Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (3 page)

Shuddering at the image that evoked
, Hayden said, “No thanks. I’ll keep it between the two of us.”

Master Asher nodded and lowered his eyepiece to undo the spells he’d cast, but Hayden said, “
Wait, there was one more thing I found.”

He extracted the scrap of fabric
that bore the strange circle with the ‘M’ inscribed in the center and showed it to his mentor.

“What in the world would Aleric
be doing with
that
?” Asher made a strange face, examining the cloth more closely.

“You know what it is?” Hayden asked eagerly.

“I’ve never seen it before, but it looks a bit like the clan markings that you see on the back of a sorcerer’s hands, showing who they’re affiliated with and what family they’re part of. It’s a status symbol of sorts, as I understand.”

Frowning, Hayden said, “Why would my father have a clan
symbol drawn on a piece of fabric hidden away in his house?”

“Again, I have absolutely no idea, though it does confirm that he was interested in our northern counterparts’ magic at some point before his demise. I had always wondered.”

“Do you think I can keep it?” Hayden asked. “If it isn’t dangerous, that is.”

Master Asher arched an eyebrow at him and said, “Why do you want it?”

“It’s the only thing of my father’s I’ve ever gotten,” he answered truthfully. “I’m trying to learn more about his life, because it seems like the first step in figuring out what happened to me the day he came to my mom’s house.”

Asher considered him thoughtfully for a moment and said, “Not a bad place to start. You can keep this, but don’t show it to anyone for the time being. If you’re interested in tracing
Aleric’s steps, you might consult the library for any books about the northern sorcerers. One of them might have an index of known siglas that may help you identify which clan it came from, though I’m not sure how that will help particularly.”

“Thanks. I’m not sure what I’ll find, but it’s a good place to start,” Hayden acknowledged. Changing the subject he asked, “What’s going on with the war right now? I kept hearing different things when I was staying with Zane’s family, and we didn’t know what to believe.
Oliver’s mom wouldn’t talk to me about it much because I’m not on the Council.”

Master Asher frowned and said, “Our scouts have reported small numbers of isolated attacks at the Forest of Illusion along the coastline. So far our fighters have been able to repel the attacks.”

This sounded like good news to Hayden, who couldn’t understand why his mentor looked so grim right now if they were winning.

“Then what’s wrong?”

“It doesn’t feel right,” Asher sighed, pacing the room without looking at Hayden. “They have to cross the Yrani Sea to get to our shores, which takes both time and resources. If you were going to take the trouble of outfitting a ship and sailing across the Yrani to invade another continent, would you only send twenty people at a time?”

Hayden’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “They’re really only sending twenty sorcerers at a time?”

“The exact number varies with each attack, but always seems ridiculously low to me. In the past they’ve sent hundreds—thousands—of sorcerers to attack us. Unless they’ve gotten dumber as time elapses, I think they’ve changed their game plan and are getting ready to snowball us, though my opinion is not the popular one amongst the Council of Mages.”

“Why not?”

Asher stopped pacing long enough to give him a funny look and said, “Aside from the fact that I’m not terribly popular with the Council, they don’t like being told that there’s something wrong when we appear to be winning.”

Frowning, Hayden aske
d, “What do you think the sorcerers are trying to accomplish, if not taking control of the Forest?”

“Oh, I think they still want control of the Forest of Illusions very badly,” Asher explained, “I’m just not sure what their
plan to conquer it entails yet. I’ve glanced at a few of the field reports, and it almost sounds more like they’re sending scouting parties than combatants…perhaps looking for an ideal spot to land their main force?” It wasn’t clear whether the Prism Master was asking himself or Hayden to answer the question. “Many of the others seem confident of a quick victory for us, but perhaps I’m just a pessimist.”

“Do you think you might get called into battle?”

Asher looked at him and said, “Perhaps, though it won’t be good sign if that happens.”

“What do you mean?”

“Training the next generation of mages has always been the highest priority of the magical community, especially the Council of Mages. Our children are our future, so to speak. Without proper training, huge troves of our magical knowledge will be lost over time.” He gave Hayden a grim look now. “If they begin pulling the Masters out of the Great Nine to fight, it means that things are going very badly in the war.”

Hayden didn’t even like to think about what would happen if the war went badly for them and the
sorcerers took control of the Forest of Illusions. If they held the stronghold of the Nine Lands’ magic, there would be nothing to stop them from taking over the rest of the continent as well.

“Hopefully I’m overreacting and it won’t come to that,” Asher continued, apparently reading the look on Hayden’s face. “The Council may be full of elitists, but they’re magically-powerful elitists, and in the past they have made good decisions for our kind. For now we just have to trust their directing of the war effort and hope for the best.”

Hayden nodded and moved to look out the window. He could see the tops of some of the supply shops, including Pounds of Prisms and the Magnificent Mage. He was trying not to imagine them burning and in ruins if the war made it to Mizzenwald.

“Well, I’ll leave you now.” Asher pulled his attention away from his dark thoughts. “I
t occurs to me that you are in my level-four class this year, and that I don’t actually have a lesson plan for the level-four class, as I’ve never had to teach it before.” He smirked.

“I was wondering whether you’d prepared anything for me or not,” Hayden admitted.

“I’ll make it up as I go along; I always do, and it usually turns out alright.” Asher shrugged, turning to leave. “You’re cleared to purchase level-four prisms and texts, by the way. You’ll also need a workbook this year, as we’re going to begin studying the basic formulas you’ll need in the future to discover new alignments.”

Hayden had seen pages of calculations on Asher’s desk before and hadn’t been able to decipher a bit of it. The thought of trying to learn it was both exciting and terrifying, but all he said was, “Okay, I’ll remember to get a workbook.”

Asher nodded, twirled the onyx prism in his hand one last time and then tucked it into his pocket.

“See you at the start of term,” he said cheerfully, removing his spells from around the room and closing the door behind him.

Since he had nothing better to do, Hayden spent the rest of the afternoon stocking up on supplies for the start of term. He visited Pound
s of Prisms to upgrade his supplies, and for once the shop owner greeted him with wary neutrality rather than open disdain.

Things are looking up for me this year,
Hayden thought with a faint smile.

He bought new clothing in The Magical Mage, as his pants were becoming noticeably too short and some of his shirts had holes or burn marks in them from the antics of last year.
He upgraded his wands to level-four and stuffed his new textbook into his bag, awkwardly carrying the cluster of heavy bags into Kly’s Elixirs, his last stop of the day. He was surprised to see Master Kilgore in there, reviewing an accounting list with Kly.

Both men looked up at the sound of Hayden’s arrival and the former said, “Hello, Frost. Come to stock up on ingredients before the start of term?”

“Yes, sir. I’m out of heartsbane and siltgrass.”

The Master of Elixirs nodded and made a dismissive motion at
Kly’s list, as though he had better things to do right now than review the accounting for the store. Hayden was surprised when the Master joined him on his circuit of the shop to collect ingredients.

“How was your winter break?” Kilgore asked in his usual gruff tone.

“Good, but exhausting. Zane thinks his parents were trying to show us what working in one of the prison mines is like.”

Kilgore chuckled and said, “Good. Young people need to do real work, or you’ll grow soft.”
He nodded approvingly to Zane’s parents. Hayden supposed he shouldn’t be terribly surprised by the Master’s attitude; Kilgore was built like a forge-worker.

“How was your break, sir?” he ventured cautiously, not sure if it was an impertinent question.

“Not my best, but fair enough. Access to the Forest of Illusions is becoming greatly restricted, which hampers the bulk of my research, but I had other things to look into that passed the time tolerably.”

“Are we still d
oing challenge arenas this year with the war going on?” Hayden asked, capitalizing on the Master’s willingness to talk to him.

Master Kilgore narrowed his eyebrows and said, “For now, yes. If things take a turn for the worse, the challenge arenas will likely be cancelled to free up our evenings.”

Hayden nodded grimly, but the Master of Elixirs startled him by adding, “I expect you’re looking forward to dropping Lorn Trout from your arena team this year?”

His immediate instinct was to agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment, but something gave him pause. It seemed like a strange thing to ask out of nowhere, and Kilgore was watching him closely, which meant this was probably a test of some sort.

“I don’t know…” Hayden began neutrally. “If he’s still a good fit for our team then he stays. If I find someone better at Powders or with a broader skillset then I guess I’ll try and trade him.”

Master Kilgore let out a low chuckle and said, “Glad to see you learned something last year. Carry on, Frost.”

The Master returned to the accounting with Kly after they added Hayden’s purchases to the roster, and Hayden made his way back to the castle with his belongings, still thinking about what Kilgore had said. Obviously he had been pleased with Hayden’s response…

But why?
What was he looking for?

Hayden thought back to last year, when he had first found out that Lorn Trout was going to be in his arena group. He was at dinner when Zane told him, and he’d immediately left the room to go shout at the Prism Master about it. Was there a chance that the other Masters had found out about that at some point?

Probably; I’m sure they all share information about their students with each other.

Hayden frowned. Now that he thought about it, he had done an awful lot of shouting at the Masters last year, and on one occasion he even dueled the Prism Master on the front lawns, after his first horrific challenge arena of the year. In retrospect, that was probably a bad thing.

Maybe that’s what Kilgore was looking for—
he frowned thoughtfully—
to see if I’ve calmed down and gotten control of myself.

It was unnerving to think that his teachers were watching him so closely, but it was also strangely comforting to know that they were invested in his future. As he unpacked his bags, he realized he had a lot to think about this year.

3

The Absorber

Hayden’s friends didn’t return to school until the day before the start of term, and he spent most of the intervening time playing ‘fetch’ with Bonk and Cinder or doing research in the library. In the entirety of his previous two years at Mizzenwald, Hayden realized he had only been to the library on the second floor a handful of times to look up reference materials for his homework assignments.

By the end of the week he thought he knew it well
enough to work there. Kept behind the only set of glass doors that Mizzenwald had, it was either a very low-ceilinged room or else it just felt that way due to all the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves throughout it. The room wasn’t laid out in an open rectangle like most of the other areas in the school, but was some sort of irregular shape that meant he had to turn corners and follow short corridors to find different sections of it, reminiscent of a maze that he might have to navigate in the challenge arenas (but lacking the monsters).

There was an art to the organization of the books as well, which took the better part of his first day to figure out.
Books were grouped in broad categories, and then by either author, subject, or date of publication depending on what the topic was. When Hayden finally located a few books about the northern sorcerers, he felt like he’d scored a major victory, and was certain that the hard part of his task was over.

However, h
is research was less fruitful than he’d hoped. He did manage to locate a book that had a list of known siglas from the northern clans, but it admitted to being largely incomplete and didn’t have the symbol that Hayden had tucked into his bag upstairs. There wasn’t even much information about the sorcerer’s magic or how it differed from their own, because the only time the north and south interacted with each other was when they were at war, and they were hardly going to stop and share trade-secrets with their enemies. Hayden closed the book with frustration and abandoned the search for now, trudging back to his dormitory with Bonk on his shoulder.

I just hope that the sorcerers know as little about us as we do about them.

He was so caught up in his thoughts on the subject that he didn’t see Tess in the hallway until he walked straight into her and knocked her to the ground.

“Sorry, Tess!”
He extended a hand to help her up, feeling like a colossal idiot. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Are you hurt?”

She glanced at her familiar, Mittens, to make sure
the cat was alright and said, “I’m fine—I wasn’t paying attention either.” Then she took a closer look at Hayden and her eyes widened slightly. “You look…more muscular than I remember.”

The way she said it made Hayden reflexively stand up straighter, and for some reason he caught himself saying, “Thanks. I did a lot of the manual labor around Zane’s house during break: chopping firewood, patching the roof, hunting, that sort of thing.”

“Wow, that must have been a lot of hard work…it was freezing this winter,” Tess looked distinctly impressed.

“It was pretty easy once I got used to the cold,” he said without thinking. He had no idea why he was downplaying how unpleasant it was, or why he didn’t mention all the help he had from the rest of the family. He especially didn’t know why he was grinning like an idiot right now
.

“Anyway,” he changed the subject, desperate to escape before he
started sounding as arrogant as Oliver Trout, “I better get back to my room to see if the others are here yet.”

Tess nodded and said, “Alright. I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow. We can go over our schedules and see if we’ve got any classes together.”

“Great, yeah, sounds good,” Hayden rambled, already walking away. “See you tomorrow!”

As soon as he was safely inside his room he slumped against the closed door and put his head in his hands. “Frost, you are an idiot,” he grumbled, thinking it would be a miracle if Tess still thought he was sane.

“Has he always talked to himself like that?” Conner’s voice broke his train of thought, and Hayden’s eyes flew open to find all three of his roommates staring at him.

“Sometimes he mutters when he thinks no one is listening,” Zane put in cheerfully.

Hayden got to his feet and said, “Sorry, I didn’t know if you all were coming back this year, since term starts tomorrow morning and none of you saw fit to return before now.” He made a face at them.

“Yeah, well no sense in spending more time here than necessary,” Tamon shrugged and settled his boa constrictor into its tank. “We spend most of the year here anyway.”

“So why are you cursing yourself for a fool this time?” Zane changed the subject, taking a seat on his bed and patting Felix the fox absentmindedly.

Hayden scowled and said, “Nothing worth mentioning.”

“Oh yeah, did you get to go to your dad’s estate during the break?” Conner asked excitedly, and Hayden seized on the subject gratefully and described his tour to them in as much detail as he could remember. The only part he left out was that he and Bonk had discovered two of the Dark Prism’s artifacts while there.

“Whoa, sounds like an awesome place,” Tamon grinned. “If they ever clear out all your dad’s old traps and stuff
, you could actually reopen the manor. You’d be my first friend ever to live in a Great House, and I would expect to be invited over often.”

“A Great House?”
Hayden raised an eyebrow at that. He’d heard the term before, but something about the way Tamon said it implied that it was more than just a description of a really cool house, like it was a proper title.

“Yeah, you know…one of the mage families that’s important enough or rich enough to get an estate, though there are some people in the non-magic
al community that make enough money to have one built as well. We don’t call those Great Houses though; that’s reserved for mage families.”

“The Frosts have been known for their magic for centuries, except for your grandfather. I think he was the first
one in like, a bazillion years not to be magically-inclined, and he started that booming apothecary business anyway and became the richest of them all out of spite,” Zane added.

“Oh, I see.” Hayden nodded. “Now that I think about it, I’m sure I’ve heard t
hat term thrown around a few times, I just never really gave it much thought since it didn’t apply to me.”

Conner smirked and said, “Yeah, well now it does. So, when are you planning to have us over for a party?”

Hayden rolled his eyes. “Given that I’m not even allowed into the place without an escort, probably not anytime soon.”

“That’s cool, I can wait,” Zane grinned. “As long as you don’t invite the
Trouts, in which case I’ll have to stop being your friend forever. Fair warning.”

“Deal,” Hayden agreed readily.

His friends continued their discussion about Great Houses and mage lineage for most of the evening, but Hayden was only half-listening and eventually feigned tiredness so he could go to bed early. As usual, he had so much on his mind that it took him a long time to fall asleep, his thoughts occupied by sorcerer siglas, the onyx prism, and Tess.

His first class the next day was Elixirs. Master Kilgore congratulated him for making it to the level-three class this term, given how much he had struggled with the subject during his last two years. Unfortunately, Hayden didn’t make a very good showing for himself on the first day, distracted by thoughts of his next class: Abnormal Magic.

He had no idea what to expect from Abnormal Magic, or Master
Laurren, who taught it, but as soon as Elixirs ended he approached Master Kilgore to ask for directions to the classroom.

“You seemed distracted today, Frost,” the Master greeted him
gruffly. “I expect better focus from you in the future.”

“Sorry sir, I’ve just been thinking about my next lesson…” he trailed off, holding up the sheet of paper
with his schedule written on it, “…only I’m not sure where it is. My other classes all have room numbers listed beside them, but this one just has the letter ‘B’.”

Master Kilgore smirked and said, “It’s in the basement,” like that was obvious.

Alarmed, Hayden blurted out, “We have a basement? How could I be here for two years and not know that?”

“Do you really want me to answer that, Frost?” Kilgore raised a bushy red eyebrow at him.

“Probably not, sir,” Hayden mumbled. “Um, so how do I get to the basement?”

“Out the back doors, near the place where Reede teaches Conjury.
There’s a set of doors in the ground. Now off with you; I need to prepare for my next lesson.” He made a shooing motion to emphasize the point.

Hayden left at a jog, not wanting to be late for his first day in a new class, but still baffled that he could have missed the fact that Mizzenwald had a basement after going to class here for two years.

He passed a group of level-fives headed to Conjury on the lawns and stopped in the middle of the freshly-mown grass, turning in a circle and looking for a door. To his surprise, it was in plain sight. He had always taken for granted that the two doors leading underground along the edge of the castle went to a cellar, never wondering why a place like Mizzenwald would need a cellar in the first place since they didn’t drink wine at meals. Now he hurried to them and tugged on the handles. They opened easily.

He descended a surprisingly wide, well-lit stairwell
, and followed the only hallway at the base of it. Expecting something cavernous and dark, it was startling to see that this space looked just like the rest of the school, with wooden floors and wall paneling. If he didn’t know better, he wouldn’t even guess he was underground.

He passed an office that was open and a door that was closed before coming to the end of the hall and entering the classroom for Abnormal Magic.

The classroom was laid out differently than he expected: the desks were all shoved back against the walls, leaving the entire floor space clear. What appeared to be a fire-pit was in the exact center of the space, and the walls were adorned with strange artwork and scrolls. Upon closer inspection, Hayden saw that many of the flattened scrolls were either written in languages he couldn’t read or covered in calculations that didn’t make sense to him.

Immediately interested, he took a vacant seat along the wall to his left, beneath a painting of a man with blue skin. There were about thirty seats in the room, but only half of them were filled by the time
Master Laurren entered and called the class to order.

“Welcome to the introductory-level of Abnormal Magic,” he greeted them
pleasantly.

Looking at him now, Hayden was reminded of how the man seemed to have an unusual aura about him: the strange, purple-blue color of his eyes; the way his pale skin almost glowed in contrast to his black hair and metallic green robes. Something about
Laurren made Hayden believe that he was capable of extraordinary power, despite the fact that Hayden had never even seen him use magic before.

“Each of you is in this class for a reason; for some of you this is your second or third attempt at it. For the newcomers, let me explain that this class will not be like your
other lessons. We are exploring an area of magic that is not understood. It is unquantifiable and vague at best. The sooner you adjust to the fact that you may never learn the answers to any of the questions you ask, the better you’ll do.”

A few of Hayden’s classmates looked alarmed by this and one of them raised his hand and said, “Excuse me, sir. But why do we teach a class that has no answers?”

Master Laurren smirked and opened his hands to the others. “Would anyone like to venture a guess?”

No one volunteered, and they spent almost an entire minute in awkward silence before the Master said, “We aren’t moving on until one of you brave
souls thinks of an answer. That’s another thing to remember about my class—I value participation.”

Frowning, Hayden raised his hand slowly and waited to be called on.

“Yes, Hayden? Can you tell the class why Mizzenwald pays me an exorbitant amount of money to teach a class about questions that have no answers?”

“Because there
are
answers—there’s always an answer. Things don’t happen randomly, we just aren’t smart enough to understand things yet. If we don’t pass the knowledge we
do
have on, then it gets lost, and we’ll never figure things out.”

“A fine point,” Master
Laurren acknowledged with a nod. “Ten points to you for manning up and answering my question.” He looked around the room. “We teach this class at Mizzenwald because, as ever, we are trying to find the next great mind that will make the next great discovery in the world of magic. We’re prepared to invest time and money into educating hundreds of you, uselessly, in the hopes of finding the one person who earns their keep and makes it all worth it.”

Some of Hayden’s classmates looked offended at being called a wasted investment, but Hayden saw only the challenge to prove himself.