Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (11 page)

“You’ll have to work on that if you want to reach your full potential, especially if you ever aspire to be a research apprentice to one of us,” Master Willow said without apology. “Now if you’ll excuse me, Hayden, I’ve got something to attend to.”

“Actually sir, I wanted to ask you if Mistress Razelle has been sick or something,” he interrupted. “I wanted to thank her for helping me last week, but I haven’t seen her since that night and she’s had a mastery student teaching
all of her classes.”

The Master of Wands frowned at Hayden and said, “Asher didn’t tell you?”

Startled, Hayden asked, “Didn’t tell me what?”

Master Willow sighed and motioned Hayden away from the center of the foyer. When they were standing near the east wall, he lowered his voice so that they wouldn’t be overheard and said, “Mistress Razelle was called to the front. She delayed her departure long enough to make sure you were alright, but then she had to go.”

Alarmed, Hayden blurted out, “What are you saying? You mean she’s in the Forest of Illusions fighting in the war right now?”

“I’m not sure if she’s fighting or not…I suspect they called her there mainly to treat the wounded, as she’s a very gifted healer,” Willow explained.

“But when will she be back?” Hayden knew it was a stupid question, but he couldn’t resist asking it. Until this moment the war hadn’t been a real thing to him, it was something distant that other people were caught up in, people he didn’t know or care about. Now it was coming to Mizzenwald—or at least bringing Mizzenwald to it.

“When the war ends, I hope.” Master Willow sighed. “It woul
d be a shame to lose such a competent Mistress of Healing, and such a good person.”

“But…but I thought the war was supposed to be going well,” Hayden argued. “Isn’t that what the import
ant people keep telling us? The sorcerers haven’t landed many troops, and we’re driving them off all along the borders of the Forest.” He said the last part in a mockery of an official-sounding adult.

Master Willow smirked and said, “That is certainly what the reports say. One wonders then, if that is true, why they continue to need additional manpower at the front.”

Hayden remembered that Master Asher had told him that Willow was also skeptical of the news about how the war was progressing.

Softly, as t
hough he was whispering treason, Hayden asked, “Isn’t there anything we can do to find out the truth without the Council finding out?”

“What do you think we’ve been devoting our evenings to for the last several months?” Master Willow smirked humorlessly. “Between the near-daily Council meetings, which we must send a representative to attend, and the more covert task of getting in touch with all of our contacts throughout the magical community to share candid information about the war effort and what is to be done, I’m lucky if I can get to bed by midnight these days.” He rubbed his eyes tiredly at the thought. “We have our own information coming in from the front—inde
pendent news is always an asset. After all the campaigning, sneaking around, and open meetings, we still have to teach classes, assist our mastery students in their research projects, and judge challenge arenas—though that may soon come to a halt.”

Hayden felt like a fool for not having some idea that all of this was going on right under their noses, for thinking that the war wasn’t having an effect on him for all this time.

“Isn’t there anything I can do to help?” he offered.

“We are doing everything in our power to keep students away from this nastiness. Your job is to learn as much as you can and prepare yourself in case we are unsuccessful. I know the kind of person you are, Hayden: you have a streak of righteousness and loyalty that is very admirable, but may lead you to ruin. This is not your war, Hayden. It is not your time.” He spoke with such quiet intensity that Hayden was startled by it.

“Now I really must go.” He sighed and swept past Hayden, turning out onto the grounds. Hayden wondered where he was going and what he was doing tonight for the war effort.

As he took the stairs to the fourth floor to drop off his things before dinner and collect Bonk, Master Willow’s words seemed to echo around his head.

…may lead you to ruin…not your war…not your time…

“Not yet,” Hayden said quietly to himself, waking Bonk for dinner.

When Hayden told Tess and Zane about Mistress Razelle after dinner that night, they took the news almost as badly as he did. Then they agreed to move their training schedule up to mid-week.

Despite the fact that he had so much homework he could barely keep up as it was, Hayden still found time to do some planning for their training session on Lenthin, which was to take place shortly after their arena team practice. He told Master Asher what he intended to do in class that day, and the Prism Master gave him some additional pointers and made recommendations about where to start.

After dinner that night, the three of them and Lorn met in the fourth-year common area on their floor, sitting around the empty fireplace and discussing what went right and wrong in their last arena challenge, as well as tactics for the future, now that they knew what sort of thing to expect.

Lorn and Zane spent twenty minutes debating whether they should have been aiming to kill or stun in their last challenge, and after Hayden got tired of listening to them and Tess nearly fell asleep, he called for an end to the discussion and they had to agree to disagree for the time being.

“Are we done here?” Lorn snapped in his usual surly tone.

“Yeah, we might as well call it a night. We’ve got other things to do,” Hayden sighed and rubbed his eyes, thinking of the homework he still needed to do and wondering if he would manage to finish any of it.

Lorn grabbed a cookie from a tray near the door and loped off to his room, while the other three made their way back downstairs and departed the castle, deciding to practice in one of the rear courtyards where there would be fewer spectators at this time of night. Master Asher caught them on their way outside and handed Hayden a jumble of necklaces that he produced from a pocket of his red robes.

“What are these?” Hayden asked curiously, surprised to run into the Prism Master at this time of evening.

“Magical dampers.
They’ll weaken your spells so that you shouldn’t injure each other terribly while you’re practicing. Mages tend to use them when they’re working on new techniques.”

“Then why in the world haven’t we been wearing them while you train me every-other day?” Hayden scowled at his mentor, who gave him a winning smile
in response.

“I’m wearing a Mastery Charm, which serves as a damper or an amplifier depending on my needs. I
have
been taking the edge off of some of my more dangerous spells for you.”

Hayden winced at the thought of how badly he’d be hurting if Master Asher
hadn’t
been cutting him some slack all this time.

“Well, thanks, but you gave us one too many anyway.” He handed the fourth back to the Master, who didn’t reach out to take it.

“Oh, did I? Well, you might as well hang onto it for now.” He smiled again and walked off with a jovial wave at Tess and Zane.

As soon as they were outside with the doors shut behind them Zane said, “You may have a wickedly powerful mentor teaching you magic, but I’m still not sure he’s right in the head.”

Hayden chuckled and said, “You get used to it. Besides, I’ve long suspected that he acts that way on purpose just to throw people off; he can be stone-serious when he needs to be.”

He handed each of them a magical dampening charm and they draped them around their necks. Hayden immediately felt as though a wet blanket had been dropped over him, like he was muffled and weaker.

“Whoa, this is weird,” Zane made a face. “My Foci feel…heavy.”

“It was nice of Ma
ster Asher to think to give these to us so we won’t have to worry about hurting each other as much,” Tess added, admiring the carved emblem on the end of the chain.

“Don’t know why he insisted on giving us four of them though.” Hayden shrugged and tucked the spare necklace into his pocket. “Alright, were both of you able to get the more advanced materials you were hoping for?”

Tess nodded and Zane smirked and said, “I found myself mysteriously cleared for level-six texts—well, some of them at least.” He grinned, obviously pleased with himself. “Looks like I was right about Reede clearing me for better texts behind my back. Good to know he’s fond of me.”

“Okay, well I talked to Asher today in class and he gave me some advice for where to start, so—”

“What are you three doing?” Lorn interrupted, and Hayden turned to find his teammate lurking nearby, gracing them with his characteristic scowl.

“Nothing you care about, just an extra project we’re working on,” Zane returned tartly.

Lorn looked even more suspicious and surly when he said, “If you’re doing extra arena practices without me then I’m going to clobber you.”

“It’s not extra arena stuff—though I guess it could help out in there as a side benefit,” Hayden explained.

“Then what are you doing and why don’t you want me to know about it?”

Hayden sighed and said, “We’re just doing some combat practice, you know…in case we have to fight other mages at some point. You may not have noticed, but I didn’t do so well with that in the I.S.C. last year,” he added dryly.

Lorn looked surprised by his honesty. “You’re practicing fighting? But you’d need at least level-five clearance to get any spell books that would help with that…level-six, maybe.”

“Which we’ve got, thank you very much,” Zane retorted with savage pleasure. Lorn’s pudgy chin dropped in surprise.

“Then I want in. If you all are going to be studying the important stuff, then you’re not leaving me behind to look like an idiot in our arenas.” He folded his arms across his chest, preparing himself for opposition.

“Why would we want to include you?” Zane smirked. “I thought the
Trouts were such an illustrious family that you couldn’t bear to even be seen with commoners like the rest of us.”

Lorn made a face and said, “Shut it,
Laraby, if you like your face the way it is. Otherwise I can have it rearranged for you.”

Tess pursed her lips and said, “You seem awfully sure that you could take him in a fight.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Lorn shrugged. “But I know for a fact that my brother Oliver would jump at the chance to help me take care of all three of you.”

Hayden suppressed a shudder at the thought of facing Oliver Trout in combat. As much as he hated the arrogant jerk, he had to concede after last year that he was an excellent fighter and quite powerful.

“Okay, okay, no need for us to see who can threaten the other most effectively,” Hayden intervened. “If you want in, then fine, but I expect you to keep up and do the same amount of work that the rest of us are doing to prepare, or you’re out.”

Lorn nodded, mollified, but Zane looked incredulous. “But he’s not cleared for the materials we are. How do you even know he’s allowed to practice with us?”

Suddenly understanding, Hayden reached into his pocket and extracted the fourth dampening charm, tossing it to Lorn and motioning him to sit down in the grass with the rest of them.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Zane muttered. “How could Asher know that Lorn would be s
talking us and demand to join up?”

Hayden smirked and said, “I’ve stopped questioning how Asher knows half of what he does and just started accepting it.” He turned to Lorn.
“Put that on; it’s a damper, so we don’t accidentally maim each other.”

Lorn did as he was told without any sarcastic commentary, and even Zane settled down.

“Alright then, I’ll teach you all the stances and tactics that Asher’s been showing me, and you guys will share any interesting spells you encounter that the rest of us can research within our own majors,” Hayden explained. “I think we should agree up front that we don’t hide information from each other. If one of us knows something useful, we tell the others and help each other figure it out. There’s no point in us being spiteful about this just because we don’t all like each other,” he avoided looking at Lorn.

The others all agreed, watch
ing Hayden expectantly.

“Okay…well, here’s how you’re supposed to stand if you’re fighting against
a prism or wand-user.” He stood up and angled himself so that he was turned sideways to them. “You present your enemy with the smallest amount of your body as possible, because prism and wand magic both have a fairly narrow field of focus; if your enemy’s aim isn’t very good then they’ll have a much harder time hitting you if you’re a small target.” He paused while the others took notes; Tess had to lend Lorn a piece of paper and a pencil.

“If you’re fighting a powder-user or a conjurer, there’s no point in making yourself smaller: powders fan out so much that as long as they can hit the broad side of a barn they’ll still nail you with some of it, and conjury circles can be massive. Your best bet with both is to keep moving and never stand still long enough for your enemy to get a chance to aim properly.
Asher always says you should pretend like you’re dancing on hot coals—always keep your feet moving.”