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Shuffling down Sixth toward Greenwich Avenue, Grag ignored the stares of the humans he passed along the way and clutched the artifact tighter.
"Still in New York," he muttered. "But something's different." Ahead, a magazine stall perched near the corner, rows of print media, along with a variety of snacks, on display. Grag's stomach growled and he tucked the artifact away. He hadn't eaten well the last two days – too busy trying to dig his way out of disaster. He scrabbled in a pocket and came up with a few crumpled bills.
"Here!" he called up to the vendor, a tall, spare man with bushy black hair and a sharp look in his eyes. "Gimme a Snacker bar and a bottle of that fruit punch there." He waved the bills and the avoided the man's speculative look.
As a rule, New Yorkers tended to mind their own business. The natives had lived in the city all their lives and were used to a certain amount of strangeness. Small, pale skinned individuals with knobby knees and round, unblinking eyes were probably just another kind of immigrant, and nobody liked a nosy-Parker.
The vendor traded the snacks for the bills and gave Grag his change. Turning, Grag's gaze fell on the rack of newspapers arranged conveniently at his eye level. A human, taller and in more of a hurry, might have missed it, but the date screamed for Grag's attention.
May second, 2024.
Grag's toe caught on the cracked sidewalk and he stumbled, his fingers grasping the food tighter to avoid dropping it.
"You all right?" the man asked, and Grag mumbled something affirmative as he scuttled around the corner. He slunk past a restaurant into the shadows of the first alley he came to and crouched down next to a dumpster smelling of stale pizza and rotted vegetables. His stomach rumbled, and he ripped the wrapper off the Snacker bar, stuffing it into his mouth whole as he pulled the artifact out for closer examination.
The figure eight of blackened silver gleamed in the dim light. Grag choked as he realized it was carved in the shape of Ouroboros — the tail eating dragon-snake of legend. A stout pin snugged behind the dragon's ear and beneath the crossed body to emerge through the lower circle. A square cut black obsidian graced the pin's top, creating a sort of handle. It was a cloak pin, like the Celts used to use.
The dragon winked one onyx eye at him and Grag spasmed, fumbling the pin. He gripped it tighter and stared at the dragon-head. The jaws grasped the tail with delicate precision, the teeth gripping, but not penetrating the scales.
"What are you?" Grag whispered.
The dragon didn't respond.
"You winked at me. I saw you," Grag said. "Answer me!" He gripped the jewel tighter, accidentally driving the pin deep enough into the fleshy heel of his hand to draw blood. Swearing, he dropped it and pressed the hurt to his mouth. "Bastard," he mumbled.
Something tugged at his memory. Long ago, before Drakat sold him to Blackwell, Grag had been a servant in the demon's household. A household with a full library. Grag had not been allowed in the library, but that hadn't stopped his sneaky nature.
He'd visited many times, hoping to find a way to dissolve the bond that kept him tied to Drakat. He never found a spell that could free him, but he had gathered a lot of what he'd considered useless information.
As he glared at the obsidian, avoiding the dragon's eyes, a fragment from one of Blackwell’s spell books came back to him.
Seven stones, souls ensnared,
Living only to serve.
Beware.
Solcruth to make, Clochroi to reveal,
The Eye destroys and Lapisvitae heals,
Eiliminti controls the elements,
while Caraigama binds time itself.
He couldn't recall what else the passage had said, but the description echoed in his head now, filling his mind with amazement as it joined the knowledge he already had.
"It can't be. This is Caraigama? The stone of time?"
It was the only explanation that fit. Time travel was possible, but only at enormous cost to the traveler. Only the truly desperate attempted it; they rarely survived, let alone succeeded.
Jumping six months into the future was beyond his own capabilities. He'd done no casting, called on no witch or mage for help, yet here he was, six months out of his own time when he should have been stewing in a harpy's gullet.
Most of the stones were lost, though he'd heard Drakat discussing the Eye, once. She'd spat out the name Balor like a curse, declaring that if she'd been King Dinael, she'd have killed the traitor and been done with it. If the rumors were true, Dinael himself held Eiliminti.
Could this really be Caraigama, the lost stone of time?
Grag crept forward, gingerly lifting the cloak pin out of the alley filth to stare at it. A grin pinched and pulled at his rubbery lips.
"This is it," he whispered. "This is my ticket home. Drakat will release me if I offer this to her, and she'll have to keep her word or ownership will return to me."
His knees trembled and he hopped from one leg to the other in a clumsy dance. "Free, free, I'm going to be free," he sang softly.
He turned the artifact over in his hands, then over again. "But before that, I'll see what profit I can make. A thief that can slip in and out of time has got to be a success, don't he?" He tucked the pin away and inched to the alley mouth, peering out onto the busy avenue.
Sniffing, he made out the dark, sludgy scent of the rivers that bound Manhattan on either side, and the brighter scent of salt water, further away, but bigger. A lot bigger.
What he needed was a ship, or better yet, a plane.
Grag was going home.
GRAG HUDDLED IN THE dark cargo bay, the thrum of the ship's massive engines pounding against his ears, his belly roiling like the ocean itself. They'd set sail the previous dawn and the smell of machine oil and metal drifting from the crates nearby was making him sicker than the waves had any chance of doing.
Getting on board a plane had proved impossible without money, and nothing he'd stolen from the wreckage of Blackwell's former home had been helpful in fixing his penniless condition. He might have snuck into the baggage hold of a 747, but those weren't pressurized, and he was double-damned if he'd spend a seventeen-hour flight trapped in between suitcases with no access to food, drink or bathrooms.
Luckily, the cargo troll had been willing to turn a blind eye in exchange for Grag’s poison ring, so here the imp was, shivering against a damp, rusty-smelling bulkhead, wishing he’d taken a chance on the 747.
The ship would take a week to reach Belfast, but at least he could wander the vessel at will, so long as he was careful and stayed out of sight.
Or... wait.
He pulled the cloak pin from his pocket and stared at it. How did it work?
"Take me to the day we dock," he commanded.
Nothing happened.
Squinting, he cast his memory back, trying to recall the exact sequence of events that led to his previous time jump.
Images flooded through his mind, and he whimpered. Tanchra about to jump on him. His sobs. "I wish I had more time," and then... sitting in the dirt of an empty lot six months later.
Grag scowled. He didn't want more time, in this case. He wanted less. But it amounted to the same thing. He wanted to jump forward, this time to a specific date.
Maybe that was the problem. He was being too specific.
"I want to move forward in time one week."
His voice echoed tinnily against the metal walls, but when he opened his eyes, he was still in the same spot, listening to the same engine noise, smelling the same stink.
That didn't necessarily mean he was in the same time, though. Did it?
His internal clock told him it was around midnight. It would be as dark above decks as it was here, except for the moonlight.
Scurrying out of the compartment and up the passageway, he came to an elevator and stood on tiptoe to slap the call button. Clambering inside, he rode it upward, exiting on the main deck.
A quick check of the passageway confirmed its emptiness. Most of the crew was either asleep or on duty. Sneaking along, he found his way outside to the deck.
Here he had to be more careful, keeping to the deepest shadows, huddling in corners and ducking behind stacks of container boxes whenever anyone strolled past. Luckily, that didn't happen often and, in a few minutes, he was standing on the foredeck, with a 180* view of the ocean, stretching to the horizon, no land in sight.
The stone didn't work. I'm stuck here for a week. Why didn't it work?
Slumping down, he pulled the pin out again and stared at it. "Why didn't you work this time?"
The broach made no answer, and Grag decided he must have imagined the weary sigh of 'very well,' when it transported him before. If, in fact, it had transported him. For all he knew, the master had a regular time hole embedded in the floor of Bletch's room.
Why anyone would do something so dangerous was beyond Grag, but the master had done other, equally inexplicable things in the past. Grag had long since stopped trying to figure him out.
Pocketing the jewel, he decided to look for an empty cabin, or even a cupboard, he could hole up in for the week. Anything was better than the cargo bay. Then he needed to find some food.
It was going to be a long week.
SIX DAYS LATER, THE Corrine pulled into the port of Belfast and Grag wasted no time disembarking. At least there had been an empty cabin to sleep in. No blankets, but he was able to heist a couple from the laundry with no trouble.
Food had been harder to come by, but he'd managed.
And now he was here! He stopped on the quay and looked around. People bustled by and the rich, salt tang of the ocean mixed with the stench of diesel and the cries of seabirds made him smile. He hadn't been home in far too long.
Hoisting his new pack over his shoulder, he whistled his way down the dock. He'd stolen the sturdy canvas sack from one of the crew, dumped the contents on his bed, left what he thought useless; a picture of a girl, a crucifix and three hankies. He pocketed the coins and a wad of bills he found inside. Probably the sailor's pay for the trip. Now he was a pile of euros richer and he had a backpack to carry his valuables in, the broach included.
Time for a pint.
