Time of Trial (11 page)

‘Wait,' Caroline said. ‘You're learning? Learning what?'

A flicker of confusion crossed Sylvia's face before she was, once again, serene. ‘I'm not sure.'

‘Von Stralick,' Aubrey said, pointing. ‘What's he doing?'

‘What he likes to do, what he does best.'

Aubrey was surprised. He hadn't imagined von Stralick's idea of heaven was being surrounded by books. ‘Does he know you're watching?'

‘No. He thinks it's real.'

‘Like a convincing dream,' Aubrey said. Caroline glanced at him. She could see the danger, too. ‘So we'll be in a place like that, unaware that it's not real, and just going about our business for your entertainment.'

A hint of shock; her hand almost went to her mouth before it dropped, once again, to her side. ‘No. Not entertainment. Learning.'

It was Caroline who leaped to the conclusion this time. ‘And his life goes faster in there, the better for you to watch and learn?'

Sylvia peered over the rail, her expression dreamy. ‘It appears so. It gets faster, too. Especially toward the end.'

Aubrey wasn't enchanted by this. ‘You said you had other ... visitors. Ones who aren't here now. They were in places like this?'

‘Not libraries,' Sylvia murmured. She rested her chin on one hand as she propped an elbow on the rail. ‘I remember one was in a laboratory, a magical laboratory. She loved it. Another, one of my favourites, was living in a forest among the pines.'

‘They're gone.' Caroline's face was determined, but Aubrey could see that the ghastly fate of those who had gone before was haunting her.

He found he had to steel himself as well, and he concentrated on noting how callous Dr Tremaine was, how careless of the lives of others. He had some sympathy for Sylvia's plight, and he'd even thought he'd detected Dr Tremaine's humanity in trying to save her – but in the end he was essentially as selfish as ever. He'd sacrifice others without a thought to achieve his ends.

And you're preparing to sacrifice Sylvia to serve
your
ends
, a voice whispered.
Are you so different?

He shook his head. Conscience. Imagination mixed with empathy.

‘Gone,' Sylvia murmured. ‘One day, they were near their end, and the next I couldn't find them or their happy place.'

Aubrey had a new definition of nightmare. Trapped in a make-believe place, imprisoned but never knowing it. But his inner contrariness pointed out that being granted heaven couldn't be a bad thing...

Living a hoax would be, though
, Aubrey thought and he shuddered, thinking of the ant farm he'd kept as a young lad. The ants had been well fed and watered and he had watched their busy industry for hours, convinced that they were much better off than they would be out in the wild.

Unfeeling manipulation. It was an easy frame of mind to slip into, and rewarding in its sense of power. Aubrey vowed never to succumb to it.

‘Where's George?' he asked Sylvia. ‘And how do we get them out of here?'

‘Get them out?' She looked at him as if he'd asked her to draw a four-sided triangle. ‘It's where they belong.'

‘Not us.' Caroline pushed past the pale woman, heading for the north door. ‘Aubrey, time to follow our noses.'

Aubrey looked back to see Sylvia with one elbow on the rail, leaning over, studying the scene below as if she were on a riverbank on a lazy summer's afternoon.

On the other side of the door was the stone prison corridor again – and the tantalising smell of food. The smell of bread was overlaid with other aromas – bacon, coffee, and something fresh and fruity. ‘Food,' Aubrey said, staring at the doors stretching out on either side of the corridor. His stomach growled.

‘Real food.' Caroline peered ahead. ‘And where there's food...'

‘We should be able to find George.' Aubrey set off, trying not to limp with his unbooted foot. Of course George's idea of heaven would involve good food, and plenty of it.

‘This one, I think.' Caroline drew up in front of a door. Aubrey sniffed and had to agree. It was like standing in front of the world's best pastry shop during the morning baking. She pushed the door, it swung open and they stepped out onto another gallery.

Aubrey stopped short. ‘That's not what I imagined.'

He'd expected George to be sitting back at a table laden with delicacies, being waited on, new dishes being thrust upon him, sampling, grazing, appreciating good food and drink. Instead, his friend was speeding about a kitchen – working like a whirlwind. One look at his white jacket, hound's-tooth trousers and the tell-tale puffy white hat and it was obvious that George's heaven was food-related – but as a chef, not as a gourmand.

‘Hidden depths, perhaps,' Caroline murmured as she leaned over.

Aubrey knew he shouldn't have been surprised. George was the most generous person he knew. His idea of heaven wouldn't be selfish, pleasing himself, it would be providing goodness for others.

The kitchen was spotless. The floor was made of gleaming white tiles, while the great cast-iron stove that took up one side of the room was black. It beat out heat that Aubrey could feel from the gallery. He could also smell the baking bread smell from the man-sized oven on the opposite wall.

Which made him think and, without realising it, he began to hum as he drummed his fingers on the rail and pondered the situation. Heat, smell, and light obviously passed through the barrier – at least, in one direction. Was it permeable in both?

He took in the rest of the scene with a glance while he was thinking feverishly. Fresh wooden benches, a large trough, shelves and a servery window ledge where George was a blur, arranging plates of gorgeous-looking food. Breakfast, from the look of it, with bacon, eggs, mushrooms and neatly grilled tomatoes. George was managing to keep plate after plate moving through his kitchen and onto the ledge of the servery window, topped with piping hot toast with nary a sign of burning. The plates disappeared, whisked away, but try as he might, Aubrey couldn't see how. One instant they were waiting, the next they were gone.

George was sweating, red-faced, and grinning as he shook pans, cracked eggs and slapped bacon on a large griddle, cooking up a storm. He moved with smooth economy of effort but with the same prodigious speed that had infected von Stralick. Aubrey was impressed, but not surprised. He knew George's large frame made people think he was clumsy, but George had a natural fluency of movement that would be called grace in another person. His sporadic efforts with the cornet showed that he was dextrous, and once he realised that dancing was a good way to meet young women, he had become very accomplished on the dance floor.

Aubrey took a sixpence from his pocket and spun it into the air. It glittered and arced toward where George was busily working. Then it struck the invisible barrier and hung in the air, gently moving up and down like a cork on the sea. ‘The barrier is selective,' he said to Caroline. ‘We can see him, he can't see us.'

‘But smells are getting out. And sounds,' Caroline said as George dumped a pan into the sink. It clattered against a collection of dirty utensils.

‘Or is it that nothing is getting in from this side? Light isn't getting through, that's why he can't see us. No sound, so he can't hear us. That makes it a one-way barrier.'

‘You're trying to think of a way to get in.'

‘Of course. Before our turn comes.'

Aubrey felt as if he were wrestling with a dozen ideas and possibilities at once. He was hard-pressed to deal with them all as they grappled, pulled and gouged at him. He'd worked with scores of spells and had knowledge of hundreds more. But if he was dealing with Dr Tremaine, he knew that he'd be up against very special magic. This whole place was magically constructed, and it also had an ongoing responsibility. It preserved Sylvia, and provided the environment that supported and protected her, as well as snatching outsiders and imprisoning them.

First question: could anything pass through the barrier both ways? If he could determine that, it may give him something to work with.

Air, that was for certain. Neither George nor von Stralick showed any signs of gasping for breath. He shook his head, violently, and scowled.

‘No answer yet?' Caroline asked.

‘No.' He was acutely aware of his sock-clad foot. He tried to curl it around his leg. ‘I thought air was the answer, but the whole floor below is isolated from the gallery. It could have its own source of air.'

‘True.' Caroline joined him. She, too, gripped the rail and scowled over George's busy domain. Aubrey decided that a scowl, on her, was decidedly becoming.

She turned to him. ‘You said the barrier felt spongy.'

He nodded. ‘Springy, definitely not a rigid barrier.'

‘Your boot was bobbing up and down. It would tend to indicate that the surface undulates.'

‘It wasn't liquid, if that's what you're thinking,' Aubrey said, but Caroline had set him thinking in a different direction. ‘More like a rubbery blanket, held at four corners but not drawn taut.'

‘Allowing room for expansion? This whole place must be adaptable, from what we've seen.'

The solution was close, hovering just beyond reach, Aubrey knew it. Talking aloud, working with Caroline was a definite help – another good reason to keep associating with her. ‘I couldn't push my way through it. It resisted effectively enough.'

‘If you can't push through it, why not try to pierce it?'

He smacked himself on the forehead. ‘Of course. Or we could slice it.' He looked around, then patted his pockets. ‘Of all the days to forget my sword.'

‘I was thinking of that scythe you left behind,' Caroline said, keeping a straight face. ‘Rather short-sighted of you.'

‘You're right. Next time before we head off for a spot of adventuring, could you please remind me to take some sort of large, sharp-edged implement? Agricultural or military, doesn't really matter.'

For a moment, swept up in the banter, they caught and held each other's gaze. In a heartbeat, Aubrey felt a wave of emotion so intense that it almost made him stumble. His affection for her, his desire to be near her shook him – and he thought he saw it mirrored in her eyes.
No
, he told himself sternly, the voice of duty coming to the fore.
It's wishful thinking. Don't deceive yourself.

‘Aubrey,' she said. She looked away, briefly, then she brought her gaze to bear on him, steady, luminous and all-enveloping.

It took all his strength, but with a great effort he coughed and took a tiny, shuffling step back, unsure if it was the right thing to do but feeling it was the
only
thing to do. ‘No sharp objects?' he said lightly. He wiped his face with a hand. ‘Right, then it'll have to be magic.'

She paused a moment, then hooded her eyes. ‘Of course. That's your department.'

Was it his imagination, or did her voice catch a little?

‘Indeed.' He cudgelled his brains, but no ready-made spell summoning large, sharp blades immediately sprang to mind.

So it's back to first principles
, he thought, glad of the distraction of wrestling with spell elements.

Slicing, piercing, bisecting, dissecting. Could he conjure up some sort of force to cut the barrier? The Law of Division had some useful applications when it came to chopping up substances, but ensuring that each bit still retained the characteristics of the whole...

He stared at where the barrier must be. Perhaps he was thinking about this the wrong way.

Just as it was a necessary part of many applications to limit the time of a spell's effect using the Principle of Duration, many spells limited the spell's range by including a component based on the Principle of Range of Effect. A restraining diagram was another magical way of achieving the same thing.

Which was, Aubrey realised, just like putting a barrier around a spell.

If he could take this principle and invert it, it might be a way to
remove
a barrier instead of putting one in place. With a snort, he remembered the old Arabian fairy story where a simple ‘Open Sesame!' was enough to open a magically sealed doorway. He wondered if it was the ‘sesame' that did it, or if naming any aromatic seed would have done the trick – and he wished things were that simple in the real world.

If he were to make this work, he needed to construct a spell that would cover extent, duration, physical parameters, intensity and range of effect, as well as dealing with the time differential. His spell would need to manipulate time, space and also the intricacies of another's magic, all without creating channels where the intersecting magics would feed upon each other, perhaps creating ferocious confluences which could run out of control.

And, of course, he was mindful of Ravi's Second Principle: the more complex the spell construction, the more effort is required from the spell caster. Unconsciously, he fingered the Beccaria Cage that lay against his chest. After the late Lanka Ravi's masterly exposition, Aubrey understood its significance in an intensely personal manner. Performing magic was perhaps the most taxing thing he could do, and it was the act most likely to stress the bond between his body and soul. The so-far useful magic of the cage would likely be tested most when he performed complex magic as he was about to do now. Would it hold? Or would it collapse, sending him into a crisis?

And did he have any options?

‘It's dangerous,' Caroline said, watching his face.

‘Perhaps,' he said, with a fair stab at calmness. ‘We'll soon find out.'

He decided to use Danaan, a language he'd been immersed in. With the efficiency of effort he'd learned since beginning university (‘Don't re-invent the wheel!' Professor Fortescue was fond of saying in his Aspects of Spell Construction lectures. ‘Reuse parts of spells that have worked well in the past!') he plucked components from spells he'd hammered out for temperature stabilisation, light intensity and controlled acceleration of distant bodies. Of course, none of these were in Danaan, so he had to translate them in his head, but luckily none of the numerative determinants were outlandish.