she’ll be hungry like a bear for a few days, but that’s not so different from usual.” Another fish bone flew past his head.
“You’re sure you know how to find Ohin?” Sema asked.
“Positive,” Gabriel said. “Ohin told me that we always feel more comfortable in our own time. But the temple at Tenochtitlan was built much later than his time, so I’m sure that whatever time he ended up in, he would travel to my time to wait for us.”
“And you’re sure Ohin will think of all this?” Marcus asked.
“Pretty sure,” Gabriel said.
“No one has a better idea,” Ling said.
“But what year do you think he will he go to in your time?” Sema asked.
“Ohin isn’t the sort to sit on his rump waiting for years for us to show up,” Marcus said.
“Well,” Gabriel said, “I was taken from the timeline in 1980, but the temple was only just being excavated then. So I’m guessing he’ll use the Coyolxauhqui Stone at the base of the temple.”
“It was rediscovered in 1978,” Marcus said.
“So it might have been in a museum when I left the timeline,” Gabriel said.
“That’s good,” Marcus said. “At least they’ll be comfortable. Teresa is always complaining about the lack of air conditioning in the castle.”
“Let us go, then,” Sema said, extending her hand between the others. Ling and Marcus placed their hands on hers. Gabriel reached into his pocket and withdrew the watch and the shard of Aztec pottery. They would need to go back to the temple at a time when the Coyolxauhqui Stone was still there and then use it to find Ohin.
He placed his hands around theirs and stilled his mind, searching out a time when the city of Tenochtitlan was not busy, a time at night, a time when they would attract little notice. He found an image in his mind as he used his time-sense to probe the pottery shard. Focusing the energy within him through the pocket watch, blackness surrounded them, and the white light soon washed over everything.
They stood in a different part of the city. It even looked like a different city under the moonlight of the night sky above. It took Gabriel a moment to realize why. Tenochtitlan was in ruins. Not ancient ruins. Recent ruins. Buildings and temples shattered. Streets deserted. Houses gutted by fire. One of them was probably the last place the piece of pottery he used to travel through time had been whole as a vase. Looking around, he could see what remained of the Templo Mayor a quarter mile away.
“After the Spanish conquest of the city,” Ling said. “1521.”
“Weren’t the most tolerant lot, were they?” Marcus said as he surveyed the destruction.
“Spain was the birthplace of the Inquisition,” Sema said, a certain bitterness in her voice.
“We should go,” Ling said and headed toward the temple. Gabriel and the others followed, using their amulets to alter their appearance. As he walked along the ruined street, he remembered his feelings of disgust for the practices of the Aztecs. The wars to gain captives for sacrifice. The huge numbers of victims. Here and there he passed what could only be bodies still rotting in the streets, others floating, bloated, in the canals. This was just as disgusting. How many times would he see this throughout his time travels? Violence leading to violence. Death bringing more death. It made him tired, and he had only just woken from a full night’s sleep.
As they walked, Gabriel tried to remember from his studies the series of events that had led to this. This was the time of king Moctezuma II, sometimes called Montezuma. He was the second king named Moctezuma. Moctezuma II had been considered a living god, and it had been forbidden for citizens to look upon his face under penalty of death. He had been extremely powerful, but also extremely religious.
Like most Aztecs of the time, he was convinced of the truth of his myths, both those that commanded his people to provide blood sacrifice to satiate the gods, as well as those that told of how the god Quetzalcoatl would return from the waters of the ocean to the east. So when Hernán Cortéz, the Spanish explorer and
Conquistador
, arrived in 1519 on the eastern coast of what would one day be called Mexico, Moctezuma II and many of his people believed it was the return of Quetzalcoatl. The fulfillment of prophecy. It was really the arrival of 530 soldiers in Spanish ships. By August 15th of 1521, the city had fallen, and the Spanish Conquistadors were the new rulers of what remained of the Aztec empire.
As they reached the base of the temple a few minutes later, Gabriel reflected that there wasn’t much left of the Aztec empire for the Spanish Conquistadors to rule. Although they had seen a few Spanish soldiers and a pair of priests, and even a few remaining Aztecs, no one had so much as glanced in their direction. At the base of the Templo Mayor, the Great Temple, sat the Coyolxauhqui Stone, blackened by the soot of fire, but still intact.
Gabriel placed his hand upon it, and the others placed theirs upon his shoulder. He reached out with his time-sense toward the enormous carved stone and tried to feel his way forward, or what would be forward if time were straight like an arrow. It was more like being in a spherical room filled with millions of tiny windows, each one leading to a time and place where the Coyolxauhqui Stone had been. He searched and found images of the stone buried beneath rubble and earth. That was no good. It would be most unfortunate to jump into a future where they would be buried alive. If he had been using a fragment of the stone from a future date, he would have been able to move them a short distance away, but by using the stone while still within the natural flow of the Continuum, he would need to stay in contact with it.
He continued to search for the right place. There it was. An image of the stone unearthed in the middle of a city block. Darkness and whiteness followed, one after the other.
They stood in Mexico City near an excavation that looked like it had recently been a construction site. Streetlights provided illumination from the distance. Two policemen stood nearby talking quietly and smoking cigarettes. They turned at the sound of Gabriel and his companions climbing out of the pit that the Coyolxauhqui Stone still sat in. Sema raised a hand to them and the policemen turned back to their conversation.
Marcus was the first to the top of the slight pile of earth and rubble. He helped Sema and Ling on to the stone-paved plaza as Gabriel clambered up to join them. He could see the Torre Latinoamericana building rising straight into the night sky. Nearby the silhouettes of the Mexico City Cathedral and the Sagrario Metropolitano church beside it filled the sky. He remembered the names from his brief study of Mexican history back at the castle.
“What next?” Ling asked.
“Well,” Gabriel said, “I’m guessing that Ohin will try to go to the exact date that I was taken from the timeline. Which is probably about two years from now. So, we need to find a place where he would wait during that day and we can spot him.”
“It will probably be close to the temple,” Sema said.
“We’ll need to find a way to check the dates,” Marcus added.
“A news stand,” Gabriel said. “If we find a news stand, I can use it as a relic, and we should be able to see the date on newspapers.”