Aubrey knew that magicians tended to either be theorists or pragmatists. The theorists had always wondered at the source of magical power. The pragmatists didn't care – if magic worked, it worked.
But now, as Ravi's flying chalk and mesmerising voice pressed on, he could see the two camps coming closer together than ever. Ravi had derived quantifiable, measurable ways to determine the strength of magical fields – and thus the potential power of a spell. This had always been hit-and-miss in the past, with much effort put into the inclusion of careful limiting factors in spells. Ravi's work could point the way to a dramatic increase in the magnitude of spell effect. If it led the way to calculated manipulation of the force of spells, it could change the face of magic forever.
And if the content of Ravi's revelations wasn't exhilarating enough, the way he presented his findings threatened to have the same effect on Aubrey as a sledgehammer would on a gong.
Ravi was using a symbolic language to fill the blackboard, describing the way that human consciousness interacted with the universe to create a potential magical field. But it was as if the standard symbols used for describing abstruse magical elements weren't good enough any more. Ravi had made up many of his own – and was using old symbols in completely different ways.
Aubrey was frozen – the only part of him that could move were his eyes as they flashed across the unfolding wonders of Ravi's insights. He was absorbing almost without conscious thought, as if the revelations were simply passing through his skin. At the same time, though, his brain was racing in a hundred different directions, making connections, leaping ahead, thinking of alternatives, seizing on implications.
He was spellbound without a hint of magic in the air.
Some time later – it could have been ten minutes, it could have been ten years – Lanka Ravi stood back with a nubbin of chalk in his dusty fingers, gazed at the blackboard and said, 'I think I'll stop now.'
It was as if a bomb had gone off. Everyone was on their feet. Half the lecture theatre was cheering and applauding, the other half shouting angrily. Professor Bromhead appeared and shepherded Lanka Ravi out of the lecture theatre while Aubrey sat, transfixed.
Lanka Ravi's revelations had the immediate crystal clarity of truth. Aubrey was certain Ravi was right. His simple articulation of principles was perfect. It was as if Ravi had provided a lens, making things focused that had previously been blurred.
Aubrey went to stand and flinched. He stretched, barely avoiding the flailing arms of an over-excited don. While he remembered, he scribbled a note to Craddock, assuring the head of the Magisterium that Lanka Ravi was a first-rate theoretician – perhaps unique.
FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK, AUBREY FELT AS IF HIS BRAIN was being stretched in all directions. He revelled in it. This is what he wanted. More than that, it was what he needed. He gave his studies all his attention, for that was what they demanded.
Notes came from Maggie's Crew, written in a large, bold hand and signed – simply – 'Maggie'. Day after day the surveillance was constant and unrevealing. Spinetti sang, ate at the best restaurants, went to clubs, was entertained in high society and in all ways did what was expected of a feted visiting baritone. Which was exactly what Aubrey expected. Tremaine was very, very good.
He wasn't about to make amateurish slips – but his arrogance was sure to lead him to do something that would leave him exposed.
He saw Caroline once, briefly; it was like opening a door into summer. She pumped him for details of goings-on in Trinovant. He gave her a précis of his meeting with Maggie and her Crew, the flood, and the plummeting train before she rushed to her commitments in the Science faculty.
She left him breathless.
On the Thursday evening, after a sound dinner, he was poring over Allday's Fundamentals of Resonance when he was diverted into checking some mathematics to do with rates of change. In his battered school calculus text, he stopped at a marginal note he'd written last year.
Immediately, it took him back. Stonelea School, before his disastrous experiment. A more uncomplicated life, certainly. But somehow less rich, less challenging.
Then he read his scrawled marginalia and remembered more.
It was half in jest, half serious, an effort toward defining a law of human experience, rather than of magic. 'Have you ever found yourself seeing a grey horse, suddenly, unexpectedly, and then seeing grey horse after grey horse all that day?'
Patterns. There must be something in the human ability to see patterns. Finding them when they're only hinted at. Seeing them when they're not there.
Was Dr Tremaine there at all, or was Aubrey seeing something because he wanted to see it? He gnawed on this bone for some time, then he sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. 'Well,' he said aloud, 'what if Dr Tremaine is working on this principle too?'
He looked around to remind himself that he was alone, George having gone to an editorial meeting with the Luna crowd.
Could Dr Tremaine be interfering with people's innate pattern-sensing ability? Had he concocted a spell that would stop people from noticing those details that added up to Mordecai Tremaine-ness?
Why am I resistant? he thought – silently this time. And then he nearly fell off his chair when the answer hit him like a deftly applied mallet behind the ear.
They'd been connected. In the moment of magical struggle over the kidnapped and ensorcelled Sir Darius, Aubrey and Dr Tremaine had been linked. Aubrey had thought it a momentary thing, a by-product of their magical grappling that had passed.
But what if it lingered?
Connections. Aubrey put his head in his hands. It was all to do with connections. His body and soul. Himself and Dr Tremaine. Even the more ordinary magic that bound Aubrey to his parents, to George, and – though she might deny it – to Caroline.
No-one was a totally free agent, untouched by others, but now Aubrey understood that he had a magical connection with Dr Tremaine. Exactly how deep and what it meant, though, he couldn't tell.
Not yet.
IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT AUBREY'S EYES SNAPPED open. A furtive sound had woken him.
He waited, but nothing further happened. He tugged on the cord of his reading lamp. On the other side of the room, George moaned and rolled over. 'Not more study,' he mumbled. 'Can't it wait until morning?'
Aubrey ignored him. He sat up and then saw the envelope that had been slipped under the door. Even in the dim light, he recognised Maggie's handwriting.
The message was terse, quite unlike the detailed, itemised account of the hour-by-hour movements of Spinetti.
Come as soon as you can, it said, but it didn't say where to find her.