“Yes, very good. At certain points, and very rarely, parallel timelines may touch or intersect at a given point in space and time. We call such watershed points a temporal crux, and they are of tremendous significance because at these points multiple timelines can be affected by a single action.”
“So Danica left me my sword and built the gateway here during one these cruxes?”
“Your sister left your sword for you during a temporal crux, one that she waited a very, very long time for. As for the gateway, that proved even more challenging. Danica actually manufactured a temporal crux of sorts—a pocket of space outside time, but one that touches upon all parallel timelines of a given timestream. This pocket dimension, if you will, is fixed in space, but not in time, and so appears in all parallel timelines whose spatial orientation is the same. It is the same Arcanum that enabled us to build this keep.”
“But how could she do such a thing? Where would she learn such a secret art?”
A sly smile tilted Rasen’s features. “Perhaps she had little help.”
“From whom?”
Rasen’s smile broadened. “From me, of course.”
Chapter 47
First Contact
Danica thumbed through the library’s catalog. With a sense of mounting dread she realized that she was to come up short yet again. Despite all the research she had done, all the experiments she had risked, it seemed that she was destined to fail her brother.
She had delved deeper into the hypnotic arts that Phinneas had taught her than she had ever dared go before. She had poured over the ciphers in the time mage’s journal. She had attempted to join the disciplines of dream magic and time magic together when she had come upon Motyl’s cryptic suggestion that it might be possible for one to eject their consciousness from their body and travel through time and space in that fashion. She had crafted special alchemical chalk and scrawled ornate spellforms all over the floor and walls of Ogden’s study.
And all to no avail.
“You seem lost, dear,” said a voice from over her shoulder.
She turned to find a man in a simple brown tunic and breeches with skin as black as pitch and not a hair on his head. “Something like that,” she replied.
“Perhaps I might be of some assistance. This place is known to me.”
Danica studied him and found little guile in his angular face, but still, he had a certain air about him—a sense of slumbering power. “I need information on the time mages.”
“Ah,” said the man, who took the catalog from her and closed it. “You won’t find much luck here. Most record of the time mages has been lost, and not accidentally.”
Danica was rewarded for her brazen tactic. The man seemed unsurprised by mention of the time mages, unlike everyone else she had encountered. “You know of the time mages then?”
“I know that they were dangerous arcanists who commanded powers best left undiscovered.”
“And what if that power is to be used for good?”
The stranger shrugged. “In truth that is how most begin. Few set out with ruin in mind. In the beginning it’s about the art, the science, but then the hunger sets in. And in the end it always wins out against reason.”
“You speak in riddles, wizard. What is it you want me to ask: What hunger, great one? Or, maybe that’s what happened to you.”
The mage smiled. “It happened to all of the time mages. They all went mad. It was the price they paid for their art. I suppose like any other addiction they told themselves, one more time, and then I’ll stop. But there’s always a right to wrong, a question that must be answered, a knowledge that must be grasped. But is knowledge for its own sake enough, for like unrequited love does it not ache to be expressed?”
Danica’s eyes narrowed. “Now I’m confused. Are you flirting with me?”
The black-skinned man chuckled. “Your brother was a better student.”
Danica bit back the response that leapt to her lips: You knew my brother? What do you know of him! The wizard had her at a disadvantage, but she was damned if she was going to let him know it. “Elias was always more earnest, and trusting. A noble trait, but it gets him into trouble at times. That’s why he has me to watch out for him. Every family needs a golden boy, and a bitch.”
“My point, Danica, is not whether or not you’ve enough brass for the task at hand, but whether or not you are to be trusted with it. Your brother used this power for ill and created a catastrophe beyond your imaginings. Can I trust you not to make the same mistake?”
“Elias may have his faults, but his is the truest heart I’ve ever known. There’s nothing that can blacken it.”
The wizard exhaled through his nose in a sharp gesture that wasn’t quite a sigh. “It is your brother’s heart that has gotten him into this mess. Love, fear—two unlikely bedfellows that couple more often than you might think—can blind the best intentioned of men. A master of the Deep Arcanum must be above this. Only those who would serve are worthy of such power, and they must put the whole above themselves.”
“You sound more like a priest than a wizard.”
“I am, after a fashion. Through the long ages of the world has my order policed the would-be masters of the deep secrets of the universe. And yes, as you guessed, I am a time mage. The last of them.”
“And what happened to the others? They all went mad to a man and then what, exploded?”
“No,” said the time mage, “I killed them.”
†
“She’s down, and deeply,” Phinneas said.
“I don’t like this,” said Lar who paced around the supine Danica, his eyes never leaving her face.
“You’ve made your position more than clear, Lar,” said Ogden. “But we all agreed we have little choice. After the last attack—”
“I remember,” said Lar. “I was there.”
Lar had been of the mind that the first two attacks were something of a random occurrence. The first creature that fell through the rift was a mindless beast, or at least he had assumed it was. The second half-man creature had appeared frightened and out of his element and certainly not a diabolic mastermind, though the rumors spreading like fire in a rick-house painted quite a different tale. The third attack, however, had been nothing like the first two.
A team of four warriors outfitted for battle had appeared in Bryn’s former bedchamber in the middling hours of the afternoon. The band, who fit a close enough facsimile of the elves Lar had heard tell of as a child, had appeared with drawn steel and were nothing if not well-prepared. They were dressed in dark clothing and fighting leathers, supple boots, and while they traveled light they had packs with tents, basic survival gear, and rations. Whoever they were, their outfitting made it clear that they were a scouting party. Sadly, however, their secrets died with them.
As fortune would have it, Lar and more than a few Redshields were close at hand. Since the second attack Lar had begun to expect another such event, and the anticipation grew with each passing day. As such he stuck close whenever he didn’t have an eye on Danica, or was pretending toward being First Marshal. He may not have Danica’s wits or Bryn’s guile, and was of little use in their endless research to uncover any shred of knowledge or clue that might help them solve the riddle of the rift and discover Elias’s whereabouts, but he knew as well as anyone that the goings-on in Bryn’s room were the key and he was determined to be there when it happened again. Dealing with whatever came through that hole in the world and bearing witness to it might be all that he could do for Elias, but he was sure as hell going to be there to do it.
So it was without surprise that Lar heard the alarm raised, and thanks to their previous encounters Lucerne was prepared. The Redshields had standing orders to try to take whoever came through the rift alive, but the elves had other plans. They refused to lay down their arms and demanded to be told what country and land they were in, or so Lar was told. At least one of their number was an arcanist for he had busied himself with chanting an
d wild gesticulations, though nothing explosive happened. Ogden later suggested that he was likely trying to open the rift back up.
By the time Lar entered onto the scene the situation had already devolved into violence. The elves were highly skilled combatants but were vastly outnumbered. Still, they had killed three Redshields before any of their number suffered a single wound. They fought with long, thin-bladed sabers with a smoky blue tint. Ogden had collected the weapons for further study, stating that they were enchanted.
Lar waded directly into the fray, having little time to assess the situation. His new blade, which Danica had named Kyan, leapt into his hand seemingly of its own volition. Though Lar had painstakingly trained with Blackwell over the past weeks he was fully aware that his fighting style lacked art and was built upon the cornerstones of his strength and reach. Blackwell had once remarked to him, “It’s a shame that full-plate has fallen out of vogue, for you would be quite the tin-can soldier with that oxen back of yours, providing we could find a horse strong enough to carry you!”
Despite his superior strength the first elf he encountered gave him more than a fair fight. The elf caught Lar’s opening, over-hand blow easily on the flat of his saber, but he must not have braced himself enough, for he staggered under the blow. Lar pressed his advantage and the elf retreated under his heavy-handed volley, his saber recoiling with a tinny sound at each parry. Still, the elf was fast of hand and fleet of foot and snuck in arrow-quick counter strikes that Lar was barely able to check with his heavier double-edged bastard sword. Lar’s plan to take the elf alive disappeared, replaced by the imperative to survive the encounter by any means necessary.
They exchanged a flurry of blows, the elf steadily losing ground, but Lar tired from the effort of keeping stride with his alacritous foe. The elf retreated to the far wall and Lar felt a renewed burst of stamina as he sensed the lithe swordsman was spent and sought retreat. He couldn’t have been more wrong.
The elf lowered his sword but, as Lar was presently about to learn, he had more in his repertoire than a quick sword hand. The elf’s eyes narrowed and an invisible fist of force punched Lar in the chest. The ring-mail he wore under his duster did little to blunt the blow and he found himself thrown back as if he had been shoulder checked by an ox. He managed to keep his feet under him, but only just.
The elf’s blade took him across the abdomen, parting his duster and ring-mail with equal ease, and Lar felt his legs fail. The momentary shock, accompanied by a warmth spreading down his stomach, lasted but momentarily, for a geyser of wrath, carefully suppressed for the better part of a year, burst forth. Until the end of his days Lar would never forget the following seconds, for he knew full well, even in that very moment, that they could be his last.
He found himself on one knee as the elf’s blade descended in a silver arc. Acting out of instinct, or perhaps osmosis from Blackwell’s incessant drilling, Lar pressed his knee into the ground and swung from his hip, torquing power from his torso. His blade met his foe’s, but it didn’t stop there. With a mighty detonation the elf’s sword sundered and he was catapulted from his feet, even as a half-foot of Lar’s steel opened him from collar bone to sternum.
Lar later attributed the explosion to the breaking of the elf’s blade, as it was enchanted with some kind of fey magic. Ogden didn’t dismiss his conclusion but reminded him that his own blade had been enchanted as well and may hold more secrets beyond a peerless edge than they had supposed. The rumors of course had already pinwheeled, and now the talk of Lucerne was that Elias had died and passed his powers onto his successor. Lar nipped these in bud wherever he could, particularly in the Marshal Barracks. He told the men that Elias would return, but though he was no politician or leader of men, Lar could read doubt easily enough on their faces.
While the elf was in no position to be taken prisoner and bled out before Ogden and Phinneas entered the scene Lar’s own wound was far from fatal. The elf’s sword didn’t nick his guts and between Phinneas’s tight stitching hand and Danica’s healing magic he doubted he’d even carry a scar. Still, his brush with mortality was close enough for his taste.
Sadly, none of the other elves survived the skirmish either. Each of them fought to the death, allowing for no quarter though they were impossibly outnumbered. Still, their appearance had at least solved some of the riddles surrounding the rift, even as they had raised more yet.
“Legend speaks of a time when the fey and ancient man shared the world,” Ogden had said after examining the bodies, “but after a great struggle between the two races, human arcanists drove the fey back from whence they came. Many historians had thought they meant some continent to the west, but modern exploration of the world has shown that to be a myth, unless said landmass had sunk into the sea. This is why most scholars view the old fey records as fantastic works of fiction, like the Ittamar’s songs of the old gods.”
In any case, Ogden surmised that wherever the fey ended up, there was now a portal between there and here. Between the reemergence of the mythic House Senestrati and now the fey, it seemed that Agia’s sordid history had come to call. Lar couldn’t help but wonder if the two were connected somehow. Wherever these elf creatures, or whatever they were, hailed from, Ogden and Phinneas had become convinced that it was another world entirely, or in their words, another dimension or plane. Lar cared not one crumb about the whether-tos and why-fors; all he cared about was putting a plug in this whole business, and soon.
Danica murmured in her sleep and Lar’s attention snapped back to the present. He studied her features, serene in sleep, save for a faint furrow in her brow and the darting of her eyes beneath their lids. She remained convinced that she had encountered Elias in a dream world to which she sometimes traveled when she slept. So she had begged Phinneas to induce another trance. The doctor had refused at first, but Danica had argued that time was running out for them, especially after the most recent incident. While the first two occurrences could be marked off as random, the third seemed anything but. Finding Elias, she had said, might be the only way they could unravel the mystery before it was too late. And so Phinneas, Ogden, and the queen had all agreed, albeit reluctantly.
Now they all awaited Danica.
Lar continued to watch Danica, the last scion of House Duana on the face of Agia, and wondered what it was that she saw.
†
Danica shrank back despite herself. Who was this man, this time mage, if his claims could be believed? She felt the gravity of his uncanny, dark eyes upon her. His stare was without malice, but nor was there any clemency in it.
Her attention turned to the library, which she now realized was empty of even a single other soul. As her thoughts turned to the environs she realized that she couldn’t quite remember how she had come to be here, or even where she was. The floor began to warble and her body became light.
“Stay with me Danica!” the mage commanded.
The density of the world reasserted itself and Danica stood her ground. “I’m back in the dream world, aren’t I?”
“Something like that.”
She fixed her eyes on the mage and something tickled in the back of her mind. She took a step toward him. “Rasen Motyl?”
“The very same.”
“You killed all of them? All of the time mages?”
“Yes,” said the mage matter-of-factly. “Although I took no satisfaction in it. It was a dirty task, I do not deny it, and loathsome, but ultimately necessary.”
“Because they had gone mad?”
“Traveling though multiple time streams and retaining asynchronous memories of all them would make anyone go mad, and, yes that was part of it. But more than that they went mad with power. They destabilized the very fabric of space and time in many, many worlds. Mastery over time travel was not something mankind was ready for. Perhaps it is something they will never be ready for. It is an art best left uncovered.”
Danica’s mind went back to her half-remembered meeting with Elias. He had
said that he was outside time, which is why he needed her to find out about the time mages. Well now, it would seem, she had one right before her. “Where is my brother, or, should I say, when is he?”
The mage smiled, a wistful, wilting kind of smile. “In your terms, he would be far, far in the future.”
A thought occurred to Danica, the import of which staggered her mind like a lightning bolt. “You’re not the last time mage at all are you? Elias has followed in your footsteps.”
“I don’t want to destroy your brother.”
Danica hated herself for the way she trembled. “And yet you’ve considered it?”
“I’ve had to.”
“Don’t you do it. Don’t you dare.”
“It is true that I can help him. It is true that I can give him the tools to balance the timelines, but a seed of the knowledge of time magic will always remain buried in him. Can I trust him to bear that seed?”
Danica chose her words carefully, for she knew the time mage would weigh them just as carefully, and that the fate of both Elias and all of Agia might well hinge on them. “Elias has a good in him that cannot be measured with a scale. He cannot bear to see anyone suffer or to see an injustice stand. He lives his life by a code that eludes me, as if God himself is watching his every move. If he’s stepped in it, I can only imagine it was because of extenuating circumstances. If you trust him with this task he will succeed. I’d wager my life and the very world on it.”
The mage locked eyes with her. “Those are the stakes.”
Danica felt the mage’s words like a punch to her gut. “You are not one to mince words, so tell me true: Will you help us?”
He studied her, his eyes the only thing about him that moved. “I will give Elias the tools he needs to succeed, but he will need your help. Now listen to me carefully, Danica. You must do exactly what I say when I say to do it. There can be no margin for error.”
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 39