Tessa and Laura Diamond are hosting the Nature of Magic Blogfest, a chance for authors to post excerpts that show what magic is like in their fictional universes. Thanks for the opportunity, and the chance to see what other writers are doing!
This entry is an excerpt from my upcoming novel, ‘A Lovesome Thing.’ A demon has been possessing people in the city of Osyth, and the Royal Academy’s faculty have a duty to create protective wards. But most of them don’t work with demons, so who will teach them how to make the wards? Teddy Whin from Demonology is happy to give her colleagues some training.
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Teddy prowled the seminar room, checking the vibes and setting out equipment. She set off a purple smoke charm inside the pentacle on the demonstration stage to test for leaks; then she placed field charms on the demo tables. As soon as she had set up one of the head-sized metal hoops and linked the interlaced wires of the charm to it, she spoke the single word “Itar,” and the silver web’s center filled with the same purple smoke that swirled in the pentacle. When she had all the charms activated, the room looked impressive. Teddy set up the pentacle’s reinforcing lines and the safety-chain and then had leisure to sit on the front table, look around the room, and watch the faculty assemble.
The girly ones and the not-bad-looking men in corduroys and chinos at one side of the room were from Social Magic. Behind them a group of people with clothing that varied from dressy to ragged were taking their seats … Arcane Artists. A slight man in a yellow tee-shirt sat down inboard of them. You could tell he was an alchemist because of the Guild brand on his forearm, with a tattoo around it to make sure nobody missed it. More faculty were filling in the spaces with faces Teddy knew from Zoomancy, Agrimancy, and the various museums and libraries. The noise level rose. Show time! she thought, and hopped off the table.
“Yo!” she yelled. The buzz died away. “Our goal here is to make wards against demons. Is that what all of you are here for?”
“Hell! I thought it was a faculty senate meeting!” said the alchemist in the yellow shirt.
“Not till the demons get here,” said Teddy, who was used to sophomore heckling. “I’m assuming you all know how to cast your essence into a ward blank. Do any of you need extra blanks?” Several hands went up, and Teddy saw her colleagues move through the room handing out blank wards. They were gold medallions with the Academy’s symbol stamped onto one side, and they took a while to hand out because the recipients had to sign for them. Natural Magic was not giving gold away to the other schools.
Three of the Social Magicians clustered together, writing runes on their ward blanks with feather pens dipped in what looked like a jar of water, and one of the Arcane Artists built a structure of his blanks on the desk in front of him. All around the room eyes squeezed shut, hands clasped wards or shuffled through them, auras flared, and in ten minutes all the faculty were sitting at attention, much sobered. Casting one’s essence into something had that effect.
“All right then, here’s how it works. I’ll be calling up a generic demon. Your job is to concentrate on how your perception of the room changes as it appears, and transfer that into your ward blank.”
“How will that help ward the demon off other people?” one of the Social Magicians wanted to know. “They might perceive the demon differently.”
“It wards the demon off the ward, which is an extension of you. The person wearing the ward is protected as a side-effect.”
“If the ward’s an extension of us, what happens to us when a demon approaches the ward?”
“You feel a bit of what you felt when the demon approached you,” Teddy answered patiently. “Divided in force by however many wards you’re running.” Griping began among her audience. “When you’ve created a ward you like,” she said, raising her voice, “bring it down to us at these demonstration tables. There’s a field charm linked to the demon’s pentacle on each table. One of us will put your ward in one of the fixed clamps, and move the field charm toward it. If it’s a good ward, we’ll get a nice fireworks display and the field charm won’t be able to touch it. Got that?” Heads nodded. “Now this is very important,” she said in her talking-to-sophomores voice. “Do not go near the field charms. Do not move your wards toward them. A ward is unidirectional. It doesn’t prevent you from touching a demon; it prevents a demon from touching you. So if you move a ward toward the field charm, it’ll go right through into the pentacle, and the demon will eat it. And then you’ll have to start all over and make a different kind of ward, because that type will be no good any more. Got it?” The griping arose again, this time higher-pitched. A hand waved from the Arcane Arts section.
“What if we put our hand into the field charm by mistake?”
“That would be a bad idea,” said Teddy.
“This seems awfully dangerous,” said a voice from the crowd.
“There’s a reason for that,” Teddy said happily. “Don’t sweat it. We do this with sophomores every year, and we haven’t lost one yet. Ready?” Linus, Anders, Will and Susan came down the end aisles, passing out barf bags, and nobody refused them.
The five of them stood around the pentacle and did a name-based invocation without any frills except the purple smoke. Apeltes was in rare form, its spines standing out at all angles until it seemed they would scrape against the pentacle walls. It turned, suspended in the cloud of smoke, and stared at the audience with flat glassy eyes. Teddy heard retching from behind her.
“Friend,” she reminded the demon. “Take these gifts prepared for you. Feed, rest, and be welcome.” Apeltes nodded, or seemed to; a monster of few words, it dipped its head and settled to the floor. Knobby knees and frilled appendages stuck out of the purple cloud, a crunching sound filled the stage and Teddy felt safe to turn around and survey the awed and silent magicians filling the rest of the room.
This is the best morning of my life, she thought.
