‘I have one also,’ von Stralick said. ‘I know someone who works for a surgeon.’
Aubrey was grateful he wouldn’t be carrying the single most clichéd item of medical equipment. He caught Caroline’s eye. She was stifling a grin. ‘Caroline and I will have to do without, it seems.’
‘I’m sure we could scout up a pair, old man,’ George offered.
‘We’ll content ourselves with looking knowledgeable and full of anatomical learning,’ Caroline said.
‘Exactly,’ Aubrey said.
The nurse at Reception was polite and had been apprised of their visit. She handed them on to a hospital orderly, who took them to the fourth floor. The orderly was a voluble fellow, middle-aged, a few wisps of sandy hair, and Caroline managed to find out that he’d worked at the hospital for over thirty years. He remembered the arrival of the patient they were going to see, and the ministrations of her brother, a wealthy benefactor to the hospital. Somehow – and here the orderly’s knowing smile hinted that he knew the workings of the world – this had ensured the comatose woman had a private room with the best of care.
Caroline coaxed a description of the brother from the orderly, and the details were enough to make Aubrey very satisfied with his telephonic detective work. Dr Tremaine was a memorable figure.
In front of an impressive pair of glass doors, the orderly handed them over to the senior doctor in charge of the Neurological Ward.
‘I am Dr Gottfried,’ he said in Albionish. He was well dressed in an expensive blue suit under his white coat. He had a silvery spade-shaped beard and rimless spectacles that made his eyes appear slightly larger than they were. ‘You are the foreign medical students?’
Aubrey made the introductions. Dr Gottfried was courteous, interested and his Albionish was very good indeed, which wasn’t what Aubrey wanted at all. Why couldn’t they get a perfunctory official who’d simply leave them to get on with their business?
Frustratingly, Dr Gottfried made a point of enquiring about their studies. ‘Ah, the fine Greythorn University. I spent some time there, years ago, in my training. I know many scholars there.’
‘Well.’ Aubrey sensed a sticky situation looming. ‘There has been much movement in the last year or so, people coming and going, retiring...’
‘Dying,’ George put in helpfully.
‘Is that so?’ Dr Gottfried looked troubled. ‘I had heard none of this. Still, relations between our two countries have not been the best of late.’ He looked at them with a degree of speculation. ‘Foolishness, though, you know. This is the modern world. We should be above all that.’
With that, Dr Gottfried strode off, leaving them to follow in his wake, and for Aubrey to reflect on the nature of people.
They were led through a long ward. Their feet echoed on the hardwood floor, but the noise was comforting, filling a silence that would otherwise have been daunting. A few nurses were present, but they seemed to have taken on the quietness of the patients; they moved about the ward like moths.
Dr Gottfried took them to a room at the end of the ward. ‘Remarkable case, this is. Requires very little tending or turning. She manages most of her own bodily functions. Even eats when food is placed in her mouth.’
Aubrey paused at the door. ‘But doesn’t wake.’
‘No. We noted a magical component to her condition, of course. But our finest medical magicians have been unable to make any headway. It’s a hopeless case, I’m afraid.’
‘And her relatives?’ George asked. ‘Did they shed any light?’
‘There is only a brother. He still comes in to see her.’
Caroline took the doctor’s elbow. ‘He does? When?’
Dr Gottfried looked down. ‘A strong grip for someone so charming, young lady.’
Caroline blushed and took her hand away. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘She wants to know everything about this patient,’ von Stralick said. ‘You never know what may be important.’
‘I see,’ Dr Gottfried said, even though it was plain that he didn’t. ‘In any case, the gentleman in question isn’t bound by routine. He comes and goes. Sometimes we don’t see him for months. At other times he is here nearly every day.’
‘And lately?’ Aubrey asked.
‘He was here yesterday, I think. I’d have to check with the nurses.’
Aubrey resisted an impulse to whirl around and check if Dr Tremaine were creeping up on them. His presence was suddenly very, very real.
‘Thank you, Dr Gottfried,’ he said. His mouth was dry. ‘Can we see the patient now?’
Dr Gottfried nodded and opened the door. He stepped inside, then reeled back, stifling a most unprofessional oath. Ashen-faced, he clutched both sides of the doorway and stared at what lay within.
‘What is it?’ Aubrey cried, trying to see into the room.
Dr Gottfried let his hands drop. He lurched into the room. ‘I do not believe it,’ he whispered.
From a doorway that was suddenly full of people, Aubrey stared.
The young woman in the bed glared at them. ‘What are you looking at?’
The voice was hoarse, but she was unmistakeably Sylvia Tremaine. She was identical to the presence they’d encountered inside the pearl – apart from the liveliness in her face.
She waved a hand. It was limp, and the effort was clearly a strain, but it did have a modicum of grace. ‘Close your mouths. You look foolish.’
Aubrey had been prepared for almost anything, but he hadn’t taken this into account. The reintegration had clearly been achieved. The soul fragments had found their way home. They had joined their pale, incomplete presences to recreate something that was definitely greater than the sum of the parts. While Sylvia didn’t appear in the absolute peak of health, she was alert and coherent. She was pale and thin, her eyes were red-rimmed, but she looked like someone with a bad cold rather than someone who had just emerged from a coma that had baffled doctors for years. And she seemed to have a spark that was absent from the presences in the pearl.
It reminded Aubrey of her brother.
‘Remarkable,’ Dr Gottfried kept saying as he fussed around his patient. ‘Remarkable.’
‘Don’t keep repeating yourself, doctor,’ Sylvia said hoarsely. ‘It’s becoming irritating.’
Doctor Gottfried took her wrist, for the lack of anything better to do. ‘Do you know where you are?’
She frowned. ‘I’m in the hospital, of course. I’ve been here a long time.’
‘Ah. Yes. Yes you have.’
She looked around the room solely by moving her eyes, as if her head were too heavy to lift. ‘Where’s Mordecai?’
‘Your brother? He’s not here.’
‘I can see that. Send a message to him, straight away. I need him.’
Doctor Gottfried opened and closed his mouth. He looked at Aubrey, Caroline, George and Hugo. ‘I...’ Then he pushed past them and hurried out of the room.
‘Foolish man,’ Sylvia said.
Aubrey stepped to the bedside. ‘Hello, Sylvia. My name is Aubrey Fitzwilliam.’
She studied him with fever-bright eyes, but her countenance was pale, not flushed. ‘I know you.’ She flicked her gaze around the room. ‘All of you.’ She swallowed and a hint of pain touched her face. ‘It wasn’t a dream,’ she added, almost to herself.
‘No, it wasn’t,’ Aubrey said. ‘Your soul was in pieces.’
‘And you helped free them.’
‘I did?’
‘At my family home.’ She frowned. ‘And another place I didn’t recognise. Grey.’
Caroline came close. ‘You were aware of what was happening?’
She took some time to answer and for a moment Aubrey thought she had fallen asleep. ‘I knew. In this room, at my home, in the grey place, wherever my pieces were. It was blurred, but I was aware of them all.’
‘Even in the pearl?’ von Stralick asked.
‘In the pearl?’ She rubbed her forehead and sighed before letting her hand fall once
again to the bedclothes. ‘What pearl?’
Aubrey reached into his vest, and was glad that George had prevailed on the embassy’s housekeeping staff to mend it overnight. ‘This one.’
Sylvia gasped. With some effort, she propped herself up on one elbow.
‘I gave it to him.’ She stared at it with hungry eyes. ‘A long time ago.’ She closed her hand around the pearl and dropped back onto the bed. ‘I’m thirsty.’
George appeared at the bedside with a glass of water. ‘Here.’
Caroline cradled her while she drank – only a few sips, but it seemed to refresh her. She lay back on the pillows with a little more colour in her cheeks, but that simply emphasised the paleness of the rest of her face. ‘The grey place. Part of my soul was in the pearl?’
‘Quite a few fragments,’ Aubrey said. ‘The rest was lingering at your home, it appears.’
‘I was scattered.’ She shivered. ‘But it was only because Mordecai tried so hard to make me better.’
‘You were unwell?’ Aubrey asked.
‘Dying.’ She said the single word with the practised ease of someone who had come to terms with death a long time ago. ‘A wasting disease. I had made my peace, but Mordecai couldn’t bear it. He wrought great magic and stopped it.’
‘But shattered your soul in the process,’ Aubrey said. He couldn’t imagine what that would do to a person. And Tremaine? The man accustomed to having nature itself bend to his bidding? To fail so spectacularly? ‘He did his best,’ he found himself saying. He patted Sylvia’s hand.
A voice came from the doorway, low and full of amusement. ‘I’m glad to have your approval, Fitzwilliam.’
Dr Tremaine leaned in the doorway. He was wearing a full-length fur coat and a rakish, wide-brimmed black hat. He had a walking-stick in one gloved hand and a generous cravat around his high-buttoned collar.
Von Stralick was the first to move. He was standing to one side of the door, his back to the wall, and he lunged, swinging a roundhouse blow at Tremaine.
It was hard to follow what happened. A flurry of movement ended in Dr Tremaine still standing in the doorway, not even breathing heavily, while von Stralick lay unconscious at his feet. ‘He almost surprised me,’ Dr Tremaine said and he nudged von Stralick with his foot. ‘I don’t think his jaw is broken.’
George was standing next to Aubrey at the foot of the bed. He steeled himself but Aubrey put a hand on his shoulder to restrain him.
Sylvia struggled to sit up. ‘Mordecai!’
Dr Tremaine closed his eyes. He trembled, then opened his eyes. ‘Oh, Sylvia. I didn’t dare believe.’
In an instant he’d crossed the room, ignoring Caroline, who sat on the edge of the bed, next to the pillow. Aubrey and George may as well have been tree stumps for all the notice he took of them.
Dr Tremaine sat on the bed and, with eyes only for his sister, he reached out and took away the pistol that had appeared in Caroline’s hand. It vanished into the folds of his coat.
He held Sylvia’s hands and Aubrey noticed that he didn’t remove his gloves first. ‘How do you feel?’
Carefully, Aubrey turned toward the door. This wasn’t the time and place of their choosing. ‘We’ll just leave you two alone.’
George took the hint. He edged away. ‘Family reunions should be private.’
Caroline didn’t move. She was only a few feet away from the rogue sorcerer. Hands clenched in her lap, she was breathing heavily, her nostrils flaring. Her eyes were hammered steel. ‘My father died because of you.’
Tremaine flicked a glance her way. ‘Oh, it’s the Hepworth girl. Still on about that, are we?’
‘You must pay for what you’ve done.’
Dr Tremaine kissed his sister’s hand. For an instant, it looked as if he might cry. ‘I have no doubt about that. But you’re not the one who’s going to make me pay. And don’t look at Fitzwilliam like that. He’s not going to do anything either.’
‘You’re a dangerous man, Tremaine,’ Aubrey said, then he winced, for he knew he’d left himself wide open.
‘Ah, you’ve mastered a cliché!’ Dr Tremaine said. ‘Well done, boy. Keep it up and they’ll let you write speeches for your father soon.’
I deserved that, Aubrey thought. He gestured at Caroline with a minute twitch of his finger, but she ignored him. With rising nervousness, he knew she’d attack Dr Tremaine in an instant if he didn’t do something.
He patted his appurtenances vest. Multiple use paraphernalia, nothing suitable for major magic – and major magic was what would be required to take on Dr Tremaine. He’d learned a number of things since their first encounter.
But not now. Not now, not unprepared.
A wise commander chooses his battlefield, the Scholar Tan said. It was the most quoted of his apophthegms. But Aubrey knew, because his father had drummed it into him, that the Scholar Tan then went on to say: But the wiser commander makes do with what he has.
And what did he have? He had George and Caroline, and an unconscious Hugo von Stralick. He had a hospital room.
And he had himself, with his magical connection to the man they had to defeat. He also had the ability to weave magic, to construct spells that were new and different, that were unexpected.
If he could prevent Dr Tremaine from casting a spell, that would be something. It would remove the man’s most powerful weapon, but it still wouldn’t leave him powerless. His formidable hand-to-hand combat skills were one thing, but now he also had a pistol.
Von Stralick groaned. Painfully, holding a hand to his jaw, he struggled to his feet, glaring. Then he staggered toward Dr Tremaine.
As a distraction, it was enough. George hesitated then launched himself at the rogue magician, just as Caroline lunged along the length of the bed.
Dr Tremaine sprang to his feet. With one hand, he used his prodigious strength to push the massive hospital bed to the wall. Then he stood between it and his attackers, keeping them away from Sylvia, who cringed, weakly batting with a hand, while the other shielded her face.
Aubrey knew he wouldn’t have long for spell casting, so he opted for containment. It was simpler than trying something destructive, and it could buy them some time.
It helped that he had the perfect prison close by – the pearl in Sylvia’s hand.
The pearl had already been used as a place of containment. Feverishly, while the four-way brawl raged – Dr Tremaine a colossus standing in front of the bed, lunging, striking, twisting in a blur of motion, blocking Caroline’s advance by shoving George at her, heaving von Stralick sideways, recovering to meet Caroline’s panther-like leap with his shoulder – Aubrey was able to work up a spell that drew on the Law of Propensity to access that aspect of the pearl. Having once been a prison, it was ready to be a prison again with only minimum magic. A short series of Akkadian syllables and the pearl was prepared. More than ready – the magical power blossomed over it like stardust, feeling like aniseed and sounding slippery.
Even in the middle of grappling with George, Dr Tremaine saw what Aubrey was up to. ‘No!’ he cried, but then he doubled over when Caroline punched him right in the solar plexus. Instantly, he straightened, flinging off Caroline and George, then he knocked von Stralick to the floor with a tremendous uppercut.
He locked eyes with Aubrey. Aubrey swallowed, grateful for the three or four yards’ separation between them.
Dr Tremaine smiled. ‘I think it is time to see you off, Fitzwilliam.’
It was a moment that called for a pithy retort, or a confident gesture, but Aubrey decided otherwise. He raced straight into pronouncing his signature at the end of the spell.
Dr Tremaine stared at his sister with horror, then at Aubrey with utter fury. ‘No! You haven’t! You couldn’t!’
He reached for his sister. She took his hand then cried out. Together, it was as if they gradually turned to smoke. Within seconds, they had lost all solidity, becoming insubstantial, wavery forms that looked as if they would dissipate in a gentle
breeze. Then they curled, twining, spinning, spiralling as one, like water going down a drain.
There was a soft rush of air into a suddenly vacated space, and then the tiny noise of the Tremaine pearl falling to the bedclothes.
They were gone.
Aubrey was left panting and trembling, his heart threatening to rebreak his ribs with its battering. Caroline, George and von Stralick untangled themselves.
Caroline turned her head, looking for Tremaine. ‘Where...?’ she began, then she saw the pearl. With a hesitant hand, she reached for it.
‘Stop!’ Aubrey cried. He lurched for the bed and winced at the pain in his side. ‘I haven’t finished yet.’
Dr Tremaine wouldn’t be trapped inside his own creation so easily. He knew the ways in and out of the magical pearl. But not if Aubrey could do something about it quickly.
Aubrey drew on his study of the Beccaria Cage. Its function was sustaining, but also protective. It kept his soul in his body, locking it in.
He aimed to use some of the same principles to put a layer on the pearl, keeping Dr Tremaine – and Sylvia – inside.
He chanted the spell as quickly as he could while maintaining utter clarity in the proto-Latin language he used. He bit off each syllable, each element clearly and with precision, until he was done. He hoped he’d been fast enough.
Then he sagged to the bed, perfectly aware that he was experiencing a textbook example of the expenditure of effort required by a series of challenging spells.
‘Finished now?’ George stared at the pearl with suspicion, as if it could explode at any moment.
‘One last thing,’ Aubrey panted. He searched for the magical connection between Dr Tremaine and him, to ensure that the sorcerer was trapped in the pearl. So close, he should be able to detect it.
He extended his awareness, but grimaced when it was swamped by the magic of the pearl and the protective layer he’d placed on it. He couldn’t find the connection.
I’m tired, he thought.
He promised himself he’d check again later, and he picked up the pearl with a hand that trembled slightly. Absurdly, he was expecting it to be heavier than it was earlier, and he was oddly disappointed when it wasn’t.
Time of Trial Page 31
