Frost Prisms (The Broken Prism Book 5) (12 page)

As soon as Hayden cleared the door the little dragon pounced on the platter of food, knocking it to the floor and descending on the scraps as though they might outrun him. Hayden sighed and left him to it, waiting for his familiar to finish devouring all the meat and licking the scraps off of the floor before picking up the empty platter and setting it carefully on the nightstand.

He laid back in bed and contemplated the meeting he had just departed, musing out loud to Bonk because it helped him think.

“It seems like Isla was telling the truth about meeting my father in her back yard, but it’s just so weird to think of him fixing her Foci out of the goodness of his heart. Everyone else seems to think he might have turned over a new leaf since he came back, but they weren’t there that day that he passed through the schism with me; they don’t know what he was like, or how quick he was to almost kill me.” He sighed. “Asher says that he must have fixed Isla’s Foci deliberately, as some part of his overall strategy, but I just can’t imagine how helping a random mage as ditsy as Isla would benefit him at all. You sort of knew him when he was still at school, Bonk—what do you think about all of this?”

Bonk rolled over on top of the sheets and burped loudly.

“An excellent point,” Hayden muttered, rolling his eyes at Bonk and then closing them, covering his face with his arm to block out the moonlight as he tried to sort through his jumbled thoughts.

The next thing he knew, sunlight was streaming through the gaps between his arm and his face, and someone was shaking him roughly.

“Wake up, Hayden—I know you’re not dead, or they would have laid your body to rest in a more dignified position.”

Only the familiarity of that voice and the strangeness of hearing it in the Trout estate could shake Hayden from sleep so rapidly. Sitting up so fast that it made him dizzy, Hayden’s mouth dropped open as his eyes confirmed what his ears had told him moments before.

“
Zane?
”

His best friend had a gash over his right eye and looked exhausted, but he grinned at Hayden’s shock and said, “I’m starving. When do they serve breakfast in this place?”

7

A Battle of Wills

The shock of seeing Zane in his guest bedroom at the Trout estate was almost as great as if it had been Aleric Frost waking him up for breakfast. For a moment all Hayden could do was stare at his best friend in open-mouthed amazement. Eventually he got his wits together enough to ask, “How in the world did you get here?”

Delighting in Hayden’s surprise, Zane sat down on the edge of the bed and said, “By magic. It’s a harrowing tale, involving a lengthy battle with the Council of Mages, followed by days of living off the land and hiding in caves while they pursued me relentlessly—”

“Are you
serious!?
” Hayden exclaimed in horror.

“No, I totally made that up,” Zane grinned. “In reality, one of the Council’s goons showed up to interrogate me for the nine-hundredth time on your whereabouts, and for the nine-hundredth time I told them that I had no idea where you were, that we weren’t really great friends to begin with, that you were probably vacationing in the northern continent with Bonk, things like that.” He stopped and grinned again.

“The Masters said you and Tess would be badgered relentlessly by the Council about me, and that they would try to extract you both when it was safe,” Hayden interrupted guiltily. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“Yeah, well you caused quite a stir when you disappeared from the middle of the dining hall at school, using magic so advanced that you didn’t even have to look through your prism to cast it.” Zane rolled his eyes. “You might have told your friends that you were planning to bail on us so we could prepare ourselves for the hailstorm of unpleasantness that followed.”

“It wasn’t exactly planned,” Hayden explained. “Asher just busted into my head when those Council guys showed up and told me to grab hold of Bonk. It wasn’t even my magic that took me away from there—Kilgore and Mrs. Trout did the translocation from here, using the sympathetic link between Bonk and Slasher to pull it off.”

Zane’s expression cleared and he said, “Ah, that makes more sense. I was wondering when you learned super-advanced translocation, since you had just that week told me you couldn’t even properly pull off self-translocation within the castle itself.”

“Get back to your story,” Hayden changed the subject. “You said the Council showed up to interrogate you again…”

“Oh yeah, right,” Zane shook his head to clear it. “I had instructions from Willow not to make any trouble with the Council or try to escape as long as they were just asking questions—it would make me look guilty or complicit or something like that.” He shrugged. “Only this time, the Councilman said he was going to haul me off to the Crystal Tower to be magically-interrogated if I didn’t give him any useful information.”

“Magically-interrogated as in…tortured?” Hayden asked with a disbelieving wince.

“That’s sort of the implication I got, though he never came out and said it—I guess it’s only in stories that the bad guys stand around explaining all their evil plans in advance. Still, you always see people grimace when they hear about magical interrogation methods, so it didn’t sound like something I wanted any part of.” Zane shrugged. “I knew I needed to escape, and I didn’t have a lot of time to come up with a plan. When the guy grabbed my arm to drag me off into the living room, I elbowed him in the face and broke his nose,” he explained in a rush, face flushed. “While he was feeling around his face I grabbed his chalk and started drawing a translocation circle—”

“You broke a Councilman’s
nose
and stole his weapon?” Hayden interrupted. “You’re going to have your own Wanted poster beside mine before all this is over.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I had a long time to formulate a proper escape plan,” Zane grumbled. “Anyway, Flory and Victoria—they’re the only two sisters who are still at home—heard the noise and they jumped on the guy and held him down while I finished the circle.”

“You let your
sisters
get involved in an attack on a Council member?” Hayden winced. “Aren’t they going to get into trouble for that?”

Zane shrugged, though he looked a little guilty when he said, “They’re older than me, and they knew what they were getting into. Besides, they hated that guy as much as I did; he haunted our family night-and-day for weeks.”

“I didn’t think you knew how to do translocations yet,” Hayden interjected, changing the subject.

Zane looked a little green when he said, “I don’t—or I didn’t. I was never cleared to try it by Reede, but I’ve seen the circles often enough and I know the theory behind the magic. Desperate times call for desperate…desperateness,” Zane continued with a shrug.

“And it worked on your first try?” Hayden asked, a little jealous.

“Thankfully, yes—well, mostly,” his friend amended. “I didn’t have a specific location in mind, which makes it harder. I just wanted it to bring me to Master Reede because I figured he would be able to tell me where to go afterwards to hide out. I was concentrating so hard on finding him, I didn’t focus on sticking my landing, so I came out in the middle of the men’s bathroom in the Crystal Tower, and fell from the ceiling.”

“Wait, you transported yourself straight into the very place we’ve all been trying to avoid—in the
bathroom
of all places?” Hayden covered his mouth to prevent the burst of laughter that threatened to escape.

“Yes, the irony wasn’t lost on me either, not that I had long to appreciate it.” Zane made a face at him. “Like I said, I fell from the ceiling and nearly landed right on top of Reede, who was washing his hands at the sink and thankfully not in the middle of peeing.” He grimaced at the thought. “I caught the sink with the side of my head as I fell, which is how I got this.” He pointed to the gash on his forehead, which was bruising spectacularly.

“I was wondering how you came by that,” Hayden admitted. “Usually when I imagine your face, it isn’t pounded to a pulp.”

“Nice to know you dream of my face,” Zane teased flatly, earning him a punch in the arm from Hayden. “Anyway, Reede reacted so fast it was almost like he was expecting me to pop up in the bathroom at the Crystal Tower. He said, ‘Sloppy execution, Laraby
’,
and drew another circle so fast that my head was still ringing and my eyes hadn’t even focused yet by the time he was done. Then he shoved me into it and sent me here just as the door opened and someone else was coming in to use the bathroom. When the world stopped spinning I realized I was in a mansion of some sort, but it wasn’t until I saw Oliver that I knew exactly where.”

Hayden made a noise of sympathy and said, “Yes, welcome to the palace that is the Trout estate.” He gestured expansively around the guest room, nearly hitting Bonk in the head—who was no longer sleeping and had crept up beside him to listen to Zane’s story. It was then that Hayden noticed Felix the Fox curled up on the foot of the bed, looking similarly exhausted.

“Yeah, magical creatures have their own means of travel—lucky for them,” Zane scowled at Felix like this was all his fault.

“I like that you fell from the sky in the middle of the men’s bathroom and the only thing Reede could think to say to you was that you executed your circle poorly,” Hayden pointed out in amusement. “I swear, him and Willow are the most unflappable human beings I’ve ever met.”

“I think it’s a requirement for being a Master: never react to anything that happens or you’ll be fired.” Zane grinned. “It’s probably part of their initiation or something.”

Hayden’s laugh turned to molten fear in his mouth, as a new thought struck him.

“Wait a minute—” he lurched out of bed and nearly knocked Zane to the floor. “If you’re on the run from the Council and they think you’re with me, what’s going to happen to Tess?”

The smile slid off of Zane’s face as he considered her fate as well.

“I don’t know…I mean, surely they were monitoring her too. Maybe they won’t do anything to her just because I left though. I mean, I haven’t been in contact with her since we left school, so it’s not like she had anything to do with me leaving. It wouldn’t be fair to punish her.”

“Sure, and the Council of Mages is nothing but fair.” Hayden paced furiously in a circle. “Magdalene and Laris have been trying to destabilize Calahan for months because they both want his job, so now he’s half-paranoid and hates anything to do with me. That is
not
who I want meting out justice to my friends, or my girlfriend.”

Zane gestured towards the door. “Come on, let’s go see if anyone knows what’s going on with her. You live in the base of operations for the resistance; someone here must know what’s going on. For all we know, Tess might be in another room in this museum right now.”

It would make sense that the Masters would evacuate Tess as soon as Zane ran away, and Hayden felt mildly calmer as he left the bedroom and led Zane towards the informal dining room, where people were most likely to be at this time of day.

“Are you still wearing yesterday’s clothes?” Zane asked pointedly as they walked, turning his head in all directions to take in the spacious hallways and opulent decorations as they hurried past them.

“Yeah, why?”

“Because they’re ripped, dirty, and you kind of smell like a sweaty sock.”

Hayden scowled and said, “I had a lot on my mind yesterday and didn’t get to shower. I’ll take care of it after we find out about Tess.”

“Oh yeah, you can catch me up on what’s really going on, since I doubt the Council of Mages is out there sharing the truth with the rest of the continent.” Zane’s eyes lifted in awe as they passed through the library. Hayden couldn’t blame him; he had also been impressed with the collection of books during his first visit. “I can’t imagine growing up in a place like this. No wonder Oliver and Lorn are such snobs.”

Hayden didn’t comment until they reached the dining room, where only Master Mandra was there to greet them. He was sitting at the table, reading a stack of papers while finishing his coffee, eyebrows furrowed as though what he was reading wasn’t at all to his liking. He looked up at the sound of their arrival.

“Hayden, good morning,” the Master greeted him tiredly. “Holy arcana, have you bathed at any time this week?” he wrinkled his nose.

“I know, I stink, I’m going to shower soon—but there’s something more important I need to know first.” He felt his cheeks flush and tried to ignore his embarrassment.

“Is this the friend that caused such a stir by showing up at the crack of dawn?” Mandra turned to Zane.

“Oh, right, I forgot you two didn’t know each other.” Hayden recovered his manners immediately. “Zane, this is Master Mandra—he teaches Wands at Valhalla; we met during the I.S.C. in my second year. Master Mandra, this is Zane Laraby, my best and sometimes only friend at Mizzenwald.”

The two shook hands and Mandra said, “That’s quite a gash on your forehead. Has anyone seen to it yet?”

“Not really,” Zane admitted. “As you said, it was the crack of dawn when I made a break for it, and Reede barely had time to send me here before anyone saw me at the Crystal Tower, and Mrs. Trout only hung around long enough to tell one of her housekeepers to take me to Hayden’s room.”

“Then sit down, and I’ll see what I can do for you,” Mandra pointed him to the chair beside him, and Zane sat obediently, though he looked a little nervous about letting a stranger work on his head wound. It was all Hayden could do not to jump up and down and shriek about Tess, but he forced himself to remain calm and patient until they were sure Zane would be alright.

The Master of Wands drew a birch wand from his belt and waved it a few times in front of Zane’s face, casting a series of spells without speaking aloud. Hayden could see the wand shrink visibly, and knew that he must be using fairly powerful magic to consume a mastery-level wand so rapidly. The gash on Zane’s forehead looked cleaner and less swollen when he was finished, and Zane seemed to relax as the man dabbed a blue elixir on the wound and wrapped an ethyl-infused bandage around his entire head.

“Your Mistress Razelle could do better, but at least it shouldn’t get infected, and I’ve sped the healing up considerably,” he said at last.

The mention of the Mistress of Healing raised a new question for Hayden.

“I’ve seen almost all of the other Masters here at some point or another, but not Sark or Razelle. Are they not on our side?”

Master Mandra looked at him in surprise.

“They’re both contributing to our efforts in their own way, but we all have different assignments and some of them allow for less freedom of movement than others. You’ve also seen a few of our colleagues from the other Great Nine schools, but there are more that you haven’t seen who are still doing their part behind the scenes.”

“Oh,” Hayden nodded thoughtfully. It was nice to know that they had even more allies than he had previously thought.

The more the better. It’ll take everything we’ve got to get rid of my father and manage the Council of Mages at the same time.

“Master Mandra, I have to ask…do you know where Tess is right now?” Hayden blurted out.

The Master of Wands gave him a strange look and said, “Who?”