The rubbery nature of time was always brought home to Aubrey when he worked on magic. The intensity of his focus and the intellectual effort needed to shape magic meant that time either slipped past or ground to a halt. This time, when he was done and the Symons had the powerful spell in its breech, he became aware of his surroundings again just as the sound of the wings changed. Instead of all his weight being on his back, pressing him into his seat, he found himself leaning forward. They were levelling off. ‘That’s our ceiling,’ Caroline announced. ‘The Merlin won’t go any higher.’
Aubrey peered out of the window. The earth was far away, Trinovant spread out in all directions from the heart of the city to the faraway outskirts blending into countryside. He could see the other ornithopters labouring upward, all trying to gain altitude.
He tilted his head. Dr Tremaine’s skyfleet was still thousands of feet overhead and maintaining its steady course: a great circle taking it right around the city of Trinovant, from Lambshome in the south to Parmenter in the east, Mayfield in the north and Marbury in the west.
The skyfleet was a daunting sight, clearly visible to all the inhabitants of the city. Having already experienced bombing from dirigibles, Aubrey knew the skyfleet would be bringing dread to the population as Dr Tremaine went about his magical preparation.
The thought gave him pause, and once again he wondered at the complexity of Dr Tremaine’s spellwork. Could the sense of dismay and fear that the skyfleet was imposing be useful in some way? If the consciousnesses he was harvesting were in a state of horror, could this also improve the efficacy of his bid for immortality? This could explain the outrageousness of the skyfleet, the size and the impressiveness of the assault. It was designed to daunt.
‘Time to put the altitude enhancer to work.’ He’d been conscious of the magical field emanated by the box to the rear of the aircraft, a node of magical brightness among many throughout the complex machine. It was quiescent, though, waiting for his spell to activate and control it.
He consulted the tech specs and tried to put aside the effects of casting his magic bullet projectile spell. It was a fourth generation carbon copy, blurry and difficult to read. Someone had scrawled out a series of suggestions but the more Aubrey looked at it, the more it looked like a list of hopeful ideas than a definitive guide to operation. The gist was that an amplification spell needed to be overlaid on the box, one that could be ratcheted up by degrees. Choice of language, duration and – apparently – chance of success was up to him.
Caroline glanced at him – a brief, flashing look that was enough to spur him on. He took out his notebook and pencil and he scrawled out a well-practised standby: a Mycenaean amplification spell he’d used many times before.
‘I’m not sure exactly how this is going to work,’ he said after he pencilled in a reminder to append his signature element, ‘so hold on.’
‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ she said and her hands danced across the control panel. ‘When you’re ready.’
Aubrey gave the spell his best and immediately the Merlin shot upward like a rocket. Feeling somewhat like an earwig caught in a hosepipe at the worst possible moment, Aubrey craned his neck and saw, miles away to the south, Dr Tremaine’s skyfleet.
‘Over there!’ Aubrey cried. ‘The flagship!’
Caroline leaned into the controls. George groaned as the ornithopter tilted, then righted itself, and suddenly they were screaming upward at an angle. Aubrey was pressed against the door and he hoped that the mechanic in charge of door latches had been in top form when putting this one together.
‘We’re close, Aubrey!’ Caroline cried.
The hulls of the skyfleet were growing larger and larger as they neared, flanked by the storm clouds that escorted the fleet like well-built bodyguards helping rich patrons on a night on the town. Around them, other ornithopters were shooting upward erratically, some immediately plunging back down again.
Aubrey hastened to cut off the spell before they rose too far and brought themselves into a direct line with the guns of the fleet.
Instantly, their upward surge halted. The gigantic shape of Tremaine’s flagship cut off the sun and they were plunged into shadow while they bobbed like a balloon a few hundred feet below it.
Satisfied, and unwilling to trust to the altitude enhancer again, Aubrey started the other spell he’d prepared as his part in getting them close to Dr Tremaine’s location without being seen, all of which made his initial plan of bringing magic suppressors to neutralise Dr Tremaine’s magic impossible.
Like most of his outlandish schemes, this one had seemed reasonable when it had first come to him. He’d prepared a spell derived from the Law of Sympathy (‘Like affects like’) to encourage a link between the hull of the warship and the steel of the ornithopter. An attractive link wouldn’t be difficult to propagate, he reasoned, since even though the hull was made of cloudstuff, it was aspiring to steelhood, no doubt aping the form and qualities of steel through an application of the Law of Propinquity. The Law of Attraction provided a backbone to the spell, made all the easier by this propensity of ferrous materials to attract each other.
Awfully exposed, bobbing in the air as they were solely due to the altitude-enhancing device, Aubrey hurried out the spell. They rose, quickly, and before he had time to make any adjustments, they struck the hull with a resounding clang.
They hung there, silently looking at each other, and the whole ornithopter vibrated as if it had decided, on a whim, to become a bell. The cabin shook, the frame vibrated, every single piece of steel or iron around them hummed.
Caroline turned to him, a needless question on her lips. Aubrey wanted to slap himself on the forehead, but decided that fixing the spell would be a better use of his time. He hadn’t anticipated that it would be making every iron-based component of the ornithopter want to embrace the overwhelming iron-like presence just above them. Hurriedly, before the ornithopter could shake itself apart in its eagerness, Aubrey eased back on the attraction spell. Not enough to disengage them, but enough to stop the ornithopter from disassembling itself.
When the quivering all about them diminished and then vanished, Aubrey relaxed the death grip he had on his pencil and notebook. ‘There,’ he said. ‘Just as planned.’
Sophie tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Aubrey, how are we going to get onto the ship?’