Hour of Need tlom-6 Page 4

  Create a spell, then use a reproducing spell to make copies. Or was it the work of a magically constructed and potentialised engine, a spell-copying machine? With a supply of engineered canisters ready to be filled, identical spells could be churned out over and over again, as seemed to be the case here. The first three cylinders had melted and burst, evidence of the spells having been triggered. The metal looked like aluminium, or thin steel, strong enough to be packed and stored, light enough to carry, but not presenting any impediment to the operation of the spells.

  Aubrey was left with one poser. How was he going to investigate the basement without setting off a dozen transference spells? He didn’t fancy having to catch himself mid-plunge again and again. What if he tired and his concentration slipped?

  He shuddered, then he hummed a little, deep at the back of his throat, before a smile spread across his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a penny. The profile of King William stared at him. Aubrey saluted, then flipped the coin into the air.

  It bounced on the stone floor, rolled a little, then wobbled to a halt and lay there, unmoving.

  ‘Non-living objects don’t trigger the spells,’ Aubrey said aloud and, for a moment, his brain hared off in a wayward direction, wondering if this spell could be turned into a very effective method of ridding a place of vermin.

  Von Stralick pursed his lips. ‘What if the spells are triggered according to weight rather than one’s living status?’

  ‘Good point, Hugo. Fortunately, I’ve already thought of a way to test this.’

  They spent the next fifteen minutes hauling objects of increasing weight from the gardens, down the stairs and launching them into the basement, where they accumulated, stubbornly not being transported over the edge of the cliff: a garden gnome, a large flower pot complete with daphne, a birdbath and finally a sundial nearly as tall as von Stralick.

  ‘So.’ Aubrey dusted his hands together. ‘I think we’ve proved that it’s not entry into the basement that triggers the spell, but the entry of something living into the basement.’

  ‘Not exactly.’ Von Stralick thrust a hand through the doorway. He remained untranslated.

  ‘Just so. Touching the floor is the crucial trigger.’

  ‘And am I correct in surmising that you want to enter the basement without touching the floor?’

  ‘That I am. Stand still.’

  Aubrey ran through his levitation spell. Von Stralick flailed a little when he rose, and he whirled his arms in circles. ‘This is most awkward.’

  ‘Steady, Hugo. You should be perfectly stable if you don’t move too quickly.’

  Von Stralick looked sceptical, but he eased his frantic movements. ‘And how do we move ourselves along if our feet can’t touch the ground to propel us?’

  ‘We use our hands.’ Aubrey seized the doorframe. ‘Keep close to the wall and push yourself along. And mind your head.’

  Their progress was clumsy, but steady. Aubrey found that if he leaned toward the wall, he could shuffle both hands and move toward the part of the room that interested him the most: the strange stalls, especially since he could now see a connection ran from the cables into each stall.

  ‘You are rather good at this, Fitzwilliam, this magic business.’

  ‘Thanks, Hugo. I do my best.’

  ‘Zelinka said you were an outstanding talent.’

  ‘She did?’ Aubrey was startled and pleased. Madame Zelinka was not effusive, but she had seen enough magic and operational magicians for Aubrey to value her judgement.

  ‘And Dr Tremaine had a high opinion of your abilities, too.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Von Stralick eased his way around the corner of the room. ‘It was in your file. Don’t look so surprised. You should have known that the Holmland intelligence agencies have a dossier on you. One that I helped to compile.’

  Aubrey remembered first encountering von Stralick when the Holmlander was a trusted part of the Holmland spying machinery. Naturally he would have reported his encounters with Aubrey. ‘I suppose the son of the Albion Prime Minister deserves a dossier.’

  ‘The foreign Prime Minister’s son who just happens to be a remarkable magician, with a decidedly heroic bent. The last I saw it, your file was a rapidly growing one.’

  ‘Nothing scurrilous, I hope,’ Aubrey said faintly. It was all logical, but it was unsettling, nonetheless, to think of strangers dissecting his life.

  ‘They tried, but couldn’t find anything.’

  ‘I’m glad,’ Aubrey said, but he found himself perversely irritated by this. Did this mean there was nothing in his past that was scandalous, or that any incidents weren’t worth reporting, or was it that he’d managed to keep his mishaps secret? He wasn’t sure which was preferable.

  Aubrey reached the nearest bay, while still trying to assimilate this latest information. He assumed von Stralick himself would have a dossier by now – his erstwhile employers would have begun one immediately he disappeared from their network. But would George have one? Caroline? His mother? Such considerations made him queasy.

  Grappling with the metal uprights, Aubrey dragged himself around until he faced the open door of the first stall. The door had no lock, just a simple latch. Inside, it was barely more than shoulder wide. Aubrey sniffed. The magical residue was a dull orange aroma mixed with a salty sound, a melange of disquieting sensations, but cutting through it was a more ordinary sensation: a genuine smell. He wrinkled his nose at its unpleasant, slightly rotten, meaty odour.

  He asked for the lantern. Von Stralick held it up while Aubrey pulled himself closer to inspect the straps, making sure not to touch the floor. The leather was new, still unsupple, and the buckles were bright brass, except where they were stained. Aubrey scratched at the crustiness on the straps, then rocked backward.

  ‘Dried blood,’ von Stralick said.

  ‘I’d say so.’ Not a lot of it, but enough to mean that someone had been strapped against the wall – one set of straps around the throat, one at chest height, one around the hips, and the last keeping the legs and feet together – and then suffered something that had made them bleed.

  Numbly, Aubrey inspected the floor. It was scuffed and slightly dusty, but unstained. The bleeding hadn’t been substantial.

  The next bay showed no signs of blood, but the next did, and the one after that. After checking the thirty-six bays they found nearly half of them showed signs of blood – and one of them had something else.

  Aubrey scooped up the wire mesh helmet. It was the same as he’d seen prisoners wearing when they were exercising in the gardens. It wasn’t heavy, and the lantern light glinted from its surface. Inside, a swivel-bolted mechanism was clearly designed to hold the tongue and stop the wearer from talking, but what intrigued Aubrey most was what looked like an electrical socket, firmly welded to the back of the helmet.

  ‘This is to keep magicians quiet?’ von Stralick said. ‘So they can’t cast spells?’

  ‘Apparently,’ Aubrey said, but he had an inkling that its purpose was much more sinister than that. He peered at the socket at the rear of the helmet, deeply unhappy at the implications that were circling like carrion crows. Then he looked up and all the suspicions he’d been harbouring coalesced into a moment of profound horror.

  8

  A single cable dangled from overhead. when von Stralick moved the lantern to get a better view, Aubrey saw that the cable was tangled and would easily have extended into the stall if it were straightened.

  It had a plug on the end of it.

  Abruptly, the helmet felt unclean. He dropped it and wiped his hands on the seat of his trousers. Filthy though they were, it was good, clean dirt rather than the taint this device carried.

  ‘All of the bays have cables, don’t they?’ Aubrey asked von Stralick.

  The Holmlander held up the lantern. The next bay had a cable hanging into it, and so did the one after that. Propelling themselves by dragging on the uprights, they floated a
long the row of doors, opening and leaning in. Cables led into all of them.

  ‘This is magic?’ von Stralick asked.

  ‘Of a kind. Blended with electrical engineering.’

  ‘For what purpose?’

  ‘I’m still thinking about that.’ And I don’t like what I’m coming up with.

  Von Stralick sighed. ‘Mysterious is all well and good, but I’d prefer the mystery were on our side rather than the other.’

  ‘I’m sure there are people in Holmland saying the same. All Dr Tremaine’s cards are unlikely to be on the table.’

  It never hurt Aubrey to remind himself that Dr Tremaine’s goal was to perform the Ritual of the Way to achieve immortality for himself and his sister. To that end, he was fostering bloodshed, which he needed on a huge scale to implement the spell. Bringing the world to war was the first step, but he needed a titanic battle, one that would unleash death on a hitherto unimaginable scale. Since the beginning of the war, forces had been massing on the eastern front with Muscovia and on two western fronts: one through the Low Countries and on the border with Gallia, and one on Gallia’s north-east border near Stalsfrieden and Divodorum.

  In the long, worrying days watching over a delirious von Stralick, Aubrey had time to wonder about the disposition of the Holmland armies. Having two fronts on the Gallian border a hundred miles apart puzzled him, but his brooding had thrown up an awful possibility. Could Dr Tremaine be planning to link the two fronts? It would make a battlefront of staggering proportions, just the thing he would need to achieve his ends.

  The prospect was horrifying. Such a battlefront would commit huge quantities of war materiel, directing the entire output of whole nations to destruction. It would throw thousands, tens of thousands, of soldiers against each other. It was a possibility that any sane person would recoil from. No-one with any semblance of humanity would plan such a thing.

  This, of course, meant it was entirely within Dr Tremaine’s scope of imagining, which left Aubrey grappling not with what but with how.

  Aubrey found that he had drifted up toward the ceiling. He reached up and steadied himself, then turned to his magical awareness. Immediately, he bared his teeth as the basement became a chaos of magical splatters, cast-off residue from the intense magic that had taken place. Through the pseudo-sight that came with being magically endowed, it was like being in the studio of an extremely careless and extremely prolific artist, one who specialised in subjects malignant, festering and brooding.

  Aubrey didn’t want to get close to the residue smears. They throbbed, which suggested that they still contained some magical power – the nature of which he couldn’t divine. Something unhealthy, something to do with channelling and amplifying was the best guess he could make.

  ‘Hugo.’ Aubrey pushed against the ceiling, moving himself until he was directly over one of the desks in the middle of the basement. With a few syllables, he adjusted his elevation until he could nudge a pile of sodden papers with a toe. ‘If you were in charge of the Holmland forces, how would you go about uniting the division that is currently bogged down in the Low Countries with the one that’s dug in around Divodorum?’

  Von Stralick was peering at where a thick electrical conduit entered the room, high up on the wall near the stairs. Hand over hand, he lowered himself, then cocked an eyebrow at Aubrey. ‘Ah, the hypothetical! You Albionites love your games to fill in time. Charades, Donkey Tail Pinning, Hypotheticals.’

  ‘It’s not a game. You have some knowledge of the Holmland military mind. You should be able to put yourself in the shoes of the Supreme Army Command.’

  ‘That is not so difficult. More difficult, of course, is to predict what Dr Tremaine will do.’

  ‘Imagining yourself a Holmland general will be enough for now.’

  ‘There is not much to guess at, then. I would transport many, many troops to Stalsfrieden. A division or two. Or three.’

  ‘Forty, fifty thousand men? Why Stalsfrieden?’

  ‘It has good rail connections to Fisherberg. From Stalsfrieden, they can march to the Divodorum battlelines – or march to the Low Countries.’

  ‘Would it make good sense?’

  ‘Good sense is a slippery concept in war time, Fitzwilliam. I’m sure a build-up like that would appeal to many of the generals, which is probably reason enough to do it. We have been fighting for a short time, really, and many of them are impatient for what they see as glory. Commanding a force that made such a bold move would be very good for a career.’

  Another thought crept up on Aubrey and elbowed him uncomfortably. ‘What if these new divisions simply aimed to capture Divodorum?’

  ‘That would be even bolder, and therefore more praiseworthy. Any general who championed such a strategy could become a hero.’

  ‘It’s not just Divodorum that I’m thinking of. It’s what lies on the other side of Divodorum.’

  ‘Ah. A direct route via river, rail and road to Lutetia.’

  ‘The Gallian capital would be laid bare.’

  ‘So which is it? Opening a wide front across the north of Gallia? Or a lightning strike toward Lutetia?’

  Both would require much bloody fighting. Either would do for Dr Tremaine’s purposes. ‘I’m starting to think that Dr Tremaine, as usual, has more than one iron in the fire.’ Aubrey swept his gaze around the basement. ‘I’ve seen enough.’

  ‘I think I saw enough a long time ago,’ the Holmlander said.

  Once outside, Aubrey took a deep breath and spoke the syllables that lowered them to the ground. The smell of ash and smoke was clean compared to the air in the crypt below.

  Helmets, cables, restraints and blood. Nothing good happened down there. He still didn’t know exactly what it was, but he knew it was important. Dr Tremaine wouldn’t have spent a month here if something important hadn’t been going on.

  ‘What time is it?’ The clouds were breaking up to show that the stars were still there, bright and constant. He wondered if the soldiers at the front could see them.

  ‘Just after four. We have an hour until dawn.’

  Aubrey yawned. ‘Enough time to investigate the house.’

  Von Stralick went to reply, but stopped and put a hand to his ear.

  Startled by von Stralick’s concern, Aubrey turned in the direction the spy was facing.

  A motor, approaching but still distant. As Aubrey strained to make it out, he heard the crunching of gears that announced the beginning of the mountainside ascent. It suggested a lorry rather than a motorcar.

  ‘The guards are coming back?’

  ‘With reinforcements, most likely.’

  ‘I had hoped we’d have more time,’ Aubrey said. ‘We haven’t learned much, not really.’

  ‘Quickly then.’ Von Stralick picked up the rake he’d dropped. ‘Take the lantern.’

  They ran through the gardens to the house, approaching from the west. Von Stralick didn’t slow down as they sprinted up the broad stairs from the gardens and across the terrace. He used the rake as a jousting lance and crashed through the glass doors. ‘No time for finesse!’ he cried.

  Together, they lurched through the debris into a sunroom that was lavishly laid out with wicker furniture and a grove or two of potted palms. Gingerly, von Stralick brushed splinters of glass from his jacket.

  Aubrey remembered the Directorate training facility, another handsome estate that had been taken over by military. Some things would, of necessity, be the same. ‘Somewhere on the ground floor should be an operations room. Near the front door?’

  They found it off the entrance hall. Once, it had probably been the grand dining room, but instead of a long table and heraldic banners it was fully stocked with desks, each with typewriter and telephone, plus extensive pigeon holes on the walls for routing of documents.

  While von Stralick hurried among the desks, glancing at documents that looked promising, Aubrey cast about in a circle, feeling for any trace of magic but being frustrated when all he could detect wer
e mild touches in too many different places. Nothing outrageous, nothing promising at all.

  To judge from the dowel hanging on the walls, and the traces of paper caught in them, maps had been torn down and disposed of. Smouldering remains in the huge fireplace showed that files and documents had also been eliminated. He stirred the ashes with a poker, hoping to find something that had only been half-burned, but whoever had had that job had been extremely thorough. The ashes were uniformly black and useless.

  With a grunt, von Stralick used both hands to pick up a head-sized lump of stone from the mantelpiece. He rolled it over in his hands. ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Aubrey stared at the banded stone, dark green and blue, glittering in the lantern light.

  ‘This is Green Johannes stone.’

  ‘I’m pleased about that, but don’t we have more important things to worry about?’

  ‘I’m surprised to see it here. When I’m surprised, I become curious – and since I’ve seen how you respond to your curiosity I’ve decided to listen to mine.’

  ‘Tell me then, Hugo – what’s surprising about Green Johannes?’

  ‘Johannes stone is only found in one tiny mine near Korsur, just on the Holmland side of the Gallian border. It comes in a number of varieties and Green Johannes is very, very rare.’

  Aubrey looked up from the undeniably attractive striped stone. Something buried in his memory was struggling to make itself known, trying to rise above the snippets of information, the sawn-off ends of ideas and the half-formed conclusions that swirled about in the deepest recesses of his mind.

  ‘Valuable, is it?’

  ‘Greatly. It’s worth a thousand times more than Brown Johannes, a hundred times more than Blue Johannes -’

  ‘I see the pattern, Hugo. It’s the most valuable Johannes stone there is.’

  ‘Apart from Crystal Johannes, but the last of that was mined a hundred years ago.’ Von Stralick hefted the shapeless stone. ‘This is freshly extracted. See? It hasn’t been worked or polished.’