Blaze of Glory (22 page)

'How are you going to make it attack?' Caroline asked.

'An adaptation of the Law of Sympathy – like to like.
George's notebook is quite similar in
nature
to your
father's notebook. Notebooks being notebooks, they
share physical qualities, but they also have commonality
of
purpose
. This spell will draw on those similarities
and change the appearance of George's notebook until
it takes on the appearance of your father's notebook,
which, I hope, is somewhere in this room. Otherwise it
will be out of range and the spell won't work.'

'I see. Thinking it's seen the notebook it's been waiting
for, this shade creature will attack an empty jacket and
hat,' George said.

'And we can deal with it,' Aubrey said. He buttoned the
jacket. 'Of course, a not-so-empty jacket and hat will be
much more tempting.'

This was the easy part. Using a spell he'd perfected
through many repetitions, he began to chant softly and
ran his hands over the jacket sleeves. Slowly, and to his
great relief, the jacket began to swell like a balloon being
inflated.

Aubrey heard both Caroline and George inhale sharply
when two ghostly hands appeared at the end of the
sleeves. They quickly became firm and fleshy, hanging
limply.

Aubrey turned his attention to the hat. He put both
hands on its crown, then stroked downwards, continuing
the spell. He was particularly careful when he intoned the
elements setting the solidity of the effect, as this would
be important.

'Good Lord,' George said, as a face appeared.

It was his.

Aubrey took a deep breath as a wave of fatigue rolled
over him. Caroline began to speak, but he held up a hand.
'The Law of Contiguity. A special variation. The jacket
and hat had been touching George, absorbing his
Georgeness, if you will. I've drawn on that, added a few
elements for appearance and here we are.'
Not bad for such
a jury-rigged job.
'It's not a real body, simply an illusion, no
substance at all. A real body would require much more
work than this.' He glanced at George. 'But it will do.'

Aubrey began to tremble and shooting pain ran up and
down his legs. He leaned against George.

'Is this a good idea?' George muttered.

'Let's find out, shall we?'

Aubrey limped over to join Caroline. George followed,
nervously looking upwards as he went. 'It's still there?'

'Yes,' Aubrey said, without looking up. He studied his
reflection in the shiny quicksilver.
Perfect
, he thought.

He moved aside all the clutter on the bench – papers,
beakers, crucibles, a mug half-full of cold tea, a feather
duster – putting them on the other benches until only
the quicksilver bath was left. With a grunt, he moved
this to one end. The quicksilver rolled backwards and
forwards.

'Chalk,' Aubrey said, looking around.

'Here.' Caroline put a piece in his hand.

Aubrey smiled his thanks and drew a large rectangle on
the surface of the bench. He dropped the chalk into his
pocket, then wet his finger in his mouth. With painstaking
care, he traced the outline, his finger moving
through the air an inch
above
the chalk line.

Then Aubrey seized the quicksilver bath and upended
it onto the bench.

George stifled an oath and stepped back, but the
mercury flowed to the edge of the chalk outline and
stopped, meeting an invisible barrier. Soon, the shiny,
liquid metal lay there, bounded only by a chalk border,
making a slab of quicksilver about two feet by two feet,
and an inch thick.

'Excellent,' Aubrey said. 'Now for the Law of
Opposites. Caroline, would you please hand me those
safety matches?'

She had been regarding Aubrey with more than a little
scepticism. 'Are you sure you know what you're doing?'
she asked as she handed him the box.

'Oh yes. Quite elementary, this part. A minor application
of the Law of Opposites. Observe.'

With a flourish, Aubrey struck a match, waggled an
eyebrow, muttered a few words, then stuck the lit end
in his mouth.

Caroline's eyes went wide, but George gave an exclamation
of disgust. 'It's an old trick,' he said to Caroline.
'He mastered it when he was eight.'

Aubrey's cheeks bulged. He pulled the dead match from
his tightly closed lips, then leaned over the quicksilver.

With a mighty breath, he exhaled a snowstorm.

Fog rolled across the bench as the heat of the match
had been magically transformed into its opposite. Aubrey
had not merely conjured a slight chill, either. This was
arctic.

Aubrey reached out with a knuckle and rapped on the
mercury. 'Good.' He looked at his knuckle and the piece
of skin he'd left on the surface of the mercury. 'Ah.'

George held up two pairs of leather gloves. 'You'd
better use these.' Fog puffed around his words.

'You too, George. We'll both need them. Now,
Caroline, can I borrow your diamond brooch?'

He admired her for the way she simply unclipped it
and handed it over. He knew the memento from her
father was precious.

He reached out and used the brooch to score a straight
line across the middle of the hardened mercury. His
breath steamed over the metal as he took one edge. He
grunted at its weight, but managed to lift it.

The mercury snapped cleanly in two. 'We now have
two mirrors.'

'And what for?' Caroline asked.

Aubrey handed back her brooch. 'A mirror trap, to
catch our shade.'

Caroline looked at the two mirrors. 'Perhaps you could
have found something in this workshop. After all, Father
was not without skill in matters magical.'

Aubrey grimaced. 'I know. I had the highest respect for
your father. But blundering around in this workshop
would be like trying to use a candle to find a length of
fuse in a room full of high explosive.'

She considered this. 'You could be right.'

Aubrey wasn't prepared for how this nod of approval
made him feel, as if his heart had given a small, definite
hiccup.

He straightened, brought himself back to the task at
hand, and looked at George. 'Ready? Time to apply the
Law of Sympathy to the notebook. The phantom George
will appear as if it has the professor's book, and I'm sure
it's been set on guard for just that eventuality.'
And such
interest makes me very, very curious about the contents of that
notebook, too.
'When the shade attacks, we have to manoeuvre
so that we catch it between our mirrors. Gloves
on, George.'

Even through the thick leather, Aubrey could feel the
cold bite of the mirror's edge. He looked up at the shade,
then he muttered the remainder of the spell that would
precipitate the Law of Sympathy.

Slowly, the phantom George reached for a notebook
that was suddenly larger and more dog-eared. The cover
had a purple stain and the binding was frayed.

'Father's book,' Caroline breathed.

A blur of movement cut through the air and the top
third of the hatstand toppled to the ground. The
phantom George stood there, unfazed, lifting the false
notebook to its face.

'Now, George!' Aubrey shouted.

The shade was buzzing in a tight circle around the
hatstand, a vicious whirlwind, trying to slice the phantom
George to pieces. An angry hissing came from the
creature as it met little resistance.

Aubrey strained and lifted his sheet of mercury, gritting
his teeth at the weight of it. He shuffled until he was
about six feet away from the shade. The mirror was heavy
and cold, and he had trouble keeping it upright. 'George!
Trap it between my mirror and yours!'

He peered around the edge of the mirror and saw that
George was in position. He began chanting.

The syllables were long, convoluted and scraped on his
already raw throat. The pain in his legs grew worse and
his arms started to tremble with the weight of the
mercury.

'Good Lord!' George exclaimed. An angry hissing went
up. 'It's trying to get out, Aubrey!'

Aubrey couldn't see, but his mirror was suddenly
buffeted, as if something had been flung against it. 'What's
happening, Caroline?'

'The shade is flying from side to side,' she said calmly.
'Like a rat caught in a drain. Hold fast, George.'

'I am.'

Aubrey crouched behind his mirror and felt another
blow. The cold was eating its way through his gloves.

'It's flying faster,' Caroline described. Her voice was
dispassionate and clinical, as if she were describing a
tennis match. 'I'd say it's frantic. It tried escaping the
bounds of the trap but it behaves as if it's been caged.
The phantom George has collapsed and the hatstand has
been reduced to splinters.'

The hissing and the buffeting began to lessen.

'Aubrey?' George called. 'Are we done?'

'It's gone,' Caroline reported.

'George,' Aubrey called. He longed to rub his temples
to soothe the pounding inside his head. 'Bring your
mirror over here. Don't look into it.'

Caroline guided George with a firm, clear voice. 'A
little to the right, George. Two paces forward. A small
one. Good.'

'George.' said Aubrey. 'When we fit the two mirror
faces together, can you take both and hold them
together? It will be heavy.'

'I'll manage.'

Aubrey held up his mirror, guided by Caroline. For an
awkward moment, he and George fumbled, but the two
mirrors finally came together with a heavy
click
.

'Good,' Aubrey said. 'Place them on the bench.'

George shuffled over and eased the mirrors onto the
bench. He stood back, removed the gloves and blew onto
his hands.

'They've fused,' Caroline said.

There was no crack separating the two sheets of mercury.
They had merged into a single, shining slab.

'And that's the mirror trap,' Aubrey said. He leant
heavily on the bench. Despite the cold radiating from
the mirror, he was sweating. 'But there is one last thing
I must do.'

With a sigh, he turned to look around the workshop.
'Perfect,' he said and took a hammer out of a box of
woodworking tools. He fumbled a piece of chalk out
of his pocket and inscribed a symbol on the face of
the hammer.

When he struck, the merged mirrors shattered like
glass.

'Now, all the pieces go back into the quicksilver bath.
When it melts it will be simple mercury again.'

George put the gloves back on and hurried to gather
the fragments. 'The shade?'

'Is gone.'

A
UBREY'S TIRED GAZE FELL ON A STOOL NEAR A RACK
of cogs. He hobbled over to it and sat down.
'Caroline,' he said, and he was pleased to hear that his
voice wasn't trembling. 'Your father didn't say where he
kept his notebook? It has to be somewhere near, otherwise
my spell wouldn't have been able to make George's
notebook look like your father's.'

'No.'

He scanned the cluttered workshop, still trying to get
some of the cold out of his bones.
Where would the professor
have kept a notebook?

He got up and lurched around between the benches,
his hands behind his back. 'Now,' he said, 'a notebook is a
working tool, something that should be close at hand for
reference or for addition, correct?'

George was looking in a wooden cabinet. He grunted.

Aubrey went on. 'And – forgive me, Caroline – the
professor didn't know he was going to die so suddenly,
did he?'

'No,' she said, her face set.

'Then I'd say that the notebook would be accessible for
the next time the professor needed it, no?'

Caroline smiled crookedly. 'While this may be obvious,
I'll grant your point.'

'Thank you.' Aubrey came to the main workbench in
the middle of the space. 'We do know what our missing
notebook looks like, from our work with the Law of
Sympathy and the phantom George.'

'Large, foolscap size at a guess,' George said. He held up
a tobacco tin and examined it. 'Brown cover with a
purple stain.'

'So we'll recognise it once we see it.'

'Naturally,' Caroline said, with a touch of asperity.

'So we're looking for something that isn't in sight and
something which, on the other hand, should be readily
accessible.'

'A paradox,' George agreed. He'd discarded the tobacco
tin and had found a receipt book, which he was leafing
through with some interest.

'Not entirely,' Aubrey said. 'George, come and stand
here, at the main workbench.'

The main workbench was bare. The wood was dark,
heavily scarred in some places where it looked as if heavy
equipment had been dragged. Other scratches, score
marks and stains showed that this bench had been the
scene of much activity.

Aubrey stood back. 'Stand in the middle, George. A
little to your left. Just so.' Aubrey motioned to Caroline.
'Come here, if you please, Caroline. Would you say George
is of approximately the same stature as your father?'

Caroline studied George, tilting her head to one side.
'Father was perhaps taller, but only slightly.'

'Your father was left-handed, correct?'

She narrowed her eyes. 'And how did you know that?'

'No mystery there. At the shooting weekend, I saw him
with the gun up to his left shoulder.'

She nodded.

'Excellent. Now, George. Can you stretch out your left
hand, towards the end of the bench.'

'Of course.' As he reached out, he jerked his hand
back, his eyes wide. 'Good Lord! Something's there!' He
squinted. 'But I can't see anything.'

'I think we've found it,' Aubrey said. His head was
pounding, but he smiled nonetheless.

'It's not a book, Aubrey,' George protested. 'The shape
I felt was hard, like metal.'

'Of course. What good would an invisible book be? It's
probably in an invisible box or cabinet.'

'Ah.' George fumbled around. 'Here.'

George's hands went through the motions of tipping
back an invisible lid. Suddenly, the interior of the box was
revealed. There, sitting snugly, was the notebook.

Aubrey opened the book at random. 'Let's hope this
can answer some of our questions.'

The pages were filled with the professor's spiky handwriting,
much crossed out and added to, with many
different colours of ink. Aubrey stared when he realised
that the page he was looking at dealt with death magic
and the forbidden Ritual of the Way, but it soon launched
from this into a bold new theory on existence itself,
before breaking off into an arcane but brilliant set of
jottings about the nature of magic.

I can use this
, he thought, gripping the book.
It could
help me step back, return me to the true land of the living.

Suddenly, his neck began to prickle. He felt deep
unease in his stomach and his eyes grew wide. He was
horrified at what he was doing.

Aubrey dropped the notebook. He put his hands to his
face and moaned – then stifled the sound, afraid that it
would bring the attention of this place on to him. He
knew, with awful certainty, that he was being watched.
He'd had the temerity to take the book and creatures of
vileness and unspeakable depravity had woken. Once
they fixed on him, he was doomed.

Dimly, Aubrey heard whimpering. He cursed it silently,
wishing it would stop before it drew
their
attention.

His only hope was that they might not see him. Small
and insignificant as he was, perhaps their terrible regard
would miss him. He might be able to hide in the mud
and slime. He closed his eyes.

A small, frightened sound came from nearby. For a
moment Aubrey wanted to open his eyes, take his fingers
away from his face and see what it was, but he didn't dare.
The cold, malignant gaze of the guardians had been
aroused.

He huddled on the floor, bringing his arms over his
head, making himself as inconspicuous as possible. His
mouth was dry. His jaw ached as he clamped down on
the scream that was trying to escape. His heart hammered
so fast it threatened to burst from his chest. His hands
were clenched in hard, painful fists.

No
, he thought, with an effort
. It's a trick. Remember the
Black Beast of Penhurst?

Aubrey opened his eyes. With the strength of will he'd
learned since he found himself standing on the edge of
the true death, he turned away from the terror. Slowly,
it began to recede. His heart started to slow, his fists
unclenched. He still felt the terror, distantly, but he no
longer wanted to shriek with fear.

It was magic working on him. Gritting his teeth, he
noted that the terror had the same flavour as the terror
that went with the Black Beast, but here it was closer and
a hundred times stronger.

He stood. Panic beat down on him as if he were in a
tropical downpour. He shook his head, refusing to give
in to it.

A short distance away, Caroline and George were lying
on the ground, their knees drawn up as they tried to
hide themselves from the horror. Their eyes were screwed
tight.

He walked over to them with legs that were heavy and
unresponsive. 'George.'

His friend ignored him.

'George. It's all right. Come with me.'

Aubrey touched him on the shoulder. He screamed.

Aubrey stepped back, but George screamed again and
lashed out blindly. Aubrey grabbed at him, but his friend
shrieked and flailed, rolling along the floor, eyes still shut
tight. He gibbered, moaning with fear.

Aubrey tried to subdue him, but George was lost in the
grip of terror. He swung his arms and kicked, and it was
only because his eyes were closed that he didn't connect.

George rolled over and tried to flatten himself against
the concrete floor of the workshop. Aubrey leapt on his
back to trap his arms by his side. George thrashed and
tried to dislodge him, but Aubrey hung on.

Sobbing, George flung himself sidewards. Aubrey
threw out a hand to balance himself and he grinned
when it touched rope.

Aubrey wrenched at the rope, dragging out a length.
He threw it over George's head, slipping it down as his
friend clawed at it. Aubrey used the opportunity to pass
more loops of rope around his arms and shoulders.
George tried to bite, heaving and throwing himself
from side to side, but Aubrey eventually had him solidly
bound.

Aubrey slumped against the wall, panting.
The things I
do for you, George
.

His whole body was a source of pain, with his nose a
particularly bright spot. Before he seized up entirely, he
dragged George towards the door, passing the still whimpering
Caroline lying on the floor.

Outside, the cool air was like a balm. Aubrey threw his
head back. The stars looked down on him with astonishment.
It's night?
Aubrey thought, dazed.
We've been in there
longer than I thought.

He looked down. 'George, we're outside the workshop.
I have to go back in and get Caroline.'

George opened his eyes. His gaze darted from side to
side, but the panic was fading. He tried to shrug, but the
ropes prevented him. He smiled, then grimaced. 'I think
I'm about to be sick.'

Aubrey managed to untie his friend so that he could
crawl to the gutter, then he looked away to give him
some privacy.

'You'll be all right?' Aubrey asked when George had
finished. He nodded and wiped his mouth.

Aubrey staggered back to the workshop and plunged
into the miasma of terror.

This time, Aubrey had rope ready before he tackled
Caroline. But when he touched her she slammed an
elbow into his cheekbone, just below his eye. It made
lights jump around inside his head. He reeled back and
she was on him, hands outstretched like claws.

She wasn't as strong as George, but she was quicker and
her blows were more calculated, even in her terror. He
backed away, tripped, and she threw herself at him.

Aubrey rolled to one side and she hissed, missing him.
She came to her feet, eyes wild, but she slipped and her
head struck the corner of a bench. She slid to the floor
insensible.

Chest heaving, Aubrey lifted her and stumbled towards
the door, not too exhausted to marvel at the muscularity,
the firmness of her body.

Then he remembered the notebook. He put her down
and crawled to where he'd dropped it. He tucked it into
his jacket and picked her up again, groaning as his head
threatened to explode. Then he saw Caroline's hat, which
had become dislodged during their struggle. It had
fetched up under a bench. For an instant he was tempted
to leave it there, but he thought better of it. Balancing his
precious load, he felt around under the bench with his
foot, eventually snagging the reluctant headgear. Then,
with the hat on the tip of his shoe, he shuffled and staggered
out of the benighted workshop.

Outside, he sagged at the knees, but managed to ease
Caroline to the pavement.

He sat on the ground for a moment, head bowed,
Caroline's hat in his hands. He looked up to see George
staring at her. 'She hit her head,' he explained. 'She tried
for my eyes, but I was just quick enough.'

'That's twice, you know, that she's been knocked
unconscious grappling with you.'

Aubrey sighed. He hoped Caroline wouldn't resent it,
but he had his doubts.

'What was it, Aubrey?' George said. 'What happened in
there?'

Aubrey looked back at the workshop. 'Terror, George,
a purer, more concentrated version of what we felt at
Penhurst with the Black Beast. It's powerful magic.'

George was silent for a moment. 'Things were about to
attack me. I thought I was going to die.'

'I'm sure Caroline felt the same. We were meant to be
reduced to mindless, terrified wrecks.'

'I was. There was nothing I could do about it.'

'It works with primal fears, I'd say,' Aubrey mused.
Caroline muttered a few nonsense words and lifted a limp
hand. 'Things that haunt us all at some deep part of ourselves.
Fear of ancient evil, of powerful things waiting to
see us, to devour us.'

George shuddered. 'Enough, Aubrey.'

Aubrey nodded. 'I think she's regaining her senses.' He
sighed. 'It probably used some of the professor's recent
work. A concentration of emotion, a field triggered by
our unauthorised opening of the notebook, designed to
incapacitate us. I can see that the military would be interested
in such magic.'

'And why weren't you affected by the terror?' George
asked. 'Weren't you scared?'

Aubrey looked up at the night sky. 'I was. But once
you've gazed on the face of death, ordinary fears don't
seem to matter as much any more.'