Abaddon's Call

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Selifer found Naena a week after she helped execute Nillon Salord.

"By sending him to Hell?" he demanded as he sat across from her. "And what did they say when they learned your supposedly awesome protection spell is just a healer's implement cleansing spell tuned to the Hell magic you specifically carry?"

Naena frowned at Selifer, baffled by his accusation.

"That's a portable workroom spell," she said. "That's all. They used them up until fifteen hundred years ago, and then they started building walls. So others couldn't see what they were doing. The spell was laid into the floors and walls and basically forgotten over time. Can't ban them without banning work rooms."

"Is that what's up with those rooms?" Selifer asked. "I don't know, I've never been in one. Healers use it for their major works, which they'll probably end up using on you, or if you were a healer, you know, you'd really take to that. Or need it."

"How do you know—" she started.

"We can't talk about your door," he said with a shrug. "You got lucky. Or you found something only a female mage can do. Yay."

He finished weakly and with a little, terrified squeak.

Naena reached out and set a bronze, misshapen coin on the table. Selifer felt a prickle from the coin, but then it moved past him. She set her elbows on the table and leaned forward. He recognized the look and wanted to run, but he felt locked into place as he wondered what the bronze coin did.

"Hellfire used to open doorways into Hell," Naena said. "It cannot be mined, ground, grown, retrieved, harvested, or collected. I took that as it must be fresh. But what if you're right? What if they forgot the source? This whole don't involve women in magic thing. Maybe it was to stop them from discovering and using Hellfire?"

"I could check some sources, I suppose," Selifer said as he reached out and set a hand on the table with two fingers stretched toward the coin. "What's that?"

"That?" Naena asked, looking at the coin, then to Selifer.

"Can I touch it?" he asked.

"Sure," she said with a little smirk.

Selifer tapped the coin quickly, then darted back and ducked his head, expecting it to explode. By the time he ducked his head, he began raising it again as he realized what the spell work was. Not just a spell, but several jumbled into one another, almost like a puzzle box.

"Puzzle boxes are an interesting bit of magic," he said. "Like a tumbling mechanism. It's not like a chain reaction, not chained magic like the night light that unlocked the spell on the floor. More like a puzzle box, you have to adjust and play and work toward the appropriate outcome. The magic binding the Seven is a puzzle box magic. Over time, it devolved into dimensional and flat magic, like they use now. This puzzle box isn't sturdy enough. The edges of the mazes have already rattled loose, and it won't work for more than a few more days before it begins broadcasting your secrets instead of keeping them. It's a fascinating bit of work, though."

"Wait," she said as she leaned back and dug something out of her pocket.

Naena set a stone on the table.

"No, thank you," Selifer said. "That is nefarious magic, and I will not."

"The spell."

"No, the magic."

"They don't have the same magic?"

"No."

Naena frowned at him. Selifer knew she'd want answers but wasn't sure how much he could tell her.