The Sword of Unmaking (The Wizard of Time - Book 2)

by G. L. Breedon

  Masking their presence by hiding their subtle energy didn’t work nearly as well with so few people in the castle to blend in with. The fact that children were supposed to have been removed from the castle added an additional complication. It took them nearly half an hour to creep from the stable and sneak across the courtyard to hide behind some barrels twenty paces from the church entrance.

  They sat in silence, as much from fear of being overheard as from lack of constructive conversation topics, while they waited for the rogue Apollyon to make his daily supply run. Late in the afternoon, the Dark Mage exited the chapel doors and strode across the courtyard.

  “Good luck.” Teresa squeezed Gabriel’s hand quickly but firmly.

  “Thanks.”

  Gabriel waited until a soldier crossing the courtyard turned away. Then he dashed through the shadows along the castle wall and slipped through the church door. Inside, he found much the same scene as his previous visits to the chapel. He walked slowly through the sick, feeble villagers reclining on the chapel floor, doing his best to avoid attention and keeping his subtle energy hidden in his feet.

  In the back corridor, he concentrated his mind, clearing the Soul Magic spell hiding the rogue Apollyon’s room. He touched the door and extended his magic-sense as deeply as possible into the room, looking for possible magical booby traps. More convinced he would run out of time than that the room held no dangers, he gently pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  His previous glimpse of the room proved accurate in revealing its details. A narrow wooden bed with a thin mattress and a crumpled blanket sat against the wall, flanked by a small desk and a stool. A candleholder rested on the desk, residue from the half-melted tallow candle spilling over onto the wood. A small stone statue of a woman perched on an overturned wooden crate between the desk and bed. A bladder sack of wine hung from a wooden peg in the wall. A reeking pile of chicken bones and apple cores littered one corner of the room. The rogue Apollyon’s sanitation habits seemed as impaired as his sanity.

  Gabriel hurriedly searched the room, checking under the bed and the mattress, looking within the folds of the blanket, and peering at the underside of the desk. He placed the statue on the bed and flipped the crate over, running his hand through the empty interior. He replaced the crate and reached back to grab the statue, knocking it from the bed. He threw his hand after the statue as quickly as he could, but it reached the floor first.

  Gabriel picked up the statue and saw a small chip missing at the base. He scanned the floor, knowing he wasted precious time that he should be using to search for the notebook. Spotting something under the bed, he bent down and picked it up. A tiny sliver of stone. He placed it against the chipped space in the base if the statue. It fell away. He held the small piece of stone in his hands, looking around for a good place to leave it, a place that would look like it had fallen naturally from the statue. Shaking his head in frustration, he jammed the splinter of stone into his pocket.

  He placed the statue back on the crate. If the rogue Apollyon noticed the missing chip, hopefully he would think it had happened long ago. Why did this Apollyon have a statue in his room, anyway?

  Gabriel looked at the statue more closely. The soft red stone revealed the detailed features of a woman with a sharp chin and high cheekbones. Was she someone Apollyon had known? What did the statue mean?

  Gabriel could risk no more distractions. His time for searching the room exhausted, he gave a futile last look up to the rafters of the room, but could see no place where a notebook might be hidden. He retreated from the chamber, closed the door, and walked as quickly as he could down the short corridor and back to the chapel nave.

  Seeing the door to the chapel swinging open, Gabriel quickly sat down between two old men dozing against the wall of the church. Hiding his face in his arm, he pretended to sleep, as well. His body screamed to run, lungs panting in anticipation of flight. He tried to slow his breathing.

  Through barely open eyelids, he watched the rogue Apollyon stomp through the church door, slamming it behind him. Gabriel could feel the Soul Magic the Apollyon radiated, turning away the attention of everyone in the room. He held his breath until the Apollyon crossed the chapel hall and entered his hidden chamber.

  Wasting no time, and knowing that the residual effects of Apollyon’s Soul Magic would help conceal him, Gabriel dashed across the church floor, hopping over coughing old men and wheezing women to slide quickly through the main doors and out into the cold air. Pausing only a moment to make sure no one nearby might see him, he raced back along the castle wall to where Teresa waited in hiding behind several barrels of walnuts. She wrapped him in a lung-crushing embrace as he sat beside her.

  “When I saw him go in, I thought…” Teresa sat back, her face a mixture of fear and anger. “I didn’t know what to do.”

  “I’m fine.” Gabriel tried to slow his breathing, realizing how loud the pounding of his heart sounded in his ears. “I hid. Like a frightened mouse.”

  “Like a smart mouse,” Teresa said, finally beginning to relax. “Any luck?”

  “Nothing.” Gabriel leaned against one of the barrels. “Maybe he does have the real notebook on him when he leaves the room. If it’s hidden, it’ll take time to find it.”

  “We can check every time he’s out.” Teresa leaned back beside Gabriel, pulling the blanket up around them.

  “We can wait outside his room at night. He has to be tired enough to sleep soon. If we can catch him dozing, we could sneak in and get the notebook before he wakes.”

  “It’s too risky.”

  “We don’t have a better plan.”

  “I didn’t say it wasn’t a good plan. But we need to make sure he sleeps, not wait for it to happen.”

  “How do we do that?”

  Teresa’s eyes widened with excitement. “I may not pay attention to Ohin’s history lectures, but I do remember a few things Marcus taught us about herbs. Yesterday, I saw one of the women in the chapel making a tea from valerian root for some of the sick villagers. With enough of it, I can make a sleeping potion. It won’t knock him out instantly, but it should make him drowsy enough to doze off. Especially since he hasn’t slept in days. Once he’s asleep, we sneak in and steal the notebook.”

  Gabriel marveled at Teresa’s ingenuity. “How do we get him to drink it?”

  “We put it in his wine.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  Teresa’s excitement faded. “I have no idea.”

  Getting the valerian-laced wine into the rogue Apollyon’s hands turned out to be far less complicated than Gabriel or Teresa had presumed. Unable to mingle freely with the remaining villagers in the castle, they found themselves forced to accomplishing everything under the cover of darkness. This included stealing food for themselves in addition to securing enough valerian root to render the rogue Apollyon unconscious. After chopping and crushing the root and blending it with water, Teresa created a concentrated liquid to instill into a sack of wine. These things were relatively easy, though time consuming, to accomplish.

  Figuring out how to get the wine into the rogue Apollyon’s hands proved simple. The next time the rogue Apollyon went out, Gabriel snuck into his room and replaced the contents of the wine sack hanging on the wall. There could be no guarantee the rogue Apollyon would drink from the wine skin, but it was the only hope they had.

  That afternoon, shortly after Gabriel made the switch with the wine, the soldiers expelled the last of the villagers from the castle. Gabriel and Teresa hid, hastily cramming themselves into a large, mostly empty barrel of chestnuts. With the lid of the barrel placed loosely above their heads, they felt relatively safe from the forced eviction.

  As the sun set and the noises of the villagers’ protests faded, Gabriel and Teresa crowded together in the moldy-smelling barrel, trying to arrange their limbs in some manner of comfortable alignment. They ended up with Teresa seated on Gabriel’s lap, her head bumping against the wooden lid. The pain
of the chestnuts digging into his hindquarters distracted greatly from the pleasantness created by Teresa’s proximity.

  “Whose stupid idea was this?” Teresa tried to arrange her arm so her elbow didn’t poke into Gabriel’s ear.

  “Yours.” Gabriel groaned softly as Teresa’s knee jutted into his stomach while she twisted around.

  “This must be what it feels like in a can of sardines.” Teresa rotated her head, her hair falling across Gabriel’s face. He found himself suddenly thinking far less about the pain the chestnuts caused him.

  “More like a can of Spam.” Gabriel blew a puff of air to dislodge a strand of Teresa’s hair tickling his cheek.

  “Let’s not talk about food. I’m too hungry.” A thin shaft of moonlight pierced the gap between the barrel and the lid, illuminating Teresa’s face.

  “If you’re counting Spam as food, you must be hungry.”

  Gabriel paused for a moment, mesmerized by the beauty of her face. How did she manage to look so pretty with greasy hair and her face covered in dirt?

  “Would you like a raw chestnut?”

  “If you can figure out a way to slice them open with that sword and not take my hand off.” Teresa’s eyes went to the Sword of Unmaking shoved against the side of the barrel.

  “I think it would be safer to starve a little longer.” Gabriel tried to adjust himself again, sending Teresa tilting sideways.

  “There must be something we can do to keep our minds off how uncomfortable this is.” Teresa’s eyes flickered to Gabriel’s, and then away, just as quickly.

  He could certainly think of something that would take his mind off their circumstance. Had she been thinking the same thing? Could she possibly have been thinking the same thing? How could he know? Was there some sign? Some signal? How did these things work? Gabriel suspected they rarely worked inside a barrel of chestnuts.

  He tried to think about all the romantic movies he had seen and how the boy first kissed the girl. He realized then that he had not really seen many romantic movies. Science fiction movies, kung-fu movies, sports movies, comedies, yes, but what fourteen-year-old boy willingly watched romantic movies? This now seemed like a monumental oversight. A massive strategic blunder. How was he going to know what girls might like, one girl in particular, if he didn’t at least research the subject?

  As he made a mental note to create a list of romantic movies to study upon his return to Windsor Castle, he noticed the odd look on Teresa’s face and how closely she seemed to be studying him.

  “Is there something wrong with you?” Teresa frowned. “You’ve been staring at me like, forever.”

  Gabriel blinked. He had been staring at her for a considerable time. He could feel his cheeks burning. He’d been daydreaming about ways to kiss Teresa while staring at her. Idiot!

  “Nope. I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  “What were you thinking about?”

  A phrase from Akikane’s training leapt to Gabriel’s mind. Less thinking, more doing. That’s what he needed — more doing. Gabriel leaned forward, tilting his head up, intending to show Teresa exactly what he had been thinking about. As he brought his lips level with hers, his eyes staring deeply into her own, a small avalanche of chestnuts collapsed beneath him. He wriggled and shifted his weight to try and compensate, but somehow overcompensated, knocking his forehead into Teresa’s nose.

  “Ouch!”

  Teresa wiggled sideways as Gabriel tried to correct for the shifting weight and the foot suddenly stabbing into his kidney. The motion sent the barrel tilting precariously to the side. Teresa quickly leaned in the opposite direction of the sway, Gabriel instinctively leaning with her, becoming aware as he did so that his mass only enhanced the counter tilt of the barrel, sending it tipping over and rolling across the hard ground for ten feet before thudding into the side of the horse stable. As the barrel bounced back from the wall of the stable and came to a rest, Gabriel and Teresa lay half outside it, their arms entangled, heads facing away from each other.

  “I’m not sure what you were thinking about,” Teresa said, disentangling her arms from Gabriel’s, “but maybe you shouldn’t think about it again. At least not while we’re in a barrel.”

  “Right. I’m not sure what I was thinking.” Gabriel sat up, feeling like he would spontaneously combust from embarrassment. He looked around, thankful to find that their tumbling barrel trick hadn’t attracted anyone’s attention. He consoled himself by noting that Teresa had said not to think about it while they were in a barrel. He had no intention of getting in a barrel again anytime soon.

  “We might as well sneak into the church and wait for him to fall asleep.” Teresa brushed herself off as she stood up.

  “Good idea.” Anything to keep them both from thinking about the disastrous near-kiss could be considered a good idea. Gabriel grabbed the Sword of Unmaking from the barrel and stood beside Teresa.

  They crouched low as they ran from store house to stables to the steps of the church entrance. Squeezing quietly through the church door, they found the inner nave empty. The old and sickly villagers had been expelled from the castle with all the others. It saddened Gabriel to know they would starve in the cold air outside the castle walls, and that some would surely die before King Philip would consent to let them pass. He wished he could do something for them, but knew it was impossible. One of the many aspects of his new life he could never accept — seeing injustice but being unable to act against it.

  They walked silently across the nave. The sounds of the priest’s snores reached Gabriel’s ears before he reached the pulpit. When he stepped into the small corridor behind the altar, he realized the snoring came not from the open door of the priest’s quarters, but from the magically hidden room the rogue Apollyon occupied.

  Gabriel glanced inside the priest’s chamber and found it empty. The clergyman had obviously been evicted along with the villagers. Or, more likely, had chosen to follow and help them as best he could.

  Gabriel turned to the concealed door of the rogue Apollyon’s room and focused his mind, clearing away the Soul Magic obscuring the room. He knew Teresa was unlikely to accomplish a similar feat, so he motioned her to follow him as he slowly pulled the door to the room open and stepped through.

  He stopped and held still. The rogue Apollyon lay on the narrow bed, feet dangling over the edge, his snores reverberating around the room. The flickering light from the candle on the table showed the surprise on Teresa’s face as she stepped through the nonexistent wall and stood beside Gabriel. The glow of the candle also revealed the notebook, sitting open on the small desk.

  Gabriel glanced at the slumbering rogue Apollyon and inched closer to the desk, trying to keep his breathing shallow and quiet. Each breath seemed like a roar of wind in his ears. Cautiously extending his arm, he reached for the notebook.

  He felt a space-time seal fall into place as his finger touched the open pages.

  Gabriel grasped for the imprints of the Sword of Unmaking and his pocket watch as he spun to confront the rogue Apollyon. Unable to sense the space-time seal, Teresa didn’t realize what had transpired around her until the sound of the snores ceased and the rogue Apollyon sat up on the bed with a wild laugh. His curly black hair, matted and oily, gave him the appearance of a vagrant while his wild, roving eyes seemed more like those of a madman.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the valerian root?” The rogue Apollyon stood up, three concatenate crystals glowing on a chain around his neck. “Valerian root. It was one of the first things he taught me.”

  “Gabriel?” Teresa risked a glance in his direction.

  He could feel the magical energy she held, waiting to be unleashed.

  “I won’t kill you.” The Apollyon’s mania faded slightly. “I need you alive.”

  “Gabriel?” The pitch of Teresa’s voice lowered an octave, expressing more concern in that single word than a countless number of sentences might have accomplished.

  Gabriel wasn’t
ignoring Teresa. He wasn’t panicked into inaction. Not yet, at least. His mind spun in a dozen possible directions, simultaneously seeking out a possible course of action that could lead to a desirable outcome. They could attack, but could they win? Three concatenate crystals would be more than a match for the Sword of Unmaking and his pocket watch. Especially if each of the crystals were connected to six others.

  Even Teresa’s considerable magical power and skill would be of little consequence. With his bracelet of concatenate crystals no longer connected to the imprinted relics of the castle, Gabriel simply did not have the magical strength to defeat the rogue Apollyon. Even if they could escape, would they be able to steal the notebook? If not, they would never have a second chance to track it down. And if they did manage to escape with the notebook, the magical battle required to do so would surely create a bifurcation of the Primary Continuum, and possibly more than one new branch of time.

  “Gabriel, what do we do?” Teresa turned to him, her face contorted in anger and fear.

  The words of Akikane’s last lesson rang clearly in Gabriel’s mind like the sound of bells cutting through the noisy din of a city street. Words which revealed an unexpected path out of disaster. Words he hoped he could remember well enough to turn to his advantage.

  Gabriel lowered his arms.

  “We surrender.”

  Teresa’s jaw dropped in surprise. He looked her in the eyes.

  “Trust me.”

  He planted the words in her mind via Soul Magic, and then released the imprints he held.

  The rogue Apollyon laughed, high-pitched and near-maniacal, as he rubbed his hands together.

  “Excellent.”

  Chapter 11: Captive Audience

  Gabriel and Teresa sat on the edge of the moth-eaten mattress, their hands tied behind their backs with strips of bedding cloth, their legs bound together in a similar fashion. Gabriel’s sword and pocket watch and Teresa’s bracelet lay in a corner of the room. The rogue Apollyon sat on the shaky-legged stool facing the two young mages, his face sweaty, voice strained.