“How many copies has he made?” Gabriel asked. “How many is he trying to make?”
“Too many, too many,” Akikane said. “I suspect he will be looking to make a hundred and eight copies of himself.”
“A hundred and eight,” Gabriel said with surprise. “So many?”
“Oh yes, oh yes,” Akikane said. “To break through The Great Barrier will require more magical power than has ever been assembled before. Except maybe to create it. And a hundred and eight is a special number. Very special. Many cultures consider it a significant number. Hindu. Buddhist. Many others. Now, a test.” Akikane pointed at the wall of swords. “I have a blade I use for pruning bad branches. Can you tell me which one it is?”
Gabriel looked at the wall of swords. Twenty-one swords lined the wall, each resting horizontally on a pair of wooden brackets. In the center, stacked one atop the other, sat seven long swords. On either side of the long swords sat a row of seven shorter swords. The long swords had blades nearly three feet long, while the blades of the shorter swords ranged from a foot-and-a-half to two feet in length.
“The long swords are called daito-katana, and the short swords are called shoto-wakizashi,” Akikane said. “But can you tell me which one is the sword we will use today?”
Gabriel centered his mind and extended his magic-sense, feeling the imprints of the blades. Several of the blades had no imprints at all. He wondered if they were ceremonial rather than practical swords. From one of the longer swords and one of the shorter, he could sense deep negative imprints. He wondered why Akikane would keep such tainted swords. The rest of the swords had positive imprints, and Gabriel remembered the story Councilwoman Elizabeth had told him, of how Akikane had use a sword defensively without ever taking a life with its blade. It was clear which of the swords that was. The one at the top of the wall.
“That one,” Gabriel said, pointing at the sword resting on the wall seven feet above the floor.
“Very good, very good” Akikane said, smiling his gentle smile again. “Can you get it for me?” There was no ladder, no steps, and no stool, so Gabriel reached into his pocket and clasped his hand around the silver pocket watch, reaching for the magical energy within himself. A second later, the sheathed sword rose out of the wooden arms that cradled it. Gabriel focused his mind and the sword flew toward him a little faster than he had intended. He tried to raise his left hand to catch the flying blade and would surely have been struck in the face had Akikane’s hand not flicked forward and snatched the sword at the last possible moment.
“Good, good,” Akikane said. “A little less thinking next time. Too much thinking leads to too much magic. Magic is like salt. Always use just the right amount. Not too much, not too little.”
“I haven’t had much practice,” Gabriel said.
“Slowly, slowly,” Akikane said. “Each day you will be a little better than the last.” He unsheathed the sword so that Gabriel could examine the blade. “This I call my Sword of Unmaking. I only ever use it now to sever a branch of time.”
“Is this the sword you used when you stopped being a monk?” Gabriel asked as he examined the edge of the sword’s blade. It looked sharp enough to sever a branch of time.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said, resheathing the sword. “But I never stopped being a monk. Once you take the vows, they are for life. Even if your life changes the way you must live them. I was a warrior long before I was a monk. And I was a monk for many years. Many peaceful years. But they were years of peace only for me. There came a day when I could no longer sit and meditate while other warriors were taking innocent lives.
“There was a village near the monastery that came under attack by bandits. I was there in the village square when they came, swords drawn and demanding food and money. I had come to beg for rice for the temple. One man stood up to the bandits. A simple farmer selling his vegetables. They killed him and his daughter. As I watched their bodies fall to the ground, I realized that my vow of nonviolence could not have been intended to be a vow of non-action. It was then I took up the sword again. And left the monastery.
“A monastery is no place for a monk with a sword. There is no good place for a monk with a sword. Except in battle.” Akikane paused as he stared at the sword in his hand. His smile faded slightly. Just for a moment. Then it was back, and he was beaming at Gabriel. “Now we should go. Ohin is waiting. There is work to be done.”
Gabriel followed Akikane to the door. As he left the room, he asked the question that had been on his mind since he entered it. “Will you teach me to fight with a sword? Like I saw earlier?”
“To be sure, to be sure,” Akikane said, placing his arm around Gabriel’s shoulders as they walked. “But the sword is the least of what I will teach you.” He handed Gabriel the Sword of Unmaking as they walked, and Gabriel held it gently in his hands, like something alive that must be treated with great respect. It felt right to hold it. It felt very right.
When they met Ohin in the Lower Ward courtyard, Gabriel was surprised to see the entire team assembled. “You’re all going?” he asked.
“We’re like your bodyguards now,” Teresa said with her usual broad grin. “We go wherever you go from now on. Rajan’s on bathroom duty.”
“I think he can manage that alone,” Rajan said, raising his eyebrow at Teresa. Sema patted Gabriel’s shoulder, Marcus rustled his hair, and Ling slugged him in the arm. The usual greetings.
“I’ll wait for you here,” Ling said.
“You’re not going?” Gabriel asked.
“Too dangerous,” Ling said.
“Potential dysphasic reality collapse,” Teresa said. Gabriel cocked his head in silent question.
“Get too close to the place where you made the branch while it’s severed and I might wink out of existence,” Ling said.
“Unstable probability determinates,” Teresa said.
“Unsafe,” Marcus added.
“Unwise,” Sema said.
“Unlikely,” Ling said, clearly unhappy to be left behind.
“Unbelievable,” Rajan said with a frown at Ling’s stubbornness.
“The plan,” Ohin said loudly, gathering everyone’s attention, “is simple.” Teresa rolled her eyes. Ohin pretended not to notice, but Akikane smiled at her with his gloriously peaceful smile, and she fidgeted with her hands in embarrassment. “Gabriel will take us back to the moment just before he created the alternate branch of time. Hopefully close enough so that we can see the exact moment he created the bifurcation. At that moment, Akikane will sever the new branch of time from the Primary Continuum. There should be nothing for anyone else to do except watch.”
“Wish we got jobs like this more often,” Marcus whispered to no one in particular. Akikane beamed at him and Marcus coughed.
“Sema,” Ohin said, nodding toward her. Sema stepped forward and handed Gabriel the Venetian glass pendant she normally wore as a talisman. He noticed a string of prayer beads wrapped around her wrist as a replacement.
“I will expect this back,” Sema said as Gabriel took the pendant.
“Of course,” Gabriel said, looking around as everyone formed a circle around him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
“When you are ready, Gabriel,” Ohin said, his voice calm enough to help ease Gabriel’s nerves. “I will lend my power to yours for the jump. It is a large group to jump at once.”
Gabriel nodded as he took his pocket watch out and held it together with the glass pendant. He reached for the magical energy within himself and focused it through the pocket watch as he opened his time-sense to the glass pendant, searching for just the right moment. A moment memorable, but just slightly different from the last time he had experienced it. He could feel Ohin’s magical energy blending with his own. Then blackness surrounded them and the familiar white light washed everything out of existence.
They stood on a street at night in Venice. The same street where he had created the bifurcation of time to save Ling. The canal was there, jus
t as before, but they stood farther along it. He felt the hands of his companions leave his shoulders. Everyone stepped into the shadows just as Gabriel saw his previous self appear down the street.
“Soon,” he said, pointing to his earlier self at the end of the street. He could feel the bend of the space-time fabric as the even older version of himself must have appeared in St. Marks Piazza two blocks away with the other, original versions of Sema, Ling and Marcus. Akikane stepped up beside Gabriel and withdrew the sword.
“Here, here,” Akikane said. “Hold the hilt with me. I will show you how it is done.” Gabriel took hold of the hilt of the sword even as he watched the older version of himself raise his hand and the water of the canal explode. He could sense the fabric of space-time twist and rip away. He also sensed the flow of time slow down. He realized that Akikane was helping him, reaching out to him with Soul Magic and assisting him to better observe what the elder True Mage was about to do.
Gabriel could almost see the rip in the fabric of space-time now, he felt it so clearly. And he could also feel the power that Akikane channeled through the Sword of Unmaking. Only when he had touched the tainted imprints of the Aztec temple had he felt more power.
While that power had been like swallowing a barrel of thick, crude oil, this was like ingesting the purest of spring waters. As he extended his time-sense, he could feel Akikane focusing that power, like brilliant sunlight through a magnifying glass, on a very specific portion of the fabric of space-time. Not a portion really, not a location, not a place, not even a moment, but an aspect of its being, a point of potentiality. Gabriel could feel that point, that facet of space-time possibility beginning to form, beginning to branch away from the stability and seeming solidness of the Primary Continuum. In some ways, it was like looking through a portal, a doorway to another dimension of yet unrealized reality, another world, another possible timeline.
Just at the point where its being began to become, began to be realized, Akikane unleashed a focused burst of magical power, and like a sharpened blade sliding through a slender thread, the alternate branch of time was gone, the portal slipped shut and the world beyond it was no more. The world that might have existed there had vanished, and all the potential people of that world were snuffed out in an instant, an alternate version of himself included. No wonder Akikane called it the Sword of Unmaking.
Gabriel realized he was still staring at the blade. He looked up. They were firmly in the Primary Continuum, the scene as it had been when they arrived. A few people walking the streets on either side of the canal. Two gondolas and a small boat slowly gliding through the water. His previous self was gone now, as that reality had dissolved with the severing of the alternate branch of time. Gabriel looked back to see Akikane smiling yet again.
“Good, good,” Akikane said. “Clean cut. Very fine.”
“Well done,” Ohin said, placing a gentle hand on Gabriel’s shoulder.
“What now?” Gabriel asked.
“We wait,” Ohin said. “We need to wait for the events in the piazza to play out.”
“For you to rescue us,” Sema said as she looked at Marcus.
“For Apollyon to leave,” Akikane said.
Gabriel heard other words between those that had been spoken. To wait for Ling to die again, he thought. As he extended his magic-sense, he could feel the fight going on in the piazza two blocks away. If he focused intently, he could almost discern the type of magic being used. The Wind Magic Apollyon used to hurl Ling into St. Mark’s Campanile. The Fire Magic he used while running toward Sema and Marcus.
Gabriel looked up at Sema and Marcus, standing beside the canal with him, glad they were here with him now. He knew from their faces they could sense the magic, even if he didn’t think they could tell which beyond their own form of magic was being used. And then the sense of Time Magic as the fabric of space-time warped slightly, and the previous version of himself jumped away with Sema and Marcus. He felt the fabric of space-time warp again, only a fraction of a second later, and he knew that Apollyon was gone.
“It’s safe now,” Gabriel said, wanting to speak before anyone else, to make sure they knew he was paying attention to what had happened.
“Yes,” Ohin said. “I’ll take us back.” Everyone reached out a hand, placing them on Ohin’s broad shoulders as he removed a piece of amber from his pocket. A moment of blackness and whiteness and they stood in the Lower Ward Courtyard again. Ling leapt up from a bench and ran over to them.
“You’re still here,” Marcus said with a sigh of relief.
“Of course she is,” Teresa said. “I told you there was nothing to worry about. Cross-temporal stability quotient. You’re feeling solid, aren’t you?” Teresa tried to poke Ling with her finger, but Ling caught it and held it firmly, making a noise that sounded like a growl. “Hardly any risk at all of her disappearing. Even for a few minutes.” Teresa pulled her finger free from Ling’s hand with a grin.
“Did everything go as planned?” Ling asked, looking at Akikane, Ohin, and Gabriel.
“For once,” Rajan said.
“Everything has been set right,” Ohin said. “The alternate branch will never be.”
“But you will,” Akikane said, eyes twinkling peacefully. “You will.”
“I think we should celebrate over dinner,” Rajan said.
“How surprising,” Teresa said, “Rajan wants to eat.”
“And wine,” Marcus said. “I know the perfect bottle to open for a celebration.”
“And Marcus wants to drink,” Sema said. “Again, how surprising.”
“That is a good idea,” Ohin said. “We need to discuss the next steps and the next mission.”
“We need to find the place where Apollyon is making his copies,” Gabriel said, assuming that was the next step.
“Yes, yes,” Akikane said, beaming as he walked toward the Waterloo Chamber across the castle grounds in the state apartments. “And to do that, we will need to find Nefferati.”
The statement left Gabriel so stunned he stood rooted to the spot while the others walked away. Ling gave him a push in the middle of the back. He stumbled forward to catch up with the group, Ling at his side.
“Nefferati?” Gabriel asked, not knowing what else to say.
“Ohin says she is the only one with enough experience to locate the place in time that Apollyon is using to make his duplicates,” Ling said. “It will be hidden with powerful magic.”
“Right,” Gabriel said, wondering just how powerful Nefferati was if True Mages like Akikane and Elizabeth could not find the spot in time where Apollyon was hiding his illicit activities. They walked on in silence behind the others for a moment. Then Ling rustled his hair and laughed.
“What?” Gabriel said, wondering at the source of her amusement.
“It’s funny,” Ling said. “When I first met you, I figured you’d be a troublemaker. From further up the timeline than nearly everyone. An annoying know-it-all making my life difficult.”
“I wonder who you could be talking about,” Gabriel said, looking ahead to see that Teresa was too far away to hear their conversation.
“Exactly,” Ling said, following his line of sight. “She’s like a daughter in that way. I had two daughters back before all this, as well as my son. She’s like a combination of both of them in one. They never listened to me, either. But you. You listen to everything everyone says, you’re sweet and polite, and even manage to be modest about being the fulfillment of the prophecy. Humble about being the Seventh True Mage. And yet you cause more trouble than anyone!” Ling laughed again and slugged him in the arm as they walked. From her, this was like being showered with hugs and kisses, and Gabriel felt his cheeks grow hot as he smiled back.
Chapter 16: The Best Laid Plans
Dinner that night was the usual affair: scrumptious food, plenty of wine, at least for the adults, boisterous banter from Marcus, Teresa, and Rajan, and cordial conversation among Sema, Ling, and Ohin. Gabriel felt happ
y for the first time in days. He noticed the rabbit’s foot switch hands between Teresa and Rajan again and asked a question that he had been wondering about for some time.
“What happens if you lose a bet and you don’t have the rabbit’s foot to hand over?”
“Why don’t you make a bet and find out?” Teresa said with a look of innocence.
“Don’t take the bait, Lad,” Marcus said.
“I think I’ll pass,” Gabriel said.
“Not a betting man?” Rajan asked.
“I think I’ve gambled enough lately,” Gabriel said, and the others laughed.
After dinner, Gabriel took a nighttime walk with Ling and Sema through the castle grounds. They walked several paces behind him, talking between themselves. Gabriel had wanted some time alone to think things through and clear his head, but Sema and Ling had volunteered to go with him. When he had suggested he might want to be by himself, they had seemed oddly deaf. Apparently he was to have bodyguards even within the castle walls. At least for the time being. Until it was known who the spy was. Or spies.
He was desperate to try more magic, to practice with Fire Magic or Wind Magic, but he had been cautioned not to try any magic that might reveal his status as a True Mage until it was known by everyone in the castle.
He walked through the grounds, staring up at the stars in the sky above, wondering what his future would hold. He seemed to spend a lot of time doing that lately. Wondering what would come next. Stopping Apollyon from making more copies of himself was the first mission, but what would come after that? Would he even be allowed on any missions? Councilwoman Elizabeth had been of the opinion that he should not be risking his life even on the mission to find Apollyon’s secret branch of time where he copied himself. She felt that he was too valuable to jeopardize in such an endeavor.
Akikane had apparently been insistent that his new apprentice train to the fullest extent possible. Gabriel was thankful for that. He had no idea what dangers he might face, but being the Seventh True Mage probably meant he would face more than most, and it would be best to have as much training and experience as possible. It had helped that Akikane made it clear that he would personally accompany Gabriel on this mission.
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