Free Salamander by David D. Friedman Page A

began the first invocation of the schema. Coelus chimed in on cue, then the other three. With eyes closed, Coelus could see the web building, woven with mixed lines of the elemental colors. For a moment it trembled, then froze, a solid four pointed star centered on Maridon, drawn everywhere in the Four Colors.
    Maridon spoke the Word. The Colors poured through him, up his right arm, out the outstretched hand from each finger, in a spreading web, further and further. One line pulsed, froze, a bright line of cold blue—a mage pulled into the web. A line twisted of blue and white. Again, this time a hair thin line—not a mage, but every drop of power mattered. Again. Again, until the air was filled with a spiderweb of lines.
    Maridon’s face held triumph in part, in part something else. He half turned, pointed with his left hand. Coelus looked down; the silver blade of his athame was sinking into the grass, vanishing, only the handle visible. He tried to turn, willed the link broken. Nothing.
    Maridon pointed, one after another, at the other three. Cold lines from his fingers to them. They too froze. For a moment time stopped, save for Coelus’s mind racing. No answer.
    Coelus watched, unable to move, as the most powerful mage in the world, the most powerful mage that had ever lived, walked slowly over to the wall of woven fire bordering the garden, the inside surface of the sphere protecting the college from the world, the world from the college. Maridon reached out with both hands, caught strands of fire, pulled.
    For a moment the weave held. Maridon said another Word, Coelus felt the shock and saw the others sway. For a moment the world darkened. Slowly Maridon’s hands pulled apart. Through the widening gap, Coelus could see the elm tree just outside the dome, the barrier that no mage in the world could break. Until now.
    Maridon said a final Word. From his fingertips new strands spread, beyond the sphere. A million ordinary folk, each with his little magic to tap, thousands of mages.
    One of the new strands pulsed, hair thin, froze. Another.
    The third was a column of red, as thick as the mage’s wrist. For just a moment Maridon was outlined in fire.
    The fire died. The gap it had poured through closed. Where Maridon had stood was nothing but floating ash.

Chapter 9  
     
    “You look tired; how is your project going? Have you solved the puzzle of the containment sphere?”
    Ellen had been up most of the night finishing the work she was about to hand in to Magister Coelus, but she was sure she looked better than he did, after the death of his colleague and the tense inquiry that had followed. She sat down without being asked, knowing he would follow suit.
    “Not exactly solved. This—she handed him a single sheet of paper—is my theoretical calculation of the rate of loss. It is not precise because I do not yet have the full structure of the sphere, but I do not think it can be high by more than about a factor of two. I assume no loss from the bottom half, earth being a good insulator against fire, and no net loss from the interior surface.”
    “This,” a second sheet of paper, “summarizes my empirical test of the theoretical work. I constructed things similar to the sphere on a much smaller scale—the biggest was four inches across—and timed their decay. The results fit within my estimated range of error.
    “This is the other half of the empirical work. I measured the actual loss from the sphere through a very small solid angle and then scaled it up accordingly. It comes out lower than my theoretical estimate, but within my margin of two.”
    “This is my calculation of the pattern over time, assuming no additional support after the sphere was created. It shows how strong the sphere would have had to be forty-seven years ago, when it was created, in order to be at its present level now.”
    “And this”—she handed him the fifth and final sheet of paper—“shows what it would have taken Durilil to