Word of Honour

by Michael Pryor

  A crash came from the direction of the crate. The cursing that followed was intense, and all the more interesting for its restraint. It was conducted totally in whispers, even though one of the cursers sounded as if he was in considerable pain. Aubrey added 'well-disciplined' to the description he was ready to give to the police.

  He took out the box of matches. The applications of the Law of Intensification were well understood. Certain processes could be intensified if the spell were very precisely phrased. The precision was important, otherwise the intensification could run rampant and get totally out of hand. Aubrey had seen a practical demonstration go badly wrong when a tuning fork's sound had been shoddily intensified. The whole class had to flee the room, hands clapped over ears, and all the windows of the room had shattered before one of the senior masters came and cancelled Mr Lapworth's spell.

  Mr Lapworth hadn't remained long at Stonelea School, even though he was the headmaster's wife's nephew. The last Aubrey had heard, he was in Antipodea and making a good fist of banking.

  Aubrey had always used Mycenaean for his intensification spells. It was a difficult, rigid language, but its very rigidity gave him confidence where intensification was concerned. He knew that an explosion was merely very rapid burning, intensified burning, as it were, and he didn't want an explosion in the confines of a museum workshop.

  He undertook an elaborate mime with his mother, finishing with an injunction to cover her eyes. She nodded and he gave thanks for all the hours the family had spent playing Charades.

  He held the box of matches in the palm of his hand. Just as he was about to start the spell, another thump came from the clumsy villains, and another stream of hushed cursing.

  It was perfect timing, covering Aubrey's whispered Mycenaean. He pronounced each agglutinative syllable carefully, concluded with a modest signature flourish, then he threw the matchbox over his head and clapped his hands over his eyes.

  Even though Aubrey had confined his intensification to light, he felt a wave of heat roll over him at the same time as hard, white radiance crept through the cracks in his fingers.

  This time, the oaths weren't muffled.

  Aubrey removed his hands from his eyes and stood.

  'It's safe.'

  His mother took her hands away and blinked. 'I haven't seen your spellwork for ages, Aubrey. You have improved.'

  Aubrey was about to answer, modestly, when he realised something wasn't right. If all had gone smoothly, the villains should have been dazzled, then run off, afraid that their doings had been discovered. The dazzling had happened, as planned, but he couldn't recall hearing the sounds of villains decamping the scene, in a northerly direction or any other.

  He peered around the corner of the coat stand to see the burglars advancing on their position, making their way through crates, boxes and piles of horsehair packing. In the quick glance, he saw that they were blinking, wiping streaming eyes, and furiously unhappy.

  He withdrew his head and cursed his luck. Not only had he stumbled on antiquity-loving burglars in the middle of a job, but they were hard-bitten villains, not easily scared, and looking as if they were more interested in settling scores than getting on with good, honest thievery.

  Or they don't want witnesses, he thought and his stomach turned to stone. The game had suddenly become much more serious.

  He pushed his mother toward the door. She didn't stop to argue, for which he was grateful.

  Outside, Aubrey skidded on the parquetry floor.

  'Which way?'

  'Which way to where?' Calm, a little puzzled, Lady Rose made sure she closed the door behind them. Softly.

  'To somewhere away from here. They're after us.'

  'Ah. This way, then. Through the Oriental Hall.'

  They'd only made it halfway to the arched entrance to the Oriental Hall when a shout went up, then a shot. Aubrey ducked, instinctively, and flung an arm around his mother.

  She shook it off. 'You can run better without such niceties,' she snapped and ducked past the pillar at the entrance.

  A few lights were on in the Oriental Hall, enough for Aubrey to make out that it was a long, uninterrupted stretch of display cabinets in two long columns, all as tall as he was, with an aisle in the middle and space between the cabinets and the walls on either side.

  Aubrey summed it up in an instant. Fortunately. If they wove in and out of the cabinets, no-one could stand and shoot at them from the entrance with any likelihood of success.

  Of course, someone could simply run down the middle of the hall and tackle them.

  Therefore, make pursuit more difficult, he thought. Time was important. The nightwatchmen must have heard the gunshot. They'd be converging at any instant.

  'Light the lantern,' his mother ordered.

  'What?'

  'Now,' she said calmly. She held it up in front of his face. 'Light the lantern.'

  A simple ignition spell jumped into his mind and the lantern was alight.

  'Now,' she said, 'let's see if this helps.'

  She swept the beam of the lantern down the hall, through the glass cases. Immediately, it bounced and bent, and the room was full of dozens of shards of light, flashing across walls and ceiling. Some cases were full of brightness, but lost it when the beam moved on. Other cases sent the light in unexpected directions as it reflected off curved surfaces, gold and silver.

  'Sow confusion where you may,' Lady Rose said. 'Or so the Scholar Tan says, apparently.'

  The evening had turned into a session of complete gob-smackery for Aubrey, so his mother's quoting the Scholar Tan was only mildly flabbergasting.

  He grinned. She smiled. Then they were off.

  They darted down the middle aisle, then flitted left at a cabinet holding a beautiful, globular water jug, Lady Rose keeping the lantern beam moving in jerky, erratic sweeps. They paused for a moment, then they ran along the wall, before slipping right across to the other wall and racing for the far-off exit.

  Aubrey took out the bottle of bicycle oil just as a voice called out from the entrance to the hall. 'Stop right there!'

  Aubrey had momentary visions of aeronautical pigs, then he uncorked the bottle and splashed it on the ground as they ran, the sunflower seed rattling inside the bottle. They crossed to the other side of the hall, sprinting past cabinets of ewers and silver plate which reflected the lantern light beautifully.

  Aubrey dribbled oil as they ran.

  Starting to pant, he chanted a spell, doing his best to make it as clear as possible. The sunflower seed had been in the bottle of oil for months now, preparing for a use such as this. The Law of Proximity. In the time that the oil and the seed had been close to each other, they had absorbed some of the characteristics of each other – helped by some judicious spells, of course. Now, the seed had a special oiliness about it, while the oil had taken on some of the qualities of the seed. With a little magical nudging, the oil had the desire to grow, just like a seed.

  Aubrey pushed out the last of the spell, a dimension-limiting element, giving a rough idea of width and breadth. He added his signature and immediately staggered.

  It hadn't been a difficult spell but on top of his exertions in the ruined shrine, it was taking a toll.

  His mother grabbed his arm. 'Aubrey! Are you all right?'

  The spell had drained him. The effort had struck him like a punch to the stomach. 'Fine. Run.'

  Behind him, he heard a thud, a crash, renewed cursing, then a shot, but he was too tired to get worked up about it. More thumps, curses, crashes, cursing. It sounded as if a herd of bulls had taken it into their heads to do a spot of china shopping.

  'They're floundering on the floor, can't stand up at all,' Lady Rose reported. Whistles sounded from nearby.

  'Ah. Watchmen. The oil will disappear soon, I hope.'

  'Ten minutes. Was all I could manage.'

  'It is enough.'

  They dashed out of the Oriental Hall. Lady Rose shone the lantern both ways, then hurri
ed Aubrey toward a nearby doorway. 'The Arctic Display. It's being redone. We won't be disturbed.'

  Aubrey would have thought that the entire museum in the middle of the night was a place not to be disturbed, but events had convinced him otherwise. He leaned against a lumpy, canvas-draped shape. The canvas slipped and Aubrey was unsurprised to be staring at a polar bear. He shrugged. 'Can you get us back to the workshop?' he asked his mother. His pulse was loud in his temples. He rubbed them, but it didn't help.

  'I can. But I don't think that's wise. We shouldn't be found here.'

  'We won't be found here. If you can get us there unseen.'

  'Aubrey, you're not making sense.'

  'If we can get there, I think we can still spirit the Rashid Stone away.'

  Lady Rose put both her hands together, as if she were trying to hold a piece of paper between them, then put them to her lips and studied him over the top. 'Exciting though this has been, I really should get you away from here. Enough is enough.'

  'Mother, this could be a last chance to restore the stone to the Sultan. If we don't do something now, Holmland will have it forever.' He put a hand to his forehead. 'Or whoever those thieves are working for.'

  And that's something I have to think about. When I have time.

  Lady Rose dropped her hands. She looked at Aubrey with exasperation. 'You're determined to do this, aren't you? Despite the danger, you still want to do the right thing?'

  He straightened himself and stifled a groan. 'It's our best chance. I think we have to.'

  'You're just like your father.'

  With that, Lady Rose set off, not looking back, marching deeper into the shadowy maze of canvas and scaffolding that was the Arctic Display under reconstruction.

  A door near a fire hose opened onto a short corridor, lit by a single electric light globe in a wire cage. 'I don't think anyone knows this building in its entirety,' Lady Rose said over her shoulder.

  The corridor ended in a metal door. Aubrey added his weight – ignoring the burning pain it sparked in his shoulder – and the door screeched open. 'But you've done some exploring,' he said.

  His mother nodded. 'This is tricky. Hold my hand.'

  Linked, they shuffled along a narrow, concrete corridor that smelled of damp. Aubrey trailed his spare hand along the wall and it came away wet.

  'Careful,' Lady Rose said. 'Stairs. We're going down.'

  The stairs were metal. Aubrey felt for each one and clung to the handrail with strength that surprised him.

  A watery light beckoned at the bottom of their descent.

  'Cellar?' Aubrey looked around. The place was full of trees. 'Forest?'

  Lady Rose swept the lantern beam and it ran across dozens of tree trunks. Some were slender, some were broad and gnarled. Branches and leaves completed the unexpected picture. 'These are props. We use them for dioramas. You know: "The Animals of the African Plains" and suchlike.'

  Aubrey had seen some strange things underground lately, but he'd never expected to see an underground forest.

  'Careful,' Lady Rose said as Aubrey turned away from the trees.

  Directly in front of him was a gap in the concrete floor. It was a few feet across, and when his mother pointed the lantern down he stared.

  Tracks. Tiny train tracks a foot or two across. He followed them and saw that they disappeared into the wall.

  'It's a parcel railway,' Lady Rose said. She pointed the lantern up the tunnel, but the darkness ate the beam before it made any real impression. 'Between the Art Gallery, the Houses of Parliament and St Michael's Hospital, for some reason. It's fallen out of use, but it once had a regular, circular route.'

  Aubrey felt as if he was learning about a hidden side of an old friend. 'The underground life of this city astonishes me.' He toed the rusty rails with his boot, then frowned. Had the rail just shuddered?

  He drew back his foot to try again, but his mother tugged on his jacket. 'We should hurry.'

  Reluctantly, Aubrey allowed himself to be led away from the mysterious parcel tunnel.

  Lady Rose took them through unlit corridors and dusty, cobwebbed staircases. In some places, they had to squeeze past forgotten crates, stacked high against the walls. Other passages were empty and echoed to their footsteps. It was as if they were in another world.

  The workshop was quiet. From other parts of the museum, however, Aubrey could hear the noises of pursuit – whistles, shouts, ominous crashes. Further away again, sirens and bells spiralled through the night, suggesting that urgency was a useful attribute.

  One side of the crate had been removed. With his mother holding the lantern steady, Aubrey crouched and peered inside.

  Cloth had been torn aside. Nestled inside it was the irregular black shape of the Rashid Stone.

  'Can you leave the lantern, please, Mother? And listen at the door? Let me know if we're likely to have visitors.'

  'Very well.' She composed herself. 'I was working late, became extremely worried by all the commotion, tried to find out what was going on and ended up here.'

  'Excellent. Who could doubt you?'

  After she left, Aubrey spared himself a moment of awe. This fragment was a time voyager. It had travelled four thousand years – and several thousand miles – with its mysteries intact. It had messages which had lasted longer than kings and queens, longer than empires.

  But underneath it all, the Rashid Stone was still a very large, very heavy lump of granite. And I want to walk out of here with it.

  This, at least, was something he had prepared for. His makeshift spell in Lutetia, which had levitated a whole building, was one he'd spent some time refining since that adventure. He felt confident about applying it to the Rashid Stone to reduce its weight. He didn't want it bobbing along like a balloon, though, as a slab of granite drifting through the air was likely to attract attention.

  He wanted to slip it in his pocket.

  Weight-negating, then, was under control. But he needed to compress the size of the stone to something more manageable.

  And this is where his pondering over the dimensionality spell he'd seen in action on the submersible came in handy. By combining aspects of his levitation spell (the Law of Reversal) and the dimensionality spell he could produce something which would shrink the stone to an unnoticeable size, but not leave it in a state where its weight would be unmanageable.

  Of course, such a novel combination of spells, crossing distinctly different principles, was something that needed careful experimentation, in controlled laboratory conditions, so that variables could be noted and countered, the results could be tabulated and mused over, a paper could be written on 'Some Aspects and Applications of Combining Spells Derived from the Law of Inversion and the Principle of Dimensionality', preferably with the name of a respected professor attached, the one who dropped into the lab looking for his tea cup.

  With no time for that, Aubrey took a deep breath and started.

  The thrill he felt at embarking on a new magical direction almost overcame his exhaustion. He'd done much of the preparatory work on the way to the museum, and he pulled out the scrap of paper he'd used while in the cab. It was hard to read, even when he angled it to catch the lantern light. He'd hammered out the variables for duration (open-ended – he didn't want to be held up on the way back to Maidstone and have a suddenly massive chunk of stone tear a hole in his pocket) and direction (heavier rather than lighter) but he hadn't been able to do much more before seeing the slab. He squinted and worked up some dimensional and positional parameters, translating them into Demotic as he went. He'd felt that using the ancient Aigyptian language might be fitting in this circumstance; he'd had some experience using it for spells that dealt with physical variables.

  He stood, knees popping alarmingly, fixed his gaze on the stone in the crate, and began.

  It was a long spell, of necessity. It had many elements to control, and all had to roll out in the correct order.

  It helped that the language was pleasing to
work with; Aubrey had always enjoyed it. When he used Demotic, it felt as though he was constantly talking about flowers.

  He finished with his signature element and closed his eyes. The wave of exhaustion that struck him wasn't unexpected, but even so he had difficulty not slumping to the floor. His legs trembled, his chest felt tight. His stomach was hollow as if he hadn't eaten for days, but the thought of food made him nauseated. He swayed, steadied, and opened his eyes to see that at least one aspect of the spell had worked. The Rashid Stone had disappeared.

  He bent, not trusting himself to crouch, but it was nearly a mistake. His vision swam, little black suns swelling and bursting in front of his eyes. He gasped and caught himself on the edge of the crate, rubber-legged. After a moment, he groped inside with his other hand.

  He found something in the bottom of the crate, something important that wasn't there. By not thinking about the contradiction, he was able to push his lump of beeswax over it.

  Carefully, he straightened, still swaying a little, with the non-dimensional, light-as-air Rashid Stone pressed into the beeswax. He slipped it into his pocket.

  'We should go,' he croaked just as his mother appeared.

  She was by his side in an instant. 'You sound terrible.'

  'A cold. Coming on.'

  'I hope not. Fitzwilliam men are terrible invalids.'

  Twenty-one

  THE NEXT MORNING, A TENTATIVE KNOCK CAME AT the door. It opened and Tilly stepped in. 'If you please, sir, Sir Darius would like to see you in his study. He's just got in and is asking for you.'

  Aubrey straightened and rubbed his eyes, grateful that this Monday was a public holiday and he hadn't had to rush back to the university. He glanced at the sheets of paper on his desk, filled with his transcriptions from the Rashid Stone and from the mysterious Roman fragment. The fragment was proving to be what he hoped: a key to unlock the mystery script.