The Other Prism (The Broken Prism) (26 page)

Being back in familiar territory after spending the last year and a half at Mizzenwald was surprisingly painful. He remembered the cobbled streets and the fountains of the commons
, the smithy and the ironworker further down the road, the playground and the park on the other side of town, where his mother used to take him to play as a child.

Without planning it, his feet began carrying him down a series of narrow streets and alleys, the most direct route he could remember from childhood to get to where he was going. He passed a group of children playing with a ball outside the tailor’s, and they stared at him open-mouthed as he walked past with Bonk on his shoulder and a belt full of prisms. The sunlight caught the different tints on his belt and scattered light in all directions, drawing attention to him even more than his familiar, but for once Hayden didn’t care.

Past the butcher, the tea shop, and the seafood market—he was getting close now. He was practically sprinting as he rounded the corner into the residential area, passing two-story houses with neatly manicured lawns as he hurried down to the slightly poorer area. When he finally rounded the corner onto Gladdington Lane he came to an abrupt halt, eyes wide with amazement.

He was standing before the ruins of his childhood home.

14

The High Mayor

When Hayden woke up from his coma, following the explosion of his childhood home, others had tried to describe the damage that had been done that day, but until now he had never really absorbed how bad it was.

The place where his house used to be was in a mile-wide crater that had leveled the houses around it and scorched the ground so that not even grass could grow. Bits of wood and debris still littered the area, and even the nearest houses that weren’t damaged looked like they had been vacated after the explosion. In fact, the entire street looked abandoned and empty.
Hayden was willing to bet that the site hadn’t been touched since the day he left.

A barely perceptible haze of magic lingered around the ruins of his home, and Hayden swallowed hard and took a step forward, wondering how he could ever have survived being in the center of this at the age of ten. No wonder his parents’ bodies hadn’t b
een recovered from the wreckage. At the time Hayden thought that was odd, but seeing the utter devastation that was left behind, he had no trouble believing that his mother and father were both atomized in the blast.

Bonk made a noise of protest as Hayden stepped into the crater and moved closer.

“Hush, Bonk. I’m just looking around.” He moved carefully around broken bricks and stones, careful not to stumble as he stepped further into the crater. Bonk continued to make pitiful, strangled noises, and when Hayden finally looked at him, his familiar fell from his shoulder and flopped around on the ground as though in terrible pain.

“Bonk! What’s wrong?!” Hayden bent down to pick him up, but was hit with a sudden wave of vertigo, swaying as he attempted to balance himself. His Focus-correctors began to burn
his wrists, and the defense charm was scorching around his neck, like they were trying to absorb an enormous amount of magic and were becoming overloaded.

Of course…
Hayden thought dimly as he fell to the ground and the world began to spin.
This place was destroyed by the Dark Prism; it’s probably still teeming with corrupted magic…

That would have been a good epiphany to have five minutes ago, before he and Bonk had become overwhelmed by the suffocating power in the area. Strangely, he felt
sorrier for his familiar than he did for himself; after all, Hayden had been the idiot who wanted to come here. Poor Bonk was just following his stupid master.

Hayden felt his eyes roll back into his head as his back arched convulsively. He was choking, drowning…

The feel of sharp teeth pierced his hand, and Hayden’s last thought was that he couldn’t blame his familiar for being angry enough to bite him in his final moments of life.

When Hayden opened his eyes he found himself staring at a dull grey ceiling that was jarringly familiar. For a horrible moment he was certain that the last year-and-a-half had been a pleasant dream, and that there was no Mizzenwald at all. It wasn’t until he sat up in bed that he became aware of Bonk’s warm body coiled up on his stomach, and Hayden exhaled heavily in relief. If Bonk was real, then the rest of it was real too.

Still, that didn’t explain how he had come to be in the orphanage tha
t he’d spent two years at before he was sent to Mizzenwald. There was no mistaking the severe grey walls and ceiling, or the cots lined up on the cold floors. Currently Hayden was the only one occupying one of these, and he blinked several times and examined his bitten hand. There was a row of tiny, pointed teeth marks on it, but it appeared that Bonk hadn’t seen fit to poison him this time, because there was no swelling.

After checking to make sure that his circlet was still
on his head and his prisms were intact along his belt, Hayden forced himself to his feet and woke Bonk up.

“Hey little guy, are you alright?” he asked the dragon, who of course didn’t answer. “I’m sorry about getting us into that mess…”

Bonk looked decidedly annoyed, but flew up to perch on his shoulder just as the door opened and Anna walked in.

Even though Hayden had come to
Merina for the express purpose of seeing her, her presence still took him by surprise. She looked almost exactly the same as he remembered, long blond hair pulled back in a simple ponytail, and her grey apron tied over her clothing. She took in the sight of him with the barest trace of a smile and said, “Oh good, you’re awake.”

“Anna, I…” he forgot what he was going to say and changed tracks immediately, “What am I doing here?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I have no idea why you’re in Merina, just that your pet dragon terrified everyone by dropping down in front of the building with your lifeless body clutched in his claws.”

“Bonk carried me here?” Hayden eyed his familiar skeptically.

“He was about forty feet bigger than he is now. He didn’t shrink down again until you were on the ground, and then he sort of collapsed too. We thought you were both dead.”

The look on Bonk’s face clearly read,
You’re welcome, chump.

“Oh, uh, thanks Bonk.” He patted his familiar on the head and the dragon’s expression softened. “And t
hank you for not trying to spear him when we turned up on your front doorstep.”

Anna scowled.
“As though any of us would dream of taking on a dragon that large. We’re just thankful he didn’t decide to eat us all and burn down the orphanage.”

She was the first person Hayden had ever met who seemed wary of his familiar. Most people fawned over him.

“He’s actually quite friendly, and I have no idea how he got to be so large. Normally he’s this size,” he tried to reassure her.

“W
hat are you doing back in Merina?” Anna changed the subject abruptly. “Did you have a problem at Mizzenwald? Did they send you away?”

“What? No,” Hayden
raised his eyebrows in surprise, “it’s summer break, and actually I came back here because I wanted to see how you were doing, and to thank you for taking care of me while I was here and everyone else was avoiding me.”

Anna looked absolutely stunned by his admission.

“Oh, well, you didn’t have to come all the way here just to thank me for doing my job. Besides, you were always so quiet and well-behaved…”

Hayden frowned. “I know, but no one else gave me the time of day, and even though I know you were afraid of me because of who my father was, you never tried to make me feel bad about it.”

This would probably be going better if I hadn’t shown up unannounced, unconscious, and in the clutches of a giant dragon.

“Well, thank you for coming all the way here just to tell me
‘thank you,’ ” she smiled, but Hayden could tell that she was still uncomfortable. So was he. Too much time had passed, too much had changed.

“Um, do you mind if I walk around the orphanage a little bit? I wanted to see if it’s the same as I remember it.”

She nodded, looking relieved to have an objective. “Of course—lunch just finished.” She motioned for him to precede her into the hall. She was smart enough not to make a half-hearted comment about him visiting old friends—they both knew he had none of those here.

Hayden was surprised by how much he had forgotten about the orphanage since leaving. The underlying scent of soaps and cleaners in the corridors, the sparse furnishings that lent the place an air of cold utility, the narrow doorways…all of it came back to him as he walked slowly down the hallway with Bonk on his shoulder. The dragon seemed to be looking around just as much as he was, as though interested in seeing the place where Hayden spent two years of his life.

He could tell from the sound of footsteps echoing hollowly against the wooden floor near the cafeteria that people were moving in his direction. Unsure of whether he would recognize any of his old housemates (or whether they would recognize him), he stepped around the corner and braced himself for whatever may come.

The first person he laid eyes on was
Bil, easily the burliest person in the assembled group headed towards him. He was surrounded by his usual cronies, who used to make a hobby out of tormenting Hayden when none of the caretakers were looking, because he was small and alone and they knew he couldn’t use magic against them with his lead Binders on. Hayden expected to feel the familiar rush of disdain at the sight of them after all this time.

Instead he was struck with how much smaller they seemed, as though his memory had made giants of them. They were a bit taller and more built than Hayden remembered, but somehow they still seemed inconsequential. Perhaps because he could finally see the hopelessness in their gaits, the hand-me-down clothing that didn’t fit quite right, the mean look in their eyes that concealed real fear.

How could I have ever been afraid of these people?

Bil
locked eyes with him and stopped in the middle of the corridor, and his cronies mimicked him. Some of their gazes flickered towards Bonk, eyes widening in amazement and…jealousy?

Hayden had been completely unprepared to feel sorry for his old nemeses, and found himself at a total loss for words. Anna moved past him so that she was positioned halfway through the space between Hayden and the group of boys, preparing to break up a fight.

“What are you doing here, Frost? Back for revenge?” Bil spoke first, clenching his fists at his side as he looked between Hayden and Bonk.

“I just came to see if it was like I remembered,” the former said in a measured tone. “I’m not here to fight anyone.”

A few of the others relaxed marginally, and Hayden could see the glint of relief in Bil’s eyes. A new thought struck him then, one so absurd and alarming that he wasn’t even sure what to make of it.

They’re
afraid of me. They spent years picking on me when I was small and weak, and now I’m stronger than them.

He blinked and shook the thought, though he was certain he’d return to it later.

“Is that a real dragon?” one of the others asked, pointing to his shoulder.

Hayden nodded and said, “This is my familiar, Bonk.” Without knowing why, he added, “Do you want to hold him?”

To his surprise, the boys eagerly agreed, and Hayden passed Bonk over to them and watched his familiar preen and flap his wings while the others admired him. Watching them, Hayden wondered how he could have ever feared these boys or their torments. Somehow, with time and distance, they had shrunken from giants to ants in his mind, and all he could feel for them was pity. They would remain here for another year or two, and then they would be turned out into the world to make their own way or starve, while he was given a new life in the magical community. It didn’t seem fair.

This entire day was leaving a bad taste in his mouth, and once the older bo
ys were finished examining Bonk, Hayden reclaimed his familiar and took his leave, bidding Anna farewell for the last time before he left. He had a feeling that he would never see her again.

His next stop was
Kargath, the capital of Junir. It would take him several days to make it there by horse, much longer since he was on foot. He had nothing but his thoughts to keep him company as he walked from one town to another along the winding trade route to Kargath—though Bonk occasionally provided some entertainment by chasing squirrels.

He
ultimately decided that he was glad he returned to the orphanage, and to his mother’s house. It had given him closure, just not the kind he was anticipating. Another unexpected side-effect was that visiting the past made him seriously consider the future. For the first time in his entire life, he began to really think about what he wanted to do after he finished school.

I could ask Master Asher about doing research again…

Now that the Prism Master had some time to think about it, he might be more agreeable to taking Hayden on as an apprentice in the future, but even research wasn’t a well-paying job, unless he discovered something incredible. He would still have to find work somewhere in the Nine Lands and find a place to call home when he wasn’t doing research.

I could be a monster-slayer with Zane.

That was one career path that would never be in short demand, because the monster population was in one of its cyclical booms right now. Hayden had never relished the prospect of pitting himself against deadly, magically-powerful creatures before—he had nearly cried when he was attacked by a dragon last year—but with a few more years of training he might have the chops to do it well. People with much less Source-power than him were decent monster-slayers, so did he really have a right to avoid it just because he was afraid of being eaten?

That segue took
his thoughts in a new direction. Well, not entirely new; he had given the subject of his unusual amount of natural power quite a bit of thought before now, but hadn’t come up with a good explanation for it yet.

He had been told, more than once, that he had a freakish amount of latent Source power, perhaps even more than his father at the height of his reign of terror.
If his Foci weren’t so terribly warped, he might be the most powerful mage in all of Junir right now. Was it just hereditary? It didn’t seem possible to him, since his mother wasn’t magically-inclined at all; shouldn’t that have diluted his Source, not strengthened it?