Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism)

by V. St. Clair

  “Keep your friends close, Hayden.”

  Hayden nodded and walked away, unable to ignore how ominous Master Willow’s parting words sounded.

  As luck would have it, Hayden’s arena team came up late in the drawings and they didn’t have to face their first challenge for three weeks. This was fine with him, as they were having a hard time arranging practices with all of the homework everyone had to contend with each night, and were mostly restricted to weekends.

  Lorn had even started to be nicer to Tess during these training sessions. Well, nice was probably stretching things, but at least he didn’t call her Tess the Mess anymore.

  Unfortunately, Hayden’s resolve to not get his butt kicked this year was going poorly, though not in the way he’d originally anticipated. Every-other day he and Master Asher switched between mind-boggling calculations and all-out war with prisms, which the Prism Master—predictably—always won. Not only did he win, but he was fairly merciless about stomping Hayden into the ground each time.

  “Is anything broken?” Asher asked him for the third time that day, lifting his eyepiece so he could watch Hayden with both eyes. His Mastery robes were draped over the branch of a pear-blossom tree behind him as he surveyed Hayden from across the lawn with his arms folded. They’d taken their sparring sessions outdoors at the insistence of Master Willow, to avoid destroying the castle. Hayden was just grateful that they were behind the school near the cliffs that overlooked the Gawain Sea, instead of displayed prominently in the main courtyard where everyone could see him get beaten.

  “I don’t think so,” Hayden groaned, testing his arms and legs and climbing slowly back to his feet, rubbing his backside where he’d landed hard. “I don’t suppose you could try to avoid throwing me off the cliffs? That last one nearly had me.”

  Given that the Prism Master was wearing a faded blue t-shirt and loose-fitting black pants, he looked strangely impressive standing there with the wind whipping through his hair and the prism circlet on his head. The effect was lessened when he snorted and said, “Your enemies won’t hesitate to throw you off a cliff if they get the chance. I’d be doing you a disservice to spare you the effort of accounting for it in your training sessions.”

  “What enemies?” Hayden snapped in exasperation. “You act like the sorcerers are invading the continent for the sole joy of hunting me down and lobbing me off of tall objects. Is there something I should know about?”

  Asher relaxed his posture slightly and said, “No, I doubt you’re even on their radar right now, but we have to face the reality of the situation. If the Council attempts to call you into service, you will come to their attention, and they are fully-trained adults who have come here to murder anyone who gets in their way. Also, if your father knew any sorcerers—which seems possible given the sigla you found in his bathroom—it stands to reason that they hate him by now and would love to take their aggression out on his only living descendant.”

  Hayden raised an eyebrow at this.

  “Why do you think they’d hate him now?”

  “You didn’t know your father at the height of his power, but believe me when I say that, as his former best friend, he was a colossally-arrogant jerk. He burned every bridge he ever had without a care in the world, and quite literally everyone on the continent was screaming for his head by the end of his campaign—even former allies and friends. If he was communicating with the sorcerers, it was because he wanted something from them—magic, most likely. When he got what he wanted, he would have had no qualms with infuriating them either.”

  “Oh, good,” Hayden frowned, “more inherited enemies to deal with.”

  “Which brings us back to why I’m not going easy on you during these training sessions. If you’re tired of getting stomped, then get better at fighting.”

  Asher lowered his eyepiece back into position and Hayden dove out of the way just in time; he felt the ripple of magic pass by him as he rolled back to his feet and spun his amber prism around in his eyepiece. He turned towards Asher and cast Obscure just as the Prism Master was preparing another spell.

  His mentor cocked his head to one side in surprise as his vision became foggy and unclear, giving Hayden time to swap out his amber prism for his clear one.

  “Not bad, Frost. I haven’t had Obscure used against me in years,” Asher conceded before dispelling the effect.

  Pierce! Hayden aimed through his clear prism, using one of the first combat alignments he had learned this week in his clear prism. Asher cast a shielding spell fast enough to protect himself from most of the effect, but a thin cut appeared on his right cheek and began darkening with blood.

  He retaliated with a battery of spells so quickly that Hayden had no idea how he even managed to turn his prism fast enough to find them all: Darken momentarily blinded him, Expand made him feel like he was about to explode from the inside out, Push sent him hurtling backwards through the air and landing at the edge of the cliffs, and he had no idea what spell Asher hit him with to knock him unconscious.

  When he woke up, the Prism Master was wearing his red robes again, sitting beside him on the grass. It looked like he’d moved Hayden away from the cliffs, and had been reading a paperback book to kill time until Hayden woke up. When he saw Hayden stir, he tucked the book into a pocket in his robes and extracted a banana, offering it to him.

  “Here, get some energy back. I don’t want you fainting during the rest of your classes,” he greeted him.

  Hayden struggled to sit up and accepted the fruit, peeling it and taking a bite only to discover that he was really hungry, though lunch had been barely an hour ago.

  “Are you sure you didn’t accidentally kill me during that last round?” he asked uncertainly. “Because my body feels like it’s actually dead and just hasn’t stopped moving around yet.”

  Asher huffed in amusement.

  “Sorry about that. Sometimes I forget how slow your casting is compared to mine and I don’t remember to go easy on you.”

  “You’ve been going easy on me this whole time?” Hayden asked, aghast. “I thought you were unleashing your full fury on me…I was beginning to wonder if I’d done something to make you mad.”

  The Prism Master laughed again. “Heavens no, I’ve been pulling my punches so that I don’t annihilate you completely. That would be counterproductive and demoralizing for you. You managed so well with the Obscure and Pierce combo that I got carried away and returned to my normal casting speed.”

  “If you normally cast that quickly, I don’t see how anyone can fight you at all. You don’t give anyone a break long enough to get a spell in of their own,” Hayden grumbled.

  “You’d be surprised.” Master Asher seemed to glance down at the Focus-corrector on his left wrist without truly seeing it. “I am not the only fast-caster in the Nine Lands.”

  Treading into uncomfortable territory Hayden asked, “Was my father faster than you during your last battle with him?”

  “Not really,” Asher tilted his head thoughtfully at the memory. “We were fairly evenly-matched on that front. The problem was more that he had a vast array of powerful magic that I’d never encountered and had no idea how to defend against, courtesy of the Black Prism. You know how hard it is to defend against a spell you’ve never seen: do you use Shield or another warding spell? What if it penetrates both of them?” he added rhetorically.

  “It must have been scary, fighting him,” Hayden said lamely. “Knowing that you were probably going to die.”

  Hayden could hear the bells ringing inside the castle to signal the end of the period, and got to his feet to brush the grass off of his clothing before his next lesson. For a long moment Master Asher was silent, making no move to get up off of the grass, but just as Hayden was preparing to say goodbye and walk away he spoke.

  “Not too scary, all things considered,” he said softly, causing Hayden to pause in his tracks.

  “You aren’t afraid of dying?” Hayden asked incredulously.

&
nbsp; Staring out into the distance Asher said, “Dying is easy. Living is hard.”

  Hayden could think of absolutely nothing to say to that, and a shiver went up his spine as he turned and walked back to the castle, leaving the Prism Master sitting in the grass, staring out at the sea.

  5

  Mnemora

  Hayden crumpled the paper in his hand and tossed it into the nearest trash can, resting his head in his hands and rubbing his eyes in frustration. He had spent more time in the library in the last three weeks than in the entirety of his life up until now, combing through every volume he could find on obscure magic that would account for the damage to his magical Foci, or anything else that might help him explain what happened on the day his parents died.

  He’d even asked Masters Asher and Laurren for advice. The latter had suggested a number of books that unfortunately did nothing to help him but were still interesting reads, while the Prism Master recommended that Hayden reach out to a few of his father’s old school friends to see if they knew anything helpful.

  Surprised that he hadn’t thought of it himself, Hayden had enthusiastically written letters to anyone Asher could think of who knew Aleric Frost and was still alive. The problem was that most of the people who were acquainted with him after he became the Dark Prism had been killed either by the Council of Mages or Aleric himself, so the only responses he received were from a smattering of old school friends who more or less just confirmed things that Asher had already told him last year. He had just thrown away one such missive, and was growing agitated by the entire process.

  How can it be so hard to piece my father’s life together? He’s probably the most famous mage in the Nine Lands right now—shouldn’t everyone know everything about him?

  Putting the books back on the shelf where he’d found them, he stifled a yawn and left the library. It was already almost time for bed, and he’d wasted yet another evening trolling through the library when he could be spending time with his friends—a fact Zane felt compelled to point out to him once or twice a day. Even Bonk became restless and spent more time out on the grounds with Cinder or Torin these days, tired of watching Hayden’s fruitless searches.

  He was halfway back to his room when Hayden changed course and moved down the main stairwell, passing a few older students who had just come in from the front lawns. Crossing the pentagonal foyer, Hayden turned sharply and made his way down the hallway that led to the rear exit of the school and stepped outside. The sun had almost completely set as he tugged open the cellar doors that led to the Abnormal Magic classroom and descended the stairs.

  The classroom was dark at the end of the hall, but a light was on in Master Laurren’s office, and Hayden stopped outside of it and knocked on the open door to announce his presence.

  Master Laurren turned his head, saw Hayden standing there, and motioned him inside. He was holding a partially-spent yew wand and standing in what appeared to be a pile of colored glitter, and his normally black hair was stark white, which made his eyes look even more purple than usual by contrast.

  “Hayden, hello. What can I do for you?” he greeted him without commenting on his own strange appearance.

  “Um, sorry to interrupt, sir…is this a bad time?” Hayden ventured cautiously.

  “What?” Master Laurren looked around distractedly, as though expecting to see a roomful of people with him. “Oh, you mean the glass dust…” he gestured at the pile around his feet, stepping carefully out of it and attempting to clean off his pants and shoes with his wand. “No, it’s not a bad time. I was just experimenting with something and the results were rather unexpected.”

  “Oh,” Hayden stood carefully away from the pile of glass grit, not wanting to pick up a thousand tiny cuts from getting any of it on his skin. “Is that why your hair is white?”

  Master Laurren gave him a puzzled look and said, “Is it?”

  “Uh…yeah,” Hayden confirmed, watching the Master pick up a mirror fragment from his desk and examine his reflection.

  “Oh, good. That makes everything much clearer,” he sounded genuinely relieved. “I was beginning to think the reaction was unbalanced in some horrible way.”

  Hayden was going to have to take his word for it, because nothing about this conversation was clear to him so far. Changing the subject he said, “I finished looking through those books you recommended.”

  “Ah, yes. And did you find anything helpful?”

  “Not really, no.” Hayden frowned. “I was wondering if you had any other ideas, since you’re the Master of Abnormal Magic and what happened to me seems like a prime example of it.”

  He didn’t really expect Laurren to have any other ideas for him, so he was surprised when the Master pursed his lips and said, “Well, there is one thought I’ve been toying with…but I’m not at all sure it’s wise.”

  Since most of Hayden’s good luck in life sprang from his own idiocy, the thought of doing something risky and stupid actually raised his hopes.

  “What is it? I’m not afraid of taking risks; I figured I’d have to at some point, given that I’m researching the most dangerous mage the world has seen in at least a couple centuries.”

  Master Laurren gave him a small smile and said, “I don’t question your bravery, just the advisability of my idea.” He frowned thoughtfully.

  “Well, you could tell me about it and I’ll let you know if it sounds like a good idea to me…” Hayden suggested, trying to conceal his excitement.

  Laurren gave him a flat stare and said, “Sure, because you’re the most objective resource to consult in this matter, and fourteen year-old boys are historically excellent judges of morality…”

  Even Hayden had to laugh at that one, which seemed to relax the Master because he motioned for Hayden to sit down.

  “Alright, I’ll tell you what my thought was. As you’ve rightly noticed, I am indeed the expert on Abnormal Magic at this school. In my studies, I’ve come across an herbal concoction that has been shown to assist with recovering suppressed memories.”

  Hayden leaned forward in his seat so that he was perched at the very edge. “But that sounds like exactly what I need! If I could get back my own memories of the day my father showed up to blow up my house, it would be a huge step towards figuring out what happened to my Foci, and why my Source is so weird!”

  “Yes, but it’s still highly experimental and controversial,” Laurren explained patiently. “In some people it produces very strange side-effects, and while they’ve proven to be temporary, they’re dangerous enough that I would never encourage a person to try it if I thought there was any other option. Besides, it only works in about half the people it has been tried on, and sometimes the memories you recall are not the ones you were searching for.”

  Frowning at Laurren’s lack of enthusiasm, Hayden insisted, “But it might work for me. And you said yourself that even the bad effects were temporary, so if you have to lock me in a padded room for a day or two I swear I’ll make up my lessons afterwards.”

  Master Laurren was silent for a long moment, staring pensively at Hayden, who didn’t dare speak in case it broke his focus. Finally the Master clasped his Mastery Charm and said, “A word, if you have time.”

  Hayden had absolutely no idea who he was talking to until Asher appeared in the middle of the office between one blink and the next, clasping his Mastery Charm in one hand and a mug of hot cocoa in the other. He looked like he was getting ready for bed, dressed in a black t-shirt and striped flannel pants. He was also barefoot.

  “What’s up?” he took in the room at a glance, along with Master Laurren’s strange white hair, though he didn’t look surprised by any of it. “It’s not often that you call me for a late-night consult on your work.”

  His colleague gestured towards Hayden and said, “We’ve been discussing something experimental to help him recover his memory of the day the Dark Prism died, but I can hardly be called an objective source as to whether or not it’s a good idea. You�
�re his mentor and seem to have his best interests at heart, so I thought to ask you.”

  Asher’s eyebrows lifted in interest and he took a sip of cocoa.

  “Ah, shuffling the accountability onto someone else’s shoulders, good call. By all means, let’s hear this plan of yours.”

  “What do you know about Mnemora?”

  The Prism Master looked genuinely startled and said, “You want to give him that swill?” He leaned back against the wall and continued without waiting for an answer, more thoughtfully this time. “Doesn’t it have some pretty odd and wide-ranging side-effects?”

  “But they’re supposed to be temporary,” Hayden blurted out, and both Masters turned and silenced him with a look.

  “Yes, and a host of more normal but no-less-dangerous side-effects as well,” Laurren replied as though Hayden hadn’t spoken. “The nosebleeds alone…”

  “I don’t mind a little nosebleed,” Hayden interjected again, and Master Laurren turned towards him once more.

  “A quart of blood hardly qualifies as a minor nosebleed.”

  “Oh,” Hayden paled slightly, “well…Mistress Razelle is really great at healing, so she can probably fix it in no time…”

  Asher rolled his eyes and said, “I assume you’re eager to try it out for your own academic interests?” to his colleague.

  “Indeed, yes. I’ve read about its effects in numerous references, but I’ve never witnessed it first-hand.”

  The Prism Master frowned. “I’m not sure—”

  “Come on, you have to let me try!” Hayden interrupted, jumping to his feet. “I’m fourteen-years old, and fine—maybe I’m not fully-qualified or ultra-powerful like you two, but my entire life changed because of what happened that day! My mother was killed and something weird obviously happened to my magic, and I have a right to know what it was!”

  He wasn’t aware that his hands were balled into fists until he forcibly unclenched them and tried to look like a reasonable, mature person who deserved to be listened to.