Later that night, after a meal of canned soup, heated in a large pot with Fire Magic provided by Gabriel, he and Ohin went through every detail of the plan with the rest of the team. Gabriel first explained all the events leading up to Teresa’s death, and then how he intended to alter each moment, ever so slightly, to create a different outcome. They discussed the plan while eating a dessert of apples Rajan had procured from an old orchard behind the house.
“Something is still not clear to me.” Aurelius held his apple, uneaten, in his cupped hands. “Why must we kill the girl in a different way in order to save her?”
“She’s part of the Primary Continuum now.” Gabriel hastily chewed and swallowed a bite of apple. “She has to die now or it will create a bifurcation. But we can’t save her from a death by axe. It’s too final.”
“I still say we could change the angle or direction of the axe and skip all these complicated and risky changes.” Ling gestured to Ohin with an apple core. “I can put the axe anywhere we need to.”
“No, the boy’s right.” Marcus sat slouched in his chair, drinking a bottle of beer, ironically chilled by the heat dispersing power of Gabriel’s Fire Magic. “An axe blade can create too much damage no matter where it strikes, and the handle is too small to be fatal. The real problem is the body. I’ll need at least a week to create a Replacement. And I have nothing to create it with.”
“Use this.” Gabriel pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket and handed it to Marcus. “I can help you speed up the process of making the body. With two of us, it won’t take as long.”
“You really have thought of everything.” Marcus pulled a dark black hair from the folded paper and held it up. As part of his planning, Gabriel had taken a stray hair from Teresa’s shirt.
“Yes, Gabriel has considered all the possibilities.” Ohin frowned and looked around the table. “I believe his plan will work. I would never have considered it possible before, but in examining every detail and knowing the timeline of the Primary Continuum to be somewhat flexible, enough so to accept Teresa becoming a part of it, I believe we can change it and save her. However, we cannot control every event. We cannot plan for every contingency. There is a chance, and I don’t know how large or small, that we will fail, both in attempting to rescue Teresa and in avoiding the creation of a bifurcation. There will be consequences for that failure, and we all need to accept them before we begin.”
“I’d rather face the consequences of failure than the alternative of not trying, simply so we can say we followed the rules.” Rajan looked across the table to Gabriel, altering the tone of his voice slightly to indicate his next words were quoted and not his own. “Be not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor despair, if thou dost not succeed in doing everything according to right principles.”
Aurelius turned his head toward Rajan and squinted in curiosity. Gabriel recognized the words Rajan had quoted. They came from Aurelius’s Meditations, a posthumously published book of his thoughts and sayings.
“I agree.” Sema folded her hands on the table. “We’ve lost too many friends and allies this day to lose one more. Especially Teresa.”
“Here, here.” Marcus raised his bottle.
“The sooner we get her back, the sooner she can start annoying me.” Ling put her chin in her hand. “I actually miss her annoying me.”
Ohin looked at Aurelius, and the others slowly followed his gaze. Aurelius met their eyes, then brought his own to rest upon Gabriel. “We have a duty to those we love, even when there is danger to the world in fulfilling it.”
“Then we are agreed.” Ohin sat back in his chair and seemed to relax for the first time. “It’s been a long and painful day. We’ll rest tonight and begin training and organizing first thing tomorrow.”
Preparations for the extraction took little less than a week. They spent their days practicing each element of the mission, going over every action on paper and rehearsing them in the backyard during the day or in the massive living room of the house at night. Gabriel wanted to take the team back in time to witness the accident for themselves, but Ohin decided against it. Gabriel would already suffer the effects of the paradox they were about to create, remembering both a death that no longer happened as well as one that did. It would be unwise to submit the entire team to such cognitive distress.
Gabriel cursed himself for not thinking to grab a camera to film the accident and view it later. The idea tempted him in retrospect, but he agreed with Ohin — the risks to his mind from paradox could not be taken lightly. He also had no desire to see the accident again. He found it painful enough to think about it all the time.
As the days passed, they debated possible flaws in the plan and potential anomalies that could be capable of creating a bifurcation. Gabriel and Marcus tended in turns to the rapidly growing simulacrum of Teresa in the downstairs study. They also practiced the methods they would need in order to revive Teresa from the alternate death they planned for her. The gruesomeness of the work weighed heavily on all of them, but on Gabriel in particular. A permanent knot of anxiety gripped his stomach. He found it hard to think about anything beyond the mission, but this only yielded thoughts about Teresa and contemplations of what could go wrong, or worse, condemnations of his failure to protect her in the first place.
Late in the afternoon of the third day, Gabriel sat at the large dining room table, golden autumn sunlight spilling over his plans and drawings as he reviewed the rescue strategy for what seemed like the hundredth time. While he strove to keep the plan from being overcomplicated, he knew he needed to anticipate and compensate for every variable. If they made the slightest mistake in their alterations of the Primary Continuum, not only would a bifurcation be created, but Teresa would likely remain dead forever.
Dead to him forever. He could not escape the recurring thought, the constant self-recrimination, that he alone carried the responsibility for her death. He had accepted that responsibility, but would he be able to rectify the result of Teresa’s close acquaintance with the most dangerous individual in all known realities, the Seventh True Mage, Gabriel Salvador?
“Something to eat?”
Gabriel looked up from where a single drop of salt water stained the parchment paper spread across the table to find the dark brown eyes of Aurelius steadily meeting his own. Gabriel rubbed his eyelids and took a deep breath.
“Yes. Thank you.”
Aurelius slid a worn wooden tray across the table. A half loaf of bread Rajan had baked the day before sat beside a small round of brie Ohin had somehow scavenged from the local town, along with a crystal bowl filled with dark purple kalamata olives from a can.
“I thought you might need some fortification.” Aurelius sat down across from Gabriel. “I always found a light snack at midday to be of considerable aid when planning my campaigns.”
“I’m fourteen. A snack is always a good idea.” Gabriel pulled a hunk of bread free from the loaf and cut a slice of the soft cheese, its pungent odor filling his nose and making his mouth water in anticipation.
“I seem to remember that from my youth, as well.” Aurelius plucked an olive from the dish and plopped it in his mouth. Spitting out the pit, he looked at Gabriel, seeming to think while he chewed the delicate meat of the olive. “One can, of course, over plan a campaign.”
“One mistake could mean disaster.” Gabriel stuffed a bite of cheese and bread into his mouth as he stared down at his map of Sagalassos.
“Mistakes can arise while implementing even the best of plans.” Aurelius watched Gabriel flinch slightly at his words.
“That’s not reassuring.” Gabriel glanced up, his eyes a mixture of worry and annoyance.
“I mean, simply, that the universe is dynamic, and therefore, we cannot control every moment of it.” Aurelius folded his hands, his voice soothing.
“I only need to control a few seconds.” Gabriel put his head in his hands as he looked back down at the papers, his hunger evaporating as his anxiety condensed.
>
“And have you found any mistakes in your plan?”
“No.”
“And do you trust your teammates?”
“Of course.”
“Then maybe you should trust yourself.”
“How can I trust myself when I’m always the cause of death for my friends?” Gabriel looked up again, his voice breaking under the strain of the emotion he struggled to hold in check.
“Are you truly the cause for young Teresa’s death?” Aurelius’s soft, questioning eyes seemed to peer into Gabriel’s heart.
“Being near me makes death more likely.” Unable to hold Aurelius’s gaze, Gabriel looked out the window, watching the multicolored fall trees sway gently in the wind.
“We cannot despise death, our own or others. It is the will of nature. We are all some aspect of nature’s will, whether we die in old age, or on the battlefield, or from some fateful, common accident.” The tone of Aurelius’s voice brought Gabriel’s gaze back from the window.
“I can’t watch my friends die because of me. I don’t care if it’s part of some natural order.”
“Would you instead turn your friends away? Banish them from your company? Could you manage without them? Without her?”
“I…”
Gabriel choked as his words dissolved in frustration. Would Teresa and Ohin and the others be better off without him? He knew he needed them, needed them for more reasons than he could contemplate, but did they need him? He swallowed back the words and emotions straining his throat.
Aurelius placed his hands flat upon the table, seeming to weigh his thoughts and their possible impact before he spoke them aloud.
“The universe is as one living being, of one substance, like the many strands of a spider’s web. This is the truth beneath the truth of our human lives. In our lives, some strands of this universal web hold the others in place. They cling to this central filament for support and structure. Sometimes an emperor is such a strand, binding a nation together. Sometimes it is a boy, gifted beyond all others, the outcome of a war hinging upon his actions. But a single strand is not a web. The web needs both the central and tangent strands, or it simply dissolves in the wind.”
“And how many strands will perish because of their connection to me?” Gabriel’s jaw ached with the expression of that question, a query his heart fought to avoid answering.
“How many will live because of their connection to you?” Aurelius placed his finger on the papers before Gabriel. “Could anyone else save Teresa? Would anyone even dare? Is she in more danger for being close to you or safer because of it?”
“I don’t know.” Gabriel frowned as he considered the notion.
“It has been my experience that when one goes to war, the safest place to be is next to the best swordsman.” Aurelius pulled a piece of bread from the loaf on the tray.
“I’m not a very good swordsman yet.” Gabriel eyed the dish of olives, feeling his hunger return as Aurelius’s words sank into his mind.
“Sometimes it is better to be the sword than the swordsman. And you are both.” Aurelius winked and tossed the chewy bread into his mouth.
Gabriel spent much of the rest of that day and the next considering Aurelius’s advice. He felt an odd kinship with the man, one Aurelius also seemed to acknowledge. Both had found themselves at the heart of extraordinary events affecting vast numbers of people, their decisions impacting lives near and cherished, as well as those distant and unknown. Few people could truly understand the weight of the decisions Gabriel had faced and would face. Aurelius knew the costs, personal and collective, of leadership. Gabriel found it a comfort knowing someone who could fathom the depth of the doubt and apprehension accompanying the choices he confronted. He felt thankful fate had thrown the wise Roman emperor into his life.
The night before the attempted extraction, Gabriel sat at the edge of the rickety back porch, staring up at a handful of clouds lazily drifting through the star-filled sky. Gazing at the night sky always calmed his mind. The stars were not nearly as bright as those seen from Windsor Castle so many millions of years in the past. The light pollution inherent to the 21st Century dimmed the night sky even in a place as remote as the woods surrounding the derelict house.
He counted the handful of constellations Teresa had taught him, remembering starry nights like this as they talked in the castle courtyards or sat waiting for some mission to start. She knew all the constellations. Even in the southern hemisphere. She even knew constellations from Mayan and Egyptian astronomy. He studied Polaris, the North Star, the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor, known as the Little Bear. He wondered if Teresa would ever feel for him the riotous mixture of emotions his heart held for her.
Gabriel heard someone step from the house and cross the porch to sit beside him. He continued to stare at the stars, knowing from the way his magic-sense rippled in his mind who sat alongside him.
“It must feel weird for you.”
Gabriel thought about the statement and wondered what about his life didn’t feel weird.
“What do you mean?” Gabriel turned his head to look at Ling.
“Worrying.” Ling laughed and punched Gabriel’s shoulder lightly before throwing her arm around it. He felt his stomach relax for the first time in days under the strength of her arm. “Normally you plunge ahead and follow whatever wild idea or strange instinct has entered your head without taking the time to consider the possible consequences and dangers. Now you’ve spent a whole week thinking about what might go wrong and what it will mean for Teresa and us and you. The worrying must feel weird to you.”
Gabriel considered Ling’s words for a moment. “Is that a compliment or a criticism?”
Ling laughed. “An observation.”
“It feels awful.” Gabriel knew he tended to act too quickly, without waiting to think through the complications of his decisions. He had been trying to work on that fault, but he realized now that deliberative deeds could carry a set of problems absent from decisive action.
“It’s awful for all of us. But not as awful as it could be.” Ling raised her eyes to the stars above. “When Teresa first joined us, she was miserable. She sulked. She cried constantly. It made us all depressed to see how wretched she felt. Nothing Sema did seemed to help. For weeks, I resisted comforting her. I told myself she needed to learn to accept her new life in her own way. And I am not a person who finds affection easy to express. Don’t give me that look. Anyway, that’s what I told myself.
“It wasn’t the truth. The truth was I wanted to comfort her, but I didn’t want to face the feelings it would bring. It would remind me of the children I had lost. The husband I had to leave behind. I feared those feelings. I thought they would overwhelm me. But I was wrong. I found that when I did offer Teresa comfort, it also gave me solace. Helping her heal the wounds of her loss helped me heal my own.”
“How did you comfort her?” Gabriel couldn’t quite imagine Ling playing the role of consoling companion.
“The same why I comfort everyone,” Ling said. “By giving her unrelenting grief until she’d forgotten how much she ached for her family.”
“Like stomping on someone’s toe to help them forget they’ve bumped their head?” Gabriel asked.
“Exactly.” Ling laughed again.
“She’s wrong about you,” Gabriel said. “You’re not like a caramel chocolate that’s all hard and chewy on the inside, you’re more like a cream-filled chocolate that’s soft and gooey inside.”
Ling sniffed and seemed to think about this for a moment. “You may be right.” She lowered her eyes from the stars to look into his. “But don’t forget that outer shell of chocolate is rock hard and will break your teeth if you’re not careful.”
“It’s an observation, not a criticism,” Gabriel said.
“Well, here’s another observation.” Ling squeezed her arm around Gabriel’s shoulders. It felt like a panther had caught him in its grip, but it filled him with warmth. “I’ve s
een you do amazing things. Things I never thought I’d see any mage accomplish. If you say this plan will work, I have complete faith in you. And you have the best team in the castle to help you. Why worry?”
Ling slipped her arm up around Gabriel’s head and brought her free hand around to rub her knuckles lightly against his skull. Gabriel laughed and squirmed away as Ling chuckled in his ear. Her method of comforting might not be conventional, but Gabriel found it compelling in ways that brought tears to his eyes.
He found he slept better that night than he had all week.
The next morning, after a quick breakfast, the team assembled in the backyard and used their amulets to alter their appearances to blend in with the citizens of a Roman town. Gabriel looked at the team, his friends, his new family, as they waited for him to take them into the past, back to Sagalassos, and Teresa.
“Thank you. Thank you for believing.”
No one spoke. They didn’t need to. The stern smiles on their faces said more than could ever be articulated aloud. Gabriel took the chunk of statue from his pocket and looked at Aurelius, wondering how the man would respond to seeing himself carved in stone in the bathhouse. Then he focused on the magical energy of the imprints in the Sword of Unmaking, attuned his space-time sense to the piece of statue in his hand, and transported the team through time to save Teresa from her death.
Chapter 17: Return to Rescue
Cloaked in Sema’s Soul Magic and rendered nearly invisible to the patrons of the Roman bathhouse of Sagalassos, Marcus Aurelius squinted as he stared up at the fifteen-foot statue of himself.
“Not the best likeness I’ve ever seen.” Aurelius turned to Gabriel and the others. “There are far too many of those around.”
“Is everyone prepared?” Ohin watched as the others nodded agreement of their readiness. He placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “Let’s begin.”
Gabriel jumped through space, taking them all to the rooftop of the Nypheum, across the forum plaza from the bathhouse and near the street of Teresa’s deadly accident. He jumped far enough back in time to avoid being seen by any of his previous selves who were watching the street and ultimately, Teresa’s demise. He then jumped through space with each team member to their designated positions along the street, slowly releasing the cloak of Soul Magic around them. Except for Sema, they would each need to rely upon their training to remain unnoticed. They also relied upon their amulets to alter their appearances so there would be no chance of Teresa spotting and recognizing them by accident. Aurelius, with his limited training received at the safe house over the past week, blended in as well, if not better, than the others, appearing to be merely an old Roman man resting against the wall of a home.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 48