The Time Tutor Read Online Free Page A

Hannelore, or Bertrand, about the card he’d sent. But he’d seen Bertrand over dinner last night—in the eighteenth century this time—and he hadn’t said a word about it. Dar had spent the first few courses listening to Bertrand’s conviction that sending the girl endless mimsy-pimsy love notes was the way to win her heart. “No woman worth wanting wants to be wanted that relentlessly,” Dar had finally said. But Bertrand hadn’t been interested in pearls of jaded wisdom. He’d retorted that it was quite obvious that Dar did not know the difference between taking a woman to bed and taking her into his heart. “That, my friend, is the only true word you have spoken this evening.” Dar had raised his glass. “May it ever be so!” Bertrand had refused to raise his glass in return, and the dinner ended on a sour note.
    Just as well, Dar thought, staring at the door that never opened, never proffered his prey. Let Bertrand get used to not liking him.
    In the normal course of things, Dar taught the essentials of time travel to newly hatched Ofan simply by being, himself, a passionate believer in knowledge for knowledge’s sake. A fiery-eyed hater of the Guild and their obfuscations of the talent. An eloquent discourser on the shoals and shallows, the currents and eddies of the River of Time. A damn good teacher, plain and simple.
    But today’s tutorial wouldn’t be in the service of training Ofan. Today’s tutorial was a trap. Dar knew the weakness in the life that the Guild offered. Hannelore wasn’t teaching her Favorites to jump in time, and that was her big mistake. She plied them with jewels and parties and her own endless wit, but he could give them what they all really wanted, whether they admitted it or not: knowledge. The power to use and understand their talent. The ability to travel through time. It was too intoxicating a desire to quash forever. How could you sever that part of yourself—that most amazing part—and sell it for a poxy life of locked-away partying? Dar could show them the world. And if he could get this particularly troublesome young lady to take his arm, trustingly, in the belief that she was about to learn what Hannelore wouldn’t teach her, then he could whisk her away to somewhere and sometime that the Guild didn’t care about. Marrakesh in the sixteenth century. Saxony at any time. Settle her in, maybe find her a man . . . then leave her there, without teaching her how to get back. In comfort, of course. But safely out of Bertrand Penture’s lovelorn reach.
    How long was the confounded girl going to take?
    She came at sundown. Dar had just gotten to his feet and gone behind the counter to get more candles, when the shop door finally opened and a cloaked figure entered. She stepped forward, pushing her hood back with one hand. “Ignatz Vogelstein? I believe you sent me an invitation.”
    It was dark in the shop but he could tell that the girl was very pretty. Her eyes were enormous, and in the shadows they looked as if they might actually be purple, which was surely impossible. He couldn’t tell how old she was, but it was some variation on young. He sighed, and prepared himself to be bored. Time to begin his performance.
    â€œGreetings,” he said, stepping out from behind the counter and bowing very low over her hand. “Greetings, young creature, beautiful seeker of knowledge! Come in, come in. Come, sit in this chair. Yes, yes . . . make yourself comfortable, my dear. My name is Ignatz Vogelstein, Time Tutor. I am versed in the secrets passed down through the ages by Chronos himself, and I am ready to lay them all at your exquisite feet.” And then he bowed again, came up, and bowed once more. There was no overdoing it with young women. They encountered the world as if it were a play, the more overblown the better.
    But when he came up from the last bow, he