“Danica, what is your plan?” asked Phinneas, a brittle edge to his voice.
“Be patient,” said Danica. “It’s almost time.”
“I will reprogram the second field to blink out at the appointed time,” Rasen had told her. “As we discussed, the book must be returned after thirty-six hours, so if you cannot manage to retrieve it in the two minutes the containment field is down, you will fail in your task.”
Danica checked the watch yet again. Her heart quickened. She clicked the watch closed and slid it into her pocket. The energy field winked out, much to the surprise of the Sentinels spread out behind her. Danica didn’t wait a beat before she sprung to the dais and cast open the chest, which Rasen had been kind enough to leave unlocked.
Danica took a deep breath before reaching her hand into the inky depths of the chest, through which no light escaped, and no light could enter, as if the interior of the chest was the very void of nothingness.
The time mage’s words echoed in her mind: “As for navigating the chest—that is not something that I can help you with. There are many secret things suspended in that chest, and it is far deeper than you can even conceive. Reach into it and focus on your task—retrieving the book. Bend all of your will to it. Picture it. Imagine how the leather feels in your hands. Think of your need. If you bear sufficient mental fortitude you will activate the magic of the chest and draw the spellbook to you.”
Danica thrust a hand into the void. She met no resistance, and blessedly, her hand remained very much attached to the rest of her arm, though it tingled as if every last nerve in her hand fired at once. She bent her thoughts to the spellbook. She imagined it flitting through the cavernous void and alighting in her hand. She thought about the feel of the leather ridges on its spine. Yet, her hand remained empty.
With a mounting sense of dread she redoubled her efforts, clenching her eyes shut. I command you! She cried in her mind. I command you to come to me. Now! And still, nothing. Panic tightened her throat and she dizzied. She thought about what her failure would cost. The time mage had hinted at a bleak future where mankind was scattered or else the slaves and play things of the Dark Fey. Her mind turned to Elias and how she would never see him again.
Hot tears squeezed from her eyes and suddenly her hand was no longer empty.
Danica snatched her hand from the chest and a warning chimed in her mind. She had taken too long. She pivoted about even as she tucked her legs beneath her and then sprung off the dais, leading with the book in her outstretched hand.
She cleared the dais as a tremendous force clapped behind her feet and sent her darting through the air. She was certain she would have cleared the distance to the door, but for Lar. He had been poised for action at the perimeter of the first shield, a deep sense of foreboding tearing through his mind. When Danica arrowed off the dais he sprung to action and caught her, though the force of her unplanned flight bowled them both over.
Lar lay on his back looking up at Danica’s blanched face, with the thought that he would feel his acrobatics in his back tomorrow. “You know, Danni, I think you’re taking your flair for the dramatic a little far these days, even for me.”
Danica gave him a playful slap on the cheek. “Just trying to keep you on your toes, Marshal.” She pushed herself off Lar with a groan and some help from Bryn and Phinneas. She held the book up. “Got it.”
“Danica, do you have any clue as to what that chest is?” asked Ogden, his voice grave.
Danica cast a glance at the chest and shuddered. “The time mage told me that it is an artifact of another age. One evidently of a set. Through some mechanism he didn’t explain, the chest contains space without time.” She shrugged. “The interior of the chest is outside time and space, and yet somehow touches upon many timelines simultaneously.”
Ogden’s scowl deepened. Scholars had thought about time travel and the nature of time since the beginnings of civilization, and he had even studied some of their calculations, but it had all been theory. No one he had ever spoken with had even considered that travel through time was something that mankind could ever achieve.
“An artifact from another age, you say,” Ogden said at last. “Then the question becomes: is it from a past age, or a future one?”
Danica shuddered again. “I’d rather not think about it. Let’s get out of here. We have thirty-six hours before we need to get this spellbook back into the chest.”
“Why may we have it for so short a time?” asked the wizard.
Danica shrugged. “Apparently another me, in another timeline, needs it to help Elias. Best not to think about it too much. It only invites headaches.”
Danica turned heel and made her way out of the room and back toward the entrance before Ogden could formulate a response, which he supposed was good as he couldn’t seem to come up with one.
Chapter 49
Time Mage’s Apprentice
“Help from you?” asked Elias for the second time in a minute. “Danica had help from you?”
Rasen shot Elias a withering look. “How do you think she managed to hide your sword for you, and build a portal here? Though, I must give credit where it is due. She spent a lifetime decoding the cipher I left for her, but it was I that left the clues.”
Elias swallowed. “You met her?”
Rasen shifted on his chair. “In a manner of speaking. There are many ways to travel. You know something of this, yes?”
Elias became still. Rasen knew much of him, and he found it more than a little unsettling. “We met in a kind of dream world, yes.”
“Travel to this dream world, as you call it, is not utterly different than travel through time. Philosophically they are similar in that they both require passing certain boundaries.”
“How is it you know so much of me and my sister?”
“As you yourself have witnessed, I can see a great many things from here. He who has mastered travel through the timelines can also see into them. From here, in a pocket outside the flow of time, I can see even further. And you, my friend, have caused quite a stir in the timestreams. Quite a stir, indeed.”
Elias shook his head. It seemed beyond a man to have the kind of abilities Rasen did. “Rasen, who are you really?”
Rasen’s expression of good humor melted away. “My tale is a long one. Perhaps I’ll share it with you someday, Elias, or, I should say, some-when.
“For now, let us focus on the task at hand. You’ve much to learn, and I’ve much to teach you. Elias, you must learn the spell to seal the anomaly.”
“Not that I’m ungrateful for all you’ve done to help me, but I have to ask—wouldn’t it be simpler for you to go with me and seal the anomaly yourself?”
“Easier for you, I’m sure,” Rasen quipped, but then his expression sobered. “Yet leave here I cannot. I am bound to this place, betrayed by my own brothers, and may never again leave it.”
Elias found he couldn’t meet the time mage’s eyes. “Rasen, I’m sorry.”
“It is my fate, and one that I willingly accept.”
Elias couldn’t imagine the purgatorial existence Rasen endured wiling away his life in solitude, unable to set foot outside of the small island. Still, his inquisitive mind worked and he found other questions had come to him. “Yet you managed to help Danica?”
Rasen sighed. “I see that I must satisfy your curiosity in this matter for us to proceed. So be it. I have in my possession a curious artifact bound by Arcanum unknown to the arcanists of your world. It is a chest of sorts, but one with a unique function. Suspended within the chest is a small, self-contained pocket dimension, which is void of time. For all intents and purposes the flow of time does not exist inside the chest.”
The significance of this was not lost on Elias. “So this is how the time mages were able to communicate across time?”
“Yes, by using the chest I can easily send an item into the past or future, such as a note or bauble, almost anything really. How this concerns you and your sister
, however, is that this chest is one of a set.”
“But that would mean...”
“Yes, one such chest is in Peidra, in your wizard’s keep. I sent Danica instructions with which to help with things on her end. Seeing that she was able to access the chest was another matter, and required me sending a message to myself in my own past to reprogram the containment fields that shield the chest when I first hid it in your timeline, before I was bound from reentering the timestreams. I also programmed the central containment field to go down for another two-minute period the day after you are due to return to your own time.”
“To what end would you lower the shields for me?”
Rasen smiled grimly. “Not for you, but for Danica again, in the event that you fall when you encounter Mordum.”
“I appreciate the vote of confidence,” Elias said dryly, “but why is it so important for Danica to be able to get back into the chest if I am defeated?”
“Do you recall how you agreed to follow my instructions to the letter?”
“Yes,” said Elias, unsure what the time mage was about.
“Mordum has the Grimoire, the book containing all of the scripts for travel between times, timelines, and even more esoteric formulas. I need it back. If you can’t return here with it, I need Danica, or whoever is left standing when the smoke clears, to take it from him, at any cost, and put it back into the chest so that I can retrieve it here. I have left instructions in a spellbook I gave to Danica for opening a gateway between the two chests.”
“Very well,” said Elias, and then a thought occurred to him and he went cold. “You said back in the chest—is that where it came from? Is that where Talinus found the Grimoire?”
“My guess is yes. It’s the only logical conclusion. He didn’t have the ability to take it back to his masters so that they could use its power to break through their dimension into your world, so he tricked you into using it, for he knew you could do it.”
“Why me I wonder? Surely Ogden or one of the others would have been better equipped.”
“Your gift is unique. Not everyone has the ability to harness magic in the way required to open a temporal gateway. That, and perhaps they lacked a sufficient power source.”
Elias’s thoughts turned to the time gate that Danica had left for him and how he had needed his sword to activate it. “It was father’s sword and my ability to control it that allowed me construct a gate to travel into the past, thus creating the rift.”
Rasen smiled. “Perhaps you’re not as clean a slate as I had thought, and won’t prove as difficult to teach as I had feared.”
Elias let the last comment pass unaddressed. “I wonder how Talinus managed to get his claws on the Grimoire if it was so well-guarded?”
“The more poignant question is what was he doing in your realm in the first place? He’s an imp, a creature of the Dark Fey. He should have been barred from your world, for all the old gateways between the fey realm and yours have been destroyed.”
“He told me that he was summoned by a wizard.”
“Impossible. Unless he wasn’t in the fey realm to begin with.”
“Where could he have been?”
“Who can say? Perhaps he’s been in your realm since ancient times, having escaped the fey purge.”
Elias sat back and tried to wrap his head around the possibilities. Since his battle with Sarad in the throne room, the many unanswered questions surrounding Talinus had plagued him. The imp was a loose end, and that did not sit well with him. He had never doubted that the imp had helped them return to Lucerne and defeat Sarad to serve his own ends. He had a sinking suspicion that the imp had never really been under Sarad’s control but was scheming on behalf of his true master, the Obsidian Queen, the entire time.
Despite how far he had come, Elias still had more questions than answers, but he supposed there was little to be done about that at present. He, and Galacia, would be better served by him bending his focus to the task at hand. “What’s our next step?”
Rasen shot him a wry smile. “It is time that you relearn what you have forgotten, and your lessons begin now.”
“Very well,” said Elias. “I have but one more question.”
Rasen favored him a shake of his head. “Of course you do.”
“Why was the Grimoire in Galacia—or rather my Galacia—in the first place?”
Rasen’s expression turned grave. “For that I am sorry, and thus I must take a measure of responsibility for this debacle. I hid an Infinitum Chest in your timeline, as a failsafe. At a later time, when I was left with no alternative, I sent the Grimoire there because I believed it would be safe. No one in your timestream knew of time magic, or so I believed. Moreover, no one in your timeline even knew of the Grimoire or how to operate the chest should they happen upon it.”
“Save for Talinus.”
“So it would seem. I would very much like to meet the imp.”
Elias thought of the way Talinus had unceremoniously slashed Sarad’s throat, executing him after he had failed to resurrect the scions of House Senestrati. He suppressed a shudder. “He has much to answer for.” Elias blinked away the grisly memory of Sarad bleeding out, his eyes wide with abject terror. “Nevertheless, I imagine the Grimoire would have been safer here.”
Rasen shifted on his seat, and for the first time Elias saw the time mage look uncomfortable. “I was not always the last time mage. My fellows and I had some disagreements about what should be done with the Grimoire. Our travel through the timelines had consequences, not all of which could be undone. Some of us believed the Grimoire should be destroyed, myself among them. But destroying the Grimoire Infinitum is no easy task. The scripts and spells contained within it are so volatile that they are actually bonded to the very pages via powerful binding magic. The book itself is a magical artifact of immense power.
“Destroying the book would involve erecting a containment field to restrain the volatile energies released during the process, while simultaneously unbinding the magic contained within the Grimoire. But this requires at least two time mages and preferably more, who could erect further shielding in case anything goes awry. Otherwise the unbinding of the Grimoire could very well destroy the entire isle. Sadly, not all my compatriots believed this was the proper course. They couldn’t bear the thought of the knowledge being lost forever, or else wanted its power for themselves.
“A great fight broke out among us, on this very ground. I escaped the melee and sent the Grimoire through the Infinity Chest to keep it from being taken should I fall. It was a desperate act, but given the circumstances, the only one available to me. I left it there because I knew that one day someone would hear tell of the Grimoire and seek the isle. I didn’t think anyone would ever think to seek it in a timeline free of the time mage’s influence. That’s why I hid the chest in your world, because I foresaw a vergence in the timelines and feared that someone might try to claim the book from me in the future. The other time mages had acolytes and may have set in motion contingency plans should they fall.”
“This is why your brothers cursed you and bound you here,” said Elias. “To exact vengeance for you hiding the Grimoire from them.”
“No,” said Rasen in a small voice. “I killed all of my brothers that remained. The few that escaped that day returned to try to make me talk, to find the Grimoire. They had scoured the timelines seeking it, but to no avail. None of them survived their return, however. I had planned for them.
“No, I bound myself to this place. I drew spells in my own blood and tied my very life force to this place. It made this domain my own, made us one so that I could defend it against the unscrupulous, against my former brothers. This place needed a guardian, and there was no one else. Someone needed to endure to see the Grimoire destroyed, no matter the cost.”
A hot wave of nausea passed through Elias as the blood drained from his face. The time mage had inflicted an eternity of torment on himself to ensure the safety of countless worlds. He lo
oked upon Rasen with new eyes.
“And yet now,” said Elias, “the Grimoire cannot be destroyed, for you are the last of your kind.”
“No,” said Rasen, fixing his millstone-gaze upon Elias, “I was the last of my kind, but then you came along. Elias, it’s you I’ve been waiting for these long centuries outside of time. I need you to help me destroy the Grimoire Infinitum.”
Chapter 50
The Road Home
“Me?” asked Elias. “But I am no time mage. Not really.”
“That,” said Rasen, “is something that I aim to rectify.”
Elias looked Rasen in the eye. He didn’t know if he could do the things the time mage asked of him; he didn’t know if he possessed the strength or the intellect to grasp the language of the time mages, or wrestle the profound energies required and bend them to his will. Yet, he knew that he had little choice but to trust in Rasen and his plans if he wanted to save those he loved.
“Very well,” he said at last. “I am with you.”
Rasen laid out his plan, and Elias listened. It seemed sound to him, though it demanded that his timing be perfect and allowed for few contingencies. Still, given the circumstances, it seemed their only course of action.
Elias had thought that Rasen’s plans were mind-bending, but compared to nuanced language of time magic the plan was naught but semantics, a skeleton framework upon which rested a complex and terrible Arcanum that harnessed enormous amounts energy to manipulate the very fabric of space and time. Much like the spell he had used to bind the Scarlet Hand, at its basic root time magic involved using complex geometric spellforms to harness the requisite energy for opening a portal to the past, the future, or to leap between timelines. And like the spell he had used to bind the Hand, time magic demanded that the spellform erected was three-dimensional, but first required drawing a one-dimensional representation with which to anchor the spell. The drawn spellform required a special kind of alchemical chalk that was crafted from specific crystallized metals and sands magically bound to lead. The interspersed crystals of metal channeled the energy, while the lead, aside from serving as the delivery vehicle, barred foreign energy from influencing the spellform. Dedicated spellforms required that specific metals or crystals were used to anchor the spell, like the one Danica had created in an alternate timeline.
Wayfarer (The Empyrean Chronicle) Page 41