Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (12 page)

“What about elixirs?” Tess asked, gesturing towards her belt full of them.

“They’re somewhere in between, because elixirs are liquid so they have some splash range on them, but not a lot,” Hayden explained. “Asher says it’s best to try and move around a bit and also show a small target when fighting an elixir-user, a bit like doing a waltz…though when I told him I’ve never actually done the waltz before he just laughed and knocked me out with one of his spells,” he grumbled.

“Any skilled mages we fight would know the same stances as we do, and
they would be looking at ways around them,” Lorn pointed out.

“True, so we’ll have to work on ways to get around other people’s tactics while still protecting ourselves.” Hayden nodded. “Since we’ve got a good spread of majors between the four of us we can pair off and practice with the spells we know.”

“We might as well try that first to see where we’re at and who the best fighters are, so they can give pointers to the others.” Hayden was surprised to hear Lorn suggest it, especially because he sounded so reasonable and not hostile for a change.

Since he couldn’t think of a reason why this was a bad idea
, he shrugged and said, “Sure, we might as well. How about Tess and Zane, and me and Lorn partner up to start with?”

The others agreed with varying levels of enthusiasm, and they stood up and spread out to begin.

8

Midnight Flight

A week before their next scheduled arena challenge, the announcement came that the arenas would be cancelled indefinitely. Hayden wasn’t really surprised, as news had been filtering in through letters to students from their families about the war for weeks, and it wasn’t looking good. While no one could seem to agree on how many of the enemy’s forces were on shore—some said a mere handful while others claimed thousands—the rest of the news was identical: our fighters were going into the Forest of Illusions and not returning, supply lines had been intercepted or cut off (the details on this were still unclear), and communication from the fighters had virtually dried up.

The mood in the castle became very grim, especially after the High Mayor sent a messenger to all of the Great Nine schools of magic to ask for volunteers to fight from anyone who had completed their sixth year of schooling. The Masters did their best to caution the mastery-level students from being hasty, but some of them left anyway, and the mood in the castle darkened further from the loss of normal occupants.

Hayden skipped lunch to work on his homework from Abnormal Magic, because Master Laurren had given them a bear of an assignment, and since he planned on having a long combat-practice meeting tonight with his team, he didn’t want to count on having energy or time for homework afterwards.

He was supposed to be writing an essay on why he thought large amounts of
Farfelle—a red berry that grew in arid climates—were safe to consume, but why small amounts were lethal. Since no one had actually discovered the true answer yet, there was no text for him to consult, and he had just crossed out a sentence for the sixth time when he sighed in frustration and went to find Master Laurren to ask for help.

Since lunch was nearly finished, he decided to check the Master’s office first, and took the downward stairs two at a time on the outside of the castle. His efforts were rewarded when he found
Laurren in the classroom where he taught Abnormal Magic. The Master was wearing a circlet like Hayden’s and had a clear prism equipped, his face tilted upwards towards the light as he looked through it.

The first words out of Hayden’s mouth weren’t the ones he’d planned.

“You’re a prism-user?” he blurted out into the silence, and Laurren startled and turned to face him, removing the circlet from his head and placing it back into a drawer.

“Hayden, what are you doing here?”

“I’m sorry to bother you, sir, I just had a question about the homework. I was surprised to see you had a circlet though, since I’ve never seen you use prisms in class before, and usually only natural prism-users buy or wear one.”

Master
Laurren smirked humorlessly and said, “I was a natural prism-user; it was my major at Isenfall.”

Stunned, and wondering how he didn’t
know that before now, Hayden asked, “But then why don’t you wear the circlet all the time?”

Laurren
gave him a wry look and said, “Have you never wondered why I teach Abnormal Magic, of all things? Or why my eyes are such a peculiar shade of purple?”

Taken aback by the turn of the conversation, Hayden said, “I
had
wondered about your eyes…but I just thought you came from a land where that was normal.” He shrugged. “And about you teaching this class, well…it’s a weird class, and you’re kind of a weird teacher, so it fits.”

Upon reflection, he could have worded that much better. He was therefore surprised when Master
Laurren let out a bark of genuine laughter and said, “Your candor is quite refreshing, Hayden, thank you. People will insist on skirting around their true thoughts for fear of being found rude or impolitic.”

Slightly embarrassed, Hayden said, “I don’t always think things through before I say them out loud.”

Master Laurren smirked and added, “That is not always a bad thing, in my experience. It makes you appear genuine.”

A m
oment of silence passed before Hayden caved in and asked, “So why do you teach this class?”

“It was never part of my original plan, I can assure you.” The Master sighed. “I was a prism-major at
Isenfall, apprenticing under the Prism Master there during my mastery year. I was working on a particularly ambitious research project with compounded prisms when I thought I had a new alignment all worked out. I checked and double-checked my calculations to ensure they were correct, and then I gave it a try.”

Hayden frowned and asked, “What happened?”

“I got an enormous amount of magical feedback that I wasn’t expecting in the form of TMS, and it did this to my eyes.” He gestured to their color. “It also made me color-blind.”

It took a moment for the enormity of that simple statement to penetrate Hayden’s brain. T
hen he felt the blood drain from his face and had to lean against a wall to keep from fainting at the horrible thought.

“But a prism-user who can’t see color…” he trailed off in numb shock.

Master Laurren gave him a sympathetic look and said, “No colors, no prisms. I haven’t been able to use one properly in years.” He sighed mournfully. “Since I knew that my math was correct, and that I shouldn’t have gotten that kind of TMS from the spell I was casting, I immediately set out to discover what went wrong, which led me to Abnormal Magic. Since Isenfall doesn’t bother teaching it, that led me here.”

Hayden was still trying to recover from the hideous idea of never being able to look through a prism again, of never feeling the connection with the light and channeling magic through it. It would be worse than losing a limb.

“Did you ever figure out what happened?”

“Not yet, though I suspect it has something to do with Schisms. It’s very hard to confirm, as there aren’t generally Schisms kept open between our world and the parallel space of anti-magic.” He shrugged. “Don’t look so horrified,” he continued, seeing Hayden’s expression. “I can still use the other areas of magic without issue, so it isn’t all bad. I actually got much better with elixirs and powders after I lost prisms.”

Hayden tried to school his face into something more neutral for the Master’s sake.

“Why do prism-users always seem to have bad luck?”
Hayden added with a rueful scowl. “It seems like every time we read about someone who went evil, or crazy, or got hit by weird magic, it’s a prism-user, and then everyone in class stares at me like they’re wondering why I haven’t keeled over yet.”

“That’s not entirely coincidental,” Master
Laurren explained lightly. “Prism-users walk the narrow line between genius and insanity more closely than any of the other majors; therefore we are much more likely to topple over the line than the others.”

Hayden frowned and said, “What do you mean? Are you saying I’m closer to being nuts than Zane?”

Master Laurren chuckled lightly and said, “Almost certainly, yes. Natural prism-users almost always descend from a line with mental instability in it. It is that touch of instability that gives us the power to see magic in light, which a more normal mind lacks.”

Hayden thought about that for a moment in alarm. Asher had told him once that he was probably conceived soon after his father began messing around with Dark Prisms, so he supposed it was no surprise that some of that instability passed on to Hayden. But as for the other prism-users he knew…

“What about Master Asher though? He has a pretty normal family from what I’ve seen.”

Master
Laurren raised an eyebrow and said, “If you mean Torin, then yes. Have you never wondered about his mother?”

Hayden frowned. He hadn’t ever heard Asher talk about her before, and had never thought to ask where she was if he and his father were at Mizzenwald all the time.

“What happened to her?” he asked at last.

“She tried to kill me when I was nine,” Asher’s voice from the doorway startled Hayden so badly that he jumped and almost shouted. The Prism Master was leaning against the doorframe; there was no telling how long he’d been standing there.
“I’ve no idea where she’s at now, or if she even lives.”

“Master Asher—I’m sorry, I was just—” Hayden stammered.

“Normally I don’t really notice or care when students don’t show up to class, but as you’re the only one in my level-four session it’s kind of hard for me to ignore when you’re absent.”

Hayden only just realized the time. He had completely forgotten about fourth period when he and Master
Laurren got to talking about prisms. He didn’t even remember what his homework question was anymore.

“I’m partly to blame,”
Laurren explained. “He came to ask me a question and I fear I sidetracked him.”

Asher shrugged and said, “No matter. Are you ready to go to class now, or should I make other plans for my day?” to Hayden.

“No sir, I’m ready.” He hurried after the Prism Master and they made their way upstairs in silence. After it became unbearable Hayden decided to press his luck and asked, “Was that true, about your mother?”

Asher looked down at him as though just realizing he was there and said, “Yes, it is. Torin said he began to notice changes in her shortly after I was born, which got worse as my childhood progressed. I remember her occasionally talking to people who weren’t there and crying in the night. My father tried everything he could to help her but it didn’t do any good, and after she tried to drown me he finally cut ties with her and we moved here, about as far from
Sudir as you can get without crossing an ocean.” He said all of this calmly, as though he was describing someone else’s life and not his own.

“I suppo
se she always had that time-bomb in her head, waiting to go off, but I always wondered if I had something to do with it,” he continued a bit more grimly.

“I don’t see how you could have…” Hayden argued gently. “You were just a kid.”

“True,” he tilted his head in concession, entering the classroom ahead of Hayden. “And no one on my father’s side of the family was ever a natural prism-user, so I suppose I would not be where I am if she hadn’t been as she was, so it’s hard to wish that things had gone differently.”

That was an uncomfortable thought, because Hayden was sort of in the same position. If Aleric Frost had never dabbled with broken prisms, so many families would still be whole and the world would be a better place, but on the other hand, would Hayden be what he was today? Would he have grown up in the Frost estate, with relatives pressing him to be great and to live up to the Frost name? Would he feel so much pressure that instead of his father,
he
would be the one to bow to the pressure of messing with dark magic in the hopes of not letting them down?

“It feels…selfish,” Hayden frowned, “to be happy about where I am, knowing what it cost the world to put me here.”

“You’re still looking to the past, because you want to know where you came from and who your father was. I don’t say that as criticism, as we all look to the past at some time or another, searching for clarity or wondering what could have been. But someday you will have to accept that what’s done is done and that it doesn’t really matter what your father was thinking on the day he disappeared, or why your Foci and Source are so abnormal. When that happens, you’ll stop looking backwards and start focusing on the future, the only thing that truly matters.”

“So you never look back?” Hayden asked skeptically.

Asher shrugged and said, “Not any more than I have to. Best to leave the ghosts where they belong.”

And with that he changed the subject to prisms and began Hayden’s lesson for the day.

The weeks dragged on, with more bad new
s coming in by the day, as people’s friends and families were called to war and weren’t heard from again. When news came that Magdalene Trout was missing in action, Lorn’s dedication to their combat practices became almost terrifying. His pudgy face screwed up in determination, he practiced relentlessly and drove them to longer and longer sessions every time, and none of them had the heart to insist that they slow down. He even started showing them tricks that Oliver had taught him over the years, and gradually they all improved so that Hayden was even able to hold his own in the fights against Master Asher every-other day.

Oliver was a different matter. Since his mother’s disappearance he had become quiet and moody, not joining in the table conversation with his normal group of friends at mealtimes and snapping at people who tried to approach him, including his
younger brother. One night at dinner a messenger came to the castle on horseback with a sealed letter for him, which caused quite a stir since there was rarely a message important enough to bring someone from town this late in the day. Oliver took it from the courier and ripped it in half without even opening it, dropping the pieces calmly into a burning brazier as he left the dining hall.

“Ouch,” Zane winced. “I never thought I’
d feel sorry for Oliver Trout, but I actually do.”

Hayden frowned and said, “What do you think was in the letter? He didn’t even
open it and read it.”