The Schism (The Broken Prism Book 4) Read online

  “Lift your eyepiece,” the Master muttered to him in a low, lightly-accented voice, “or they’ll see it as a challenge to fight.” He tilted his head ever-so-slightly towards the Council members who were approaching behind him with the rest of the group.

  Hayden did as he was told and raised his eyepiece so that the prism inside it was pointed straight up at the sky, trying to place the man’s accent to mark his origins. Osglen, maybe?

  “What’s all this?” Hayden asked the man, gesturing around at the large group of people who were now examining the opening of the schism and speaking hurriedly to each other.

  “Another expedition to attempt to seal off the gateway,” Graus explained easily, though he frowned minutely at the lanky red-haired girl who was explaining something to her escorts.

  Surprised, Hayden blurted out, “Those five are going to go inside?”

  Master Graus nodded, eyes never leaving the young girl’s face when he answered. “Yes. Delauria has some minor Focus damage on both sides, and volunteered to go inside to attempt to close the schism for good. Those four are going with her—both as protection, and though no one will say it out loud, to carry her bodily to the opening and attempt to force her to perform the Closing spell if it proves necessary.”

  Hayden gulped and looked at the girl again, wondering if this was the last time he would see her alive—or sane. She seemed so young and fragile, smiling confidently as she assured her escorts that everything would be alright. Hayden couldn’t tell if she was just that brave, or if she was putting on a front for the sake of the others. Either way, he admired her for it.

  Kobi was standing off to one side of the aperture, looking poleaxed at being surrounded by so many important people all at one time. Hayden approached Delauria and extended a hand to introduce himself.

  “Hayden Frost, right?” she preempted him, smiling and taking his hand. “Of course I know who you are—not like there are a lot of natural prism-users at Mizzenwald right now,” she gestured to his circlet.

  “How come you volunteered for this?” He couldn’t help but blurt out the question that was burning in his mind. “Did the Council pressure you into it?”

  She looked stunned that he would even think such a thing, sparing the Council members behind her a brief glance.

  “The Council? What, no—they’ve been so nice to me, even before I volunteered. And they’re paying me a fortune just to even attempt this, so I can’t really complain; my family could desperately use the money.” She shrugged, perplexed by Hayden’s surprise. “And I offered to go because not a lot of other people were stepping up, and I figured it would be shameful to just sit around waiting for others to fix things while I took it easy. I suppose you were the one who taught me to be brave like that, if I think back on it.”

  “What? Me?” Hayden asked, raising his eyebrows. He hadn’t ever seen this girl in his life before now, and he was supposed to have influenced her decision in some way?

  “Well sure, I mean look at what you did just last year. You defied everyone who told you to stay at school where it was safe and ran into a warzone—and won, when you were just fourteen. I’m five years older than you were then, and I couldn’t bear the thought of being so cowardly when you had been so brave at an even younger age.”

  Hayden wanted to jump up and down and scream at her for being a fool. He wished people would stop trying to analyze all of his stupid actions and assigning merit or forethought to them. Now this girl who was barely an adult was going to leap into a schism where she could lose everything—including her life—because she thought he had set the example. But what could he do about it—shout out that she had gotten it all wrong and that she should turn back now? What would that accomplish other than to make him look nuts and cheapen her sacrifice?

  Instead he asked, “How badly damaged are your Foci?” gesturing to her bare wrists. She had obviously removed her correctors before coming here.

  She shrugged.

  “I’ve got quarter-inch correctors on each arm normally,” she explained with a slight flush of the cheeks. “Sorry, I’m used to being embarrassed by how much correction I need…it’s so strange having it be an asset for once.” Then she looked at his wrists and blushed even deeper, probably thinking that she’d insulted him. All Hayden could think about was that quarter-inch correction wasn’t going to be enough to keep her sane for days inside the schism.

  She’s going to lose her mind at some point inside there…

  He only hoped that the effects were temporary and could be righted when her team pulled her back out before the opening was sealed for good.

  “Well, uh—good luck.” He shook her hand again, feeling unaccountably sad for this girl he hardly knew. “Happy hunting, and all of that.”

  “Thanks,” she grinned, looking much more at ease than he would have right now if their roles were reversed.

  After a few more words with the Masters and the Council members, Delauria took a deep breath and stepped inside of the schism, disappearing from view in an instant, her four escorts right behind her. The area felt strangely empty without them, and now the others began to walk away, though not before Master Willow set a wand in a makeshift wooden stand, pointed towards the opening.

  “Close,” he said casually, leaving the wand there once he saw that the spell was working.

  “You’re just going to keep a constant Closing spell cast at the opening the whole time that she’s in there?” Hayden asked in in surprise. It seemed like a horrible waste of materials for someone to keep coming out and replacing them as they were steadily consumed.

  “That’s about the only thing we can do,” he informed Hayden, glancing back at the opening of the schism with a slightly resigned look on his face. One of the Council members Hayden didn’t know very well joined them silently and listened to their conversation, but Willow didn’t acknowledge him so neither did Hayden.

  “There’s no way for us to know when she’s made it to the opening on the other side, or when she’ll start casting, so for a few days we’ll simply keep a constant spell going from this end so that when she’s ready there will be no delay from our side,” Master Willow continued heavily.

  “And if she hasn’t made it in a few days?” Hayden asked around a knot of tension in his throat.

  “Then we’ll assume she was lost,” he answered softly. “No one could withstand the distortion effects for long in there, and if she hasn’t made it by then…”

  There was no real need for him to finish his thought. If she hadn’t managed the Closing spell by then there was no hope of her ever being seen again.

  “Her Foci aren’t warped enough for her to even last a few days in there, are they?” Hayden asked the Master as quietly as possible. Willow considered him for a moment and then shook his head.

  “No, they probably are not. I’d be surprised if she has hours.”

  “Then why did we just let her go in?” his voice was strained from having his worst fears confirmed.

  “It was her choice,” the Master sighed.

  Finally, the Council member who was walking silently with them spoke to Hayden.

  “I wonder how many people you’re going to let sacrifice themselves before you man up and do the right thing.” For someone that Hayden didn’t even know the name of, the man harbored a surprisingly strong disdain of him.

  Hayden glanced at the Councilman and frowned.

  “I don’t see you hurrying forward to fling yourself into the schism,” he snapped back, agitated that the Council was trying to make him feel like a coward, and even angrier that it was working.

  “I don’t need Focus-correction,” the man held up his bare wrists for Hayden to see. “It would be a pointless suicide mission for me to go inside, but you would last longer than anyone in the Nine Lands, and yet you sit here at school like a child.”

  “He is a child,” Master Willow suggested delicately, though there was a note of steel in his voice.

  “He wasn�
��t playing the child when he sued us, was he?” the Councilman continued. “Came strutting into the room like a little lord, wearing his daddy’s robes and his fancy Medal of Heroism, because he wanted to be treated like an adult. Well he won that battle, and now he wants to go back to being a scared little boy who lets other greater men and women shield him behind their skirts.”

  The look he cast Master Willow made it plain that he was included in the jab, though Hayden was too busy trying to calm himself to notice whether the Master of Wands seemed upset by it. He was so angry he thought he could feel his blood boiling between his ears, torn between feeling cowardly and justified in his refusal to go into the schism. He didn’t trust himself to speak for fear of saying something that would get him arrested, so he simply picked up his pace and walked away from the others as quickly as he could without actually running.

  The Councilman called out after him, “I hope you don’t lose any sleep tonight over the fact that you shook that girl’s hand and sent her off to her death when you could have prevented it!”

  Hayden walked even faster, fists clenched and heart racing as he approached the back door of the school.

  Just get inside…just get away before you say something stupid…

  “I’ll be sure to tell her little sister how her death was necessary, so that little Hayden Frost could keep playing at school!”

  Hayden couldn’t take it anymore and broke into a run, sprinting past the smooth black stone where Conjury was taught and into the castle, slamming into students on their way to their next class and shoving through them without apology, desperate to get to his room until he calmed down.

  It wasn’t until he reached the safety of his dormitory that Hayden realized he had walked out in the middle of his shift with Kobi without even asking if they were allowed to leave. That just made him angrier on top of everything else, and he aimed a kick at the side of his desk to vent his frustrations, which accomplished nothing other than making his foot hurt.

  “Told you he looked ready to kill,” Zane’s voice said from the doorway. In Hayden’s furious pacing, he hadn’t even heard it open.

  He turned and saw his roommate standing in the threshold with Tess, who had a very concerned look on her face as she watched him, cheeks flushed as though she had chased after him.

  “What happened?” Zane entered the room first, waiting for Tess to follow before shutting the door behind them. “I saw you running up the stairs like the school was on fire, but you ignored me when I called out to you.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Hayden snapped, still struggling to master his emotions. The fact that the Councilman had accomplished exactly what he was trying to do by making Hayden angry only incensed him further.

  “Alright, well I guess the three of us can sit around in awkward silence if you’d prefer,” Zane suggested cheerfully, taking a seat on the edge of his bed and continuing to stare at Hayden. After a hesitant moment, Tess joined him.

  “Can’t I just stomp around the room kicking things in peace?” He sighed, though some of the heat was beginning to leave him already. Somehow it seemed a lot stupider to throw a tantrum when there were people watching him.

  “Sure thing, carry on,” Zane grinned, sensing his shifting mood. “We won’t say a word.”

  With a last sigh of agitation, Hayden threw himself onto the chair in front of his desk, clenching and unclenching his fists a few times just because he could.

  “I happened to be on schism duty when a big hoard of mages showed up, including some of the Council members,” Hayden explained, though now that he thought about it, it did seem awfully coincidental that they just happened to all show up when he was on rotation. Maybe they planned it that way deliberately so they would have a chance to needle him…

  “Oh yeah, I saw a few of them walking through the Pentagon, but I didn’t know what they were here for,” Tess interjected, still scrutinizing him carefully.

  Hayden summarized his meeting with Delauria and the others, his cheeks flushing with renewed fury when he told them the things that the Councilman shouted at him. By the time he was finished, Zane looked like he was smelling something unpleasant, and Tess was fingering the hilt of a knife she kept on her belt like she was itching to stab someone.

  “That horrible old toad,” she fumed, looking down at her hand. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she stopped toying with the knife.

  “Has anyone ever told you how refined you are?” Zane asked her. “The thing I was thinking of calling him was much less appropriate than ‘horrible old toad’.”

  Tess ignored him and said to Hayden, “You know he’s just doing it to get under your skin—so you can’t let him succeed. They have no right to try and pressure you into anything just because they don’t like you; you’re not the Council’s errand boy.”

  Hayden frowned.

  “Apparently I am. And it wouldn’t bother me so much if I thought I stood any less of a chance than the others, but let’s face it…my Foci are considerably more damaged than anyone else’s. I might have the best shot at succeeding just because I can stay sane longer than anyone else.”

  Tess shook her head furiously.

  “No. I mean, that may be true…but that still doesn’t mean it’s your job to solve all the magical problems in the world for the Council. You said Delauria was taking a group of normal people with her, so they’ll be able to keep focused and drag her along no matter what.”

  “She still needs to be well enough to perform the Closing spell,” Hayden pointed out grimly.

  “I’m sure they’ll manage it somehow. Look, if the Council still didn’t know you existed, they’d find another way to solve the problem using fully-qualified adults who do this for a living. They’re just leaning on you because they can, and because you’re a minor and you don’t have a family that can stomp on them for you.”

  Not wanting to be argumentative, Hayden still felt compelled to point out that without him, there might not be a schism at Mizzenwald in the first place. It was he, after all, who had inadvertently blown up the Forest of Illusions, causing it to lose stability and jump locations, which opened up a bunch of schisms across the Nine Lands during the backlash.

  “You’re right,” Zane observed dryly, “Things would be much better right now if we were being overrun with sorcerers. I’m sure the Magistra would thank you for not opening any inconvenient schisms for her while she ruled from the top of the Crystal Tower. Maybe the rest of us could get cozy jobs as slaves in her new world order.”

  Hayden let that pass without comment, his anger beginning to wind down.

  “I know you’re right,” he relented at last. “Sometimes I just wish it wasn’t illegal to punch Council members in the face, or that you could buy a pass for it or something. I have a lot of money now; I could afford whatever prices they were charging.”

  It wasn’t until Tess relaxed that he noticed how tense she was. Apparently she had been worried about him haring off into the schism in a moment of foolish bravado.

  Zane, also seeing this, said, “Hey, we might be worrying over nothing. That group that went inside will probably be back by tomorrow, and everything will be sealed up nice and tight. The worst thing we’ll have to worry about for the rest of the year is our unholy amount of homework.”

  Hayden wasn’t sure if any of them really believed that, but they all nodded and then dropped the subject entirely. There was nothing else to do but wait.

  He kept an ear out for news about Delauria’s group over the next two days, but no one reported them emerging from the schism, and the opening looked as large and imposing as ever. On the third day, Master Willow came outside and removed the last wand he had set out to perform the Closing spell, not making eye contact with Hayden or saying a word as he walked back inside.

  Even though he knew they had officially given up hope of Delauria’s party ever returning, he couldn’t help but hold out hope for her every time he had schism-patrol in the next w
eek. He was sitting on the grass near the aperture, working on his Charms essay while Kobi watched the opening, avoiding conversation because he could tell his partner wanted to ask him why he hadn’t volunteered to go into the schism yet on his own expedition and he didn’t feel like answering.

  He had nearly finished drawing a sketch of the emblem he was referring to in his essay when he heard Kobi let out a strangled yell, followed by a thud that was forceful enough to shake the ground where Hayden was sitting.

  Leaping to his feet and equipping a prism as he looked up, Hayden felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. After all this time of waiting and wondering whether anything would ever break free of the schism, he now found himself facing a fifteen-foot tall hydra with seven heads. It looked a lot like a hydra from this world, except that it was dark purple and appeared to be rotting from the inside out, patches of scales flaking off of it as it moved and revealing sinew and bone beneath it.

  It must have jumped through the opening with amazing speed, because Kobi was lying in a heap on the ground near one of its scaly legs. The hydra had to have slammed right into him upon exiting the schism and knocked him unconscious. One of those seven heads was lowering towards his prone figure, teeth bared hungrily. It occurred to Hayden just then that while he had extensive experience fighting hydras, he had only ever tackled the two- and three-headed ones before—never a seven-headed one, the most powerful.

  He spun the crystal prism around in his eyepiece as fast as he could, casting Pierce at the head that was approaching Kobi and diving out of the way of the other six, which were rearing back to strike at him. The hydra let out a high-pitched shriek that let him know his spell must have been at least somewhat effective, and when he rolled back to his feet he saw that the head that had been struck was now blind, lashing back and forth in agitation.

  He dove for the nearest summoning torch, not caring who it brought to help him, but fell short of his goal and had to roll out of the way as two more heads struck out at him, slamming into the ground on either side of his body. Looking up from his back, the hydra seemed even bigger and scarier, all six heads swaying above him and positioning for the next attack.