Pieces came together in Aubrey's mind, falling into place with inarguable elegance. The photographer. The magical aura that came when the flash powder erupted. Monsieur Bernard's state. The Soul Stealer.
The photographer was the Soul Stealer. Somehow, he'd discovered a way to divorce souls from bodies without incurring the true death. Excited, Aubrey realised that if he could find out how, he may be able to gain some insights into the relationship between body and soul that he could use to help himself.
He sat back on his haunches sifting through the possibilities. While he hummed, something caught his eye. On the floor near the chair Bernard had been posing in was a photographic plate.
Aubrey thought back to the moment he entered the workshop. He'd cleared his throat, noise, confusion, bright light, magic flaring, and then the sound of . . .
The Soul Stealer had dropped something. He'd panicked and then he'd dropped something.
Aubrey rose, wincing at pain in his knees, and limped to the plate. He studied it where it lay for a moment. Then, carefully, he picked it up.
It fairly vibrated with magic. Aubrey frowned as the tips of his fingers hurt. It was a kind of magic he'd never encountered before. He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. The gelatin on the plate was imbued with unfamiliar substances. The smell was harsh and faintly rotten.
He held the plate up to the light and gasped.
The backdrop, the chair and the vase stand were all clear and perfectly in focus. As a still life, it was a fine photograph. Every fold in the cloth was articulated, every board in the floor was sharp and in focus. But the main figure in the composition – Bernard – was grey and translucent. The backrest of the chair was easily seen through his ghostly form as he sat, with an expression of pure horror on his face.
Aubrey peered more closely. Cords were attached to the ghostly Bernard's wrists and ankles. They then stretched out to the four corners of the photographic plate. It was as if the ghostly Bernard were an insect, spreadeagled on a specimen board. His face was contorted with agony.
Aubrey didn't need to see a colour photograph to know that the cords were golden. He'd seen their like before. With a chill, he recognised them from the disastrous experiment with forbidden death magic that had caused the golden cord uniting Aubrey's own body and soul to be disrupted.
He stared at the photograph and felt sick. In a hideous union of magic and technology, Bernard's soul had been trapped, embedded in the photographic plate Aubrey held in his hands.
He felt unclean, holding the unnatural thing. He let go with one hand and wiped his other on his jacket, but the taint remained.
He looked at the empty vessel that had been Bernard. His body and soul had been torn apart. Could they be brought back together?
He steeled himself and gripped the photographic plate in both hands. He shuddered when he realised that the agony on Bernard's face was mixed with terror – which suggested that the poor man, at the last instant, knew that his soul was being dragged from him.
And here I have it in my hands, Aubrey thought. He chewed his lip. He feared that the longer they were apart, the more difficult it would be to bring them back together. What were his options? If he freed the trapped soul from the photographic plate, it would immediately be drawn to the portal that led to the true death. It would be lost forever. But was there a way to free the soul and reunite it with its body? And if he could do that, could it lead him to something useful for his own state?
He stared at the glass plate, its greys and sharply edged blacks a sign of the silver-gelatin process, but the Soul Stealer had enhanced it with – what? He touched it with a forefinger and felt the telltale tingle of magic. Without realising it he began to hum as he thought.
He knew that silver was the key ingredient in many photographic processes, thanks to its light-sensitive nature when compounded. But silver had other useful characteristics, and Aubrey seized on one of them: silver was a very good reflector.
Aubrey had seen early mirrors which were made with a thin layer of silver behind glass. His mind worked on this, feverishly, while he scanned the room.
His gaze found the flat metal bowl that had almost tripped Monsieur Bernard. He lunged for it and used it to scoop up a handful of fragments from the photographic plates that had been on the workbench. He had a plan.
The bowl was dull copper, the size of a large serving platter. Working quickly, he ground the glass to a powder, using a brass letter seal that had been kicked under the bench. Then he swirled the powder around the bowl, as if he were panning for gold, while chanting a spell he'd concocted on the spot. His aim was to bond the silvered glass to the bowl, so he included spell elements that emphasised affinity (copper and silver were both metals, both fine conductors of electricity) and also proximity. It was a hasty spell, rough and imperfect, but Aubrey wasn't wasting time. He could refine it later – if it helped.
Under his magical urging, the glass swept around the bowl in a shimmering wave. Soon, Aubrey could see his own face, distorted by the gentle concavity of the bowl.
A wave of dizziness struck him. Simple though the spell had been, it had taxed him. He put a hand to his forehead and rubbed, sighing, but when he withdrew his hand he stared with dismay.
The skin on the back of his hand was flaking. As he watched, great dry patches fell away.
He put the bowl down and studied his other hand. It, too, had been struck by the rash. No redness, or itchiness, simply sloughing off of skin as if it were tired and unable to cling on.
I am not falling apart, Aubrey thought, denying the alarm that was uncoiling in his belly. I refuse to.
He picked up the silvery bowl and spun it over between his hands. It flashed, silver then copper, then silver again, and he was happy with the result.
He'd created a magical reflector.
His aim was to smash the soul plate, the disturbing resting place of Monsieur Bernard's soul. He hoped his magical reflector would prevent its disappearing into the true death.
It was bold, it was perhaps rash, and Aubrey wished he could cross his fingers – but that would make it even more difficult to hold the bowl just over the photographic plate.
I'll just have to trust to science, he thought.
He looked at Bernard's empty body. He looked at the photographic plate.
He strode over and crouched beside Bernard, apologising in advance.
Then while he held the magical reflector over Bernard's forehead with his left hand, he smashed the photographic plate on Bernard's forehead with his right.
Aubrey was blinded again, but this time the cause wasn't flash powder. Instead of a dazzling magnesium flare, this was an uncanny inversion of light, a void that sucked all illumination toward it. For an instant, Aubrey was plunged into total darkness. He couldn't see because there was nothing to see.
He held out a hand, but the void disappeared quickly. Aubrey found he was looking down at Bernard. Shards of glass lay in the man's hair and on the floor underneath his head. His forehead was bleeding. He dabbed at it weakly with a fat hand.