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.