Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism)

by V. St. Clair

  “I am. That’s why I’m using my right,” Asher turned it slowly in front of the light. “I can’t detect any magical booby-traps on it, but one can never be too careful. Better to check first through my non-dominant eye in case it sears my retina.”

  He looked through the prism in silence for a moment longer before switching over to his left eye, apparently deciding it was safe to look through. A minute later he frowned and passed the prism to Hayden.

  “Tell me what you see.”

  Having the Prism Master consult him for his opinion raised his spirits, and Hayden lifted the prism to his eye and faced the light that was streaming in through the window, wondering what kind of strange arrays he would find within.

  There was nothing.

  It wasn’t that the prism lacked arrays, it was that the onyx was as solid and opaque as a rock. No matter which way he rotated the prism there was simply nothing to see; no light passed through the solid onyx at all.

  “I don’t see anything. It’s too dense for light to pass through, so there aren’t any arrays,” he frowned in disappointment and handed the prism back to Asher.

  “Yes, which makes me wonder what its intended purpose is.”

  “You think it still does something?” Hayden asked skeptically. “But what good is a prism that can’t refract light?”

  “I have no idea,” Asher said thoughtfully, “but if your father found it valuable enough to hide inside his manor—albeit in the bathroom—then it can’t be worthless.” He tapped his nose with one finger while he considered the prism a moment longer. “I’m going to hold onto this and study it further; it may be that we just haven’t stumbled upon the right way to use it yet.”

  Hayden had half-expected this ever since deciding to show the objects to the Prism Master.

  “Will you tell me if you find out what it does?” he asked hopefully.

  “Of course.” Master Asher nodded. “Though I think for the time being we should keep its discovery a secret between the two of us. The Council would have your head if they knew you were capable of penetrating your father’s defenses and accessing his magical weaponry.”

  “Why did it let me have the prism anyway? Mrs. Trout said the Council have searched that room before and not found anything…”

  Asher smirked at him and said, “Hayden, you possess an advantage that no one else in this world could ever have for themselves.” At the confused look on Hayden’s face he added, “Your blood, Hayden. You have some of your father’s blood in you—apparently enough of it to fool his defenses into thinking you’re him. That means that anything he has sealed with blood will open for you, and no one else. Do you think that the Council wouldn’t cheerfully drain you dry if they knew this?” Asher frowned in disdain. “They’d paint that entire house in your blood before it was said and done to make sure they didn’t miss anything. They will do anything to find and destroy the elusive Black Prism.”

  Shuddering at the image that evoked, Hayden said, “No thanks. I’ll keep it between the two of us.”

  Master Asher nodded and lowered his eyepiece to undo the spells he’d cast, but Hayden said, “Wait, there was one more thing I found.”

  He extracted the scrap of fabric that bore the strange circle with the ‘M’ inscribed in the center and showed it to his mentor.

  “What in the world would Aleric be doing with that?” Asher made a strange face, examining the cloth more closely.

  “You know what it is?” Hayden asked eagerly.

  “I’ve never seen it before, but it looks a bit like the clan markings that you see on the back of a sorcerer’s hands, showing who they’re affiliated with and what family they’re part of. It’s a status symbol of sorts, as I understand.”

  Frowning, Hayden said, “Why would my father have a clan symbol drawn on a piece of fabric hidden away in his house?”

  “Again, I have absolutely no idea, though it does confirm that he was interested in our northern counterparts’ magic at some point before his demise. I had always wondered.”

  “Do you think I can keep it?” Hayden asked. “If it isn’t dangerous, that is.”

  Master Asher arched an eyebrow at him and said, “Why do you want it?”

  “It’s the only thing of my father’s I’ve ever gotten,” he answered truthfully. “I’m trying to learn more about his life, because it seems like the first step in figuring out what happened to me the day he came to my mom’s house.”

  Asher considered him thoughtfully for a moment and said, “Not a bad place to start. You can keep this, but don’t show it to anyone for the time being. If you’re interested in tracing Aleric’s steps, you might consult the library for any books about the northern sorcerers. One of them might have an index of known siglas that may help you identify which clan it came from, though I’m not sure how that will help particularly.”

  “Thanks. I’m not sure what I’ll find, but it’s a good place to start,” Hayden acknowledged. Changing the subject he asked, “What’s going on with the war right now? I kept hearing different things when I was staying with Zane’s family, and we didn’t know what to believe. Oliver’s mom wouldn’t talk to me about it much because I’m not on the Council.”

  Master Asher frowned and said, “Our scouts have reported small numbers of isolated attacks at the Forest of Illusion along the coastline. So far our fighters have been able to repel the attacks.”

  This sounded like good news to Hayden, who couldn’t understand why his mentor looked so grim right now if they were winning.

  “Then what’s wrong?”

  “It doesn’t feel right,” Asher sighed, pacing the room without looking at Hayden. “They have to cross the Yrani Sea to get to our shores, which takes both time and resources. If you were going to take the trouble of outfitting a ship and sailing across the Yrani to invade another continent, would you only send twenty people at a time?”

  Hayden’s eyebrows lifted in surprise. “They’re really only sending twenty sorcerers at a time?”

  “The exact number varies with each attack, but always seems ridiculously low to me. In the past they’ve sent hundreds—thousands—of sorcerers to attack us. Unless they’ve gotten dumber as time elapses, I think they’ve changed their game plan and are getting ready to snowball us, though my opinion is not the popular one amongst the Council of Mages.”

  “Why not?”

  Asher stopped pacing long enough to give him a funny look and said, “Aside from the fact that I’m not terribly popular with the Council, they don’t like being told that there’s something wrong when we appear to be winning.”

  Frowning, Hayden asked, “What do you think the sorcerers are trying to accomplish, if not taking control of the Forest?”

  “Oh, I think they still want control of the Forest of Illusions very badly,” Asher explained, “I’m just not sure what their plan to conquer it entails yet. I’ve glanced at a few of the field reports, and it almost sounds more like they’re sending scouting parties than combatants…perhaps looking for an ideal spot to land their main force?” It wasn’t clear whether the Prism Master was asking himself or Hayden to answer the question. “Many of the others seem confident of a quick victory for us, but perhaps I’m just a pessimist.”

  “Do you think you might get called into battle?”

  Asher looked at him and said, “Perhaps, though it won’t be good sign if that happens.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Training the next generation of mages has always been the highest priority of the magical community, especially the Council of Mages. Our children are our future, so to speak. Without proper training, huge troves of our magical knowledge will be lost over time.” He gave Hayden a grim look now. “If they begin pulling the Masters out of the Great Nine to fight, it means that things are going very badly in the war.”

  Hayden didn’t even like to think about what would happen if the war went badly for them and the sorcerers took control of the Forest of Illusions. If they
held the stronghold of the Nine Lands’ magic, there would be nothing to stop them from taking over the rest of the continent as well.

  “Hopefully I’m overreacting and it won’t come to that,” Asher continued, apparently reading the look on Hayden’s face. “The Council may be full of elitists, but they’re magically-powerful elitists, and in the past they have made good decisions for our kind. For now we just have to trust their directing of the war effort and hope for the best.”

  Hayden nodded and moved to look out the window. He could see the tops of some of the supply shops, including Pounds of Prisms and the Magnificent Mage. He was trying not to imagine them burning and in ruins if the war made it to Mizzenwald.

  “Well, I’ll leave you now.” Asher pulled his attention away from his dark thoughts. “It occurs to me that you are in my level-four class this year, and that I don’t actually have a lesson plan for the level-four class, as I’ve never had to teach it before.” He smirked.

  “I was wondering whether you’d prepared anything for me or not,” Hayden admitted.

  “I’ll make it up as I go along; I always do, and it usually turns out alright.” Asher shrugged, turning to leave. “You’re cleared to purchase level-four prisms and texts, by the way. You’ll also need a workbook this year, as we’re going to begin studying the basic formulas you’ll need in the future to discover new alignments.”

  Hayden had seen pages of calculations on Asher’s desk before and hadn’t been able to decipher a bit of it. The thought of trying to learn it was both exciting and terrifying, but all he said was, “Okay, I’ll remember to get a workbook.”

  Asher nodded, twirled the onyx prism in his hand one last time and then tucked it into his pocket.

  “See you at the start of term,” he said cheerfully, removing his spells from around the room and closing the door behind him.

  Since he had nothing better to do, Hayden spent the rest of the afternoon stocking up on supplies for the start of term. He visited Pounds of Prisms to upgrade his supplies, and for once the shop owner greeted him with wary neutrality rather than open disdain.

  Things are looking up for me this year, Hayden thought with a faint smile.

  He bought new clothing in The Magical Mage, as his pants were becoming noticeably too short and some of his shirts had holes or burn marks in them from the antics of last year. He upgraded his wands to level-four and stuffed his new textbook into his bag, awkwardly carrying the cluster of heavy bags into Kly’s Elixirs, his last stop of the day. He was surprised to see Master Kilgore in there, reviewing an accounting list with Kly.

  Both men looked up at the sound of Hayden’s arrival and the former said, “Hello, Frost. Come to stock up on ingredients before the start of term?”

  “Yes, sir. I’m out of heartsbane and siltgrass.”

  The Master of Elixirs nodded and made a dismissive motion at Kly’s list, as though he had better things to do right now than review the accounting for the store. Hayden was surprised when the Master joined him on his circuit of the shop to collect ingredients.

  “How was your winter break?” Kilgore asked in his usual gruff tone.

  “Good, but exhausting. Zane thinks his parents were trying to show us what working in one of the prison mines is like.”

  Kilgore chuckled and said, “Good. Young people need to do real work, or you’ll grow soft.” He nodded approvingly to Zane’s parents. Hayden supposed he shouldn’t be terribly surprised by the Master’s attitude; Kilgore was built like a forge-worker.

  “How was your break, sir?” he ventured cautiously, not sure if it was an impertinent question.

  “Not my best, but fair enough. Access to the Forest of Illusions is becoming greatly restricted, which hampers the bulk of my research, but I had other things to look into that passed the time tolerably.”

  “Are we still doing challenge arenas this year with the war going on?” Hayden asked, capitalizing on the Master’s willingness to talk to him.

  Master Kilgore narrowed his eyebrows and said, “For now, yes. If things take a turn for the worse, the challenge arenas will likely be cancelled to free up our evenings.”

  Hayden nodded grimly, but the Master of Elixirs startled him by adding, “I expect you’re looking forward to dropping Lorn Trout from your arena team this year?”

  His immediate instinct was to agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment, but something gave him pause. It seemed like a strange thing to ask out of nowhere, and Kilgore was watching him closely, which meant this was probably a test of some sort.

  “I don’t know…” Hayden began neutrally. “If he’s still a good fit for our team then he stays. If I find someone better at Powders or with a broader skillset then I guess I’ll try and trade him.”

  Master Kilgore let out a low chuckle and said, “Glad to see you learned something last year. Carry on, Frost.”

  The Master returned to the accounting with Kly after they added Hayden’s purchases to the roster, and Hayden made his way back to the castle with his belongings, still thinking about what Kilgore had said. Obviously he had been pleased with Hayden’s response…

  But why? What was he looking for?

  Hayden thought back to last year, when he had first found out that Lorn Trout was going to be in his arena group. He was at dinner when Zane told him, and he’d immediately left the room to go shout at the Prism Master about it. Was there a chance that the other Masters had found out about that at some point?

  Probably; I’m sure they all share information about their students with each other.

  Hayden frowned. Now that he thought about it, he had done an awful lot of shouting at the Masters last year, and on one occasion he even dueled the Prism Master on the front lawns, after his first horrific challenge arena of the year. In retrospect, that was probably a bad thing.

  Maybe that’s what Kilgore was looking for—he frowned thoughtfully—to see if I’ve calmed down and gotten control of myself.

  It was unnerving to think that his teachers were watching him so closely, but it was also strangely comforting to know that they were invested in his future. As he unpacked his bags, he realized he had a lot to think about this year.

  3

  The Absorber

  Hayden’s friends didn’t return to school until the day before the start of term, and he spent most of the intervening time playing ‘fetch’ with Bonk and Cinder or doing research in the library. In the entirety of his previous two years at Mizzenwald, Hayden realized he had only been to the library on the second floor a handful of times to look up reference materials for his homework assignments.

  By the end of the week he thought he knew it well enough to work there. Kept behind the only set of glass doors that Mizzenwald had, it was either a very low-ceilinged room or else it just felt that way due to all the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves throughout it. The room wasn’t laid out in an open rectangle like most of the other areas in the school, but was some sort of irregular shape that meant he had to turn corners and follow short corridors to find different sections of it, reminiscent of a maze that he might have to navigate in the challenge arenas (but lacking the monsters).

  There was an art to the organization of the books as well, which took the better part of his first day to figure out. Books were grouped in broad categories, and then by either author, subject, or date of publication depending on what the topic was. When Hayden finally located a few books about the northern sorcerers, he felt like he’d scored a major victory, and was certain that the hard part of his task was over.

  However, his research was less fruitful than he’d hoped. He did manage to locate a book that had a list of known siglas from the northern clans, but it admitted to being largely incomplete and didn’t have the symbol that Hayden had tucked into his bag upstairs. There wasn’t even much information about the sorcerer’s magic or how it differed from their own, because the only time the north and south interacted with each other was when they were at war, and they were hardly going to stop
and share trade-secrets with their enemies. Hayden closed the book with frustration and abandoned the search for now, trudging back to his dormitory with Bonk on his shoulder.

  I just hope that the sorcerers know as little about us as we do about them.

  He was so caught up in his thoughts on the subject that he didn’t see Tess in the hallway until he walked straight into her and knocked her to the ground.

  “Sorry, Tess!” He extended a hand to help her up, feeling like a colossal idiot. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going. Are you hurt?”

  She glanced at her familiar, Mittens, to make sure the cat was alright and said, “I’m fine—I wasn’t paying attention either.” Then she took a closer look at Hayden and her eyes widened slightly. “You look…more muscular than I remember.”

  The way she said it made Hayden reflexively stand up straighter, and for some reason he caught himself saying, “Thanks. I did a lot of the manual labor around Zane’s house during break: chopping firewood, patching the roof, hunting, that sort of thing.”

  “Wow, that must have been a lot of hard work…it was freezing this winter,” Tess looked distinctly impressed.

  “It was pretty easy once I got used to the cold,” he said without thinking. He had no idea why he was downplaying how unpleasant it was, or why he didn’t mention all the help he had from the rest of the family. He especially didn’t know why he was grinning like an idiot right now.

  “Anyway,” he changed the subject, desperate to escape before he started sounding as arrogant as Oliver Trout, “I better get back to my room to see if the others are here yet.”

  Tess nodded and said, “Alright. I’ll see you at breakfast tomorrow. We can go over our schedules and see if we’ve got any classes together.”

  “Great, yeah, sounds good,” Hayden rambled, already walking away. “See you tomorrow!”

  As soon as he was safely inside his room he slumped against the closed door and put his head in his hands. “Frost, you are an idiot,” he grumbled, thinking it would be a miracle if Tess still thought he was sane.