Clutching the shreds of his consciousness, Aubrey was lashed with indifference. The connector had recoiled, bringing a wave of Dr Tremaine’s emotions, and the overwhelming impression was of disinterest. It was humbling to realise how unimportant he was to the rogue sorcerer. Dr Tremaine’s preoccupations were far loftier than worrying about Aubrey Fitzwilliam.
Staggering, bent over double, Aubrey was bombarded with a tumble of impressions, of nations, governments and magical advances. In all of them he was stunned to see how few people actually featured. His father, briefly, and Chancellor Neumann, but even they were almost featureless, more important for their positions than for their person. The only fully formed, fully realised person that emerged from this welter of memories and recollections was Dr Tremaine’s sister, Sylvia. She burned with a fire that was only matched by Dr Tremaine’s appreciation of himself. They were the only ones who were alive, who were vital, who were important.
Aubrey didn’t feature. His interruptions to Dr Tremaine’s plans did, but only as irritations to be overcome. The frustration of the foiled assassination plot against King William, the rescuing of the Gallian Heart of Gold, the ruination of the twin plot to animate Trinovant and to destroy the currency of Albion, all were inconveniences when measured against the vast canvas that Dr Tremaine was working with.
This attitude pervaded all of the feelings and thoughts that battered Aubrey as his head spun. It wasn’t even contempt. It was as if people were an alien species with which Dr Tremaine – and his sister – had little in common. They simply didn’t matter.
Aubrey struggled, sickened almost to the point of vomiting, but he was determined to prove Dr Tremaine wrong. People did matter.
Dr Tremaine’s world roared over the top of Aubrey, and swept him away.
Even though it seemed as if an age had trudged past, when Aubrey was next able to frame coherent thought, he was dimly aware that he was lying on the marble floor. He was unable to do much about it as his limbs had apparently turned to jelly. He could lift his head, a little, to see that Dr Tremaine was lying on the floor as well, yards away from the column of magic. A stone’s throw away, George was crumpled, unmoving, and Sophie was running to him. Behind them, Caroline had managed to trip the steaming golem hybrid with the silken rope, and to tangle a sword-wielding Sylvia in it as well.
Aubrey really wanted to remain there for a while and recover, but he knew that he couldn’t afford that luxury. Personal hurts, and wants, and dreams, could wait. He had to complete his plan.
Climbing to his feet was one of the harder things he’d had to do in his life. His chest felt as if it were one single, great bruise. The rest of his body wasn’t much better, but it was functioning, more or less, in the same way that the Gallian police functioned, more or less. His head thrummed and thumped whenever he moved, which was unfortunate because he had no prospect of holding still because Dr Tremaine, too, was climbing to his feet.
‘Fitzwilliam,’ the rogue sorcerer called and Aubrey was remarkably heartened to hear that his usually powerful voice had been reduced to a croak. ‘Why do you think you’re different?’
Aubrey’s heavy, aching head dropped. His eyes widened, slightly, painfully, when he saw, still attached to his chest, the ghostly remains of the magical cord that had once connected him to Dr Tremaine. He followed it with his magical senses and realised that his spell had been successful – it was the short length that remained on his side of the cut. Wearily, he sought for the other part and saw it was still connected to Dr Tremaine’s chest.
‘What do you mean?’ Aubrey said and his mind, sluggish though it was, began to arrange magical elements and string them together.
Dr Tremaine was dragging his left leg as he worked his way around the column of magic. ‘This thing. This connection. Gave me a glimpse at you. Your thoughts. You.’ Dr Tremaine glanced upward. He changed direction and shuffled toward the light. ‘You think you’re different from all the others, but you’re not. You’re all alike.’
‘We are.’ Aubrey squinted. He could make out the remnants of Dr Tremaine’s end of the connector more clearly, stretched limply on the floor. ‘We are all alike and we are different.’
‘Ah. The uniqueness argument. Tedious and meaningless.’ Dr Tremaine grunted as he reached the column of power. It roared, rich with magic culled from all the consciousnesses in Trinovant. ‘To me. Meaningless to me, which is all that matters. You are all alike. I can manipulate you all, move you all around, to suit my ends. None of you matters.’
Aubrey took a step in the direction of the rogue sorcerer. ‘And that’s going to be your downfall. If you thought more about how we are different, and the different ways we can all contribute to bringing you down, then you might have had a better chance.’
Dr Tremaine laughed. It was a weary laugh, but it held no doubt. ‘A better chance? I need no chances. My plan is a certainty.’
With that, he spoke a sharp series of syllables and plunged both hands into the pillar of light. For an instant, he jerked backward, his spine arching, his teeth bared. Then a sigh came from his lips and when he turned to Aubrey his eyes were shining. All trace of pain and exhaustion had disappeared. ‘Such power,’ he whispered. ‘Such power you’ll never know.’
Aubrey hardly heard. He was still stunned at the spell Dr Tremaine had spoken. The economical, clipped, syllables bore no resemblance to any language Aubrey had ever heard. The sounds, the rhythms, the patterns were almost inhuman in their brutality. Aubrey doubted that his mouth could cope with such a thing, so awful was it – but its effect was undeniable. Was this the Universal Language for Magic?
Aubrey started to run. ‘I’m glad. If it makes people like you, I don’t want a part of it.’
Dr Tremaine barked a hard laugh. He withdrew one hand from the pillar of light. In it, he held a blinding mass, a lump of raw magic that changed as the rogue sorcerer worked his fingers, shaping it like clay. Small bolts of false lightning darted from it and he chuckled. ‘Goodbye, Fitzwilliam.’
With a careless, backhand action, the sorcerer flipped the magical missile at Aubrey. Shedding light and magic, it hurtled at him.
Aubrey didn’t stop running. He snapped out a few syllables, the elements he’d used to deflect the worst of his Transference spell onto the soldiers on either side of no-man’s-land, and raised an elbow. The boiling magical missile glanced off, veered away wildly and burst harmlessly.
Aubrey didn’t stop. He spat out a tiny spell that was concentrated on the specific area between the soles of his boots and the marble floor, decreasing the coefficient of friction a few thousand per cent so that it was nearly zero. He went into a long, braced slide at a speed that took his breath away.
It was like wet ice on wet ice and Aubrey’s sudden transformation from a galloping nuisance to a lightning bolt surprised Dr Tremaine enough for Aubrey to throw himself forward in a long, shallow dive. He thumped onto his chest and stomach, adding to the indignities that his poor body had experienced, and slid, just missing Dr Tremaine’s feet, but close enough to grab the remains of the magical connector still embedded in the sorcerer’s chest.
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
