Lying on his back, only a few feet away from the torrent of magic, Aubrey shielded his eyes and flung the loose end of the connector into it.
Dr Tremaine shouted, a huge wordless cry that filled the chamber. It roared like a storm, reverberating until it was elemental in its rage. His limbs were flung wide, star-like, his mouth jerked open and he hung, spread against the magic pillar like an insect in a museum.
His eyes were on fire. They filled with blinding light, consumed by the raw power channelled by the connector, which had swelled and grown, three or four times its previous diameter, jerking and throbbing with crude potency.
Aubrey lay on the floor, panting, horrified and triumphant at once. Dr Tremaine was caught in the grip of a magic that was beyond his control. The combined power of the magical artefacts, the captive magicians and a million Trinovantans was too much even for him when it was pumped into his very being via a magical connector. The control he wielded as a master magician was no use here, as the connector bypassed his intellect. Magic poured into him unchecked.
Aubrey had deduced that it was only Dr Tremaine’s intellect and talent that allowed him to work such stuff. The connector was more primitive and more direct than that. Now the rogue sorcerer was helpless.
‘Mordecai!’
Before Aubrey could move, Sylvia Tremaine ran from the shelter of a pillar base. She halted, aghast at the sight of her brother being consumed, the back of her hand to her mouth.
Then, to Aubrey’s amazement, Dr Tremaine resisted. Wracked by untold magical power, he shuddered. Slowly, his eyes closed with the ponderousness of stone. When he opened them, they were his again. He had expelled – or controlled? – the magic.
Still pinned against the column of light, the rogue sorcerer threw back his head and howled, the tendons in his neck standing out like hawsers. ‘Sylvia!’ he cried. He strained to release his limbs but they were held fast against the light. ‘Sylvia!’
Without hesitation, Sylvia flung herself at her brother, clasping him around his neck. She cried out, he howled again, and then they started to change.
Aghast, Aubrey couldn’t take his gaze away as first Dr Tremaine, then his sister, were pulled upward, losing their substance as they were drawn like oil over glass. Their wordless cries rose in pitch as, together, they smeared across the column of unrelenting, uncaring magic. Dr Tremaine struggled, but his efforts were useless. Thinner and thinner they became as they were drawn out. Light began to shine through them as their mass was stripped away. Finally, they started to shred, reducing quickly to tatters.
In a burst of light, with a last howl that was both agonised and defiant, they were gone.
Aubrey climbed to his feet, feeling a thousand years old. Caroline was at his side. He reached out and touched a nasty bruise on her cheek. ‘The golem,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry yourself about it.’
‘Caroline,’ he said. ‘I’ve decided to give up worrying. It hardly seems worth the effort.’
84
Aubrey had never been to the Palace at Belville, even though it was only half an hour from Lutetia. He had, however, always been intrigued by its reputation for unrivalled opulence. It had been the home of the Gallian kings for two hundred and fifty years, up until the commoners of Gallia decided they’d had enough of being oppressed by rich layabouts and decided they wanted to be oppressed by poor layabouts instead. The palace had survived rather better than the aristocrats who used to swarm about its extensive gardens, its numerous courtyards and its swooningly lavish rooms. Aubrey had heard that one court official had had the responsibility of walking about the place checking for anything that might be considered drab. If he found something, he had a stupefyingly large budget to gild it, extend it, or get a famous painter or two to daub a forest scene over it.
The Gallery of Glass was the most astonishing part of the palace and, while waiting for the formalities of treaty-signing, Aubrey had much time to admire the impressive windows spaced along one long wall of the gallery, perfectly arranged to throw light on the dozens of crystal chandeliers and make rainbows on the richly panelled far wall.
In his full Directorate uniform, adorned with the embarrassingly ornate medal that King Albert had pinned on his chest, Aubrey stood at ease next to Sophie – who also sported the same medal, one of only four in existence – in their entirely superfluous job as aides to Commander Craddock. Not far away, the bemedalled Caroline and George were filling the same role for Commander Tallis, the two commanders being the representatives of the Albion Security Intelligence Directorate at the signing.
Two months had flown by since the battle in the skies over Trinovant. Without Dr Tremaine’s plans and advice, the Holmland war effort had collapsed and the new government, installed after a popular uprising, had quickly sued for peace.
Aubrey and his friends had spent much of that time in Darnleigh House, compiling accounts of the events leading up to the Battle of Trinovant and being called in to offer opinions on sightings and observations after the collapse of the Holmland government. Aubrey was intensely interested to see, for instance, a report about Manfred the Great conducting prestidigitation lessons for the king of one of the smaller islands in the Pacific. A documented rumour about one Elspeth Mattingly opening a fencing academy in remote Muscovia specialising in the sabre was harder to believe, especially once Caroline expressed doubts about Elspeth’s abilities in that area, pointing out that she was sure she could thrash the spy without much effort at all.
Dr Tremaine’s crippled skyfleet had begun evaporating soon after the rogue magician’s demise. Every eye in Trinovant was turned skyward for two days as an urgent effort was made to ferry the magicians and the artefacts to the ground before the magical craft lost their solidity entirely. Caroline and Aubrey piloted separate ornithopters in the ultimately successful undertaking, so short-handed was aerial service since the sky battle.
Aubrey hadn’t known that signing a treaty document would take three days – with the promise of more to come – but he was learning that everything in international diplomacy moved at a pace that would make a glacier look positively frisky. He patted his pocket, which reassured him – and then filled him with doubts – but he took the confusion as a good sign that life was resuming normality.
Aubrey’s father was at the head of the extraordinarily long table that had been placed in the Gallery of Glass. He was with the Gallian Prime Minister, Giraud, while in between them was the new Chancellor of Holmland, Ilse Brandt.
Aubrey had difficulty remaining solemn whenever he looked at Chancellor Brandt. The sheer novelty of a woman rising to such a position told Aubrey that if the world was resuming normality, it was a delightfully new kind of normality that promised much.
Part of the reason for the delay in the final signing had been the traditional negotiating over the fine points in the treaty. In the weeks leading up to the ceremony, Sir Darius and his Foreign Office had ironed out the major issues, but Sir Darius had confided to Aubrey that he’d deliberately left some minor points vague. He understood that it would be important for Holmland to win some concessions in the negotiation.
Sir Darius had been adamant about this, even in the face of resistance from his own party. Many in Albion and Gallia wanted to punish Holmland for the war. Some wanted to go further and humiliate the country for its aggression. Suggestions were made to strip Holmland of some of its territory, while enormous sums of money were touted as appropriate reparation for the damage Holmland had done.