Zak Turner - A Twist In Time (41 page)

For the last few minutes, he tried to teach them how to fly upside down, but with the exception of one third year, who managed to get right way up again without hitting the floor, the rest of them ended up in tangled heaps, picking up plenty more bruises! 

Most of the students were using school brooms, although a handful had brought their own.  After the upside down flying, the brooms were in a bit of a state with dislodged and broken twigs, footrests askew, and one splintered handle.

Now I understand why Father wouldn’t let us bring our Falcons!

Yeah.  I wouldn’t have wanted to crash mine into the ground like that!  That was a bit extreme though, surely we won’t be doing that during normal flying lessons?

“Right you lot, time for a bit of Balayage.  We’ve only got half an hour, so we’ll just have ten minutes attack for each team.  You five first years are team A, you four second years and Myles are team B, and the rest of you third years are team C.  Team A is attacking first.  Come on then, let’s get to the pitch, the others have just finished.”

Zak and Tallion picked up Pelotts four and five, and flew with the other first years to the attackers starting position.

“Right,” said Ganvard, “I’ve got number one and Agenor’s got number two.  If we haven’t got our Pelotts into the pit within two minutes, then it’s a Pelott free-for-all and you just need to get your own Pelott in as best you can.  After five minutes, we try and get ourselves into the pit, in order, but at eight minutes it’s also a free-for-all, just get yourself in as best you can manage.”

“How do we know how much time has passed?” asked Zak hoping it wasn't a silly question.

Ganvard look disbelievingly at Zak, and then grinned in understanding. 

“On the clock you loon, up there!”

Zak and Tallion both looked where he was pointing and saw that there was a clock on the scoreboard at the end of the pitch.  Zak went a bit pink, but was saved from further embarrassment as the whistle blew to start the game.

Ganvard, it turned out, was a bit ferocious when it came to Balayage, and hurled himself, with his Pelott, straight at the wall of defenders, picking a couple of second years who he correctly guessed would dodge out of the way.  His Pelott was in the pit within seconds, and Agenor tried to follow suit only to find his way blocked by some third years!  He tried to swerve round them, but couldn’t manage so turned away for another approach. 

He surreptitiously passed his Pelott to Ganvard in a slick move that they’d obviously practised, and for a few seconds the attention of the defenders was focussed on the wrong attacker, which allowed Ganvard to lob the number two Pelott over the heads of a couple of different second years, and into the pit.

Harry realised he was on, and tried the same aggressive frontal attack on the second years, but got a face-full of  twigs from a third year’s broom for his trouble, and dropped the Pelott.  David blew his whistle for a foul, as Ganvard scooped up the Pelott and tossed it to Agenor who lobbed it over the distracted defenders’ heads straight into the pit. 

Three Pelotts were now safely in the pit in the right order, and Zak was flying straight towards a third year with the number four Pelott tucked under his arm.

He had no idea why, but the memory of Cygnus’s move that they saw on orientation day came into his mind, and he decided to barrel roll under the third year in the same way.  It was a case of confidence overcoming reality, because his five attempted barrel rolls on the Sauteur field had all ended up with him crashing to the ground!  This time though, maybe because he had the image of Cygnus doing it in his mind, he performed a perfect roll underneath the stunned third year, and found himself dizzily right way up above the pit, where he quickly dumped his Pelott next to the other three.

Tallion had heard his thoughts and knew what his soul mate was going to do.

Vertical climb like Cygnus and catch mine!
he called out telepathically, and Zak remembered how Cygnus had caught the next Pelott and slammed it into the pit.  He looked up and saw that Tallion had already thrown his number five Pelott high in the air towards him, and all he had to do was go straight up on his broom and deflect it out of the air as it flew over his head.  It sailed safely down into the pit to join the others.  Unbelievably within two minutes, all five Pelotts were home, and the first years could now concentrate on getting themselves in.

Ganvard and Agenor were already doing just that, and managed to get there before the defenders had them properly marked.  Harry was blocked out though, and despite trying to force his way between the defenders, he simply couldn’t manage it, and was repeatedly pushed back by the third years.  Every time he made another run they simply put themselves in front of him, and there was no way through. 

Zak tried to stay in the air over the pit, but found himself marked by several second years, who were pushing him with their shoulders and broom tails to try and get him away from the pit.  With only thirty seconds left, he heard Ganvard shout to him to get in the pit, so he shot upwards away from the jostling markers, and dived vertically downwards. 

His overconfidence in his abilities got him into the pit, but it also gave him a big crash landing, which wasn’t helped by Harry landing on top of him a couple of seconds later! 

Tallion was still trying to push his way over the pit when the whistle blew for the end of their ten minutes attack.  He was very disappointed that he hadn’t managed to get in, but he soon forgot it when he felt Zak’s physical pain burst across the bond between them!

Blimey Zak, what happened?

Crash landing.  I forgot about gravity…

David had seen Zak’s dive, and knew the first year would be badly hurt, and was hoping it wasn’t too serious.  A broken wrist, two broken fingers, a bloodied nose, and three cracked ribs were Zak’s trophies of war, and David’s medi-wizard shills were once again pressed into service.

“Zak, it’s a game.  Please don’t try and kill yourself okay?” smirked the prefect as he cleaned up all the blood and fixed Zak’s broken nose.

“Aaaggghh!  Phoorrr, thad hurd!” responded the eleven-year-old, and delicately felt his nose with his fingers.

“I’ve fixed plenty broken noses, Zak, it’ll be fine.  It’ll hurt for a while though, and the swelling will take a while to go down too.  Nice barrel roll though!  You don’t see many people pull that stunt even in a real match, let alone a practise match.  How did you know to try it?”

“I saw Cygnus Proudfoot do it on orientation day, so thought I’d have a go.”

“Well, if you can repeat
that
on demand, and match it with some other moves, then you’ll find you’re on the team for sure.  Don’t let the other houses see you do it though, you need to keep that move secret, until you can make it count in a match!”

The rest of the practise session passed without further injury to Zak or Tallion, although Harry and Ganvard chalked up broken wrists and bruised ribs when they were knocked off their brooms by the third years trying to get into the pit.  David was very pleased with his second team players’ performances though, despite it having been the most bruising practise session he’d supervised all year! 

26.  The Horologist’s Curse

In no time at all Zak and Tallion were being escorted to the headmaster’s study by Arcturus for their ‘detention’, as it was being described within Moncero house.  They were more than a little perturbed to see Sir Philip sitting in one of the comfortable chairs by the headmaster’s window when they entered the room!

Uh oh.  We’re in trouble now!

Yeah.  I thought it was too good to be true getting away with it yesterday.  Even if nothing happens here, Father will not be pleased when we get back to the castle at the weekend!

“Welcome, boys, and thank you Arcturus, your care is most appreciated.  We’ll arrange to escort them back when their ‘detention’ is finished.

Arcturus nodded and left, the door closing softly behind him.  The headmaster waved his wand casting an additional silencing charm over it.

“Right, as instructed by your head-of-house, we’re going to consider what actions we can take to bring good to those around us.  At least, that’s
my
interpretation of her suggested punishment, although it may not turn out to be quite what she had in mind!  Your father is here to assist us, not because of our ‘misdemeanour’ yesterday.  No doubt he’ll have something to say about that to each of us in private.”

The headmaster steered the boys over towards the squashy sofas by the window.

“Now however, time is short, so let me get straight to the point.  A few weeks ago, one of our students was, apparently against his will, subjected to an assault of sorts which led to him losing his soul.  Whether or not his soul was taken from his body at the time is unclear.  Tradition would indicate that a body without a soul dies, so I tend to believe that his soul is still
in
his body, but is no longer his own.  Very little is written about this subject that I’ve been able to unearth to date, unless it’s written in books to which I have no access.”

Zak and Tallion were staring wide-eyed, struggling to get their heads round what their headmaster was saying.  The contrast of coming from their happy, energetic, Balayage practise, into a conversation about someone losing their soul, was stark, to put it mildly!  The headmaster barely paused for breath though before he carried on.

“My initial hope was to reverse the incantation and restore the boy to normal.  Alas this appears to be impossible, which leaves us with only one option.  We need to stop it from happening in the first place.”

The headmaster paused, expecting to have to explain the concept of time travel, but was surprised to find that his assumption was incorrect.  Tallion, despite the unexpected direction of the conversation, had guessed correctly why they were there, and Zak seamlessly voiced his soul mate’s thoughts.

“You need us to go back in time and prevent it somehow?” he asked, with a furtive glance at Sir Philip who was watching his two sons keenly.

“Yes, exactly!” replied the delighted headmaster.

Tallion looked at his father too.

Zak, don’t mention Tai Tuie’s Tomb.  Now would be a bad time for Father to find out that we know about it, and how we’re planning to use it.  We’ll have to tell him soon though.  I don’t think Professor Trell needs to know about it either!

No problem.  I’ll let you do the talking unless we agree otherwise.

Okay.

“It’s fraught with danger, Tallion,” said the baronet answering the look in his son’s eyes, concern clear in his voice. 

“Travelling back in time sounds like a lot of fun, and is perhaps the single greatest weapon in a wizard’s armoury, but it can be lethal, especially going back in time to change something.  You might make a change that affects your own future life, and you might even set in train events that could kill your future self!  Some wizards argue
that
is impossible, otherwise you wouldn’t have existed in the future to enable you to visit the past, however, experience has led me to reject that theory.” 

“When you travel in time you’re in a cocoon, protected from past future events until you return to the present, or until any changes that you’ve made become totally irreversible.  Making changes within a few hours of an event is relatively risk free, but the further back you go, the greater and more widespread will be the effect of even the smallest change.” 

“Your grandfather kept his abilities in this area hidden from me until I was well through my thirties, and had experienced some of the trials and pitfalls of life.  I am most reluctant to pass this knowledge on to you when you’re less than a third of that age.  However, it seems to be your lot in life to take on the responsibilities of adults before you’ve even had chance to enjoy being teenagers, and for that I am sorry.”

The baronet sat watching the two boys sitting on the sofa opposite him, thinking carefully, but knowing there was no real option.  At length he reached into his pocket and took out a small locket on a platinum chain.  He glanced at it and immediately felt its hypnotic and mesmerising effect, and quickly forced himself to look away.  It truly was a thing of beauty, and destruction!

“This is a Time Talisman my sons, one of nine that were originally made many, many, centuries ago.  No-one knows who made them, or where the others are, or even if they still exist, and no-one outside these four walls, except your mother, knows about this one, or that it’s in our possession.  That situation must not change, ever!”

Zak and Tallion caught a glimpse of the powerful sorcerer who lay beneath the pleasant surface of Sir Philip Middleham’s public life, and both were determined never to cross the boundary which he’d just set!

“That means you must never be seen to be ‘out of time’, and you must never change something in such a way that it’s obvious what has happened.” 

The baronet then held up the locket letting it hang from its slender chain.

“It’s a pretty thing is it not?  Tempting to the eye as well as the mind, but it will try to bewitch you, as I see that it already has.  The way to break its spell is as simple as it is effective; you just need to stop looking at it.” 

He wrapped his hand around the talisman breaking their eye contact with it, and they both shook their heads and looked up at him in surprise, blinking their eyes as though they’d been dazzled by a bright light.  He repeated what he’d just said, and this time they heard it, and nodded.

“It’s dangerous boys, very dangerous, and before you ask, this talisman can only take you backwards through time, and bring you back to the present.  It can’t take you ahead of time.  These days that is the realm of the mystic and the seer.  The headmaster will tell you what he needs you to do, and I will cast the required charms over you when the time comes.  I will also meet you, whenever you are, and return you to the present.”

Zak and Tallion both swallowed nervously, why were they being involved in this?  The headmaster quickly continued.

“In a few minutes we’re going to go back in time to rescue Rufus Logan from the fate which has befallen him, by making sure it didn't actually happen.  The only information we have about what took place is from Sartrina and her friend Andra Tait.  Sartrina
heard
what happened, but Andra
saw
what happened, and it was a most gruesome scene to behold!  Andra kindly allowed me to view her memory using my Pelustra Orb.  The poor girl has suffered nightmares ever since.”

“In order to protect Rufus from a
future
assault, however, we must let events play out until he sees his folly, and begins to panic.  Only when he refuses to join young Malchus, and sets himself firmly against the boy, will he be able resist him in the future.  It has to be something in his own will.  We cannot magically change someone’s desires without enslaving them, and I’m not prepared to go that far.”

“That much is easy and I could have accomplished it alone, but we are not dealing with a single event and we are not trying to rescue a single boy.  Two other first years have apparently been through a similar ritual and are already ‘assisting’ young Malchus.  We need to find out when they were snared and rescue them too, but that won’t be possible if young Malchus realises he’s been caught.”

“Once he knows the game is up he’ll rush to cover his tracks, just like his father, and none of it will ever be attributable to him, it will all look like accidents or even suicides.  The safety of the other two boys depends on our stealth, for if they die in their current condition, they’ll suffer a fate much worse than death!  We must reunite them with their souls at all costs, and the only way that I know of is to stop the initial separation.” 

“I can see you have a question Tallion, please ask.”

“Thank you, Sir.  If we can go back in time and change things, can’t we go back and stop someone dying?”

“I know what you’re trying to ask.  Why does it matter what Shaul Malchus does to the two boys now, if we can go further back in time and set them free too, and therefore change the course of their history so that they never become his followers and therefore never get killed?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“Alas, I can only tell you what little I know about passing from one world to the next.  Long established wizarding tradition has it that when someone dies, time as we experience it ends, for both the body and the soul, and the two separate.  The body returns to the earth, but the soul ‘goes on’.  When a soul leaves this world, it steps beyond the realm of ‘time’.  It is the existence of this ‘other realm’, outside time, that makes time travel possible.”

“However, a marker is set both in and out of time at the crossing point when the soul ‘goes on’, an indissoluble marker, that signifies the point where the separation of body and soul took place and where, or maybe
when
, the soul entered the realm outside time.” 

“It
is
possible to go back in time and change the course of someone’s life, so that they don’t experience the same series of events that led up to their death.  But once a marker has been set
out
of time by their future death, when that point
in
time is reached, the body and soul will still separate, for the soul must ‘go on’ from that point by itself.”

“There is no magic that can bring back the dead, young Tallion, even the magic of time travel.  If our three young first years are to live to become second years, we must ensure their survival at
all
times, and make sure that the marker of their death is never set.”

“So why don’t we rescue the other boys first?  Surely that would mean that we wouldn’t even need to rescue Rufus because he wouldn’t have got trapped.”

“How do you know they wouldn’t occur?  Maybe they
would
still occur.  Maybe at a different time or in a different place, or in a different manner.  If we change history so long before he’s snared, then everything will be different, we might never become aware of the circumstances of his ‘separation’.  We might miss our chance to rescue him from this fate forever!  That is why the only thing we are planning to change tonight is the outcome for Rufus Logan’s soul.  Sartrina and Andra still have to witness the incident in the dungeon, and must still tell Professor Pectus what they saw, including the incantation young Malchus used, and whatever happens after they all left the dungeon must also still happen.  We need to use sleight of hand to save Rufus Logan’s soul and nothing else!  We will substitute a doppelganger for the real boy at the last moment.”   

“A doppelganger sir?”

“A look alike, a fake Rufus Logan, one that young Malchus can cast any number of incantations over without harming the real boy.”

This is messing with my brain Tallion,
thought Zak to his soul mate as he looked at him in exasperation.

Mine too! 

All I‘ve really understood is that we have to go back in time and rescue these three boys one by one, without Malchus realising that we’ve done it, or giving him chance to kill them, ‘coz once they’ve died we can’t fix it!

That’s where I’m up to.

Blimey, that’s complicated!

That’s why you don’t mess with time Zak.  Now I understand why father didn’t want to tell us about it yet!

Me too.  Eeek!

“Once the assault is over,” continued the headmaster, unaware of the boys’ rapid thought conversation, “the real Rufus Logan will be removed from school to a place of safety, in a plausible manner, by the real Professor Trell of that time, who has already been made aware of the essential details of what we’re doing.  Once Rufus is safe, we then need to go back and rescue the next boy, Marcus Hendry, and when he’s safe, we go back and rescue the last one, Freddie Smith.  I think I know the date when Marcus Hendry was snared, so we should be able to home in on
that
assault easily enough.  Freddie Smith though is still a mystery.”

“Sir, why don’t we just stop Malchus bewitching any of the boys right at the beginning of term?”

“How?”

“Go back to the first of September and don’t let him into the school!”

“Why?”

“Because of what he’s going to do!”

“At the beginning of term, I don’t
know
what he’s going to do…  And I have absolutely no evidence which I could use to justify excluding him, because at the beginning of term he hasn’t actually done anything.  Accusing young Malchus of having given his soul to a demon and being intent on doing the same to his fellow first years would not play well…”