Abaddon's Gift

Chapter Twenty-Five

Maeno was surprised when he entered Wyver's office before class and found Bo Belus sitting in one of the chairs.

Wyver was the spell mage who sat the university's coven. He was older than most of the professors and, rumour had it, would be replaced with Shorel before Maeno left university. Wyver's mind was as sharp as ever, but as a mage aged, the chances of them having an incident rose.

At a certain point, not even Amos could employ the man even if he was as bright as the day he first stepped foot on the grounds.

"Maeno of the Cape, you are late," Wyver said, his thick voice crackling as Maeno came to a stiffened stop.

"I apologize," Maeno said, his voice tilting up in question because he wasn't certain what Wyver meant.

"You should have come to me last year upon acceptance into the school, Maeno of the Cape."

"It's a little disturbing that you keep adding that to my name," Maeno said.

"Yes," Bo said. "It's meant to be. Have a seat."

Maeno took the empty seat and frowned at Bo, then Wyver. The professor grunted and motioned to Bo.

"This is a peer of mine," Wyver said. "He wears the trappings of a student you well know. He, too, is late. You will bring him to me when next you visit."

With a sidelong glance at Bo, Maeno took in a little breath, the breath they taught students at the end of first year to center themselves in their magic.

"Unwind him," Wyver said.

"I beg your pardon?" Maeno asked.

"Unwind me," Bo said. "The illusion. Find it, break it, unwind it."

"I've studied illusions on paper only," Maeno said.

"We know," the two said at once.

Maeno looked between the two of them. He didn't have magic of his own; he couldn't reach for the symbols the way they could.

"Do you require pen and paper?" Wyver asked.

"Yes," Maeno said.

Wyver slipped both across to Maeno. He sketched the basic spell on the corner of the page to tap into Wyver's magic because he had no idea who sat beside him. When the spell should have launched, should have given him a thread of magic to use, he found nothing at all.

He took it in stride, but wouldn't tap into the one sitting beside him still. That might have been a trap, for all he knew. Instead, he wrote redirection into the spell and, as he waited, he sketched out the search and threads to pull everything back. He added to it a trigger mechanism.

Every illusion had a trigger that turned it on and off. Maeno's spells pulled in magic from any passing mage, which was why he waited. Once the spell found a mage with magic, it dragged enough to trigger the search spell, which wound into the illusion and found the trigger. The first spell then retriggered, finding another mage, slipping into the second to turn the switch on the illusion spell.

No result.

Maeno took that as meaning that the illusion spell had protection around it. Protection could vary from very complicated to very simple, though he doubted it was simple because it was a test. He added a spell to the page to test for the barrier.

It returned a false response.

There was no barrier around the trigger or woven into the illusion.

He tapped the page several times as he thought.

Maeno looked over at Wyver, then to the one who sat beside him.