The Rossem Project

The Welding

The test chamber was a six foot cube with a single door on one side, which was covered on all sides by layer upon layer of thick lead plating. Inside it had, until recently, been almost completely filled with shelves large enough to hold several dozen cages of lab animals and items of magical measuring equipment, with only a small space in the middle where a man could stand while loading, unloading or rearranging the cages. Now, though, all of that had been stripped out to create a single open space with iron handholds welded onto the walls, floor and the ceiling. The entire structure had then been rendered transparent by means of a magic spell cast by Pondar Walton himself while Thomas, Karem and Edward watched in fascination. They were there to help attach it to a teleportation chamber the size of a small house, an operation similar to the hitching of a thirty foot caravan to a reliant robin.

"Are you sure it'll be able to carry that much weight?" asked Thomas doubtfully. "The levitation spells are only so powerful, after all."

"That is not your concern," replied Pondar gruffly, trying to conceal his own doubts on that score. "Be ready to cast the weld spell when I tell you to."

Thomas looked down at the scroll in his hands; a cracked and yellowing roll of paper on which the words of the magic spell were written in an ornate, stylised form that seemed to writhe and crawl as if trying to avoid his eyes, as if they didn't want to be read. The only reason Thomas could read them at all was that he'd cast an intellectus spell on it a few minutes before. Magic scrolls came in two varieties, one of which was deliberately designed to be read by anyone, even mundanes, but this was an example of the second type; intended solely for the use of the wizard who'd created it, several centuries before. Scrolls of this kind were notoriously hard for anyone else to read. It was almost as if they had a life and an intelligence of their own, and Thomas had only managed to do it with Pondar's help.

The weld spell was officially a mid level spell, but it tended towards the upper limit of that category and many wizards treated it as though it were high level, just to be on the safe side. It was the second most powerful spell that Thomas had ever attempted to cast, second only to the teleport spell. Unfortunately it was not a spell that was often used, as conventional, non-magical welding techniques were usually just as good and didn't need the rare and expensive material components that the spell needed. It was so rarely used, in fact, that no living wizard had bothered to learn it, and so Pondar had had to dip into the University's considerable stockpile of scrolls and potions to obtain a copy.

Only a spell would do in this case, as attempting to weld the teleportation chamber to the test chamber in the conventional way, by the partial melting of their structures, might upset the magics of both devices. That was how the original teleportation chamber had been destroyed, after all. The danger was that the magics of the weld spell might have the same effect, and the precautions against this happening were the reason for this spell's sophistication and complexity. If it were simply a matter of sticking two boxes together a simple glue spell would have done, but when both the objects to be joined contained powerful magics of their own you entered a whole new level of complexity.

"Now remember," Pondar said to Karem and Edward. "I will be the one doing most of the hard work of lifting the test chamber and carrying it over. Your job is just to hold it steady and prevent it from tilting over. Are you clear on that?"

"Yes, master," said Edward, and Karem nodded, looking offended that he thought they needed telling twice.

"Are you ready?" Pondar asked Thomas. Thomas confirmed that he was.

"Very well," said the senior wizard, raising his hands. "I'm going to start lifting. Here we go." He spoke the magic words, activating the latent levitation spell, and the test chamber began to float slowly into the air.