Cave of Nightmares (11 page)

Master Reede had made it look easy, but Hayden and most of his classmates struggled in vain to replicate his results. The Master didn’t seem discouraged or surprised as he walked around inspecting their attempts, telling them to erase and try again every time they ran out of room. Hayden never thought that such an easy thing could be so difficult, and went through three pieces of chalk before he managed to produce a circle that
Master Reede deemed ‘not tragic’.

Only three of them were able to produce per
fect circles, and as the Master suggested, they were all Conjury majors. The rest of them had varying degrees of success until their instructor told them to stop.

“It goes without saying that your homework for the night will be to practice drawing circles, though we’ll move on for now.” He drew another flawless circle in the
middle of the floor that earned a few grumbles from Hayden’s classmates. “Last night you read about crosshatching.” He drew a straight line through the bottom arc of the circle, extending about two inches past it on either side.

“Crosshatch
ing is the bread-and-butter of conjury,” he explained, dusting his hands off on his bright red robes. “The more crosshatching you do and the more complex it is, the more powerful your conjuring will be. This single line through the bottom of the circle is the most basic form.”

“Sir,” the girl on Hayden’s left raised her hand. “How do you know it’s the bottom of the circle? From where I’m sitting it looks like the top.”

A few people snickered at her but Master Reede only smiled.

“A fine observation, and not at all amusing.”
He shot a glance at those who had laughed. “In fact, this line could be oriented on any part of the circle, depending on how you’re looking at it.” He walked slowly around it to illustrate the point. “The reason I called this side the bottom is because I
believe
that it is.”

He fell silent, watching
to see how they processed the information.

“What do you mean?” s
omeone asked at last.

“I mean that
, in my mind, I have convinced myself that this end is the top and the other is the bottom. Since I drew the circle, it is as I conceive of it. Any guesses why this matters?”

He looked around at them all once more, though for some reason he said, “Hayden?” despite the fact that Hayden had been determinedly not looking at him in the hopes of not being called on.

He glanced up and tried to think through everything he’d ever been told about magic, most of which had come from Master Asher only yesterday.

“Um…well it’s your circle…and you’re the one who’s—” he thought
back to Master Asher’s wording, “—exerting your will on the world, so the circle…kind of…follows your will, right?”

He was absolutely certain he’d guessed wrong, and winced in preparation for the contradiction.

“Couldn’t have put it better myself,” Master Reede said cheerfully, and Hayden’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Well, I might have said it without all the dramatic pauses and uncertainty, but otherwise it was a fine answer,” he amended.

“Yes, the conjury diagrams we draw assume the orientation that we mentally assign to them, becaus
e as Hayden said, it becomes the instrument for channeling our power. Now, continuing on, this basic crosshatch signifies—”

Hayden was barely able to keep from smiling as he took notes, because for the second time he had answered a question correctly and this was only his first day.

I should thank Master Asher for explaining so much to me yesterday morning.

After Conjury was Introduction to Healing, Hayden’s only class from the minor arcana this year
by requirement. It was taught by a soft-spoken woman named Mistress Razelle, and they spent most of the lesson taking notes on different roots and plants and the role they played in healing.

By lunch time Hayden thought his brain was going to explode from all the new info
rmation he was trying to absorb. He hurried back to his room to switch out his books for the afternoon classes, prodded Bonk until the lazy dragon woke up and hopped onto his shoulder, and then hurried back to the dining hall for lunch.

He was a little surprised to see that Master Sark, the Powders instructor, was sitting on the bench b
etween Zane and Mira, even though the former told him that the Masters sat at a different table for each meal to interact with the students.

Hayden went to join them, taking the only vacant seat directly across from Sark and trying not to do or say anything stupid.

The Powders Master gave him a cursory examination.

“I see you’ve won yours
elf a dragon,” he said in greeting, and Bonk took flight across the table as though called on. Hayden watched in horror as the dragon alit on top of Master Sark’s shiny, bald head.

“No, Bonk—come back over here
right now
,” he demanded as sternly as possible, but the dragon just stared at him like he was stupid and didn’t budge.

Mira was trying so hard not to laugh that she stuffed her fist in her mouth to muffle the n
oise. Hayden could hear chuckles from the nearby tables, and Master Asher looked like he was about to wet himself with glee from the other side of the room.

“Frost, please
learn to control your familiar,” Master Sark said, dryly.

“Sorry, sir, I’m trying.” He glared at Bonk. “Come here,
right now
, or I’m taking you back to the room for the rest of the day.”

M
ercifully, the dragon heeded his threat and flew back to Hayden’s side of the table, standing at the edge of it and dunking his head into Hayden’s glass of milk to drink.

Why did I have to get the weirde
st dragon ever?

Glancing at Oliver didn’t help matters, because the older boy had
Slasher trained perfectly. The sleek black dragon was perched on his shoulder, and Oliver’s friends were taking turns tossing it bits of meat. They saw him watching and laughed unpleasantly until Hayden looked away.

“How’s your day going?”
Zane got his attention, and Hayden was thankful for the change in subject.

“Not bad, so far. There’s so much to learn though, I’m not sure how I’m going to keep up with it all.”

Zane shrugged. “No one expects you to be good at everything. You’ll drop the classes you’re bad at next year and pick up new ones in their place. What have you got this afternoon?”

Hayden consulted his schedule.

“After this it’s Powders…” he glanced nervously at Master Sark, who said nothing in response. “Then Elixirs, and finally Prisms.”

Zane
grinned.

“Well cheer up,
you’re bound to be ace in Prisms at least,” he said with confidence.

“Have you shown any aptitude with
powders or elixirs yet?” Master Sark asked with keen interest, pushing back the sleeves of his bright red robes in the warmth of the dining hall.

“Not yet, but I haven’t trie
d anything with them yet either,” Hayden admitted, rolling up his long sleeves without thinking, subconsciously mirroring Master Sark.

“Holy halibut!”
Mira exclaimed loudly, catching sight of his Focus-correctors, which immediately drew the attention of everyone nearby.

Hayden mentally cursed himself as even Master Sark’s eyes went wide with shock. He had deliberately worn long sleeves since he’d gotten his correctors to avoid this very situation. He had no desire for everyone in the school to know what a freak he was, and he blew it on the first day.

“Good gracious, Frost, are those truly your Focus-correctors?” Sark asked in absolute disbelief. Zane was less tactful.

“Do you even
have
a Focus?! I’ll be surprised if you can tie your shoes with that much adjustment on your channels.”

There were people at other tables standing up to get a better look at him, and Hayden blushed furiously as he pulled his sleeves back down over the correctors.

“Master Asher said he thinks my Foci might have been damaged by magic,” he admitted.

“
Destroyed
is more like it,” Sark mumbled. “I’ve never seen magical damage that severe, though I suppose Asher would know better than anyone.”

“Why is that?” Hayden asked curiously, eager to shift to attention onto someone else.

“Because his left Focus was damaged years ago; that’s why he wears a corrector now,” Master Sark replied, and now it was Hayden’s turn to look surprised. “Are you sure you’re able to channel magic with that much correction on both hands?”

“I was still able to use a prism after I put them on.” Even his ears were burning in embarrassment now, and he could hear the other tables whispering about him like a buzzing of bees.

“Hmm, most interesting,” Master Sark left it at that, and thankfully Mira changed the subject by asking a question about her Powders homework.

Hayden managed to survive the lunch hour
and followed Master Sark to his next class on the ground floor, through the pentagonal foyer and into a room off the main path to the rear entrance where he had Conjury. The desks here were much larger than he expected, like worktables, and there were glass mortars and pestles on each one, along with a small cauldron that couldn’t hold more than a few cups of water.

Master Sark starte
d class like most of the others, discussing more of the basic principles of magic and how they applied to powders. Apparently there was an entire art form to crushing, grinding, and mixing different compounds together, though Hayden didn’t understand a bit of it. Every time he tried to grind something, Sark pronounced it too fine or too coarse. They all looked the same to Hayden, and even worse, the powders made him sneeze violently every time he caught a whiff of dust.

After half an hour
he was unfortunate enough to accidentally breathe a cloud of rose-colored dust that he’d just created with his vigorous attempts at grinding. Rather than sneeze, this dust made him vomit into his cauldron, which he’d just mixed a blue and white powder together in.

Apparently the mixture reacted violently with vomit, because the entire workstation was soon on fire, and Hayden threw himself to the floor and scrambled away from the flames while the room filled with smoke and the shouts of his classmates. Bonk stood patiently beside him, and Hayden only just remembered that he tol
d the dragon it could come to class as long as it stayed quiet and behaved.

Master Sark opened a pouch on his belt and threw a pinch of powder into the flames, waving his hand back and forth in a wafting gesture. The fire collapsed in on itself and the smoke began to dissipate, until the room was clear and safe once again.

Everyone turned to stare at Hayden on the floor, including Sark.

“You, out of my classroom.
I don’t want to see you back in here until you’ve got a dust-mask on, and I want a one-page report on why it’s a bad idea to vomit on a mixture of blue-1 and white-3.”

Hayden got to his feet, willing himself not to cry in
embarrassment and frustration. It wasn’t
his
fault that he couldn’t breathe all these stupid dusts without retching.

“Y-yes
sir,” he stammered, hurrying to collect his things and leave the room, while Master Sark resumed teaching as though there had been no interruption.

Since he didn’t know what else to do, he made his way to the front courtyard and decided to start on his homework. He had just sat do
wn in the shade of a white pear-blossom tree when he heard a familiar voice.

“Hi again.”
It was that girl from yesterday—Tess.

“Oh, hey there.”
He stared at the cover of his Powders book, wondering if there was a chapter called Why It’s a Bad Idea to Vomit on Powders.

“Bad day?”
Tess solicited, taking a seat on the grass beside him.

“It was going well until lunch, actually.
Everyone got a good look at my massive Focus-correctors, and then I set the room on fire in Sark’s class and got kicked out.”

Tess put a hand to her mouth in surprise.

“Oh my, how did you set the Powder’s room on fire?”

He groaned in embarrassment.

“Those stupid dusts keep making me sneeze, except for rose number-whatever, which made me throw up into my cauldron full of blue-1 and white-3. I’m supposed to be figuring out why that caused my workstation to go up in flames.”

Tess let out a quiet giggle even as
she tried to look sympathetic.

“Oh, well white-3 reacts violently wit
h water. It’s a strong oxidizer and has a low auto-ignition temperature, so your puke must have set it off quite nicely,” she explained.

“Wait, seriously? You
know
this?” He looked at her in amazement.

“Sure,
like I said, I’m a double-major,” she admitted, blushing. “Anyway, look in chapter one for the section on white-3 and it’ll explain properly.”