Dr Mordecai Tremaine was the Sorcerer Royal, adviser to the government on all matters magical. From his studies, Aubrey knew that Dr Tremaine was a radical thinker on the Nature of Magic, and since that subject was the current hothouse of argument, debate and occasional fisticuffs between major magical academics, Aubrey wanted to know what the Sorcerer Royal's views were.
Aubrey began to frown as he read. It didn't take long before he closed the book in disappointment. He rubbed his eyes and sat back in his straight-backed chair.
The book was nothing new. It was a compilation of a series of groundbreaking papers published last year in The Greythorn Journal of Magic, papers Aubrey had already read in his quest to know more. Dr Tremaine's notion was that magic was a phenomenon with some similarities to electricity, magnetism and light. It obeyed laws and it could be manipulated by magicians, who have the special ability to draw on a vast magical field, channelling it to their ends via the mechanism of properly constructed spells. But where did this magical field come from? In the final paper of the series, Dr Tremaine explored the possibility that it was humanity that brought about such a universal magical field, caused the generation of such a reservoir of enormous magical force. Was it human awareness? Human intelligence? Human souls? In the end, he left this question unanswered – tantalisingly so to Aubrey's way of thinking.
In class, Aubrey had learned of the shock this series of papers created in magical circles. Fusty academics who for years hadn't considered anything more important than whether to have another cup of tea or not were almost rioting in the corridors and cloisters of the universities. Dr Tremaine was praised, condemned, questioned and even, in one overdramatic display, burned in effigy. How could humankind possibly have an effect on such a powerful force? Alternative theories sprang up, where magic was compared to an invisible fluid that filled the cosmos, or a form of power bestowed by creatures unknown.
Such controversy excited Aubrey's curiosity and fired his imagination. He wanted to be part of the great enterprise, to debate, to spar, to cross intellectual swords with others afire with the quest to discover the Nature of Magic – and more. Magical Theory still had much to do. Many areas were virtually untouched as savants experimented, observed and tried to quantify the effects of magic. Names were made in an instant by researchers stumbling on new laws or new applications of old laws. Great and powerful functions were being discovered almost daily. These were heady, exhilarating times, but Aubrey's great fear was that everything would be discovered before he could finish school and begin serious research. So he'd decided he couldn't wait.
He scanned the pages he'd been working on. All his preparations were in order. It was time. He closed the books on his desk and gathered his papers. He slipped them into a satchel and threw it over his shoulder. He found several sticks of chalk, which he dropped into his pocket.
He left a light on for George, then hurried out of the room.
The corridor was still lit by gas jets, the program for converting the school to electrical lights having stalled at the library and the assembly hall while contractors and the headmaster argued over costs. The gaslight gave Aubrey's shadow a yellow cast, as if it were jaundiced. He reached the end of the corridor and went into the night.
The wind seemed to have leapfrogged 'breeze' and gone directly to 'gale'. Its ambition seemed to be causing as much mischief as possible. Aubrey held a hand in front of his face to avoid the dust and shredded ivy leaves. Assorted bangs and clatters echoed around the quadrangle as unfastened shutters enjoyed their freedom and branches whipped at stone and glass. He squinted and leaned into the wind and, in the manner of a man walking through thigh-deep mud, pushed step by step towards the Magic Laboratories.
The Magic Laboratories were contained in a large stone building a hundred yards to the south of any other structure at Stonelea. After a series of fires and explosions and one memorable earthquake had destroyed fourteen centres for magical experimentation, it had been decided that moving such a facility away and surrounding it with a good deal of open space was a wise step in assuring the ongoing future of the school.
Aubrey had trod this path many times before, so his feet took him automatically through the darkness and the wind. It gave him time to think as he pressed on through the avenue of elms and past the broad sweep of lawn that led to the caretakers' barracks. The wind was coming from his right and he had to lean to one side to counter it. He screwed up his eyes as a blast of sand flew from the mound near where builders were constructing an extension to the music wing. The music wing was dark and silent and Aubrey wondered idly where George was practising his cornet.
His thoughts turned to rehearsing some of the more difficult parts of the spell he was about to cast. Much of it was in language unfamiliar to him, but there lay its potential.
Language was at the heart of magical manipulation. Baron Verulam had established that language was part of the vital talent that enabled magicians to bend magic to their will. The trappings of spells since the dawn of time – incense, hand-waving, ingredients rare and often distasteful – were simply not essential. Sometimes they could be used as props to help focus the magical force, but that was all. Language was the key.
Magical energy was so powerful, so wild, that every spell had to be organised in meticulous detail, with every element in the spell naming and limiting the variables and constants involved. There was no room for inaccuracy, ambivalence or ambiguity. Precision was the paramount quality of each spell, and magicians shared this painstaking approach with watchmakers, accountants and tightrope walkers; only the last had the same awareness of the perils of not achieving perfection.
Aubrey knew that much magical language used today was the descendant of spells that had been used from the earliest days of shamans and hedge wizards, a language quite unlike the language of everyday communication. It had grown into an argot, a jargon special to spells, and it had been augmented by every language imaginable, especially any with pretensions to learning. Latin and Greek elements were common in the language of spells, and experimentation threw up other possibilities as well. Magical language was an unruly beast with a thousand fathers and a thousand mothers, none of whom would recognise their offspring. The result was a language that tended to be inexact.
This had always irked Aubrey. He was dissatisfied with every scheme to reform magical language. None had the clean, systematic structure that he dreamed of. He saw the construction of a universal language for magic as the true culmination of Baron Verulam's Magical Revolution, when spells would be clear and consistent at all times.
The wind shifted slightly and, as if sensing Aubrey's slight imbalance, buffeted him anew. He staggered and turned his head in time to see certain death hurtling towards him.
It was a large plank, six feet long at least. The wind had picked it up from the building site near the music wing and it was tumbling towards him. He had time to straighten and it speared past his nose, whistling as it went.
Aubrey was counting his good fortune when a crash came from the Magic Laboratories ahead. He sprinted as best he could through the wind and arrived to see that the plank had crashed through the large, expensive and famously ugly leadlight window above the front door. It had been donated forty years ago by the large, wealthy and famously tasteless Lord Wallington, who'd made a fortune in soap by selling it by the ton while not using it himself. The plank jutted from the remains of the window like an arrow in the eye of a king.