Time of Trial (26 page)

‘I'm starting to feel a bit left out,' George said. ‘I don't suppose a clear mind and a pure heart count for much?'

‘Against Dr Tremaine?' Aubrey said. ‘I don't think so. And I'm not sure how much use firearms are against him, either.' He remembered the encounter Caroline, George and he had had with Dr Tremaine in the vaults of the Bank of Albion. Caroline had shot at him from a distance of no more than ten paces, but he had escaped unharmed.

Aubrey listened with half a mind as Caroline, George and von Stralick argued about the efficacy of various weapons, while Fromm looked on with amusement. Aubrey's other half mind was busy rattling through spells to use if it came to a confrontation with Dr Tremaine, and sorting through the items he'd stowed in his appurtenances vest.

‘All I have are some nuisance spells,' he announced finally. ‘If I had more time, I may be able to construct something useful.'

‘We should strike now.' Caroline's eyes were flat and hard.

Aubrey could see disaster rolling their way like barrels down a ramp. He knew that if he tried to argue her out of confronting Dr Tremaine, he'd lose. She'd simply ignore him and go her own way. It was time for an outflanking manoeuvre.

‘We can't just barge in on him,' Aubrey said. ‘We have to scout the terrain, see what's going on.'

Caroline gazed at him for a moment. Then she nodded. ‘Very well.'

Aubrey lay on his stomach, unmindful of the effect the leaf mould and dirt was having on the fine wool of his jacket and trousers. Inch by inch, he wormed his way through the untended greenery.

After scrambling over the wall and finding themselves in a garden that had gone wild, he'd managed to persuade the others that he should go on ahead, by the simple expedient of demonstrating his spell-assisted belly crawl.

Ever since the adventure in Lutetia, where – in a moment of manic invention – he'd levitated a whole medieval tower and sent it sailing across the rooftops of the Gallian capital, he'd worked, sporadically, on refining the weight-cancelling spell that had enabled this dramatic mode of locomotion. He'd had the notion of writing a paper on the subject for the
Albion Journal of Magic
, but he'd wanted to sort out all the derivatives and variations first. Publication in a prestigious journal like the
AJM
meant he'd be on display, subject to scrutiny, and to criticism, from some of the best magical minds in the world, so he wanted to make sure he had everything correct.

All in all, it was a pleasure to be fiddling with minor, very practical applications of the spell he'd been working with so closely. In this instance, he was simply easing his weight a little so he wouldn't make a sound on the dry leaves underfoot. Or underbelly. It worked, and he fancied he slithered like a particularly deft snake.

Ahead, closer to the site of the ruined house, he could hear at least one person. They made little effort to hide their presence –
just like Tremaine
, he thought – and he lay there trying to sort out the tramping. One person or two? Or was it three?

He edged forward, keeping his head down, and parted a heavy, but thankfully thornless, bush.

Just in time to see an old man claw at the air and disappear into nothingness.

Horrified, Aubrey scrambled to his feet and shouted for the others, just as another stranger climbed out of the charred beams and rubble of the ruined house.

‘Mr Black!' she cried.

Caroline burst through the foliage. She'd changed into her black silk fighting suit and she had her revolver at the ready. ‘Aubrey!'

George was hot on her heels. ‘Old man?'

Von Stralick and Fromm were more cautious. They pushed aside branches and edged through the greenery, then stood eyeing the woman who had climbed from the ruins. Her face was smeared with black and she was wearing riding trousers under a black leather coat. ‘Do not go over there!' she called.

George froze, to the extent of having one foot in the air. ‘Over where?'

‘There.' Aubrey pointed to a spot halfway down the side of the ruin, about four or five yards from what would have been a wall. ‘Where the old man disappeared.'

‘Merikanto,' the woman whispered. She held onto an upright beam, careless of the charred timber. ‘He was trying to stop it.'

‘Madame Zelinka?' Aubrey said. ‘What's going on? Where's Dr Tremaine?'

‘Tremaine?' Madame Zelinka looked around in horror. ‘Is he here?'

‘Apparently not,' Caroline said. She stood with her hands on her hips. ‘Aubrey, are you going to introduce us to your friend?'

Von Stralick grinned at Aubrey. ‘Do, Fitzwilliam. Be a gentleman.'

Aubrey sighed and did the formalities, finishing with, ‘And you know George Doyle. I mean, Mr Evans.'

Madame Zelinka was pale and shaken, but she gathered herself. ‘He has two names? As do you? Which is it, Black or Fitzwilliam?' She looked exhausted. ‘Who
are
you?'

‘Good question,' Aubrey said. He spun his story carousel, looking for a solution to the sticky situation he'd dropped himself in. Perhaps he could invent
another
persona, one that was pretending to be two different people because of an identity stealing spell...

Caroline elbowed him. ‘Simple would be better, I believe.'

He swallowed, and told Madame Zelinka the truth.

In the end, it was a relief. Madame Zelinka listened carefully. Aubrey was sure she would become angry at his deception, but she simply nodded. ‘You were good, Fitzwilliam. And you, Doyle. You had me convinced.'

‘Later for this,' von Stralick said. ‘What about this old man that you say disappeared? Are we in danger?'

She touched her forehead. ‘Merikanto.'

‘What was he doing?' Aubrey asked.

‘He was trying to quell the disruption that Tremaine left behind.' She trembled. ‘It reached out from the basement and took him.'

‘He's in pieces, now,' Fromm said. He spat on the ground. ‘Like dropping a glass on a stone floor. Shattered, he is, and blown to the winds. Fromm felt him go.'

Madame Zelinka stood in the ruins and her equanimity crumbled. She began to cry, tried to stop it, but then was seized by her distress.

Automatically, they all went to her. They had to pick their way through the ruins, crunching through ash and burned wood, stepping carefully over tumbled-down stones. Aubrey felt glass crushing underfoot and noted the bright frozen rivulets where lead from the roof had melted and run.

Caroline put an arm around the distraught woman while von Stralick and George looked on helplessly. Fromm sidled to Aubrey. ‘She's here, you know.'

‘Sylvia?'

‘She retreated when the old man was broken apart. But she's here.'

‘What about this disturbance Madame Zelinka is talking about?'

Fromm snorted. ‘Her crew are always finding problems. They are troublemakers.'

‘You know them?'

‘Ghost hunters know much.'

Which wasn't an answer, but Aubrey let it go. ‘You don't think it's a problem?'

Fromm spat on the ground again. ‘Could be. Can't you feel it?'

Aubrey glanced at him. Fromm looked back placidly. Aubrey shrugged, closed his eyes, and extended his magical awareness.

It struck him like a gravel flung in a gale, a sharp, painful spattering of loose magic. He winced, but concentrated on making sense of the sensation.

It was wild, unshaped by a restraining spell. It roared like an out-of-control fire in a forest. Assaulted by a jumble of sensation, Aubrey reeled. He heard harsh, bitter tastes, while he smelled blinding white light that rippled and shifted. He bit down on roughness like sandpaper in his mouth and nearly gagged.

He opened his eyes. Caroline and George were both frowning at him. ‘It's in the basement. And it's growing. We have to stop it.'

Aubrey had felt something like it before, and that knowledge gave him no pleasure. Some aspects of the magic's wildness were like the raw flame of power that Dr Tremaine had built in tunnels under Trinovant in his effort to destroy the city. This magic, however, was even more unformed. It was as if a brew of noxious chemicals had seeped into a swamp, combining to create something hideous. The soul fragmentation was its work of the moment, but who knew what it could give rise to if it was allowed to grow?

‘I have to go down there,' Aubrey said. ‘Dr Tremaine has left spell residue to fester and it's getting stronger.'

‘Merikanto was trying to stifle it with our usual methods,' Madame Zelinka said. ‘He was afraid, because it was stronger and stranger than anything we'd ever encountered before, but he tried anyway. We had no magic suppressors,' she added and her eyes were accusatory.

‘I've had some experience with its likes,' Aubrey said, remembering the spell he'd used to quell Dr Tremaine's wild magic in the tunnels underneath Trinovant.

‘And you think you can do something about it?' Madame Zelinka said.

‘I can try.'

‘Good.' She studied him carefully, her dark eyes intent on his face. ‘I'm glad you're not a weapons merchant after all.'

‘Ah?'

‘I deal with them because I must. They all have had their hearts removed and replaced with stones.'

‘Oh.' Aubrey blinked, and took a deep breath. Madame Zelinka's concentrated attention was forceful, to say the least. ‘What's the best way down to the basement?'

Caroline took his arm. ‘Is this a good idea?' She let his arm drop and looked abashed. ‘I mean, couldn't you wait for help?'

Madame Zelinka shook her head. ‘I have no-one else to call on, not in Holmland.'

Aubrey was heartened by Caroline's concern. He tried to tell himself that it was the simple feeling that she would have for anyone about to risk his life, but another part of him couldn't help but see something else in it. ‘It's getting worse. Something needs to be done now.'

‘And you think you're the one to do it,' she said.

‘I tend to, I know. Sometimes I'm right.'

‘And that's the extraordinary thing,' Caroline said. She turned away. ‘Very well. I'll leave you to it and go and help George and Hugo.'

‘What?' Had she called him extraordinary? ‘What are they up to?'

‘They're helping Fromm. He's on the trail of the ghost.'

The basement was on the eastern side of the house where the floor had given way, leaving it open to the sky. Aubrey crept gingerly around the gap, looking down, and he could see the remains of stone walls and pillars. He counted three arched openings that dived into the blackness beyond and he studied them grimly.

The others were busy with Fromm and Madame Zelinka. He felt a pang, for he did appreciate having George's steadiness with him in a tricky situation. And, all things said and done, he would rather be with Caroline than not.

Even though he hadn't truly extended his magical awareness, he could feel the power pouring from below. It pulsed irregularly, raw and chaotic, and it set his teeth on edge. The fate of poor Merikanto was testimony to its power; Aubrey didn't want to put Caroline and George in such danger.

He, on the other hand, was feeling prepared. The Beccaria Cage was a wonderful asset in any soul-risking situation. After a shaky start, it had proved its worth. Since he'd freed it from Dr Tremaine's influence, he'd suffered none of his accustomed debilitation from his disrupted soul. He'd had no episodes requiring expenditure of will and effort to keep his soul united with his body, efforts that, in the past, had left him sapped of energy.

It was what he'd been striving for ever since his stupid experiment with death magic. Whole, united, much as people were meant to be – and feeling strong enough to risk it against rogue magic that was capable of shattering souls into fragments.

Foolhardy? Reckless? Imprudent? He shook his head and spied a stairway leading downward. He approached it with care.

He knew he had to test himself. He couldn't sit at home, avoiding all danger. He had to know his capabilities, for he had plans. His future depended on knowing how much he could achieve and how far he could extend himself.

The stairs hadn't been damaged by the fire. Cracked by falling beams, they were treacherous but not impossible. Aubrey started down, leaning into the buffets of magic coming from the depths.

He heard someone above, calling his name, but he needed to concentrate in the swirls of magic. He ignored it and pressed on.

The basement was a wasteland, the place where most of the house ended up after the fire. The debris would take an army to clear, but Aubrey thought he could see a way through. Keeping close to the wall, he squeezed between fallen beams and splintered, charred flooring, moving with delicate care over broken furniture, window frames, and – most painfully for Aubrey – the scorched, ruined corpses of hundreds of books. Aubrey hated to see books mistreated, and the loss of whatever library Dr Tremaine had assembled hurt him deeply.

He tested each footfall before committing, never resting his weight against anything other than the stone wall, and ignoring the way his heart hammered as he approached the arched openings.

Then the wooden floor gave way beneath him.

Aubrey flung out his arms, clutching for a handhold, but found nothing. He fell, and did his best to twist and protect his head. Before he could utter a sound he struck the floor shoulder first, and he went tumbling, skinning the heel of his hands on rough stone.

For a moment, half-stunned, he sprawled there, doing his best to remember how to breathe while raw, wild magic rolled over him like storm-driven breakers.

He flinched, grunting as the jumbled, chaotic confusion of magic pounded him. It was like being pelted with wads of clay – as long as the clay was imbued with colours (reds, browns and something that was a nauseating off-white) and smells (a dizzying mash of industrial smells and the sickening, cloying smell of boiling sugar mixed up with faint hints of things barely smelled – glass, stone, snow).

He closed his eyes and tried to make sense of the shifting mess of magic, but the rawness played havoc with his magical senses. It grated on him, and he immediately had a headache the size of a football.

Grimly, Aubrey sifted through this torrent of sensation, looking for its origin. He wasn't surprised when he found, at the core of it, a trace of tightly constructed magic that could only be the work of Dr Tremaine.

He grunted as a shift in the welter of magic made him dizzy for a moment, then he concentrated on examining the remnants of Tremaine's spellcraft.

Clearly, it was an experimental spell gone wrong, and was probably what had brought the house down. Aubrey probed a little more, tasting the elements of the spell, and was sure that the spell had something to do with the making of golems.

A step toward the sort of improved golem that could replace a prince?
Aubrey thought.

He gritted his teeth. Raising himself on all fours, he ignored the pain from his skinned hands, and he opened his eyes.

The real world came rushing back in. He could see the rough stone flags, the cracks between them filled with a combination of ash and dirt. The sharp tang of scorched wood rasped at his nose. His own breathing was loud and hoarse.

He was glad he hadn't asked Caroline and George to come with him.

He couldn't stay where he was. Still on all fours, he closed his eyes for a moment and regretted it. Colours swirled in his mouth and his ears were filled with a startling peppermint sensation that made him flinch. The pounding in his head redoubled.

It was enough to get him moving. He braced himself, then climbed to his feet. He swayed there for a moment as he took in his surroundings.

The ceiling of the sub-basement – the floor of the upper basement above – wasn't far overhead. He wouldn't have been able to stand upright when this sub-basement was new – and Aubrey was grateful. It had meant his plunge had been painful but not fatal. The walls were roughly finished stone, as was the floor and the rudimentary slabs for stairs. The entire effect was of age and crudity, as if the place had been constructed by primitives.

The notion made Aubrey shiver. How long had it been here? What magics had been practised here over the centuries? And when had a young Mordecai Tremaine found the place?

Light coming from the Aubrey-shaped hole above showed that the basement was cluttered with rubbish – papers, reagent bottles, lengths of copper wire – the detritus of magical experimentation. On the floor, he wasn't surprised to see the blurry chalk outlines of restraining diagrams, dozens of them.

After taking this in, Aubrey steeled himself, closed his eyes and turned in a circle, trying to locate the source of the magical eruption. The walls on all sides fairly radiated unformed magic, the leftover residue splattered the same way a maniac cook would splatter a cake batter if he beat it too fast.

He hissed, and staggered, putting a hand to his chest where he felt the comforting shape of the Beccaria Cage. He grunted at the impact and opened his eyes, searching in the gloom. There, by the stairs, was the concentration of magic that he'd been looking for.

He took a step closer, then stopped himself. Keeping a distance seemed like a good idea, at least until he'd discovered what he could.

Which I'd do if I'd remembered to bring a lantern
, he thought. He glanced up. The light coming from above was enough

to make really good shadows, but that was about all. If he took more than a few steps, he'd be swallowed by darkness.

Aubrey crouched and swept around, looking for something to help. Wood shavings and scraps of paper, some of which he stuffed in his vest for later scrutiny, were good fuel sources, but – of all the things – he'd forgotten to stow matches, even though he'd brought two candle stubs along.

He bit his lip, feeling the malignant beating of the magical residue. The Beccaria Cage on his chest began to feel warm and he swallowed. The magic was testing the strength of his bond between body and soul; the cage was responding.

He shifted his weight and something tinkled. He cocked his head and saw his boot had disturbed some broken glass, the remains of a bottle, to judge from the tattered label.

At that moment, Aubrey had an odd, familiar sensation. It was as if he were moving out of himself. His body continued to function – he picked up a piece of the broken bottle, held it up, admired the clarity of the glass – while his mind was bounding ahead like a hound that had caught wind of an exceptionally desirable fox.

Glass. Focus
, he thought
. Lens. Concentration.

He turned the glass over in his hands. It was a sizeable chunk, most of one side of the bottle. It was first rate, too, not wavy, very few bubbles. For moment he wondered what Dr Tremaine had kept in it, then his mind caught wind of the fox again.

Light. Heat. Law of Intensification.

He held the glass up to the light and turned it, first concave, then convex. Peering through it, he saw his hand as larger. Only slightly, but it was enough for him to smile.

He'd caught his fox.

He scrabbled for one of the candle stubs in his vest. Clutching it in his left hand, he held the glass shard between it and the light. Then he raced through a spell to intensify the light coming through the glass, magnifying it – and magnifying the heat.

A bright spot landed on the floor. Aubrey adjusted, moving the glass until the spot fell on the candle wick. In seconds, the wick began to smoke. He grinned, held the glass steady, and the wick sprang into flame.

Pleased with himself, Aubrey slipped the glass shard into one of the reinforced vest pockets and held up the candle.
One little light dispels all the dark
, he thought and realised he had a metaphor on his hands as well as dripping wax – but no time to ponder it.

Armed with light, he advanced into the face of the magical outpouring.

At first, he was surprised that the candle didn't flicker and he had to remind himself that the disturbance he felt was magical, not physical. It was only apparent to magical senses, not impinging on the physical world.

Not yet
, he reminded himself.

‘Aubrey?'

George's voice came from above and Aubrey stopped in his tracks. ‘Stay where you are.'

‘Need any help, old man?'

It was a well-meant question, but Aubrey didn't need the sort of help that George could provide. A crack team of specialist magicians, trained in dealing with high-intensity magical residue, would be more than useful, but he doubted that George had such a thing in his back pocket.

‘Not at the moment,' he managed to reply without looking around. ‘But if you back away a little, and stay handy, I'll make sure to call if I need you.'

‘Ah. You're messing about with magic again.'

‘Not for long.'

‘How long?'

‘Just long enough to stop it from destroying us all.'

A pause.

‘Right. I'll let you get on with it, then.'

‘Capital idea.'

Aubrey was pleased that the light was steady. It meant that the candle was burning well and unlikely to go out, and it also meant that his hands weren't shaking.

It was the curse of having too much imagination and too much knowledge. He knew enough about wild magic to understand what it was capable of, and his imagination was quite happy to race ahead and supply all sorts of details about messy transmogrifications, arbitrary changes and long, lingering, painful deaths.

If he were alone, it may have been different, but in the immediate vicinity were two people he cared for, and three others he wouldn't wish ill on.

Steady-handed, he advanced in the face of the howling magical storm.

When the candle light fell on the wall, his ordinary sense of sight told him a patch of moss or lichen was growing there. A dark, unhealthy green-grey, it was an irregular shape splashed on the stone, about as large as a dining table. If he hadn't the evidence of his magical senses he would have ignored it and kept searching for the source of the magical disturbance.

And the way it ripples is a bit of a giveaway, too
, he thought and rehearsed his method of attack.

When Aubrey had been able to disrupt Dr Tremaine's spell casting under Trinovant, the rogue magician had abandoned his scheme but had left the magical flame running amok, out of control, more dangerous than ever. Aubrey's experiences with magical suppression devices, and the parlous situation of his friends, trapped close to the runaway flame, had sharpened his mind wonderfully, to the extent that he was able to craft a spell under great duress, a spell that achieved the same end as magical suppression devices – it quelled and negated the magical flame, snuffing it out completely.

So he inspected the residue with as much coolness as he could summon, glad for the hand-steadying, gut-settling confidence that comes from having done something before.

He leaned forward, slowly. Close up, he decided, it didn't look so frightening. Even when he closed his eyes, the tumult that assailed him was rather less disconcerting now that he knew that it emanated from something that looked as if it would be at home in an unsanitary bathroom.

Time to clean you up.
A faint, dissenting thought flitted through his mind, something about famous last words, but he ignored it.

He'd been rehearsing the quelling spell as he approached, recalling it and taking the opportunity to polish some of the roughness, the understandable awkward phrasing that had come from trying to formulate an intricate spell while bound by copper wire to a possibly living mechanical construction in the face of a magical flame that was threatening to wipe out the largest city in the world.

He tightened the elements for distance and duration, estimating the area of effect by eye. He rearranged the order of the elements that controlled the negation, the anti-magic heart of the spell, to speed up its efficacy. No sense in letting it rampage any longer than it needed to.

He rolled the long, complex string of elements backward and forward, settling them in his mind, ready to go. He adjusted his stance, squarely facing the belligerent patch of dross. Then he gathered himself and began.

The spell came to him as easily as a well-rehearsed speech on opening night, each element falling into place with the sort of solid certainty that was the mark of a well-crafted piece of magic. He was pleased. His focus, his concentration was absolute – the rest of the world had gone away. He was in the realm of magic, shaping and wielding the power that humanity had struggled with since time immemorial. It was the Great Test, taking the mystical energy that arose from the interaction of human consciousness with the universe itself and using language to control and direct it.