“How long does the windbag usually go on for?” Ling looked ready to burst through the screen and attack the room full of Dark Mages.
“I’m not sure.” Gabriel took out his pocket watch. “We’ve only got twenty minutes left.”
“We can’t grab her with a whole room of mages and soldiers watching,” Rajan said.
“Maybe Kumaradevi will finish and clear the room before we run out of time.” Sema tried to sound hopeful.
“I’m really wishing I had some of that wine about now.” Marcus put his eye to the peephole and rubbed his head.
“We should wait as long as possible in case we get lucky, but we need a plan.” Ohin settled his gaze on Gabriel.
“I have a plan.” Gabriel had been giving the options considerable thought ever since glimpsing Teresa through the peephole. He could not abandon her now. No matter what the cost. The sight of her in agony stirred some irrational part of his brain that trampled all notions of caution.
“A plan to fight a room full of Dark Mages?” Fear and determination tinged the edges of Rajan’s voice.
“A plan to distract a room full of Dark Mages,” Gabriel replied.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane’s smiled returned, looking more devious than beatific. “Sleight of hand. Like a magic trick.”
“Exactly.” Gabriel began laying out his plan for the others, glancing down at the watch in his hand while trying to ignore Kumaradevi’s voice still droning on behind them. He realized she’d never finish before their deadline. She loved to gloat and preen to her subjects too much for anything less than an hour, even with one of the Apollyon duplicates standing beside her throne. She would list off all the ancient illusory grievances, present her imagined injustices, parade her plans for revenge, and finally call for volunteers to lead the first assaults. She might go on for more than an hour. They needed to halt her oration and turn the attention of the room away from the throne long enough to rescue Teresa from her perch, suspended in the air above it.
When Gabriel finished explaining his plan, he handed Akikane the small bull statue — the relic key that would return the team to the Primary Continuum where Vicaquirao waited to sever the alternate reality. The others looked at Gabriel with concern and annoyance.
“I know what Teresa would say.” Ling looked as though she might spit on the marble floor.
“Worst. Plan. Ever.” Rajan looked to Akikane and Ohin, clearly hoping one of them would override Gabriel’s newfound leadership decisions.
“Exactly,” Ling said.
“It’s risky, lad,” Marcus said.
“We will lose more than Teresa if it fails,” Sema added.
“That has always been a risk.” Ohin placed his hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “This plan can work.”
“Indeed, indeed,” Akikane said. “And we should work it quickly. While we still have time.”
Gabriel looked again at his watch. They had less than ten minutes now. He turned to Akikane and his teammates. He wanted to say something. Something encouraging. Something inspiring. Something heroic. He settled for something practical.
“If it goes wrong, don’t wait for me.”
Before anyone could respond, Gabriel slid out the back door of the throne room and into the service hall. As he walked, he stripped off the jacket with the red flame emblazoned on it. He needed people to recognize him now. Throwing the coat to the floor, he embraced the imprints of the three daggers and the three concatenate crystals. His stomach lurched with the assumption of so many dark imprints. He added the Grace imprints of his pocket watch to counter them. It did little to help. He focused his mind on his breathing, holding at bay the spark of rage being inflamed by the negative imprints. He could not afford to allow his anger to cloud his judgment in the coming minutes. Too much depended on what he was about to say and do.
He passed through the kitchens again, drawing little attention at first, but as his pace and his manner were gradually noticed, gasps of recognition began to compete with the noise of clanging pans and hustling cooks.
When Gabriel walked through the kitchen doors into the main hall, he encountered a team of six Dark Mages standing sentry duty. He knew they had drawn the responsibility as a penalty for real or imagined infractions. All of the soldiers with any social standing would be in the throne room with Kumaradevi.
Before they became fully aware of his presence, he reached out to them with Soul and Heart-Tree magic. Fortunately, as punishment, they had been given talismans that contained worthless imprints. Gabriel easily overwhelmed their minds and left them standing in a stupor as he strode between them. Had their talismans contained any significant imprints he might have stopped to collect them. Instead, he walked calmly and purposefully toward the towering twin doors that led to the throne room.
Two hulking Wind Mages stood guard on either side of the giant doors. As they saw Gabriel and realized who he was, they reached out toward him with simultaneous attacks of Wind Magic. Gabriel deflected their assaults as he concentrated on their talismans, stealing control of their imprints and robbing them of their magic. He cast the men aside with a flick of Wind Magic before turning that same power toward the doors looming in front of him.
The great doors burst inward with a momentum so powerful that they crashed against the walls, driving their head-sized brass handles into the polished marble walls in a cloud of dust. Gabriel marched through the doorway without pausing to think, without considering the ludicrousness of the path he had set himself to follow.
The sound of the crashing doors drew all eyes toward the entrance and onto Gabriel. Hundreds of Dark Mages turned to face him as Kumaradevi looked up to see the nature of the commotion that had interrupted her presumptive victory speech. Gabriel stopped just inside the threshold of the door, seeing the look of rage upon Kumaradevi’s face and how it contrasted with the confusion clouding the continence of the Apollyon duplicate standing beside her throne.
Gabriel felt a space-time seal fall in place around him, held there by the Apollyon ambassador. He had expected this. It would give his adversaries a false sense of advantage. Now his plan fell into motion. His part needed to be convincing in order to provide the necessary distraction for his teammates.
He focused solely on Kumaradevi. Her dark eyes and beautiful, angular face floated above the fabric of the red and gold dress flowing off the throne and down the steps of the dais. The garment twinkled with reflected light from the many concatenate crystals sewn into the fabric. Gabriel continued to stare at her. He did not risk looking where Teresa floated above her head for fear of drawing notice to the very thing he need to lure attention away from.
“This seems so familiar. You before a room of incompetents, boasting of things you will never accomplish. No wonder you had to hide in this world.” Hopefully those words held her attention.
“How did you find this place?” Kumaradevi’s voice rang with anger. She remained seated, but her hands gripped the arms of her throne as though she might leap to her feet at any moment.
“You are not the only one to have made new friends.” Gabriel nodded to the Apollyon ambassador with a smirk. “Vicaquirao says hello.”
Gabriel observed a shift in the faces of both Kumaradevi and the Apollyon ambassador. The knowledge that Vicaquirao knew how to access Kumaradevi’s alternate kingdom implied things neither Dark Mage found pleasant. Before they had time to consider the full ramifications of Gabriel’s statement, he added another. One he hoped would prove even more provocative.
“I have come to offer terms of a truce.”
A murmur swept through the kneeling soldiers, rushing outward like the wave of a pebble dropped in a still pond. Gabriel used this commotion as cover to sneak a glance toward the ceiling where Teresa floated in her cage of lightning. He discerned the faint outline of six bodies cloaked in the invisibility of Wind Magic, rising to meet Teresa near the ceiling. Ling used small amounts of Wind Magic to bend light around the team and avoid attracting attention while Akikan
e used a similarly limited amount of Wind Magic to fly them slowly to their destination above the throne.
They were almost there. Gabriel quickly flicked his eyes back to Kumaradevi.
“Silence!” Kumaradevi’s bellowed word echoed throughout the marble walls, the room instantly falling quiet as the vibrations of her voice faded. “What truce do you speak of?”
“A truce that will provide all sides with what they desire.” Gabriel resisted the urge to look upward again. His teammates needed another few seconds. And he needed to place a believable proposal before Kumaradevi and the Apollyon ambassador.
“The Council has authorized me to offer the following terms: we divide the Continuum among us. You may remain unmolested in this alternate realm while the Council will retain control of the past up to the year 2012. The Apollyons will have dominion over the future beyond 2012, but the Great Barrier of Probability will remain intact. All of the Apollyon duplicates will need to cross the Barrier as it is, sealing them away from the past.”
It was, of course, a ridiculous plan, but Gabriel hoped it illuminated for Kumaradevi the Apollyons’ true desires. If they only wanted to rule the future beyond the year 2012, they could do so at any time by crossing the Great Barrier. They would never be satisfied with anything less than control of the entire Continuum. He also hoped it provoked a few seconds of argument that he needed for his plan work.
“Your proposal is too little, too late,” the Apollyon ambassador said with a laugh.
“I pronounce judgment here.” Kumaradevi turned to glower at the Apollyon.
Gabriel used this moment to glance upwards again. As he did so, a cry rang out through the chamber. Gabriel turned toward the scream ringing against the marble walls to see a servant at the edge of the room, pointing toward the ceiling. The candlelit chandeliers hanging from the ceiling created a flickering illumination that Ling’s low intensity Wind Magic could not easily disperse. The effect rendered her magical field of invisibility only partially successful. While the team would not be seen from anyone’s peripheral vision, they were obvious if looked at directly.
As the eyes of Kumaradevi, the Apollyon ambassador, and hundreds of soldiers rose to follow the servant’s outstretched arm, Gabriel blended Wind and Fire Magic to create an exploding shockwave of gravity, heat, and light. The growing ball of flame and force tossed the soldiers surrounding him outward in a rapidly expanding circle. Even before the edge of the surging fireball reached the walls, he gathered his Wind Magic and launched himself into the air. The space-time seal around him did not break, and his only hope of escaping the room alive was to reach Akikane and Ohin before they used the tiny carved bull to jump back to the Primary Continuum. The three of them together could disrupt the space-time seal and rescue Teresa and the team.
Screams of anger and pain and fear shattered the air as Gabriel soared to his awaiting companions. Even though his speed of flight might be fast enough to elude the eyes seeking him, halfway to his destination, fifty yards from Teresa and the others, he knew they could not make it away from this world. He felt a space-time seal fall around Akikane and Ohin and the team — a seal far too powerful for them to break though.
Pain began to wrack his body as dozens of unseen Wind Magic hands dragged him to the ground. He fought back as best he could, seeing Akikane and the rest of the team pulled to the floor as they tried to repel the magical violence allayed against them. Winning a fight with the Apollyon ambassador and Kumaradevi alone would have been improbable. Especially as the Empress commanded the imprints from dozens of concatenate crystals stitched into her ornate dress.
The hundreds of Dark Mages filling the room, angered now by Gabriel’s attack, rendered his escape impossible. His plan had failed. If they did not find a way to elicit their freedom in the next few moments, it would all end when Vicaquirao severed the entire alternate world from the Primary Continuum and they ceased to exist.
The knowledge of Kumaradevi’s irrevocable demise provided some small comfort to Gabriel as the dark magical forces compelled him, groaning, to his knees. He could barely see straight with the Soul and Heart-Tree Magic stabbing into his brain. His arms quivered as he tried to keep himself from falling face first onto the marble floor. The negative imprints he held were ripped away from him, and he clung to the Grace imprints of his pocket watch.
Akikane, Ohin, and the rest of the team slammed into the floor beside him, writhing and moaning in pain. Gabriel found his head forced upward to look directly into Kumaradevi’s eyes, a fury burning in them that seemed it might set the room aflame with their intensity. Far above, still hovering near the ceiling, Teresa floated in a prison of electric arcs.
“You will find your future far different from the one you described.” Kumaradevi’s voice rasped with uncontrolled emotion. “Your future will be filled with pain and suffering beyond your feeble imagination until the day I grant you the mercy of perpetual servitude. Your punishment will be the cries of your companions and your rewards will be their deaths. You will witness everything you have ever loved destroyed and you will thank me for it as you help me destroy all else that you have held dear. Your life will be an endless misery compounded by the knowledge that nothing will ever reprieve you from your despair. This will be your future.”
Tears of agony streamed down Gabriel’s trembling cheeks, his besieged body quaking against the onslaught of magic. He wished he could look at his watch. To see how many minutes remained of this torment — how many seconds. There could not be many. Regardless, he would not allow what little time he had to be spent in anything other than defiance.
“There is no future.”
Kumaradevi looked at Gabriel quizzically, opening her smirking mouth to reply as a voice sliced through the air. A voice filled with terror and disbelief.
“The palace is on fire!”
Gabriel could not see who had entered the room, but suspected one of Kumaradevi’s attendants from the tenor and accent of the man’s voice.
“What do you mean?” Kumaradevi appeared confused by the phrase, as though it could not possibly describe reality. Beside her, the Apollyon ambassador suddenly appeared anxious.
“The palace and the city are on fire.” The attendant’s voice came closer with each running footstep. “Mages are attacking soldiers and guards. The streets and halls are bedlam.”
“What mages?” Kumaradevi’s attention passed completely from Gabriel to the approaching attendant. He felt the pain ease, but not cease, with her diverted concern.
As if in answer to Kumaradevi’s query, a familiar voice rang through the air.
“The true Mages of Light, tyrant!”
Gabriel’s muscles worked well enough now to turn his head to where he beheld a sight so inspiring as to be nearly unfathomable. Gerrad stood in the towering doorway to the throne room, hundreds of men and woman rapidly filling the space behind him. All of them were armed with swords or short carbine rifles. Gabriel knew those holding swords to be the Grace Mages of the rebellion. He could see concatenate crystals glowing at their necks.
“How dare…” Kumaradevi’s next words were forever lost in the tsunami of sound that crashed upon the room with the rebel Grace Mages’ simultaneous assault. Balls of flame and arcs of lightning filled the hall as the sound of gunfire and clashing swords reverberated through the air.
The Apollyon ambassador fell to the ground as a bullet struck his leg. Kumaradevi screamed in rage as the side of her arm exploded with blood from a rifle shot. The ground shook with blasts that deafened, the air filling with sulfurous smoke. The rebels had grenades.
Gabriel felt the magics that had been impaling him with pain vanish in the ensuing cacophony. The space-time seal also evaporated. He quickly scanned the battle being fought around him. He and his companions seemed forgotten in the heat of combat as Kumaradevi and her troops defended her throne. The Apollyon ambassador had disappeared from sight behind a wall of soldiers pushing to reach the fight at the front of the room.
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He turned to Akikane. The elder mage nodded, his panted breathing too quick for words. Gabriel pulled his pocket watch from his pants and cupped it in his shaking hand. They had less than a minute. He reassumed command of the imprints of the pocket watch, the tainted dagger, and the three concatenate crystals, forcing space-time to bend around him slightly as he readied the Wind Magic he needed. A moment later, he and Akikane and the rest of the team floated in the air near the ceiling. Teresa hovered only a few feet away in a web of lightning, her mouth open in a silent scream of agony, her eyes rolled back into her head with the pain of her magical captivity. Knowing he did not have the time, he didn’t bother trying to figure out the magic necessary to release her.
The mêlée below them grew in intensity and violence, the rebel mages and foot soldiers gaining the upper hand as more of them poured into the room with every passing moment. Gabriel saw Kumaradevi standing in the center of a phalanx of her troops, dispensing deadly magic to the rebels seeking to unseat her from power. He wasted no more time or thought on what might happen. He had only seconds to escape.
Akikane held the small bull statue in his hand. The blackness of time travel filled Gabriel’s mind. His space-time sense tugged and twisted as the darkness became brilliance, fading with their arrival among the clay and stone ruins of a small village.
Gabriel turned to Teresa, the magical sphere of lightning vanishing, as he had hoped, with the distance in time and space from the dark alternate world. With the sudden absence of the magical torture that had confined her, she collapsed into unconsciousness. He crawled to her, holding her head in his hands, pushing her hair from her face as he kissed her forehead.
“Your return does not leave much time.”
Gabriel looked up to see Vicaquirao standing above him. “I will sever the world if you wish to observe.”
Gabriel did not have time to wonder why he might want to watch Vicaquirao sever Kumaradevi’s world, or why he would choose to do so rather than caring for Teresa, wounded and battered in his arms. Instead, the air became heat and light and sound and vibration. The power of the sun fell down upon the earth. A fiery hand pressed into his flesh.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 81