Forest of Illusions (The Broken Prism) (2 page)

“It looks like someone has been keeping up with maintaining the grounds,” he observed mildly.

“Of course, or the manor would fall into disrepair long before you could ever hope of taking possession of it.”

Hayden stepped out of the cold, shutting the door behind him. He was standing in a white marble-floored foyer, and on the
maroon walls all around him were large rectangular spaces where the painted wood was slightly darker than the rest, as though paintings used to hang there. Beneath each spot was an etched placard with a name.

“What happened to all the paintings?” Hayden asked, his voice echoing in the cavernous foyer. He would have liked to see portraits of his ancestors, to have some idea of what t
hey looked like so he could search for similarities in his own features. He eyed several ornate vases on pedestals that were currently empty of flowers.

“I don’t know; it was like this when we took possession of the house,” Magdalene explained softly. “Perhaps your father didn’t like having reminders of the people he betrayed staring him in the face
all the time, so he took them down.”

Frowning, Hayden continued to follow her through the entryway and into a massive dining room with plush burgundy carpet and a table that could seat forty
people easily.

“This is the formal dining hall, generally reserved for important dinners with prospective business partners,” Magdalene explained, gesturing around the room.
“Your grandfather had a very lucrative apothecary business that was expanding across the Nine Lands, and he often invited associates here for meals and to talk business.”

It felt strange having this guided tour of the place; it made him feel oddly voyeuristic, like he was interfering in things he had no right to.
He couldn’t imagine actually growing up here as a child, and wondered if he would be as arrogant as the Trouts if he had.

But I
do
have a right to this place,
Hayden told himself.
All of this is mine now…

He tried to imagine actually living here as
they moved into the next room. If the place was ever fully rid of the Dark Prism’s dangerous things, would he come to reside in this massive mausoleum all by himself? He shuddered at the thought of how eerie it would be, roaming these hallways and trying to maintain a place so large all on his own…

“Did my family do all of the upkeep on this
place, or did they have a support staff?” Hayden interrupted whatever his guide was telling him about the sitting room they were standing in (one of four, apparently).

“They had dozens of personnel on retainer for the running of the estate,” she explained. “Cooks, cleaners, personal attendants, someone to answer the door…”

“They paid someone to stand beside the door all day and open it for whoever showed up?” Hayden couldn’t decide if that would be the best or worst job in the entire world.

“You do
n’t know much about the Great Houses, do you?” Magdalene asked with a trace of a smile.

“Not really. My mom and I weren’t ever rich,” he admitted without shame
, thinking that his mother’s entire house probably could have fit inside the large dining hall of this one.

“I’ll let you in on a secret then,” her smile broadened. “The most important thing about being wealthy is to make sure that other people realize how wealthy you are. If you can afford a cook but not a doorman, that sends a message to your peers regarding the limits of your capital. If you are fully-staffed and can afford to fete your acquaintances in the formal dining hall…well, that tells them something too.”

Hayden frowned and said, “So basically, rich people do everything they can to impress other rich people, to show that they’re…richer?”

Magdalene actually
laughed, which made her look much friendlier than usual and said, “Yes, that’s right. If you can impress potential business associates or customers, they see what you have and say ‘I want that for myself. If I do business with this person, maybe I’ll become like them.’ Much easier to make favorable deals that way without actually promising anything.”

They continued their walk through the manor, always sticking to the main hallways and rooms, ignoring any closed doors that Magdalene said had not been cleared by the Council yet. Hayden was still trying to imagine
himself living here someday. If he could afford to hire a few service people, the place might not seem so oppressive and lonely, but the thought of having grown men and women wait on him in his own home was bizarre.

Maybe I could throw parties here and invite my friends over…

That might be fun. The look on Zane’s face when he saw this place would be priceless. Come to think of it, he could invite Zane’s entire family to live here and it wouldn’t be even a little bit crowded. They could pay someone else to chop firewood for them all winter. The sheer thought of how much firewood would be needed to heat a building this large nearly gave him a seizure.

Tess would be awed by the place, and maybe even impressed with him for owning it. He could invite her to dinner in the formal dining hall sometime, with those impressive crystal chandeliers and nice thick carpets, prove to her that he had a lot going for him…

He shook himself mentally. Wasn’t he just thinking about how ridiculous rich people were for shoving their status in people’s faces just to make themselves look good? And here he was, already contemplating the same just to impress his friends…

They finished with the ground floor and returned to the foyer, taking the wide wooden staircase up to the second level. There were more sitting rooms up here, but also workshops and offices, including one that was full of filing cabinets of
dusty accounting paperwork. Most of the bedrooms were also on this floor, though Hayden wasn’t surprised when he was told he couldn’t go into his father’s old bedroom. If there was going to be something dangerous left in the house, surely it would be in there.

Bonk had been so quiet and well-behaved that Hayden forgot the
dragonling was perched on his shoulder, until he hopped down to the ground and snuck into a bathroom when Magdalene wasn’t looking. Stopping in his tracks, Hayden was about to tell Bonk to stop exploring on his own when the dragon peeked out of the ajar door and shook his head seriously.

Wondering what his familiar was up to and why he wanted Hayden to keep quiet about it
, he turned to his guide and asked, “Can I use the bathroom?”

Magdalene stopped ahead of him and gave him a scrutinizing stare.

“Why do you want to do that?”

“Uh…cause I have to pee,” Hayden lied, hoping she wouldn’t notice that Bonk was no longer on his shoulder.

“Can it wait?”

“Not really…I had a lot to drink at Zane’s house…” he tried to look apologetic, and she frowned thoughtfully towards the bathroom where Bonk was hidden.

“I don’t know…” she began doubtfully, “you aren’t supposed to leave my sight for any reason during this trip. Calahan was pretty clear about that.”

“Yeah, but surely he doesn’t want you to watch me pee,” Hayden said reasonably. “I mean, it’s not likely that my father kept a lot of dangerous things hidden in the
bathroom, is it?”

“That’s true…” she admitted.

“I’m sure you all already looked in there at least once since you took the house from him.”

“Yes, we checked all of the rooms at least once, and we’ve found nothing in any of the restrooms so far.”

“Well there you go; even my father isn’t crazy enough to hide dangerous weapons in the bathroom.” Hayden shrugged, having no idea whether that was true or not. “Can I please go now before I wet my pants?” He made a show of rocking back and forth on his legs to indicate urgency.

“Fine, but be quick about it,” she relented, and Hayden thanked her and hurried into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Looking around, it was hard to tell whether Bonk was pulling his leg or not. It certainly looked like a normal bathroom, with a marble tub for bathing on one end and a latrine and washbasin at the other. There was even a mirror hanging on the wall over the washbasin, though he had no idea why anyone would want to watch themselves wash their hands. Maybe in case their hair looked stupid, so they could fix it before they left?

Bonk was standing on the rim of the basin, motioning towards the mirror with his wings.

“What are you on about?” Hayden whispered. “I don’t really have to pee, you know, and she’s going to get suspicious if I’m in here too long.”

Bonk flapped his wings and took flight so that he hovered in front of the mirror, gently tapping his head against it.

“Uh…you like that mirror?” Hayden touched it with his hand, but Bonk looked exasperated with him, like he was being deliberately stupid.  “I don’t know what you want—this isn’t the first mirror you’ve ever seen before,” Hayden insisted, and rather than answer, Bonk bit his hand so hard it drew blood.

It was everything Hayden could do not to cry out (or punch Bonk in the head), because dragon bites hurt terribly
, whether poisoned or not.

“I’m going to skin you alive when we get back to Mizzenwald, you dumb dragon,” Hayden threatened, tears welling in his eyes as he examined his bleeding hand. Bonk ignored his threats and began motioning at the mirror again.

Wondering if his familiar had finally lost his mind, Hayden touched his bleeding hand to the mirror. If nothing happened, he was going to get a towel to clean up the mess and drag Bonk out of here by the neck if necessary.

Something happened.

When his blood touched the mirror, the glass seemed to ripple and become fluid like water. Glancing sideways at Bonk in surprise, Hayden took a deep breath and put his hand through the reflective ripple in the mirror, watching his fingers disappear from sight until his entire hand was inside, where it finally hit something solid. Half-terrified at the thought of what might be in here, he grabbed what felt like a prism and a piece of cloth, sweeping his hand around to make sure he had everything before pulling it out of the glass and watching the mirror turn solid again.

He glanced at th
e objects in his hand. The square of cloth had a circle drawn on it in black with the letter ‘M’ inscribed in the center and dozens of intricate lines and curlicues ornamenting it. He had no idea what it meant or why it was hidden in the bathroom mirror. The other thing in his hand was indeed a prism, but it was made of jet-black onyx. Hayden’s first horrible thought was,
I found the Black Prism!
until he remembered that the Black Prism wasn’t actually supposed to be black. He pocketed both items when Magdalene called out, “Are you finished yet?”

“Yeah, just washing up,” Hayden responded, turning on the water and finding a towel to wipe the blood from the mirror. His heart was racing
as he considered the things he found, the things that only his blood made visible to him.

I’ll take them to Master Asher; he’ll know what they are and what to do with them.

If he told the Council about them now, they’d doubtless just confiscate the items and probably arrest him for finding them in the first place. The Prism Master at Mizzenwald was one of the few adults he trusted not to scold him for what he’d done or refuse to talk to him about it, though he might still take the objects away if they were dangerous.

Tr
ying to look calm and innocent, Hayden stepped back into the hall with Bonk on his shoulder and said, “Thanks for waiting. What’s next?”

Magdalene Trout gave him a cursory glance as though trying to detect wrongdoing, but finally she relented and said, “The blue parlor is this way,” and they continued down the hall.

Hayden had a hard time paying attention, since he could feel the onyx prism and the cloth with the weird symbol on it every time he put his hands in his coat pocket. He was barely able to suppress a smile when he thought,
I guess my dad
was
crazy enough to hide dangerous weapons in the bathroom.

2

The Dark Prism’s Treasures

The first thing Hayden did after
arriving at Mizzenwald was search for Master Asher. The Prism Master wasn’t in his classroom or his office, and Hayden’s knock on the door leading to his private living area went unanswered. He was beginning to suspect that his mentor wasn’t back from his holiday research expedition yet, and resigned himself to wait until he returned to school, resisting the urge to handle the items he’d found too much in case they were dangerous.

There were many more people than usual at Mizzenwald right now, given that there was still a week before the beginning of the new term. He supposed that with a war going on, people might feel safer leaving their kids at a magically-fortified school than keeping them at home.

Hayden carried his things upstairs to the fourth floor (every year he got to climb one less flight of stairs) and turned down the main hallway, checking the placards beside each door until he found his room. For once it was actually close to the main stairwell, and he let out a mental cheer at the prospect of how much easier it would be to get to his room after being beaten to a pulp this year. Having his friends drag him to the end of the fifth-floor hallway after each of his I.S.C. trials last year hadn’t been much fun for anyone involved.

His dormitory was a bit roomier
than in previous years as well. The writing desks and beds were larger, and there was a window with a pane that could actually be opened, and a colorful throw rug on the floor.

It’s good to have
fourth-year status.
Hayden grinned at Bonk and set his bags down on top of his bed.

“Come
on, let’s go see if Torin got you a new chew toy over the winter break.”

Bonk’s ears perked up with interest, and Hayden made his way back down the main stairwell and through the pentagonal foyer that showed the major arcana on the walls. It was nice to be able to roll his sleeves up in
the middle of winter, courtesy of the climate control on the grounds. He turned and followed the path that wound around the eastern side of the castle, passing the stables and ending at Torin’s log cabin.

Hayden lift
ed his hand to knock, but Bonk took flight and flew inside through an open window without waiting, so Hayden just pushed open the door and went in. Torin and Master Asher were sitting around a circular table sipping mugs of something that smelled like cinnamon and laughing. They both looked up at the interruption as Bonk perched on Torin’s shoulder.

“Bonk, you little menace! Good to have you back!” Torin greeted the dragon, who immediately dunked his face into the steaming mug of whatever the man was drinking.

“I told you to stop stealing other people’s food and drinks,” Hayden scolded his familiar, stepping further into the room. “Sorry about that, Torin; Bonk only listens to me when it suits him.”

Torin chuckled and stroked the dragon affectionately on the back while he drank.

“Great arcana, Hayden, did Laraby’s family have you wrestling bears over the winter holiday?” Master Asher interjected, eyeing him in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

“You’ve lost some baby-fat from your face and bulked up your arms since I last saw you,” he observed. Hayden immediately felt self-conscious, because he didn’t think he looked that different.

“Oh, uh…Zane’s family had me chopping a lot of firewood this year. I guess my arms got stronger.”

Torin added, “You’re taller too, which explains some of the thinning in your face.”

Hayden shifted from one foot to the other and said, “I didn’t realize I looked so weird…”

“You don’t look weird—well, weirder than normal for a teenage boy,” Asher amended. “It just startled me how much you’ve changed in a couple short months. You look more like your father now.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” Torin correctly interpreted his facial expression. “Your father was a decent-looking fellow.”

“Before he killed all those people,” Hayden put in.

“No, he still looked alright even after that,” Asher countered mildly. “Anyway, you didn’t come here to talk
about appearances. What’s up?”

Grateful for the change in subject Hayden said, “I was actually looking for you earlier, but I couldn’t find you so I thought I’d come down here and see if Torin had a new chew toy for Bonk yet.
That rubber weasel has seen its last days I think.”

“Ah, well now you can kill two c
himaeras with one prism since you’ve found us both,” Asher put in cheerfully.

Hayden arched an eyebrow and said, “I couldn’t kill
one
chimaera with
ten
prisms in the Forest of Illusions. Whoever made up that saying obviously never fought a real chimaera before.”

Asher snor
ted and took another drink from his mug, while Torin stood up and walked behind the counter to rummage through a cloth sack, extracting a rubber squirrel and tossing it to Bonk. Hayden’s familiar dove for it and began chewing it enthusiastically on the floor.

“And why were you looking for me?” the Prism Master asked casually.

“Um, I wanted to talk to you privately about some…magical artifacts…that I found over the holidays.”

Master Asher narrowed his eyes in scrutiny as he looked at Hayden now. “Oh? I didn’t know that the
Larabys had any interesting artifacts lying around the house.”

“Um, that isn’t where I picked them up, sir.”

The Prism Master’s eyes flashed dangerously and he inhaled sharply. He knew that Hayden was supposed to visit his father’s old house during the break; surely he could put two-and-two together.

“Well, you’ve caught my interest.” He stood up, feigning his usu
al airy cadences. “I don’t suppose you brought these artifacts with you to Mizzenwald?” There was something dangerous in his voice, like he was thinking,
How dare you bring deadly magical weapons to this school!?

Torin was watching the two of them with heightened awareness, plainly able to read something in his son’s behavior
that eluded Hayden. Trying not to sound cryptic, Hayden said, “Yeah, they’re in my room.”

“Well then, no time better than the present. Let’s go have a look at them.” Master Asher was already halfway to the door when he spoke, grabbing Hayden’s arm in passing and half-dragging him towards it.

They hadn’t taken four steps from Torin’s cabin when Asher rounded on him and said, “Please tell me you did not find and steal anything from your father’s house,” in a low hiss.

“Well…” Hayden began nervously, “technically Bonk did the finding, and legally the house belongs to me
, so I wouldn’t say I
stole
anything…”

The Prism Master made a threatening guttural noise but said nothing
else until they were standing in Hayden’s room. Asher drew a violet prism and twisted it around in his eyepiece, casting silent spells at the door and around the room in rapid succession that didn’t have any visible effect.

“What did you do?” Hayden asked curiously
, wondering how much trouble he was about to be in.

“Soundproofing and warding spells, to make sure we aren’t overheard before I figure out how colossal your error in judgment was and whether it needs to be reported to a higher authority.”

It had never occurred to Hayden before that Asher might feel compelled to hand him over to the Council of Mages for this, or perhaps he wouldn’t have gone to his mentor with his discoveries. Since it was too late to back out now and pretend it was all a big misunderstanding, Hayden sat down at his desk and began telling the story.

“Look, I went in there with good intentions. It was Bonk—you know how he gets. He hopped off my shoulder and hid in a bathroom, and I thought he was trying to hide from Oliver’s mom and wanted me to come with him, so I told her I had to pee. Honestly, I didn’t think my father would hide anything worth finding inside a bathroom.”

Asher raised his eyebrows in interest and said, “Not the most likely place for dangerous objects to be stored. Continue.”

“Well, Magdalene didn’t want to let me out of her sight, but she finally gave in and let me go in on my own. Bonk kept flapping around near a mirror, like he wanted something from it, and then he bit my hand so that it bled.”

“Bonk bit you?” Master Asher glanced at Hayden’s familiar momentarily.

“As soon as I touched my hand to the mirror it sort of turned to liquid, so I reached in and—”

“Do you mean to tell me that you stuck your hand into a magical surface, in the most dangerous house in the Nine Lands, that you couldn’t even
see
through?” Asher interrupted him, rubbing his temples like his head hurt.

“It sounds bad when you say it like that…”

“Have I taught you nothing in the last two years?” The Prism Master sighed ruefully. “Reaching into mysterious magical portals—especially in your father’s old house—is one of the dumbest things you could ever do. You’re lucky you didn’t lose your hand, or your life.”

Considering that for the first time, Hayden swallowed hard and said, “Okay…well I’ll remember that next time. But I got lucky and nothing happened, ex
cept I found this scrap of cloth and a strange prism…”

“What?!
You found one of your father’s old prisms?” Master Asher looked like he was about to duel him, and Hayden flinched reflexively.

“Yeah, only I didn’t really get a chance to look at it properly and I wasn’t sure if it was dangerous, so I wanted to show you…”

He opened his knapsack while he was talking and withdrew the black onyx prism, passing it carefully to the Prism Master. Asher held the thing in his hand for a moment and then cocked his head to the side in confusion, twirling it slowly in his palm.

“At first I thought it might be the Black Prism that everyone’s looking for, but then I remembered that you said the prism wasn’t
actually
black, just that it showed black in its arrays,” Hayden put in. “I didn’t want to try looking through it, in case it burned my eyes out or something.”

“Good to know that you were paying attention in class last year when I talked about booby-trapped prisms,” Asher said calmly, relaxing marginally. He moved his eyepiece out of the way and held the onyx prism up to the light, closing his left eye and looking through it with his right.

“I thought you were left-eyed,” Hayden said quietly.

“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 a
nything 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.”