by V. St. Clair
“I told him I had broken the right one in an experiment gone wrong, years ago, and he asked if I wanted him to fix it for me.”
“WHAT?” Magdalene practically stood up in her agitation, barely restraining herself at the last moment.
“I know, and I was terrified—I mean, there was his circlet just resting on his head with the Black Prism in it.”
“You saw the Black Prism?” Magdalene interrupted, eyes wide. “How do you know? It would look like any other prism unless you were gifted in that area and happened to be looking through it.”
“Well, yeah, but it was the only prism he had on him, and why would he only carry around one regular prism when the whole world is searching for him?” Isla shrugged. “Anyway, I said I didn’t want to take part in dark magic, and he just smiled and said there was nothing dark about it. You wouldn’t believe how normal and sane he seemed, Mags—I know that the posters all say he’s mad and evil, but he seemed completely normal to me.”
“Go on,” Magdalene prompted softly, apparently beyond anything more complex right now.
“Well, it wasn’t like I had a lot of choice—what am I going to do, fight the Dark Prism off when I can’t even do magic properly?” she asked of no one. “Anyway, he looked through his prism, aimed at my hands, and…” she held up her hands as though presenting them as evidence. “He fixed them, Mags. He fixed my Foci.”
Now Magdalene did stand up.
“I don’t believe it,” she said flatly. “Why would he fix your Foci? Aleric Frost has never been one to help others, nor would he just show up, fix your magic, and then leave. That’s completely at odds with his personality: he doesn’t go anywhere without a purpose.”
For the first time, Isla looked flushed and indignant.
“I’m not lying! Here, let me borrow some powders and I’ll show you.” She held out her hand defiantly.
Looking skeptical, Magdalene reached into one of the slots on her robes and withdrew a pouch of magenta powder. Reflexively, Hayden held his breath to avoid sneezing, coughing, or vomiting—as he was wont to do all three in the presence of powders.
Isla took a pinch of the magenta powder and sifted it through her fingers for a moment as though savoring the effect. Then she snapped her fingers together so loudly that it seemed to echo around the room, and with a spark the powder ignited, coming together and transforming into a white, long-stemmed rose. Isla caught the flower in mid-air and held it lightly between two fingers, while Magdalene looked on in amazement.
“See? My Foci are perfectly balanced again; I don’t even need correctors anymore.” She smiled and passed the flower off to her friend.
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Magdalene said softly, staring at the undeniable proof in her hand. “Ever since he’s taken this dark path of his, Aleric has never been one to help the needy. By all accounts, he shouldn’t even take an interest in other human beings; he’s too busy working on his own plans to even be cognizant of others unless he has a use for them.”
Isla shrugged and said, “I know, and I wouldn’t have thought it was possible either if it didn’t just happen.” A note of doubt was injected in her voice now as she said, “I know he was really bad before…but maybe he’s different, now that he came out of the other realm? Maybe spending time there did something to help fix his mind…”
Magdalene got to her feet and seemed to make some internal decision.
“Thank you for telling me this, Isla. You can rest assured that I will relay this to the people who need to know and we will certainly take your testimony into account while making our decision about what to do next.”
Isla continued to look slightly unsure.
“Are you going to lift the kill order on him, if it turns out he is better? Truly, he seemed perfectly normal to me, and with all the new magic he has probably discovered, he could make a lot of great contributions to mage-kind.”
Magdalene’s smile didn’t reach her eyes, and Hayden thought there was something distinctly forced and angry about it, but she said, “If it turns out that he has recovered after his time in the other realm, then our position on him will certainly need to be revised.”
Hayden noticed that she hadn’t actually said they would rescind the kill order, a nice bit of weasel-wording there, but Isla seemed reassured, and left after another cup of tea and a couple biscuits.
When the staff reported that she had left the premises, all of the invisible people in the room popped back into view and Hayden came out from behind the curtains. Magdalene Trout was slumped forward in her chair at the table with her head in her hands, while the others reclaimed their seats.
“Impossible,” Laris asserted amongst the general noise in the room. “She must be lying, or mistaken.”
“Who would falsely identify themselves as Aleric Frost, when he is the most hated and feared man on the continent?” Master Graus pointed out lightly.
“I don’t know, someone playing a bad joke,” Laris waved a hand dismissively.
“Just how badly damaged was her right Focus before tonight?” Master Willow asked softly, prompting Magdalene to look up from her hands and rejoin the conversation.
“The right one was destroyed entirely—she couldn’t get a drop of magic through it. Like she said, even her left was affected by the imbalance; magic would bunch up on the right side and then spill over through her left Focus in floods when the pressure became too great. She stopped using magic entirely, before her left Focus could be completely destroyed as well.”
Hayden winced in sympathy at the thought of how unpleasant that sensation must be. Though severely warped, his Foci were still able to allow some magic to pass through them, and at least they were both equally damaged so he wasn’t imbalanced.
“The fact that she was able to effortlessly use powders tonight implies that she was telling the truth,” Master Willow continued heavily. “Unless you know anyone else who is capable of repairing damaged Foci?” he addressed Laris, who shook his head.
“No, of course not, but still…” he trailed off doubtfully. “You expect me to believe that the Dark Prism, of all people, just happened upon someone with damaged Foci at her home and was feeling magnanimous enough to cure her for no apparent reason? And then he just left?”
“I know, it sounds ridiculous, but she clearly wouldn’t have made it back to us with this tale if he had attacked her, and the fact does remain that her magic works now where it didn’t before,” Graus countered evenly.
“Maybe he targeted her on purpose,” Magdalene postulated, rejoining the conversation. “If he knew that her Foci were damaged, maybe he went there deliberately to fix them.”
Everyone turned to stare at her.
“So now you’re saying he’s one of the good guys, roaming the countryside looking for the sick to cure?” Laris asked in disbelief, leaning away from her as though she were carrying something contagious.
“No, but it makes more sense than to just assume he was wandering around people’s backyards in the hopes of finding someone worth chatting with.” She ran her hands through her hair in frustration, the first time Hayden had seen such a loss of control from her.
“Maybe he really has become different since leaving the other realm,” Master Kilgore, who had been silent so far, interjected. “Aside from a brief confrontation at Mizzenwald as soon as he crossed over, none of us have interacted with the man. Perhaps he just needed time to recover once he came back into our realm.”
Everyone turned to Hayden at this point, apparently to get his opinion on how likely Master Kilgore’s theory was. Hayden remembered the way his father smiled at Asher when he first laid eyes on him, how warmly he’d greeted his old friend. He also remembered the icy coldness in his father’s voice as he held Hayden in front of him like a shield, pressing a knife to his throat and threatening to kill him. There was no love in that voice, no respect for human life; Hayden was nothing but a tool that would help him escape before Asher could kill him.
“If he’s good now, that’s a surprise to me,” Hayden answered carefully, not wanting to lie and give the others false hope, but also determined not to get Asher put in jail for letting the Dark Prism escape. “It’s not like we had a lengthy conversation before he escaped, but he sounded ruthless and cold and not at all interested in keeping me or anyone else alive.”
The others frowned at this, and Master Willow turned to Asher, who had not rejoined them at the table, but was standing in front of the curtains that Hayden had only recently vacated, holding one side open and staring out the window.
“Asher, you’ve been silent thus far.” An oddity in and of itself, was implied.
“Yes, Masters,” Laris turned to him as well, “You knew the man better than anyone still living. To this day, you’re probably the only person to survive a fight with Aleric, and you and Hayden were the only ones who saw him when he crossed through the schism at Mizzenwald. What do you think about all this?”
For a long moment Asher continued to stare out the window, keeping his back to the others at the table. Hayden wondered what was going through the man’s mind, and if he was planning on answering, or if he was going to pretend he hadn’t heard the questions directed his way. Finally, before Laris could open his mouth to reiterate his thoughts, the Prism Master turned around and joined them at the table.
“He hasn’t changed,” he stated quietly but firmly, briefly meeting Hayden’s eyes. “I saw what he was when he came back into our realm; it is the same monster he had become before his disappearance.”
“You seem very confident,” Laris argued. “You could be mistaken.”
“I am not mistaken,” Asher countered easily. “I have no idea what game Aleric is playing right now, but he is no more stable now than he was on the day he disappeared.”
Magdalene Trout frowned and said, “Normally I wouldn’t argue with you on this, but the fact remains that he did help Isla…”
“More evidence that he is not himself,” Asher explained. “Even at his best, Aleric was more arrogant than I ever was, and I am supremely conceited. He never had time for those weaker or dumber than him, and Isla Strauss is both. If he has given her so much as the time of day, it is only because it serves some purpose of his to do so.”
That earned a stunned silence from the collective group as they digested that piece of information.
“What purpose would it serve for him to fix her Foci?” Kilgore changed tracks, accepting Asher’s assertions without question.
“I have absolutely no idea,” Asher replied without hesitation.
“We can’t discount the fact that she says she carried on a normal conversation with the man,” Magdalene pointed out. “He’s supposed to be too corrupted and unstable to really interact with others, much less to pass himself off as sane.”
“I don’t know if that’s really true,” Master Willow disagreed lightly. “Even at his worst, he was perfectly capable of coordinating his movements, issuing threats, and speaking to whomever he pleased. The main issue is that it pleased him to take whatever he wanted to further his own corrupt magic, and he freely murdered anyone who he felt got in the way of that.”
Magdalene tilted her head to concede the point.
“It’s amazing that he’s been able to keep his mind as functional as he has,” Graus observed admiringly. “Most people go raving mad after a few months of working with corrupt magic, but he held together for over ten years—and appears to be doing just fine, even now.”
“I did say that he had more stubborn willpower than any human being I’ve ever met,” Asher added softly, with a glance at Hayden that seemed to say, You’ll never beat him on that front.
“Maybe he’s trying to deliberately confuse us,” Hayden volunteered into the silence. “If he knew that Isla was Mrs. Trout’s friend, he knew she would report to her as soon as he left, and that she would tell the Council—or us. He might want us to have this very argument, to divide us while we waste time arguing over whether he’s good or bad, which leaves him unopposed—especially if we take the Wanted posters down at some point and the only person that is still being hunted by the Council is me.”
The others were silent for almost a full minute, which forced Hayden to wonder whether his idea was ridiculously stupid and they were just trying to find a nice way of explaining it to him.
Finally, Master Graus said, “An interesting thought, Hayden. That is the sort of craftiness one might expect from Aleric Frost.”
The others murmured various levels of agreement with his theory, which made Hayden feel like a real contributor to these meetings for a change, but he couldn’t help but notice that Master Asher remained silent.
“What do you think?” he asked his mentor, who rubbed his eyes tiredly.
“It’s as possible as anything, which isn’t to say that I find it terribly likely. Aleric has never cared that the entire continent hates him. He hasn’t cared that the Council of Mages has put a price on his head. He hasn’t cared that we’ve sent countless mages to kill him—he’s murdered them all and sent their heads back to us, gift-wrapped. He is absolutely confident in his abilities, in his Black Prism, and in the defenses he has in place around his base of operations—likely his estate. Why expend the effort to make us fight amongst ourselves and sow confusion, when he just doesn’t have to?”
“By your account, he’s invincible and we should just throw down our arms right now and accept defeat,” Laris muttered mutinously.
Asher shook his head. “He is only invincible in his own mind. In fact he is just very, very skillful, and absolutely without morals. Still, the fact remains that he has never concerned himself with the opinions of others, and I don’t see a reason for that to change now.”
“This is obviously not a mystery we are going to solve tonight,” Magdalene stood up, addressing the group collectively. “It’s late, and many of us have early morning appointments tomorrow, so we should take what rest we can get. We’ll meet again later in the week, and if anyone has any ideas or additional information, they should be presented then.”
Everyone agreed and got up to take their leave. Hayden had never felt less tired in his life. This was the first real information they had gotten about his father’s whereabouts or plans, and he had no desire to go to bed until he had unraveled the entire nefarious plot—and he believed Asher implicitly that his father had to be planning something unpleasant, even if it seemed helpful right now.
But he was forced to call it a night when the others left one-by-one, and he found himself alone with only Magdalene Trout in the dining room.
“Go to bed, Hayden. There’s nothing more to be done tonight, and we’ll all think more clearly in the morning.”
“It’s hard to imagine sleeping right now,” he admitted. “I’ll take some food scraps back to Bonk if you don’t mind; he usually wakes up when I come to bed. Maybe some time alone will help me sort my thoughts and I’ll get a brainwave.”
“If you like.” She shrugged as though she couldn’t care less what he did with his free time—probably true. “I expect you to be fresh and bright-eyed for your training tomorrow, regardless of how late you stay awake tonight.”
Hayden nodded and said, “You know me. There’s nothing I like more than waking up at the crack of dawn to battle mages a dozen times more skillful than myself.”
She chuckled wearily and left him alone. By now he knew his way around the Trout estate better than the Frost one, which seemed both ironic and horrible, and he made his way unerringly to the kitchen to request a late night snack for Bonk. One of the kitchen staff handed him a platter of shaved meat he couldn’t readily identify the origin of, and Hayden thanked her and carried it back to his bedroom, where Bonk was awake and waiting eagerly for his return.
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
