Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (27 page)

“I suppose you wouldn’t remember that part since you were incapacitated,” the Master of Wands reconsidered. “There was some sort of violent magical explosion that ricocheted through the Forest of Illusions while we were still fighting. Since the Forest is unstable on the best of days, it was enough of a catalyst to cause the entire thing to shift locations. That’s why we’re currently in the middle of Minir, on the southern end of the continent.”

Hayden’s mouth dropped open. “You mean the entire Forest of Illusions moved with all of us inside of it?”

“Yes, and let me tell you that it’s an experience I don’t ever care to repeat,” Kilgore grunted. “The ground gave way and everything seemed to bend and stretch all around us. I thought my face was melting at one point before things leveled out again.”

Hayden dimly remembered the sensation of being dragged over a ground made of jelly, which kept buckling and swaying beneath him.

“How did that happen?” he asked in amazement.

Asher, who had been watching him silently until now, said, “We were hoping you could tell us, since anytime there’s a magical catastrophe you seem to be right in the middle of it.”

Hayden grimaced. “Well, I guess I did accidentally blow up those boats,” he allowed.

Master Willow frowned and said, “You might as well start at the beginning. We pumped Oliver for information but there were still some gaping holes in the story that not even he could explain.”

“Oliver made it out alive then?” Hayden asked with interest. “How about his mother?”

The Masters looked surprised that he would ask this, but Kilgore said, “Magdalene’s
a tough lady; she’s healing up fine.”

Good, then Oliver can keep his word and help me get my estate back.

“How about everyone else?” he asked desperately, mouth suddenly going dry. “The other Masters, and Zane, and…” he couldn’t bring himself to say Tess’s name yet.

Asher ticked off his fingers. “The rest of us are mostly intact, with the exception of Master Ferule, who died during the fighting.” The others looked momentarily somber. “Zane broke an arm and a leg but both are mending nicely thanks to Razelle, and Tess was surprisingly unscathed, save for a few bumps and bruises.”

Hayden exhaled heavily in relief as he felt the blood return to his extremities. His friends were okay…his stupidity hadn’t gotten any of them killed…

“Now, do you mind telling us what in the world happened in there?” Kilgore demanded gruffly.

“Right, well…Oliver and I snuck up on the campsite with the help of Bonk and Slasher, but they both disappeared before we got inside. A group of sorcerers surprised us and we got into a fight, but of course our magic wasn’t working properly because of those stupid Suppressor crystals—though we didn’t know why at the time. We did…really badly, without magic; well, Oliver was actually alright—he managed to floor one of them with nothing but his hands before they tied him up.”

The Masters nodded patiently, waiting for him to go on.

“They had me cornered and were about to take me down when they noticed my hands—”

“Yes, Oliver did mention that you bore sorcerer siglas, though he didn’t seem to know how you’d come by them.”

Hayden raised his eyebrows at that, because he had sort of told Oliver where he’d gotten them. It seemed that Oliver didn’t want to be caught in the middle of the entire thing and was leaving it entirely to Hayden to tell.

“Well, um…it was one of the things I brought to you at the beginning of the year…” he said to Master Asher, looking for some sign that it was alright to divulge their secret to the others.

The Prism Master waved a hand in resignation and said, “Hayden found a treasure or two at his father’s old estate last winter. One of them was a scrap of cloth with a sorcerer’s sigla drawn on it.”

Kilgore and Willow stared at their colleague as though he was speaking a different language. Finally the former said, “And I don’t suppose you saw fit to turn over these treasures to the Council of Mages?”

“Totally slipped my mind,” Asher said with a hint of his usual humor. “The boy told me that his blood was capable of opening hidden doors in the Frost estate; what do you think the Council would have done with that knowledge?”

Master Willow winced minutely and Kilgore merely shrugged.

“So you’ve been running around all year with your father’s old weapons in your possession?” the former asked in a dangerous tone.

“Give me a little credit,” Asher interrupted before Hayden could answer. “I took the prism from him for further study. I only left him the
sigla because it looked like nothing more than a drawing on a scrap of fabric. I didn’t feel any magic coming from it at all.”

Willow waved a hand in concession and motioned for Hayden to continue his story.

“Well, anyway, I had the siglas on my hands and the sorcerers kind of panicked and went to find someone who speaks our language. Oliver and I didn’t know who the sigla belonged to at that point, but when Mikesh showed up and told us to come with him we thought maybe we could get some scouting done and then find a way to escape and warn the next wave of reinforcements about the magic-dampeners before they walked into a trap.”

“So you were brought to the
Magistra,” Master Willow sighed. “Oliver told us that neither of you knew who she was until you’d nearly talked your way into an impossible situation.”

“Yeah, I wasn’t really expecting her to be a young lady…” Hayden admitted. “But she thought my father was
still alive, so I put on my best ‘Great House’ voice like Oliver’s been teaching me, and tried to convince her that we were there on his behalf.”

Master Asher gave him a wry smile and said, “At some point I want to hear about how you and Oliver Trout survived weeks of travel together
without maiming each other, and why he was teaching you to be snotty.”

Hayden made a face at him and the Master laughed, looking more like his normal self than before.

“Anyway, she was touring us around the camp, and she explained about the Suppressor crystals. I told Oliver to start arming people out of our bag of weapons, because I knew we couldn’t just leave you all there to suffer any longer, and I was working up to doing something really stupid.”

Master Kilgore snorted in amusement at his willingness to admit his own idiocy.

“We’d been there for months; we could have lasted a while longer while you went to warn the reinforcements,” he insisted dryly.

“Those of us who had Mastery Charms were particularly fortunate,” Asher explained to him. “The sorcerers didn’t think to take them from us, either because they thought they were decorative or because they just didn’t care if we kept them.” He shrugged. “We were able to channel some of our magic through them to bypass those damnable golden taps they stuck into our chests. It let us slip into an almost sleeplike state and allowed us some reserve power in case we were ever freed and needed to fight.”

Hayden brightened in understanding. “I was wondering why you all seemed to bounce back faster than the others once you were free.”

“
Us and the Council members were fortunate, yes. It’s lucky that there were so many of us with Mastery Charms available or we would have been annihilated as soon as we were freed from our cages.”

“How did they trap you, anyway?” Hayden frowned.

Master Willow made a face as though recalling something distasteful. “When we crossed the barriers of the Suppressors and realized our magic was useless, they sprang a trap from behind us and drove us further into the woods. It wasn’t terribly difficult to overwhelm us at that point, though we did manage to whittle down a few of their number before we were all caged and chained.”

“Cinder actually escaped captivity for a while, being at his strongest and also able to fly out of reach,” Asher pointed out. “He kept coming back to try and free me and Horace, though he also picked off a few sorcerers before they managed to ensnare him as well.”

The Prism Master fell silent for a moment before adding, “I wish he’d succeeded. Horace died soon after Cinder was caught.”

Hayden gasped in horror and reflexively squeezed Bonk for reassurance that his familiar was still there with him. He could think of few things that would be worse than to lose his trusted companion, even if that companion liked to eat all of his food and make him look like an idiot in front of important members of society.

“Anyway, back to what you were doing,” Asher pointedly changed the subject. “You were getting ready to commit to suicidal idiocy…”

“Oh, right.” Hayden shook his head to clear it and immediately regretted it. “
Since the Magistra said the main invasion force was due in that day, I didn’t think we could afford to run away and come back later. But before I could really plan anything, Felix showed up and started drawing the sorcerers’ attention, and then Zane and Tess charged in and started fighting. Oliver was wrestling the Magistra, so I decided to start taking down the Suppressors so we could use magic again.”

“Didn’t you hear me call out to you before you went to the first one?” Asher raised an eyebrow at him.

“I heard you yell something but I didn’t hear what it was.” Hayden shrugged. “Why? What did you say?”

Asher pursed his lips and said, “I told you not to attack the crystals—though in retrospect I’m glad you ignored me.” He sighed. “Didn’t you wonder why you were the only one who was going for them?”

Hayden’s eyes widened in surprise and he slowly said, “Well, yes…I had wondered, but there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it. Why?”

“Because we’re not stupid, Hayden.
As we were being driven into their camp, a few of us recognized the crystals and knew what they must be for. Two of our companions tried to break them, and they were both killed hideously by the magical backlash—it was like the worst case of tangential magical spillage I’ve ever seen.”

Master Kilgore frowned gravely and added, “I’d never seen such horrible internal burns that they were
visible from the outside.” He shuddered. “The best thing that could be said is that they died quickly and didn’t have to suffer for long—the poor things were cooked through.”

Hayden’s face felt bloodless as the significance of this washed over him. If he had any idea that he was going to get his Foci cooked to death, he never would have been brave enough to attempt to break the crystals with magic.

“Fortunately, your Focus-correctors seem to be what saved you,” Master Willow conceded. “They must have absorbed an enormous amount of magic to shield you from the worst of the backlash.”

Hayden nodded dumbly and said, “When the first one broke I felt my wrists burning. It was worse with the second, and I had to take one of my healing elixirs. Then the third cracked my correctors, and the last one shattered them completely and my skin was all blistered and bleeding. I used the last of my elixirs to keep from passing out from the pain.”

He stared down at his bandaged arms for a long moment and then said, “That must be why the sorcerers didn’t really start coming for me until I’d taken down the first one—because they thought it would burn me alive. After that it felt like everyone in the camp was coming after me. I had to shield myself constantly or I never would have made it.”

“You weren’t imagining it, Hayden: they
were
all coming after you,” Master Asher frowned. “They knew that if they lost the crystals they’d lose the upper-hand, since we had superior numbers at that point. Why do you think so many mages and animals sacrificed themselves to get between you and the enemy?”

“What do you mean?” Hayden demanded, his mouth feeling oddly dry again.

Master Willow looked surprised that he didn’t already know, and when he spoke his tone was very gentle.

“Once Asher saw the first crystal go down he yelled at everyone to shield you. You were being hit with dozens of spells at a time—your own charms and shielding attempts would never have been enough to defend against them all. Everyone who wasn’t attacking a sorcerer directly was casting protection spells at you while you ran, because you were our only hope for victory. Many mages fell because they weren’t able to defend themselves and shield you at the same time
, and they knew you were more important.”

Hayden felt strangely hollow inside, his throat constricting with emotion. He remembered Asher yelling something, though he hadn’t heard what it was because he’d been too busy destroying crystals. He even vaguely remembered seeing a mage get overwhelmed because he was busy protecting him, but he had no idea that people had given their lives to save him without him even knowing it
, people he had never met before in his life.

The Masters let the silence spiral horribly while Hayden digested this new information. Bonk nudged him gently with his head, and Hayden patted him absentmindedly.

Finally, Asher broke the silence before it could become unbearable and said, “Bonk and Slasher returned to the fight once they’d gotten Cinder to safety. I must say, I’ve never seen Bonk so angry in all the years I’ve known him. They tore through the camp in a fury, unleashing their magic on anyone who was unlucky enough to cross their path. Dragons are hideously proud creatures, and even Bonk can become fantastically arrogant when one of his kind has been brought low.”