Gabriel and Teresa’s amused laughter ceased in unison as they looked at each other and then their friends around the table. They shifted uncomfortably in their seats. Gabriel felt his face burning so hot he nearly grabbed a glass of water to douse himself as first Marcus then Sema, then Ling and Rajan and Ohin and Paramata and Nefferati and Elizabeth, and finally, Akikane burst into laughter that filled the night air. As their embarrassment turned to amusement, he and Teresa’s laughter joined that of their friends, lifting their hearts.
Sometime later, after more merriment and more food and more plans for the future, Gabriel and Teresa sat on a bench beneath an oak tree in the Horseshoe Cloister, holding hands and staring up at the moon rising above the Curfew Tower, its light bathing them in a soft, luminescent glow.
“We did it.” Teresa shrugged her shoulders as though releasing a long held tension.
“Did what?” Gabriel asked, absentmindedly pulling the small hourglass from his pocket and checking it before the light of the moon.
“Put it all right,” Teresa said. “Kumaradevi, the Apollyons, The Great Barrier, and us. That’s the best part.”
“Yes.” Gabriel turned to Teresa, admiring her face in the moonlight. “That is the best part. The best part of the future too.”
“A very long future, hopefully.” Teresa turned to Gabriel seeing the hourglass in his hand. “Still no idea what that’s for?”
“Nope.” Gabriel flipped the glass upside down. A single grain of sand defied gravity to rest against the upturned base of the glass. “The sand only flows in one direction, and very slowly. It could take years to empty. Decades, even.”
“So, you’re supposed to do something years from now, but you have no idea what?” Teresa raised a finger to touch the hourglass. “That’s so very Vicaquirao.”
“He said I’d figure it out eventually.” Gabriel slid the hourglass back in his pocket. “Looks like I’ve got plenty of time to think about it.”
“Meanwhile, I could suggest something else to occupy your mind.” Teresa’s mischievous smile, the one Gabriel found so appealing, slowly spread across her lips.
“A game of chess?” Gabriel teased. “Or checkers? A hand of cards?”
“I’d beat you at all of those.” Teresa leaned closer to Gabriel. “I was thinking of something where we could both win.”
“A jigsaw puzzle?” Gabriel leaned toward Teresa, two magnets irresistibly drawn together.
“You can stop being clever to impress me, I’m already in love with you.”
Gabriel closed his mouth and opened his mind as his lips met with Teresa’s, his heart welling in his chest as his thoughts flew away, erasing all concern of castles and councils and mages and wars and dangers and problems and futures unseen as he simply kissed the girl he loved.
They stayed like that on the bench for a very long time.
And they remembered that night for the rest of their lives.
The Last Chapter
Vicaquirao emerged from the eternal brilliance of time travel to stand exactly where he had stood only moments, and decades, ago. Robert Scott’s expedition hut from over a hundred years earlier still stood nearby. He looked past the shed at the mountains of Antarctica and shivered against the chill wind. He had timed his arrival perfectly. Only seconds remained.
Vicaquirao stood beside that artic ice on October 28th in the year 2012 at 4:44 p.m. Greenwich Standard Time. As the seconds passed, he looked around, taking in the last moments of time before what he had always considered the unknowable future. At the moment when the Great Barrier of Probability divided time, he shivered again, stamping his feet after crossing it. He stood in the same place, in a future separated from the past — separated from everyone he knew in the past, as well.
He took a small nail out from his pocket and held it in his hand. Twisting space and time around himself, he appeared a moment later behind a dilapidated house, weeds fighting with wild grass to fill the small backyard. Vicaquirao slid the nail back in his pocket and closed his eyes. His features shimmered, his flesh wavering as it transformed from one state to another. He stood taller, looked younger, and processed a different face with a similar shade of skin but much darker hair.
A second man stepped from the house to stand on the rickety wooden boards of the back porch. The man touched a hand to his curly grey beard, cropped close like the locks of his head. He seemed confused. He walked forward off the porch and into the tall weeds and stared at the first man.
“Gabriel?”
“Hello Aurelius.”
“You look so much older.”
“I am older. It’s so good to see you again.”
The man who had appeared to be Vicaquirao, the man the boy named Gabriel Salvador had grown to be, stepped forward to his old friend, Marcus Aurelius Antonius Augustus, former emperor of Rome, and embraced him in his powerful arms. Gabriel, who had been pretending to be Vicaquirao in order to save his own younger duplicate self from death, felt a sense of relief at the conclusion of that particular mission. It had taken him nearly a decade to realize the purpose of the hourglass and its implications.
Eight years after saving the Great Barrier of Probability a voice had pierced his mind while in the middle of a mission to recover a stolen concatenate crystal. A voice he knew speaking words he remembered all too well.
Help me!
He had ignored it, hoping his imagination might be playing tricks on him. Fifteen years later, while looking for a particularly important relic, he heard it again. He did not ignore the voice that time but did not know what to do about it. He realized that in both instances, he had been in the same time frame as an anchor point. The voice had been his own. A version of his own. His voice as he died that day in Scotland.
The third time he heard the voice came five years later as he stood near an anchor point in ancient Babylon, watching the final grain of sand empty from the hourglass. That could not be ignored, and he knew exactly what it meant — yet one more paradox haunted his life. It had not been Vicaquirao who had saved him. He had saved himself. Would save himself. And would give his younger self the tiny hourglass to ensure it.
Eventually, he had convinced himself to embrace the paradox, and his life, and do his duty. As it always had, contemplating his duty brought his mind back to the man from whom he had learned the most about the subject.
“I do not understand.” Aurelius held Gabriel by the shoulders, a look of wonder and confusion filling his face. “I thought you couldn’t cross the Barrier without being trapped here in the future. What are you doing here?”
“I thought you might be hungry.” Gabriel smiled, wrinkles creasing the corners of his eyes. “I thought I would take you to lunch.”
“Lunch?” Aurelius laughed. “I could use a meal, but…”
Time and space bent around them, a flurry of deep darkness and infinite illumination that left them standing atop a castle tower overlooking rolling fields. A thick wall connected the tower to another and another, encircling a small town. A woman sat on a checkered blanket spread across the stone floor of the tower. She looked exactly as she always had, only years older. She leapt to her feet and threw her arms around the former emperor.
“Aurelius! It’s so good to see you.” Teresa kissed Aurelius on his bearded cheek. “It’s been too long.”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “We would have come earlier, but we were busy.”
“Earlier?” Aurelius said. “It’s only been a few hours since I fell across the Barrier.”
“Hours for you.” Gabriel gestured for them to sit down. “Quite a bit longer for us.”
“Where are we?” Aurelius asked, looking at the fields below the massive stone walls.
“The walls of Avila in Spain,” Gabriel said.
“The year 2015,” Teresa added.
Aurelius turned slowly from the vista beyond the crenellations of the tower and back to Gabriel and Teresa. “It is good to see you both still together. It is not often young love
lasts so long.”
“There were a few years where we became confused.” Gabriel frowned slightly at the memory.
“Long, painful years.” Teresa grabbed Gabriel’s hand. “But that is the past and we are here for the future. And for you.”
“Me?” Aurelius said. “You should not have worried about me. After all, I did lead a nation once. I would have managed. And now you are both trapped here with me in the future, away from your friends.”
“Well, most people would be trapped.” Gabriel said.
“You said someone could only cross the Barrier in the direction of the future,” Aurelius said.
“He’s very clever when he wants to be.” Teresa began pulling cheese, bread, fruit, and a bottle of wine from a wicker basket at her side.
“Clever enough to listen to someone twice as clever as I’ll ever be,” Gabriel pulled three wine glasses from the basket.
“You mean we can go back, across the Barrier, into the past?” Aurelius took an empty glass from Gabriel.
“As Teresa pointed out to me, when you build a wall to keep people from getting in, it is usually wise to build oneself a secret passage in case you need to get out. Or back in again.” Gabriel poured the wine.
“It’s a long story.” Teresa handed Aurelius a small plate of cheese and bread and dried sausage.
“We’ll have plenty of time to explain.” Gabriel felt bashful as he looked into the eyes of his old friend. “We need your help.”
“In the future,” Teresa said.
“About a thousand years in the future,” Gabriel said. “Surprisingly, these walls are still standing.”
“I don’t know how I can possibly help you with anything, but if I can, I will,” Aurelius said.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “We’ll explain as much as we can while we eat, but there is a great deal to do.”
“There always is,” Teresa laughed.
“Then may I offer a toast.” Aurelius lifted his glass. “To old friends. And the future.”
Gabriel and Teresa raised their glasses while repeating Aurelius’s words. Gabriel sipped the wine, smiling at Teresa and Aurelius as he placed his glass down. There would always be a future, even though he would one day cease to have a future of his own. He had once thought that day to have come by drowning in a bus at the bottom of a river. He had been wrong. He had thought his future to have expired many times since, but each time, fate, and just as often, his friends, had pulled him away from the end of destiny to continue onward through life. He knew that eventually a day would come when fate would not save him, when no friend’s hand could pull him back from the brink, when his future would finally unravel and come to an end. He could not know when that time might come. It might arrive in centuries as easily as seconds. All he could do was be thankful for the time he had. Time to spend with old friends. Time to spend with Teresa, the girl who had become a woman — a woman who had saved him more times than anyone — most often from himself. Time to live, to love, and to do the things that only the Seventh True Mage could do.
Time to save the future.
The End of The Wizard of Time Trilogy
About the Author
After a childhood spent whizzing through the galaxy in super sleek starships and defeating treacherously evil monsters in long forgotten kingdoms, G.L. Breedon grew up to write science fiction and fantasy novels. He lives with his wife in Brooklyn, NY.
He is also the author of:
The Sword of Unmaking (The Wizard of Time – Book 2)
The Dark Shadow of Spring (The Young Sorcerer’s Guild – Book 1)
Summer’s Cauldron (The Young Sorcerer’s Guild – Book 2)
The Celestial Blade
For more information or to sign up for G.L. Breedon’s mailing list, please visit:
Kosmosaicbooks.com
Word of mouth and recommendations are essential in helping an author’s work find new readers. If you enjoyed The Wizard of Time, please consider writing a short review at Amazon. Even a few words would be very helpful.
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Dedication
Thanks to my parents, for encouraging me to follow my dreams, no matter how long it might take.
Thanks to Andrea Clark, my constant first reader, for her lifelong friendship and diligent editing.
Thanks to my wife, Tsufit, for her boundless faith, her unceasing love, and her endless patience.
The First Chapter of The Dark Shadow of Spring
(The Young Sorcerer’s Guild – Book 1)
Chapter One: Race Through Runewood
Pedals reversed, gears locked, and thin rubber tires squealed across the ancient cobblestones of the narrow street. A sneaker-clad foot slid from a pedal and scraped along the cobblestones to steady the Schwinn Red Phantom bicycle as it made the sharp turn onto Tulip Street. Then the foot slammed back in place on the pedal, the rolled blue jean pant leg slapping against the chain guard as thin legs pumped hard and the bicycle picked up speed again. The bike swerved, braked, and swerved again to miss a big-boned woman with a bag of groceries stepping into the street.
“Alex Ravenstar, you reckless hellion!” the woman shouted. “Your mother’s going to hear about this!”
The wind whipped through Alex’s short black hair as he tried to stifle the grin that spread out across his long, angular face. How many times had he heard those words in his thirteen years?
“Sorry, Mrs. Gumblson!” Alex called out over his shoulder, catching a glance of the rotund woman’s red-faced glare as she stomped off across the street.
“You’re in trouble now.”
Alex glanced over to see his sister, Nina, pedaling up beside him, her long, pitch-black hair flapping in the wind behind her. She was grinning as widely as Alex.
“She won’t tell Mom,” Alex said as he leaned back on his seat and coasted beside his sister. “She never does.”
“It’s not Mom you have to worry about,” Nina said, her dark brown eyes alight with mischievous delight. “It’s me!” Nina yanked the handlebars of her bike and veered sharply toward her brother. Alex swerved to avoid colliding with Nina and reversed the pedals of his bike, braking to a screeching halt at the side of the street.
Nina hooted with glee over her shoulder. Then she pedaled faster than ever. Alex started after his devious sibling and wondered, not for the first time, whether he was a bad influence on her or she was a bad influence on him. Either way, he wasn’t about to let his eleven-year-old little sister beat him in a bike race.
Alex jumped up and threw his full weight down on the right pedal as he pushed off with his left foot. Seconds later, bike chain clanking as gears spun, he sped to catch up with his sister, slowly narrowing the gap with each revolution of the wheels.
Alex and Nina raced along the curving streets of the town of Runewood, turning off Tulip Street onto Main Street and whizzing past Sparrow and Hawk Streets, down to the town center where small shops and houses were intermingled and snuggled up against each other. They pedaled past the Thakar family’s dress shop and Mrs. Stephonopolous’s meat market. They whisked by the tobacconist Mr. Amamander standing next to Mr. Pak outside his bookstore before careening across the street outside the Truffaut Café and DeSoto’s Green Grocery.
Leaning hard into the curve of the street, they circled the massive monument at the heart of the town, rushing past the stone faces of a man, a woman, a dwarf, a giant, and a tree elf. By the time they sped past the town movie theater, its marquee listing the weekly double feature of Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Forbidden Planet, Alex had once again pressed the advantage of his size and age to pull up even with his sister.
Nina looked at him and stuck her tongue out as they neared the Poonjari bakeshop. A petite Indian girl with dark brown skin, ink-black hair, and otherworldly emerald green eyes stood outside the bakeshop. She held a bright green bicycle and wore a hunter green flannel shirt above an old pair of jeans with the pant legs rolled up. Alex and Nin
a laughed at the girl as they rushed past.
“Hades' hairpiece!” Alex heard the girl curse behind him. The girl was Daphne Poonjari, a founding member of the Young Sorcerers Guild and Alex’s oldest friend. She loved to curse. And she hated to lose a race.
Alex pulled ahead of Nina and braked hard as he pulled onto Raven Street. He could hear his sister puffing behind him to keep up. He stood up to pedal harder, afraid to look back for fear he would lose control of the bike. The cobblestones of Runewood’s streets were picturesque, but it had been centuries since they were level, which made racing along them much like running an obstacle course. Alex banked to his left, leaning deep into the turn onto North Street. The street ran straight up to the Azure River, the old docks, and the Ravenstone Bridge. The cobblestones of North Street were a bit more even and Alex was just about to risk a look back over his shoulder when he heard the roar of a truck engine and felt a rush of wind.
“Slow poke!” Daphne shouted, her ponytail whipping in the wind as she whizzed past him, one hand steering her bicycle and the other grasping the tailgate of Mr. Wilson’s old Plymouth truck as it sped down the street.
Alex shook his head in disbelief. Daphne was the most courageous member of the Young Sorcerers Guild, but she was also the most reckless. Thanks to the bewitching beauty of her mother, a dryad wood nymph, Daphne was both the shortest and most striking girl of her age in town. It was a combination she hated. Her size and prettiness gave many boys the impression that she needed someone to look out for her. To compensate, Daphne liked to prove that she could not only take care of herself, but also that she could accomplish more than any boy could. She was hardly ever wrong.
“Look out!” Alex heard Nina yell from much closer behind him than he expected. Alex saw what Nina was shouting about just as Daphne turned and saw the same thing. An empty flatbed wagon hitched to a horse sat on the side of the street right in front of Daphne. Thanks to the speed of Mr. Wilson’s truck, she was going far too fast to stop, but if she didn’t do something quick, she’d run right into the back of the wagon.
The Wizard of Time Trilogy (A Fantasy Time Travel Series) Page 91