The Wizard of Time (Book 1) Read online

  THE WIZARD OF TIME

  (Book 1)

  G. L. Breedon

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The Author holds exclusive rights to this work. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited.

  Copyright 2011 by G.L. Breedon

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9837777-1-7

  This book is available in print at most online retailers.

  For more information:

  www.kosmosaicbooks.com

  Dedication

  Thanks to my parents, for encouraging me to follow my dreams, no matter how long it might take.

  Thanks to Andrea Clark, my constant first reader, for her lifelong friendship and diligent editing.

  Thanks to my wife, Tsufit, for her boundless faith, her unceasing love, and her endless patience.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: That Sinking Feeling

  Chapter 2: Rebirth

  Chapter 3: The Castle

  Chapter 4: Making Magic

  Chapter 5: The Waterloo Chamber

  Chapter 6: Reading the Stars

  Chapter 7: The Time Machine

  Chapter 8: Dinner Time

  Chapter 9: Templo Mayor

  Chapter 10: St. Fillan’s Stones

  Chapter 11: The Seventh True Mage

  Chapter 12: Twins in Time

  Chapter 13: The Wrong Thing to Do

  Chapter 14: Lost and Found

  Chapter 15: The Sword of Unmaking

  Chapter 16: The Best Laid Plans

  Chapter 17: Palace of Light Darkness

  Chapter 18: Battles and Honors

  Chapter 19: Lessons in Light Darkness

  Chapter 20: Out of the Fire and Into…

  Chapter 21: Grace and Atrocity

  Chapter 22: Tea Time

  Chapter 23: Seeking to Sever

  Chapter 24: Alexander the Terrible

  Chapter 25: Battle Fatigue

  Chapter 26: Angel of Destruction

  Chapter 27: Home

  About the Author

  Chapter 1: That Sinking Feeling

  Gabriel closed his eyes as the fist dug into his stomach, knocking the air from his lungs in a gust of breath and pain. He opened his eyes in time to see a second fist strike his chin. A blinding white light suffused his brain. His vision blurred as he saw another fist swinging for his face.

  The bus lurched and the tires squealed as the brakes locked up. People screamed. He screamed. The bus hit the railing of the bridge. The boys beating him flew through the air as the bus tumbled over the railing, spinning as it fell. Gabriel spinning as it fell.

  It must be a dream, he thought. It was too real.

  The bus struck the water, the engine dragging it down into the river, the water rushing in, filling the bus as the screams echoed in the air until there was only water. Ice cold water filling his nose, filling his mouth, filling his throat, filling…

  Gabriel woke from the dream, lurching up in bed, gasping, sputtering, and sucking for air as though water really were flowing down his throat and into his lungs against his will.

  He hated dreams like that.

  He had them sometimes. Dreams that felt more real than reality. Dreams where he saw and did things that felt like he was really seeing and doing them. But he knew they were dreams. He always knew. Because of the feeling. The feeling it was more real than his waking life. And he always knew something else as well — whatever happened in the dream would happen when he woke up. Not right after he opened his eyes, not in the first hour maybe, possibly not for a day or two, or even a week, but eventually it would happen.

  So, Gabriel Salvador knew he was going to drown that day.

  The first time it happened, he was five and he had dreamed he was falling out of a tree. The next day he had fallen out of the willow tree in the backyard. When he told his father about the dream, his father had smiled and said it was what was known as a self-fulfilling prophecy. He dreamed he would fall out of the tree and then he had climbed the tree, remembered the dream, and was made so anxious by it that he had fallen. Gabriel didn’t tell his father he hadn’t remembered the dream until he saw the ground rushing up at him. He was lucky then. He only sprained his arm. But it happened again. And again. It couldn’t be avoided. What he dreamed was going to happen.

  Gabriel decided not to think about it. There was nothing he could do. If he stayed home from school, he might drown the next day. Or he might drown in the bathtub. Or it might rain for two days straight and he might drown in a flood. It didn’t matter. But it didn’t make him happy, either.

  He climbed out of bed and looked at himself in the mirror above his dresser. He was tall and skinny for thirteen, his hair slightly wavy like his Jewish father’s and dark black like his Guatemalan mother’s. He looked like his father’s child in the dim light of winter and his mother’s in the sunny days of summer. Even his eyes seemed like a blend between his parents: deep brown with flecks of green. He wished one of his parents had been a fish. That might help.

  He reached out to pluck his lucky pocket watch from the top of the dresser and paused. That was odd. Where was his lucky pocket watch? He had put it on the dresser the previous night before going out to practice catching fly balls with his dad in the back yard. Had it been there before he went to bed? He couldn’t remember. Could it have fallen on the floor? Gabriel searched around the dresser and the room with no success. Where could it have gone? It seemed like a bad omen, losing your lucky pocket watch on the day you thought you were likely to die.

  His father had given him the pocket watch on his thirteenth birthday, just as Gabriel’s grandfather had given it to him when he had turned thirteen. His grandfather had inherited the watch in a foxhole during a battle in World War II when his best friend had thrown himself on a mortar to save his buddies’ lives.

  But there was no lucky watch to be found that morning no matter where Gabriel looked for it. He filled his pockets with the usual things: coins, crumpled bills, a pack of gum, and a pocketknife and headed downstairs.

  At breakfast his mother could sense his mood immediately. “Why the Glum Gus routine this morning?”

  “Didn’t sleep well,” Gabriel said. He had learned long ago that telling his parents about his dreams never worked out. He didn’t need any more lectures about over-active imaginations and he especially didn’t need any more threats to see Dr. Wallace again. Gabriel didn’t need a psychiatrist, he needed a hot breakfast. And a life jacket.

  “Do I have to go today?” Gabriel asked. He knew the answer, but he figured he should try.

  “Are you not feeling well?” his father asked.

  “No, I’m fine.” It was too late to start faking an illness. If he were going to go that route, he should have come down the stairs coughing. Besides, it didn’t matter if he went or not. The dreams always came true.

  “Then you have to go,” his mother said.

  “Is that boy still bothering you?” his father asked.

  “No,” Gabriel answered. “Not usually.” Eddie Sloat was the neighborhood bully who had been pestering him for months.

  “You should walk to school with Emily Baskin,” his mother said. “You used to walk with her all the time.”

  “Emily hates me.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” his mother said. “Why would she possibly hate you?”

  “Do you honestly think I understand why girls do any of the things they do?”

  “Not to fear, Son,” his father said with a grin. “Once they become women, their actions are wholly and completely comprehensible in every way. Why, I understand your mother better than I understand myself.”

  “That’s odd,” his mother
said. “When boys turn to men they become completely obtuse. Your father surprises me every day with the things he says.”

  “I should go,” Gabriel said, standing up. “Wouldn’t want to be late.” He kissed his mom and hugged his dad and started for the door.

  “Walk with her.”

  “That’s how I won your mother over. Ignoring her when she told me to go away.”

  Gabriel waved at his parents. If he couldn’t figure out a way to let the dream happen without him drowning, it might be the last time he saw them.

  “I love you both,” he said as he closed the door.

  ***

  The first raindrop exploded gently on Gabriel’s face as he walked toward the school parking lot. He quickened his pace as a sheet of rain followed the lone raindrop. His best friends Tom and Harold laughed and rushed along with him and the rest of his class toward the waiting school bus. School was normally school, vastly boring daily drudgery, but today was a class field trip to the Museum of Natural History, so Gabriel was excited.

  History was Gabriel’s favorite subject. Baseball was the other. While Harold and Tom played other things, baseball was the only sport that had ever interested Gabriel. He suspected it was the history of the game that appealed to him — the way it had been woven into the character of the American psyche for over a century. Gabriel didn’t think there would ever be a football player who held the same sort of mythological wonder as Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle.

  Stepping onto the bus, Gabriel wiped the rain from his face and looked around for a seat. Most of the seats were already taken. To his left he saw Emily Baskin. She looked up at him with a half-smile that quickly transformed into a scowl as he passed by her seat. Harold and Tom had already grabbed a seat, so Gabriel slipped into the seat across the aisle from them next to Larry, a sickly boy who was always sneezing. Something to do with allergies. Larry sneezed and wiped his nose on his jacket sleeve. How could you have allergies in a rainstorm, Gabriel wondered.

  He groaned silently to himself as Eddie Sloat slid into the seat behind him and the bus rumbled into motion. Eddie was on the wrestling team and was forever wrestling smaller kids to the ground who had never even seen a wrestling match, twisting their arms, pushing their faces in the mud, and generally enjoying himself at their discomfort. Gabriel was one of his favorite targets, although Eddie had so far confined himself to verbal taunts and the occasional shoulder shove in the hallways.

  Gabriel was skinny, but several inches taller than Eddie, so he had hoped to avoid any wrestling matches. Unfortunately, the thuggish red-headed boy bristled with animosity whenever Gabriel was around. Gabriel assumed it was because he was different. The only non-white kid in a small rural town. Although most of the kids accepted him for who he was, being different was enough for some people to hate you in a small town in 1980. It was certainly enough for Eddie.

  Gabriel knew it was coming. It took no clairvoyance to see what would happen next. It was like it was scripted and he was just playing his part. It started with the finger snap to the back of his head. Gabriel didn’t ignore it. His mother was always telling him never to start a fight, but to make sure he finished it if someone else did. His father was of the opinion that violence usually only led to more violence. Gabriel tried to walk a path somewhere between the two. Run when you could. Hit hard when you couldn’t. Which is probably why he’d been able to avoid a fight with Eddie so far.

  “Knock it off, Eddie,” Gabriel said, whipping around and looking the other boy in the eyes.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Eddie said with that gap-toothed grin of his.

  Gabriel turned back around, but it wasn’t long before the next finger snap came to the back of his head.

  “Seriously, knock it off.”

  “It must be your imagination.”

  “I must have imagined you had enough of a brain to realize how stupid you’re being.” Not a great retort, but the best he could think of on short notice.

  Then came the full-handed smack to the side of the head.

  “If you want to fight, why don’t you just fight?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “If you keep it up, Tom’s going to kick your ass.” That was Harold.

  “I don’t fight girls.” That was Tom.

  The fist came next. And then the pushing and the pulling and the yelling and the other fists. Some were Gabriel’s landing on Eddie’s face. Some were Eddie’s landing on his. The bus was over the Tillet River Bridge by then. Gabriel was busy trying to punch Eddie’s nose so he didn’t have time to notice if the bus driver, Mrs. Hopper, was distracted. He thought he heard her voice somewhere in the din of shouting that erupted with the fight, but he wasn’t sure. It didn’t pay to listen to voices of authority when someone was punching you in the face.

  So, maybe she was distracted. Maybe she turned the wheel when she was looking into the giant rearview mirror. Maybe she didn’t see a car stop in front of her. Gabriel never knew. All he knew was the sudden fishtailing motion of the bus and then the squeal of metal against metal as the bus scraped along the guardrail of the bridge. And the screams. After the screams, it was hard to hear anything else. His own scream was particularly hard to hear over.

  And then the bus was tumbling. Over the guardrail. Spinning as it fell. He could see the other students falling and twisting through the air, bouncing against seats and windows and the ceiling and the floor. He saw Tom’s head hit a window. He saw Harold clutching at the leg of the seat. He saw Eddie, terror in his eyes and his mouth wide in mid-scream, slam his shoulder into the ceiling.

  And he saw the water. The bus plunging toward it. Forty feet from bridge to river in long, panic-filled moments. Enough time to notice anything. A small eternity. And he had seen it all before.

  The bus struck the water sideways and the motion within came to a jarring halt, bodies falling into the windows on the bottom. Some of the windows had been open. Others broke. The water began pouring in faster than Gabriel would have imagined possible. He was wedged under a body. Tom’s body. Not moving. The blow to Tom’s head must have knocked him unconscious. Gabriel could see Harold. Screaming. Everyone was still screaming.

  “The door!” Gabriel screamed. He struggled up above the side of the seat and saw that the front door of the bus had been pushed open by the impact and water was rushing in. The entire bus would be flooded in seconds. He couldn’t see Mrs. Hopper. Straining to push Tom’s unconscious body off himself, he saw two kids struggling near the emergency door at the rear of the bus. It took a moment before he realized it was Emily Baskin and Eddie. Emily was struggling to get near the exit door and Eddie was trying to stop her.

  “We have to get it open,” Emily screamed.

  “The water will come in,” Eddie screamed back.

  He probably can’t swim, Gabriel thought. Gabriel hadn’t been able to swim either until last Spring. He hadn’t wanted to learn, but his parents had insisted. It had been a mortifying experience. The only thirteen-year-old learning to swim with a class of seven and eight-year-olds. Apparently Gabriel had a higher tolerance level for mortification than most boys his age. He was glad he did. Otherwise, he might have been like poor Eddie; so afraid of drowning that he might try to stop the one person who could save him.

  The water continued to flow into the interior of the bus from the windows and the front door. Emily continued to fight with Eddie near the emergency door at the rear. The water was up to their waists. People continued to scream. And Gabriel continued to struggle to get from underneath Tom.

  He saw Eddie punch Emily in the face. Emily’s head snapped back, but her legs never moved. She may have been a slender, geeky girl, but she knew how to take a punch. And she knew how to deliver one. Emily had six older brothers. Eddie saw the left hook, but he never noticed the right-handed haymaker that clocked him in the temple. Eddie collapsed with a splash into the ever-deepening water. Gabriel had just enough time to think that if it was going to be
the last thing he saw, seeing Eddie Sloat being knocked out by Emily Baskin wasn’t half bad.

  Of course it didn’t matter, Gabriel thought in a wave of despair. The rear emergency door only opened out. It would never budge until the water had already filled the interior of the bus. However, Emily didn’t move to open the door. Instead, she reached down behind the rear seat and pulled free the large red fire extinguisher. Why didn’t I think of that? Gabriel wondered as he continued to struggle with Tom’s unconscious form.

  Emily slammed the base of the fire extinguisher into the window of the exit door with all her strength. The window cracked. That was all. Too bad, Gabriel thought. Emily struck the window again. Nothing. She shouted in frustration and raised the fire extinguisher to strike again when the window suddenly imploded, a wall of water throwing her back into the bus. Gabriel barely had time to suck in a lung full of air before the water was over his head and the bus filled to capacity, sinking even faster than before.

  Gabriel floated up to the opposite side of windows near the surface of the river as the bus swiftly sank to the bottom some fifteen feet below. The engine of the bus sank first, the rear falling more slowly. The bus rotated as it hit bottom, the ceiling becoming the floor. It was all Gabriel could do to keep his head straight and know which way was which. Where was the door?

  He dragged Tom through the water, pulling him past the row of seats above their heads, struggling past kids panicking and drowning, past kids trying to swim for the exit door. Gabriel pushed people with one hand, pulling Tom with the other, using his feet to kick against anything he could use to reach the exit.

  Someone before him had managed to open the door. Gabriel groped his way through the opening and looked around, seeing cloudy sky above the water fifteen feet over his head. He swam. He swam harder than he ever had before, the weight of Tom pulling him down, the small mouthful of air in his lungs burning to get out, stinging like acid in his chest. He could feel the weight of his clothes and shoes, his jacket making it harder to move his arms. He was getting closer. The water above his head was lighter. Brighter. Nearer.