Alex Verus Novels, Books 1-4 (9780698175952) (96 page)

“Variam!” I called. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Variam said through gritted teeth. I could feel Anne's healing magic working behind me but didn't turn to look.

“Anne, where's the phone?”

Anne sounded distracted. “I dropped it. Alex, I need to concentrate.”

I dropped the sword and bent down to grab the phone instead, driving blind for a second. “Sonder?” I said, straightening up.

“Alex!” Sonder sounded relieved. “You're okay?”

“Not for long. These things are tearing us up.” Wind roared through the sunroof and I could see a traffic jam developing behind us. The constructs hadn't reappeared but I knew they hadn't given up and I didn't think we'd survive another attack like the last one. “Ideas?”

“I don't know! Um . . . Have you managed to damage them?”

“Well, we hit them with a car a few times but it doesn't seem to have slowed them down much.” A sign went by overhead indicating a turnoff, and I pulled into the left lane, driving right-handed.

“Okay, so they're not programmed to avoid physical impact?”

“No, they—Wait. When I was about to run that one over a minute ago, it
did
avoid it.”

“So they do—Alex?”

I thought fast. I'd managed to hit one with the Jaguar back in the car park. But when one had gated onto the hood, it had gated away again when I tried to run it down afterwards. But then that last one
hadn't
gated away before being run over by the Toyota behind me . . .

Time. The one that had landed on the hood had had longer. “Sonder. How much energy would it take to do one of these teleports?”

“Um, a lot. That was why they stopped building—”

“Could it teleport and then teleport again half a second later?”

“Um . . . I'm not sure. I don't think so. The construct's internal energy reserves should need at least a couple of seconds to recharge between—”

“Perfect.”

“What? Alex? Hello?”

I dropped the phone onto the seat and pulled the car into the turnoff. It was a motorway layover, just a small enclave on the side of the road with a public bathroom, surrounded by woods. Nobody else was there. I brought the Jaguar to a stop and the engine died away with a fading growl. Outside on the M4 the cars swept past with a rush of air, the swooshing sound muffled through the car. “Anne,” I said. “Can Variam walk?”

“I need more time.” Turning around, I saw that Anne was bent over Variam, green light glowing around her hands as she held his broken leg. She was concentrating and didn't turn to look. “Give me a few minutes.”

“Can't.” I got out and pulled the passenger door open. Variam looked up distractedly and I held out a hand. “Grab on,” I told him. “I'm carrying you.”

“Wait!” Anne said. “He's—”

“We've got sixty seconds until those constructs catch up.”

Variam's face was pale from shock but he gave me one look and nodded. I reached down and picked Variam up with a heave; his fingers tightened on my arms and I knew it must have hurt, but he didn't make a sound. “Bring the sword,” I told Anne as I hurried into the woods.

There was a small clearing just twenty feet into the trees. Bits of garbage were scattered around from previous visitors, and the glow of the motorway lights was muted. I set Variam down against an ash tree. “Your weapon,” I told Variam. “Can you channel through it when you're not touching it?”

“I—yeah. Why?”

“When I call, do it.” Anne made as if to go to Variam, but I turned and blocked her. “No.”

Anne looked at me in frustration. “At least let me—”

“If you want to help him, keep your distance,” I said quietly. “I need you to do something dangerous.”

“What?”

“Bait.” I looked steadily at her. “These things are after you. They only attack us when we get in their way, and their targeting resets every time they lose sight of us. I need you to stand next to me and not move until I tell you.”

Anne looked from me to Variam, and I felt the two of them share a glance. Then Variam gave a small nod. I took the sword from Anne and walked to the centre of the clearing. The sword was oddly shaped and didn't look like any weapon I'd seen; the blade was wide and heavy, broadening slightly from the hilt to the tip before narrowing abruptly to a blunt point. I walked to the centre of the clearing and moved the sword from side to side, feeling the weight of the blade. “Designed for cutting, right?” I asked Variam absently.

“Yeah.” I could hear the tension in Variam's voice.

Anne moved beside me. “Do you trust me?” I asked her quietly.

In the shadows it was hard to make out Anne's expression, but I could sense she was watching me. “. . . Yes.”

“Don't move,” I said. “When I press down on your shoulder, get out of the way as fast as you can.”

Anne nodded. I took a stance in the middle of the clearing, most of my weight on my back leg with Variam's sword held down by my side, and rested my left hand on Anne's shoulder. She didn't tremble but held still. Ten feet away against the tree Variam watched, tense. The only light in the woods was the orange-yellow glow of the motorway lights, broken up with the shadows of the trees. There was no sound but the steady
swoosh
of the cars. The air was cold and smelt of exhaust smoke and dried leaves.

I closed my eyes.

The flicker of gate magic came right when it was supposed to. I pushed on Anne's shoulder but she was already moving, ducking down and away. As the construct blinked in, reaching out for where Anne had been a second ago, I called “Variam!” and thrust.

My plan back in the car had been to try to set up the constructs to teleport onto the sword. It hadn't worked; the gate spell the constructs were using had a fail-safe preventing them from teleporting directly onto something. But after they teleported there was a brief window in which they couldn't teleport again.

Variam channelled and the edges of the sword lit up with licks of orange flame just as I rammed the blade through the construct's torso. It jerked and staggered but I was already turning and as the second construct blinked into view next to us I got it with a kick to the body that knocked it over. Turning back to the first construct I forced it back, pushing it with the blade. I could feel the heat radiating as Variam poured fire magic through the sword and into the construct. Its clothes were smouldering around the wound and as I watched they caught fire. The construct tried to teleport away but couldn't and I kept pushing it back, feeling the sword go loose as the construct began to melt from the inside. The construct fell over backwards and I followed it down, took a two-handed grip on the sword, and dragged the blade out sideways. The construct kept trying to grab me, empty eyes locked onto mine, and I stabbed it again and again until heat melted its body and the scrubby grass and dirt it was lying on ignited.

I turned to see Variam with his hand raised towards Anne and the second construct gone. Anne was standing at the centre of the clearing again, looking around. “Get down!” I shouted and ran towards her, bringing the sword back for a swing.

Anne dropped instantly and the second construct blinked in behind her. I'd already started my slash and as I did I felt Variam's fire magic flare to an inferno. The sword flashed white-hot, the heat scorching my arm and hand, and it cut through the construct's neck like butter. The head and body ignited, falling in different directions, and the sword spun away and went into the earth with a hiss.

And suddenly the clearing was quiet. The light of Variam's fire magic blinked out and the only light was the glowing remnants of the two constructs. I shook my burnt right hand and gave Variam a look. “Ow.”

“It's dead, isn't it?” Variam was still propped up against the tree and he looked very tired. “Anne, you okay?”

Anne nodded. “Let me have a look at you.”

“After we get out of here,” I said. “You can patch us up later.” I couldn't hear any sirens yet, but after the mess we'd caused on the motorway I knew they wouldn't be far away.

Neither Anne nor Variam argued. We limped back to the Jaguar, put Variam in, and drove away. As I did I realised my phone was ringing, and I took it out. “Hey, Luna,” I said wearily. The aftereffects of the fight were starting to kick in and it was suddenly hard to talk.

“Hey!” Luna sounded excited. “I've been trying to call you!”

“Sorry. Something came up.”

“I won the duel!”

“Good job.” A sign passed by overhead and I began signalling to take the turn that would lead us off the motorway, northwards back towards Fountain Reach. “Meet us outside the mansion in half an hour. We've got some news too.”

chapter 11

I
t was one hour later.

Anne, Variam, Luna, Sonder, and I were in the woods behind Fountain Reach, in a small clearing on the other side of the hill from the mansion itself. The winter night was only a few degrees above freezing but a small fire burned at the centre of the clearing, its heat forming a bubble of warm air that kept away the cold. The five of us were spaced around the fire, Luna a little farther away. Around us the forest was dark and quiet, the only sound the rustle of wind in the trees.

We'd assembled on the grounds of Fountain Reach before heading into the woods. Sonder had been the last to arrive, having had to make the journey up from London, and as soon as he'd shown up we'd gotten out of sight. The burns on my arm and hand were gone; Anne had healed them along with Variam's broken leg to the point where I couldn't even tell where I'd been hurt. Now everyone was looking at me. I'd led them out here and they were waiting for me to tell them what to do.

“Anne,” I said. “Before we start—are we alone?”

Anne nodded. She was sitting on the thin grass with knees up and hands clasped on top of them. “Yes.”

Luna looked at her curiously. “How do you know?”

“I can feel them.”

“Who?”

“Anyone,” Anne said in her soft voice. “Their body, their shape, whether they're hurt . . .”

“How much can you see?” Luna asked.

Anne looked at Luna. “You've got a bruise on the side of your left knee from where you fell a couple of hours ago fighting Ekaterina. And you pulled two of the muscles in your thigh a little.”

Luna's eyes widened slightly and her hand went to her leg. “We don't have to worry about anyone sneaking up on us,” I said.

“Who are you worried about?” Sonder asked. He'd taken off the parka that he'd worn here and was sitting on it.

“Before we get to that,” I said, and I nodded to Anne. “Tell us what you found out from Hobson.”

As Anne took out the pad she'd been writing on and began to look through it, reminding herself of the notes she'd written during her conversation, I studied her. The firelight flickered off Anne's dark hair and the lines of her face, leaving most of her body in shadow.

She didn't look like the sort of person who should be getting assassination attempts. But someone had just tried to have her killed for the second time in four days and I didn't know why. Usually when a mage is attacked it's because they're a threat, but Anne seemed like about the most unthreatening apprentice I could imagine. I had to be missing something.

“Okay,” Anne began in her soft voice. “Hobson told me that he used to work for the family who lived there, the Aubuchons. He didn't . . . Well, he didn't
say
they were mages, but he knew some of it. Enough not to ask questions.

“The master of the house when Hobson started working there was Vitus Aubuchon. He was in his seventies and he was really concerned with his health. He'd always been sickly and he had a lot of doctors on call making house visits. When he wasn't with them he'd shut himself away in his private rooms. His wife had died a long time ago and the only other member of his family was his son. Hobson had the idea Vitus was an inventor, but”—Anne glanced at me—“I'm pretty sure it was magical research. Anyway, a few years went by. The research didn't seem to be going well and Vitus stopped seeing anyone.

“Then all of a sudden things changed. Vitus came out one day and ordered the house torn down. He kept the central rooms and the basements but the two wings got demolished. Then he started rebuilding. He had a set of plans he was working from and he'd come out every day to check that it was being done right, and he'd fire builders who didn't do it the way he told them. No one could figure out what he was doing. Fountain Reach used to have a little summerhouse that Vitus used with a hedgemaze around it, and he built right over it.”

I stirred, something catching at my memory. “The reconstruction took two years,” Anne continued. “On the day it was finished Vitus took a walk around Fountain Reach to do his final checks, then he went inside and Hobson says from that day on he never left the house again. But he started to act differently. Before he'd always kept Fountain Reach private, but from then on he started inviting groups to come and tour the mansion. He wrote to local councils and tourist agencies and made Fountain Reach open to the public.

“Things kept on that way for a long time, but then there were problems. Hobson and the other servants started overhearing arguments between Vitus and his son. They'd never gotten on all that well, but things got worse and worse as Vitus got older. And people stopped coming to Fountain Reach.”

“Why?” I said.

“No one seems to know,” Anne said. “But Hobson said there was a police investigation, although it was hushed up. Apparently a travel group had been to Fountain Reach and someone went missing.”

Sonder frowned. “Wait. You mean—?”

“Keep going,” I said.

“After that Vitus Aubuchon wouldn't see anyone at all, not even the servants,” Anne said. “His son left the mansion, then one night when most of the servants were away he came back. Hobson was there and he said Vitus's son was drunk. He told Hobson and all of the others to get out of the house and never come back, then he went looking for his father.

“That was the last anyone saw of either of them. Hobson and the other servants woke up the next day and couldn't find Vitus or his son. When they searched the house they found fire damage in one of the inner rooms—it looked like somebody had tried to burn the house down during the night. The police were called in and searched the house from top to bottom. Months went by and the house was closed and they kept on searching but they never found either Vitus or his son. And Hobson never went back.”

Anne fell silent. “Someone went missing in Fountain Reach?” Luna asked. “How long ago?”

“Thirty years ago,” Anne said. “She was our age.”

“Why was this Hobson guy telling you this stuff?” Variam asked.

“I'm not sure. He was . . . odd. He seemed really jumpy the whole time. And he never asked why I wanted to know.”

“That's weird,” Luna said curiously.

“No, it's not,” Variam said. “He was bait for a trap.”

Anne frowned. “I know it looks that way but I didn't get that feeling from him. He was nervous about something, but he didn't seem like he knew what was going on.”

“But why would anyone want to kill you in the first place?” Sonder asked, echoing my thoughts from earlier.

“So she couldn't tell anyone what she knew,” Variam said.

“Doesn't make sense,” I said. “The constructs were after Anne, not Hobson. And whoever sent them had to know it would draw
more
attention to Hobson.” The more I thought about it, the odder it seemed. Between the tip-offs and the attacks, it was as though someone
wanted
to point me towards Fountain Reach. But why?

I came out of my thoughts to realise Variam was arguing about something with Luna. “Sonder,” I said, cutting them off. “Did you get anywhere in London?”

“What? Oh, the investigation. No. It's just like all the others. We can trace them up to the point where they disappear, but the shroud stops us from getting anything useful.”

“What about the information I asked for?”

“What information?” Luna asked.

“About the Aubuchon dynasty,” Sonder explained. “Well . . .” He pushed up his glasses and leant forward. “It matches with what Anne said, really. The Aubuchons were a hereditary magical line. They used to be very famous but they dwindled over the years like a lot of mage families. Vitus Aubuchon was the last.”

“What about his son?” Luna asked.

“He was a normal. No magical talent. Apparently Vitus wasn't happy about that.”

“The rebuilding of Fountain Reach,” I said. “That was when those wards were put up, wasn't it?”

Sonder nodded. “That's something I
was
able to find out. The reason he was doing that rebuilding was to build the wards in with the house from the ground up. Basically all of Fountain Reach is one giant focus. Lots of people were curious because it seemed like such overkill. I mean, everyone has wards, but those ones are about five times as strong as they should be.”

“Did they figure it out?”

“Not really. The best guess was that the wards were acting as the skeleton for an envelopment focus.”

“What's that?” Luna asked.

“It's a large-scale focus that acts as a magnifying effect,” Sonder said. “As long as you're within the area you can use the energy to power spells that are much more powerful than normal, or ones from a different type of magic than you should be able to use.”

“If they're so good, why doesn't everyone use them?” Variam said.

“Well, an envelopment focus only works within the physical area it covers. And the spells that run it are unstable, so they need a lot of maintenance. Basically it makes you more powerful, but only as long as you stay in one place.”

“Why didn't any other mage take Fountain Reach for himself after Vitus disappeared?” I said.

“They couldn't get the wards to work,” Sonder said. “Vitus had attuned them to himself.”

I nodded. “And if it had been built in with the physical design of the place, it would have been more trouble than it was worth to change it.”

“If those mages couldn't get Fountain Reach to work for them, how did Crystal do it?” Luna asked.

“Guess she figured it out,” Variam said.

Sonder frowned. “But the mages who investigated the wards after Vitus's disappearances were . . . Well, I actually know two of them and they know more about focus magic than almost anyone else in the country. If they couldn't reattune the wards I don't see how she could have.”

“Who cares?” Variam said. “Maybe she just didn't bother.”

“But that would have problems too. Even if they aren't directly designed to defend the location, living in a place where you don't have any control over the ward layout is—”

“Okay, look,” Luna said. “What about that missing girl? It has to be the same thing, right?”

Anne and Sonder looked at each other. “I'm not sure,” Sonder said. He looked troubled.

“I am,” Luna said. “Alex, do you think if we went looking we'd find a bunch of other people going missing there?”

I thought about it for a second, then nodded. “Maybe not obviously . . . but yes.”

“I don't know how they missed this,” Sonder said. “Fountain Reach was investigated—”

“Fountain Reach was investigated for disappearances involving mages,” I said. “But I'll bet you the Council never looked into what happened to
normal
people who went there.”

“But it still doesn't make sense,” Sonder objected. “It's the apprentice disappearances we're trying to solve, and there's still no connection—”

“About that.” I got to my feet. “Come with me for a second. There's something I'd like you to check.”

*  *  *

F
ountain Reach was a cluster of light against the winter darkness. Stars twinkled down from above, and from the mansion dozens of windows glowed. We were at the edge of the woods bordering the gardens and even across the lawn we could hear the chatter of voices through the thick walls. Everything else was black.

“What are we doing here?” Sonder asked, shivering. Away from the warmth of Variam's fire spells, his breath was a pale shadow in the cold air.

“What you just told us was useful,” I said, “but it wasn't why I asked you to come down. When's your best guess on when Yasmin went missing?”

“About one o'clock this morning.”

“I want you to look back into the past over the period immediately after that. Let's say a three-hour window.”

“Look, even if it
was
here, you know the wards would stop any—”

“The wards prevent scrying inside the house,” I said. “I want you to search the grounds
around
the house.”

“For what?”

“Nothing,” I said truthfully. “See what you find.”

Sonder sighed and closed his eyes. Behind him Anne, Variam, and Luna were half hidden by the trees, though only Luna was shivering. “Do you want me to look around the front?” Sonder asked.

“No,” I said. “The farther out of view the better.”

Sonder fell silent. The only noise was the murmur of voices drifting across the gardens. I kept my arms folded against the chill, trying not to show how tense I was. Minutes passed and I forced myself to stay patient. I went over the reasoning in my mind, checking it for holes. It all hung together. Sonder ought to find . . .

“Huh,” Sonder said, interrupting my thoughts. “That's funny.”

“What?”

“There's an empty patch.”

“A shroud?”

“Yeah. One-fifteen to one-eighteen.”

“Okay,” I said, making sure to keep my voice calm. “Is it the same shroud? The same as when—?”

“Yes,” Sonder said. He was looking at me. “The same one that was used at Kings Cross and all the others.”

“Now check the time the last apprentice disappeared,” I said. “Vanessa. Same deal, the period immediately after she went missing.”

It only took Sonder a minute this time. “It's the same,” he said. I couldn't make out his expression, but he was looking at me. “Alex, this means—”

“Check them all.”

*  *  *

I
t was the same with all of them. The disappearances of all the missing apprentices matched up with a period of shrouded time in the back of Fountain Reach. By tracing the exact activation of the shroud, Sonder was able to figure out that the person using it had come from the woods to a little-used side door set into the mansion, half hidden by the bushes. Backtracking, we found that all of the routes led back to one of a pair of clearings a few minutes into the trees, where they stopped.