Cave of Nightmares (35 page)

“So, um…did you get any good research done over the holiday?” Hayden ventured, not sure if he was allowed to pry into the Prism Master’s business or not.

“Actually, yes,” he sounded pleased. “It was quite productive. I also met a very pretty girl who showed me around the theatre district during my free time.”

Encouraged by Asher’s willingness to answer his questions, Hayden asked another. “What did you work on?”

“Well, women like to feel appreciated for their efforts, so I tried to make sure—”

“I meant your research, sir,” Hayden interrupted, and Master Asher looked almost
amused by the change of subject.

“
I’ve been working on the same thing that all Prism majors study,” he explained, “discovering new arrays of power—specifically in compounded crystal-crystal prisms.”

Hayden frowned thoughtfully. “Is there still much left to discover?”

Master Asher looked stunned by the question. “We’ve barely scratched the surface of the power of prisms!” The sudden passion for learning in his voice startled Hayden. “You might as well take a cup of water from the Gawain Sea and claim to have captured the whole of it! There are thousands—millions of arrays to be seen, most of which are still too complex for mere humans to even perceive properly, let alone use.”

Hayden thought about his own brief attempts at
compounding, and the thousands of light patterns he was presented with, most of which he couldn’t even begin to make sense of.

“Anyway, I’ve been mapping an array for months now that seems promising,” Master Asher continued, his voice returning to its normal pitch and volume
.

“What does it do? Or what do you think it does?”

The Prism Master grinned at him. “I think it will bring the rain.” He paused for a moment to let that sink in. “Can you imagine it? Being able to summon rain, no matter where you are? We wouldn’t have to worry about droughts and bad harvests ever again.”

Hayden had never sur
vived a very bad drought since Junir’s climate was very well-balanced, but had heard that some of the western lands suffered huge casualties in years past from lack of food and water as a result of the droughts.

“Tha
t sounds like a very good thing,” he answered sincerely. “Do you enjoy doing research?”

Asher gave h
im a strange look. “If I didn’t then this would be a terrible position for me to hold.” He smirked. “Yes, I enjoy research very much. When you start my higher-level classes you’ll begin to see my name referenced in publications.”

Hayden was forcibly reminded of seeing his father’s name alongside Master Sark’s in
Tess’s textbook on powders. Perhaps that was what drove him to ask his next question.

“Do you think
I
could do research with you someday?”

Maste
r Asher’s reaction was completely unexpected. Hayden had anticipated a smirk, perhaps a noncommittal joke. Instead the Prism Master stopped dead in his tracks and gave him a wide-eyed stare that was almost…frightened. Hayden took a step back in alarm, because his mentor had just removed a diamond prism from his belt as though he was getting ready to equip it and use it to murder him.

“I-I’m sorry, I didn’t—” Hayden had no idea what he was saying, bu
t Master Asher recovered his composure in the blink of an eye and glanced down at the prism in his hand as though unsure of how it had gotten there. He returned it to the vacant slot on his belt and attempted his usual airy tone, not quite pulling it off.

“You’re still years away from
worrying about apprenticeships,” Master Asher spoke without quite meeting his eye. “By the time you’re at the mastery-level you may not even be interested in it. I’ll see you in class, Hayden. Glad you made it back in one piece.”

He walked off without giving Hayden a chance to respond, taking long strides in his obvious haste to get away. Hayden had no idea what he’d said that was so horrible, and could only conclude that Master Asher was aghast at the prospect of becoming his sponsor.

And why shouldn’t he be? I’m the Dark Prism’s son. Nobody trusts me with advanced prisms.

He was having a difficult time swallowing for some reason, trudging into the castle with a heavy heart. All of his previous joy at being home had evaporated strangely, and now he almost wished he was back at the orphanage.

I always thought Master Asher was on my side.

The young Prism Master had always
acted
as though he trusted him, defending him to Master Sark and the others when he got into trouble, saying he would always be there to help him if he needed it.

He even lets me talk to him an
d Torin on family day sometimes because I’m all alone.

It was now almost impossible for him to swallow, and Hayden was beginning to suspect his airways would close off if he didn’t think about something less depressing.
Imagine Lorn’s face when he hears you’ve defeated a dragon.

Even that thought was bitter and unsatisfying, because he knew how little he deserved the honor. He heard Tamon call out to him as he passed the common area on the sixth floor and sped up, desperately wanting to be alone right now. He was nearly sprinting by the time he flung open the door to his room and threw himself face-down on top of his bed, devoutly
thankful that none of his roommates were back yet.

He didn’t want any of them to see him cry.

17

Sleep

Torin was true to his word and returned Bonk to him in good health by the beginning of the fall term. Word soon got out about their exploits in Calypso, and Hayden and
Zane were fortunate enough to be present during the moment that Oliver’s friends broke the news to him and Jasper during lunch.

“Interesting,”
Zane remarked with badly-suppressed glee, “I didn’t know a person’s face could become that red without their head exploding.”

Tamon, who was sitting with them
remarked, “Oliver’s head exploding would drastically improve his looks, if you ask me.”

The others laughed at that, though Mira rolled her eyes even as she joined in. “You’re just jealous of him because he’s so popular.”

“Yeah, with idiots and jerks,” Tamon mumbled mutinously, earning another chuckle from Zane.

“Jasper looks like he wants to have his falcon gouge your eyes out, Hayden.”

Hayden followed Conner’s line of sight and noted that his assessment seemed accurate. Jasper was glaring daggers at him, though he quickly turned away as though none of them were worthy of his attention when he spotted them looking.

Hayden sighed. “What else is new?”

Master Asher must have kept his word and told the other Masters something convincing about the slaying of the dragon, because n
o one else asked him for an explanation or even mentioned it at all. The exception was Master Kilgore, who asked him to stay behind in Elixirs long enough to say, “Really, Frost—
fire
? Against a
dragon
?”

Ashamed of his blunder all over again, Hayden hurried off to Prisms and took his usual seat beside Tucker, wondering how Asher was going to act around him. This was the first time he’d seen the Prism Master since that unpleasant moment in the courtyard.

As it turned out, Master Asher seemed completely normal. He began teaching them about how some minor alignments could be inverted to produce major alignments—called the Law of Inversion—and whenever his eyes met Hayden’s he looked perfectly cheerful.

He informed them that their homework was to look for examples of such alignments in their clear and amber prisms, and that there woul
d be a prize for whoever correctly identified the most before the next day.

To no one’s real surprise
, Hayden was able to identify twenty different qualifying alignments, more than double what any of his classmates had found. His reward was a blue-tinted glass prism, which Master Asher informed him he now had permission to carry and use. Amazed and pleased, Hayden tucked it into his third prism slot and resolved to examine it in more detail later that night.

“Kind of makes you wonder,” Tucker said as they were walking back upstairs to drop off their things before dinner, “what he would have done if someone else won the challenge.”

“What do you mean?” Hayden asked, confused.

“He’s
made it clear that not many of us are ready for another tinted prism yet. If he was just angling for a chance to reward you, why didn’t he just ask you to stay after class and tell you you’re okay to use blue prisms? Why make you prove how much better you are than the rest of us?”

Hayden frowned. “I don’t
know what Asher’s thinking these days.” That was true on more than one level.

Tucker shrugged. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing. We’ve got another challenge arena coming up in a few weeks, so figure out how to use that thing
, because we need all the help we can get.”

When Hayden entered the dormitory after dinner that night, it was to find his part of the room thoroughly trashed: books all over the floor, clothing smeared with mud (and worse) and desk supplies smashed and unusable.

“Whoa…”
Zane and Conner followed him inside, eyes widening with shock. “Who do you think did this?”

Hayden scowled and examined a group of snapped pencils on the floor. He was suddenly glad that he brought Bonk with him to dinner that night, or who knows what might have happened.

“I’m beginning to think there is a reason that Jasper and Oliver were late arriving to the dining hall.”

Zane
looked outraged on his behalf.

“Don’t
worry, we’ll get them back for this. They’re just jealous because you’re making them look bad by being smarter than them.”

Hayden wasn’t entir
ely sure if that was true, but he was too tired to care just now. He began the laborious process of putting the room back in order, salvaging what could be kept and throwing away the rest. Fortunately both Conner and Zane had some useful repairing spells and the damage wasn’t as bad as he’d initially believed, though all of his clothing had to be sent to the laundry to get the mud and bird poop off of it.

Zane
and Conner spent the next hour coming up with all sorts of devious ways they could pay the older boys back, with Hayden only half-listening.

“—know what you should do first thing tomorrow?”
Zane got his attention. “You should tell Master Asher what they did. I’ll bet he sends them somewhere really horrible for detention,” he added with grim satisfaction.

Hayden’s stomach flipped unpleasantly at the thought of a
sking the Prism Master for help now that he knew how the man really felt towards him.

“No,” he said too quickly, surprising his roommates. “I don’t want them to know they’ve gotten to me,” he added immediately, trying to look calm and reasonable. “Besides, there’s no proof that they were the ones who did it, and I might just get in trouble again for picking fights.”

Zane gave him a strange stare and said, “You’re Asher’s favorite. He’s got to believe anything you say.”

“I’m not his favorite.” I
t was everything Hayden could do not to sound snappish when he said it. “Anyway, you both had some good ideas for payback, so we’ll just keep this between us for now…see how they like it when it comes back on them.”

That immediately set
Zane and Conner on another discussion about what they could possibly do to make Oliver and Jasper pay for their sins. This time Hayden joined in.

***

It took three days for them to exact their revenge, mostly because there were so many details to work out to prevent them from being caught. In fact, it might not have been possible for their plan to work at all if Hayden hadn’t recently been granted permission to use blue-tinted glass prisms.

The three of them waited until
Kayce was asleep before sneaking out of the room and into the darkened hallway. It was after midnight and none of the lights were on in the castle, giving it an ominous, oppressive feeling.

“I could give us a little light…” Conner offered in hushed tones, but the others waved him down.
“Too risky. If any of the Masters are up they’ll see us right away.”

Still, by the time they’d crept back to the main stairwell and were heading downwards in the near-blackness, Hayden would have given almost anything for a bit of light. Every creak and groan of the building made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and more than once they thought they heard voices.

Since Oliver and Jasper were almost at the mastery-level of schooling, they were on the second floor, and the three of them turned down the hallway and moved slowly as they counted doors. Zane had been sent as a lookout during dinner just the night before to read the names next to each room and figure out which one was theirs.

Ten…eleven…twelve…thirteen.
Hayden stopped in front of the right door and looked at the others, eyes straining in the darkness to see their features. They were almost at the point of no return…

Zane
pulled the chalk from his pocket and felt around for the doorknob, drawing a small circle beside it that was just large enough for his hand to fit inside. Hayden admired his ability to draw crosshatches and braids in the dark, returning the chalk to his belt and sticking his hand straight through the middle of the circle and the wooden door as though it were made of jelly.

Zane
was elbow-deep in the door before he twisted his arm to the side and grabbed the knob. They heard the lock click—it sounded loud in the silence—and the door eased open. Conner and (surprisingly) Kayce had worked on installing a lock on their own door after the recent vandalism, though Hayden was starting to second-guess its security now that he saw how easily his friend bypassed the older boys’.

Hayden and
Conner slipped inside the room, but Zane gave a muffled gasp from behind them. When they turned they saw him still kneeling in front of the door with his arm still sticking through the wood, which seemed to solidify around him.

“What’s wrong?” Hayden asked as quietly as possible.
His friend let out a helpless sigh and said, “I’m stuck. The circle disappeared when I unlocked the door and now I can’t get my arm out.”

That was not a consequence they had foreseen, and Hayden and Conner exchanged a nervous glance. Neither of them was good enough at conjury to replicate
Zane’s circle to get his arm out.

Conner flicked his wand a
nd a bright bead of light lit the end of it, nearly blinding Hayden, whose eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. He heard the sound of rustling sheets from one of the beds nearby as he lowered the eyepiece of his circlet over his right eye, the blue prism already loaded.

Sleep
, he thought at the rustling form, which immediately fell silent and still. He turned to the other three and repeated the spell, anxious to keep them unconscious until the three of them were long gone.

“How do we get you out of there?” Hayden turned back to
Zane, his voice still a whisper but much more relaxed.

“I don’t suppose either of you can draw a twice-ha
tched, single-braided circle?” he sighed, already knowing the answer.

“Can’t you just draw it with your left hand?” Hayden asked
desperately, while Conner moved further into the room to begin exacting their revenge on Oliver and Jasper while the boys slept.

In the resid
ual light from Conner’s wand, Hayden could see Zane scowl at him. “About as accurately as you can target through a prism with your left eye.”

Hayden had actually never tried to use his left eye before
for casting, and pulled the clear prism from his belt to hold it up in front of him. It felt strange and awkward, like writing with his left hand would be, even though he could see the colors and arrays just fine. He had the feeling that he could cast this way if he had to, but it would be sloppy and badly-focused.

Zane
had used his left hand to remove the chalk from his belt and pass it to his right on the other side of the door.

“What are you doing?” Hayden whispered.

“Attempting to get myself out of this,” his friend grumbled. “If I use my left hand I’ll probably end up vanishing my conjuring arm entirely, and then I’ll have to explain what happened to Master Reede so he can attempt to find it for me.” He scowled and twisted his arm uncomfortably in the wood, clenching his teeth in pain as he tried for a good angle to draw from. “I don’t suppose
you
want to explain why we’re in the sixth-year dormitories after midnight with my arm stuck in a door?”

Hayden didn’t, so he watched helplessly as his friend attempted to draw a conjur
y circle without being able to see it, wishing they had never come here tonight. They were going to get in a world of trouble if they were discovered…

The sound of fluttering wings nearly stopped his heart.

Oh no…we forgot about the familiars…
.

Conner clearly had this thoug
ht at the same moment as he did, and stopped drawing on Oliver’s face in black ink long enough to stumble backwards in horror. Jasper’s falcon was waking up. If it thought they were attacking its master it would try to tear them to pieces, and if Slasher woke up….There was no way they could overpower a magically-inclined dragon long enough to escape undetected.

Hayden swung the eyepiece with the blue prism in it out of the way, held the clear one i
n front of his right eye and thought,
Focus!

Jasper’s familiar became suddenly interested in staring at its perch. Hayden had no idea how long the spell would hold, but by some miracle
Zane managed to free himself without losing an arm or breaking the door, and the three of them took off down the hallway without pressing their luck any further.

They didn’t stop or speak until they were safely inside their own room, where
Zane flipped on the lights and sat down heavily on his bed, white-faced.

“That was close,” he said in a low voice, despite the fact that
Kayce was a heavy sleeper and probably wouldn’t wake up even if the sun crashed into the world and exploded.