Free The Wizard of Time (Book 1) by G.L. Breedon Page B

or if they had been in a particular place before.
    As they stood together in the back of the bookstore, Ohin placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I think that is enough for our first lesson. Why don’t you see if you can take us back to the castle?” Ohin pulled a small orange-brown rock from his pocket. It was a piece of amber. A thought occurred to Gabriel as he looked at the dragonfly suspended within it.
     “How does the council keep the castle safe from the Malignancy Mages?” Gabriel asked. “Can’t they find it with a piece of amber like this or some other relic?”
    “The castle is protected by layers of magic,” Ohin said. “A piece of amber or a relic from that time by itself is not sufficient to reach it. Only a Time Mage who has been there can sense it. You should be able to sense the time placement of the castle when you scan the piece of amber. ”
    Gabriel started to reach for the amber fossil that would lead them back through time to the castle and stopped. There was something else he needed do first. Somewhere and some when he needed to go. If an object could be used to travel anywhere in time it had been, maybe a person could do the same thing. Maybe he could act as his own relic. He reached within and sought with his time-sense for the moment he was looking for, examining his own body as he had the copy of The Time Machine .
    “I need to get something first,” Gabriel said.
    “That would be…” Ohin started to say, but the pitch-black darkness, followed by the blinding white light, cut off his words.
    They stood in Gabriel’s bedroom.
    “...Unwise,” Ohin said, finishing his thought that had been interrupted by decades in one moment. Gabriel’s room looked just as it always did. The small desk, the unmade bed, the bookcase, the stack of comic books and magazines, the baseball and glove on a chair. It was night and the room was dark, but the light of the moon cast enough of a glow through the windows for them to see. Gabriel walked over to the dresser.
    “This is your house, isn’t it?” Ohin asked in a whisper.
    “Yes,” Gabriel said. He could hear voices, now that he took the time to notice. He had arrived exactly when he wanted to. The voices he heard were his parents and his own. He was downstairs having dinner with his parents. His previous self. The self of a few days ago. Gabriel had taken himself and Ohin to the night before he had the dream about drowning.
    “We always feel most comfortable in our own time,” Ohin said, the tone of his voice blending both anger and understanding, “but you know the risks. It is too dangerous to be here, especially in this house.”
    “I needed to get this,” Gabriel said, picking up an aged and dented silver pocket watch from the dresser and holding it by the chain for Ohin to see. The pocket watch spun on the end of the chain, reflecting moonlight around the room.
    “Taking something from this time and place could create a bifurcation,” Ohin said. “If it is missed or needed for some future action, the result will be a new branch away from the Continuum.”
    “I already took it,” Gabriel said, realizing that didn’t necessarily make sense to Ohin. “I mean when I looked for it the morning...the morning I drowned, when I looked for it, I couldn’t find it. Anywhere. I know I put it on the dresser when I came home. When the me downstairs came home an hour ago. So I must have come through time to take it.”
    “Do you remember seeing it before you went to bed?” Ohin asked, curious.
    “No,” Gabriel said. “I never even looked at the dresser that night. Tonight.”
    Ohin looked at the pocket watch and then reached out his hand and held it a moment. “This is a greatly imbued artifact. The imprints on it are very strong.”
    “It was my grandfather’s,” Gabriel said. “It was given to him by a friend, a soldier in World War Two who died saving my grandfather and four other men. It was my good luck