Chapter Thirteen
Maggie busied herself with her coffee, hoping the cool liquid would help the blush creeping up her neck. When it didn’t work, she avoided Taliesin’s confident smirk by looking at the spread-out documents, lab results, and ancient books open on the table.
He had even brought a test tube filled with a viscous liquid that could only be pall slime.
She picked it up, running her thumb over the rune keeping the pall contained within the glass, and turned it over to watch the shimmering lavender liquid move from end to end.
It was almost pretty when it wasn’t trying to kill you.
“Is your arm bothering you?” Taliesin asked, and she looked down to where she was absentmindedly rubbing where the ghoul had gripped her with its long, knobby fingers.
He had asked after her arm every morning that week.
She pushed up her sleeve and showed him what remained.
It had faded significantly, with just a hint of red lingering.
Her skin was itchy and tight as it healed, but it was more of an annoyance than any true discomfort.
“No. It’s much better,” she said. After a moment, she added quietly, “Thank you for asking.”
As she tugged her sleeve back down, he gestured to the documents on the table. “As promised, this is everything I know about the pall so far.” He handed her a stack of file folders. “It will be helpful to have another set of eyes on the data.”
She opened the first folder. The document on top was a summary of the chemical makeup of the pall.
She wasn’t surprised to see that it was strangely potent, composed of an unusually high amount of ectoplasm.
Taliesin had at least had the sense to set up monitoring equipment, which showed regular off-the-charts electromagnetic readings and dangerously high levels of the unseen elements.
Barometric pressure for a full square mile was off-kilter, with readings that explained the low-hanging clouds and drizzling rain that had plagued Galloway in the days after the pall fell.
“How far out are the effects being felt?”
He pointed to a weather radar chart showing a small circle over Galloway.
“It’s a small section of town. Essentially the one square mile around Ilex Hall, which includes a small section of downtown Galloway.
I consulted with one of the botanists, Dr. Silva, and she assured me that there aren’t widespread ecological implications, especially if we employ mitigation efforts if this drags on through summer to protect plant growth on campus and in Galloway itself. It was one of my first concerns.”
Before she could even ask, Taliesin shuffled the papers again and produced various reports about fantasmia sightings. Maps showing increased activity, data charts, eyewitness accounts, all carefully sorted. The man was organized, and, for some reason, that made her skin flush hot.
“Unfortunately, we are seeing elevated fantasmia activity for about fifteen square miles around Ilex Hall. It’s most prominent in the towns along the edge of the Wilds.
” He pointed to a stat showing the incidence of ghoul and banshee sightings.
As expected, they were being driven from their nests in the forest, attracted to the pull of the pall.
He went on. “Wraith sightings have increased, too, but I am less worried about them. Since your run-in with the ghoul, wardsmiths have been called in from Atlantia and Delphi to strengthen wards on public buildings and private residences within these perimeters.” Maggie narrowed her eyes, but Taliesin answered her question before she could say it out loud.
“For free.” He cleared his throat. “We should have done it sooner, but I had hoped to have the situation under control before now.”
Maggie put down the papers she was holding and fanned out another stack. “Can I see the dissipation spells you’ve tried so far?”
He flipped through documents until he found what she was looking for.
Unsurprisingly, his equations were elegant.
They were detailed and complex, inclusive of all the variables she had thought of and a few she hadn’t.
Though she would like someone else to confirm the calculations were correct, she suspected there wouldn’t be a mistake among them.
He reached across the table and pointed to two of the runes. “These I tried with a decoction of gold dust,” he explained. “I found a few promising studies about gold as a conduit for the unseen elements, but it didn’t make a difference.”
Maggie looked at the papers thoughtfully. “And your incantations?”
“I modified the standard dissipation spell to account for the size and severity of the pall, but I’m sure you’d be able to make them even better.”
Sure enough, as she looked over his variations of the dissipation incantation, she could see several places where she would make small, subtle changes. Little translation differences that, in the grand scheme of things, probably wouldn’t change the outcome of the spell.
Even with its size and severity, dissipating this pall should have been simple. Dissipation spells, like banishments, were legacy incantations that had been around as long as there had been magic. Taliesin’s calculations were impeccable. His runes expertly drawn. It didn’t make sense.
Finally, she couldn’t avoid it anymore. She had to know. “Dr. Taliesin,” she began, and he frowned slightly, but she went on. “I need to know. What spell caused this? Class three spells are banned on Hawthorn’s campus without extensive precautions. Why did you do it?”
He sighed, but he had to have known this question was coming.
It simply wasn’t possible for her to work on finding a solution to this problem without knowing what caused it in the first place.
She tried to soften the harshness in her voice, but her words still had a hard edge to them.
“The kind of magic necessary to create a fissure this large…”—she referred back to his own measurements of the crack between this world and the next—“seven feet.” She couldn’t imagine it.
Anyone who studied spellmaking, whether they specialized in incantation translations or runology or alchemy itself, took an entire semester on pall science and dissipation.
The largest fissure Maggie had ever seen was around five inches, and this was seven feet.
It was unthinkable. A fissure that large between this world and the next…
the next world, where souls should be resting.
Maggie swallowed, suddenly feeling sick.
“Have you seen unsettled souls in Ilex Hall?” When a pall descended, souls that had moved on to their final resting place could be stirred, slipping through the fissure back into this world.
Maggie had never seen an unsettled soul, not even when she had done her required coursework in pall science.
But a pall of this strength, a fissure of this size…
of course the hall had to be rife with the dead.
There was a pained expression on Taliesin’s face as he nodded. “Every time I’ve been, there are more unsettled,” he admitted, and Maggie could have sworn he was changing the subject when he sighed and went on. “I know I need to tell you what happened.”
“You don’t need to be embarrassed.”
He considered her for a moment. “I’m not embarrassed. That’s not why I haven’t told you—or anyone except Dean Clearwater—what happened.”
“Dean Clearwater knows?”
“Of course. I told him the moment I left the infirmary that day.” He fiddled with his coffee cup, the drink long gone.
“About three years ago, at Dartwood, a new spell I was working on for my research went awry and I conjured a pall by mistake. I confined it to a cabinet in my lab so I could use it in a lesson with my undergrads.”
Maggie raised an eyebrow. “So, this is a habit of yours?”
He glanced up at her, and she waited to see his eyes flash with annoyance or even anger, but he just gave her a sad smile and went on.
“I carefully warded the lab, set the pall loose, and gave my students fifteen minutes and fifteen minutes only to observe it.
They wore masks, gloves, and rune charms to stop the effects of the pall from taking root.
We timed their exposure to the second. I had a school counselor on standby, just in case any of the students found the melancholia too upsetting.
“They spent ten minutes taking notes and studying the pall, and in the last five, I demonstrated the dissipation spell. The pall fizzled out quickly, leaving only a bit of slime and a thick coating of dust behind.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m a careful man, Maggie.”
He sighed again, looking off to the side.
She was surprised by the pain she saw in the way he narrowed his eyes.
It almost looked like grief. When he went on, he still avoided her gaze, staring down at his hands as he laced and unlaced his fingers.
“My first mistake was doing the spell at all. But it’s one I have done hundreds of times.
One that, I thought, I could do in my sleep.
” He paused again. “Are you familiar with my research?”
She laughed a little at that. “Of course I am. Who isn’t?”
“You’d be surprised. I don’t like to assume people care about what I’m doing. That’s a fast way to look like an asshole.”
At that, she really wanted to laugh. Her impression of Arthur Taliesin was that he didn’t care at all what people thought of him, let alone whether people thought he was an asshole. Maggie did a very good job, though, of keeping her face neutral, reaching for her coffee to drink the last of it.
“I just wanted our students to see what was possible.”