Cave of Nightmares (17 page)

“Nobody asked you to join our convers
ation, Frost, so stay out of it,” Lorn sneered.

“Shut up about me and I will,” Hayden countered.

Bonk hopped onto the side of the cauldron, balancing himself on the rim and nudging Hayden’s arm to draw his attention.

“It’s a free
land, we can talk about whatever we want. And right now we want to talk about how useless you are and how insulting it is that they let you in here,” Lorn said, not bothering to keep his voice down anymore. “Take your useless dragon and go back to the orphanage where you belong.” And with that he shoved Bonk, who flapped his wings wildly as he lost balance and toppled right into Hayden’s cauldron.

Hayden grabbed wildly
for him but was too late, and when Bonk splashed into the mixture, hot liquid sloshed up and burned Hayden’s hand as he hurried to pull him out. He laid Bonk out on the desk, panicking because the little dragon was completely limp and still; even his tongue was lolling out.

The sound of Lorn and
Pollus’s laughter made him so furious that without a second thought he stood up, drew back his fist, and punched the former in the face as hard as he could.

His burnt
hand hurt doubly after striking Lorn in the jaw, but he was beyond caring. He barely registered the shouting around him as he pounced on the other boy and punched him again just for good measure, this time in the eye. All of his rage was pouring out of him as he pummeled Lorn, and it felt viciously satisfying, until he suddenly lost feeling in his extremities and toppled over like a rag-doll, slumped awkwardly on the wooden floor.

Horrified that he’d
somehow been paralyzed, he turned his head as best he could until he saw the hem of Master Kilgore’s robes hovering nearby.

“What in the
name of the arcane are you two idiots doing back here?” he demanded sharply. Hayden wasn’t sure whether it was a rhetorical question or not, and Lorn was still whimpering too much to answer.

“WELL?” Master Kilgore raised his voice to a near shout.

“I can’t feel my arms and legs,” Hayden said dumbly, horrified at what he’d done now that his anger had left him.

“That’s because I used a s
evering charm on you,” the Master of Elixirs answered tersely. “I’ll remove it if you agree to sit up and tell me why you two louts felt it was a good idea to start a fist-fight in a room full of dangerous compounds.”

“
He’s
the one who hit
me
!” Lorn blubbered, and Hayden was pleased to note that he sounded muffled as his jaw swelled.

“I don’t doubt you did something to deserve it.” Kilgore snapped his fingers and the feeling returned to Hayden’s limbs as though it had never been gone. He sat up shakily and looked up at Master Kilgore from the floor while the rest of the class watched
in anticipation.

“He threw Bo
nk into my cauldron and killed him!” Hayden insisted angrily, and Kilgore raised a bushy eyebrow and turned to examine his familiar, who was still splayed out awkwardly on the desk.

“Is that true, Trout?”

Lorn was still struggling to wipe tears from his eyes, one of which was blackening nicely, as he answered.

“I didn’t
mean
to push him in, sir—”

“Yes you did!” Hayden was tempted to get up and hit him again for lying.

“Shut up, Frost, I’ll get to you in a minute,” Master Kilgore gave him a menacing glare. Lorn tried to shoot him a smug look before the Master turned his attention back to him, but was too slow.

“Don’t think I’m not getting ready to sh
out at you as well,” Kilgore said flatly, folding his arms across his broad chest and staring down at the pair of them. “Why did you push his familiar into his elixir?”

Lorn frowned.

“I didn’t—”

“Every time you lie to me
I’m going to add another half hour onto your punishment,” Kilgore cut him off, and Lorn blanched visibly.

“He was being mouthy with me,” h
e said at last.

“You and
Pollus started it,” Hayden grumbled, loudly enough for Master Kilgore to hear. “You spent the whole lesson trying to goad me.”

Kilgore studied both of them for a minute and then said, “
You will both report to the main courtyard after your last class of the day to receive your punishment.” He turned to Hayden. “Your dragon will be fine; dragons have powerful magic protecting them.”

“Then
why’s he all limp?” Hayden exhaled in relief, wondering when he had become so fond of Bonk.

“H
e’s had an overdose of calming elixir. It might have killed a lesser creature, in which case your classmate would be facing expulsion.” He shot Lorn another unpleasant glare. “As it is, he’ll likely be fine by morning, though perhaps drowsy.”

He turned away from them and walked back to the front of the room as though there had been no interruption, hopping back onto the edge of his desk and addressing the rest of the class.

“You’ve got five minutes to submit a completed sample for grading.”

As everyone had been watching the debacle at the back of the room until now, his words sent them scrambling to hand something in on time. Hayden’s elixir was useless by the time he retu
rned to it: aside from having had a dragon in it, it had simmered for far too long and congealed unpleasantly along the sides of his cauldron.

Hayden winced as he pushed himself to his feet, examining the burn on his hand and suppressing a surge of nausea at the white, blistered skin there. The pain was almost blinding, but he was determined not to cry like Lorn, so he sat there stubbornly until class ended, watching the other boy leave for the infirmary.

When the lesson was over he was one of the last ones to pack up his things, mostly because he was attempting to do it one-handed. Since Bonk was worse-than-useless right now, Hayden had no choice but to lower him gently into his bag on top of his books and hope he didn’t get crushed during the walk to Prisms.

Master Kilgore called out to him as he was leaving.

“Get back here, Frost.”

Wondering if he was about to g
et yelled at for real this time he turned around, trying to move his injured hand as little as possible because the air made it hurt.

“You’re favoring your right arm. Are you injured?” Kilgore’s tone was surprisingly concerned.

“I got burned pulling Bonk out of my cauldron. It’s nothing.”

Master Kilgore frowned and approached him, motioning for him to hold out his hand.

“Good lord, boy, that’s no minor burn.” His eyebrows lifted in surprise and he moved quickly behind his desk and began rummaging around in a drawer. “That must be agonizing.”

Hayden was acutely aware of the sweat running down his forehead and his heart racing from the pain. He was beginning to feel a little lightheaded.

“It hurts—a lot,” he admitted.

“Wh
y didn’t you say something sooner?” Master Kilgore returned to him with a small tub of oily orange paste.

“I didn’t want to give Lorn the satisfaction.”

He cried out in pain as his instructor began smearing the oily paste over his hand, dropping to his knees and nearly vomiting all over the Master of Elixirs’ shoes as patches of light exploded before his eyes.

“You’r
e as stubborn as they come, boy,” Kilgore didn’t sound entirely angry about it. “I know this hurts like the blazes, but there’s no helping that now.” He began bandaging his hand, and Hayden remembered screaming shrilly just before the world lurched and went black around him.

When he opened his eyes he was lying flat on his back on the floor of the Elixirs classroom, and Master Kilgore was checking his pulse.

“What happened?” Hayden asked thickly, struggling to sit up and wincing at the pain in his right hand, though it wasn’t as bad as he remembered.

“You passed out, which made bandaging that hand of yours a lot easier,” Master Kilgore answered calmly. “It should start to feel better soon: that paste accelerates healing and temporarily deadens nerve-endings; it’s made especially for burns.”

Hayden’s hand did feel a little numb now, and he had a hard time wiggling his fi
ngers when he tried. The Master of Elixirs helped him to his feet and dusted him off.

“Thank you, sir.”

He nodded. “Run along to your next class. You’ll still need to report to the courtyard afterward, injured or not.”

Hayden hoisted his bag back onto his shoulder, remembered that Bonk was inside, and tried to hurry to Prisms without jostling him too much. He had no idea how late he was, bu
t when he hurried into the room Master Asher was already in the middle of explaining a drawing of alignments in an amber-tinted prism.

The Prism Master took in his entire appearance at a glance, narrowed his eyebrows fractionally at his bandaged hand, and continued lecturing without acknowledging his tardiness.

Grateful for the reprieve, Hayden hurried to the vacant seat beside Tucker and tried to unpack his things as quietly as possible, though he was horrified to realize that he couldn’t take notes with his right hand incapacitated.

Well, if there’s one class I can manage
in without taking notes for a day, this would be it.

Tucker gave him a questio
ning look and mouthed the words,
What happened?
when he caught his eye. Hayden mouthed back,
Later
, and turned his attention to Master Asher, hanging onto his every word since he couldn’t write anything down.

Tucker tried to corner him after class, but Master Asher beat him to it by telling him to get out so that he could talk to Hayden privately.

“I’m sorry sir, but I’ve got to go to the main courtyard for my punishment with Master Kilgore,” he frowned, ashamed with himself for letting Lorn goad him in Elixirs.

Asher raised his eyebrows and said, “I’ll walk with you,” catching sight of Hayden’s half-packed bag with Bonk inside of it. “What
the devil happened to
him
?”

“Lorn shoved him
into my cauldron during class and he overdosed on calming elixir. Master Kilgore says he’ll be alright by morning, but only because he’s a dragon.”

Asher frowned pensively. “Leave him here; I might b
e able to revive him a bit faster.”

Relieved, Hayden pulled Bonk carefully out his bag and set him on the desktop, hating to leave him behind
but not knowing what else to do. Master Asher led the way into the hall.

“May I ask why
you are being punished if Trout the younger tried to kill your familiar?”

Hayden avoided Asher’s eyes when he said, “Because I punched him in the face until Master Kilgore paralyzed me.”

To his surprise, the Prism Master looked more interested than disapproving at hearing that he’d hit a fellow student.

“Is that why your hand is bandaged?”

“No, it’s because I got burned pulling Bonk out of my elixir.” Hayden attempted to wiggle his fingers again with no success.

“Then I certainly hope you got in a few good punches before Kilgore stopped you.”

Hayden gasped at Asher’s comment, and couldn’t entirely suppress a smile when he said, “He went to the infirmary with a black eye and a swollen jaw.”

The Prism Master looked as though he found that a fair compromise.

“Knowing Kilgore, he’s going to have you both doing something extremely unpleasant for punishment tonight. He doesn’t like people fighting in his classes.”

“I know. I shouldn’t have let Lorn get to me like that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have,” Asher agreed, before giving him a sly look. “If you could go back in time and do it again, would you still hit him?”

Hayden knew what he was supposed to say, but he felt comfortable being honest with the Prism Master for some reason.

“Probably,” he admitted.

Asher laughed loudly as they
approached the main courtyard.

Hayden didn’t have long to savor the humor, because Kilgore and Lorn were already waiting for him when he got there, and neither of them looked very cheerful, though the former greeted Asher politely enough.

“So, what’s it to be for them?” the Prism Master asked pleasantly. “A hike up Mount Arawas for freshly-fallen snow? The Forest of Illusions for berries? Or the ever popular fields of Hynar?”

Hayden had
no idea what or where any of those places were, but none of them sounded fun right now.

Master Kilgore gave him and Hayden a cursory gla
nce before saying, “The bogs. I could stand some more siltgrass for my third-year class.”

Asher made an unpleasant face at the suggestion, which made Hayden dread the upcoming punishment even more.

“Ouch. Well, happy hunting you two,” the Master turned to him and Lorn. “Try not to let the hydras eat you.”

And with that he walked off.