Moment of Truth (43 page)

‘Of course. We have a mission to attend to.'

Aubrey sighed and thought of lost opportunities. ‘Don't call it that, Hugo. Please don't call it that.'

Michael Pryor has published more than twenty fantasy books and over forty short stories, from literary fiction to science fiction to slapstick humour. Michael has been shortlisted six times for the Aurealis Awards (including for
Blaze of Glory
and
Heart of Gold
), has been nominated for a Ditmar award and longlisted for the Gold Inky award, and five of his books have been Children's Book Council of Australia Notable Books (including
Word of Honour
and
Time of Trial
). He is currently writing the final book in the Laws of Magic series.

For more information about Michael and his books, please visit
www.michaelpryor.com.au

You're the one who betrayed us!' he croaked. ‘I always knew it was you!'

Aubrey flinched as the accusation echoed on the rock walls that had been their home for almost a month. Slowly, he climbed to his feet, trying not to startle the wild-eyed Holmlander. A restraining spell was on his lips but he was unwilling to use magic unless he had to, not with the magic detectors around the estate below, so close, so sensitive.

‘Traitor!' von Stralick snarled at him. ‘You, and the rest of them! Everywhere!'

‘I'm not a traitor, Hugo.'

‘Traitor.' Clawing at the air like an animal, Hugo von Stralick, the ex-Holmland spy, advanced. ‘We have photographs.'

Aubrey hesitated, and was dismayed to see von Stralick had a rock in his hand. ‘Put it down, Hugo. You're sick.'

‘Hah! Sick, am I?'

A grunt, then the stone thumped into the wall not far from Aubrey. He sighed. Von Stralick may have been sick, but enough was enough. Aubrey caught him around the waist and shuffled him backward. A feeble blow or two landed on Aubrey's back, then von Stralick faltered, groaning. His knees buckled and Aubrey had to move quickly to avoid falling on top of him.

‘Traitor,' von Stralick murmured as he lay stretched out on the rocky floor of the cave.

Aubrey groped for his electric torch to find that the Holmlander's eyes had closed. His face was pale, a disturbing chalky-white. He was shivering, too, and when Aubrey touched his forehead he was dismayed at how hot it was.

Alarmed, he dragged von Stralick back to the pile of tree branches that was his bed.

Aubrey arranged him as comfortably as he could, picked up the notebook he'd been using to work on his spellcraft from where he'd accidentally kicked it during the struggle, then sat by his side. The Holmlander's lips moved, a meaningless stream of half-words and names, as if he were alternately reading from a street directory and a poorly compiled dictionary. Aubrey had thought von Stralick had been getting better, but it had obviously been wishful thinking. The fever and the delirium hadn't broken. For nearly two weeks, von Stralick had been ill, and Aubrey was now starting to worry that the ex-Holmland spy was going to die.

What had begun as a mission to find Dr Tremaine's estate and to confront the rogue sorcerer had become frustration after frustration. Careful initial observation had been necessary, for Aubrey wasn't about to move on the rogue sorcerer without meticulous preparation, but after von Stralick had collapsed with fever, Aubrey had no choice but to nurse his companion. As von Stralick's illness worsened, this meant that Aubrey had much time on his hands – but using this rare gift, he had formulated a daring move that could end with war with a single stroke.

The crag that overlooked Dr Tremaine's retreat was high in the Alemmani Mountains. It caught the wind, no matter from what direction it came, and it constantly reminded Aubrey that this place was the natural home of ice and snow, and probably bears and wolves. ‘Forbidding' was possibly the kindest thing that could be said about it, but its dramatic outlook probably appealed to the rogue sorcerer. That, and the relative isolation.

Their three-hundred-mile cross-country scramble had taken them more than a fortnight. They'd become expert in avoiding Holmland troops, but Aubrey had come to understand that ‘living off the land' sounded altogether grander than the reality, which was actually spending hours scrounging for food and water. He never thought he would have seen the day when his mouth watered at the prospect of the larger of the two grubs they'd found. Occasionally, while pawing at the leaf mould in the darkness of woods, he'd wished he'd studied mycology instead of magic, just so he could have known the difference between the edible mushrooms and the attractive ones that drive people mad.

Dr Tremaine's stronghold was a local landmark. From its position right on the edge of an impressive granite cliff, it had a view over the mountains and the woods that surrounded it, then the open expanses of farmland. The city of Bardenford was perhaps twenty miles away, clearly seen by day or by night. The retreat wasn't cut off, however. A tarmac road had been rammed through the forest, switching backwards and forwards up the face of the mountain until it arrived at the gatehouse. The road was wide enough for supply lorries, and comfortable enough for town cars – including that of the Chancellor, who had visited twice since Aubrey and von Stralick had been there.

Within the walls of the estate were a number of buildings. One clearly housed an electrical generator, from the thick cables and the unceasing whine. Another sported a tall chimney and could be a foundry or furnace of some kind. The purpose of the scatter of other structures – clearly newer than the main house, and perhaps temporary – was uncertain, but Aubrey wouldn't have minded wagering that at least one was a laboratory. The others? Living quarters? Workshops? Prisons?

On their journey, four days after leaving Stalsfrieden behind, it had been von Stralick who had insisted on finding some news. While Aubrey hid in what turned out to be a mosquito-infested bog, von Stralick, after doing his best to improve his bedraggled appearance, strolled into the reasonably sized town of Pagen and bought a newspaper.

Aubrey had been sickened by the triumphant headlines that crowed over his father's humiliation. The more sensationalist newspapers were full of glee at the Prime Minister's disgrace. More correctly, of course, it was Aubrey's disgrace: ‘the traitor son of Albion'. He took some solace in that it confirmed that Caroline and George had arrived home safely, because Sir Darius had implemented Aubrey's plan: he had denounced him before the Holmlanders could publish their photographs.

Aubrey was now, officially, the blackest of black villains in Albion. He was the son of privilege who had turned his back on everything the nation had done for him. He could almost hear the cries for his blood, the press running riot; he only hoped that his father's pre-emptive action meant that he could stand firm, positioning himself as the wronged father of an ungrateful son, and that the public would feel sorry for him.

Aubrey wasn't confident, however, that this would mean that he would be treated as a hero in Holmland. Traitors rarely were and, besides, he was sure that Dr Tremaine had him on a list of people of interest. If he dared to make himself public, a cell was no doubt waiting for him somewhere secret and unofficial.

Or perhaps a more dire fate would be his, to judge from what he'd glimpsed of the activities of Dr Tremaine's retreat.

Aubrey glanced at von Stralick, who had ceased his muttered outpouring and appeared to be sleeping more soundly. The Holmlander's condition had begun as a simple cold, a few days after finding the cave in the crag. It had worsened gradually until he'd collapsed while on surveillance duty. In the ten days since then, Aubrey had been dividing his time between tending him, finding food and water, and working on the spells that could win the war.

Cut off as they were, the lack of information frustrated Aubrey. He was desperate to know what was going on. What about the siege of Divodorum? What were George and Caroline up to? Sophie and Théo?

At least he had some hint about the success of his sabotage at Baron von Grolman's factory in Stalsfrieden. Yesterday, a lorry had made a canvas-shrouded delivery. When it unloaded, Aubrey had been instantly on his feet.

Three Holmland soldiers were needed to manhandle the ominous metal shape from the back of the lorry. They stood it upright on a trolley and it towered over them. It took all their effort, but the monstrous golem-machine hybrid was eventually wheeled into one of the temporary buildings to the north of the main house.

Aubrey had been sure that his efforts to destroy the hideous creations, back in Stalsfrieden, had been successful. The contagious spell would infect golem after golem, embedded as it was in the enhanced coal that was the vital, energising element in the creatures. If the spell hadn't been successful, Dr Tremaine would have hundreds of ghastly mechanised soldiers ready to storm through Allied lines and lead a Holmland assault on Gallia.

But why had a single mechanised golem been brought to Dr Tremaine's retreat?

Movement below had caught Aubrey's eye and, when he had the binoculars focused again, he saw Dr Tremaine striding across from the main house and entering the building where the mechanised golem had been taken.

A tense hour later, Dr Tremaine had shouldered through one of the gates at the rear of the main building, his arms full of metalwork. He strode to the edge of the cliff and, with one disgusted motion, flung the pieces wide. They fell in a glittering arc, but Aubrey had time to see a boxlike head and what was unmistakably a stubby chimney.

Aubrey was relieved. To judge by Dr Tremaine's displeasure, it appeared as if Aubrey's spell had worked. The rogue sorcerer had little patience with anything that didn't live up to his expectations. Having failed a test, the golem suffered the consequences.

In between tending to von Stralick and working on the raft of interlocking spells that he hoped would achieve his goal, more than once his mind had drifted to Caroline and the way she'd farewelled him after the Stalsfrieden mission. He'd examined it from a dozen different points of view, a
hundred
different points of view. He'd probed it, dissected it, weighed and analysed it. Then he'd abandoned any effort at a scientific approach and he began to alternate between wild optimism and unutterable pessimism, both states being totally resistant to evidence. With little effort, he was able to construe Caroline's actions as pity, as irritation, even as forgetfulness, before he'd veer around and start thinking they might be signs of actual affection. This being the conclusion he hoped for most, it was naturally the one he was quickest to discount.

Of course, he'd accepted that his mission – his personal mission to win Caroline – had gone by the board. Matters of the heart were out of his hands, overtaken by matters military and political. Out of his hands? He had to laugh at that, without much humour. As if matters of the heart were ever in his hands.

Wearily Aubrey put aside the spellcraft notebook. He rubbed his eyes, glanced at von Stralick, then at Dr Tremaine's retreat. Even at this time of night, it was alive with lights and activity. He reached for the surveillance notebook, checked his watch and made an entry, then flipped back through the pages of observations he'd made, just in case he could communicate them to the Directorate.

And just in case your spells don't work,
a traitorous voice whispered at the back of his mind.

He lingered over the entries for the people who he'd seen brought to the stronghold. Aubrey had found it hard to believe the number of well-known magicians who were bundled into one of the outbuildings. He recognised Maud Connolly, Parvo Ahonen, Charles Beecher and a score or more other prominent theoreticians and scholars. None of them showed any signs of delight at being there, unless manacles and gags had suddenly become fashion items rather than devices of restraint.

This influx of magical practitioners and theoreticians was alarming, especially when Aubrey added Professor Mansfield and Lanka Ravi to their numbers. Dr Tremaine had mentioned that he had these two luminaries in his keeping, which meant that he was assembling a formidable array of magical talent, but to what end? Aubrey couldn't imagine many of them – the Albionites and Gallians, most obviously – cooperating with the ex-Sorcerer Royal. Was he simply removing them from the possibility of helping the allied cause?

It did explain the disappearances of prominent magical people over the previous few months, and Aubrey's record keeping could help the analysts who pondered these things. More intelligence, more information, pooled together, might throw up a conclusion.

Aubrey had even seen Professor Bromhead, Trismegistus chair of magic at the University of Greythorn for twenty years, when he was first brought to the complex, struggling and kicking. A few days later, Aubrey had seen him in a walled garden to the west of the complex. He'd been wandering about, attended by an armed guard. Aubrey hadn't recognised Bromhead at first and he had focused on the lonely figure simply because of a strange device attached to his face. It was a cross between a muzzle, a helmet and a clamp, a metal and wire contraption enveloping the man's head, but particularly strong around his mouth and jaw. After some careful focusing of the binoculars, Aubrey was finally able to make out who it was, and he understood that at least part of the function of the device was to stop Professor Bromhead from speaking – and to stop him from casting a spell.