Confident after his recent implementation of his revised levitation spell, Aubrey took George through the garden and to the very edge of the cliff at the rear of the estate. The darkened forest was hundreds of feet below, but the increased gunfire coming from the woods on the other side of the estate was enough to convince George that this was a reasonable, if precipitous, direction to go.
Aubrey managed the spell with alacrity, and was somewhat put out by George’s refusing to open his eyes on the entire downward journey, even when the muffled thumps of twin grenade explosions came from the estate overhead.
Once on the ground, they followed the river until they found a crossing, a shallow ford a mile downstream, one that – from the hoof prints – was a favourite of stock. They pushed on for an hour. George embellished his account of the crossing of Gallia, the finding of Sophie’s parents, spiriting them out of the country, reporting to the Directorate and the aftermath. Even though he minimised his own part, Aubrey could see that time and time again the journey would have foundered if not for George’s perseverance and ability to find a middle approach between disparate ways of thinking.
In turn, Aubrey shared with George the hardships of crossing Holmland, a far more dangerous task than journeying across friendly Gallia. Despite some past antipathy with the ex-Holmland spy, George showed some sympathy for von Stralick’s illness and the difficulties it had caused.
While they trudged through the night, keeping as much as possible to the forested paths and avoiding roads, Aubrey told of the horror they had found in the basement of Dr Tremaine’s estate. He was still trying to grasp the full implications of the ghastly apparatus and a hundred details that he hadn’t realised he’d taken in began to emerge through George’s gentle probing.
Every detail he remembered, every small item that he’d filed away for later consideration, pointed to the fact that Dr Tremaine was working in ways that were not only mysterious, but were interlocking in a manner that was extremely ominous. Aubrey felt as if he were managing to catch sight of the smallest corner, the barest hint, of a huge and vastly complicated map made by a master cartographer.