The Laws of Magic 6: Hour of Need (27 page)

T
HE ORNITHOPTER STOOD NEXT TO WHAT HAD ONCE
been stables but was now being used as a mechanical workshop. The Gannet gleamed in the low light of the receding storm. Its wings were folded back in the resting position, reaching almost back to the massive extra fuel tanks that were responsible for its range.

In the wake of the storm, the chateau complex was subdued. The damage was remarkably minor, with flying debris having caused most of the destruction. Aubrey was pleased to see the black dog strutting about as if it had been solely responsible for seeing off the invaders.

Their departure wasn’t so precipitous that some preparations hadn’t been undertaken. General Apsley wasn’t prepared to rely on a single ornithopter to get the news to Albion, so he had organised the dispatching of motorcycle riders to relay the news to the Directorate and the Prime Minister.

In the meantime, while the ornithopter was readied, Aubrey found a satchel of maps to which he added the notes he’d been accumulating. He also scrambled together some magical items he hoped would be useful. George and Sophie busied themselves in readying for their flight as Caroline was briefed on the new flying machine.

George hefted his rucksack. ‘You can fly this, Caroline?’

Her eyes were bright. ‘Oh yes, I’m sure I can.’

Sophie peered through goggles. ‘I have never flown in an ornithopter before.’

‘You’re in for an experience.’ George flung open the door and together they leaped into the back seat, where, to Aubrey’s mind, they spent an inordinate amount of time becoming untangled.

Caroline vaulted into the pilot’s seat, slammed the door and tied back her hair while she studied the controls. They looked familiar enough to Aubrey, but he noticed that the wing tilt indicator and oil pressure gauge had swapped position. He swallowed and peered at the dials, switches and knobs. What else was different?

‘We’re fully fuelled,’ he announced, having found the appropriate indicator.

‘Excellent,’ Caroline murmured. Without taking her eyes from the panel in front of her, she snapped her seatbelt around her waist. Aubrey didn’t have to be told; he quickly did the same and he heard two similar metallic catches from behind him.

Aubrey could fly an ornithopter, and fly it very well if his instructors could be believed. He knew, however, that he wasn’t a patch on Caroline. He enjoyed the flying experience; she loved it, and her love translated into a sublime ability to pilot the notoriously cranky machine as easily as if it were a kite.

She leaned forward, and a tiny tip of her tongue protruded from a corner of her mouth. She paused for an instant, then flipped a switch. The engine coughed twice, then decided it was well enough to lurch into action. It roared and the noise of the storm was drowned out. Caroline’s hands ran across the panel, engaging and testing components of the fiendishly complicated machine she was about to shepherd into the sky. Tiny lights winked on and off, and Aubrey felt flares of magic awaken from the various enhanced aspects of the ornithopter.

Caroline grasped the controls and used a thumb to open the switch on the right-hand panel. Instantly, the earth was left behind.

George cheered, but the launch was always Aubrey’s least favourite part of any ornithopter flight. In any take-off, it felt as if his stomach were left well behind on the ground and then had to spend some time clawing its way back to reunite itself with the rest of his body. He swallowed to equalise the pressure in his ears. The thrashing of the great metal wings managed the impressive task of drowning out the roar of the engine, where all the pistons were labouring with the effort of hurling the bulk of the machine skywards.

The ornithopter spiralled, seeking its best flying altitude. Aubrey consulted a map.

‘A heading, Aubrey?’ Caroline glanced at him, her lip quirked upward.

‘Two hundred and sixty degrees,’ he said, surprising himself with such lucidity in the face of a Caroline lip quirk.

‘Let’s see if we can beat that skyfleet to Trinovant.’ She adjusted the wing attack angle and the metal bird lurched, canted, then set off in pursuit of Dr Tremaine.

W
ITH THE AFTERNOON SUN MOVING WESTWARD
, the glare made seeing difficult, but Aubrey thought he could make out a far-off line of dark cloud. As it was directly between the Albion capital and them, this tended to confirm Professor Mansfield’s claim that Trinovant was Dr Tremaine’s target – especially as Aubrey had felt the rogue sorcerer’s presence as the skyfleet passed overhead.

George tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Since we missed lunch, I thought some making up might be in order.’

‘Rations?’

‘Superior rations,’ George said. ‘After all, the chateau has been hosting Bertie. We’ve got good ham, cheese, proper white bread, smoked chicken. And I’m not quite sure how this chocolate cake made its way into my sack, but I’m only glad that I managed to slip it into a tin before it did.’

Sophie offered Aubrey a bottle. ‘Ginger beer?’

Aubrey carefully opened it. ‘What was ginger beer doing in a Gallian chateau?’

George considered this. ‘In some ways – the ginger beer department, for example – that place was a little bit of Albion in the middle of Gallia.’

‘The best of both worlds,’ Sophie said and she passed a rough slice of bread to Aubrey. It was wrapped around some ham and cheese and he realised he was ravenous.

‘Er … do you have a glass?’

‘Drink from the bottle, Aubrey,’ Caroline said without turning her head. All her attention was on the windscreen and the control panel; she was constantly trying to coax a little more speed out of the ornithopter, trimming the wings, levelling the flight. ‘Then hold it up to my lips, would you? I’m parched.’

The next hour was spent on a precarious meal while they pursued Dr Tremaine’s skyfleet. Aubrey divided his time between accepting morsels from Sophie and George, and popping them into Caroline’s mouth as she continued her piloting of the aircraft. After they were done and cleaned up, as best they could in the confines of the cockpit, the day stretched out in the same way the countryside did below them.

Abruptly, Caroline asked Aubrey a question: ‘Have you deduced why Dr Tremaine is going to Albion yet?’

‘It’s been much on my mind.’

‘I’m sure. Any conclusions?’

‘Many. None of them particularly cheerful.’

Caroline considered this for a moment. ‘Why Trinovant?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Why is he going to Trinovant? Why not Lutetia?’

Click.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘That was the perfect question.’

‘And you have the answer?’

‘I’m getting there.’ He chewed his lip, briefly. ‘Bear with me here, but the overwhelming thing that distinguishes Trinovant from all other cities is its size.’

‘You’re being needlessly obvious again.’

It was close. He nearly had it. ‘It’s magical theory, Caroline. Magic is generated by the interaction of human consciousness on the universe. The more people, the greater the potential magical field.’
Gigantic click.
‘That’s it.’

‘Explain, Aubrey.’

The potential catastrophe made Aubrey hesitate before answering. ‘Dr Tremaine wants to harness the greatest potential magical field in the world.’

‘I see. That’s all we need. A more powerful Dr Tremaine.’

Aubrey hardly heard. ‘Remember the way I used the collective consciousnesses around no-man’s-land? Imagine Dr Tremaine using all Trinovant to propel his spell. He’ll be able to work the Ritual of the Way without the blood sacrifice we all assumed he needed.’

‘Which is a good thing.’

‘The lack of blood sacrifice is definitely a good thing. An immortal Dr Tremaine is a bad thing.’

Aubrey knew he’d have no argument from Caroline on that score. After killing her father, Dr Tremaine was irredeemable in Caroline’s eyes.

‘It sounds as if Dr Tremaine is desperate,’ she said. ‘You’ve upset his plans for battle for who knows how long, so he’s resorting to this.’

‘Perhaps.’ Aubrey was unwilling to believe that Dr Tremaine was driven to anything. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered if this had been his plan all along. After all, the Ritual of the Way had never been undertaken successfully, despite the horrors some magicians had wrought in their attempts. As Aubrey had researched the dark magic, the more he’d come to suspect that several battles in ancient times had been manipulated to achieve the level of sacrifice believed necessary to perform the spell.

Aubrey suspected that Dr Tremaine had been working on this alternative method for a long time. If he were able to couple a substantial collection of magical artefacts with a Universal Language of Magic, while tapping into the magical field over Trinovant, the Ritual of the Way could be within his grasp.

The thought did little to cheer him. He wondered if he wasn’t overlooking something, something that could make a difference.

He turned, looking for some common sense from George, to find that he and Sophie had managed to fall asleep.

Sleep was a stranger to Aubrey. The roar of the engine set his teeth vibrating, and the constant ‘thump-swish’ of the wings was jarring. Besides, he wasn’t about to sleep when Caroline couldn’t, but when he tried some inconsequential chat, her monosyllabic responses didn’t encourage him to keep it up. She was locked on course as much as the ornithopter was.

This gave him more time to think, to prepare for a confrontation where the future of the world was at stake. His mind went to the magical connection that he shared with Dr Tremaine.

During his vigil in the cave overlooking Dr Tremaine’s stronghold, Aubrey had felt the connection come and go, as was its wont. Intrigued, he’d spent time pondering the implications of the connection and its composition. He had an inkling that the Law of Entanglement and the Law of Division could shed some light on it, so while their pursuit wore on, he took out his notebook and immersed himself in a number of formulations suggested by these laws to see what light they could shed on the mysterious phenomenon.

When he became aware of the world again – some time later – the skyfleet had vanished over the horizon. With no glimpse of it, not even the thunderheads, it felt as if they were making no headway.

‘Can we catch them?’ he asked Caroline. He kept his voice as low as he could to avoid waking Sophie and George.

‘I doubt it,’ she said, ‘but we’re not giving up. If Tremaine’s devil fleet falters, we’ll have them.’

Aubrey tapped his chin. ‘What if we had some assistance?’

‘You have something in mind?’

‘As the skyfleet was approaching the chateau, I was constructing a spell to deflect any bombs. It occurs to me that I could rework such a spell to provide us with some impetus.’

‘Providing impetus to an aircraft in motion sounds as if it might involve some level of danger.’

‘I wondered about that.’ Aubrey hummed a little, to himself. ‘I’m thinking that I might be able to conjure a tailwind.’

‘Go on.’

‘If I can displace sufficient air in the right place, other air will rush in to fill the gap. Air rushing in a particular direction sounds just like wind to me.’

Caroline pursed her lips for an instant. ‘You understand that ornithopters are temperamental at the best of times, don’t you? And since the best of times means stable, calm conditions, your plan would suggest that we’ll be flying an ornithopter in the worst of conditions.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Sounds like a challenge. When do we start?’

‘Do you think we should wake Sophie and George first?’

Caroline rapidly ran a hand over the switches, adjusting dials and knobs. Their speed dropped noticeably. ‘I’ve tucked the wings into a stable climbing position. The nose configuration is now well trimmed.’ She glanced into the back. ‘Let them sleep. They’ll wake up soon enough.’

C
AROLINE WAS FLUSHED AND BREATHING HEAVILY
. S
HE
pushed back hair that Aubrey thought was wonderfully wild and free. ‘Let’s not do that again soon, shall we?’ she said huskily.

Aubrey had to agree. The Gallian landscape was a pretty thing, but not when it was screaming toward them as it had been just a few minutes ago.

‘And no more upside down, please,’ Sophie added in a small voice.

‘We can do without that twisty rolling, too,’ George added. ‘Quite lost my appetite there for a while.’

‘I’ll do my best in the future,’ Caroline said, ‘but I thought both manoeuvres were preferable to breaking up and being strewn across farmland.’

George pushed his head forward between Aubrey and Caroline. ‘I say, is that the coast?’

‘And I’m sure that wall of cloud ahead is actually what we’re after,’ Aubrey said. ‘Are we still gaining?’

Caroline craned her head to catch a glimpse of the countryside they were skimming over. ‘I’d say so. Not as much as when your magic wind had us in its clutches, but we should pass the skyfleet within the hour.’

‘Over the straits,’ Aubrey said carefully. ‘Since we’re doing so well, what do you all say to a slight detour?’

I
N THE DYING LIGHT
, D
R
T
REMAINE’S SKYFLEET WAS SPREAD
across nearly a mile in a V-shaped formation, the most gargantuan of the warships in the vanguard. It had slowed as it left Gallia behind and this had allowed the ornithopter to close on it more quickly than anticipated.

Realising this, Caroline sent the aircraft climbing, gaining altitude until the line of cloud-formed ships was stretched far beneath them, flanked by the wall of storm clouds. She had to wrestle for a moment with the starboard wing, which had developed an annoying grinding, but from this position, with the help of binoculars Sophie produced from her rucksack, Aubrey was able to study Dr Tremaine’s fleet.

This was worth the time, he told himself. Gathering information about the disposition of the skyfleet might be vital in deciding how best to combat it. The Directorate, the military, needed as much intelligence as it could get.

The flagship would have been the largest battleship in the world, if it had been on the sea. Aubrey judged it to be at least twice as long as the
Impervious
, the pride of the Albion fleet. The three turrets of twin mounted guns, fore and aft, were unheard of. Despite the fact that the ship was made of cloudstuff magically wrought to mimic the steel and iron of real battleships, it was a frightening beast. It looked as if it could destroy a city by itself.

It was accompanied by more than a dozen lesser battleships and a score of destroyers, cruisers and attendant craft. It was a terrifying fleet, correct in every detail apart from one.

‘Not many crewmen,’ George muttered.

Aubrey scanned the walkways and decks of all the ships but saw no-one. The gun turrets were unmanned, the catwalks were empty, the stairs were abandoned. In ships of this size, fully underway, Aubrey would have expected to see dozens of crewmen at work on the hundreds of tasks required to keep a ship steaming along happily.

Another puzzle.

He motioned Caroline to halt their advance.

Aubrey had thought, while crawling, exposed, through no-man’s-land, that there had to be a Better Way. When being seen was such a life-threatening handicap, a method of avoiding notice was greatly to be desired. He knew that the Directorate, under Commander Craddock’s guidance, was experimenting with approaches to disguise troops, military hardware, and even buildings, but nothing had been forthcoming.

With Sophie’s talent in the area of illusion and seeming, Aubrey wondered if they might be able to approach the stormfleet and not immediately be blown out of the sky.

He looked over his shoulder. ‘Sophie, how much work have you done with the Law of Familiarity?’

Sophie shrugged. ‘Most disguising spells use it. When Caroline and I entered Dr Tremaine’s factory in Stalsfrieden, the spell I used made the guards think that we belonged there.’

‘Exactly. But have you ever used it to disguise something that wasn’t human?’

‘An animal?’

‘What about something non-living, like a machine?’

‘Ah, you want to disguise this ornithopter!’