Chapter Thirteen #2
Maggie froze, staring at Taliesin, her cup halfway to her mouth.
How many times had she said the same thing about her Hawthorn students?
There were some students who came to Hawthorn knowing exactly what they wanted, but most were a little aimless.
They applied for college because it was the next Big Step, but they had no idea what they actually wanted to do.
No idea what the possibilities even were.
They were the kind of student she had been, before she knew what linguistics was.
That Taliesin saw this, too, surprised Maggie.
“I absolutely should have prepared differently, but I don’t regret showing them big magic.” Then he added, “Or, trying to, anyway.” He sighed and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses.
“Two of my former colleagues at Dartwood asked me to consult on research using one of the de novo energy conversion spells I’ve developed. They asked me to run the spells with a few elemental shifts, and I had reached a point in the work where I needed iron-derived gold.”
This was a spell he would have done a thousand times throughout the course of his research.
It wasn’t even a de novo spell, but a legacy with a standardized incantation.
The only reason it was considered class 3 spellwork was the energy required for the transformation.
It should have been routine. It shouldn’t have been done in a classroom lab setting, but she could see his reasoning and understood why his students could benefit from seeing it.
She could even see a way to do it safely, with a second professor and precautions in place. “Then what happened?”
Taliesin stared at a spot on the table. “My brother called during the incantation. I ignored the first call and kept reciting the spell, but I knew it was an emergency when the phone started ringing again. His mom, Lane, collapsed at work and was being rushed to the hospital. He was calling to ask me to meet him there.”
Maggie didn’t know what to do. His voice was so shaky, and he couldn’t keep his hands still. She found herself wanting to reach across the table and lace their fingers together, just to get him to stop moving, but she kept her hands around her coffee cup.
“I should have finished the damn incantation, or tied it off with magic, but I panicked. What if it had been Si—” He didn’t finish the thought, closing his eyes again.
“It doesn’t matter,” he finally continued.
“I interrupted the incantation without properly tying off the spell and fumbled with my phone. I didn’t even get a chance to call Rory back before the spell fractured.
” Taliesin sighed heavily, shaking his head as if he still couldn’t quite believe how it happened.
His voice was nearly trembling when he spoke again.
“When my mom went into the hospital the first time, I was giving a lecture. I missed the first call from her. Then the second and the third. Everything that happened after was so quick…” He trailed off.
“I know it’s a bad habit, but I started keeping my phone on during class.
Just for phone calls from my dad and brother. ”
He looked up for the first time since he began recounting that day. “Is your brother’s mom…” Maggie began.
“She’s okay. She received treatment for a minor medical condition, and other tests came back negative for anything more serious.” Maggie started to say something else, but Taliesin kept going. “Please don’t lecture me, Maggie. I know it was a series of bad decisions that I just made worse.”
Maggie bit her lip. She wished he didn’t think that the first words out of her mouth after he told her everything were going to be some kind of scolding.
Even if he maybe deserved it. A little bit.
“I wasn’t going to lecture you. I was just going to say that I’m glad Lane recovered.
” He nodded, his look far off again. “Anyone might have made the same mistake.”
He let out a huff, something between a laugh and a groan. “Even you, Dr. Linden?”
She shivered, but even she couldn’t convince herself that it was the chill in the air with the fire roaring behind her. Why did it feel like she was missing something half the time he spoke? Why did she like the way he said her name so much?
She furrowed her brow. “You seem to think I make enough mistakes in the classroom.”
It was as much a reminder to herself as it was to him. This was the Arthur Taliesin who slashed the funding for her project. The same one who thought she was incapable of saying an incantation in an emergency. The one who judged her teaching.
He blinked, like he didn’t quite understand where the conversation had veered off track. Before he could argue, she went back to his documents and asked, “Can I see the original spell?”
Taliesin handed her another file folder.
She ran her finger down the documents, looking briefly over the rune and alchemical equations that she only vaguely recognized until she got to the Diadhan incantation and its translation for the conversion spell.
It was obvious from his story that the spell faltered with the incomplete incantation.
“Where were you when the second call came in and you stopped the incantation?”
He reached across the table and pointed to a single line:
earthly shatter, fractured soil
She cringed. It was so much worse than she thought. Taliesin’s expression mirrored hers as she said, “Gods below, that’s the worst possible part of the incantation to mess up.”
“I know.”
“Stopping an incantation without tying off the spell, without giving that energy anywhere to go, could set off a pall at any point, but words have power. Shatter. Fractured. Gods below,” she repeated, “you’re lucky you didn’t open up a chasm to the underworld.
” No wonder he thinks you’re a scold. He knew all of this, and it was clear he was already carrying so much guilt, but she couldn’t quite help the lecturing tone of her voice.
“In your professional opinion, do you think disrupting the incantation at that exact moment is the only reason the pall is so difficult to remove?”
She turned the problem over in her mind.
“Alchemists and runologists often underestimate incantation errors. It’s the least precise part of spellmaking, but it’s that lack of precision that makes those errors just as dangerous as a miscalculation or an out-of-place mark.
” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’m not surprised the pall is large.
I’m not surprised it’s sticky. But a seven-foot fissure?
Dissipation spells turning to dust? Without having looked at every single one of the details, I have to think there is something else feeding this pall and keeping it alive. ”
“That’s what I think, too.”