Cave of Nightmares

by V. St. Clair

  “Three broken ribs,” she said without preamble. “Well, you’re lucky it’s not anything worse.” She removed a short oak wand from her belt and lightly touched a spot on Hayden’s chest with the tip of it, still holding her Mastery Charm with her free hand.

  “Mend,” she said quietly, and Hayden could almost feel the splintered bone in his chest knitting itself back together. She repeated the spell two more times over different parts of his torso until her oak wand was almost completely used up. His chest still hurt afterwards, but it was more of a dull ache than a sharp stab.

  “It’ll be a few days before they’re fully mended, but you should be fine as long as you avoid injuring yourself further,” she informed him, before shooing Master Asher out of the way. “I’ll finish that.”

  She made Hayden drink three different elixirs that all had horribly-clashing flavors and left his mouth tasting like onions. Then she smeared a thick blue paste over his wounds and bandaged them expertly.

  Tucker was brought in by Master Sark at some point, though Hayden only noticed when Razelle and Asher stepped away from him to turn their attention to his teammate, who wasn’t nearly as injured as he had been.

  Mistress Razelle complimented Master’s Sark’s first aid skills after peeling back the bandages long enough to check the wounds. Hayden wanted to ask about a dozen questions right now: where they were sent to, how the Masters found them, how Bonk had come to be twenty-feet long for no apparent reason…but one of the elixirs must have had an anesthetic affect because he felt drowsy and lethargic.

  He opened his mouth and said something that sounded like, “Argh un…” before he fell asleep.

  The elixir that put him to sleep must have been really good stuff, because Hayden woke up feeling like he’d been out for days, only to learn that it was still early in the morning, too early for breakfast even.

  He stood up and moved his arms experimentally to see if it caused him any pain, but other than being a little sore he felt fine. There was a sleepy mastery-level student of Mistress Razelle’s reading in a nearby chair, obviously finishing up the night shift in the infirmary. The girl looked up at Hayden’s movement and set her book aside.

  “How are you feeling?” She came over to check his bandages and prod at his ribs with her index finger to see if he winced.

  “Much better,” he admitted.

  “Any soreness?”

  He shrugged. “A little.”

  “That’s not unusual. You should recover fully in another day or two.” She applied a fresh layer of paste to his arms and re-bandaged them. “Report back here immediately if you begin to feel worse, or if you develop a fever or rash.”

  Hayden nodded, hoping it didn’t come to that. He already had more excitement than he cared for in his last week of school and didn’t need it compounded by medical complications.

  “Alright, well, you can go. Avoid heavy lifting and other forms of overexertion until you’ve been cleared for it.”

  Yeah, because I do a lot of heavy lifting around here…

  Hayden agreed to take it easy and left the infirmary, hopefully for the last time in a long while.

  Since it hardly felt worth the effort of walking up six flights of stairs only to come back down for breakfast in a few minutes, he took a seat on one of the stone benches in the main courtyard and simply watched the sun rise. It was relaxing and peaceful by himself, and the sky was cloudless and warm.

  That figures. Couldn’t have been nice out when we were being translocated to the Cave of Deadly Things That Want To Eat Me.

  He sat like that until he could hear the sounds of other students moving around in the main foyer on their way to breakfast. Quite a lot of people gawked at him as he joined the throng headed down the corridor to the dining hall, but he was used to ignoring the stares of others by now.

  Zane looked relieved to see him when he sat down, though he was just telling the others, “Sorry, the Masters told us not to talk about it until after we meet with them this morning.”

  Mira frowned as though she’d been denied a real treat, and Tamon and Conner made them promise to tell them where they’d been sent to instead of the scheduled arena later.

  “We’re meeting with the Masters this morning?” Hayden turned to his friend after piling a dozen sausages onto his plate. Apparently almost getting his face ripped off by a warg left him starving.

  “Yeah, as soon as breakfast is finished. They drafted some older students to proctor their first exams so they can meet with us,” Zane explained. “They said if you were still asleep that we shouldn’t wake you though.”

  Hayden raised his eyebrows. “Why are we meeting with them?” A horrible thought dawned on him. “Don’t tell me they’re still going to score us.”

  Zane chuckled in dark appreciation. “It wouldn’t surprise me. But I think they just want to get us all in one room to tell them what the heck happened in that cave before they found us.”

  “Ooh, you were in a cave?” Mira interjected brightly. Zane winced at his slip-up.

  Hayden ignored her. “Wait, you mean no one told them what happened yet? I was sure they would have cornered you or Tess right afterwards since you weren’t hurt.”

  Zane shrugged. “They wanted to let us rest and collect our thoughts, I think.” He speared a biscuit with his fork and began nibbling around the edges. “With you and Tucker both hurt and me and Tess half-traumatized, everything was a bit chaotic. Besides, they had to hunt down the seventh-years who translocated us for whatever reason—punishment, probably.”

  “They’re going to be punished for being surprised by the loudest thunderclap in the history of mankind?” Hayden thought that was slightly less than fair.

  “Well, I expect the one or two who were too careless to put an audio-dampening spell on themselves before attempting a translocation during a thunderstorm will be,” Zane said diplomatically.

  “Where do you think they’ll send them?” Mira asked curiously.

  Hayden smirked. “I hear Mount Arawas is nice this time of year.”

  20

  Eleven

  The five Masters of the major arcana were waiting for them by the time Hayden and Zane entered the room. Tess and Tucker were already sitting in chairs behind the long table that arena teams usually occupied while being scored for their performance.

  Good grief, they are going to rank us!

  Hayden thought back to his complete non-performance the night before, trying to find some redeeming argument for why he shouldn’t earn his team a zero.

  Let’s see…I did some running, then I stopped…then there was more running…then I led my teammates down a series of tunnels to a dead-end where we were cornered by a warg…

  Maybe he could argue that he acted as a diversion for the warg’s attention to give his teammates enough time to save them.

  “Alright,” Master Kilgore opened the discussion without preamble. “One of you tell us what in the world happened to you all last night after you were translocated to the warg den.”

  Hayden opened his mouth and said, “A den? But we only saw one of them.”

  Master Sark grimaced and said, “Then you were fortunate. Asher and I encountered six of them in another tunnel that we had to fight our way out of.”

  “I found an even dozen, but got away without a fight,” Master Willow added.

  Maybe I chose the right dead-end path after all…

  Hayden looked down the table at his teammates to give them the chance to talk. He didn’t particularly want to explain the horrors of last night unless he had to.

  Thankfully, Tucker jumped in on his behalf.

  “We started in the dark somewhere in the middle of the cave. I lit my wand and we realized pretty quickly that we weren’t in the arena, because there were no instructions waiting for us and we felt the translocation go wrong.”

  He frowned thoughtfully and continued. “We decided to stay put until someone came to find us because we didn’t want to get lost
. Then we saw the warg coming at us from the path leading upwards, so we did the only thing we could and ran along the path headed downwards.”

  Zane picked up the story from there. “We were running down that narrow tunnel but the monster was gaining on us, so Tucker used his wand to collapse the ceiling behind us. But then the stupid thing just started digging, so we kept running.”

  The Masters were watching them with a quiet intensity that was a little disarming. Maybe that’s why Zane was staring at the table in front of him rather than at their instructors.

  “We ended up in that dead-end room and tried to go back to pick another path, but we could hear the warg catching up with us again so we went back to the wide space to fight in. I was drawing the most powerful conjuring circle I could on the ground when it found us.”

  “What were you hoping to summon?” Master Reede interjected softly, and Zane blushed in embarrassment.

  “I have no idea, I just knew I needed something quick. Tucker’s wand was almost used up and Tess only had one elixir on hand and it was our last resort.”

  “I couldn’t think of what spell to cast, and the warg attacked us while Zane was finishing his drawing,” Tucker took over the story again. “That’s when my arm got scraped up. The second time it attacked it went for Hayden. Zane…well, quite frankly, Zane panicked and used a vague command to execute his summoning circle. I thought we were doomed.”

  Zane was staring very intently at the table in front of him now.

  “What spell did you execute?” Master Reede asked mildly.

  “I just asked for help,” Zane finally glanced up and met his eyes. “I didn’t even know what kind of help I wanted, just something to stop that warg from eating us all.”

  The Masters were polite enough not to chastise him for such a horrible blunder at that critical moment. Hayden thought it was a miracle that the spell worked at all.

  “Anyway, I somehow managed to pull Bonk out of the summoning circle…even though it shouldn’t have been powerful enough to transport a living creature,” Zane frowned thoughtfully.

  “Bonk being a dragon helped considerably; powerful magic, remember?” Master Asher pointed out.

  “Well, Bonk flew at the warg and Tess threw her elixir of Need at him,” Zane continued, with an admiring look at Tess. “Bonk grew about twenty feet long and kicked that warg’s a—well, he saved us. Then you all showed up.”

  About two minutes too late.

  Hayden kept that thought to himself. The Masters were silent for a long moment, though he caught more than one of them giving him strange looks. Finally Master Sark addressed them directly.

  “So Tucker used his elder wand to great effect, Zane executed a very good conjure—albeit accidentally—and Tess used her Need at the perfect moment.” He let the silence linger horribly for a moment before continuing. “Not to sound…critical…but where the heck was the great prism-wielder in all of this?”

  He gave Hayden a bemused look. He wasn’t the only one to do so.

  “You had, arguably, the broadest array of spells available in the entire group, and you didn’t think to use any of them when you were about to be eaten?”

  Hayden could feel his cheeks burning when he answered.

  “I thought there was something wrong with my prism—that it was broken. I was afraid to use it in case I was right.”

  Master Willow’s eyebrows went so high they disappeared into his hairline and Kilgore actually jumped to his feet and sent his chair toppling over to the floor behind him. Master Asher looked like he had been turned to stone.

  “Where would you have possibly acquired a broken prism?” It was Master Reede who spoke. “That’s a very serious accusation to level against a certified jeweler.”

  Hayden shook his head. “It looked fine at the store, but I left it in my room all day and grabbed it just before the arena was set to start.” Now that he was no longer in the cave, doubt began to creep into his thoughts. What if he was wrong about there being anything amiss with his prism and had just panicked and forgotten how to use it when it mattered?

  “You think it was tampered with or replaced?” Master Willow asked stonily.

  “I don’t know…I don’t know for sure that it’s broken…it just felt wrong, so…”

  Master Asher finally came to life again and stood up. “Let’s find out,” he approached Hayden and held out his hand.

  Hayden pulled down the eyepiece and carefully unscrewed the prism from its holder, passing it over to the Master, who turned towards the light and held it up in front of his left eye.

  He rotated it slowly for about half a minute before lowering it and speaking again.

  “You are correct, Hayden. This is an imperfect prism; mild distortion, but still broken.” He looked angry enough to murder someone over it, though fortunately Hayden was pretty sure that person wouldn’t be him.

  “Holy arcana,” Master Reede murmured. “You mean to tell me that someone actually gave the son of Aleric Frost an imperfect prism before a challenge?”

  Hayden frowned thoughtfully.

  “Whoever it was, they can’t have known we would end up in the wrong place…they were probably just trying to mess up our team’s final challenge scores once I realized I couldn’t use it. Or worse, if I had tried to use it and it didn’t work right.”

  Master Asher returned to his seat, still carrying the broken prism in his hand. “This prism would have worked quite well for you, I imagine.” His tone still suggested barely-concealed fury. “The skew of the distortion—it might have even amplified your power.”

  “Do you know who exchanged your prism for an imperfect one?” Master Willow’s features were oddly pale as he addressed Hayden.

  “I…have a guess,” he admitted. “No evidence though.”

  He met Master Asher’s gaze briefly, and the Prism Master’s stony frown let him know that his instructor understood perfectly.

  “I’ll look into it,” Asher said ominously.

  Hayden had no idea how he planned to get either Oliver or Jasper to confess to such a serious crime, but then he remembered that if there were any magical ways to extract the truth out of someone, Master Asher probably knew all of them. He suppressed a shudder at the memory of his own mind being briefly invaded by the Prism Master during class.

  “You didn’t use the prism once during your entire time in the warg den?” Master Sark was giving him a strange look now.

  “No,” Hayden confirmed.

  “Why not?”

  The room was silent for a moment. “Because,” Hayden answered at last, sure it was a trick question, “it’s a broken prism.”

  “You were being chased by a warg, about to be eaten, as evidenced by your injuries,” Master Reede interjected. “Even under threat of imminent death, you still didn’t use your prism?”

  “No,” Hayden confirmed again, tersely.

  “Why?” Master Kilgore leaned forward in his chair, elbows on the table as he scrutinized him.

  Are they being deliberately stupid?

  “Because I promised Master Asher on my first day here that I would never use a broken prism, no matter what. I’d rather die than follow in my father’s footsteps.”

  This was met with a resounding silence. Finally, after more than a minute elapsed, Master Willow said, “I believe a discussion is in order before we award points. Please wait outside and we’ll call you back when we’ve made our decision.”

  Hayden’s team left the room as instructed and sat down on a bench in the hallway. No one spoke much, other than to ask what time it was or to speculate on how their final tally would come out. It felt like they were waiting for a long time, but eventually Master Reede opened the door, leaned out, and told them to come back inside.

  The four of them took their original seats and waited for the scoring to begin. It was Master Willow who spoke first.

  “We have decided to score you individually on this—well, I suppose you could call it a challenge. The a
verage of your scores will be used to determine your final position in the rankings among your peers.”

  Uh oh…that must mean they want to give some of us really high scores and some of us really low scores…he had no illusions about who would receive the lowest score in the group.

  “Zane,” Master Reede spoke now, “You managed an excellent bit of conjury. If not for the fact that you lost your head during the summoning and lucked into bringing Bonk forward, you would have scored a ten. As it is, you receive a nine.”

  Zane exhaled in visible relief, apparently having expected much worse.

  “Tucker,” Master Willow went next. “You used your elder wand to great effect in the cave, though you admitted to panicking while the warg was attacking and therefore did not fully utilize your weapon. Your score is also a nine.”

  Tucker looked like he was torn between feeling pleased and disappointed.

  “Theresa,” Master Kilgore gave Tess a gruff smile. “You were clever to bring such a versatile elixir with you, and you used it well. Ten.”

  Tess nearly fell out of her chair from shock. It was almost impossible to get a perfect ten out of the Masters during an arena challenge.

  Finally, it was Hayden’s turn. His heart began to hammer and his stomach felt like it was flipping in circles when Master Asher addressed him.

  “Hayden,” he began, “you did—quite frankly—nothing from a magical perspective last night.” He smirked at the look on Hayden’s face. “However, you bear no blame for that, as you were not equipped to act safely.” He paused and gave Hayden a thoughtful look. “It takes great courage to keep your promises when death is staring you in the face and drooling on your shirt. Your score is eleven points.”

  For a horrible moment Hayden thought he had forgotten how to count to ten, because he had been certain that eleven came after. He blinked hard several times and asked, “Um, what?”

  “Eleven, Hayden.” Master Asher gave him a crooked grin. “The number directly following ten but preceding twelve.”

  “But—but that’s impossible!” Tucker said with wide eyes. “The scoring only goes to ten!”