Frost Prisms (The Broken Prism Book 5) (32 page)

I hope you can use what I’ve told you to bring an end to my father for good. When it’s all over, please make sure everyone knows that the Broken Prism died as one of the good guys; I’ve always hated that people assume I’m going to morph into my father.

                                                                                                                              Hayden

Asher stared down at the paper for several minutes, unfocusing his eyes and blinking hard several times to make sure they were clear of standing moisture. He’d been wishing to have all the answers magically appear to him for years, but now that he held them, he wasn’t sure he wanted the letter after all. The casual way that Hayden wrote about his imminent death or his father’s abusiveness—the reference to getting the daylights choked out of him couldn’t have come from nowhere—was heartbreaking.

He scanned the letter again.

But you understand, don’t you?

Another sentiment aimed at his heart. Of course he understood Hayden’s plight; he knew exactly how it felt to be associated with the Dark Prism and to have the entire world doubt him when he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. He understood being so determined to do the right thing that he was willing to die a horrible death just to inconvenience his enemy.

Hayden only addressed this to me because he thinks I’ll be reasonable enough to not let emotion override good sense and come charging in after him. He thinks I’ll accept his chosen death and only share the parts of his letter that are essential to the fight with the others.

A grim smile lit his face as Asher crumpled the letter in his hand.

Hayden doesn’t know me as well as he thinks.

He turned back towards the castle with purposeful strides to find the others. They had a fortress to storm.

19

A Meeting of the Minds

Zane scarfed down his dinner in record time and bolted from the dining hall before anyone could speak to him, determined not to miss the meeting tonight, though he wasn’t sure why he bothered going; they hadn’t really accomplished anything useful in weeks. Still, for as long as his best friend was being held captive—and hopefully alive—at the Frost estate, he was going to do everything he could think of to be even mildly useful in planning his rescue, even if it meant attending a hundred frustrating meetings where nothing really got done.

The problem was that they had little new information to work with, so they were forced to work through the same theories and assumptions they’d been operating with from the beginning, and they were running low on fresh inspiration. Conner, Tamon, and his other friends knew that he and Tess had been brought into the inner circle, and often expressed their regret that they never had time to spend relaxing or socializing anymore.

Zane lamented the loss of his carefree childhood, but at the same time realized that he was nearly an adult and that it was time to stop sitting around and letting others shape the future of the Nine Lands while he played card games. He picked up his pace as he strode down the corridor that connected the dining hall with the Pentagon, not wanting to be late for the meeting.

Tess would already be there. She rarely appeared at mealtimes for longer than it took to grab something off of the table and walk away with it, most of the time without even looking at it. Zane had been amused once to watch her snatch up a head of lettuce without even glancing at it and walk out of the room. She hadn’t returned that night to get more food, so he assumed she just ate the whole thing and went hungry until breakfast, a rare touch of pride she seemed to have picked up from her time with Hayden.

Zane crossed through the empty pentagonal foyer to the eastern stairwell and took the stairs two at a time to the second floor. Most of their meetings that only involved Mizzenwald Masters were held in Master Willow’s classroom, because it was the largest of the teaching rooms and was out of the way of casual passerby at this time of evening.

He entered the room just before Oliver—
Master Trout, yuck
—could close the door. As expected, all of the Masters were present with the exception of Asher, who had begun skipping most of their meetings about a week ago. It irked the others to no end, but the Prism Master said he could think better on his own than while listening to a bunch of grown men squabble like children over minutia. Asher had always been kind of an odd man out amongst the Masters though, and had surely taken Hayden’s disappearance much harder than the rest of them.

It was still strange seeing Oliver Trout in red Mastery robes, even weirder having to address him in public as Master Trout. Thankfully, Zane no longer took Powders, so at least he didn’t have to suffer being taught by one of his least favorite people. Weirdly, Lorn—who had returned to school for the spring term—was also a Powders major, and was therefore being taught by his own brother. For some reason no one was concerned about the potential conflict of interest, or maybe the others had counseled Oliver in private and Zane just didn’t know about it.

“Laraby,” Master Reede beckoned, and Zane crossed the room to join his mentor, who had sort of adopted him as an apprentice since term began, though he didn’t officially have any open slots for new apprentices and had turned down a number of other applicants. “Did you make any headway on the tunneling idea last night?”

Zane frowned, hating to deliver bad news.

“Yes, but you won’t like it.” He was aware of the others ceasing their conversations to listen with interest. Zane couldn’t blame them. Their most recent wild idea for breaking through the barriers at the Frost estate hadn’t been to go through them—it had been to go
under
them. He and Reede, as their resident conjurers, had been given the task of determining whether a summoning/sending circle could get them under the walls and out the other side without killing them.

“Yes?” Reede prompted him, looking weary.

“I think the magic itself is sound…at least what you and I figured out yesterday is. I made some adjustments and went out onto the grounds to try it out—”

“You tried sending yourself underground without a spotter, using an experimental spell in the middle of the night?” Master Willow asked with a touch of reproach in his voice.

“Uh, yeah,” Zane admitted abashedly.

Master Laurren gave him a small smile, eyeing him as though appraising his value as a future crazy-brilliant trailblazer like Asher and himself.

I’ve obviously done something stupid and/or amazing if Laurren approves.

He made a mental note to be more cautious in the future.

“Anyway, it was possible to dig a tunnel with magic that would get me underground, but I still couldn’t bypass the wards Mizzenwald has placed around it, and I figure the Dark Prism’s spells have to be at least as strong as ours.”

“So the defensive barriers will still hold, even below ground,” Master Reede sighed as though expecting this.

“Perhaps someone else should try, to make sure the problem isn’t with the caster,” Oliver said without making eye contact with him.

Zane scowled and snapped, “My magic was good, it’s just not a viable solution in this case. If you want to draw your own circles, then be my guest. I tried so many times that I almost banished my legs at one point.”

Oliver opened his mouth to press the point but Master Reede held up a hand and said, “I have confidence in Laraby’s magic, or I wouldn’t have put him to the task of sorting it out. If he says it won’t work, it won’t work; to be honest, I had only put our odds of success at around twenty-percent anyway.”

Zane tried not to look too pleased with his mentor’s level of faith in him. He’d been doing everything he could think of to stand out since he came to Mizzenwald at the age of ten, and finally his work was showing results. Of course, being the best friend of the guy who was critical to the fight against the Dark Prism didn’t hurt either.

“Well great, then what do we do now?” Oliver tossed his hands up in frustration. Zane couldn’t blame him; it seemed that all they did these days was hit one roadblock after another.

How is it possible for one man to outsmart the brightest minds in the Nine Lands?

Last he heard, the newly-formed Council of Mages wasn’t making much headway either, though they also had the monumental task of handling emergency preparations throughout the Nine Lands and preventing a full-scale panic. Since they—weirdly—hadn’t picked up any reports of the Dark Prism terrorizing towns since his return to power, they actually had some time to prepare for the eventuality before people started dying.

“Why isn’t he killing anyone or conquering any towns?” Zane asked out loud, forgetting that he was in a room full of people. Since everyone had been silently contemplating their options, everyone heard his question.

“If I knew, I’d tell you,” Master Willow grimaced, looking older than usual. “The only one who was ever any good at unraveling Aleric’s motivations is Asher, but the more warped Aleric has become, the more reluctant even Asher is to guess at what drives him.”

Kilgore rolled his eyes and said, “That’s no reason to sulk about on his own. He should be here with the rest of us, strategizing.”

“Though admittedly, we haven’t made much progress as of late,” Laurren intoned regretfully.

“Nevertheless,” Kilgore grunted in annoyance.

“I’m sure he’s still working on the problem on his own,” Tess surprised them all by speaking up. “He cares about Hayden as much as anyone.”
And more than most,
went unsaid. “He’s not going to give up on him until we know for sure that he’s dead.”

Zane could tell that she was trying to sound even-keeled and unaffected, but on the word ‘dead’ her voice pitched slightly higher. A few of the others looked away, as though her emotions were indecent.

“Tess is right,” Zane put in loudly, mostly to take the attention away from the awkward moment. “Asher’s crazy-brilliant—”

“You’re half-correct,” Reede muttered so that only he could hear.

Trying not to laugh, Zane continued. “He’s not going to show up for one of these meetings until he’s got all the answers, and then he’ll dazzle us as usual.”

“We’re all very talented, Laraby,” Oliver huffed in displeasure, “but you’re giving the man supernatural powers. Not even Asher can just waltz in here with all the answers in the palm of his hand.”

At that exact moment, the door opened and Master Asher walked in saying, “Oh good, you’re all here. I’ve finally got all the answers to our most burning questions.” He waved a crumpled sheet of paper with one hand for emphasis.

Every eye in the room turned and froze on him in comical and never-to-be-repeated unison.

“What?” Asher came to an abrupt halt, looking mildly unnerved by the reaction.

Holy arcana,
Zane thought appreciatively.
The man
is
superhuman!

He had no idea whether the Prism Master had been lurking outside with his ear pressed against the door, waiting for the right moment to enter the room and stun them all, or if the timing was a total coincidence, but either way it was amazing.

Willow recovered first.

“Asher, this is not the time to play jokes with us, no matter how much it may entertain you.”

“I’m not joking,” his colleague said with a lopsided grin that was much more reminiscent of his usual personality. “I know why Aleric has Hayden and what he’s planning to do with him. I also know that we don’t have much time left to stop him before he becomes nearly invincible.”

“And how in the world would you know any of these things?” Reede raised a skeptical eyebrow. “I don’t suppose he wrote you a letter, kindly explaining it all for your convenience?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Asher waved an airy hand, the one still holding the crumpled piece of paper. “Aleric wrote his last letter to me years ago.”

“Well, then—”

“Hayden is the one who wrote me,” he continued cheerfully.

Eleven people said, “WHAT?” at roughly the same time. The combined volume was probably loud enough to be heard from the basement.

“Am I being unusually inarticulate today, or are you all just having a hard time understanding?” Asher raised his eyebrows curiously. “I said, Hayden wrote me—which reminds me: Oliver, Slasher was playing courier; that’s why he’s been missing.”

Oliver swiveled his head around to look at his familiar, who was perched regally in front of the window overlooking the grounds.

“
Slasher
was at the Frost house, working for Hayden?” he asked in unflattering disbelief. “How is that even possible? He has no way to contact Slasher directly, and it’s not like we’re close friends or anything. Besides, there are two other dragonlings living with him who could have carried messages for him.”

“I doubt Cinder would have been up for the task,” Kilgore corrected mildly.

“Yes, and Aleric is an absolute fool if he leaves Bonk unconfined inside of his estate,” Laurren added. “There are few things the Dark Prism holds any reverence or respect for, but the power of dragonlings is one of them.”

“He would never allow Bonk to remain unbound,” Asher confirmed with a nod. “We knew that when we sent him to Hayden, that it would be a choice between Binders or a fight to the death.”

“If Bonk can’t use his magic, then how is Hayden supposed to have summoned Slasher to him?” Mistress Razelle spoke up for the first time. “Don’t tell me you think Hayden managed to work magic that penetrated that defensive barrier with only the violet prism you sent him. The boy is talented, but he’s not smarter than the eleven of us collectively.”

Asher shrugged and said, “As to that, I have no idea. We’ll have to ask him when we next see him.”

“You said you had answers,” Willow changed the subject abruptly, eyeing the crumpled paper in Asher’s hand. “Enlighten us.”

“The reason Aleric hasn’t been slaughtering the masses this time around is because he’s weaker this time—for a little while longer, at least,” Asher began. “When he came after Hayden the first time, he was attempting to remove his Source power and merge it with his own.”

A riot of loud objections and exclamations prevented him from saying anything further. Zane felt the blood drain from his face as he contemplated the horror of having one’s Source ripped out of the body. He hadn’t even considered it as a possibility; he didn’t even think magic that strong existed—not for humans, at least.

Willow waved one of his wands and a sound like the snapping of fingers rang through the room, amplified so loudly that it made Zane’s ears ring. Everyone fell silent once more.

Asher continued talking as though there had been no interruption. “His spell backfired, and Hayden ended up absorbing part of his father’s Source instead—a fair bit of it, given how much latent power we know he possesses.”

“Heavens…” Mistress Razelle murmured softly, touching her fingers to her lips. Zane thought that was a colossal under-reaction to the news that his best friend had not just his own powerful Source to work with, but part of a notorious mass-murderer’s as well. He’d always known that Hayden had an unusual amount of Source power—that had been readily apparent ever since he got three-inch Focus-correctors on each hand and still overpowered most of his opponents. But he’d never really considered the idea that Hayden was
that
formidable…