Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (29 page)

Tess looked grim and momentarily stopped stroking Bonk. “I can’t believe he’s just gone. I suppose they’ll find someone else to teach Scriptures from now on, but it’ll be strange not seeing him in class anymore.”

Hayden was the only one of them who didn’t take Scriptures, so he wasn’t terribly familiar with Master Ferule, but it was still hard to come to terms with the sudden loss of someone he knew.

“I wonder if we’re still going to have to take final exams this year, since we’ve been gone for so long and the Masters weren’t there for most of the year to teach us,” Zane wondered out loud, moving onto a more neutral subject.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Hayden frowned. “Assuming they can keep me out of prison,
I expect we’ll spend the last month or so of school buried in our textbooks to try and catch up before the end of term.”

Zane rolled his eyes. “I expect my mother will show up at some point to shriek at me for running
away from Mizzenwald, becoming a fugitive, and walking into a war zone without permission. If I’m lucky she’ll shift some of that yelling onto you, since she feels somewhat responsible for your care, and it’ll dilute the overall effect.”

Hayden winced at the prospect.

“My dad’s always telling me to stay out of trouble and focus on my schooling,” Tess mumbled. “I can only imagine what he’s going to have to say about all this, if he even knows I was gone.”

Hayden didn’t imagine it would be anything good, and that he would likely feature prominently
into the lecture as a bad influence on Tess. He was beginning to wonder if it was true.

“Oh, hey, did I tell you all that Oliver promised to help me get back my family’s money and the Frost estate if we got his mom out alive?” he said with a forced smile. “The Masters said she made it, so I guess that means I’ll have a house to call my own soon.”

“Really? You think they can get everything released to you before you come of age?” Zane brightened immediately.

“I don’t know about
everything
…but Oliver swears that I’ve got rights, even as a minor, and he would know.” He shrugged.

“I’ve never been to a Great House before,” Zane grinned. “If we can get into the place by the end of the year then I can come visit you for a change. Maybe you’ll be able to hire a support staff for when you live there and we can get our meals made and everything.”

Hayden snorted and said, “If anyone wants to work at the Dark Prism’s old base of operations, sure. I don’t know if I want to stay in that mausoleum by myself all winter or not, but I would like to be able to come and go as I please and look around without a chaperone.”

“I don’t see why it matters. It isn’t like the house was evil, just the person living inside of it.” Tess shrugged. “I’d still visit you there
, and I’m sure there are people in the area who need jobs and would be willing to work in the house.”

Hayden brightened a bit upon hearing that, already beginning to wistfully consider ways to impress his friends with his new mansion.

“There’s some pretty nice land around it,” he pointed out. “You might be able to do some decent quail hunting there. Mittens and Felix would probably enjoy running around the grounds too, and I think there’s a pond or a lake or something a little further on.”

Suddenly reminded of something, he turned to Zane and said, “By the way, I didn’t know that Felix could become invisible until he turned up in the Forest.
That was seriously cool.”

Zane grinned and said, “Neither did I, but the Forest is supposed to be where our familiars are most powerful—on account of all the magic hanging around the place.” He shrugged. “I don’t think he was exactly
invisible
…more like hard-to-notice, like you just couldn’t focus your eyes on him properly.”

“I guess it makes sense that a fox would be stealthy like that, I’d just never thought about it before,” Hayden conceded. “Dragons apparently have some battle-cry
that can break steel when they’re really angry. I thought it was going to break my skull too, but luckily they cut it out before that happened.”

“Dragons
are
pretty slick creatures,” Zane agreed cheerfully. “Even Bonk, when he chooses to be serious and isn’t focused on making you look like an idiot.”

Bonk continued to roll around on the straw-covered floor while Tess stroked his belly, and Cinder spared his counterpart a withering stare that Hayden knew he didn’t mean.

“It’s got to be time for lunch by now,” Zane looked up at the ceiling as though trying to calculate the angle of the sun through it. “Tess and I will go scrounge up some food and bring it back here. You want anything?”

“Yeah, I’m starving.” Hayden’s stomach growled loudly as he spoke to add weight to the assertion.

“Alright, I think it’s bean soup and bread. The food here isn’t great, but after everything we’ve been through I’d eat just about anything. Come on, Tess.”

Hayden watched his friends depart, and for a few minutes he had no one but the two
dragonlings for company. Bonk found a mouse to chase around the room while Cinder continued to perch regally and watch the spectacle, though he occasionally turned his gaze to Hayden like he was checking on him.

Hayden had the strange sensation of being filled with too many conflicting emotions at the same time. He was glad the war was over but upset about his role in it; relieved to be with the people he liked best, but horrified at t
he price they’d all paid for it; excited to return to Mizzenwald but worried that the Masters wouldn’t be able to get him free of the Fias’ charges.

By the time his friends returned with their familiars and food to share, he had decided to stop trying to feel everything at once and to simply take things as they came. Right now he was determined to enjoy lunch with Tess and Zane while he recovered, and everything else could wait until later.

It worked fairly well. They talked about small things while they ate, like whether or not Zane and Hayden would be forced to chop wood for the former’s mother this winter, or whether Bonk would ever catch the mouse he was still chasing in circles around the room. Tess suggested that their soup and bread had been cooked for about ten hours too long, judging by their consistency, while Zane thought it more likely that whoever was cooking their food had never actually attempted to make anything before.

They spent most of the afternoon that way, holed up in Hayden’s makeshift sickroom and ignoring the world around them. The most exciting thing that happened before bed was that Bonk finally caught his mouse.

The journey back to Mizzenwald was a lot less exciting than Hayden would have guessed, given that they were traveling with some pretty illustrious mages for most of the way. In fact, it was a lot like the long walk from school to the Forest of Illusions, except that they were better provisioned with food, water, and other supplies.

Asher explained that most of the mages would leave them once they felt recovered enough to do complex magic again and were confident of surviving on their own. When asked why the Masters didn’t just translocate themselves and Hayden’s classmates back to Mizzenwald—as most of them were well enough to do so by now—he was told that there were advantages to taking the long way.

“Like what?” Hayden pressed on the fourth day of their meandering travels. It seemed to him like they were being deliberately slow, occasionally stopping for hours-long rest breaks during the day for no apparent reason.

“Time, my impatient young friend,” Asher grinned. “We’re still trying to hammer out some of the details regarding your status as a fugitive. We’d like to have all of our ducks in a row before we return to Mizzenwald and confront the Fias.”

“But doesn’t the High Mayor know you all are dragging your feet out here? Don’t you think he’s alrea
dy warned the Fias to expect us all back sometime soon?”

Asher smirked again. “We’ve been putting on that a few of us are much sicker than we actually are. Willow does a convincing fainting spell on-demand, and
Laurren is sure to be found lying about, wailing in agony every time the mayor’s riders come by with a message. They’re far too fragile for magical travel right now, and so we must—regrettably—walk.” He winked at Hayden and left him to his friends. Hayden watched the Prism Master sit down on the grass across from Master Lauren—who looked perfectly hale—so that the two of them could play cards.

It wasn’t until they crossed the border into
Junir that anything surprising or interesting happened. As they were setting up camp on their first night back in their native land, Hayden heard the clip-clopping of a horse approaching at speed.

“Oh good, perhaps that’s the confirmation we’ve been waiting on from the High Mayor,” Master Reede held a hand up in front of his eyes to shield them from the setting sun and get a better look. Then he frowned. “No…it doesn’t look like a rider from the capital…”

By now their party had been whittled down to just those people who were returning to Mizzenwald, as all the other travelers had departed their company sometime during the return journey. Master Willow glanced at Hayden and said, “Best if you all keep to yourselves until we find out if this is a friend or foe.”

Hayden, Tess, and Zane obediently hid inside one of the tents, though Oliver was permitted to stay outside with the Masters. Oliver hadn’t spoken to the rest of them much since they left the Forest of Illusions, more often spending his time in the company of the Masters he still studied with
or the other sixth years—probably trying to catch up on his lessons or suck up before they returned to school.

“If we keep quiet we might still be able to hear what they’re saying,” Zane whispered as the rider approached, holding up a finger to his lips and peeking through a narrow slit in the canvas that covered the opening of the tent.

Their silence was quite unnecessary, however, as the first thing the rider did upon leaping off of his horse was loudly demand, “Where is my daughter?!”

Tess gasped and covered her mouth with one hand. “Is that my dad?”

Without waiting for an answer, she strolled out of the tent just as Master Kilgore was inquiring, “And your daughter is…?”

“Dad!”
Tess interjected, running up to the sweaty, tired-looking traveler that Hayden wouldn’t have recognized if he hadn’t known who it was. The man looked like he’d aged a decade since he’d last seen him, though the years seemed to melt off of his face as Tess threw herself into his arms.

“Oh
good, it’s your biggest admirer…” Zane mumbled to Hayden, who winced in appreciation of the dark humor. He was just beginning to get to the point where Tess’s father could look at him without scowling or cursing; now that he’d dragged her off to a war he had a feeling that his good credit with the man was shot.

Deciding that it was probably safe to come out of the tent—surely the cluster of Masters wouldn’t let Tess’s dad murder him—Hayden and Zane returned to the gathering.

At the moment, Tess’s father had eyes for no one but his daughter.

“Are you alright? You’re not hurt? What were you thinking running away from school like that to go fight in a war? Do you know how much I worried when I saw your name on posters calling for your arrest? I don’t suppose you thought about stopping by
the house to tell your old man what kind of stupidity you were planning with that boy…”

Hayden grimaced. No need to ask who ‘that boy’ was. Master Kilgore glanced at him briefly and let out a low chuckle of amusement, probably at the green pallor of Hayden’s face.

Tess’s father spoke so rapidly that he hardly gave her time to answer any of his questions, though when he stopped to draw breath she attempted to.

“I’m fine, Dad…I’m not hurt. And we
knew what we were getting into—we didn’t just leave school for a holiday. Besides, I wasn’t on my own: I had Mittens with me, and Zane and Hayden and Oliver, and their familiars too. We were perfectly safe.”

“Well, until they hit the war zone…” Master Reede mumbled loudly enough for everyone to hear, clearly amused by the scene before him.

As though suddenly realizing Hayden was there, Tess’s father whirled around and pointed at him in dire accusation, leveling his furious gaze.

“And YOU,” he barked at Hayden. Zane took a reflexive step away from his frien
d, clearly hoping to avoid any backsplash of rage. “I should have known you’d do something like this: attempted murder, destruction of property, violence against a respected member of the community…and you
dared
drag my daughter into it?!”

His face was rapidly reddening as his anger grew, and Hayden glanced around to see if anyone was going to intervene on his behalf. Most of the Masters looked bored, and had wandered off to continue setting up camp, though Asher gave him a cheery smile and thumbs-up
, and Master Kilgore nodded as though he thought Tess’s father might have a valid point.

Great.
So much for allies.

“Well, sir, actually…” Hayden began, trying to muster his own defense and wishing that they didn’t have such a large audience.

Fortunately Tess grabbed her father’s arm and cut him off before he could continue.