Cave of Nightmares (29 page)

Hayden continued down the hallway and turned onto the main stairwell, taking the steps at a jog so he wouldn’t be too late for lunch. There were plenty of stragglers like him filtering into the corridor that led to the dining hall, and he was unpleasantly surprised to find Oliver and Jasper leaning against the wall near the empty bursar’s
office as though waiting for something.

What they were waiting for became obvious as Hayden approached, because they perked up like bloodhounds that had caught a scent at the sight of him.

“Oh look, it’s the Broken Prism himself,” Oliver said loudly, attracting the attention of several passerby who stopped to stare.

“Excuse me?” Hayden stopped walking only because they were blocking his path to the dining hall.

“All the really good or really evil mages get nicknames,” Jasper explained with a nasty smile. “What better name for the messed up son of the Dark Prism than the Broken Prism? Sums you up pretty well if you ask me.”

Hayden f
elt his face burning with anger and was annoyed that none of the onlookers were speaking up on his behalf, or at least minding their own business. Oliver and Jasper wouldn’t be able to make a scene if everyone else would just go on to lunch, but people were clearly itching to see this confrontation play out.

“I guess that’s better than
what they’ll be calling you two,” he replied, trying to ignore his anger. “Jasper the Joke and the Wannabe Prism.”

A few
people watching laughed at that; others gasped. Jasper’s spiky brown hair looked like it was going to burst into flames and Oliver’s pale face turned fuchsia.

“What did you just call me?” T
he latter whipped out a prism and began twisting it into his eyepiece, voice choked with rage.

“You heard me,” Hayden realized he was equipping his amber prism only when he brought the eyepiece down into position over his right eye. “All those prisms you carry on your belt…are they decorative, or have you ever actually used one?”

Oliver snarled and Jasper drew a wand from his belt. Hayden knew just enough about wands to know that it was a level-five cherry, good for combat.

Without thinking about it, Hayden drew his own cherry wand (unfortunately only level-one)
and brought it to chest height.

“You’d better get down on your hands an
d knees and beg for forgiveness, or we’re going to rearrange your face for you,” Oliver growled.

“I’ll do that as soon as pigs fly,” Hayden gripped his wand even tighter. “And I haven’t
seen you two sprout wings yet.”

Jasper let out an inarticulate stream of curse words and waved his wand at Hayden, who did the only thing he could think of and dove out of the way as a loud crack sounded behind him. He scrambled back to his fe
et and looked at the split stone wall where he had just been standing, raising his own wand and thinking,
Reflect!
just as Jasper fired off his next attack.

The spell was reflected back at Jasper, who cried out as his hair began to grow rapidly towards his sho
ulders. It would have been fine except it appeared that all of his facial hair was growing equally fast, his eyebrows extending down towards his chin as a beard sprouted, obscuring most of his face. The nearby crowd gasped and laughed, and even Oliver looked momentarily diverted before turning his attention back to Hayden.

“You’ll pay for that, Frost.” He spun his prism around in the holder
and focused on him. Hayden jumped out of the way again, almost too slowly, and felt a ripple of magic pass by the spot where he used to be standing.

People were scrambling to clear the way for them, effectively bottling them in on either side of the
hallway as they watched. Even more of their peers seemed to be trickling out of the dining hall from the noise, but Hayden didn’t have time to worry about them right now.

Oliver cast again and Ha
yden had to roll to avoid being hit with the spell, which caused a tree branch to burst through the wall as though it had been growing there all along. Hayden was just thankful that it hadn’t hit him or the tree branch might have burst out of his chest instead.

“Is this how the great Broken Prism fights his battles?” Oliver
shouted, laughing hatefully, “On his hands and knees?”

Nettled, Hayden scrambled to his feet and looked at Oliver through his prism just as the older boy was preparing for his next attack. A fight between them wasn’t fair, because Oliver had level-two
and three prisms and he didn’t, but Hayden didn’t know what else to do but try to avoid being hit until the other boy used up his materials and was forced to stop. Jasper was drinking elixirs and waving his wand to cut his abundance of hair so he could see, but it just kept re-growing as he staggered blindly down the hallway towards the waiting crowd.

If I could just get rid of Oliver’s prism this fight would be over…

His right eye saw the new array—one he hadn’t noticed before—just as Oliver opened his mouth to cast.

“Repel!” Oliver shouted at the same time that Hayden said, “BREAK!”

Hayden was hit in the gut by some invisible force that launched him backwards at high speed. He slammed into the wall and it knocked the breath out of him, dropping him to his knees.

Oliver’s prism exploded out of his eyepiece, turning to gritty dust
that floated down to settle on the ground in front of him. But it didn’t stop there. Apparently Hayden’s will hadn’t been focused well enough when he cast Break, because the prism wasn’t the only thing that broke. Oliver’s shirt and pants practically exploded off of him, ripped to shreds by some invisible force, leaving him standing in his underwear in the middle of the corridor.

“What’
s going on out here?” Masters Kilgore, Asher, and Willow had just emerged from the dining hall with their weapons of choice drawn and were staring at the scene in the corridor in confusion.

Oliver grabbed Jasper by the wrist and took off running back towards the main stairwell, plainly not wanting to be seen in his underwear by the entire school and
most of the Masters. Jasper kept stumbling because he couldn’t see through all his hair, and Hayden heard his muffled threats as they rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

The other students trie
d to scatter now that the fighting was over and it looked like there was going to be trouble.

“Why was Oliver dragging a wildebeest through the hallway in his underwear?” Master Asher asked with genuine interest. It was about that time that Master Willow caught sight of Hayden on the floor
, coughing and trying to catch his breath.

The Master of Wands
had an arrested look on his face.

“All of you get back in the dining hall. Hayden, stay here.”

Great, I’m about to get in trouble for a fight I didn’t even start.

He stood up and focused on brushing the dust from his clothing and returning h
is half-spent amber prism to the holder on his belt while the corridor rapidly cleared. He could hear excited whispers as people passed and was a little surprised when a fourth-year he had never spoken to clapped him on the back and said, “Good job,” in passing.

The racket in the dining hall grew much louder as people began sharing what they’d just witnessed, and Master Kilgore shut the double-doors to muffle the noise.

“Why am I not surprised that you’re involved in this in some way?” Master Willow let out a sigh of resignation.

“I wasn’t trying to start anything,” Hayden insisted. “I was just on my way to lunch, and Oliver and Jasper were waiting
for me here so they could make a scene.”

“Oh, so that running pile of fur was actually Jasper
Dout?” Master Asher quirked an eyebrow in surprise, and Hayden nodded confirmation.

“Tell us what happened,” Kilgore sighed wearily, as though expecting this.

“They blocked my way to the dining hall and started calling me the Broken Prism, saying I’m crazy and messed up.” He frowned. “People were staring and laughing.”

Master Willow frowned.

“And how did you respond?”

Hayden mumbled, “I said their nicknames were
Jasper the Joke and the Wannabe Prism.”

Master Asher let out a surprising bark of laughter and hastily covered his mouth, trying and failing to look disappointed with him.

“And then?” Master Willow continued, much less amused than his colleague.

“Oliver pulled out a prism and Jasper took out his level-five cherry wand, so I put on a p
rism and got my cherry wand too,” he explained. “They told me to beg for forgiveness, and I—said no, so Jasper attacked me.”

Master Willow suddenly walked past him and began examining the damage in the hallway, one hand clasping his
Mastery Charm as he went.

“Hmm, yes, I see.” He touched the places where Jasper’s spells had hit and frowned. “Not nearly as e
fficient as he should have been; elder would have been better for this.”

Hayden couldn’t help but admire the fact that the Master of Wands was taking the time to critique Jasper’s
spell-casting efficiency at a moment like this.

“I dodged the first attack and then
cast Reflect with my wand on his next one. It made his hair grow really fast after that,” Hayden continued.

Master Kilgore turned to his colleague. “Growing spell?”

“Yes, a targeted one,” Willow responded neutrally.

“Then Oliver started casting at me with his prism, and I dodged the first couple of attacks because hi
s prisms are stronger than mine,” he continued, and Master Asher’s gaze flickered around the corridor.

“Yes, I
see what happened.”

Hayden was amazed to hear it, because there wasn’t any evidence from the damage of the hallway as to what spells had been cast—at least not that he could tell.
Then again, there was probably a reason why Asher was the Prism Master at Mizzenwald over all the other qualified candidates who tried out.

“I was trying to use up his prism
to end the fight, so I cast Break, hoping it would work.”

“Oh, you found the Break alignment
all on your own?” Master Asher turned to him with bright interest, sounding cheerful. “Good work; we weren’t due to start that in class until next month.”

As always, Hayden was surprised by the compliment.

“It seems that your will wasn’t focused narrowly enough, given that it stripped him of his clothing as well.”

Hayden frowned. “I was angry and scared, so I must not have been focusing on the prism hard enough…
though it
did
break.”

Master Willow looked intrigued.

“You shattered a level-two prism with a level-one prism?”

Hayden nodded.

“I told you Wil, three-inch Focus-correctors or not, Hayden has a very powerful Source.” Master Asher shrugged. “Even at twelve, his will overpowered Oliver’s.”

“Th
at’s no small feat,” the Master of Wands acknowledged.

“Sorry, sir…but your name is
Wil Willow?” Hayden had no idea why he asked the question but he couldn’t help himself. Kilgore and Asher smirked but Master Willow looked suddenly frosty.

“Yes. Is there something you’d like to say about that?” His tone implied that he knew exactly what Hayden was thinking right now.

“No sir,” he answered prudently.

Master Kilgore sighed.

“Well, it looks like we’re going to have to schedule another punishment for Frost, Dout, and Trout.”

Hayden was expecting this, though it didn’t please him to hear it.
It also occurred to him that the three names together made them sound like a horrible circus act. He could almost hear a ringmaster announcing,
I give you Frost, Dout, and Trout!

“
They can collect a few bottles of fresh dew from Mount Arawas for me; I’m nearly out,” Master Kilgore added, imploding the horrible image in Hayden’s mind.

The others nodded.

“Now, let’s get back to lunch before all the good food is gone,” Master Kilgore led the way back to the dining hall, the others in tow. Master Asher was walking alongside Hayden.

“How bad is Mount
Arawas?” the latter asked softly.

“Not terrible. You’ll just have to hike up a mountain for a few hours in a blizzard with your mortal enemies to collect some fre
sh snow. Try to avoid the yetis; some of them are twenty feet tall and they’re an unfriendly lot.” Master Asher clapped him on the back and preceded him into the dining hall.

The scary thing was
Hayden had no idea if he was joking or not.

14

Jasper’s Grudge

Much to Hayden’s chagrin, Master Asher was not joking about the nature of his punishment, as Zane informed him at the end of lunch. The yetis of Mount Arawas were apparently well-known and much-feared amongst the student population. The only thing that made the afternoon classes bearable that day was the fact that people kept privately congratulating him for emerging from a duel with two sixth-year students as the decided victor.

“Normally I would be furious with you for getting detention when we’re su
pposed to have a challenge practice tonight,” Tucker whispered to him during Prisms. “But the thought of humiliating Oliver Trout in front of the Masters in his underwear makes it totally worth it.”

Hayden tried to focus on that cheerful thought instead of his impending punishment.

“Where are they sending you for detention?” Tucker asked as soon as the Prism Master turned his back to them to draw a major alignment in colored chalk on the blackboard.

“Mount
Arawas,” Hayden replied.

Tucker grimaced. “Ouch. Well, try not to let Jasper or Oliver push you off of the mountain. Also, avoid the yetis…some of them are really nasty.”

Hayden didn’t trust himself to respond to that so he resumed copying notes from the board.

When Prisms ended he hurried back to his dormitory to drop off his things, borrowing a coat from Conner since he didn’t
have one of his own. He sprinted back downstairs, not wanting to be late in case it got him in even more trouble.

Oliver and Jasper were talking to Master Willow in the main courtyard when he approached. Jasper’s gel-spiked brown hair was its normal length and he was beardless once more. Oliver was fully-clothed but one of h
is prism holders remained empty since Hayden shattered the one he was using in combat.

The Master of Wands glanced at his
chrono as Hayden came jogging into view, skidding to a stop on the pavement to catch his breath. Oliver and Jasper gave him looks of pure loathing.

“Right on time,” Master Willow greeted him somberly, motioning the three of them towards the translocation circle that was drawn in chalk in the courtyard. “Did you all bring jackets? Good, Mount
Arawas is freezing this time of year.” He joined them in the center of the circle and clasped the Mastery Charm that hung around his neck.

Hayden was half-expecting the world to blur
as the translocation took hold, but of course they were going to a real location so nothing happened. He simply blinked and immediately began shivering when he was confronted with the blindingly-white destination.

They were standing on the side of a tall mountain, very high up judging by the green specks that were supposed to be trees dotting the valley below them. The sky here was white, the snow falling steadily around them in thick flakes. Hayden immediately pulled his coat on and zipped it up to his neck
, wishing he had thought to borrow mittens as well.

The mountain itself was blanketed in at least a foot of snow, sloping sharply upwards towards a peak he could barely see from here. Oliver and Jasper shivered a
nd pulled on gloves and jackets, but Master Willow looked perfectly warm, still clasping his Mastery Charm. In fact, the snow seemed to fall around him rather than on him, and Hayden suspected he was using some sort of powerful magic to keep himself warm while the rest of them froze.

“In the hope
of convincing the three of you to put aside your petty squabbles, we have decided to assign you this team punishment.” He gave them a small smile that was not at all sympathetic. “Your task is to reach the top of the mountain and fill this bucket with the purified water there.” He passed it to Oliver, and Hayden couldn’t help but think that it was more of a tall cup with a handle than a bucket.

“Since you might be tempted to abandon each other or
resume your quarrel from earlier today, I will point out that I will be watching you from overhead. Also, I feel compelled to mention that you will remain on this freezing mountain until all three of you arrive at the peak, conscious, so you stand nothing to gain from working against one another.”

Hayden didn’t like the thought of being stuck o
n a mountain with two mages who had vastly more magical knowledge than him, who hated him on principle, and would be thrilled to see him eaten by a yeti.

At least Master Willow is trying to make it worth their while to keep me alive and intact.

“Does everyone understand?” He waited until all three of them said “yes” before extracting another charm from his pocket, muttering a few words too quietly for Hayden to hear, and then turning into a bird, taking flight and disappearing into the clouds.

The three of them looked at each other for a long moment in silence, the loathing evident in the older boys’ eyes.

“Well, we’d better get started. It’s not going to get any warmer,” Hayden said at last, and Jasper shrugged and began leading the way up the mountain.

“Keep your mouth shut and try not to fall behind, Frost.” Oliver turned his back on him and followed his friend.

It was slow, difficult work, climbing the mountain. The snow was slick, and they all slipped more than once and had to catch themselves before sliding down the steep slope. Hayden’s ears and face were frozen, his breath rising in front of him in puffs of white mist as he walked into the wind.

He had no idea how long they climbed before the way leveled out for a bit—it felt like an hour—but he took the opportunity to
end the unpleasant silence.

“How much further do we have to go?”

Oliver glanced at him briefly, his pale skin chapped from the cold. The snow coated his blond hair so thoroughly that it made him look aged.

“We’re about halfway t
here,” he responded curtly, continuing alongside his friend, who was panting with exertion and cold.

They walked in silence for a few
minutes longer before Oliver asked, “How did you break my prism?” apropos of nothing.

Hayde
n was surprised by the question and answered truthfully, “I used Break.”

Oliver looked momentarily pensive. “That’s in the glass amber prism, right?” He searched his memory.
“Yellow-green-red, with a minor of blue-violet?”

“Yellow-green-yellow-red,” Hayden corrected automatically. “The red band is really thick, so it’s hard to see the other yellow
in the major alignment.”

“Oh, right.” Oliver nodded in understanding. “That still doesn’t explain how you broke my prism though. I was using a level-two glass, rose-tinted.”

Hayden shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know, I think I was a little too enthusiastic and used too much will. Master Asher said something about my will being stronger than yours at the time.”

Oliver frown
ed thoughtfully but offered no further commentary. Jasper glanced back at the pair of them and said, “Don’t waste your breath talking to the little twerp.”

Oliver seemed to rem
ember that he hated Hayden then because the next look he gave him was disdainful, and he moved forward to walk alongside Jasper once more. The path grew more perilous as they climbed higher, narrowing dangerously as the snow flurries picked up, until they could hardly see three feet in front of their face.

“We need to stop for a few minutes and tak
e cover until this cloud passes,” Oliver sounded like he didn’t relish the prospect, rubbing his reddened ears to keep sensation in them. “I don’t feel like testing Willow’s alertness by falling off the side of the mountain and hoping he catches me in time.”

His friend
mumbled dark agreement, and they moved towards an outcropping of rock that provided cover from the snow and wind when they ducked beneath it. Hayden was thankful for the rest, because his legs were aching from exertion and he couldn’t feel his hands or nose. He tried rubbing his palms together to generate heat but all it did was make his freezing fingers ache.

Oliver looked at him like he was an idiot and equipped one of his prisms. He twisted it around for almost a full minute before he found the array he was looking for
, and Hayden felt a blast of warm air as the snow beneath them melted.

Oh, duh. He’
s casting Heat.

Feeling stupid for not thinking of it immediately, Hayden removed his own clear prism from his belt and equipped it, finding the array much faster and adding to the warmth of their little shelter. He tried to channel slowly to conserve his prism as long as possible, surprised to find that he was doing a better job of it than Oliver.

Jasper was giving Hayden a hateful glare.

“I wish
Slasher was here,” he broke the silence, still frowning. “We could have him start a fire for us so you wouldn’t have to use up your prisms. And he could poison Frost and make it look like an accident while he was at it.”

Hayden scowled, unpleasantly surprised when Oliver shrugged and said, “I’ve thought about it
before, but his stupid dragon would just cure him before Slasher could do any real damage.”

“You sure about that?
Boink—or whatever the heck he’s called—is about as defective as they come,” Jasper raised an eyebrow.

“Even a defective
dragonling has enough magic to cure its master of another dragon’s poison,” Oliver sighed regretfully. Hayden was beginning to get annoyed that they were discussing him as though he wasn’t there or was too stupid to understand them.

“Why do you two hate me so much
anyway? I’ve never done anything to you other than exist,” he interrupted, and the older boys turned to him in surprise, like they weren’t expecting to see him.

“You’re the reason we’re freezing our butts off o
n top of Mount Arawas right now,” Jasper snarled at him, his gel-spiked hair sagging from the moisture of the snow.

“Uh, not to sound
argumentative…but you guys are kind of the reason we’re all here right now,” Hayden countered. “I was just trying to get to lunch when you two got mouthy with me.”

“You punched
my brother in the face,” Oliver sneered at him.

“He tried to murder my familiar.”

“Dragons can’t be killed so easily. Even
you
should know that.” Jasper rolled his eyes in disgust.

“Lorn can’t look at me without bad-mouthing me to all of his dumb friends
during class,” Hayden frowned.

“If you didn’t waltz around like you invented magic, trying to make everyone else look ba
d, maybe he’d leave you alone,” Oliver countered.

“What?” Hayden leaned back in shock. “I don’t act like I invented magic. I started this year at a huge disadvantage and have been trying to catch up ever since.”
That was true enough. Just yesterday his attempt at a freezing spell had caused his beaker of water to turn black and explode.

“Oh please,” Jasper looked away from him. “
Compounding your prisms in your first arena challenge, sucking up to Master Willow during Wands, putting together a challenge group with all five majors on it so you could start in the third-year rankings even though you were only in school for a week…you’re begging for attention as badly as your worthless father was.”

Hayden raised his eyebrows in genuine surprise.

“All of that was an accident,” he admitted truthfully, earning a stunned glance from Oliver. “I only compounded my prisms because I thought I was about to die—for real—and didn’t even know what I was doing at the time. And I don’t suck up during Wands class, I just keep getting lucky and figuring things out on my own because I don’t know enough to do things the right way. And when I picked Tess for my challenge group it wasn’t because I was being crafty…it’s because she’s the only one I knew out of the people there.”

Oliver was giving him a strange look, but Jasper plainly wasn’t buying a word of it.

“Oh sure, you’re not the bad guy at all,” he grimaced. “Except in a few years you’ll want a research position with Asher, and he’ll give it to you because you’ve been his pet since the minute you arrived. Then you’ll want to make a name for yourself, and you’ll get caught up in broken prisms until you go crazy and kill off all your relatives and their
perfectly harmless
wives…”

“
Uhh…what?” Hayden interrupted, confused, and Jasper muttered a string of curse words and went out to see if the snow had subsided, leaving him alone with Oliver Trout.

“You didn’t know?” Oliver asked curiously, his blond hair soaking wet from the melted snow, his skin paler than usual.

“Know what?”

“After your dad went nuts, one of the first things he did was kill off the rest of his family…those who wouldn’t
swear themselves to his cause, that is.” He shrugged. “Guess he didn’t want the competition.”

“What does that have to do with Jasper?”

“One of your dad’s cousins was married to Jasper’s mom. When they turned down his offer he murdered them all.” Oliver frowned. “He probably would have gotten Jasper too, except he was staying over at my house that night.”