“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 Kumaradevi 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.”
“Like what?” Gabriel asked.
“Like me, running up to them and saying I have escaped Apollyon while he was distracted,” Vicaquirao said. “And then you will appear and attack them.”
“How?” Gabriel said, feeling naked without a talisman and with Dark Mages walking down the street looking to find them at any moment.
“With these,” Vicaquirao said, handing Gabriel the concatenate crystal and pulling something shinny from his pocket.
“My pocket watch!” Gabriel said, excitement filling him as he took the watch and the crystal from Vicaquirao.
“Take this as well,” Vicaquirao said, handing him the beetle encased in amber. “When you see me with Kumaradevi’s mages, you need to attack. Can you shoot lightning from your fingers?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. He had been singed numerous times in his lessons with the Malignant Fire Mage, Malee.
“Good,” Vicaquirao said. “It is a signature of his. Attack with all the power you can manage.”
“I can’t fight twenty or thirty of them,” Gabriel said.
“I would not be so sure of that,” Vicaquirao said, “but you will not have to. Once they have me, they will signal to Kumaradevi to lift the space-time seal, and they will flee. They have no desire to die fighting Apollyon. They will be happy to have what they think is you and be gone.”
“But what will you do once she has you?” Gabriel asked.
“I am touched that you are concerned for my well-being,” Vicaquirao said. “You need not worry about me. The important thing is that when you get back to the castle, the very first thing you must do is have Councilman Zhang arrested. He is Kumaradevi’s spy. If he has a chance to send a message back to her telling of your return to the castle, things will go very poorly for me. As long as she thinks she already has you, she will not try to capture you again. And I will be free to implement a plan I have been working on for some time.” Gabriel could imagine that Vicaquirao had plans within plans ready to unfold at a moment’s notice.
“They are almost here. Remember what I have told you. Your choices are of great importance to the Continuum. Good luck.” Vicaquirao turned to go and paused, looking back for a second with a devilish smile. “And tell Elizabeth I said hello.”
With that Vicaquirao, disguised as Gabriel, dashed to the next house and then the next and then ran into the road, his arms waving at the squad of ten Dark Mages marching down the street checking houses. As Vicaquirao reached the Dark Mages, one of them sent a fireball up into the air.
Taking that as his own signal, Gabriel reached for the magical energy within himself and focused it through the pocket watch and the tainted concatenate crystal. The crystal must have been linked to six other crystals in the Primary Continuum, because it was immensely powerful. Stepping from behind the house and walking into the street, Gabriel spread his arms wide, jets of blue-white lightning leaping from the fingertips of both hands toward the Dark Mages at either end of the street. The mages with Vicaquirao flickered out of existence as they jumped with the false Gabriel.
Turning to the other side of the street, Gabriel focused all of his magical streams of lightning at the remaining mages, careful to make sure that none of the bolts of energy touched any of the buildings. The second group of Dark Mages disappeared as quickly as the first. Letting the lightning from his fingertips cease, Gabriel took the piece of amber from his pocket and focused his time-sense on it. He not only needed to go back to the castle, but back to a time and place where no one would see him except the one person he needed to.
A blackness began to swiftly surround him, and Gabriel had a moment to realize how fortunate he had been, how extremely lucky that Vicaquirao had not thought to remove the amulet Kumaradevi had given him. As the whiteness engulfed him, he had yet another moment to wonder if it had really been a mistake, or whether Vicaquirao was already guiding his choices through some deceptively obscure plan.
And then he stood in Councilwoman Elizabeth’s private chamber in the state apartments as she screamed, throwing her cup of tea at him and standing up as he felt himself thrown across the room, striking the wall with a bone-crunching thud.
Gabriel threw his arms up before his face as the air began to crackle with bolts of lightning. Seeing his hands, he realized what was wrong.
“How dare you come to this place and time!” Elizabeth roared, as the air shimmered around Gabriel and he returned to his normal appearance.
“Gabriel?”
Shocked by the metamorphosis of Gabriel from Apollyon to himself, Elizabeth released all of her magic at once. Gabriel fell to the floor with a thump.
“Hi,” he managed to say as he looked up.
“Gabriel,” Elizabeth said again as she rushed to him and knelt down to check that he was uninjured. She took his face in her hands. “What are you doing here? How did you get here? What happened? We’ve been so worried about you.”
“It’s kind of a long story,” Gabriel said, his face breaking into a smile, a feeling of relief washing over him. He was home. He was safe.