Free Thaumatology 12: Vengeance by Niall Teasdale Page A

circle, but they would not use draconic glyphs in an enchantment.
    Standing, she slipped back out to stand inside the outer ring where she could call out. ‘I need a camera shielded to work in high-energy areas. There’s something in here and I don’t want to move it until I know what it is.’
    Kennington.
    ‘And this was in the centre of your generator?’ Gwyn asked.
    Ceri nodded. The hall of High Towers now hosted a six-foot-wide copy of the cube she had found in the power station. More specifically, she had carefully transcribed the glyphs on it into the air in the same pattern they had been created in.
    ‘Well… this is definitely what’s causing the effect we’ve observed.’ Gwyn pointed out a sequence of runes curling around near one corner of the nearest face. ‘These deal with the materialisation of the immaterial.’
    Nodding again, Ceri said, ‘Energy-mass conversion structures. I got that bit. There’s a section on the other side dealing with transformations.’
    Gwyn smiled, rather proudly, and moved around a face. ‘Did you get this part?’ She pointed at a sequence near the bottom.
    ‘Uh… opening, breaching, release… Shit! I was right not to move it.’
    ‘I suspect the trigger is on the underside. Lift it out and it would breach the containment of the circles.’
    ‘We’d have a thaumic bomb going off in central London.’
    ‘There may be other little booby traps in other places. There is a lot of enchantment here just to create the spell transforming the angels.’
    ‘It’s going to take ages to work this out,’ Ceri whined. ‘I’ve got you doing the conference and I’ve got all the generator projects to do, and I need to come up with my presentation. I don’t have a clue what I’m going to give them this year. Mei has a job…’
    ‘I think,’ Gwyn said carefully, ‘that it’s time to mend some bridges with Edward. If you wish, I can go…’
    ‘No. No, you’re right. He’s the only other person I know who could figure this out and if I’m going to ask him… Well, I think it should be me who asks him.’
    Aberystwyth, Wales.
    The magical studies building at Aberystwyth was an imposing sort of structure, if you approached it from the right angle. Ceri had heard it described as a ‘Wrenaissance’ building; architecture was not her strong point and all she knew was that it was built of local stone and had a lot of French windows.
    That was at the front. If you walked through the glorious interior and headed out one side you entered a far more prosaic, younger extension. There you would find stairs down into the basement, which was where Professor Edward Perry had his office.
    Ceri knocked and heard ‘Come’ from the other side of it. She pushed the door open and walked in. Ed did not look up from the papers he was marking. He looked just the same as he had, but more so. As the dragon Athro he had taught sorcery, and as Ed Perry he taught thaumatology, and he fitted the role of slightly eccentric college professor perfectly. His salt-and-pepper hair looked a little greyer and far more unkempt. His tweed jacket was on the back of his chair; his shirts had always been badly ironed, but this one looked as though it had missed being washed the last few times. ‘Be right with you,’ Ed added when no one had spoken to him for a second or two.
    Pushing the door closed, Ceri applied a little magic to keep it that way. When she looked around again, Ed had lifted his head, sensing the energy release. She saw his face shift as tiny expressions flickered across it: pain, loss, relief. The one it settled on was fear.
    ‘Ed,’ Ceri said, ‘I know I said I’d kill you if I saw you again, but I’m not going to teleport a couple of hundred miles to do it.’
    ‘Uh, no,’ he said after a second, his voice carrying a soft Welsh accent. ‘I never took you for unreasonably murderous.’
    ‘No, I’m just reasonably murderous. Look, I need your help, but that’s an excuse…