The Laws of Magic 6: Hour of Need (15 page)

A
T FIRST, WHEN
A
UBREY WOKE, HE WAS SURE SOMEONE
was standing by the bed. The tiny cubicle was pitch black but he had that half-awake certainty of another presence. He sat up and lit a match, ready to apply it to the candle on the floor, but the flare of light showed that he was alone.

He scratched at his forearm and that was when he realised that magic was in the vicinity. His skin was alive with the sensation of acidity, a sour lemon tang setting his teeth on edge. Odd crawling sensations muddled his vision for a moment and he realised that he was seeing a high-pitched whine.

He tilted his head, listening: in the distance, the thumping
pom-pom-pom
of artillery, while a barge was chugging up the nearby canal.

Aubrey climbed out from under the blankets and tugged on a pair of trousers, slipping his braces over his bare shoulders. He lit the candle this time, then pulled aside the curtain that separated the sleeping cubicles from the rest of the basement. He held the candle high as he tried to work out where the magic was coming from.

On the opposite side of the basement, the door to Caroline’s telegraph cubicle was ajar.

He hurried across the floor, stepping lightly, weaving his way through the maze of mattresses that the Enlightened Ones had thrown down, but when he reached halfway across the basement, he stopped and looked upward.

The source of the magic was directly above. He spun, paused, then – in an agony of indecision – actually rocked from one foot to the other, unsure which way to go. He wanted to check the telegraph cubicle, but the magical emanations from above were growing stronger.

With a glance at the stairs, Aubrey vaulted over the sleeping Enlightened Ones and pushed the door of the telegraph cubicle open.

The station was empty. Aubrey froze, taking in the scene. Caroline’s headphones were sprawled untidily on the bench next to her transmitter key. A writing tablet was nearby, next to the coding machine, and a pencil lay on the floor. Aside from the desk lamp being extinguished, nothing showed the precision that was Caroline’s mode of operation. It was plain that she’d left hastily.

He picked up the headphones and nearly dropped them again as magic leaped from the earpieces. His fingers prickled and he placed the headphones carefully on the bench before he wiped his hands on the rear of his trousers.

Then he bolted for the stairs, taking them two at a time.

He flung open the hatch that led to the flat roof, and poked his head out. For an instant, he had the strangest feeling: he was like a camera, taking a series of quick snapshots, one after the other.

First impression: the flat roof extended before him. The hatch was at one end of the roof, with the far end some seventy or eighty feet away. The antenna array Caroline had so carefully constructed took up most of that space, eight wires stretched fifty feet from one side of the roof to the other, each separated by ten feet of space.

Second impression: the night was overcast, with the clouds adding a thin pallor to the sky.

Third impression: artillery fire away to the north-east, drumbeats of doom.

Fourth and overwhelming impression: the roof was ablaze with magic and electrical discharges.

Aubrey went to drag himself onto the roof and was nearly driven back by one of the dozens of huge electrical eruptions that were fizzing along the antenna wires. The sparks were enormous, leaping feet into the air, hissing with malignant glee as they slid backward and forward, crashing together at speed and showering the roof with a rain of smaller sparklets.

Cursing, Aubrey squinted, momentarily dazzled. These weren’t just electrical discharges – serious though that would be. These had magic about them, and it was the sort of magic that made him very, very wary.

Carefully, he climbed out of the hatch, holding a hand up in front of his face and keeping his back to the utilities shed. ‘Caroline!’ he shouted, then he reeled back as one of the giant sparks skated in his direction.

Are they arms?

Then Caroline threw a chair at him.

He ducked, already believing that Caroline had, at last, seen through him and was expressing her opinion by hurling convenient furniture at him.

‘Aubrey!’ she cried. ‘Look out!’

His heart surged at her warning. He abandoned his misgivings as the chair flashed through the giant spark and smashed on the brick wall behind him. Aubrey ducked, then took a step toward where Caroline was backing away, scrambling under antenna wire in her haste.

Aubrey drew close to one of the wires, close enough for him to reach out and touch. He was about to call out to Caroline when, from the corner of his eye, he saw a giant spark humming toward him, arms extended.

He didn’t have time to worry about how bizarre that notion was. He let out a yelp and threw himself away from its reach. Landing on a shoulder and rolling to his feet, he had to shield his eyes and back away as the magically imbued electrical phenomenon reached for him.

Aubrey’s mind worked in two separate and distinct modes. One part was on the verge of gibbering as the spark grew in size, rapidly towering ten feet from the wire on which it balanced. The other part coolly noted how small sparklets were racing along the wire and merging with it to make a roughly human shape. It pawed unsuccessfully at him, then swayed and stretched. Half a dozen smaller sparklets skated along to join it, flowing right up its fingerless hand and making the entire creature swell, growing another foot or two in height, an electrical demon that leered with antic glee.

Aubrey swallowed and took another step away. He looked to Caroline, but she was trapped on the other side of the roof, with eight antenna wires between her and Aubrey – eight wires populated by a growing horde of demonic sparks that sped up and down, crashing into each other and growing in size, electrical demon shapes that capered and lunged at her.

Aubrey ducked as a chair leg slammed into the brick wall to his left.

‘Sorry!’ Caroline called.

The largest of the sparks, the one that had been menacing Aubrey, swivelled at the sound of Caroline’s voice. As fast as thought, it skimmed along the wire until it reached the edge of the roof, then it extended a limb until it touched the next wire in the array, one wire closer to Caroline. Once it had grasped this wire, it performed a complicated manoeuvre, stretching and vaulting across, then reshaping itself until it once again had its four-limbed, demonic form. Joined by a rabble of smaller sparklets, it sped to the opposite end of the second wire and then repeated the process, vaulting across to the third – and again coming closer to Caroline.

Caroline hurdled a wire, keeping her distance, moving toward the far end of the roof, but Aubrey could see that she didn’t have far to go before she’d be trapped.

Caroline had realised the danger she was in. Not wanting to come up against the parapet, she’d moved to her right until she reached the end of the wire – but was once more trapped by the edge of the roof on that side. Calmly, she faced the electrical demon that was fizzing toward her.

Aubrey wanted to call out to Caroline, offer suggestions, but he didn’t want to break her concentration. She was balanced on her toes, alert, watching the creature and waiting for her opportunity.

The demon stretched out to touch its next wire. As soon as it did, Caroline threw herself under the wire she was standing against, then continued rolling under the next before coming to her feet. She glanced around and then seized a length of pipe from a stack of disused building material they’d used in renovating the factory.

‘No!’ Aubrey shouted. He started running toward her, then scrambled frantically on his hands and knees under the first wire.

Caroline held the pipe vertically, in both hands, perfectly balanced. The electrical demon paused for a moment as it assimilated a handful of attendant sparklets, then flashed along the wire toward her. When it came close enough, Caroline swung so hard she was lifted off her feet.

The electrical demon was unaffected. The pipe passed straight through and caught the wire, rebounding wildly before Caroline could bring it under control, but by then the creature had reached out and grasped it. Instantly, it flowed into the metal, its form melting like butter in sunshine. It dissolved from the antenna wire, crackled along the length of the pipe and Caroline was enveloped in a spitting, hissing radiance, an electrical cloak that made her jerk wildly before her eyes rolled back in her head. The pipe fell from her grasp and she slid to the tarred roof. A malevolent nimbus spluttered around her as she lay still.

Aubrey was running before he knew it. Without slowing, he plucked his penknife from his pocket and slashed at the wire ahead of him. Naturally, since it was under tension, it sprang apart and whipped past his face. He raced after it, caught the end and coiled the wire until he reached the edge of the roof where he slashed again, tucking fifty feet of wire under one arm.

Spells came to his lips – affinity spells, amplification spells. Coldly, he merged them together, opting for expediency and power over elegance.

The electrical glow had left Caroline’s inert body and it had leaped back to the antenna wire, where it was reassembling itself into a demon. It swayed for a moment, then it hummed along the wire.

Aubrey swivelled in time to see it vault to the next wire, speed along to the other end, then leap across to the next, coming one step closer. He was clearly its new target.

Tiny imps of sparklets were gathered up and incorporated as it hummed from one wire to the next, careering from end to end then crossing, growing larger as it crackled its way toward him. Waiting for it, Aubrey’s mouth was dry but his mind was clear. He cast the coil of antenna wire over the parapet while he held the loose end in his right hand. When the coil hit the ground, he ran through the spell that made sure it buried itself in the soil, and he paid out enough wire so that he had three or four yards at his feet, all the while refusing to notice the way his heart was thumping. Fear was knocking at the door, but he declined to answer.

The electrical demon crossed to the wire that Aubrey was standing next to. It didn’t hesitate. In a shower of sparks, it screamed along the antenna, sizzling toward him with its arms outstretched.

Aubrey spat out a spell. He swung the wire in a flat plane above his head, slowly at first, then faster and faster, whirling until it whistled. When the electrical demon was barely ten feet away, he let go. Thanks to the spell, the wire hurtled at the creature, struck, then wrapped itself around its torso, tightening like a maddened python and sending a cascade of sparks into the air.

Balanced on the wire only a few feet away, the electrical demon started to squeeze free, but Aubrey was ready for it. He delivered the other half of the spell with venom.

The demon stopped its frenzied wriggling. For an instant, it propped on the wire and tilted its head to the heavens. In defeat? Resignation? Before Aubrey could ponder this moment of terminal cognisance, the demon elongated, then compressed – as if a giant had placed hands top and bottom and were using it as an accordion. With a thud and a whistle, the demon vanished, leaving the antenna wire vibrating. The entrapping wire came alight, crackling with blue fire, a glowing serpent in the night, then it fell to the roof, inert.

The demonic creature had been earthed. Grounded. Defeated.

Aubrey raced to where Caroline lay, slashing antenna wires with his knife to allow his passage. He paused to check that she was breathing, then he scooped her up and fairly danced across the mangled antenna array, not putting a foot wrong. Without a thought he held her over his shoulder and entered the hatch, descending the stairs with the surefootedness of an alpine creature much given to spending its life on near-vertical cliffs.

He hurried to the oval table, at war with himself. Part of him wanted to despair, but he was Caroline’s hope and he couldn’t afford the dramatics.

Her eyes were still closed. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. He touched her throat to find that her pulse was thready, erratic, and he felt the insidious brush of panic. He glanced at her dear hands to see them reddened and burned.

Concentrate!
he told himself.
Time for namby-pambiness later!

He extended his magical awareness. The creature had been electrical in its nature, but it had also had something magnetic as well, all bound together with magic. The residue was familiar – it had the taint he had detected in Caroline’s headphones, and he knew, then, that this creature was responsible for the interference in the ether.

It had left its touch on Caroline. Many of her normal functions were being overwhelmed. Soon, she would be lost – unless he could perform some delicate medical magic.

Aubrey had a tendency to throw himself into gaps, wherever they occurred. He had a desire to do the right thing, even at personal cost. But medical magic? He was only too aware of the hazards. No matter how robust Caroline’s constitution was, the human body was a complex construction. He could do untold harm.

In a decision that took less than a heartbeat, he decided that inaction here was worse than action. A world without Caroline was unthinkable.

Restoration and strengthening. He’d start there. Dimly remembered lectures came to him, masters at Stonelea mumbling about medical magic and emphasising that it should be left to trained practitioners. Dons at Greythorn insisting that the human body had a remarkable system for repairing itself, but sometimes needed help.

He called on the Law of Origins and the Law of Constituent Parts. Medical magic didn’t substantially derive from these, but Aubrey was groping in the dark. He used what he knew best. The Law of Completeness. The Law of Intensification. Soon, he had a conglomerate spell with elements threaded together and supporting each other, combining to create what he hoped would keep Caroline Hepworth from dying.

Kneeling at her side, he pronounced the spell slowly, despite the urgency. He wanted to get this right – he
needed
to get this right. If sincerity made spells more puissant, then Caroline would be up and walking in no time.