The Wizard of Time (Book 1) (3 page)
“Everything will be okay,” the man said.
“Am I dead?” Gabriel asked. Best to start with the most important question first.
“You were, and in some ways you are, but you aren’t,” the woman said.
“It’s complicated,” the man added. Dead but not dead. Yes, that sounded complicated.
“Where am I?” Gabriel asked. “Is this a hospital? Where are my parents? I have their work numbers on a laminated card in my pocket. My mom insisted. She likes to plan ahead.”
“I hate this part,” the man repeated.
“You’re someplace safe,” the woman said. That seemed…vague.
“My parents…?” Gabriel said.
“Your parents are fine,” the man answered. That was vague as well. All this vagueness was beginning to make his head hurt.
“I want to see my parents,” Gabriel said, trying to sound like he had the authority to demand what he wanted. He sat up a little. His head spun a bit, but it wasn’t bad. He could see more of the room now. It clearly wasn’t a hospital room. Not any hospital he’d ever seen. Not with walls of white painted stone.
“What’s going on?” Gabriel said. “Why won’t you tell me where I am? Why won’t you let me see my parents? Who are you?” There was another question. One he didn’t want the answer to. “What do you mean I was dead, but I’m not dead?”
“We will answer your questions,” the woman said. “All of your questions. However, we have found that it is best not to head directly to the answers, but to come at them sideways. To sneak up on them, as it were. First come the introductions. My name is Sema and this is Ohin.”
“I’m Gabriel.”
“Yes, we know,” said Ohin as he stroked his chin.
“Tell me, Gabriel,” Sema asked, “did you know you were going to drown? Did you sense it in some way?”
Gabriel’s eyes opened a little wider. How could they know? What was going on? “Yes,” he replied. “I had a dream.”
“And you had dreams like this often, didn’t you,” Ohin said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Gabriel answered. “My parents always think I’m making it up.”
“But the things you see in your dreams always come true,” Sema said.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “No matter what I do.”
“But do they always come true exactly the way you dream them?” Ohin asked.
“No,” Gabriel answered. “If I try to change them, the events change, but the result is the same.”
“This is usually called precognition or clairvoyance,” Sema said.
“It is a sign,” Ohin added. “An indicator.”
“Of what?” Gabriel asked.
“Of sensitivity,” Sema said.
“Sensitivity to what?” Gabriel pressed.
“What do you think?” Ohin asked in return.
“What kind of game is this?” Gabriel asked. “Who are you?”
“Sensitivity to what?” Ohin repeated.
Gabriel didn’t like this. No answers, just more questions. Questions he didn’t like the answers to. And he knew the answer to the question. This wasn’t the first time he had thought about the dreams and what they meant and why he had them. He’d asked this question himself. Many times. And he still didn’t like the answer.
“Sensitivity to what?” Ohin said a third time, his voice gentle.
“To the flow of time,” Gabriel said, staring into the deep brown eyes of the strange man before him.
“So you think you know what’s going to happen in the future?” Sema asked.
“Sometimes,” Gabriel said. “When I dream. When the dream feels more real than being awake.”
“And do you believe that you see the future?” Ohin asked.
“Sometimes,” Gabriel said.
“Sometimes you see the future or sometimes you believe it?” Sema asked.
“Sometimes I see the future,” Gabriel said. “I always believe it.”
“If you believe you can see the future, and you dreamed yourself drowning,” Ohin asked, “why did you swim back down to the bus when you were safe on the shore?”
“Because it wouldn’t have changed anything,” Gabriel said. “Even if I had stayed with Tom on the shore, it would have worked out that I was drowning some way. It always does.”
“So you believe the future is immutable?” Ohin asked. “Fixed in stone.”
“Not exactly,” Gabriel replied. “It’s flexible like the branch of a tree. You can bend it a little, but it always springs back to where it was. Just a little different, maybe.”
“So you believe the future is set, but somewhat malleable?” Sema asked.
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “That’s what I said. What is this? Why are you asking me these questions?”
“Why don’t you take a moment to think it through?” Ohin said.
“We’ve told you everything you need to know,” Sema added.
Gabriel had been thinking it through. While one side of his mind answered Ohin and Sema’s questions, the other side puzzled through all of the possibilities, examining all of the things he knew and looking for potential answers that would fit the circumstances. Why was he here with strangers? Why did they not look like doctors? Where were his parents? Why was this not a hospital? Why were they asking him questions about his dreams and seeing the future? How could they have known about his dreams about the future? How could they have known he had sensed he would drown? How could they have known that he swam back down to the bus? Why would they say that he had been dead? That he was dead, but in some ways, he wasn’t?
“What year is this?” Gabriel asked. Best to ask a question when you fear you have the right answer. Particularly if the answer to your question might prove you wrong, and Gabriel desperately wanted to be wrong.
“Oh, he’s quick,” Sema said.
“It took me ten minutes,” Ohin said.
“You haven’t answered my question,” Gabriel said, a hint of annoyance and fear finally reaching his voice.
“Because the answer will sound absurd without some explanation,” Ohin said. “First, let me tell you that you are not in the time and place you were when you died.”
“So I did die?” Gabriel asked. It had certainly felt like it when the water filled his lungs and his vision went black. Gabriel pushed the thought away.
“Yes,” Sema said. “That was necessary, unfortunately.”
“But I’m not dead now.” Gabriel said. That seemed clear enough.
“Not from your perspective,” Ohin said. Maybe not as clear as he thought.
“If I’m not dead from my perspective, from whose am I?” Gabriel asked.
“Think it through,” Ohin said in a soft voice.
Gabriel was getting a little tired of being asked to think things through. “I’m dead to everyone in my time, aren’t I?” he said. Ohin only nodded in response. “My parents. My sister. My friends. Everyone I knew. They all think I’m dead.”
“You are dead in their time, Gabriel,” Sema said. “You did drown in that bus. You did die.”
“But then how can I be here?” Gabriel asked. “And how can they think I’m dead if there’s no body? And don’t tell me to think it through.”
“If you knew the answer to that question without being told, I’d be lining up to be
your
apprentice,” Ohin said. “You did die, but we took you from the bus the moment you expired. And your parents think you are dead because they buried a body that looked just like yours.”
“I’ll never see my parents again, will I?” Gabriel asked, tears beginning to push at the edges of his eyes. He knew the answer, but he had to ask.
“That you can think through, as well,” Ohin said.
“If I went back to them,” Gabriel said, thinking out loud, “that would change things. If I went back, time couldn’t snap back to where it should be.”
“Exactly,” Sema said. “And what do you think would happen then?”
Good question, Gabriel thought. What happened when you changed time so badly it couldn’t go back to the way it was supposed to be? Would time just change permanently? That didn’t seem right. That didn’t fit with the way he dreamed the future. If time couldn’t change, either it was physically impossible for him to return to his parents, or doing so would result in something else. Something different.
“It would create two times,” Gabriel said. “If I went back, it would change time and there would be two timelines, one where I was dead and one where I just appeared alive again.”
“You are going to have your hands full, Ohin,” Sema said.
“I am going to have the best apprentice the Council has seen in a hundred years,” Ohin replied with a smile. “You are right, Gabriel. If you went back now, the Primary Continuum, the central timeline of the universe, would spilt. Your presence would be so radically different that the Primary Continuum could not absorb the change, and a bifurcation, a new branch of time, an alternate reality, would be created. A parallel universe where, as you said, you simply appeared.”
“So why can’t I do that?” Gabriel said. He was starting to get angry now. This wasn’t fair at all. Whoever these people were, they should not be keeping him here when he could go home. “You brought me here, wherever here is, you can take me back. Who cares if there’s a parallel universe where I’m alive? I think that would be a great universe. I’m sure my parents would be happy about it.”
“What happens when a tree has too many branches?” Ohin asked.
“What happens when a branch has too many branches?” Sema added.
“And what happens if the branches reach too far from the main trunk of the tree?” Ohin continued.
Gabriel saw it in his mind. Branches reaching out too far, tilting the tree, the trunk splintering under the weight, breaking away, killing the tree. “The Primary Continuum is damaged by branches, isn’t it? The more branches, the more dangerous it is to the entire timeline. So I can never go back.” He felt the weight of the words sink into his heart. They had taken him just as he died so that his absence wouldn’t change the main timeline. But why had they taken him in the first place? Why expend all that effort to save
his
life? Did he really want to know?
“You can move through time,” Gabriel said, ignoring the questions in his head.
“Not me,” Sema said. “Ohin is the one who can move through time. And take others with him.”
“How?” Gabriel said. “How is that possible?”
“Magic,” Ohin said.
“Seriously,” Gabriel said. “How is it possible? Do you have a time machine?”
“I told you,” Ohin said, “it’s magic. All I have is my talisman.” He touched the seashell necklace on his chest.
“There are many magics,” Sema said. “There is magic to control matter and magic to control living things and magic to control energy. Mine is Soul Magic, which allows me to affect people’s minds. And it is why you are far calmer than you might otherwise be.”
“You’re using magic on me?” Gabriel asked. It made no sense. Except that it did. Why was he so calm? Could there really be magic? Was this all a joke?
“Why do you think we have brought you through time to this place?” Ohin asked.
Gabriel knew the answer to the question. He just didn’t want to say it out loud. Because it would sound too bizarre. Too impossible. “You took me because you think I can travel through time,” Gabriel said.
“We don’t think so,” Sema said. “We know it.”
“I can sense the power in you as easily as I sense it in myself,” Ohin said. “You will be a Time Mage, Gabriel. That is why we have brought you here. To train you. Because we need you. We need all the Mages of Grace we can find. There is a war on, and we are losing. The War of Time and Magic. And if we do not succeed, the entirety of the Primary Continuum is at risk.”
“Maybe we should explain that later,” Sema said. “He is strong of heart and mind, but I can sense he is at the breaking point.”
It was true. Gabriel did feel dizzy. Like he hadn’t eaten in days. Like the room was spinning. “Where am I?” he said. “I need to know. When am I?”
“You are in England,” Ohin said. “Or what will eventually become England. And if you sit up and look out the window, you’ll have a better idea of when.”
Gabriel forced himself into a full sitting position and looked past Ohin and Sema and through the slightly warped glass of the ancient window. Outside the window lay what seemed to be a cornfield, which might have made sense, but beyond that was something more difficult to explain. It was alive and nearly as tall as the tree it stood eating the leaves from. Four stout legs, a massive body, incredibly long tail, and a long, thick neck. There was no mistaking it. There was a dinosaur outside the window.
“That’s…” Gabriel began. “That’s...”
“That a Pelorosaurus,” Sema said with a matter-of-fact tone.
“That’s crazy,” Gabriel said. “We must be seventy million years in the past.”
“Nearly a hundred and twenty-five million,” Ohin said. “It seems far, but time is really interrelational. Every moment is just as far from every other.”
“Right,” Gabriel said. “Of course. That makes perfect sense.” Sema was right. He was at a breaking point. And he broke right past it. His eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out, falling back into the mattress of the bed.
“I hate this part,” he heard Ohin say as everything went black.
The birdlike creatures circled above, but never seemed to land. Or at least they were something that would one day evolve into birds. In millions of years.
Gabriel walked through the Upper Ward of Windsor castle with Ohin. The Upper Ward was an inner courtyard of sorts. The castle was something else. Ohin had explained that it wasn’t the real Windsor Castle. Well, it was
a
Windsor Castle, but not the one from the Primary Continuum. It had been snatched from an unstable branch of time in 1971 CE, just before the branch was severed from the Primary Continuum. It was fortunate timing, because a fire in 1992 had damaged more than a hundred rooms of the castle. Ohin said that it had required nearly fifty Time Mages working together to move the castle back into the far past of the Primary Continuum. Apparently you could move between alternate branches of reality and the Primary Continuum, but Ohin had not yet explained how. There was so much he hadn’t explained.
This Windsor Castle was now the seat of the Grand Council of Magic. The stones of the castle had been altered with magic to degrade into ash if the Mages required it. A precaution, Ohin had said, in case something went terribly wrong. This way no archeologist in the future would ever dig up the remains of a one hundred twenty-five million-year-old castle. That was the sort of thing that created bifurcations, branches in time. It was the same reason the castle was placed so far in the past. Even if the presence of the castle somehow disturbed the dinosaurs outside its walls, it would be unlikely to create a bifurcation of the Primary Continuum since all the dinosaurs would go extinct around sixty-five million years BCE. Ohin had said that the castle had limited electricity, powered by a series of small windmills outside the castle walls. Lighting also came from oil lamps, candles, and magic.