touching the cliff face, he watched the lantern continue its long fall to the rocks below, where it splashed in a burst of burning oil.
Aubrey bit his lip as his stomach lurched. Briefly, he wondered why an organ of digestion would react in such a way to narrowly escaping death like that, and then he consigned the question to the Unknowable Mysteries of the Universe file.
The night was still, clouds hiding the stars. In the distance the lights of Bardenford twinkled and made the town look like a fairy kingdom. Like thistledown, Aubrey bobbed alongside the sheer granite immensity of the cliff until he was calmer, then he spoke the syllables to take him up again.
He had the levitation spell so much to heart now that he only paid his ascent half a mind while the other half analysed what had just happened. Dr Tremaine must have left a compressed spell behind. With the right trigger, it would dispose of intruders without his having to worry about the efficiency of the guards.
All of which implied that the rogue sorcerer perhaps hadn’t finished with this facility at all.
Aubrey drifted over the lip of the cliff, where a stretch of lawn ran toward the house and the outbuildings. The grass was longish, which Aubrey attributed to the difficulty of finding volunteers to mow so close to the edge of such a precipitous drop.
With solid ground underfoot and still pondering deeply, he hurried in the direction of the ruins, only to meet a wild-eyed von Stralick, who advanced on him, revolver at the ready.
‘Fitzwilliam!’ Von Stralick lowered the revolver. ‘Where did you go? What happened?’
‘Dr Tremaine left a nasty little spell behind. Clever, but nasty. I was shifted bodily off the edge of the cliff.’
Von Stralick’s eyebrows shot up. ‘I’m glad you went first then.’
The same thought had occurred to Aubrey. ‘Your revolver wouldn’t have been much use to you if you’d gone ahead.’
Von Stralick squinted at it and thrust it into his belt. ‘Perhaps not.’ He laughed. ‘I am glad you yelled.’
‘I did?’
‘I heard you, so I ran out of the basement instead of following you into it.’
On the way back to the basement, von Stralick found another lantern, and then picked up the rake he’d abandoned. He lit the lantern and hung it from the rake that he carried over his shoulder.
‘It is a light burden,’ he said carefully.
Aubrey had to award him points for making a pun in a language that wasn’t his own, and he promised himself that he’d share it with Prince Albert, that most avid collector of puns.
When Aubrey again found himself falling, wind whipping his hair, he was extremely impressed. Dr Tremaine had been careful in his warding, leaving two compressed spells to fling burglars off the cliff.
After the third time, however, Aubrey began to fume.
He found von Stralick sitting on the stairs leading to the basement. ‘Again?’ the Holmlander asked.
‘Again. But this time…’
Aubrey held the doorframe and leaned inside while von Stralick poked the rake and lantern past him to provide illumination. What Aubrey saw made him rock back so quickly that von Stralick had to juggle the rake to avoid losing the lantern.
Just inside the door, in a neat row flush with the wall, was a line of a dozen or more metal cylinders, smaller cousins of ones that Aubrey had seen only too recently in Baron von Grolman’s golem-making facility.
Aubrey’s curiosity immediately ordered him to leap inside and inspect the cylinders, to pull them apart until their nature was ascertained to the last detail. Accustomed as it was to getting its own way, when Aubrey didn’t immediately comply his curiosity went off and sulked, allowing him to proceed with more rational care.
‘Don’t set foot in there, Hugo, until I can work out what’s going on.’
‘Fitzwilliam, you will find me patience incarnate.’
Aubrey extended his magical awareness and hissed. Each one of the cylinders held an identical clutch of spells. Not just similar, as would normally be the case in casting the same spell a number of times, but absolutely, manifestly identical.
His curiosity roused from its sulking. It was as if this one datum, this one piece of information, was a particularly juicy-looking rabbit lobbed in front of a dog. This time, Aubrey couldn’t help but let his curiosity loose to chase it and see where it led.
Could it be that Dr Tremaine had made great strides in efficient spell reproduction? Had he perfected a method of copying spells quickly and accurately? It fitted with other data Aubrey had been assembling – the machine-golem hybrids, the spells to control wounded soldiers, the enhanced coal that powered the golems. All of this was too much magic for one person, even Dr Tremaine – but Aubrey had difficulty thinking of Dr Tremaine recruiting and training other magicians to take over this burden of replicating spells.
Create a spell, then use a reproducing spell to make copies. Or was it the work of a magically constructed and potentialised engine, a spell-copying machine? With a supply of engineered canisters ready to be filled, identical spells could be churned out over and over again, as seemed to be the case here. The first three cylinders had melted and burst, evidence of the spells having been triggered. The metal looked like aluminium, or thin steel, strong enough to be packed and stored, light enough to carry, but not presenting any impediment to the operation of the spells.
Aubrey was left with one poser. How was he going to investigate the basement without setting off a dozen transference spells? He didn’t fancy having to catch himself mid-plunge again and again. What if he tired and his concentration slipped?
He shuddered, then he hummed a little, deep at the back of his throat, before a smile spread across his face. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a penny. The profile of King William stared at him. Aubrey saluted, then flipped the coin into the air.
It bounced on the stone floor, rolled a little, then wobbled to a halt and lay there, unmoving.
‘Non-living objects don’t trigger the spells,’ Aubrey said aloud and, for a moment, his brain hared off in a wayward direction, wondering if this spell could be turned into a very effective method of ridding a place of vermin.
Von Stralick pursed his lips. ‘What if the spells are triggered according to weight rather than one’s living status?’
‘Good point, Hugo. Fortunately, I’ve already thought of a way to test this.’
They spent the next fifteen minutes hauling objects of increasing weight from the gardens, down the stairs and launching them into the basement, where they accumulated, stubbornly not being transported over the edge of the cliff: a garden gnome, a large flower pot complete with daphne, a birdbath and finally a sundial nearly as tall as von Stralick.
‘So.’ Aubrey dusted his hands together. ‘I think we’ve proved that it’s not entry into the basement that triggers the spell, but the entry of something living into the basement.’
‘Not exactly.’ Von Stralick thrust a hand through the doorway. He remained untranslated.
‘Just so. Touching the floor is the crucial trigger.’
‘And am I correct in surmising that you want to enter the basement without touching the floor?’
‘That I am. Stand still.’
Aubrey ran through his levitation spell. Von Stralick flailed a little when he rose, and he whirled his arms in circles. ‘This is most awkward.’
‘Steady, Hugo. You should be perfectly stable if you don’t move too quickly.’
Von Stralick looked sceptical, but he eased his frantic movements. ‘And how do we move ourselves along if our feet can’t touch the ground to propel us?’
‘We use our hands.’ Aubrey seized the doorframe. ‘Keep close to the wall and push yourself along. And mind your head.’
Their progress was clumsy, but steady. Aubrey found that if he leaned toward the wall, he could shuffle both hands and move toward the part of the room that interested him the most: the strange stalls, especially since he could now see a connection ran from the cables into each stall.
‘You are rather good at this, Fitzwilliam, this magic business.’
‘Thanks, Hugo. I do my best.’
‘Zelinka said you were an outstanding talent.’
