The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (39 page)
Apollyon laughed as Gabriel aimed sword at him again. “You stupid, sentimental little child. You’ve created a bifurcation. The very thing the Council has been trying to avoid for centuries. What kind of training have they been giving you? Can’t you feel it? You’re not in the Primary Continuum anymore.”
“I know,” Gabriel said as the blackness swirled around him. “And a bifurcation is the only thing that can break a powerful space-time seal.” Whiteness became everything and he stood again in the forest, the mortars falling as they had before, just at the moment the new branch of reality had been made, just after the moment he and Apollyon had broken off from the Primary Continuum. He had not doubled back on his personal timeline, so there would be no copies of him or Apollyon. Both had slipped seamlessly into the new branch of reality.
Even as he appeared in the Primary Continuum, Gabriel grasped for all the imprints of the battlefield, embracing both the tainted negative imprints and the grace-filled positive imprints, adding them to the power he wielded in the Sword of Unmaking, and focusing all of the magical power on that slender thread of frayed reality leading to a new world, that slim portal to an alternate version of history. An alternate history Apollyon was trapped in. Gabriel’s head swam with the power of those imprints and he tightened his stomach against the instinctual retching that arose from holding so much tainted power. He focused all of the magical energy he possessed into severing that thin thread of reality.
The magical energy was enormous, amplified through the imprints of the pocket watch and the Sword of Unmaking and the battlefield where he stood. The portal to the other reality began to close, the thread nearly sliced through, when he felt something push back. The portal seemed to hold. The thread did not shear away. And the power behind it was more than he had ever imagined was possible. Apollyon was pushing back from the other side of the branch of reality, trying to keep Gabriel from severing it. The thread was too weak to allow Apollyon to jump to the same moment of time and space that Gabriel inhabited at that instant, but he was still connected to all the magical energy of the copies of himself.
Gabriel tensed and tried to summon up more magical energy from within using the breathing and energy exercises he had been practicing every day with Ohin. He felt the energy swell in his heart center and radiate down his arms into the Sword of Unmaking. He was holding Apollyon, but he did not know how long he could last. If the thread of reality gained any more stability, Apollyon might be fully connected with his many twins, who might be able to locate Gabriel in this place and moment in time.
This place and time really was a single moment. Gabriel noticed the silence around him. The mortar shells hung suspended in mid-flight and some in mid-explosion. He and Apollyon were suspending time in that moment of the bifurcation’s creation. Gabriel didn’t know how long he could sustain it. He was mustering all the energy he could from within himself. Without more imprints of some kind to focus that energy, it was only a matter of time before Apollyon overwhelmed him. Apollyon was at the disadvantage, in that he needed far more magical energy to re-establish the alternate branch of reality that Gabriel struggled to sever, but he also had far more energy at his disposal than Gabriel.
Trying to break a part of his mind away to think, to plan, to search out a possible source of more imprints, Gabriel struggled to maintain and concentrate the magical energy at just the right spot, just the right moment. No matter what he considered, nothing seemed plausible. There were no imprints left for him to claim. Even if he could release the energy directed at severing the branch of reality that Apollyon was trapped in and tried to jump through time, there was a good chance that Apollyon would follow him. And his wrath was not something Gabriel wanted to see any more of than he already had.
He almost thought he could hear Apollyon’s screams of anger from the other side of the reality portal. Gabriel screamed himself then, in exhaustion and frustration. He would not allow Apollyon to take him and use him as a weapon for his conquest, to become some puppet with a sword. He would not be taken prisoner again. That was the plan that he kept coming back to. He could turn the sword on himself before Apollyon could stop him. If Gabriel was fast enough, Apollyon would not be able to save him no matter how strong his magic might be.
It was a feeble plan, and one that felt like surrender. But better to end his own life than risk it being used to kill and destroy others, especially those he had grown to love and care for. And what would they say? What would Ohin or Sema or Akikane or any of the others tell him to do? Or his family. His mother and father and sister, who he had lost as surely as if they had died. He thought about the last moment that he had seen them. The feel of his mother’s lips on his forehead. The smell of lilacs from her favorite perfume. His father’s strong arms around him. The weight of his father’s hand on his shoulder as they said goodbye that last time. Would they agree with his plan? Would it matter? Would any of it matter? He was already dead to them. He would be right back where he had started. Where he had ended.
There at the bottom of the river, trapped in the bus, the water filling his lungs. He would be right back at the moment of his death. He had faced it once. He could face it again. The loss of all he loved. He could make that choice. Just like he had chosen to dive back into the water, back down to the bus where he had drowned. Like he had chosen to risk his life to save others. Like he had died risking his life to save others.
Why hadn’t he seen it before?
The yell that filled his throat now was not a howl of frustration, but the roar of triumph. Gabriel reached for the imprints he had found, the imprints of Grace that had been with him ever since he had given his life to save others beneath the water of that river. He had never considered them. The actions of a person left imprints on themselves, as well as the objects they used. The power of the Grace imprints from willingly risking and giving his life to save others in that bus were far more powerful than the imprints of the pocket watch or the Sword of Unmaking. More powerful because they were closer to the source. They were part of his very being. He claimed hold of them and used them to redouble his focus on the magical energy aimed at the slim thread still tying the alternate reality with Apollyon in it to the Primary Continuum.
Gabriel was surprised at the power of the imprints he held within himself. He would not have been able to access them without first using a talisman, but now that he held them, they increased his magical strength considerably. The thread of the alternate reality ceased to exist even as he concentrated his will upon it.
Then it was gone and he was alone in the forest of bare trees, the mortars falling through the snow-filled air and exploding in the clearing. Apollyon, the one he had confronted at least, had been eliminated from existence, trapped in an alternate reality that most likely had collapsed into nothingness the moment its connection to the Primary Continuum had been severed.
Gabriel took a deep breath and looked around. He reached in his pocket and pulled out the fossil of the beetle suspended in amber. He thought a moment about what he had just done. He had created an alternate world and severed it to save himself. The second time he had created an alternate reality and ended it.
Destroyer of Worlds indeed
, he thought, as he resheathed the Sword of Unmaking. He looked at the piece of amber in his hand and then turned his head away, toward the battlefield clearing. Toward the foxholes. Toward his grandfather. Nearly without thinking, he jumped through space, coming to stand at the edge of the foxhole where he knew his grandfather was.
Mortar shells still rained down from the sky, exploding throughout the clearing and the forest. Men shouted orders and screamed in pain. Gabriel cast a web of Soul Magic around himself that would make him invisible to anyone nearby. Then he did what he knew he did not entirely want to do. He stepped forward and looked into the foxhole.
He recognized his grandfather from photos of when he was a young man. Blood covered his uniform and he held that same dented pocket watch Gabriel grasped in his own hand. Little to nothing remained of his friend’s body. The look of terror and anguish on his grandfather’s face stabbed into Gabriel’s heart and made him gasp. He had wanted to see his grandfather, but he did not want to see him like this — in unimaginable pain and with no way to comfort him.
He could do nothing. Except shed a tear. And leave.
Clasping the chunk of amber in his hand, he focused his magical energy through the pocket watch and the all-encompassing blackness of time travel followed swiftly.
Whiteness faded like gauze pulled from Gabriel’s eyes to reveal that he stood in the northernmost edge of the courtyard of the Upper Ward of the Castle. That was where they had all agreed they would return if something went wrong. He had tried to return to a time equal in days and hours since the last time they had all been there. He stood facing the state apartments. Spinning around, he heard the voices even before he saw the faces.
Then a streaking cannonball of black hair struck him and he was lying on his back on the ground.
“Don’t you ever do that again!” Teresa shouted as she sat on top of him, an angry angel of protection. “How am I supposed to guard you if you run away from me?”
“I was trying to protect
you
,” Gabriel said, the wind starting to come back to his lungs. “That was the plan. For me to run.”
“But I was supposed to go with you,” Teresa said, tears in her eyes. “What if something had happened? What if you needed me to back you up?”
“Something did happen,” Gabriel said. “And I’ll always want you to back me up. But sometimes we have to face things alone. Now can I get up? I think you broke a rib.”
“Sorry,” Teresa said, her eyes darting away. “I got carried away. Thanks for trying to protect me,” she said and kissed him on the cheek before she rolled away and stood up. Gabriel found a sudden need to avert his eyes.
“Anytime,” he said, trying to not to think about the kiss on the cheek. “Thanks for trying to protect me too.”
“She was a little worried,” Rajan said, stepping up and extending a hand to help Gabriel to his feet.
“You don’t say,” Gabriel said, accepting a brotherly hug from Rajan.
“We were all a little worried,” Ohin said.
“More than worried,” Ling said.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “Very concerned.”
“What happened to you?” Sema said, stepping close and inspecting him with her hands, turning him this way and that to see if there were any marks or bruises. “Why is your hair wet? Is that snow?”
“Don’t tell me you’ve been sledding while the rest of us were running for our lives?” Marcus said clamping a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“How did you get away?” Gabriel asked.
“Most of them disappeared after you did,” Teresa said. “We thought for sure with that many of them they would catch you.”
“And then we fought and ran as best we could,” Ling said. “Each of them is as powerful as Akikane.”
“Much more, much more,” Akikane said. “We were very concerned.”
“As soon as the space-time seal was broken, we fled,” Ohin said. “We jumped in groups. I took Sema and Ling while Akikane took Marcus, Teresa, and Rajan. After a few jumps, they seemed to give up.”
“Very odd, very odd,” Akikane said. “I expected them to chase us farther.”
“What about you?” Ohin said. “How far did they chase you?”
“I kept switching relics and using different time frames like you told me,” Gabriel said. “By the time I ran out and used the pocket watch only one followed me.”
The questions all came at the same moment.
“You met with one?”
“Did you fight him?”
“Where were you?”
“How did you get away?”
Gabriel looked around and realized he would have to tell them what he had done. “I used the pocket watch to take me to the battle of the Hürtgen Forest during World War Two in Western Germany in January of 1945,” Gabriel began. “It’s where my grandfather was given the watch by a friend who saved his life. It was a copy of Apollyon who followed me. Just one.”
Gabriel recounted what had happened. The conversation. The mortar shells. The alternate branch of time he created. Trapping Apollyon in the branch and severing it from the Primary Continuum. Using the imprints from his near death in the bus that seemed like so long ago. He finished to a profound and prolonged silence. He could not tell from their eyes or the looks on their faces what they were thinking. Only Akikane was smiling.
“Well done, well done,” Akikane finally said, his smile radiant. “I think the Sword of Unmaking has a new master now.”
“No,” Gabriel said, trying to figure out what he wanted to say next.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said. “The Sword of Unmaking is yours now. But you will need to learn how to wield it. How to master it. I will teach you.”
“Thank you,” Gabriel said, his hand unconsciously sliding to touch the tip of the sword sheath hanging below his back. “Will I need to go before the Council? For creating an alternate branch of time.”
“Are you totally daft, Lad?” Marcus said, bursting out in laughter, quickly joined by the rest of the team. “You just destroyed a Malignancy Mage with the power of thirty some copies of himself at his disposal. You’ll be bloody lucky they don’t try to make you a member of the Council.”
“No, no,” Akikane said, in mock seriousness. “You do not want that.”
“You aren’t in any trouble,” Ohin said, embracing Gabriel quickly and then holding him by the shoulders. “You did the only thing that could have been done, and you did it very well.”
“We’re all very proud of you,” Sema said, kissing Gabriel on the forehead.
“Very proud,” Ling said, punching his arm.
“And happy you’re back,” Teresa added, extending her hand toward Rajan, who frowned.