Mirrored Time (A Time Archivist Novel Book 1) (24 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-O
NE

T
HE
MAZE WAS
immense in size, and the rough-hewn ceiling towered high above them. From Alistair’s position on the ground, he could make out a swirling pattern on the ceiling, and he realized where he was. He had stood on the other side of that swirling pattern begging the Council to help him prevent this very event. Alistair stumbled but managed to right himself, wincing as hard metal dug into his side.

“Careful, Archiver, wouldn’t want to make the wrong move.” The voice was soft and manic, sending a shiver down Alistair’s spine. He kept his eyes on Gwen’s slight form. Until he knew what was happening to her, he couldn’t risk making any move to try to stop Seymour. The gun dug into his side again, and his jaw clenched. He couldn’t risk it, regardless of how much the madman was annoying him.

Gwen darted around a corner, and he sped up to follow her, marveling at her unhesitating pace through the labyrinth. She rushed through the maze as if she had been there before. Yet when Alistair caught sight of her eyes, they were blank. Whatever Seymour’s touch had done to her, she wasn’t quite conscious.

His gaze shifted to where Seymour shuffled next to him. Luckily, the man had chosen to stand beside him instead of behind, and he stumbled again to distract the man, ignoring the pain of the metal digging into his side once more. The ropes were loose on his wrists, and his hands would be free for whenever he decided to act.

It was no act when his steps faltered again. The path was widening in front of them to reveal a large circular room. It wasn’t the room that had caused him to stumble, it was what hung on the wall in front of them. It reflected Gwen’s blank face as she mouthed silent words. A large black mirror, its frame as beautiful as it was horrible.

Gwen froze at the edge of the room Ben had brought her to, gaze riveted on the large black mirror. The frame was beautiful, although the haunted, twisted figures of its subject matter made her skin crawl. Her reflection in the mirror looked warped and distorted.

The circular room was bare, save for a single book lying on the floor. Ben had continued into the room without her and stood in front of the book paying no attention to the mirror.

The book’s pale leather cover was free from any writing, and the curled and scuffed edges spoke to its age. A soft crying wind whispered into the room, fluttering the pages so the book lay open. Gwen leaned forward to read the words written in a feminine script.
Today, I learned that I could not die.

She turned to ask Ben what the book was. He was no longer ignoring the mirror behind him. The silver of the mirror had liquefied and was bleeding down the wall. Gwen stared into a dark murky blackness. And with a sick feeling in her stomach, she knew what would happen next.

Her feet took an automatic step back. It wasn’t a surprise when a shadow-hand slunk out of the darkness and wrapped itself around the frame. Another soon joined it, and a harsh angry wind rushed out of the blackness. Ben had bolted away from the book and stood behind her, hands wrapped around her leg in a painful grip.

The smoke figure struggled to pull itself out of the mirror, and a loud roaring scream of rushing air filled the room. Ben buried his head into her t-shirt, and she could barely hear him crying over the sound of the wind.

“I wasn’t supposed to show you.”

Her promise to the boy rang like a bell in her mind, and she turned to block him from the horrible thing on the wall. Its edges were obscured and hazy. The smoke creature had pulled itself halfway out of the mirror, and it didn’t look to be stopping.

Gwen struggled to come up with a plan, wrapping her hand around her compass and praying it would warm. It stayed cool, and she closed her eyes, crying out in frustration. Come on!

Then her free hand closed over something cool and hard, and she looked down in surprise. Her fingers were wrapped around the blade from the mausoleum, its silver blade giving off a faint glow. The Kronos blade—powerful enough to kill a traveler and maybe powerful enough to kill the thing struggling to escape the mirror.

She untangled Ben from her legs. “It’ll be okay, I promise.” Her words were barely audible over the shrieking air. She hoped Ben heard them.

The figure had stopped its struggling, and she stared into what would have been its eyes. It reached an oozing hand towards her, the scream of the wind growling louder in her ears.

Her fingers tightened around the blade, and she rushed at the mirror dodging the wet silver trailing along the floor. The figure swung its arm at her, and she ducked. With an angry shout, she plunged the blade into the thing’s chest.

Where blade met shadow, a bright light began to grow. And under the shrieking of the wind, there was the crackling rumble of breaking ice. The light grew blinding, and with an explosion, Gwen flew backward. She felt herself hit the ground with a heavy thud. In her ears, she heard the whispering laughter of a silken voice, and then everything went black.

Alistair looked around the circular room with growing horror. The black mirror started to pulse with a sickly light as Gwen entered the room. She stood in front of it, swaying back and forth, the shadows dancing in harsh planes across her still-blank face.

The last time Alistair had been in this room, his wife died in his arms, having sacrificed herself to make sure the mirrored prison would stay secure. He watched in sick fascination as the mirror’s surface warped out with the shape of a hand trying to claw itself out of the silver prison. A rushing wind swirled through the room, tearing at his clothes and whipping Gwen’s hair into disarray. She still didn’t move, and Alistair saw her lips form unheard words.

The mirror surface warped again, and the wind blew harder, now filling up the room with a howling cry. He shifted his feet into a more secure stance, eyeing the smaller man next to him from the corner of his eyes. Seymour had ceased to pay him any attention, instead riveted to the scene unfolding in front of him. In the eerie light of the mirror, his eyes gleamed with manic energy. The gun was limp in Seymour’s hand. And pointing at the ground.

Alistair moved as if sagging to his left, triumphant when Seymour’s attention swung back to him. Alistair jerked towards Seymour, his now free hands grabbing for the gun and shoving it to the sky as he slammed his weight into Seymour’s smaller body.

They fell to the ground and the gun skittered away. They struggled. After a lucky strike of Seymour’s fist, Alistair could taste the coppery tang of blood on his tongue. But, as the bigger and stronger man, it wasn’t long before he held Seymour face down on the ground, his knee digging into the whimpering man’s back.

Threat eliminated. Alistair looked back up at Gwen, and his whole body went cold. Her hand now clutched a dagger he knew all too well. The details from Gwen’s experience in the mausoleum clicked into place, and he felt a mounting horror grow in his chest.

Although he was locked behind the mirror, Aeon had tricked them all with the small amount of influence he still had. Seymour forgotten, Alistair lunged for Gwen, trying to grab her and force the horrible knife from her grip. She moved too quickly. Alistair’s yell fell on deaf ears, and she rushed toward the mirror and stabbed the knife into its distorted surface.

A bright light filled the room, and the wind screamed around them. Squinting against the glare, Alistair could see Gwen where she stood in front of the mirror. With a deep reverberating crack, the mirror burst outward in an explosion of light and sound, sending Gwen flying backward.

The wind of the explosion hit him, and he braced himself, fighting to stay upright. The glare faded. And when his eyes adjusted from the light, he backed away from the dark smoke snaking its way out of the mirror and along the floor. He rushed towards Gwen, standing in front of her and trying to think of a way to protect her from the force inching towards her.

Then the sound of clattering glass filled the air. And in a reversal of the earlier explosion, wind began rushing towards the mirror. The frame was now an empty black hole, howling as wind rushed into it.

He fell backward, digging his heels into the ground to fight the pull. The black smoke gave an angry shriek and rushed upwards in an inky black column. The smoke slammed into the ceiling, and a large fissure broke through the rocky surface. The darkness slipped through the crack and was gone.

The mirror still howled, pulling the contents of the room towards it in a loud rushing maelstrom of wind. Seymour had screamed when the blackness had disappeared, falling to his knees and pulling at his hair.

Alistair saw the knife just as Seymour did, its silver length sliding along the floor towards the gaping hole of the mirror. They lunged for it at the same time, clawing and tearing at each other in an effort to grab hold of the hilt. An echoing crash filled the room as the ceiling began to cave in on itself, and in the distraction, Seymour grabbed the hilt.

Alistair didn’t feel the blade as it slid into his stomach. Then the power of the blade erupted and a burning fire filled his body. Seymour staggered back from him, the knife leaving Alistair’s body with a sickening noise, staring at the bloody dagger with wild eyes.

With a strength born out of desperation, Alistair staggered to his feet, one hand gripping his gut. Seymour didn’t move as he rushed him, and Alistair shoved Seymour into the vortex of the mirror. With a thunderclap of sound, the boiling black surface solidified and exploded out in shards of glass. Alistair covered his head with his free arm, turning his face away from the explosion.

When he turned back, he dropped to his knees in relief. The black mirror was quiet, the glass blown outward, only the wooden backing of the mirror remained. A moan turned his attention to Gwen, who was struggling into a sitting position, rubbing the back of her head as she looked around. Her gaze snapped to his when she heard his wet cough.

It’s becoming quite the chore to breath, Miss Conway.
He tried to smile at her, except his body wasn’t listening to his commands. His vision began to darken at the edges. And before everything went black, the last thing he saw was Gwen rushing towards him, her mouth open in a scream he couldn’t hear.

CHA
PTER THIRTY-TWO

I
T MADE HIS
ARM CRAMP, but Rafe could just reach the lock on the cell. The thin piece of metal he had hidden in his shirt was a difficult tool to work with. He had survived with worse, although the lock was proving to be particularly tricky. It was an old rusted thing that probably wouldn’t open easily with a key. He twisted. If he could just …

The piece of metal snapped in his hand and clattered to the floor. With a loud curse, he pulled back his arm and slammed his palm into the iron bars. In response to the loud bang, a guard’s faraway voice told him to settle down. In less than polite terms, Rafe told him where he could stick such sentiments.

He couldn’t shake the feeling something was wrong, and here he was stuck in this stupid cell. He slammed the iron bars again, not for any practical reason, but the pain in his hand was at least some strange form of accomplishment.

He walked over to the floor and slouched down. Leaning against the wall with his long legs splayed in front of him, he tried to think of a plan. The Guardians had taken everything from him before they locked him up, which meant he had no mirror to use to escape.

A look around his dismal cell was not inspiring. Although the air was dank and musty and he could hear the dripping of faraway water, there wasn’t the smallest puddle to use as a gateway. It was times like this that he remembered how hopeless he felt as a child before he had discovered he had the power to escape into time.

Sending out a quick prayer to whatever gods were listening that they look after Gwen and Alistair, he closed his eyes and settled in for a long wait. He couldn’t say it was the first time he had ever been locked up to await a decision about his fate, although perhaps this was the time where he had least deserved imprisonment. Give it to the Guardians for locking up a thief for being honest.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there before he had the feeling of being watched. Opening his eyes, he saw a thin slip of a girl standing in front of him. With her red hair and wide hazel eyes, she looked familiar, although he couldn’t place where he knew her from. The soft scent of spring teased his nose, just as it teased his memory.

When she continued to stare at him, he gave her an annoyed look. “Something I can help you with?”

She blinked and gave him a sad smile. “More something I can help you with.” She pulled a bundle from behind her back. It was his folded coat. She eased it through the bars and handed it to him.

As he reached to take it, her now empty hands clasped around his wrists. Where her skin touched his, it was searing hot. “What …?”

She no longer looked like a slip of a girl. Instead, her eyes burned with wisdom far beyond her years. “I wish I could do more to help, but this pushes the current limits of my powers. We’re awakening, and soon we will be back to our old selves.”

She wasn’t making much sense. He tried to pull his arms away, and her grip tightened. She was strong for someone so little. “There’s no more time for games. Gwendolyn needs you …” Her head tilted as if listening, and then she continued in her soft lilting soft. “… now more than ever.”

“How?” The heavy bars of the cell closed in on him. “I’m stuck here.”

“All hope is not lost yet, Archiver.” Again, her sad smile spread across her face. “Good luck.” She brushed her fingertips across his forehead, and the cell disappeared from view.

The absence of sound woke her. She lay flat on her back, head throbbing. At first, the memories were slow to surface in her dazed mind. Then it all came rushing back. The maze; the boy; the mirror.
The knife.

Her eyes snapped open, and she sat up, muscles protesting. Had she spared much attention to the room, she would have recognized it as the one she had just left. A weak cough drew her attention, and any thought of looking around the room vanished when she saw the figure lying prone on the ground. A cry left her lips as she jumped to her feet and ran over to Alistair—any pain in her own body forgotten.

“Oh God … no … no … please … no …” Her words were jumbled, fighting and tangling with each other as she cradled the unconscious man in her arms. “Please, Alistair … we’ll get help … Help!”

She looked around, recognizing the circular room and the empty black mirror frame that hung on the wall. With a start, she remembered the explosion and the following silken laughter from her dream.

The mirror was empty now. There was no invisible presence waiting for what she would do next. How it had happened, she didn’t know. She remembered the knife handle’s coolness in her hand, and she turned back to Alistair with dread curdling in her stomach.

His face was pale, and a stain of red spread across his shirt. With a sob, she pressed her hand against the wound. A shudder of relief ran through her when Alistair’s eyes opened. When he saw her face above him, the corners of his lips turned up in the hint of a smile.

“Gwendolyn.”

Gwen tried to keep calm. The rising hysteria was like bile on the back of her tongue. “I don’t … Did I do this? Is this my fault?” Her voice came out in hiccupping sobs. The salt of her tears was bitter on her lips. “I’m sorry, Alistair. I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know what else to do, and Seymour …” Her voice trailed off as she tried to figure out what had happened after Seymour touched her.

“The wound, it wasn’t you. It was Seymour. He’s gone now. Forever.” Alistair coughed again. When he spoke, the certainty in his voice was clear. “Never believe this is your fault. It was a trap. The nightmares, the sleepwalking. I should have guessed it was all connected. And the knife, I never would have thought you would have been able to summon the knife …” His body spasmed, and he clenched his jaw against the agony. When his body once again stilled, he continued to speak. “It isn’t your fault. Never your fault.”

Behind her, Rafe appeared from empty space. When he saw Alistair, his face went pale. “I …” His voice was a harsh croak.

“Rafe.” A hiccupping sob. “Please … help.”

He rushed over, taking Alistair in his own arms.

Gwen ripped off the front of her shirt, pressing it to the ever-widening stain on Alistair’s stomach, trying to ignore how quickly the red stain grew.

“Alistair! Alistair, please, wake up!”

A lifetime passed and nothing happened. Then with a flutter, Alistair’s gray eyes opened. Another shallow cough stained his lips bright red.

“Take care of her now. We always did, didn’t we?”

Rafe’s jaw clenched. Although he must have understood, Gwen didn’t.

“Alistair, what?” Her voice trailed off. She didn’t care if she understood anything. All she wanted was Alistair to be all right. “We’ll get help, Alistair. You’ll be fine. You’ll see.” She was repeating herself, but she didn’t know what else to do. The warmth spreading over her hand was proof Alistair would be anything but fine.

His gray eyes shifted back to her. “I wanted to die when Max gave me back my memories. The thought I had led you to your death.” He coughed again. “That’s why I had him take them, take them all. Without Aeon, I was helpless to change it. Now it doesn’t have to end how it did. It will be different now.” His red-stained hand grasped Rafe’s shirt. “It has to be different.”

The panic rising in Gwen’s throat threatened to choke her, and she closed her eyes, shoulders shaking. He wasn’t making any sense. This whole thing wasn’t making any sense. She wished herself back to the beginning, a solemn bored girl standing in front of a drab office. What she wouldn’t give to have turned around and walked back up into the light. She would still be Gwen Conway, unemployed college graduate, uninitiated to the mysteries and the horrors of the Archives.

As she thought it, she knew she would never go back. If given a million chances to do it over again, she would pick this path and no other.

“I don’t understand, Alistair. You’ll have to explain it to me. I’m afraid it’s complicated …” She didn’t manage the smile after her pitiful attempt at a joke, although Alistair’s eyes seemed to grow a bit brighter all the same.

His voice was weak, and he struggled to talk. “I imagine he will explain it better than I can. It was always you, Gwen. When I wrote the advertisement, and then there you were, like the first time I ever met you.” His voice grew softer. “Take care of yourself, my darling girl. It’ll all work out in the end.” His red lips smiled up at her.

“And you …” His weak voice managed to contain some of his smooth aristocratic tones as he looked at Rafe. “… watch your back. He’ll try to take her from you.” Another cough, and he turned his solemn gaze back to Gwen, although his eyes were unfocused. This close to his face, Gwen registered the fact his eyes were a faded blue and not a cold gray like she had always imagined. “I spent years thinking it was my fault that you died, Gwendolyn, wishing I had done anything except refuse to help you make that damned mirror. Now I’m glad I did, if it gets us away from this horrible cycle—if it makes certain that I never hold your dying body in my arms.”

He smiled weakly. “Don’t cry.” He tried to touch her tear-streaked cheek. His hand wouldn’t cooperate. Gwen grabbed his hand and pressed it to her cheek.

“I’m still here.” He whispered. “I’ll always be here.”

Gwen looked first at Alistair’s still face and then at Rafe. “What did he … I don’t …” Her voice cracked. Like a cresting wave, the sobs broke free. Tears blinded her, and she couldn’t see. Rafe’s arms wrapped around her.

She pressed her face into the rough fabric of his shirt. In the dark circle of his arms, it was all too easy to pretend, although the questions would only stay unanswered for so long. A startling loud crash had her pulling away from the embrace.

With a shout, Max came running into the room. Even with the ominous rumbling of the ceiling, he took the time to kneel down and touch Alistair’s face.

At the next crash, he looked over at Rafe and Gwen. “You two need to leave. Not only is the ceiling of concern but the Council is aware the black mirror’s protections have been destroyed. And if you are found here, they will believe it was your will to set Aeon free.”

Gwen struggled to her feet. “Why would we want to let Aeon free?”

“It is no secret that Alistair would have moved the heavens and the earth to keep his Gwendolyn alive. If given the chance, is there any doubt that he would have saved her? Would have saved you?” Max turned to look at Rafe. “Would you not have done the same?”

Rafe rose to his feet to stand next to Gwen, taking her hand in his. “What about …?” He swallowed, nodding at Alistair.

Max looked back at his old friend, his brow furrowed. “I will take care of him, honor him in death.” He eyed the ceiling. “I promise. Now, the two of you need to leave.” Another rumbling crash. “Go now!”

Gwen couldn’t bring herself to look away from Alistair’s face as she wrapped her hand around her compass. “Goodbye, Alistair.” A tear wove down her cheek. She tightened her hand around Rafe’s and the two of them disappeared.