by V. St. Clair
Maybe I’ll try to teach him to write. Hayden imagined Bonk trying to wield a pencil and suppressed a laugh.
“But dragons can cross the barrier because they’re more powerful than anything even my father can come up with,” he continued hurriedly, lowering his voice conspiratorially.
Bonk tilted his head in provisional agreement, perhaps uncertain whether dragons were stronger than anything the Dark Prism could come up with, but acknowledging that they could pass through the defensive barriers.
“I don’t suppose you can cross through with Binders on?” Hayden asked without real hope. If it had been that simple, Bonk would have volunteered before now.
His familiar spared him a flat stare at the stupidity of that question, and Hayden moved on.
“Sorry, but I had to ask. But even if you can’t pass through, another dragon should be able to, like Slasher?”
Bonk paused thoughtfully to consider this, and then slowly nodded.
Finally I get a nod out of him!
It felt like the greatest achievement Hayden had ever accomplished, including getting kicked out of Powders during his first term at school because he’d loosed poisonous gas on his classmates.
“And you have a connection with Slasher,” he continued enthusiastically. “It’s not as strong as your link to Cinder is—was,” Hayden amended, feeling awkward at the reminder that Cinder was now their enemy. “But you used it to get me away from the Council at the end of last term, when they wanted to arrest me in the dining hall for bringing my father back into this realm; you two transported me to the Trout estate.”
Bonk nodded once more.
“Can you call on him in some way and tell him to come here? If we could get him across the boundaries then you could give him the letter to take back with him. Isn’t there some way you can get in touch with him?”
The look Bonk gave him seemed to say, Sure there is, with magic…
“There has to be some way, even though you can’t use magic,” Hayden insisted. “Just…just please, think it through and give it a try. I’ll write my letter so that it’s all ready to go, and you work on getting Slasher to figure out he needs to come here.”
Bonk looked a little uncertain, which wasn’t very reassuring, but Hayden ignored it and turned his back on his familiar, rummaging around the room for something to write with. The only thing that kept him from giving up was the belief that there was still something useful he could do for the mages on the other side of the barrier, the truly powerful people who had been trying to train him and make him better for years now: information. He could give them as much useful information as possible about the defenses around the estate and his father’s plans, so that even if—when—he died, better mages than him would be in a position to take down the Dark Prism for good.
But all of these plans hinged on Hayden’s ability to communicate with the outside world, which is why he had to remain positive and believe that Bonk would somehow come through for him and find a way to pull on his bond with Slasher.
So he turned to his part of the task, which was to sit down and write. Sitting up in bed with his legs bent, he propped a worn accounting ledger book against his thighs and began thinking. The first question he had to answer was who he would address the letter to.
Tess?
That seemed like a bad idea, given that he planned on telling the recipient that he was likely going to die here and ask that no one do something stupid like try to brave the light-sickness defense just to try and rescue him. Tess was likely to ignore his request and come charging in with her hunting knife, and if there was one thing Hayden didn’t want, it was for Tess to come within a hundred yards of the Dark Prism.
Zane?
But that was almost as good as sending the letter to Tess directly. Zane would be tempted to mount a rescue operation as well, though at least he would probably realize from Hayden’s letter that it was pointless. He would tell the Masters, as Hayden intended, but there was no way he would keep it from Tess.
There was really only one good choice, only one person who could be trusted to do what was needed with the information while also respecting his wishes.
Asher it is, then.
Hayden wrote the salutation on the top line and then paused with his pencil above the blank paper. It was hard to organize everything he needed to say into an efficient order in his head, but eventually he managed it. It took him over an hour to complete the letter, and several sheets of paper, but finally he was done.
It was very late at night, and Hayden’s writing hand was cramping so badly that he might have just finished one of his final exams. He wiped the pencil smudges off of the side of his hand from where he had tracked it across the paper, rolled over, and went to sleep.
Hayden was plagued with bizarre dreams that night, dreams that made him wonder if he was hovering somewhere between consciousness and sleep. He kept imagining that he saw Bonk perched beside him on the bed, eyes closed and face focused as though in deep meditation. Occasionally he dreamed that Bonk was pacing the room in obvious frustration, or flying quiet circles around the space, venting his displeasure. Then Hayden would sink back into restful oblivion until some variation of the scene reformed in his mind. Several times he was aware of hovering in that obnoxious in-between state, not fully asleep but not truly awake, feeling his body struggle to transition from one state to the other with limited success.
At one point he must have truly fallen asleep, because he dreamed that he opened his eyes and saw Cinder and Bonk communicating quietly near the door. He couldn’t hear what they were saying from his bed, as the dragonlings kept the noise down, but they looked like they were having an engrossing discussion. Hayden knew he had to be imagining things, because Cinder and Bonk were officially enemies now, each bound to serve their respective masters, who happened to be trying to murder each other. Besides, the whole thing was ridiculous anyway, since Hayden had locked the door before going to bed, so Cinder shouldn’t even be able to get into the room with him.
Hayden woke the next morning feeling as tired as when he went to bed. He cursed his overactive mind for keeping him from sleeping properly, and then forced himself to get up and shower before breakfast. His father would probably knock his teeth out if he turned up in the formal dining room looking groggy and disheveled.
It became quickly apparent that the Dark Prism was having an off day, cognitively-speaking. One thought never seemed to track the next, and he would go from staring blankly into the distance to violently angry for no apparent reason. Hayden had seen shorter periods of this behavior in his father before, and knew by now to stay well clear of the man until his mind returned to whatever shaky equilibrium it normally maintained.
He gobbled down breakfast as fast as he could and decided not to go to the library today, since at some point he would inevitably draw his father’s attention and that could only turn out badly for him. Instead he joined Bonk on the front lawns, walking around the neatly trimmed grass and watching his familiar soar overhead.
He saw one of the imprisoned groundskeepers and nodded politely in greeting, before turning the opposite direction to avoid conversation. It wasn’t that he was trying to be rude, or that he didn’t want to talk to the others—though he had been avoiding their company since that morning in the kitchen. His self-appointed solitude was mostly due to the fact that he was constantly researching ways to bring down the magical barriers around the place or take down his father, though if he was being completely honest with himself, it was also because he didn’t want to face any more hopeful questions about his progress. He could focus on his work better if he could ignore the fact that nine other people were eagerly counting on his success.
After flying around within the limits of the barriers, Bonk alit on a stone statue in the middle of a small fountain, landing gracefully on the tip of the angel’s wing and watching the water trickle gently through her outturned stone hands.
“Did you have any luck contacting S
lasher last night?” Hayden asked his familiar, stifling a yawn and trying to enjoy the sunlight.
Bonk made a noncommittal gesture and looked like he regretted landing near Hayden at all.
“Come on, don’t be like that; this is important,” Hayden insisted. “I spent all night dreaming that I was watching you try to call out through the bond you have, which is why I’m dead-tired this morning. If I had to lose an entire night of sleep over it, the least you could do is tell me whether you actually managed to make contact with him.”
Bonk hesitated for a moment, as though there was something he wasn’t sure whether to reveal. Finally he came to some internal decision, and shook his head ‘no’. Hayden didn’t bother concealing his frown as his breakfast seemed to curdle in his stomach.
“Okay, well, that’s a bummer…but promise me you’ll keep trying, okay? This is the most important thing we need to do right now, and it’ll all fall apart if we can’t get Slasher to show up and take our letter for us. You’re the only one here with a bond to him that can summon him, or I’d do it myself.”
Bonk made a slight negating gesture, flapping his wings a few times for reasons best known to him.
“Well, okay,” Hayden amended, “you’re technically not the only one who can communicate with Slasher, but I doubt Cinder is going to help us since we’re working against his master’s best interests.”
He remembered a fragment of his strange dream, where he had been watching Cinder and Bonk discussing something quietly near the door to his bedroom, but pushed the thought aside once more. There was one thing he knew for certain, and that was that familiars didn’t ever side against their masters.
Bonk took flight again and resumed his circling of the Frost estate, and Hayden sighed and left him to it, instead approaching the gates cautiously and staring through them. Freedom was deceptively close; it looked like all he had to do was open the gate and walk about three feet, and he’d be free to go wherever his heart desired, but he knew it was all a ruse. He had no desire to have different colors of light burn through every receptor in his eyes—again. He had survived it once, by some miracle, but was pretty sure that this time his brain would turn to jelly and he would die, just like every other poor fool who tried to cross through the barrier.
Instead he closed his eyes and tried to sense any of the other defensive spells that separated him from freedom. His father seemed to think that they were not infallible, which was mildly reassuring, but all that meant was that the Dark Prism would have found a series of alignments that could bypass them in his Black Prism—which had a host of alignments not available in normal prisms. Still, the fact remained that of all his defenses, the only one his father was relying on to prove absolutely impenetrable was the light-sickness curtain.
That meant there was a slight chance that Hayden could discover and unravel the other defenses, assuming he took down his father and still had enough of his violet prism remaining that he could cast the magic needed to bring down the defenses. It wouldn’t get him and the other nine captives out, but it would make it much easier for his other allies to focus on the light-sickness spell in the hopes that someday they would break it.
Hayden had seen the Masters ferret out magical spells just by standing nearby and focusing on them with their eyes closed, though admittedly, they often gripped their Mastery Charms while doing this. Hayden didn’t know whether they used the Mastery Charms to amplify their own senses, or if there was something critical inside the Charms that actually enabled them to detect magic. If the former, then Hayden still had some kind of chance; if the latter, then he was wasting his time.
Still, he had to try, if only to be thorough. He stood there and bent all of his concentration towards the gates, trying to let himself slip away from his consciousness and become one with the world around him. It was a similar process to getting earth-based magic to work: he had to train his brain to almost leave the physical world behind in order to connect to the living world around him.
He tried for over an hour, but no matter how hard he focused, he felt nothing. Well, that wasn’t entirely true, he could feel the magic readily enough, standing before him like an impenetrable fortress with razor-glass all along the walls, lava pouring down from the top, and a few sorcerers standing nearby waiting to hurl spells at him just to add insult to injury. That wasn’t truly how the magic looked to his mind’s eye, but it was fairly representative of how difficult it would be to get around or through the wall without dying.
He mentally cursed himself for never asking any of his Masters how they sensed specific spells and unraveled them during the entirely of his magical education at Mizzenwald. Why did he ever bother wasting time on things like petty grudges against the Trouts when he should have been preparing day and night for this?
Maybe if I had known that my dead father wasn’t quite dead enough, I would have taken more effort to prepare for disassembling his magic.
Frustrated, he went back inside and looked for something else to do.
His father never came downstairs to lunch, which didn’t bother Hayden in the slightest—it was nice to eat a meal without worrying about setting off the human time-bomb beside him.
Afterwards he roamed the upper floor, reading through a few old ledger books in the office he passed and generally killing time, wondering whether it was safe to go back into the library yet. Before dinner was scheduled to begin, he happened to glance out the window and catch sight of something that made his spirits soar.
Slasher.
Bonk was hovering in mid-air with Hayden’s folded-up letter clenched in his talons, communicating with a sleek, black dragonling who could only be Slasher. Hayden had never been so happy to see anyone affiliated with the Trout family in his entire life, and vowed to buy the dragon a lifetime supply of whatever meat he wanted if he made it out of this mess alive.
Slasher passed easily through the barriers, though he didn’t look happy about it, and Bonk passed him the letter.
Now go, Hayden prayed inwardly, hands clasped so hard against the windowsill that his knuckles were turning white. Go before my father can look out the window and see you, before he can find a way to stop you!
He wanted to shout, but that would only draw attention, and Hayden thought his fingers were going to snap from clenching the windowsill so hard, until finally Slasher turned and flew back the way he came, disappearing into the distance until Hayden could no longer see him.
He felt light as a feather inside. If he accomplished nothing else in the fight against his father, at least he did this one good thing to help the others continue the battle. His father would go down, whether or not he was still around to see it; with part of his Source missing and the secret of his defensive barriers known, Asher would see to it. Somehow.
He was so pleased he was tempted to skip down the hallway, and might have except for the roar of rage, followed by the ear-splitting sound of something heavy being knocked over.
He knows.
A thrill of terror went through Hayden as another crash sounded from further down the hall. Hattie, who had been changing the sheets in the bedrooms, came running down the hall and flew down the stairs so fast that Hayden was afraid she would fall. He couldn’t blame her from trying to get as far away as possible from the Dark Prism’s wrath.
Well, he can rage and kill me all he wants. The letter is already gone and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Hayden was sorely tempted to take off running like Hattie, but thought he ought to show a little more grit. The others would probably lose confidence in him if he was hiding behind sacks of flour in the kitchen alongside them. So he did the brave—or stupid—thing and began walking towards the sounds of mayhem coming from the library.
17
Things to Burn
The door to the library was already ajar when he approached, which in itself was unusual. He pushed the door open and entered without knocking, since his father obviously knew what he had done by now and tipto
eing around wasn’t going to save him. Even as he steeled his courage, he wondered why the Dark Prism was reacting so badly to a simple letter.
The library was a mess.
His father’s worktable had been knocked over, drawings and notes scattered all over the floor wherever they landed. More than one window was missing glass now, the remaining shards dangling dangerously in the panes. Two entire bookshelves had been knocked over, which accounted for the loud crashing noises, and Hayden found his father pacing furiously back and forth across the length of the room, artfully stepping around broken bits of wood or fallen books as though he didn’t even see them in his path.
“—will not, you cretinous old man,” his father was muttering to himself while he paced, occasionally stopping long enough to slam one closed fist into his open palm, or to kick something out of his way. “You never could see past your own ego,” he continued, seething.
Confused, Hayden paused in place at the threshold, wondering if he had missed something. He had no idea who his father was talking to—or ranting about—but it didn’t seem to have anything to do with his sending a message. Besides, the more Hayden thought about it, the less certain he was that the Dark Prism would get this upset about anything Hayden did. Most of the time he didn’t even think his only son was worth the time of day, let alone getting riled up over. Besides, even though Hayden confided everything he had learned about both his father’s motives and defenses in his letter, that didn’t make the barriers any easier to get past, or the man any easier to defeat.
Maybe the timing of this outburst was coincidental?
If so, that was a relief, because it meant that his father probably didn’t know what Hayden had done, and was therefore much less likely to punish him for it. On the other hand, it made Hayden walking into the library during the Dark Prism’s psychotic break from reality all the more dangerous, and stupid, as it drew unnecessary attention to him. Belatedly, Hayden realized that he hadn’t even stopped by his bedroom to get his prism, and Bonk was still flying around somewhere outside, so he was completely defenseless. He had no idea where Cinder was, but the dragonling didn’t appear to be in the library with them, which was a shame since his father’s familiar was the only living thing that could ever talk some sense into him.