The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) (26 page)

The cockatrice fell over, dead.

For a long moment no one moved. It wasn’t until Hayden felt his adrenaline peter out and the stuffy feeling in his Foci that his brain kicked back into action, though he felt more tired than ever.

“Is anyone hurt badly?” he asked, getting to his feet and checking himself for injuries. His shirt had burned through across his stomach, where the buckler wasn’t able to shield him entirely, and his skin beneath it was red and sensitive to the touch. Fortunately the shield had absorbed the most concentrated part of the flame, or he’d probably be a pile of ashes right now.

“My arm’s still bleeding, but otherwise I’m okay,” Tanner panted, collapsing to the ground and using his good arm to fish around his backpack until he extracted a roll of bandages and some water.

“What about Harold? I saw him get thrown but I didn’t see how he landed,” Hayden looked around the cockatrice’s body.

“It’ll take more than a few bumps and bruises to do me in,” the butcher’s gruff voice answered back as he limped into view. “You okay, kid?”

“Yeah, just a mild burn,” Hayden assured him, opening his own bag to spread some burn paste across his torso, feeling the immediate relief. Harold helped Tanner wash and bandage the long gash on his arm.

“Thought you were going to just run around crying while the rest of us killed that thing,” Harold said at last, giving Hayden a slightly suspicious look. “You didn’t look like much of a hero fighting that monster.”

Hayden scowled and said, “I’m used to fighting with magic. I panicked at first and it took me a minute to refocus.”

“Yes, well, we got it in the end,” Tanner said in a placating voice, glancing between the two of them. “Should we get going in case more show up from all the noise?”

As tired as they were, no one disagreed. Hayden tilted his head back in what was rapidly becoming a familiar position, searching for the ley lines. He found them almost immediately—though the light was faint—a little to the south, and they corrected their course and set off again after gathering their weapons from the fight.

“How long do you think they’ll keep working their magic from the other end of the door?” Harold asked as they continued crossing the planes towards a densely-packed wooded area up ahead.

“They’ll keep the Closing spell going for as long as it takes,” Hayden stated firmly.

Harold cocked an eyebrow at him and said, “They’re going to give up on us eventually. I’m just asking how long you think we’ve got before that happens.”

“Asher won’t give up on me, not for a very long time,” he answered with just as much confidence as before. He knew that his mentor would make sure they gave Hayden ever possible chance at making it back before giving up on him.

“If you say so,” Harold relented, though he obviously wasn’t convinced. Hayden wasn’t sure how much he liked the man, and wished he could be a bit more agreeable, like Tanner, who had remained mostly silent since they fought the cockatrice. Hayden wondered if his arm was hurting a lot more than he let on.

As they neared the wooded area, Hayden saw the ley lines disappear into the tangle of trees and knew there would be no avoiding the forest. Upon closer inspection, it was the strangest forest Hayden had ever seen after the Forest of Illusions: the trees were multi-colored, though muted so that it was hard to tell what color they were from a distance; the branches and leaves twisted into shapes that seemed improbable for trees—twisting upwards like horns, wound in circles so that the leaves made strange concentric patterns, or sticking almost straight up into the air so that the entire tree looked like a giant feather duster.

Owls and bats peered down at them from the higher branches that Hayden could see, and he knew that there were probably hundreds of different types of animals in the forest—hopefully some of them friendly, or at least neutral. All in all, it was the last place he wanted to go right now.

So of course it’s right in the middle of our path.

“Holy gods, what is
that
?” Harold stopped dead in his tracks, staring straight ahead.

Thinking the man was a bit dim, Hayden said, “It’s a forest…”

“No, he means
that
,” Tanner corrected him, pointing.

In Hayden’s fascination with the forest, he had overlooked the strangest feature of all. There was a wooden structure built just to the side of their path, with a thatched roof that had poked through in places and two square holes in the front that were unmistakably meant to be windows.

Mouth dropping open in astonishment to mirror his companions, Hayden said, “Is that a
house
?”

14

A Fork in the Road

The three of them stared at it for over a minute in silence, trying to wrap their minds around the concept of a house existing in a place like this.

If there’s a house, then there must be people. Someone lives here…

He wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse. The presence of other people in this realm meant that they weren’t so totally, hopelessly alone, but on the other hand it also meant that someone had survived in here long enough to build a house and make a life of it. Anyone who could do that must be totally nuts by now, and may not be all that friendly towards a trio of heavily-armed strangers…

“Should we check it out?” Tanner asked hesitantly. “I mean, if there are other people here, they might be able to help us…”

Harold was obviously taking Hayden’s darker view of the matter, because he said, “Or else they’re whackjobs who like living in this scary hellhole, and they’re going to try and murder us as soon as we knock on the door.”

The other two looked towards Hayden for an answer, which he found a little surprising.

Guess they’re still content with letting me make the decisions…

“I think we ought to check it out. We should be prepared for hostility, but there’s also a chance that it’s Delauria’s people, or maybe even one of the earlier expeditions.”

Frowning, Harold said, “If it was any of them, why would they stop here instead of pushing through the forest to the other door? They knew they could be rid of this place if they could just get to the other exit.”

Hating to agree with the surly butcher, Hayden nodded and said, “I know. But maybe there’s a reason they weren’t able to go on, like they’re badly hurt, or their mage went nuts and they’re not sure how to continue alone…” he knew his excuses sounded feeble at best, but he honestly had no idea why a person would build a home here and was curious to find out.

“Either way, we need to rest up and eat something or we’re going to be useless by the time the next monster shows up,” Tanner pointed out rationally.

Why didn’t I think of that?
Hayden chided himself. In truth, he was feeling a bit sluggish and knew that his judgment would probably be compromised soon—if it wasn’t already. There was no point in pushing on just to get themselves killed when a little rest might help them.

“Okay, well let’s go see if anyone’s home.”

The three of them approached the little domicile carefully, Harold ducking down and peeking into one of the windows as the other two walked to the front door.

“I don’t see anyone inside,” he reported, moving to join them. “Looks like the place hasn’t been used in a long time. If someone lived here before, they’re either gone or dead by now.”

Slightly disappointed, Hayden opened the door and led the way inside. One look around the place told him that Harold was correct: dust lined most of the surfaces, and cobwebs grew in the corners. There were no lights on, so the only illumination came from what little light permeated the overcast sky and filtered in through the windows and the holes in the roof. The house was mostly one room, with a makeshift couch and a bed on one end and a crudely built kitchen area on the other, centered around a fire pit that vented to the outside and could be used for cooking.

Tanner looked around the kitchen area and came back with a few unlabeled jars balanced precariously in his arms. One contained strips of dried meat, another had what looked like crushed peaches, and the third had some unidentifiable green plants in it that Hayden couldn’t guess the origins of.

“Shall we eat?” he asked the others, setting the jars down in the middle of the floor and taking a seat on the edge of the rumpled straw bed. Hayden took his cue and sat down on the couch, the straw poking through his clothes and feeling scratchy, despite the cloth that had been thrown over it. Still, it felt good to sit down.

“Do you think that stuff is safe to eat?” Howard asked dubiously, eyeing the strips of meat and probably trying to figure out what sort of creature it came from.

Hayden shrugged.

“If someone lived here for any amount of time and ate this food, it obviously didn’t hurt them or they wouldn’t have lasted long enough to build this house.”

Harold looked like he wanted to disagree with him, but said nothing as Tanner opened the first jar and sampled one of the meat sticks, tearing a piece off with difficulty in his teeth.

“I’m not sure what kind of animal this is, but it isn’t half bad,” he said at last, and the others finally relented and tried some for themselves, trying not to think too hard about what they were eating.

Hayden agreed with Tanner—the meat wasn’t bad at all, and the peaches tasted like any he’d ever had in the other realm. He wasn’t brave enough to try the strange green matter, which had gelled slightly at the bottom of the jar, and neither were the others, so they left it alone.

Being fed and shielded from the elements—and hopefully, out of immediate danger—Hayden found it hard to resist the urge to sleep. He kept blinking furiously, fighting to stay awake, but his vision began to blur and his eyelids felt impossibly heavy.

“C’mon guys, we’d better go…” he mumbled, blinking and attempting to stand up.

The next thing he knew, he became gradually aware of a piece of straw poking him uncomfortably in the chest, and of a mild burning sensation in his hands and arms. Returning to consciousness and blinking his eyes open, Hayden snapped awake the moment he realized he had been asleep, looking around frantically for the others.

They were right where he remembered them, slumped over in uncomfortable positions and snoring quietly. He scowled and shook them angrily, yelling, “Wake up!”

Tanner and Harold jerked awake and the latter grabbed a knife like he expected a fight. Seeing only Hayden, he relaxed and said, “What’s with the rude wake-up call?”

“How long have I been asleep?” Hayden demanded, fear roiling inside of him as his Foci continued to burn like they were being exposed to direct sunlight for too long.

“How should I know? We were asleep too,” Harold frowned at him. “You fell off as soon as we finished eating, and we debated for a while whether to wake you or not, but we needed rest too so we took a nap.”

Tanner gave Harold a look that said he had obviously been in favor of waking Hayden and pressing onwards but had been overruled by the mouthy butcher.

“Are you stupid!?” Hayden vented loudly, getting to his feet. “Do you seriously want to die here? You
know
I’m on a deadline before I go insane and you thought we should NAP?!”

Immediately defensive, Harold also got to his feet, and despite being shorter than Hayden, his bulk gave the impression that he was looming over him.

“And what good are you if you’re falling asleep on your feet out there? You barely managed to be useful when that cockatrice attacked us, and that’s when you were wide awake!”

And so it begins…

Tanner held up a placating hand towards both of them and said, “There’s no point in fighting right now, we’re just wasting time. Let’s just get moving again now that we’re somewhat rested and try to make up some lost time.”

A part of Hayden wanted to refuse. He wanted to stand here and shout at Harold until he was blue in the face, and then he wanted to rip the man’s arms off and beat him to death with them, basking in the joy of the other man’s suffering…

Whoa, where did that come from?

The feeling left as quickly as it came, and Hayden shook his head to clear it, feeling the color drain from his face and trying his best not to show how afraid he suddenly was.

It can’t be happening already…

He tried to convince himself that he had just been feeling unusually stressed and vindictive, but it was no use. He remembered the way he felt, the savage pleasure that had surged through him at the thought of destroying Harold, of watching him suffer. That wasn’t the kind of thing he would feel on his own accord, no matter what the circumstances.

His Foci continued to burn.

“Tanner’s right, we don’t have time for this,” he said as evenly as possible, hooking his hands around his belt to make it less obvious that they were shaking. “Let’s head into the woods and hope that nothing nasty finds us in there.”

Harold grumbled in grudging agreement and the three of them set off again, this time entering the forest with the strange trees, immediately registering the lack of any sort of natural path through the foliage. Hayden’s neck soon began to ache from almost constantly being tilted upwards, determined not to lose track of the ley lines that seemed to go straight through trees without any regard for the solid objects. It resulted in him stumbling more than a few times over fallen branches or bits of uneven ground, and also made him eerily aware of how many birds and bats were perched in the branches overhead, watching their progress.

As long as they stay up there it isn’t a problem,
he assured himself.

They hadn’t tried speaking to each other since they entered the forest, because Tanner was naturally quiet and Harold and Hayden had nothing to say to each other right now that wouldn’t start a fight. It therefore took him a little while to realize that he didn’t hear anything in the wooded area right now: not their footsteps over the leaves, not the owls hooting overhead…nothing.

He stopped and turned to the others.

“Do you hear anything?” he asked, gasping in surprise when he could only hear his voice in his own head.

Tanner made a confused face and mouthed something inaudible. They all reached the conclusion at the same time: this forest muted noise. They were walking around an area that was potentially filled with deadly creatures, and they couldn’t hear a thing.

There was nothing to do but press on, and though none of them said it (and it wouldn’t matter even if they had), Hayden noticed that they all increased their pace, weaving between trees and cutting their way through foliage at a killing speed, stumbling much more often now but not daring to slow down.

Hayden saw the black bear before it bit his head off, but only because he was looking up at the ley lines and saw the creature jump out of a nearby tree. He screamed inaudibly and moved out of the way, smacking his colleagues on the arm to get their attention and drawing his knife. Tanner reacted with lightning speed and raised his crossbow—which he’d been carrying this entire time to keep it at the ready—nocked an arrow, and loosed it into the bear’s chest.

The bear staggered for a moment but then resumed its pursuit, and Hayden saw Harold dart past him, ducking under the bear’s claws and ramming his sword into its stomach, while Tanner loosed another arrow.

The bear went down before Hayden could even plan out his own attack, groaning silently and then falling to the ground without a sound. Hayden gave his colleagues a thumbs-up and tried to mouth that they were lucky that the bear wasn’t magical, but the others couldn’t read his lips so he gave up the attempt.

He turned back to continue on their trajectory when he saw no less than six wargs blocking their path.

They looked exactly like he remembered from his second year at school, when they’d breached the momentary schism the sorcerer-spy had created on the grounds and attacked Hayden and his friends. They were larger than normal wargs, and also looked like they were inside out, patches of fur peeling away from slimy innards that were visible from the outside, canine teeth hanging almost to the ground.

Hayden had no time to gauge the others’ reactions and see if they looked as terrified as he felt before the wargs attacked, darting around trees and bushes without a sound. The forest was not at all an ideal fighting ground because of all the natural obstacles, but that worked both in their favor and against them, as it also hampered the wargs’ movement. Ignoring the others, Hayden focused on the immediate threat in front of him and ducked behind a tree as a warg lunged at him, darting around the other side and brandishing his buckler in one hand, a knife in the other.

He and the warg exchanged attacks, one surging forward only to be repelled without landing a blow. It wasn’t until a second warg ran at him from behind—which Hayden could only tell because he felt the ground rumbling—that he jumped out of the way and watched the two crash into each other. While the two wargs were struggling in a tangle of limbs, he leapt onto them and stabbed ferociously with his knife, lodging it so deeply in one warg’s breastbone that he couldn’t get it out and had to grab another from his belt to cut the other one’s neck.

A third warg was streaking past him on its way to attack one of his companions, and Hayden leapt onto its back without thinking through the consequences. The warg slowed immediately as Hayden’s weight hit him, halting so quickly that with Hayden’s poor grip on its slimy fur he was thrown over its head, landing on a pile of branches strewn across the ground that snapped under his weight and poked him uncomfortably.

The warg lunged at him before Hayden could arm himself, so he did the only thing he could and grabbed both sides of the jaws that were threatening to clamp shut around his head, struggling with every ounce of strength he had to keep them open, hands trembling furiously from the strain as blood trickled down his arms. The warg tried to gnash its teeth, cutting Hayden’s hands even worse and making him clench his own teeth against the pain. Just when he thought he was about to run out of strength in his arms, the warg let out a silent howl of pain and slumped off of him, and Hayden’s hands and wrists began to bleed freely.