Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (16 page)

The summer holiday was fast approaching, and contrary to Hayden’s hopes, things did not relax inside the castle with the Fias in control. Master Sark was rarely seen outside of the company of one of them, and he was more tired and snappish than ever after being dragged through countless audits that seemed to leave everyone involved frustrated and disappointed.

On the bright side,
Fia Eldridge announced at dinner one night that the High Mayor had received word from the front in the Forest of Illusions, and that things were progressing well. This brightened the mood in the castle considerably, and Hayden began to entertain hopes that he may yet see the other Masters again someday. It spurred most of them to even greater efforts on their research projects, and even Zane was looking forward to showing Master Reede what he’d been working on during the Master’s absence.

Unfortunately, Bonk was still having nightmares a few times a week, and they seemed to be getting more frequent and severe
as time went on. The dragonling ate at mealtimes or whenever Hayden asked him to, but still lacked the enthusiasm and vitality that Hayden had come to expect from his familiar.

With that in mind, he took time out one evening before break to visit Torin in his cabin.

He hadn’t seen Torin for more than a minute at a time in the last few months with all the homework they were being assigned, which was regrettable because Torin was one of Hayden’s favorite people at Mizzenwald. He set his half-finished Wands essay to the side and resolved to stay up late and finish it after he got back from Torin’s cabin.

“Come on, Bonk. Let’s go see Torin.” He patted his shoulder, and Bonk landed gracefully on top of it, yawning widely and tucking his wings behind his back.

He hurried down the stairs and out of the castle through the main doors, wanting to be back before curfew in case one of the Fias caught him up after hours. He’d heard stories of other students getting caught out of bounds at night and having to serve detentions that involved extra homework, and he wanted no part of that. Every time he had to hear one of the Fias report how much more profitable the school had become since they took over he wanted to puke. Eldridge was hinting that he might get a medal for cost-savings soon.

A light was on inside of the cabin, so Hayden knocked on the door and waited patiently. It took Torin a minute to answer, and the older man looked like he’d been woken up from a nap, his hair ruffled and matted on one side of his head and his eyes tired.

“Hayden, what brings you to see me?” he asked in greeting, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

“Sorry to wake you, sir…it’s just that I thought something might be wrong with Bonk
, and I was wondering if you could check him out.”

Torin narrowed his gaze on the
dragonling and opened the door wider. “Come in and let’s have a look at him.”

Bonk flew from Hayden’s shoulder and glided over to the countertop
, behind which Torin kept a tall shelf of elixirs and herbs, standing patiently like he knew he was about to be examined.

“What makes you think he’s ill?” Torin asked with professional interest, opening the
dragonling’s mouth and peering inside before sticking his little finger in to press on Bonk’s poison glands. Hayden admired anyone who was brave enough to stick their hand into a dragon’s mouth in search of poison.

“He hasn’t been eating very much unless I make him, and he doesn’t seem to have a lot of energy. He almost never wants to play outside anymore, and when he does it isn’t for very long. And he’s been having these nightmares every few days that wake up the entire room…”

Torin frowned thoughtfully at Bonk and continued examining him, this time prodding the scales on the outside of his neck.

“You’re not the first person to come to me with a familiar who’s been behaving oddly,” he explained, giving Bonk a small purple leaf to chew on from the shelf behind him. “Several others have come to me with similar complaints about lack of energy and such, but none with nightmares.”

Hayden eyed Bonk worriedly and said, “What does it mean?”

Bonk finished chewing the leaf and burped a jet of green fire, which seemed to please Torin because the man nodded and patted Bonk on the head.

“I think they must be able to sense trouble in their homeland—the Forest of Illusions, that is. A place with so much magic in it being under attack is sure to make them a bit uneasy.” Torin frowned again. “There doesn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him, other than he’s obviously tiring himself out with these nightmares and the lack of food.”

“So what should I do for him?”

Torin said, “You might try things he’ll find soothing, like sending him here to roll around in the hearth. I can get a fire burning for him and arrange to be absent for a few hours, so I don’t shrivel up in all this heat.” He shrugged. “Or you might try feeding him his favorite foods, massaging him, and make certain that he eats and sleeps as much as possible until he starts to perk up again.”

Hayden grimaced at the thought of trying to give a miniature dragon a massage; he’d never even had one himself!

Typical Bonk. Spoiled rotten by everyone who knows him, including me.

“Alright, thanks. I’ll send him down tomorrow if you don’t mind him playing in the fire.”

Torin agreed, telling Hayden to come back if Bonk’s symptoms changed or worsened, and sent him on his way. It was good to know that there was nothing physically wrong with his familiar, but it almost would have been better to have something that was easily fixed, because there was a chance he would continue to have these problems until the war was over and the sorcerers were gone, which could be a long time.

Eldridge said that our side was making contact agai
n. That must be a good thing; if our lines of communication are open again it means we’re getting the upper-hand back. It’ll be over soon…it has to be,
he reassured himself as he and Bonk made their way back to the dormitory to get some sleep.

11

The Destruction of Mizzenwald

But Bonk continued to decline, despite the fact that Hayden followed all of
Torin’s advice to the letter. Tess even enthusiastically took on the task of massaging Bonk’s belly and back, which the dragonling seemed to enjoy immensely, but as soon as she stopped coddling him he went back to being moody and fatigued.

The
Fias continued to pass on snippets of information from the High Mayor of Junir about the status of the war effort, and how the mages were slowly gaining the advantage, which Hayden tried to make Bonk understand in the hopes of cheering him up, but nothing worked. His familiar started having nightmares every night, often waking the entire room with his screeching or wailing so that they were all exhausted every morning. It seemed to be affecting the other animals as well, as Felix became more skittish than ever and Conner’s owl spent more time outside than indoors with them.

Hayden was so stressed and worried for Bonk that he became snappish and surly himself, shunning the company of his friends and bending all of his efforts to trying to make Bonk feel better. He couldn’t bear the thought of his closest companion dying, but more and more he worried that it might end that way
if his familiar didn’t improve soon.

A few days before the end of term, Hayden was sitting outside near the cliffs that overlooked the Gawain Sea, tossing the red rubber chew toy and watching Bonk glide after it.

Bonk executed a perfect dive and returned the rubber squirrel to him.

He’s only fifty-something years old. Torin said dragons usually live for at least a hundred-and-fifty
years; he’s going to be fine.

Hayden
heard the dinner bells ring a few minutes earlier, but made no move to get up, closing his eyes and nearly falling asleep in the warm, peaceful air after his next throw.

He blinked and forced himself to stay
awake, watching Bonk seize the chew toy in his clutches and take flight. Bonk was halfway back to him when he let out an ear-piercing shriek, dropped the toy, and fell from the sky.

Hayden leapt to his feet in panic, sprinting towards his familiar even as the dragon fell lifelessly to the ground, landing on the grass with a soft thump and twitching feebly.

“BONK!” Hayden dropped to his knees beside him, scooping the dragonling into his arms and checking to make sure he was breathing and nothing looked broken.

His familiar moaned weakly and curled into him as though in terrible pain. Heart in his throat, Hayden took off running towards
Torin’s cabin, carrying Bonk as gently as he could and chanting,
Please don’t die…please don’t die…
over and over in his head, all tiredness forgotten.

He burst through the front door without knocking and startled Torin so badly that the older man dropped the small glass barr
el of liquid he was carrying so that it landed heavily on the floor, rolling slowly towards the far wall.

“Hayden, you nearly stopped my heart!” Torin pressed a hand to his chest as he turned to face him, expression falling when he saw the panic on Hayden’s face. “What’s happened?”

Unable to articulate a complete thought, Hayden held out Bonk’s limp body and said, “Fix him, please!”

Torin mutely took the dragon an
d set him gently on the countertop, shining light into Bonk’s eyes and testing the same glands he had before while Hayden watched in silence. Torin frowned and mixed a few herbs together in a bowl, mashing them into a paste and spooning some into Bonk’s mouth. It must have tasted terrible, because the dragon made a face and coughed. They waited a long moment for something to happen, but nothing did, and now Torin looked truly puzzled as he removed a key from a string he kept around his neck and crossed the room, opening a solid oaken trunk that Hayden had never really paid attention to before.

The silence had become oppressive, but mercifully Torin broke it
just then by saying, “Slasher has also been feeling under the weather, though nowhere near as bad as poor Bonk.” He pulled on a pair of thick gloves and very gently removed what looked like two long glass needles from the trunk, along with what Hayden could only guess was a crystal ball.

“Oliver’s dragon’s been sick too?” Hayden frowned. “Does that mean there’s some disease going around here that only magical dragons can catch? But you said other animals haven’t been feeling well either because of the fighting in the Forest.”

Torin shook his head fractionally as he carefully set the crystal ball on the countertop near Bonk and held one of the glass needles in each gloved hand.

“No, this is no disease. Whatever is happening to the animals, it makes sense that the dragons would feel it most acutely, as they have some of the most powerful Sources in existence.”

“They do?” Hayden asked curiously, momentarily sidetracked.

“Yes,” Torin nodded, before speaking to Bonk. “Don’t move for a minute; these are very expensive and if they break it will take a long time to replace them.”

Hayden thought Torin was about to skewer his familiar with the glass needles, but he simply touched one to Bonk’s chest and the other to his head, as though trying to gauge his temperature. Hayden had no idea what he was hoping to accomplish with the strange instruments.

“A
dragonling has more magical potential than just about anything,” Torin continued his previous thread while he waited for something to happen. “You could combine your extraordinary Source power with your father’s and my son’s, and you would not even register beside Bonk. Then again, Bonk has an unusually large Source, even for a dragon.”

“Really?”
Hayden frowned thoughtfully, gaining new respect for his familiar. “I didn’t know that…”

“Yes, I’ve often wondered if that’s why he’s so odd…but truthfully I think he just enjoys being silly.” Torin smirked faintly as he held the needles to Bonk’s scaly skin, eyes trained on the crystal ball, which was
now turning bright yellow with light.

“Did something happen to make him that way, like with me?”

“I’ve no idea—it’s possible.” Torin shrugged. “It’s probably one of the many reasons he waited so long to choose a master, and why he identified with you the way that he did, because you are somewhat alike.”

The crystal ball turned orange and then a deep, burning red color. It hovered there for a moment and then flashed through green, blue, and purple so quickly it was barely perceptible, finally casting out rays of bright prismatic light in all directions as though the orb had become a small
, glittering sun. Hayden, who hadn’t looked through a prism in weeks, couldn’t help but be comforted by the presence of such brilliant scattered light arrays on the walls and floor.

“That seems in order,” Torin said to himself, removing the needles and carefully placing all of the materials back into the oaken box before locking it.

“What was all that about?” Hayden asked, eyeing Bonk. The dragon seemed a little calmer, though still exhausted.

“A sort of magical potentiometer,” Torin explained. “It gauges Source power and verifies that magical flow between the channels is unimpeded. It also shows limitations, based on what color the receiver turns. If it goes through every color except green, then that means you are lacking capability in some of the more advanced earth-based
magics, and so forth.”

Hayden raised his eyebrows in interest and said, “I think I saw all the colors just now though, even though some of them went by kind of fast.”

“Yes, it affirms that Bonk has very few restrictions on his magic, none that are detectable by any means that I possess. Very few creatures can cast prismatic light from their Source alone.”

“So his magic is okay?”

Torin nodded again. “Yes, he seems perfectly healthy and intact, other than clearly being in pain and miserable.” He frowned.

“Maybe it’s still just side-effects from the fight in the Forest of Illusions?” Hayden offered tentatively.

“Possibly, but then why would Bonk be feeling it any more than Slash—”

Torin stopped without finishing his thought and his face seemed to drain of color. He took two steps towards a chair and sat down heavily, expression grim as he stared down
at his calloused hands. He seemed to age ten years in a matter of seconds.

“What’s wrong? What is it?” Hayden pressed, feeling his heart rate accelerate. Anything that could make Torin look like that couldn’t be good news for him or Bonk.

“I believe I may know why Bonk has been ill,” the older man answered heavily, pausing for a moment to collect his thoughts. “Magical creatures who spend a lot of time together can form sympathetic links between them. It gives them a general awareness of where their friends are and if they’re in danger at any given time.”

Not entirely understanding the point, Hayden asked, “So Bonk is sensing
Slasher’s feelings or something?”

Torin frow
ned and gently asked, “Hayden, who is Bonk’s closest companion?”

Hayden shrugged and said, “Well, Cinder, I guess, but he’s in the Forest of Illusions.”

“Yes, and distance does dampen the effect somewhat,” Torin agreed. “Knowing this, what does that suggest?”

“I…really don’t know, sir.” Hayden shrugged
again, feeling lost.

Torin sighed heavily. “It means that wherever Cinder is, whatever he is doing, he must be in
constant and absolute agony for his pain to affect Bonk so heavily clear back at Mizzenwald.”

Hayden’s mouth dropped open in shock and he said, “You think he’s been injured all this time and we didn’t even know it?” He glanced worriedly at Bonk, who was watching their conversation in stony silence. “But—but Bonk’s been getting worse every day. If Cinder was hurt, he should be getting better by now…”

“Unless he’s unable to heal for some reason,” Torin concurred grimly.

A new thought struck Hayden then and he felt dizzy with emotion. “But Torin…Cinder went with Master Asher.”

“Yes,” Torin nodded without looking up from the palms of his hands. “Yes, he did.”

And now Hayden knew why Torin wa
s so worried. If Cinder, who possessed a Source immeasurably larger than any mage, was terribly injured in the place where his magic should be at its strongest…could there be any hope at all that Asher was still alive?

“Are…are you sure you’re right?” he stammered hopelessly. “Maybe you’re wrong—maybe Bonk is just feeling off-color…you said Slasher wasn’t as bad off, right?”

“Slasher isn’t as close to Cinder as Bonk is,” Torin stated simply. “It would explain why other familiars have been showing similar symptoms for no other clear reason.”

“But—” Hayden stammered, opening and closing his mouth several times, determined to prove that they were overreacting, “—but the
Fias keep telling us how the mayor’s been getting word from the front again, that our forces are doing better! Cinder wouldn’t be suffering if we were winning! He would have healed by now!”

Torin finally looked up from his hands and met Hayden’s eyes, his own expression skeptical as he said,
“And why are you so sure the Fias are telling you the truth?”

Aghast, Hayden had nothing to say to that.

“I think the mayor is trying to hold back a full-scale panic amongst the people in Junir, and that he would do anything necessary to prevent that from happening for as long as possible. He only has to hold out until he actually
does
get word on the outcome of the fight, one way or another—and then it won’t matter what he told people before.”

Hayden was shaking his head, though he wasn’t sure why. He motioned Bonk to take his usual perch on his shoulder an
d asked, “What will happen to Bonk if Cinder keeps getting worse? Will he—could he die?” he asked the last part very quietly.

“He might, if he continues to decline or goes off eating,” Torin answered regretfully.
“It depends on how much longer Cinder can go on suffering before he himself dies.”

Hayden wasn’t aware of saying goodbye
to Torin or leaving the cabin, but he was suddenly walking back towards the castle, taking long strides and clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides. Bonk was perched patiently on his shoulder, looking around with mild interest and gauging Hayden’s mood.

By the
time he entered the dining hall the meal was nearing completion. Fia Eldridge was standing in front of his usual seat, still wearing the blue business suit that was common to the accountants. He seemed to be making an announcement to the room, since everyone else was quiet, and Hayden caught the last bit of it from the doorway.

“…driven the northern sorcerers away from the border with
Osglen and are hoping to bottleneck them at the coast.”

Hayden frowned and remained standing in the
threshold of the dining hall, unnoticed by anyone, as all attention was turned towards the Fia at the back of the room.