Word of Honour (24 page)

Aubrey crouched, panting. George picked himself
up and stumbled toward him. Caroline eased closer.
'Now what?'

'Nothing good.' Aubrey tried to look in all directions
at once. When would the shrine realise that it could drop
the entire ceiling and get rid of them that way?
They were intruders. He had to convince the place
that they belonged there.

The rear wall of lurched. It shuddered, stopped, then
began to grind toward them.

Helplessly, they backed away. Aubrey's stomach was an
empty, yawning hole the size of all creation.

'Time to pull something out of the bag, Aubrey,'
George muttered.

Aubrey had a solution at his fingertips. He was sure
that a variation of his identity spell, the one he'd used in
Lutetia, would work. Not just identity, but texture and
flavour of identity could be captured by the spell. He was
sure he could cloak them in enough 'Romanness' to
placate the shrine's awareness.

But he couldn't use magic.

George shouted and pushed Aubrey aside. A mass of
stone fell, sending up a cloud of dust. Aubrey cannoned
into Caroline. She twisted, keeping her balance, but
Aubrey lurched to one side and slammed his head against
the wall. Black streaks clawed at his vision.

Through his grogginess, movement caught his attention.
Behind George, on the other side of the room, a
huge mouth had formed and was snapping at him. Made
of the stone blocks of the wall, its lips flapped and snarled
obscenely. George cried out and recoiled, but the floor
beneath his feet bucked, throwing him straight at the
hungry teeth.

A few yards away, Caroline was on her back, scrambling
away from a hole that had opened in front of her.
The floor tilted, doing its best to slide her into the gap.

Aubrey flung off the last vestiges of terror. His friends
were in danger. Nothing else mattered. He had to save
them, even if it cost him.

The spell leaped to his lips, as if it had been waiting for
the chance. He began to chant.

The spell was dense; each individual term was short,
but the linking and sequencing needed to establish
identity was demanding. Sweat sprang to his forehead as
he spat out each Chaldean syllable, biting off each one
as clearly as he could. The spell writhed on his tongue,
having a life of its own. It looked for any chance to baffle
him, to go wrong, or to tease him into slurring or
mispronouncing.

He refused to be beaten. Each element came to him as
he needed it, whole and clear. He shunted them to his
mouth and marched them off, not allowing any mistakes.

Finally, he slammed out the final syllable, his signature
and conclusion.

All strength vanished from his legs. He grunted and,
boneless, he slumped to the floor.

He watched, blurrily, unable to move, hoping he'd
done enough and trying to remember another spell, just
in case he hadn't, but his mind was leaden. Nothing came
to him.

All movement in the shrine – apart from Caroline and
George's desperate efforts to avoid their traps – ceased.
They scrambled to the centre of the room, breathing
hard, eyes darting.

The mouth in the wall shrank, shifted, then disappeared.
The stone made itself whole again. The gap in
the floor closed up, the stone blocks rumbled back into
place. In the far corner, stairs projected from the wall,
floor and ceiling.

'Aubrey!' George called and hurried to his side. 'What
have you done?'

Aubrey shook his head, then he bit down as a sharp
spasm seized him.

His body and soul were coming apart.

A
UBREY DOUBLED UP, HIS KNEES ALMOST TOUCHING
his chin. He hissed, trying to let out the agony.
Dissolution had never been this acutely painful before.

He felt George's hand on his shoulder. 'Steady, old man.'

'Trouble, George,' he managed to gasp. His vision
wavered and blurred before settling. He felt as if he were
being jabbed all over with icy needles.

'I gathered as much. Here, can you make it to the
wall?'

Caroline brought the lantern close. 'What's going on?'

Aubrey gave a weak laugh. 'This is what I didn't want
you to see.'

'Your condition?' She glanced at George. 'I know, you
know.'

'Magic.'
Pause, gather breath – not too deep
. 'I convinced
the shrine that we belonged here.' He shuddered as
another wave of pain rolled through him, his soul
wrenching at the confines of his body with enough force
to make him nauseated. He used his magical awareness
and wasn't surprised to see that the golden cord was
shining brighter than ever.

The mystical golden cord. Every soul was bound by
two aspects of the golden cord. One disappeared into
the portal that leads to the true death. The other linked
the soul to the body. When the time was right, the
golden cord that linked body and soul melted, and
the surviving cord guided the soul to the true death.

It was the natural order of things. The order that
Aubrey had messed up with his experiment.

His time was not due, but the true death called him
constantly, tugging his soul towards the final journey.
Now, its summons was greater than ever.

George eased him down so his back was to the wall,
near the stone table.

Caroline crouched and held the lantern so it wouldn't
shine in his eyes. A wisp of hair had escaped the knot
she'd tied at the back of her head. She pushed it away
irritably, but with such grace and economy of movement
that Aubrey nearly wept.

'You idiot,' she said. 'What have you done?'

'That's all right,' he croaked. 'Any time.'

'What?'

'Sorry. I thought you were thanking me for saving
you.'

She thought about this for a moment. 'No. I was
upbraiding you.'

'Ah. That's what it was.' Aubrey closed his eyes for a
moment. The darkness behind his eyelids swelled and
surged in time with his pulse.

'Is there anything you can do?' she asked.

'I hope so.' He concentrated on his breathing. It
seemed to help.

'Is it like this all the time?'

'Like this?'
Small breath in, tiny breath out
. 'No. Not all
the time. My hold has been loosened.'

'What caused it then?'

'Magic. Strains me. Weakens my grip.' He probed at his
teeth with his tongue, checking to see if any were loose.

'I see. You tried not using magic, didn't you?'

'You noticed?'

'It was as if you'd stopped talking.'

'Ah. That noticeable.' Aubrey took a breath, a deep one
that didn't hurt, and he saw that as a good sign. He counted
another ten painless breaths, and then – hesitantly – felt he
may have things under control. Apart from the iron spike
being pounded into his head. And the tremors in his
hands. And a hundred other small symptoms that he was
going to address by hoping they'd go away.

'Indeed.' She studied him. 'You can't stop doing magic,
Aubrey. It's too important to you.'

'That's what I discovered.'

'So we'll just have to manage you. Somehow.'

She rose to her feet in one lithe movement. Aubrey
followed her by tilting his head back and staring, unmindful
of how this made him look.

Did she say 'we'?

Before he could query her, George spoke up. 'Aubrey.
I think you should have a look at this.'

Caroline offered him a hand, but Aubrey didn't think
his dignity could stand it so he dragged himself up via
the wall.

His soul was uneasy, but at least it wasn't battering
at its confines any more. His head was tight and he
thought he was slightly feverish. He resigned himself
to being on the roundabout of feeling out of sorts once
again.

Aubrey limped to where George was crouched in the
corner of the room. 'What is it?'

'A stone tablet, broken into fragments,' George said.
'The writing has been defaced on all of them, so it's
unintelligible. Except for this bit.'

He held up a piece of stone, roughly five-sided, about
the size of his hand. It was covered with minute script,
in three distinct bands.

'It's Roman?' Caroline asked.

'As the expert here on Roman history, I can confidently
say that the writing at the top is Latin. Most of it.
Of a sort, anyway,' George said. 'But there are two other
sorts of writing. This spiky one in the middle, and that
mess at the bottom. Or are they pictures?'

Aubrey squinted. The writing was almost microscopic,
and the light wasn't the best, but he could make out
some sections. 'The middle one, the spiky one, is cuneiform.
Late cuneiform, the writing of the Sumerians.
I think the Latin section is a translation of the cuneiform,
or the other way around.' He stared. 'They're both talking
about magic.'

'Magic, eh? That'd fit. I'd say that this tablet was
broken as part of a ritual,' George said. 'See the black
soot on the other bits? Someone poured oil over them
and lit it.'

'Whatever for?' Caroline asked. Her eyes gleamed with
interest.

'Who knows? Maybe sending a message to the gods,
or someone in the afterlife. Or a ritual attempt at destroying
them. Educated guesswork, this is.'

Aubrey leaned closer. 'If the top two scripts are translations
of each other, it would stand to reason that the
bottom one is as well.'

'Interesting.'Caroline leaned on Aubrey and peered at
the stone. He nearly buckled at the knees but managed
to hold himself up. 'I've seen something like it before,'
she said.

'Really?' George said. 'Where?'

'In the museum. The Rashid Stone.'

For a moment, excitement drove away Aubrey's
terrible weariness. 'You're right. The messy script. That's
the Rashid Stone script!'
'Good Lord,' George said, and his voice was hushed,
almost reverential. 'You understand that this means
we could crack the mystery of the Rashid Stone?
After two hundred years of trying, we stumble across a
touchstone.'

'It's more than that,' Aubrey said. 'This could be an
early treatise on magic. Maybe the earliest we have.'

Aubrey's heart pounded, but with exhilaration this
time, not fear. The few bits and pieces he could make out
suggested that stone was dealing with fundamental
aspects of magic – where it came from, how it was influenced
by people, how to shape it to one's will, and some
terms that seemed to be about city magic, which was a
puzzle to him, a small one in the larger puzzle of the
stone itself.

If the unknown language was early, primeval, could it
be closer to a source language, something which could
serve as a universal language of magic? He blew on the
stone, trying to clear the dust, and more characters
emerged.

Death. Protection. Soul. Three cuneiform characters
became clear and he nearly dropped the stone. He
checked the Latin inscription above and it seemed to
echo the Sumerian. The corresponding characters in the
unknown script were distinctive, but puzzling.

'I need to study this. I need to talk to Professor
Mansfield.' Aubrey rubbed his thumb on a soot-stained
section. Was that the Latin word for 'connection'? He
tried to remember, but his Latin was more than rusty;
it was badly corroded and in need of major restoration.

'Not now, I think,' Caroline said. 'We have a mission
ahead.'

Aubrey was torn, but he reminded himself that Maggie
and her Crew were still missing – and Dr Tremaine was
still out there. This could wait. 'Of course.'

'I'll keep it safe,' George said and he wrapped it in his
handkerchief before slipping it into his pocket. 'There.
Safe as the Bank of Albion. Or safer, really.'

They hurried from the tomb and quickly worked their
way through the marble vault. After a scramble out of the
Roman ruins, where Aubrey delightfully had to assist
Caroline, they were back in the main tunnel. Once there,
Aubrey leaned against the wall for a moment while
George and Caroline argued about the way ahead. With
glum certainty, he realised that his magical expenditure
had already come at a cost. He ached, and shivering
threatened to seize hold of him.

As he tried to steady himself, he realised that, for the
present, this was his lot. He couldn't stop using magic.
It was like deciding not to use one of his arms –
awkward, difficult and potentially dangerous.

Live with it
, he thought,
and live long enough to find a way
to sort things out.

He controlled his shivering through an act of will and
straightened to join his friends.

The main tunnel trended upwards for a few minutes,
then it opened out into a larger tunnel: a wide, open
drive. It was long, and wide as a boulevard, with some
bracing timbers as well as the magically stabilised earth.
Along one side of the excavated area Aubrey could make
out the foundations of buildings, the first reminder he'd
had of the world overhead for some time.

Sitting in the middle of the underground boulevard,
twenty or thirty yards ahead, was an elaborate machine.

George and Caroline stared. 'I think we've found our
tunneller,' Aubrey murmured.

The machine was the size of an omnibus, completely
enclosed in smooth steel apart from a window at the
front. A large auger projected from the front, twice
the height of a man, and it was surrounded by immense
electric lights in wire cages. Large metal plates ran around
all four wheels and Aubrey was startled to see that these
plates were connected, like links in a chain. He squatted,
taking the lantern from Caroline as she peered at the
welding, and inspected the undercarriage of the contraption,
growing increasingly excited at what he was
finding.

By the lantern light, he saw that the cabin had a single
seat. No room for passengers; this was a solo craft. Levers,
knobs, switches were arranged within reaching distance.
All were mysterious, unlabelled except for one brass
handle – 'Ignition'. Automatically, Aubrey tugged on it
but was not surprised when he found it locked – magically
locked, to judge from the tingling in his fingertips.

A set of three large brass rings – each as tall as George
– jutted from the rear of the machine, one behind the
other. Hundreds of silver rods ran around the perimeter
of each ring and linked them together so that they were
a handspan apart. When Aubrey touched the rings, he felt
the magical residue and immediately knew what they
were for.

'They belch out the stabilising sheaths.' He stood and
wiped his hands on his filthy trousers. 'The auger digs,
the machine pushes aside the earth, and the rings shoot
out stabilising magic that locks the earth into place.'
He shook his head with admiration. 'It's a masterpiece.'

'A Dr Tremaine construction?' Caroline said without
a trace of admiration.

'I'd say so. Dr Tremaine is a man for elegant machines.'

'So where
is
he?' Caroline demanded. 'If this is his
machine, shouldn't he be nearby?'

The thought gave Aubrey a momentary alarm. Then
he placed his palm against the cowling of the tunneller.
'It's cold. Hasn't been used for some time. Dr Tremaine
could be anywhere.'

Aubrey walked along the length of the tunneller, then
around to the far side. He lifted the lantern and faced the
mighty foundations of a building.

Thrusting down from the overburden were large stone
blocks, reinforced with steel bars driven through each
and bolted, linking them together. They rested on solid
bedrock. Aubrey looked up. The weight resting on these
foundations meant that they were immoveable, part of
the rock itself, as if they'd grown there. 'He's excavated
right along the foundations of our Bank of Albion. I'd say
the Vault Room is through here.'

George broke off from studying the tunneller's gearing
and joined Aubrey's inspection of the foundations. 'How
thick are they?'

Aubrey cast his mind back to his day in the vault with
his father. 'Ten, twenty feet? There's no getting through
that lot.'

'Then how is Dr Tremaine imagining he'll waltz in?'
Caroline said.

Aubrey looked along the length of the foundations.
'Does the tunnel continue past the bank?'

'It does. And that doesn't answer my question.'

'No, but it's a step toward answering it.'

Aubrey was sure he was close, that answers were
dancing just a few inches beyond his fingertips. He was
tired, aching, filthy and suffering from the disunity of
his body and soul – but he was buoyed by an urgency
that came from his desire to succeed whatever the
circumstances.

He walked along the length of the foundations. It
wasn't long before he was on the edge of Caroline's
lantern light and entering the realm of shadows. He
tripped on a sheaf of tarred wires that emerged from
the earth and vanished into the darkness ahead, but he
barely noticed them.

Another tunnel, at right angles to the main shaft, had
been bored along the side of the bank's foundations.

The tunnel mouth became clearer, shadows fleeing.
'Someone wants to see as much of the bank as he can,'
Caroline said. She held the lantern up, and Aubrey could
see the calculation in her eyes. 'Was he trying to find a
weak spot?'

'In the bank?' George said, joining them. 'No-one's
managed to break into the Bank of Albion. Ever.'

'Dr Tremaine is a man for firsts,' Aubrey said. He
scuffed at the earth of this side tunnel. It wasn't as
compacted as the main tunnel. Was it more recent?