Frost Prisms (The Broken Prism Book 5) (17 page)

“Okay, how long do I have to get ready?” Hayden asked as he stood up and stretched his legs, wincing when his stiff muscles strained in protest. No matter how many days he slept on the hard crystalline floor, it seemed that his body never really got used to it.

“About forty-five minutes,” the guard informed him, and Hayden picked up his pace, ignoring his aching muscles.

The two of them stepped into the lift, and Hayden watched the man activate the up-and-down control with his wand. Hayden tried to count the number of floors they passed to see how far down they were going, but it was impossible to keep track given how fast they were moving. The only thing he was certain of was that he hadn’t been this far down in the building since the night he came in. Was it his imagination, or did the air smell fresher down here?

The floor they stopped on must have been somewhere near the base of the Crystal Tower, because the space was much wider than the upper levels. The walls no longer appeared transparent, which was a blessed relief after seeing nothing but glare from the sun all of this time. Hayden had long since concluded that his prison cell had been designed with the intention of keeping its occupants in the maximum level of discomfort imaginable without physically torturing them.

He was led down a corridor that curved in a wide circle, stopping about halfway around the arc. The guard directed him into one of the interior rooms, assuming a static position outside the door: back straight, legs shoulder-width apart, and hands folded together in front of him. Hayden wondered how much the man got paid to stand around looking decorative all day.

He entered the bathroom—a much nicer one than the one on the nineteenth level—and couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or bad thing that they were treating him well on the morning of his hearing. Either it meant that they were going to find him innocent, and had decided he was entitled to a little common courtesy, or it meant that his fate was so horrible that they didn’t mind showing him a little kindness before he met his doom.

The floor was tiled in smooth, white granite with black veins shooting through it in a series of concentric circles.

No question what the Council’s favorite shape is,
Hayden thought in mild amusement, eliciting a private smile. It was nice to know that he was still capable of dry humor these days, even if only with himself.

The walls were composed of much smaller tiles, and these were colored to depict a fantastical explosion of magic that wrapped around the room like a mural. A wand was shown disgorging a trail of red and blue smoke, a colored phial near the ceiling splashed green liquid towards the floor; they had even taken the time to arrange the tiles so that it showed the splash effect as the elixir hit the ground.

Hayden approached a shower head near what looked like an explosion of different colored powders, forming a cloud that in real life would almost certainly kill him if he were to encounter it. He pulled lightly on the chords for hot and cold water, adjusting the balance until it was just right and then stripping down to wash. Since he didn’t know when his next decent shower would be, he tried to savor it as much as possible, keeping in mind that he didn’t have much time to dress and eat.

Another surprise was waiting for him when he was finished showering. Instead of donning the same worn pants and T-shirt that he had been wearing for two straight weeks, he found his formal House robes waiting for him. Again, he couldn’t decide if this was a good or a bad thing, but he did feel better once he had them on. He also hoped the Council burned his worn shirt and pants, because he never wanted to lay eyes on them again.

After a hurried breakfast of hardboiled eggs and sausage rolls, he was led to one of the exterior rooms on the same floor, where the guard chivvied him inside like an overbearing nanny and then departed.

He had stepped into a medium-sized room: smaller than the chamber where he had fought for his assets last year in Kargath, but larger than the one they had questioned him in when he was twelve and the Council was deciding whether or not to let him study magic.

There were two long tables angled towards each other in an inverted ‘V’ in the center of the room. All of the seats at the right-hand table were occupied by the ten members of the Council of Mages, wearing their formal gold-and-black robes, Calahan at the center. The other table was completely unoccupied at present, which seemed strange and made the room look unbalanced, but Hayden assumed it might be for witnesses or other people who could be called to testify later on.

Low benches lined the walls. There was probably only enough room for forty people to sit down, assuming they squeezed together fairly tightly—though it wasn’t currently filled to capacity. A large black-and-gold banner hung from the ceiling with the symbols for the ten major and minor arcana on it, artistically intertwined around the Council’s insignia. Other than that, the room was completely unadorned.

All eyes turned to Hayden as he looked to the Council members for directions on where to go. Calahan pointed wordlessly to a seat in the center of the open space between the V-shaped table configuration, and Hayden sat down, looking out into the audience to see who he recognized.

It was either a weekend or else classes had been cancelled, because all ten Masters from Mizzenwald were in attendance, even Sark. The Master of Powders met his gaze neutrally before Hayden glanced at the others. Mistress Razelle looked like she wanted to whack the Council members over the head and whisk him off to the infirmary for a healing elixir, but most of the others simply looked neutral or slightly grim.

Well, that’s encouraging…

Three of the Masters from Valhalla were there, including Mandra; four from Isenfall, though Kiresa was the only one Hayden remembered; two from Creston in Hazenvale; one from Branx, in Wynir. The other Masters were obviously from the western schools, because he had never seen their robes before and didn’t recognize a one of them. More to give himself something to do than because he was actually interested, he tried to guess at who was who while the Council members finished preparing their notes.

Those three in the black robes must be from Vyra in Ryvale, because their colors are black and silver. The one in brown is probably from Sud-Benir, in Sudir; that robe looks like it was designed with a desert climate in mind.

He had no idea which of the remaining duos was from Irea in Osglen and which was from Redkamp in Norvale, knowing virtually nothing about either place, but it didn’t matter much because by the time he started thinking about it the Council was ready to proceed.

“This is the first day of the trial Hayden Frost, who presently stands accused of returning his father, Aleric Frost—also known as the Dark Prism—back into power in the Nine Lands. He also stands accused of evading the law when he was called upon to report to the Crystal Tower to be tried for this violation,” Calahan spoke loudly and clearly, addressing the room at large. A record-keeper was hurriedly taking notes, sitting on one of the benches beside the delegates from Isenfall.

Hayden let his eyes roam over the Council members, some of whom blinked and looked away from his gaze, while others met his eyes unflinchingly. Magdalene Trout was one of the latter, though, interestingly, Laris was one of those who looked away.

“During this preliminary hearing, the charges against Hayden Frost will be finalized before proceeding to the full trial tomorrow.” Calahan turned to him now and said, “For the record, please state your name and major area of discipline for this assembly.”

“Hayden Frost, prism-user,” he answered calmly, determined not to look rattled.

“And do you understand the purpose of today’s gathering?”

“Not entirely,” he admitted. “You said you’re finalizing charges…?”

Calahan pursed his lips as though annoyed that he had to explain things, which gave Hayden a fleeting moment of satisfaction.

“That is correct. The formal trial will begin tomorrow, or later in the day today if things progress rapidly. This morning we will determine, based on our questions and your answers, the severity of the charges against you and what penalties may be sought in recompense.”

Ah, they’re going to decide whether I brought my father back on purpose or on accident and whether they want to Bind me, leave me in jail to rot, or kill me…

“Do you understand?” Calahan addressed him evenly, and Hayden nodded. “A ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer is required,” the Chief Mage prompted.

“Yes, I understand,” Hayden replied.

“Very well then, let us proceed with the questioning. Horace?”

The man at the far end of the table opened with an easy question, rather than getting right to the meat of things, and asked, “How old are you, Hayden Frost?”

“I recently turned sixteen,” he answered in his most polite tone, determined not to give anyone a reason to punish him for sarcasm.

“Sixteen years old, yet you’ve already been involved in more dangerous situations than most mages encounter in a lifetime.”

Hayden didn’t respond, since he hadn’t been asked a question, simply meeting Horace’s gaze with an expression of polite interest.

“You participated in the Battle of Northern Aggression two years ago, did you not?”

“If that’s what the war in the Forest of Illusions is being called, then yes, I was there.”

“More recently, you entered the largest stable schism on the continent with two others in an attempt to close it from the inside, which you managed successfully?”

“Yes,” Hayden confirmed once more.

Horace placed his chin on his folded hands when he asked, “But you were the only member of your original party to survive the other realm, is that correct?”

Frowning, Hayden nodded, then remembered he was required to answer out loud and said, “Yes.”

Horace yielded the floor to the woman sitting beside him.

“How did your companions lose their lives inside the other realm, while you survived?”

Not liking this line of questioning, Hayden tried to remain calm and keep the emotion from his voice when he answered.

“Harold died after the three of us came to a fork in the road. The ley lines we were following split off in two different directions at that point: the left path went through a swamp, while the way on the right seemed clear. Tanner and I wanted to go left, but Harold refused and insisted on going right because it appeared safer. We couldn’t reach an agreement on which route to take, and Harold announced that it was time to go our separate ways, and that he would meet us when the ley-lines came together again, assuming we all survived. He only made it a few yards away from us before quicksand got him and he was gone.”

A few of the Council members raised their eyebrows at this, as well as a few of the various Masters in the audience.

“You claim that a member of your party was prepared to split away from the one mage in the group with the ability to seal the schism?”

Hayden frowned and said, “He wasn’t terribly impressed with my leadership abilities when deprived of magic, and thought I was going insane and that we were all going to die there. He was grumbling a lot about how the Council pulled a fast one on him, talking me up beyond my abilities to convince him to even volunteer in the first place. I think by then he was planning on heading for the exit to the schism, whether I was there to seal it behind us or not.”

A long moment of silence followed this, in which a few of the Council members had the grace to look guilty, though Calahan apparently felt nothing for tricking a man into volunteering for a suicide mission.

“Why would two of you want to walk through a swamp, when you yourself just said that the other path appeared clear?”

Hayden glanced at Master Laurren, unsure whether or not he was allowed to tell them about the Master’s warning to him, or if that would only make things worse. The Master wasn’t looking at him, but gave a microscopic twitch of the head, which gave Hayden his answer.

“I just had a bad feeling about the other way. It seemed too easy, after everything we had already endured to get there. Tanner and I decided that if the other parties before us had gotten that far, they probably would have gone right, and it obviously hadn’t worked out well or they would have come back through the schism and sealed it behind them.”

That was vaguely true, and the most convincing excuse he could come up with on the spot.

“So, according to you, you and Tanner elected to wade through a swamp because you ‘had a feeling’, allowing your other party member to take a separate path on which he fell into quicksand and was killed.”

“That’s what happened,” Hayden confirmed, not liking the woman’s skeptical tone or the way they kept saying things like ‘according to you’ and ‘you claim’, as though he was lying through his teeth.

The next mage along the table asked, “You two couldn’t assist Harold with breaking free of the quicksand before he was overcome?” in a tone of unflattering disbelief.

Are they really going to suggest I murdered my teammates in the middle of another realm while at a complete loss for magic and rapidly going nuts?

“It wasn’t like quicksand in this realm. One minute he was walking, and in the time it takes to blink he had dropped straight through the ground and disappeared. We didn’t even have time to call out to him before he was gone—he might as well have fallen into a hole,
that’s
how fast he went down.”