by Amber Carew
"Fine, but if he wanders off, you go looking for him."
Chapter 8
When they arrived back at Delphi, Merlin leaped from Rand’s arms and trotted along beside them as they made their way to the Oracle. The building, which was now merely a floor and some small remains of walls, was cordoned off with ropes to preserve the ancient structure by stopping the erosion that would be caused by countless tourists walking across the surface.
Merlin leaped onto the ruins of a nearby wall, then made his way higher until he perched two meters above them. With the clear moonlight silhouetting his regal form, he looked like an ancient Egyptian cat god surveying his realm. Lucinda glanced at the nearly-full moon hanging high in the ink-black sky. Rand had chosen a good night for this little adventure. The energy of the moon in this phase would augment their powers--and they could use all the help they could get.
Rand cast a spell to protect the temple floor from their weight, then he ducked under one of the ropes. Lucinda followed and crossed to the point where she felt the greatest flow of energy. She unrolled a small mat, set the crystal ball in the center, then placed the quartz points around the sphere to help focus the energy. She sat cross-legged facing the ball. Rand folded himself into the same position beside her.
"I don’t have a picture of Clarissa, so I’ll project her image into the crystal ball. That way you can focus on her with me. Concentrate on taking us back to an hour before her last presence here on Earth."
Merlin bleated.
Rand wants to prove to me that Nyte killed Clarissa.
Merlin bleated again.
No, I don’t believe Nyte hurt anyone, but Rand does. Going back will give us both some answers.
The moonlight shone on Rand’s face, exaggerating the sharp angles of his features. He stared deeply into the crystal ball, his eyes focused and intense. The snowflake impurities in the crystal, which gave it so much character, started to glitter, then swirled as though caught in a winter wind, but in slow motion. They twisted and curled in a slow spiral, then coalesced into the image of a face.
Blue eyes, the color of lapis, stared back at her from the depths of clear crystal. She was stunning. Auburn hair cascaded over her shoulders. Delicately arched eyebrows and a classic nose framed her large, striking eyes.
Lucinda’s gaze flicked to Rand. The depth of his pain showed clearly in his misty, blue eyes. He must miss her terribly.
Merlin had moved beside Rand, staring at the ball with a more focused gaze than she would have expected from her feline friend. He sat close to Rand, as though to offer moral support.
"She’s beautiful, Rand."
Rand nodded. He did not remove his gaze from the ball, but he did blink a couple of times, resetting his features to an expression of indifference.
Almost.
"Now concentrate," he said, his voice perfectly level. "I will visualize the time and place we’re targeting. You focus on moving us backward in time."
Just like when they drove together in a car, he was the navigator, and she the driver. Just as well. It was bad enough getting lost in spatial dimensions. Taking a wrong turn in time was an event she’d like to avoid. Anyway, he had been where and when they were going so he could get a clear fix on it.
She closed her eyes and drew in a deep breath, relaxing her body. The moon shone down on her and she imagined the clear, crystal, white light spilling over her, enhancing the power building inside. She took Rand’s hand, wrapping her fingers around his, and felt his power join with hers. As she concentrated, she felt the energy emanating from the Oracle gathering around her, like a cocoon of flower petals pressing against her aura.
The weight of her body diminished and she seemed to float upward, as though she were a hot air balloon rising toward the clouds. The sensation lasted for several moments until suddenly gravity seemed to kick in, and she felt as though she were plunging downward. Her stomach accelerated to the top of her chest, then dropped to her knees. She tightened her fingers around Rand’s, clinging to him like a life preserver in the wild currents of time.
Passage of time in the normal sense was meaningless, but it seemed like an eon before the tumultuous ride slowed. As though they were skimming down a water slide, years splashed by like water droplets. Suddenly, she tumbled off the end and landed soundly on hard ground. Disorientation sent her senses spinning and she clutched Rand’s hand tighter.
She opened her eyes to see they were surrounded by a dark mist. A residue from their long trip through the centuries?
She pushed herself to her knees and peered around.
"Don’t worry, Lucinda," Rand said. "I’ve enclosed us in a bubble of invisibility so no one will see or hear us."
Through the dark fog, Lucinda saw the hazy shape of a lone figure. As the mist slowly dissipated, she saw that it was a man slumped on a wooden chair, his head resting in his hands. His shoulders shook in violent shudders and his anguish trembled through the air. Beyond him lay the charred remains of a room. The acrid smell of burned wood filled her nostrils as she watched him slowly lift his head.
Her breath caught.
He was a young version of Rand. Even younger than the one standing beside her. Probably only nineteen. The sorrow marring his tear-streaked face tore at her heart. She wanted to reach out and comfort him, to fill the void she sensed had been carved from his heart.
The Rand beside her bolted to his feet. "We haven’t gone back far enough." He grasped Lucinda’s hand and closed his eyes. "Concentrate. We must move one hour further into the past."
Reluctantly, she closed her eyes on the young Rand, knowing that as much as she wished otherwise, she could do nothing for him. He had to make his own way and recover from whatever horrendous event had befallen him as best he could. Whatever path he’d taken had shaped him into the man who stood by her side.
She concentrated and they tumbled into time again, but they didn’t seem to move. She pushed as hard as she could, but to no effect. It felt like a barrier had been planted in their way.
"Maybe we need some momentum," Lucinda suggested. "Let’s try a running start, focusing further back than this day."
Rand nodded, then directed them forward in time a few months, then they both concentrated on speeding back through time. They flung headlong into a very tangible barrier, then toppled back into regular time.
Again, the young Rand from the past sat in front of them, grappling with his pain. She could feel it reflected in her Rand. She placed her hand on his arm. His muscles felt like steel bands beneath her fingers, drawn taut in anguish. Her heart ached for him. She didn’t want him to relive this awful pain.
"This isn’t working," she said in her most gentle voice, trying to draw him from his emotional turmoil. "Let’s go back.
His fists clenched. "But we’re so close. I need to know what happened. Why he did what he did." His gaze locked on hers, desperation glazing his eyes frosty blue. His fingers clamped around her upper arms. "Lucinda, we must keep trying."
She eased herself from his grip--knowing he didn’t mean to squeeze so tightly it hurt--and held his hands.
"Rand, if we keep this up, we’ll run out of energy. Remember, the Oracle in this time period is not the supercharged version of the time we left, and we only have so much of its energy stored in our crystals. Once that’s gone, we could be stuck here, with no power source strong enough to send us back."
"But we’re so close." His words sounded as tight as a rubber band about to snap.
"We might as well be a million years away. Whatever this barrier is, it’s stronger than we can overcome."
He slammed his fist on the mat. "Nyte. This is his doing."
Poor Rand. He was grasping at any explanation.
"You think he erected the barrier? That doesn’t make sense. He doesn’t even know how to cast a basic protection spell, let alone--"
The glare Rand sent her stopped her words. Mr. Skeptical didn’t believe that and she knew it.
"Even if
he could, why would he?" she asked.
"He doesn’t want me to prove to you what kind of monster he is."
She could sense the extreme vibrations in his energy field, a sure indication his stress level zoomed toward overload. She placed her hand on his shoulder.
"We won’t find the answers you’re looking for here, Rand. We must go back."
His head slumped forward. She glanced at the young Rand in the room and the Rand by her side and saw the same extreme emotions reflected in their features. Anguish and a deep sense of loss.
Normally, she would not intrude into someone’s personal feelings, but it was important she understand more about this situation. She sensed the turmoil of the younger Rand, who clearly did not have the ability to shield his emotions as well as his older self.
His emotions tore through her, sucked into a bottomless pit of agony in the center of his soul. The foundations of his life had been shaken by whatever event had just occurred.
Trust and love for a man he cared for very much had been shattered. For a man named Nyte. And for someone else. For someone closer to him than anyone else....
The realization struck her like a lightning bolt.
The other someone was himself.
He was suffering from a profound case of guilt.
She took Rand’s hand, squeezing it gently, wishing she had words to offer that would help. But nothing could help unless he let it.
She realized his hand felt fragile and old. She glanced at him and noticed his hair had gone white again and his face was lined with wrinkles.
Right now, the best she could do was get him out of this place.
"Let’s go," she urged.
She concentrated and directed them back to the present. Rand didn’t interfere. When the mists cleared, she drew in a sigh of relief as she saw the ruins of Delphi, illuminated in moonlight, appear around them. Merlin sauntered up beside her, glanced at Rand’s bowed head, then turned to stare at her.
She pet Merlin’s head.
It was a rough ride.
She took Rand’s hand and tugged him to his feet. "Rand, I’ll take you home now. You need to rest."
"No, not yet." He glanced at the crystal ball. "Let me try one more thing."
"But, Rand--"
He squeezed her hands. "Lucinda, it’s important you understand what happened."
She suspected there was more to it than that. He seemed to be looking for some kind of answer.
He sat down facing the crystal ball again and gestured for her to do the same. "Maybe we can’t go back in time physically, but there is something else we can try."
"You want to call up an image of what happened?" she asked.
Since this would take much less energy than moving themselves physically through time, and with the energy of the Oracle working with them directly, they should be able to break through the barrier. She didn’t know who could have erected it, but whoever it was would have to be here directing the energy against them personally to have any kind of chance of stopping them from viewing the past. Either that, or he was a more powerful wizard than she could imagine.
"All right," she agreed.
Rand took her hand and stared into the crystal ball. She concentrated on sending Rand whatever energy he needed to accomplish his goal. The image of Clarissa dissipated, replaced by the swirling snowflakes. Another image appeared, this time of Nyte. He looked just as he did now, but his clothes were of an ancient style, including a long, black cape, and his hair flowed freely around his shoulders. A long sword hung at his side and an expression of anger colored his face.
The scene shifted slightly to include Clarissa. She stood staring at Nyte, clearly in confrontation, her expression also hardened by anger. Lucinda’s heart clenched at the sight of Nyte with this other woman. They were at odds in the scene before her, but anger like that only occurred between people who cared deeply for one another.
Rand’s hand tightened around hers and she could feel excitement pulsing through him, intermingled with a deep, throbbing ache.
Lucinda wondered what the heated argument was about. The room they moved through was the room they’d seen Rand in when they’d traveled back in time, but clearly before whatever destructive force had hit.
Nyte stalked toward Clarissa and she tilted her chin up defiantly. When Lucinda saw the resultant rage in Nyte’s face, a chill quivered up her spine. At that moment in time, he truly did look dangerous.
Could Rand be right after all? Could Nyte have done the terrible thing Rand accused him of?
The chill rippling along her spine increased and dizziness overtook her brain. She gripped Rand’s hand tighter.
As the feeling of disorientation increased, she realized this was more than a reaction to what she was seeing inside the crystal. She felt something peculiar. Like a presence around them.
The scene with Nyte and Clarissa grew cloudy, the sphere darkening as though full of black smoke, then slowly clearing until finally it regained its translucent state. It stood empty, revealing only the ruins around them reflected in its polished surface.
She turned to Rand. "What was that? It felt like some kind of...."
Her words trailed off as she saw that Rand still stared into the crystal ball, his eyes glazed as though under some kind of trance. Still searching for an answer.
She placed her hand on his arm, offering energy if he needed it. A moment later, he turned his gaze to hers. "It was a spell blocking us from the past, and it had the same feel as Nyte’s magic."
It had certainly felt different than any magic she had ever experienced. Stronger. But something more. It had been almost... otherworldly.
As for it being Nyte’s magic, she didn’t believe that, but she didn’t want to argue with Rand. He seemed too fragile.
A thought occurred to her. Just as Rand had tried to use the crystal ball to convince her of Nyte’s misdeeds, maybe she could use it to convince Rand that Nyte had actually lost his memory.
"Why don’t we try to find out when and how Nyte got amnesia?" she suggested.
She focused again and this time the ball revealed a dark scene. It appeared to be a street, or rather, an alleyway. Brick walls lined either side. Garbage cans and refuse cluttered the view.
Recognition dawned in her.
"Paris. That’s the alleyway where I found Nyte."
The center of the scene blurred, and sparks flared in a small, but growing, circle. A white cat, which had been stalking something behind a wooden crate, streaked out of the picture. The sparks flared to a blinding level. Then she saw the figure of a man, crouched down close to the ground. From the long dark hair tumbling down his back, she knew it was Nyte.
She could sense his anger dissipating to a complete sense of disorientation. She could feel the emptiness of his mind, the sense of a part of him missing. Usually, she could sense memories packed in the corners of a person’s brain, just waiting to be opened and examined, like cardboard boxes lining the walls of an attic. But with Nyte, only hollow emptiness echoed through the corridors of his mind.
She glanced at Rand and saw he felt it, too.
She wondered why she hadn’t felt the same thing when she’d first met Nyte. Of course, after all the magic she’d performed this evening, her energy was very open and flowing, making her very sensitive to other people’s energy.
She returned her gaze to the scene in the crystal ball. Embarrassment flashed through her at the thought of Rand seeing what would follow--with her and Nyte in varying degrees of undress. She released Rand’s hand and stopped sending energy to the ball. It clouded, then cleared again.
Rand nodded and stood up.
"All right, Lucinda. I concede that Nyte has truly lost his memory."
Thank heavens. Relief surged through her at finally having the issue settled.
"We are now faced with a very interesting question."
Her flood of relief froze at his tone. He turned to her, his gaze intent.
"Who block
ed us from going into the past?"
Chapter 9
Lucinda did not want to think about unknown forces with mysterious agendas.
After accompanying Rand to his house and talking for hours about who or what could have blocked them from the past, with no reasonable suggestions forthcoming, she finally decided to leave the mystery to Rand and head home.
She gathered the crystals and other paraphernalia into her bag, then scooped Merlin into her arms. After teleporting into the den, she put her stuff away, then opened the door to the living room.
"There you are." Nyte looked up from the Asimov novel he held in his hand.
He had started a fire--safely contained in the fireplace she was pleased to see--and the room glowed with its welcoming light.
"Do you always stay out this late?" he asked, his gaze scrutinizing the length of her as though searching for something out of place.
Great. Now he was acting like her father. If she weren’t so tired, she would have responded with some snappy retort, but instead she simply shrugged as she moved into the room. She knew she should go straight to bed, but the firelight playing across the soft fabric of the couch in rippling shadows mesmerized her, drawing her toward it. It looked so warm and cozy, and it was so close. Even though her bedroom would provide an easy escape from Nyte’s question, the long walk upstairs was simply too daunting.
"Have a good time?" The tight set of his jaw told her he sincerely hoped not.
She slumped onto the couch, exhaustion seeping into her bones. "Not really."
She stretched her legs across the couch and leaned back on the armrest, allowing her eyelids to drift closed. The warmth of the fire on her skin and the delicate crackling sound gently lulled her. Pushing through time, even with the help of a supercharged magical engine like the Oracle, had taken a lot out of her.