The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4)

by V. St. Clair

  Hayden made a face. Of course, the Forest of Illusions, site of all bizarre magic that couldn’t otherwise be explained and possibly shouldn’t exist.

  I should just get a summer home there, Hayden thought ruefully, since the place seemed to keep cropping up in his life these days.

  “Hopefully they send someone else looking for void–weapons then, because I’ve had my fill of the place,” he said out loud.

  Kobi raised an eyebrow at him. “So I’ve heard. What was it like, fighting the sorcerers in there?”

  “Terrifying. Exhausting. Not at all an experience I’d care to repeat,” he answered flatly, as he did every time someone asked him what it was like to fight in a war at the tender age of fourteen.

  Kobi shrugged as though expecting this.

  “Were you still inside the Forest when it jumped locations?”

  “Yes, but I don’t remember much of it—other than the ground being very fluid; one of the glamorous side effects of nearly blowing yourself up with magic is a lack of consciousness.”

  Kobi actually laughed, which Hayden tried not to take insult to, but after that he didn’t mind spending most of the rest of their shift in silence.

  8

  The Invitation

  Given how busy Hayden was, it came as no surprise that two months had passed in the blink of an eye. After floundering for the first week and getting nearly no sleep at all, he finally fell into a rhythm and had his schedule planned out to the half-hour, including his time with his friends and Tess. His day was largely filled with classes, followed by either research with Asher, schism-duty with Kobi, or a rare night off in which he could actually get his homework done at a reasonable time and see his friends for a little while before bed. Even this became difficult to accomplish when Fia Valay finished settling the accounting of the Frost estate and began sending regular letters and reports, which Hayden had to read, make important decisions about, and send back.

  Being the head of a Great House isn’t nearly as much fun as everyone thinks.

  In fact, he hadn’t even visited the place in over a year, though he was hoping to make a trip there during the summer holiday—mostly because he would be ready for a break from Mizzenwald by then. Zane and Tess were planning to come with him, which made the idea even more appealing, and Hayden wrote Fia Valay to ask him to begin staffing the estate again, but only with essential personnel since he wouldn’t really be living there until the end of the year.

  Yawning, he made his way to Master Asher’s office for their biweekly appointment, trying to remember where they’d left off with their research the other night. It still felt like half of what Asher was talking about this year went straight over his head, but it was getting easier by the day to understand things, and he was beginning to feel more like a contributor and less like dead weight.

  He knocked on the door before twisting the handle, but was surprised to find that the door was locked. He couldn’t remember Asher ever locking the door to his office when he was inside, but figured that there might be a reasonable explanation, so he knocked again and waited.

  There was no answer.

  Concerned, Hayden equipped his violet prism and cast Sight through the solid door, allowing him to see what was on the other side. The lights were off and there was no sign of Asher inside the office.

  Asher had never missed one of their appointments before, and Hayden began to worry that it was because something was horribly wrong.

  Calm down. It’s not like he got eaten by a schism-warg or anything—the magic is still holding around the stupid thing.

  Not knowing what to do, he made his way back towards the Pentagon in the hope of finding one of the other Masters and asking after Asher’s whereabouts. He had just turned in to the pentagonal foyer when he saw his mentor approaching from the front lawns in the company of Masters Sark and Reede. Asher took one look at Hayden, checked his chrono and said, “Ah, I’m late for our appointment. Excuse me,” he said the last to his peers, walking away from them without another word.

  Hayden knew his mentor well enough by now to know when he was in a bad mood. There was something in the way he carried himself—the rigidity of his spine perhaps, or the chilly tone—that let him know that Asher was not happy with his peers right now. He also usually made an effort at conversation with Hayden, but right now he was focused straight ahead, taking long strides towards his office like he couldn’t wait to get there, and pulling off his Mastery robes as soon as he was inside, throwing them into a wad in the corner with careless disregard.

  “Um, bad day?” Hayden ventured, wondering whether he would tell him what happened.

  “You could say that,” Asher agreed, relaxing his face and massaging his temples to collect himself. “I’m sorry I’m late. I was arguing with that jackal, Sark, and I lost track of time.”

  Hayden had rarely seen Asher angry enough to liken one of his colleagues to a wild animal, which meant it must have been a really explosive argument.

  “So I guess you and Master Sark still aren’t best friends?” he prodded tangentially, hoping he wouldn’t have to ask directly what they were fighting about, but desperately curious to hear about it.

  “I’ll try not to lose sleep over it,” Asher answered sarcastically, letting out a sigh and finally calming down. “The three of us just returned from the Crystal Tower, which would be more aptly titled Jackal Central.”

  “Oh?” Hayden hoped his interest wasn’t too obvious. “I’ve never been there; what’s it like?”

  Asher chuckled and said, “Well, it’s over fifty levels high and made entirely of crystal, so it looks quite impressive—a bit like an enormous glass needle. Shame the same grandeur doesn’t apply to its inhabitants.”

  Abandoning subtlety, Hayden asked, “What did the Council of Mages do this time that’s got you so upset?”

  Master Asher stopped massaging his temples and sat upright in his chair, leveling his gaze at Hayden as though he was searching for something. A moment later, the look was gone.

  “The usual argument over who we’re going to sacrifice to the schism next in the hopes of sealing it,” he explained. “Six mages have already stuck their heads inside—including me—and proven incapable of handling the conditions. Two others have actually ventured inside the schism itself, never to be seen again. The Council’s ideas are getting wilder and wilder by the day, and sadly that useless sack of flesh, Sark, is beginning to agree with them.”

  Hayden wasn’t surprised to hear that the Council was trying to mess with everyone over their wild schemes, as they’d been doing it to him for years now, so he focused on the part of Asher’s explanation that surprised him.

  “You stuck your head inside a ten-foot tall schism opening, not knowing what was on the other side?”

  A hint of Asher’s usual mischievous grin flickered across his features.

  “Why do you sound so amazed?” he asked with false innocence.

  “Because there could have been a forty-foot monster standing on the other side, just waiting to bite your head off as soon as you broke the plane of the other realm. You’re so reckless with your own life I don’t see how you’re still alive: eating poisonous mushrooms, sticking your head into giant schisms, taunting the Council of Mages and the High Mayor just for fun…”

  Asher grinned and gave Hayden a mock bow from his chair, saying, “You make me sound awesome. I should bring you around on dates with me so you can talk me up to my lady friends.”

  Hayden, used to this kind of deflection from his mentor, rolled his eyes.

  “So how come you and the others who have peeked into the schism are ‘incapable of handling the conditions’?”

  “Haven’t you wondered why a huge group of us haven’t just stormed the schism by now and closed the stupid thing?” Asher asked with wry amusement.

  “Well, yes…I had kind of wondered,” Hayden admitted.

  Asher nodded and said, “We would have done just that if we were able to, but
the fact of the matter is that the larger the schism, the further away the internal aperture you need to seal shut, which means it isn’t a simple matter of stepping inside, closing it, and stepping back out.”

  Hayden narrowed his eyebrows in confusion.

  “What do you mean? You mean the opening moves once you get inside?”

  “Time and space don’t work the same way inside the other realm as they do out here. When you go through the opening from our end, you end up somewhere seemingly random inside the other realm, and you have to work your way back to the opening from that side. In actuality, the drop-off site isn’t random at all—the space between the two doors is infinitesimally small, even though it seems massive to us and can take hours to cross—which gives you an idea of just how enormous the other realm truly is. In the case of really large schisms, it might take you several days to walk to the interior aperture—though it’s hard to keep track of time in there because of the lack of distinction between day and night.”

  The thought made Hayden’s head spin, and he closed his eyes and tried to imagine what it must be like inside such a horrible place, and how massive the other realm must be if it took days to cross the space between two openings that were supposed to be right next to each other. Just thinking about it made his brain hurt.

  “Anyway,” Asher continued, “the size of this schism makes things much more complicated, since very few people can stand to be in the other plane for more than a few minutes at a time.”

  “It’s that scary?” Hayden asked incredulously, trying to imagine what kind of horror could frighten away the Masters of the arcana and the Council of Mages.

  “No—well, yes—but that’s not why we can’t stay inside there. You see, the place is full of the echoes of the magic we use in this world. Every time you cast a spell, there’s some residual effect that occurs on the other plane. Well, that kind of magic has a strange effect on mages who enter the other realm.”

  “What happens?” Hayden asked curiously.

  “It’s a lot like the effects of distortion,” Asher explained with a frown. “In fact, when we experience distortion from spell-casting in this world—using an imperfect prism, for instance—we believe that that distortion is coming from the alternate plane through some kind of momentary connection between the two.”

  Astounded, Hayden said, “So it drives you insane just to exist inside the other realm?”

  “Pretty much, yeah,” Asher agreed without hesitation. “That weird distortion magic is just hanging around in the air, and it creeps through your Foci and into your head the longer you stay in there, until it’s driven you completely mad. So you can see why it’s been difficult to find anyone who can withstand the place long enough to find the exit and seal it off.”

  A new thought struck Hayden then.

  “But if the magic travels through our Foci…normal people don’t have a Focus—it’s why they can’t use magic—so a normal person could go inside and be fine?”

  Asher grinned at him.

  “An excellent observation, though I’ve come to expect them from you.” He nodded. “In short, yes, a normal person could walk right into a schism without issue. The problem is that they’re not equipped to seal the exit, so you still need to find a mage who is willing and able to go along, plus the fact that the other plane is crawling with magically-inclined monsters that are prepared to come between any visitors and the exit.”

  “But Kobi was telling me the other night that magical instruments don’t really work in the other realm—that you need to use special void-instruments that are really rare and come from the Forest of Illusions.”

  “That’s true,” Asher nodded again. “So you enter a world where your magic is useless, you’re surrounded by horrible monsters, alone, and being rapidly driven nuts. Still wondering why we’re lacking volunteers?”

  Hayden shuddered at the very thought.

  “I lasted longer than most others when I peeked inside, because of the extensive damage to my left Focus,” he held up his left wrist so that his half-inch corrector was visible. Hayden knew that he had acquired it after having his Focus damaged during the fight against Aleric Frost over four years ago. “I just took off my corrector for a while, which bought me enough time to look around.”

  “So having a damaged Focus actually helps when you’re trying to pop in and out of Schisms?”

  “Immensely, yes. The more warped your Foci are, the longer it takes for the distortion to find a path through it to your brain. Unfortunately, my right Focus is still perfectly intact, so I still only managed a few minutes.”

  Hayden met Asher’s gaze and frowned thoughtfully.

  “As much as I hate to point this out…I have the most warped Foci on the continent, as far as we know. Wouldn’t that—uh…make me an ideal person to send inside?”

  His mentor’s mood darkened immediately as he said, “Why do you think Sark and I were arguing?”

  Hayden winced, though he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that his name had come up already. He seemed to get volunteered for every horrible thing these days.

  “Did he…um…did he mention my name to the Council, by chance?”

  An uncharacteristically ugly look crossed Asher’s face. “It was the Council’s idea, of course. Calahan wants revenge for making them look like fools before term started, and unfortunately you are a good candidate due to your Focus problems. When it was posed in the Council meeting tonight, Sark voted in favor of petitioning you. Naturally, I voted against—quite vocally and forcefully I might add.”

  “And Reede?” Hayden wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer or not.

  “He was dead silent the entire time. I think he’s on the fence as to whether or not we should ask you for help—he wants the schism closed as much as anyone, but he also realizes that he would most likely be signing your death warrant in drafting you.”

  “Yeah, no offense or anything, but I really have no desire to go wandering around a world full of monsters by myself, without magic to help me, wondering whether I’ve gone insane yet.”

  I don’t blame you in the slightest, and fortunately no one can really make you do anything. The best they can hope for is to guilt you into volunteering, which I would strongly advise against since it would likely be your death, which most of the Council wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over.”

  Hayden scowled.

  “They can ask me all they want; I don’t plan on signing up for that death trap. I’ve jumped through enough hoops for them in the last four years; they can find someone else to kick around for a while,” he said bitterly.

  “I’m not sure they’ll even scrape up the nerve to ask you, as you did just have to recently sue them for the return of your assets—after saving their sorry hides from those cages in the Forest of Illusions. Even some of the stupider Council members must realize that you won’t be in a hurry to do them any more favors after the way they’ve treated you.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments while Hayden processed everything he had just learned about schisms. Finally he said, “Even if I wanted to go charging to my death, I’d need a void-instrument of some sort, and I definitely don’t have one of those on hand.”

  He was surprised when Master Asher made a strange face and said, “Actually, you do, though I wouldn’t go bragging about it, for obvious reasons.”

  “What? I do?” Hayden actually checked his belt for weapons he didn’t remember purchasing, but it was just his usual array of prisms, wands, and elixirs. He examined the wands minutely, because Kobi had told him that they were the most common void weapons to come from the Forest of Illusions.

  “Do you remember the prism you brought me from the Frost manor at the beginning of last year?” Asher recaptured his attention.

  “That onyx prism? The one that was so solid that light wouldn’t even pass through it?” Hayden’s eyebrows lifted as the information clicked into place. “You mean that was a void-prism?”

  Ash
er nodded.

  “Apparently so. I spent the better part of last year trying to figure out what the heck it was supposed to do—Aleric would never keep a worthless prism lying around the house—but I had no luck at all. When I was asked to see if I could withstand the distortion of the schism, I brought the prism with me on a whim and sure enough, it lit up like a torch as soon as it crossed through the opening.”

  “You’d never seen a void-prism before then?” Hayden couldn’t help but ask the impertinent question, surprised that his mentor wouldn’t have recognized it on sight since he seemed to know everything there was to know about prisms.

  Asher gave him a flat stare and said, “No, I haven’t. As far as I know, one hasn’t been seen in over a century—they’re extremely rare, even in the Forest of Illusions. Wands are much more common by far, and we only see a few of them every year as is.” He waved a dismissive hand. “Either Aleric got very lucky in finding this—not entirely impossible since he always did have uncanny luck—or he found a way to create his own void-instruments using the nefarious Black Prism.”

  “I’ll bet he made his own,” Hayden scowled. “From everything I’ve heard about that stupid Black Prism of his, it was capable of pretty much anything.”

  “Yes,” Asher agreed heavily. “It’s a shame it drives you nuts to use it, or that magic would be really handy.” Seguing into a slightly different topic, he added, “I assume you haven’t had any more insight into what Aleric was trying to do to you on the day he came to your mother’s house?”

  This was a sore spot for Hayden, who had spent the last five years trying to remember what happened on the day his mother’s house exploded and his Foci became irreparably warped.

  Frowning, he said, “Not since I drank that Mnemora last year and nearly bled to death. I’m beginning to think I’ll never really know what happened that day.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that,” Asher winced minutely. “Well, I suppose it doesn’t really matter what happened; Aleric is gone and you manage just fine around your handicap, so things could have been a lot worse.”