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

I do,” Teresa said.
    “I’ll pay when you have proof,” Rajan said.
    “Who’s paying for what?” Ohin asked
     “Rajan and I have a bet about what questions Gabriel will ask next,” Teresa said.
     “To which, I insist that we hear the question before you pay me,” Rajan.
    “You’re such a gallant loser,” Teresa teased.
    “So what is your question?” Ohin asked Gabriel.
     “What do the Malignancy Mages want?” Gabriel asked, feeling his stomach tighten a bit as he realized that all eyes at the table were on him. “If we’re fighting them in a war, what are we fighting over? How do we win?”
    “See,” Teresa said. “Pay up.”
    “That should hardly count,” Rajan said, taking a rabbit’s foot from his pocket and handing it to Teresa. “That was far more than one question.”
    “You’re right, it’s not fair.” Teresa pocketed the rabbit’s foot. “I feel terrible for you. Would you like to bet on how fast he learns to make a jump by himself?”
    “Pass,” Rajan said. “Only one rabbit’s foot.”
    “Those are very good questions,” Ohin said. “Especially in light of the attacks last week on the Hiroshima Outpost.”
    “Last week?” Gabriel said.
    “Time travel,” Teresa said.
    “Last week for me,” Ohin said. “I have been gone for nearly seven days in my personal timeline. To answer your question, the Malignancy Mages wish to control the Primary Continuum and all of the stable alternate branches of time.”
     “And to destroy the Great Barrier,” Ling added.
    “It depends on which one you run into,” Teresa said. “They’re a very confused bunch.”
    “What’s a great barrier?” Gabriel asked, still trying to process the idea that Ohin had been away for a week in the last few hours.
    “The Great Barrier of Probability,” Ohin said. “Time travel is possible anywhere along the Primary Continuum until you come to the Great Barrier. Suddenly, for reasons we cannot explain, once you reach the year 2012 on October 28 at four forty-five in the afternoon Greenwich standard time, you can no longer travel forward in time. Nor has anyone ever traveled back from after that time.”
    “That doesn’t make sense,” Gabriel said. He hated math, but he loved science and he had spent hours reading books about space and astronomy. “Time moves at different rates depending on the mass nearby. It gets warped by gravity. So time moves slower on the sun than it does on Earth. Or you could travel really fast, like at the speed of light, and even if it only took you a few hours, it might be years enough to cross the barrier. Or what about other planets? A barrier like that couldn’t exist. Especially not on other planets. It just doesn’t make sense. Does it?”
     “No, it doesn’t make sense,” Sema said. “It always gives me a headache thinking about it.”
    “Cross-dimensional synergistic probability matrix,” Teresa said around a bite of blueberry pie.
    “You are right that it doesn’t make linear sense,” Rajan said. “But that is why it is called the Great Barrier of Probability. It exists in all probable circumstances.”
    “We’ve approached it in every branching timeline we know of,” Ohin said, “and the result is always the same. The Barrier exists at the same relative instance in time everywhere in the universe and in all the branches of the Primary Continuum.”
     “The only way to cross it is to live through the time just before it,” Marcus said. “But once it becomes four forty-six, there’s no going back. Two Time Mages tried and were never heard from again.”
    “So who created this Great Barrier?” Gabriel asked, pressing for more information.
    “We have no idea who created it,” Ohin said. “Or why. Or even how it might be possible. We suspect a large circle of Time Mages created it. Mages can link their energy in a circle to multiply their power and we can only imagine that it must have taken a hundred or more Time Mages to accomplish