“But it’s dark!” Liam said, his eyes filled with panic.
“Would you rather be down here by yourselves, or up there with the goblins?” Gabriel slowly and gently pulled the children’s hands from his arms.
“We’d rather be with Mommy and Daddy.” Leah wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.
“You’ll be with them soon.” Gabriel hoped it proved true. He had seen a lot of fallen Grace Mages on the castle grounds above. “I need to go now.”
“Are you going to stop them?” Liam sniffed and rubbed his eyes.
“I’m going to do my best.” Gabriel hoped his best would be enough. And soon enough. He sensed the rage begin to burn brightly within him once again.
“Make sure they don’t come back.” Leah frowned in barely controlled anger.
“Stay here.”
Gabriel warped the space around himself and once more appeared high above the castle.
As he completed the jump, he realized his mistake. A space-time seal slipped around him as a barrage of Malignant magics assaulted his mind and body in rapid succession. Eight Apollyons floated in the air around him. They had countered his strategy more quickly than he had anticipated.
He drew on all the power of the magical imprints he held yet still found himself barely able to keep the onslaught at bay. Eight Apollyons were a match for him.
Relying, as they did, on their connection to their duplicates holding negative imprints at sites of great violence, rather than concatenate crystals, the Apollyons could be extraordinarily powerful. However, their powers, like all mages’ powers, came from how many imprints they could hold. If nearly fifty Apollyons were at the castle, that left few able to provide them with imprints. Especially if more were involved in the attack on the Dresden outpost. Unless there were more duplicate Apollyons than the Council suspected.
“We are stronger than you.” The Apollyons all looked the same and dressed the same, so Gabriel didn’t bother wondering which one spoke. He saw anger in their eyes, and, for the first time, fear. He didn’t have to read their minds to know their thoughts. They wanted to kill him. Badly.
“We will always be stronger.” Another Apollyon.
He hoped they could not so easily intuit the icy fear suddenly grasping at his heart, threatening to freeze the rage blazing there since the battle began. A sweat broke out along his face and back as he focused on repelling the Apollyons’ magics.
“How many of you are there these days?” Gabriel might as well try to acquire some useful information while he had the opportunity. Assuming he lived through the encounter, it might prove important.
“Enough.” Several Apollyons answered in unison.
“If it were really enough, the Great Barrier would be gone.” The Council suspected that Apollyon would need to make at least 108 copies of himself to have any hope of destroying The Great Barrier of Probability. If he had created that many twins, why would he delay?
“It will be gone soon enough.” The Apollyons spoke in unison. It felt like listening to a demented choir. “As will you.”
As the Apollyons’ last words faded, their magical attacks, which had not ceased during the conversation, abated momentarily. With his next breath, Gabriel discovered why. No air occupied the space surrounding him, trapping him in an airless space-time seal, exactly like he had done to the first three Apollyons he’d encountered.
The eight Apollyons still spoke, but with no air to bring the sound waves of their voices to his ears, Gabriel could only see their lips moving. They appeared to be gloating, but he could hear none of it. The physics of the situation apparently escaped them. Gabriel might have tried to read their lips if more urgent matters, like breathing, hadn’t required his attention.
Through a haze of terror, his mind noticed two things simultaneously. First, suffocating from lack of air felt nothing like the sensation of drowning. Neither was pleasant, both would kill you, but lack of air seemed to create less fright. The second thing he noticed provided him a sliver of hope. The Apollyons used the same method of suffocation against him as he had against their twins, but incompletely. While they held him in place with a field of gravity, they devoted most of their energies to maintaining the space-time seal.
Gasping for airless breaths, the fiery sensation of his lungs becoming a physical manifestation of the anger burning in his breast, Gabriel abandoned his struggles against the space-time seal and focused all the power of his magic into two separate courses. He thrust himself earthward, even as he again formed a gravity lens above himself. The lens did not stretch as wide as previous versions, but it proved more than sufficient in its magnifying power.
He forced his way through the magical chains of gravity holding him aloft moments before the sky around him exploded in heat and light. The concussion from the explosion of super-heated air hit him like a crashing wave.
He tumbled through the sky, temporarily unconscious, arms fluttering, the Sword of Unmaking slipping from his grasp. He blinked his eyes with awareness, gasping in shock as he rushed toward the ground below. He concentrated on reclaiming the imprints of the concatenate crystal bracelet, using its magical energy to arrest his descent at the last possible second.
Gabriel hung inches above the ground, feeling as though he were a speeding train that had hit a mountain wall. He lowered himself to the grass of the Middle Ward lawn and sat up. The Sword of Unmaking struck the ground beside him, burying itself nearly to the hilt in the soft grass. Gabriel jumped, his heart pounding in his chest from his narrow escape and near impalement from his own sword.
In the brief moments following, he noted the absence of the rage that had so consumed him during the battle. He knew its source. The Malignant imprints he wielded to defend the castle affected his mind. He had trained to avoid their effects, but never with this many dark imprints, and never against a foe as ruthless as the attacking Apollyons. He would have to worry about the consequences of this anger after the army of Dark Mages had been defeated.
Around him, the battle to save the castle still raged, Apollyons attacking in groups of threes and fours and hammering teams of Grace Mages with wave after wave of Malignant magic. Gabriel rolled to his feet, straining to pull the Sword of Unmaking from the ground as he tried to assess the battlefield and quickly determine a new strategy for defending the castle.
He found little time to formulate a new set of tactics. He saw something equally as important as saving the castle. Across the yard, beneath the broad branches of an oak tree, four Apollyons waged a battle of horrendous magic against Elizabeth and the members of the Chimera team.
Gabriel jumped through space, appearing beside the fallen ruins of the still-smoking Round Tower. The acrid odor stabbed at his nostrils as he raised the Sword of Unmaking above his shoulder. The four Apollyons, twenty feet away, turned like limbs of a single body to see him standing at their sides, sword raised in challenge.
Gabriel felt the rage rekindled within, searing hot as he lowered the sword in a swift arc, the mountainous wall of rubble behind him flying into the air like a million stone projectiles traveling faster than the eye could track. The wall of debris crashed through the four Apollyons, carrying them across the yard and slamming them into the North Terrace wall.
Gabriel disappeared and reappeared beside Elizabeth and his team. They looked exhausted, each sporting at least one obvious wound. He would have sworn they had been the ones hit with a wall of rubble. At least they were all still alive.
“Gabriel.” Elizabeth sighed, wiping dust and sweat from her face. “At least one of us is having some success in defending the castle.”
“Was that you who blew up the Round Tower?” Rajan bent over to catch his breath.
“Yes.” Gabriel looked around. He didn’t want to stay in any one place too long, especially near Elizabeth and the team. It presented too great a risk. He couldn’t jeopardize them like that. Not with how strongly the Apollyons wanted him dead.
“That was brilliant.” Ter
esa placed her hand on his shoulder. “But you had us worried.”
“I’m fine.” Gabriel looked at Teresa, grateful for her touch, but still too possessed by anger at the invaders to offer his customary smile. He turned to Elizabeth. “Do you have it?”
“Yes.” Elizabeth patted the pocket of her tunic. “I thought it would be safer with me, but I’m beginning to suspect that was a mistake.”
“Do you think they’re here for it?” Gabriel asked, looking around.
“Among other things.” Elizabeth frowned. “Yes. I’m sure of it.”
“You have to protect Councilwoman Elizabeth at all costs,” Gabriel said to Ohin, his voice tight with passion.
“That is what we’ve been doing.” Ohin’s voice sounded weary and annoyed.
“Not here in the open.” Gabriel looked around at his friends, his heart pounding with fear for them, and also what it might mean if Elizabeth were captured. “You have to hide. Try the cellars.”
“We can’t hide when the castle is under attack.” Ling looked like she might fight Gabriel for suggesting the notion.
“He’s right.” Everyone looked at Elizabeth. “It’s more important than the castle.”
“I’ll find you when it’s over.” Gabriel turned to go, gently sliding Teresa’s hand from his shoulder. He wanted to turn to her and tell her…tell her what? He had no time to puzzle through his feelings for her.
“What will you do?” Marcus gestured to Gabriel’s singed clothes and bruised face. “You look half-dead.”
“I’ll think of something.” Gabriel hoped he would.
“They are all sharing one mind,” Sema said, reaching out to wipe a smudge of soot from Gabriel’s face. “Try to use that if you can.”
Gabriel felt space-time around them warping and knew the other Apollyons had found them. As he jumped away through space, he tried to grab the materializing Apollyons and take them with him. There were six of them. He managed to grab four. Hopefully Elizabeth and the team could cope with the other two and then find a secure place to take shelter.
Gabriel and his four captive Apollyons appeared on the roof of St. George’s Chapel. The four were not as disoriented as he had hoped they might be, and they seemed intent on calling for reinforcements. Gabriel felt seven more Apollyons arriving via the warping of space as he jumped again himself.
Sema’s idea had given him the glimmerings of a plan, but he would need to find and restrain a lone Apollyon for it to work. Unfortunately, the Apollyons knew they were vulnerable alone and only attacked in groups. Gabriel repeatedly jumped through space from one end of the castle to the other, alighting for a moment to survey the battleground before jumping again in search of a solitary Apollyon.
After twenty-plus jumps, he found one fighting three Grace Mages near the Military Knight’s Lodgings, a fallen fellow Apollyon at his feet. Eight Grace Mages also lay on the ground, some far too motionless to be alive. A Time Mage held the lone Apollyon from jumping through space while one Fire and one Wind Mage attacked.
Gabriel studied the scene for a moment, feeling the anger flare in his heart. Raising his hands, he used Wind Magic to pull the Apollyon to him in a single, jarring motion. The Apollyon crossed fifteen feet in a fraction of a second, Gabriel’s hands reaching out to clasp the man’s skull as he came to a halt.
Remembering his lessons in Kumaradevi’s arena, his fiery rage blazing even brighter at the memory, Gabriel concentrated all of his magical energy into the Soul Magic he arrayed against the Apollyon in his grasp. The Apollyon struggled for a moment, then went rigid, a high-pitched wail bubbling forth from his lips. Gabriel pressed on, reaching into the Apollyon’s mind and searching for the man’s connection to his twins. After a moment, he found it — a whirlwind of voices. Voices filled with concern. As Gabriel pushed farther, pouring more caustic Soul Magic into the link between the Dark Mages, the whirlwind of voices became a cyclone of screams.
Gabriel opened his eyes and looked around, trying to gauge the effect his Soul Magic had on the army of Apollyons. From his vantage on the side of the Lower Ward, he could see several Apollyons grasping their heads, immobile with pain. He could also feel them fighting back along the links that connected them to the Apollyon quaking before him.
Gabriel took to the air once more, risking the use of some of his magical energy for flight, sparing a little more for the Wind Magic necessary to hold the convulsing, lone Apollyon beside him.
He came to a halt several hundred feet above the castle grounds and looked down. The tide of the battle had changed. The Apollyons stood motionless and under attack by the remaining Grace Mages. Gabriel noticed several other people not moving.
Teresa lay on the grass where he had left her in the Middle Ward. Elizabeth lay beside her, as did the rest of the team. Three Apollyons stood clasping their heads in agony nearby. Gabriel knew he could not continue to hold the Soul Magic spell on the Apollyons for long, and could never hope to keep it in place while helping his fallen companions.
Gabriel released the Wind Magic holding the Apollyon beside him in the air at the same time he undid the Soul Magic trapping the Dark Mages like beetles in amber. He glanced at the screaming Apollyon as the man plunged to the ground. Against all his better judgment, Gabriel felt sorry for him. Not sorry enough to quell the anger still swaying him, nor enough to slow the Dark Mage’s descent, but sorry, nonetheless.
Gabriel jumped through space, appearing beside Teresa and the others. He scanned Teresa’s unconscious form with Heart-Tree Magic and found her mildly concussed but otherwise uninjured. Fearing an attack, he glanced up, his eyes widening in surprise as he watched the army of Apollyons disappear from the castle grounds while they recovered from Gabriel’s Soul Magic.
He quickly examined his other unconscious teammates, finding nothing life-threatening in their injuries. As Ohin moaned, Gabriel knelt next to Elizabeth. He frowned as he probed her with his magical senses. A deep unconsciousness held her mind, a powerful Soul Magic curse clinging to her brain like black tar on exposed skin. The magic-induced coma gripped her mind completely.
Gabriel could not guess how much time it would take to cure her from the spell. Probing the curse, seeing how deeply it reached into Elizabeth’s mind, he could not be certain that she would ever be cured. It did, however, explain the uniform state of his teammates. Close proximity to a curse that powerful could easily have rendered them instantly unconscious.
Gritting his teeth in anger, he checked Elizabeth’s tunic pocket and cursed. Empty. One of the Apollyons must have it. But which one? He looked around as more of Dark Mages fled from the castle and the defensive attacks by the Grace Mages. It could be any one of them. Could be, but more likely one who had been close to Elizabeth when Gabriel started his attack. There had been several close by. Three were still left, battling off a team of Grace Mages as they tried to recover one of their fallen duplicates.
Gabriel stood up, looking around. How to make sense of the pattern? So much movement. So much activity. Except…one place. One person. Someone not moving. Someone in black, hiding behind a fallen wall. Odd. Why would one of the Apollyons be hiding? Why not simply jump through time with the others?
Then Gabriel realized the fallen wall concealed the hiding Apollyon from the view of his fellow duplicates in the courtyard. The rogue Apollyon wasn’t trying to avoid capture by the Grace Mages — he awaited the retreat of the other Apollyons.
Gabriel ducked down behind a nearby fallen tree and watched the rogue Apollyon. The last of the other Apollyons had finally departed. Gabriel waited, but did not sense a disturbance in the space-time continuum for nearly a minute. As he watched the lone Apollyon, he noticed something in the Dark Mage’s hand. Was that a flash of red leather? Did this Apollyon have Elizabeth’s notebook?
He felt the Apollyon begin to warp time and space to jump away, free from his brothers.
Gabriel knew he only had one chance of retrieving the notebook. He would have to try shadowing the rogue
Apollyon to ghost his time travel path, following him like a bloodhound tracking the scent of a fox.
He glanced over at Elizabeth, Ohin, and the others and then looked back to see the rogue Apollyon disappear. He could feel the trail with his space-time sense, but he couldn’t follow too closely or the Apollyon would sense him. Too far away and he would never be able to perceive the faint trail of the relic the rogue Apollyon used to travel through time.
Gabriel waited as long as he could, nearly a full ten seconds, and then warped the fabric of space-time around himself to follow the mysterious rogue Apollyon, hoping to recover the notebook that might otherwise give the Dark Mage the long-sought knowledge of how to destroy the Great Barrier of Probability.
As Gabriel departed the castle grounds, leaping through space and time toward an unknowably dangerous destination, he felt a hand clasp around his shoulder.
Chapter 7: Siege Mentality
Gabriel ignored the hand on his shoulder. Whoever grabbed ahold of him wasn’t trying to attack, so he disregarded the fingers grasping him tightly. He needed all his concentration to follow the rogue Apollyon. Ghosting a Time Mage, particularly a mage as powerful and experienced as the rogue Apollyon, would be no simple task. As the whiteness of space-time travel faded, Gabriel held onto it, keeping himself and his mysterious companion on the edge of materializing with the rogue Apollyon.
To surreptitiously follow another Time Mage jumping through time without their knowledge, one needed not only to sense the specific warping of space-time, but also the signature of the relic being used to determine a time and location in history.
The whiteness signaling the contraction of space-time at the end of a jump continued to linger. Gabriel could distinguish a forest beyond the horizon of the time barrier around him. He could also perceive the rogue Apollyon making another jump.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 38