Blaze of Glory

by Michael Pryor

  Aubrey spread his hands. 'It was tried, soon after the fire. Stones were carted away, hauled to make fireplaces, paths, new homes. But ill luck befell anyone who took the stones, and it usually involved fire. Houses burned down, people fell into the coals, things like that. The stones had a habit of finding their way back to the ruins.'

  'Are you saying there's a curse on St Agnes'?'

  'So the story goes. Whether it's true isn't important. People believe it, which is enough to ensure that the stones are still on the site where they fell. The burnt church.'

  Aubrey felt uncomfortable because he knew he wasn't telling George everything about the burnt church. If he had, he was sure George would refuse to go there because the burnt church was the dumping ground for failed magical experiments of the worst kind.

  Aubrey had stumbled on it in his ramblings. In his dealings with the folk of the Mire, few spoke of the burnt church, even though it was a prominent landmark in the area. Those who did speak of it did so in hushed tones. Naturally, Aubrey's curiosity was aroused by this. He was compelled to investigate.

  What he found there, late one night, appalled him. In the caves and grottoes far underneath the site were the cast-off failures from forbidden magical experiments. Twisted abominations, these monstrous creations were the worst results of insane tinkerings with spells that twisted bodies and minds. They had once been human, but were now horrors.

  Such experiments were, of course, forbidden by the Sorcerer Royal and the Ministry of Magic, but there were always those who went outside the boundaries in the search for power. As Aubrey had with his exploration of death magic. He could understand the urge to explore the arcane regions of magic, the need to try to make sense of the unexplained and the challenging, but he despised those who abused others to achieve their ends. Aubrey had gone into forbidden territory, but he had risked only himself.

  And I'm paying the price, he thought grimly.

  'The Holmlanders are going to meet there tonight?' George said. 'Let's tell Sir Darius!'

  Aubrey was torn, then nodded. After the incident in the library, he felt being open might be the best policy.

  They hurried downstairs, only to run into Lady Fitzwilliam. 'Where's Father?' Aubrey asked.

  Her mouth was tight. 'He spoke on the telephone for some time. Then he left to see the Magisterium at Darnleigh House.'

  LUNCH WAS SUBDUED AND AFTER IT AUBREY AND GEORGE waited for news. George read and Aubrey tried to busy himself with researching his condition, but found it hard to focus. Every time the bell at the front door sounded, he leapt to his feet. Whenever the telephone rang, he opened his door and tried to overhear the conversation.

  Lady Fitzwilliam, George and Aubrey ate a light meal as evening drew in. Afterwards, Aubrey sat there, peeling an orange with a silver fruit knife. He looked up at his mother, who was sipping a glass of dessert wine. 'Why don't you ring Darnleigh House?' he suggested. 'It's been long enough.'

  She looked at him. Then she put down her glass, nodded once, rose and left the room.

  It was only a moment later when she returned. Her face was pale, but her voice was firm. She stood at the head of the table. 'They said that no-one at Darnleigh House has seen Sir Darius Fitzwilliam all day.' She paused to compose herself. 'We'll meet in the library in one hour to decide what to do.'

  Aubrey sprang to his feet. 'Why the delay? We need to act now. They have Father!'

  Lady Fitzwilliam reached out and put a hand on Aubrey's arm. He subsided, still grumbling. 'I want Miss Hepworth here,' she said.

  'Why?' George asked. 'What can she add to our plans?'

  'We shouldn't bring others into this,' Aubrey added. 'It's not safe for them, or for us. We can trust ourselves, but others?'

  Lady Fitzwilliam's expression was one of intense determination and, in that instant, Aubrey could easily imagine her leading a line of bearers through a swamp, or dealing with rogue traders in an outpost far from the rule of law. 'You don't know Caroline Hepworth very well, do you?' she said.

  Automatically, Aubrey began to deny this, offering details about her family, her schooling, her background, but his mother shook her head.

  'That's not what I mean. I've only known her for a day, and I've found out what a resourceful, capable, surprising young woman she is. For instance, she's certainly a better shot than you, Aubrey. And she is an expert in unarmed combat.'

  George couldn't help himself. 'A girl?'

  Aubrey was silent. He remembered grappling with Caroline at Penhurst. She was strong, quick, and her movements were practised. He had no difficulty in believing his mother.

  'Her father had many friends and colleagues. Some even came from overseas to work with the professor. Master Wu was one of them, bringing his techniques of Eastern magic to our country and collaborating with the professor on groundbreaking advances. He also taught Caroline Eastern ways of disarming armed opponents and disabling attackers. When she visited me at the museum, she demonstrated on a museum guard. Perkins was quite impressed, when he regained consciousness.'

  'Ah, well, I see.' George subsided.

  'She has a part in this,' Lady Fitzwilliam went on. 'Her father's notebook is still missing. I believe she wants to see this through.'

  'I'm sure she would,' Aubrey said.

  Lady Fitzwilliam dispatched Harris to organise Stubbs, the driver. Barely half an hour passed before Caroline was on the doorstep, accompanied by her mother.

  Despite this unexpected turn of events, Lady Fitzwilliam was gracious, leading them to the large drawing room near the front door. Aubrey and George followed.

  The drawing room was Lady Fitzwilliam's favourite room in the house. It was crowded with fine furniture, while a large landscape took up most of one wall. An ancient spinet stood in one corner. Aubrey had never heard it played. These items were familiar, comforting to most guests. What made the room unusual was the hundreds of items Lady Fitzwilliam had brought back from her overseas expeditions. The walls were hung with tribal masks and primitive weaponry. Shelves were crammed with statues of earthenware, stone, jade and semi-precious gems. Botanical specimens under domed glass stood on bookshelves. Flamboyant feathers burst from vases. Urns and vases of disturbing shapes were arranged next to carvings that had once protected whole villages from drought. The room was a riot, a carnival, a celebration of the exotic and the outlandish, full of vibrant colours and articles of mysterious origin. Visitors usually stared wide-eyed at the jumble. Aubrey knew his mother enjoyed the unsettling effect it had, and he was impressed when Mrs Hepworth and Caroline took it all in without comment.

  'Mrs Hepworth,' his mother said, once everyone was seated, 'I'm pleased you came. Forgive me, I should have asked you in the first place.'

  Mrs Hepworth was wearing many layers of brightly coloured silk. A pearl-green scarf was loosely bound around her hair. She inclined her head. 'Indeed,' she said. 'I'm normally not one to stand on outmoded ideas of societal norms, but when my daughter is summoned to the home of Sir Darius Fitzwilliam in the dead of night, I suppose I am entitled to feel curious.'

  A tsk of exasperation escaped Caroline's lips. 'It's not the dead of night, Mother. Don't be so dramatic.'

  Mrs Hepworth smiled a little at that. 'I'm sorry, my darling.'

  'Mrs Hepworth –'

  'Ophelia, please,' Mrs Hepworth drawled. 'Everyone calls me Ophelia.'

  'Ophelia. I'll have someone bring you tea in the parlour, if you wish. The four of us have matters to discuss.'

  Mrs Hepworth looked at the door. Then she looked at Aubrey, Lady Fitzwilliam and George. 'Something is seriously wrong, isn't it?'

  Lady Fitzwilliam sighed. 'Sir Darius. He's missing.'

  Caroline put a hand to her mouth. Lady Fitzwilliam reached for a bell pull. When Maud appeared, she said, 'Tea, for five, in my drawing room.' Maud left and Lady Fitzwilliam turned to Mrs Hepworth. 'It seems you're now part of our war council.'

  AUBREY PERFORMED HIS RECITATION OF THE EVENTS OF THE last few days,
this time for Mrs Hepworth, with an addendum for Caroline concerning the disappearance of Sir Darius. He left nothing out, but he did it with a sinking heart, certain that the unvarnished account would mean Mrs Hepworth's forbidding him from seeing Caroline again.

  When he had finished, Aubrey busied himself with serving the tea, leaving George to answer the inevitable questions. Aubrey chimed in when it suited him, but he concentrated on offering lemon biscuits to the ladies.

  Finally, when all clarifying questions were asked and answered, Mrs Hepworth looked at her daughter and patted her hand. 'I can see that they need you, my darling. They may have little chance of success without your skills to help them.'

  George nearly choked on the biscuit he was eating. Aubrey's eyes widened. 'You don't mind her going with us?' he asked.

  Mrs Hepworth smiled. 'I find modern society to be a limiting force, diminishing the scope of human endeavour. I utterly reject the moderate, the safe, the comfortable. To venture is to gain. Both Lionel and I agreed on this, which, paradoxically, led to many arguments.' Her gaze softened. 'But we knew we wished to raise a daughter who would live a free life. We wanted her to reach for the stars, for that is the most certain way to attain them.'

  'Trust your children,' Lady Fitzwilliam murmured.

  'Of course. Trust them. They will fall, occasionally, but they will fly.'

  Lady Fitzwilliam applauded. 'You, naturally, are a Suffragette?'

  'What intelligent person isn't?'

  Lady Fitzwilliam looked at Caroline. 'Do you understand what you're becoming involved with?'

  'No. But I doubt that anyone here really understands what we're facing.'

  'Holmland. Plotters and conspirators. And the Magisterium – which may be against us or for us,' Aubrey said. 'We cannot count on anyone.'

  'Aubrey,' said Lady Fitzwilliam, 'what do you propose as our first course of action?'

  'George and I have uncovered a secret message, similar to one that summoned the Holmlanders to the Society for Non-magical Fitness in Greythorn, where they were met by the Magisterium. It indicates a meeting in the Mire, tonight.' He frowned. 'George and I planned to attend. Disguised, of course.'

  'Where did you see this message?' Mrs Hepworth asked.

  Aubrey explained about the agony columns and how they'd been used to relay secret instructions.

  'So who placed the message?' Mrs Hepworth asked. 'The one that lured the Holmlanders to that Fitness Society?'

  'Ah.' Aubrey paused, finger in the air. The Holmlanders could have put the code in the newspaper, unaware that a trap was waiting for them. The Magisterium? No, their set-up at the Society for Non-magical Fitness indicated that they were simply prepared to wait for their prey, staffing the reception area just in case innocent visitors dropped in – as they had.

  Aubrey had a disturbing thought. He'd cracked the cipher message. Had someone else? Someone who wanted to orchestrate a confrontation between the Holmlanders and the Magisterium?

  'I'm not sure who placed that message,' he admitted. 'But I'm not sure it's important at this stage.'

  Mrs Hepworth frowned. 'But why would the Holmlanders pay any attention to a second ciphered message if the first led them to a trap?'

  Aubrey could see that Caroline did not inherit her intelligence solely from her father. 'Excellent point,' he said. 'I was coming to that.'

  'And those vile pamphlets,' George said. 'What were they doing at that place? What had the Holmlanders to gain from trying to ruin your father's reputation?'

  He mentally thanked George for bowling up an easy one, a nice long hop outside off stump. 'Father is the leading voice for resisting Holmland aggression. When he wins the election, Holmland will have a much more difficult time in achieving its aims for an empire. Ruining his reputation is a simple way to make sure that doesn't happen.'

  'So,' Mrs Hepworth said, 'the Holmlanders appear well mixed up in this, and decidedly up to no good. But why would they traipse off to the Mire tonight? And why do you feel you have to be there? How does that help your father?'

  Lady Fitzwilliam patted Mrs Hepworth on the arm. 'Thank you, Ophelia. You've cut to the heart of the matter.' She looked at her son. 'Aubrey?'

  Aubrey stood, facing his mother, George, Caroline and Mrs Hepworth. They looked at him with expressions of interest, hope, caution and worry, but also a desire to do something instead of waiting, passively, for news. It was a desire he well understood. In all circumstances, he preferred to take matters into his own hands, to forge his own path. He was not a log, drifting downstream towards the waterfall. He was a fish, fighting the current with all his might. Even if he was dragged over the edge, he'd be struggling all the way down to the rocks.

  The attempted assassination of the Crown Prince. The Black Beast of Penhurst. The murderous shade at the professor's workshop. Powerful magic was at the heart of these events, powerful magic of a new and revolutionary kind. Getting to the bottom of this puzzle could help his country and his father, but it could also help him in finding an answer to his condition.

  A solution was close, but he just needed some time.

  He looked at the expectant faces in front of him. 'What do you think?' he said to them, opening the floodgates.

  Immediately, four people started to talk at once, with their theories of who did what to whom, where and when. Argument and counter-argument, polite but forthright, bounced from one to the other as explanations grew more and more tangled.

  Aubrey began to pace, thinking.

  The golem. The Black Beast. The shade. The Magisterium. Banford Park. Holmland. The stolen notebook. Professor Hepworth. The pamphlets. His father's disappearance. He needed to put them together and make the links into a chain.

  The others in the room ignored him, enmeshed in elaborate constructions of their own.

  He rubbed his hands together, then seized a small brass box from a vase stand. Let that be the golem, he thought. He dragged over a side table. On the way, he grabbed an onyx cube, a stone die, two marble pestles, a crystal hemisphere, a tiny book with a red velvet cover, a music box, a silk fez and a tobacco pouch. Humming, he arranged them on the smooth table, one on top of the other, shifting them around in an irregular lattice – first a wall, then a mound, then two columns spanned by the red velvet book. He gazed at the structure, but hardly saw it.

  He cleared his throat. The discussion died down, not without some reluctance, but soon the others were looking at him.

  'Father went to the Magisterium building, Darnleigh House,' he said. 'If they have him, he's still there. But if he were intercepted along the way, by Holmlanders who are eager to remove him from the political scene, as we've established, they have him. It is urgent, therefore, that we find these Holmlanders. The best hope – the only hope – we have of finding them is to go to the Mire tonight. If they think their cipher is compromised, they won't arrive. If they think it's safe, they'll come.'

  'And lead us to Sir Darius,' George concluded.

  'And if he's in Darnleigh House?' Caroline asked.

  'Mother,' Aubrey said, 'if you don't hear from us by noon tomorrow, I want you to call Bertie. Let him know that you think the Magisterium has Father.'

  Lady Fitzwilliam looked as if she wanted to argue with this, but she changed her mind. 'I will.' She pinned Aubrey with her gaze. 'Find him, Aubrey. I don't care how, but go and bring him back home.'

  'I will.'

  Lady Fitzwilliam took Mrs Hepworth's arm. They left, talking in low voices. Caroline followed.

  'You coming, old man?' George asked.

  'In a minute.'

  Alone, Aubrey put his hands together, satisfied. He was going to find his father. Nothing would stop him from that. It wouldn't matter who had him, Aubrey would find him.

  He turned to go and grinned wryly at the edifice he'd built on the table. It had helped him think, and it wasn't a bad construction at all, considering what he'd had to work with. It was firm and solid. Solid enough, anyway. He wouldn't want to nudg
e it just there, for instance, because it could get a little shaky. He rubbed his chin. Maybe it did need a little support on one side.

  He looked around and his gaze landed on a small, dark object that was hidden behind some white plumes from a plant his mother had brought back from South Arenta. It was perfect.

  He paused when he had it in his hand. It was wooden, no bigger than his thumb, made from a dense, black timber so finely grained that the whole figure seemed to be looped and whorled, as if made from a whirlwind. The figure was only vaguely human, with the merest hint of limbs and a head. The face had no features.

  He slid it in between the onyx cube and the fez. It fitted perfectly and stabilised the whole construction.

  Aubrey left the room, still thinking.

  Twenty

  LADY FITZWILLIAM OFFERED MRS HEPWORTH A PLACE to stay for the night. After some discussion, she agreed. Aubrey watched as they went up the stairs. 'And so to the Mire,' he said to Caroline and George.

  'The Mire, at midnight?' Caroline shook her head. 'We must be on our mettle.'

  'Even on our mettle, we need some help.'

  'Jack Figg?' George said.

  'Yes. And it's time for Tommy Sparks, too.'

  George grimaced and glanced at Caroline. 'You think that's wise?'

  'We can't go looking like this. Tommy's well known. He moves easily through the Mire.'

  Caroline crossed her arms and glared. 'I refuse to go any further until you two stop speaking in riddles.'

  Aubrey considered this. 'Perhaps we need to show you what we're about.'

  While Caroline and George waited, Aubrey went to his dressing room. His heart was beating faster. He found the box at the rear of an upper shelf.

  Tommy Sparks was inside.

  A bowler hat with a frayed brim and scuffed crown. A long, patched jacket which had once been brown. Flannel trousers. Boots with new soles, but holes in the uppers.

  As Aubrey put on this disreputable costume, he felt the thrill of release, becoming Tommy Sparks. Being this rogue gave him the chance to escape from the responsibilities of being Aubrey Fitzwilliam, once heir to the Duchy of Brayshire.