‘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.’