“You look troubled.”
Elias startled, sloshing his cold tea onto his boots. He turned to find Rasen standing behind him as if he had always been there. “I had difficulty sleeping,” Elias managed.
Rasen nodded, unsurprised. “The energy here makes it difficult. Or, perhaps you had troubling dreams.”
Elias made a conscious effort not to shift under Rasen’s stone-eyed gaze. “I didn’t dream last night.”
“Ah, that is where you’re wrong. We always dream, kopta. The question is whether or not we remember what we see when we close our eyes. We do tend to remember the dreams we have while we are awake a little better, do we not?”
Elias kept his expression neutral. He knew that Rasen was trying to elicit information from him, whether by his response or by his reaction. He, like Teah, wanted to know if he had succumbed to the madness that plagued the time mages. “I think it was the bedtime reading you prescribed that kept me tossing and turning.”
“That is good.”
“Is it?”
“I too was troubled when I first read that book. The implications staggered my mind. Most of my compatriots, on the other hand, found only a hunger for more knowledge. They were over eager to explore these theories.” The time mage shrugged. “They are all gone. I alone am left.”
“What exactly did happen to all of the other time mages?”
“Does it matter? Come now, I want to show you something.”
The mage turned about without another word and went back into the keep. Elias was left with little recourse but to follow him. Once inside the keep he found Rasen bent over the apparatus in the center of his study. The mage had busied himself with turning the rings that encircled the crystal globe, which clicked with each spin. The symbols etched into the metal rings lined up in an order that Elias could only guess at but that he had no doubt to Rasen spelled out a complex litany in a language that he alone could understand.
Next, the time mage turned his attention to the large rings set into the floor around the apparatus. There were ten such rings and Elias noted, not without some surprise, that they rotated as well. The floor rings featured lines as well as symbols, and Elias soon discovered why. When rotated in the proper alignment the rings lined up to create a spellform, and, judging from the number of turns each ring was capable of making and the myriad symbols, he surmised that at least a dozen spellforms were contained within the ingenious design.
When Rasen finished adjusting the rings he looked up at Elias. The spellform was set in a square instead of a circle like most of the spellforms the Marshal had seen before, yet it seemed somehow familiar. “What is its function?” Elias asked.
“This form creates not a doorway, but a window.”
“This is how you know of me, and Mordum.” Elias took the mage’s silence as an affirmative. He stepped inside the circle and examined the apparatus at its center, which stood waist high. He looked at the rows of symbols, noted their tight ranks and order. “And these are what? Coordinates?”
“Clever,” said Rasen. “They are very much like coordinates, yes. But think on this: if there are, as The Infinitum Model suggests, near infinite dimensions and timelines then of how much use is such a device, for clearly there are nowhere near infinite combinations available to us?”
Elias considered Rasen’s question, though he knew full well the answer was beyond him. If the author of Infinitum was correct, or even partially correct in his postulations, and a probable timeline or reality was born at every crossroad in a given line of probabilities, then the scripts on the device would fall more than a little short. “This device clearly works, as you seem to know a great deal about me and my situation, so my only conclusion can be that the author of Infinitum is wrong in his deductions.”
“A logical argument,” said Rasen, “but incorrect. Look here.” The time mage pointed to a line of script. “This line here indicated by the arrow on the outer ring is the active channel. This focuses the spell on the temporal signature of a certain timeline, but it does so broadly. Let us consider that there are parallel timelines and multiple vergences along a given timeline. Now let us consider that these parallel and vergent timelines have a similar temporal signature.”
“All right,” said Elias slowly, digesting the concept. “So that one line of script will allow us to view any given number of timelines that are similar, or interconnected?”
“Yes, very good. This litany is the prime timeline of the Agia you knew.”
Elias ran a finger down the line of script that crossed the radius of the circle from the far end to the crystal globe at its center. “If this one line, or litany, represents many timeline possibilities then how do we focus on any given one?”
“Ah, that is where science meets art. It is this art that the time mages have perfected. Let me show you.”
Rasen took a seat on the stool set before the apparatus. He placed his hands on the outer ring of the circle. His eyes drooped closed. The symbols of the litany became lambent with silver light one by one and then the globe began to glow as well. A cone of silver-white light fanned from the globe, at first diffuse but then solidifying. Above the cone formed what Elias could only describe as a rectangular hole in space.
On the other side of the viewing portal Elias saw Bryn’s chamber, where his journey through time had begun. A white starburst formed before her bed, where he had cast the spell that took him into the past. The starburst blossomed until the entire chamber was awash in a cold white light. A chill shot up Elias’s spine as he realized that the white wasn’t a light at all, for it lacked luminescence. Rather, it was empty space devoid of anything.
He felt Rasen’s eyes on him and turned to meet the mage’s stony gaze. Rasen returned his hands to the apparatus and the whiteout faded, replaced by a dark purple vortex, flecked with black streaks. The vortex spiraled toward a pinprick of light, and Elias realized it was a kind of tunnel that was taking them to another timeline.
The vortex winked out and the viewing portal snapped back into focus, showing them the outskirts of Illedium. Mordum stood alone before the forest, his hands outstretched. The arcane barrier that cocooned the forest flickered and the Enkilder haven phased in and out. The fey cried out, an inarticulate sound brittle with grief and fury. Elias watched in horror as Mordum’s hands first smoked and then blackened, and he realized that the fey was caught in an arcane backlash of tremendous magnitude.
Illedium flickered one final time and then was gone, consumed in a whiteout. Scant seconds later Mordum too was consumed and Elias, for the second time in minutes, looked upon the white, empty face of oblivion. Rasen took his hands from the apparatus and the window collapsed back into the crystal globe.
“What the hell was that?” Elias asked.
“Mordum’s knowledge of temporal magic is incomplete. He ended up destroying that which he sought to save.”
“And what was he doing when...when...” Elias found the words catching in his throat as he had no way to describe what he had seen.
“When the timeline collapsed,” Rasen supplied. “That’s what you saw. He was trying to save Illedium, to transport it to another dimension, another time, but such a feat is beyond any one person.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That is abundantly clear.”
Elias’s temper flared, though he knew he had only himself to blame. “Then enlighten me.”
Rasen fastened his penetrating, otherworldly eyes on him. “If I agree to help you, you must do exactly as I say. You must follow my instructions without even the most minor of deviations. Do you understand me?”
“Yes.”
“You agree so quickly?”
“What choice do I have?”
“None, but you must make me believe you.”
Elias didn’t know how to respond. How could he convince the time mage that he was worthy of a second chance when he had erred so colossally? He retreated into the void, to clear his mind.
E
lias opened his eyes to find Rasen peering at him with a look of keen interest. A distant part of him wondered if he had nodded off for a moment, but it was a detached thought and dissolved momentarily. He found himself speaking though he had no clear sense of what he was saying, or from where the words came. “I swear it by my salt—by the salt of my blood, and the salt of my tears.”
Rasen startled. “Where did you learn those words?”
Elias had no answer for him, and so he returned the mage’s iron-eyed gaze.
Rasen grunted. “Very well. It would seem there is more to you than I had supposed. I accept your blood oath.”
Though Elias kept his expression neutral, he went cold inside, for he realized that he had just put his life in Rasen Motyl’s hands.
“Let me start by asking you this,” said the mage. “What was your plan in coming here? What did you hope to accomplish?”
“I had hoped to travel into the past and close the portal I had made, or else stop myself from having done it.”
“And have you given any thought to how one goes back in time, or how it is even possible?”
“I did it once, although I do not remember how.”
“Indeed, but we’ll get to that momentarily. It is a great deal simpler to move forward in time. After all, we’re always moving forward in time, from one moment to the next, along a straight line, or so we think. To jump forward in time, all we need do is speed up our forward momentum. It is a gross over-simplification, but you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Good. So answer me this: what then is the problem with moving backwards in time?”
Elias had thought on this very question many times since finding himself cast centuries into the future. “If we assume that time moves forward in a straight line, then we would have to move backwards along the same path. It would be like rowing against the current, I suppose.”
“An interesting thought. Your idea of time as a river means that the past always exists, that it doesn’t dissolve into the future like a beam of light. But think about what this means. Every moment that ever existed still exists, is still happening, somewhere.”
Elias frowned. “It is a bit much to grasp. It would mean that there are near infinite coordinates along the timeline, and that there are countless versions of ourselves that somehow still exist.”
Rasen smiled, and Elias found himself begrudgingly forgiving the smug tilt to the mage’s expression. “The Infinitum Model doesn’t seem so unfathomable anymore, does it?”
“I suppose not,” Elias admitted.
“Good, you’re beginning to think like a time mage. The problem is that time is not a line at all. In point of fact, the term timeline is something of a misnomer, though it does have a nice ring to it.”
Elias uttered a silent, mental sigh. “Very well. I’ll bite. If time isn’t a line than what is it?”
“Here look at this.” Rasen pushed himself back from the apparatus and held his hands up. A hologram of a graph with three axes formed above his open palms. “We are taught to perceive space in three dimensions, length, width, and depth, with time being the fourth dimension, which moves perpendicular to the x, y, and z axes.”
Rasen waved his hand and a spiraling line corkscrewed at an angle perpendicular to the holographic graph. “But time, as you can see, is not a line but a coil. Think of it as a spring, and like a spring it has definable dimensions, but it can be stretched, or compressed. Each time a new temporal cycle begins, the previous one becomes a temporal echo, if you will. A temporal echo is something like a parallel timeline in practice, as far as the mechanics of traveling through time are concerned, but differs in the sense that it is predicated on the causal flow of the original timeline. There is no limit to the number of temporal echoes that may exist in a given time period.”
Elias had to give Rasen credit—he was a skilled teacher. “I think I understand, but what does it mean for me?”
“When you traveled back in time you created an anomaly because you yourself became a temporal paradox.”
“Yes, Teah said as much to me. I changed the past and thus negated the reason that had led me to travel into the past in the first place.”
“That’s the one. Your paradox caused an inconsistency in the timeline, which formed an anomaly in your present, where you cast the gate to travel into the past. Thus was a parallel timeline created at the moment the anomaly formed. It’s a natural mechanism that protects the original timeline from corruption.”
Elias’s thoughts turned back to the Infinitum Model. The book explained that a parallel timeline was a vergent timeline, but one which mirrored the original timeline very closely, often with only minor variations. “Very well,” Elias said, “but how does this help us?”
“You still don’t see.” Rasen leaned forward. “Elias, you weren’t just catapulted into the future, you were ejected from your timeline like a skipping stone and into a parallel timeline.”
Elias stared blankly at Rasen for several beats before the significance of the mage’s words became apparent to him. He didn’t merely create a paradox, he was the paradox. Thus, for all intents and purposes, he was cast into another reality. Just like a living body rejects a splinter, his own timeline had rejected him. He went cold. He was even further from home than he had thought. “Does this mean that I can’t return home?”
“Fortunately for you that’s not necessarily the case. You were ejected because you didn’t belong when you were. If we can send you to the right when and seal the anomaly, your original timeline will likely tolerate you again.”
“Likely?”
Rasen shrugged and said, not unkindly, “Part art, part science, remember? Patching up the anomaly, and dealing with Mordum, are our chief concerns now. If we can do those two things, balance will be restored, and you may well be able to resume the natural course of your destiny, if you believe in such things.”
Elias’s thoughts turned to Teah and Nyla, Malak and Leosis. “What of the Enkilder?”
Rasen shrugged. “Changing your original timeline need not mean that the parallel timeline must change.”
A bright but tenuous seed of hope bloomed in Elias’s heart. “But how is this possible?”
“What I am proposing is not negating the anomaly from being created, for to do so would create yet another paradox as when you first changed the past. No. What I’m suggesting is sealing the anomaly, thus preserving your original timeline from further erosion. Since the creation of the anomaly is what sparked the alternate timeline, theoretically it should still exist. We are only changing the one, by acting in your present to affect your future.”
Elias’s mind tracked back to the timelines that he and Rasen had viewed via the temporal window. “What of Mordum?”
“Good. Now you’re on track. Mordum doesn’t know what I know. He doesn’t know that his timeline is parallel and independent of yours. He thinks that we all inhabit the same divergent timeline, meaning a timeline that has been diverted from its original path—diverted by you as it were. Because of this he thinks that when you seal the anomaly and prevent the fey incursion you will eradicate the Enkilder from ever being. Because of his error in judgment both of your timelines stand on the brink of ruin.”
“How so?”
“Your timeline is what we would call the proto timeline, in that it is the original from which all probable, parallel, and vergent timelines have diverged—at least in this particular temporal cycle.”
Rasen’s expression became grave. “Now listen very closely. If in his ardor to stop you, Mordum’s actions corrupt the proto timeline and it collapses, all other timelines and probable realities that sprung from it will cease to be. My research, as you saw not long ago, indicates that if he is not stopped this is exactly what will happen. His very presence in your timeline will further destabilize the anomaly, which will create a cascade effect that will cause the timeline to fail.”
Elias’s stomach cramped. The thought was more than he coul
d wrap his mind around. He had already been sick over the idea that he might not be able to save his people and the Enkilder both, but if Rasen’s theory of multiple timelines was correct, a far worse threat loomed. If such a thing as multiple divergent timelines were possible, than far more than the few flames represented in Illedium would be snuffed out, including his own.
Elias looked up at Rasen, startling as he realized that he sat on the stool lately occupied by the time mage. Rasen held him by the shoulders and peered at him with his unsettling black eyes. “Now you know the burden of the time mage,” Rasen said, not unkindly. “All of us have had the epiphany you are now experiencing. It will pass.”
Elias shook his head. “How can such a thing be? How can a thing exist one moment, and then not exist in the next? It defies logic.”
“Sometimes logic fails us.” Rasen pulled a chair over and sat opposite Elias. “I don’t know the answer to your question. I’m not sure that anyone does. I too find it hard to believe that a thing can be, and then not be. It defies the tenets of the Prime Arcanum: energy cannot be created or destroyed. And this is precisely why I do not wish to bear witness to the effects of multiple timelines blinking out.”
Elias couldn’t help but agree.
“Now,” said Rasen, “have you any more questions at present?”
Elias barked a short laugh. He had dozens, but only one drifted to the forefront of his thoughts. “If I was thrust into a parallel timeline, then how did Danica manage to leave my sword for me and create a portal here?”
“That,” replied Rasen, “is an excellent question. You remember that I told you that time is not a linear line at all but a coil, like a spring?”
“Yes.”
“So then, let us imagine that two parallel timelines can be envisioned as two springs that run a parallel course. Now because these timelines are so close we could even see them as intertwined, with one coil corkscrewing around the other, though they never touch.”
“Except when they do.” Elias saw Rasen’s model in his mind’s-eye, and he wondered if the mage had used some kind of psychic magic to push the image into his mind.
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 38