Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  But this girl not only thought that my plan was wrong, but that it was so pathetic as to be hysterical. I lost my temper and bellowed, “WHAT IS SO FUNNY?”

  Her eyes widened in the dim light with surprise at my yell, but she continued to laugh. Then a deep cough echoed through her chest and she dissolved into a fit of hacking. She rolled over onto her side in the bed and coughed, a sad, empty sound. It went on for several minutes, and I began to worry that she would choke from the violence of it. When the coughing finally quieted and she caught her breath, all traces of her smile were gone.

  “Boy,” she whispered hoarsely. “You are not looking for a stone. Those who have sent you here after a simple rock have either misled you or been misled themselves. What you have failed to learn before now, along all of your traveling, is that you are looking, in fact, for me.” Then she lay back on her bed, her eyes trained on the low ceiling of the cave. “But you can’t have me to either use or destroy,” she continued quietly. “There is no way out of this place.”

  “Looking for you?” I said. “I don’t understand.”

  “I hold the power. The story of the stone serves only to hide me.”

  I took another step.

  “STOP!” she bellowed, coughing hollowly once again. “Stop. If you come any closer, you will be trapped in here with me. And, forgive me, but I don’t think I could handle another two hundred years here with someone as simple as you.”

  “I am NOT simple!” I protested immediately. Two hundred years? “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through or where I’ve come from to get here. Now why—”

  “If you take one more step in this direction,” she said angrily, glaring at me now, “then you will be trapped in here, a prisoner like me, forever. Is that what you want?”

  “But what do you mean?” I asked, stopping. “There are no bars holding you in. There’s nothing keeping you here. If you want to go, then go.”

  “You understand nothing!” she bellowed. “Do you think I would stay here if there were a way, any way, to break free? You are a fool.”

  “I am NOT—” I began.

  “Try it then,” she said menacingly. “If you are so wise, go ahead. Try to throw me something from where you stand.”

  “Throw you something?” I asked, confused. I had been about to launch a tirade of my own.

  “So I can show you,” she said, her voice grating with irritation.

  I glared at her for a moment, and then relented. I removed the pack from my back and dug out an apple, my last. Standing, I threw it directly at her head. But as it flew through the air it made a ripping sound halfway between the two of us. It seemed to pause a little bit midair, as if it was tearing through a thin sheet of paper. Then it broke through to the other side; she caught it in one hand and held it up for me to see.

  “Ok,” she said. “Now watch.” She tossed the apple back towards me. I lifted my hands, ready to catch it, but it did not meet my grasp. Instead, it bounced off an invisible barrier, and landed on the floor next to her bed. There was a wall between us, though I could see nothing.

  “You see,” she said, finally, “if you come through the wall, you will never, ever be able to get out again. There is no escape.” She pulled her covers up to her chin and rolled over, facing away from me.

  “Is there…” I began, then I paused, unsure of what to say. “Is there anything to be done? Is there any way out?” It was a stupid question, I knew, but I could think of no other.

  “No,” her back spoke. “There is no way out.”

  No way out.

  I backed up against the wall and slid down to the floor. I tried to make it all fit together right in my head. I could not destroy the Stone of Borna because, according to her, there was no Stone of Borna, only this slight little girl. I wouldn’t hurt her, even if I could reach her. But could I leave her here? Should I continue on to search for the next link?

  What I knew for certain was that Almara had led me here to find the next link. Owyn had wanted me to destroy the Stone, but it was Almara I needed to follow. Whether he had meant for me to find this girl, I didn’t know, but here, somewhere, would be an answer to where that link was hidden.

  I looked up at her again and, realizing she really couldn’t get to me, decided to tell her why I was really here.

  “It’s not just the Stone I’m looking for,” I said. “I’m looking for a link to lead me to Almara.”

  “You are looking,” she said, rolling over in her tiny bed, “for Almara?” She studied me closely, her eyebrows furrowed together.

  I scrambled over to the edge of the invisible wall so that she could see me.

  “Yes, I have been looking for him all this time. I’ve been following his links for the past few weeks and the last one led me to here. To you.”

  Her eyes grew wide with disbelief.

  “But you are not Brendan,” she said, shaking her head slightly.

  “No, I am Aster. Aster Wood,” I said.

  “But where is Brendan?” she asked.

  Did she not know?

  “Brendan is dead,” I said. “He died on Earth, my planet, ages ago.”

  At this her eyes grew even wider, and then slowly filled with tears.

  “He is dead,” she said quietly.

  “Yes,” I said. “So I am trying to get to Almara instead. I am Brendan’s descendant, his great great grandson.”

  She ignored me.

  “He is dead,” she said again, and rolled over to face the wall again. The light moved across the room to her and hovered over her head.

  After several long moments I broke the silence.

  “Do you know where I can find the link?” I asked.

  “Of course I knew he must be dead,” she said quietly. “No other explanation exists for why he would not come for me.”

  “You knew Brendan?” I asked.

  She did not respond to this question, but to the other one.

  “Yes,” she said. “I know where the link hides. But it is not a secret I can tell. I must be with you to find it.”

  “But why?” I asked. “Why do you need to be with me? I’ve had help to find the other links, but I’m sure if you just tell me where to look I’ll be able to get to it.”

  She chuckled softly. “No. The link is entwined with my own wild magic. Without me, you will never, ever find it. Almara made it so.”

  “Ok,” I said, scrambling. “Then we’re going to have to get you out of here.”

  There had to be a way.

  “You and I,” I said, “we’ll figure it out.”

  “The lock is too complicated, too difficult for even someone with my talents to force open. A secret word must be entered into it. He does it every time he comes to torture me, but I have never seen the letters he enters. There are many languages, and even if we knew which one we would need the correct word. One must possess the key.”

  “A key?” I said. I didn’t have a key. The skeleton key from the dungeons had been lost to the snow lands. But it wasn’t a normal lock she was talking about, it was a code.

  “I have a book of codes. Will that work?”

  Her head moved slightly as she tilted her face a fraction towards me. “You have a book? Of codes?” she asked.

  “Almara’s book,” I said. I dug through the pack and pulled it out.

  She rolled over again and held herself up on one elbow, looking over at me with interest. I opened the book and showed her the codes inside.

  “How did you get that?” she asked, amazed. A look of longing crossed her face.

  “It was one of the links,” I said. “I stole it from Cadoc.”

  “You stole it from Cadoc?” she asked incredulously. “How are you still alive?”

  Good question.

  “Nevermind that,” I said. “What sort of word should I look for?”

  “How do you know of Cadoc?” she asked, interrupting me again. Her eyes narrowed now with suspicion.

  “I’m t
rying to tell you,” I said. “I took it from him. He was chasing me in Stonemore, and then I set the prisoners free, and then—”

  “Cadoc,” she said, “is my captor.”

  I stopped blubbering and stared at her. On her face she wore a grimace of distaste and pain.

  “Cadoc put you here?” I asked. She nodded. I felt I had known this all along. Who else would do such a thing?

  “Don’t you understand?” she said. “Even if you could free me, he will know. As soon as this enchantment is broken he will come for us both.”

  This statement froze me in place. Cadoc would know? The last thing I wanted to experience ever again in my life was to come face to face with the man in black. But a tiny voice in the back of my head reminded me of what he had said the last time we met: that he had the power to send me back to Earth. Could it be that if I faced Cadoc now, this whole thing might be over and I could go home? Or might I be better off leaving her here and avoiding him altogether? Maybe I could find the link on my own if I searched this land for long enough. Maybe the magic that gave me the power to run in these lands, maybe it would be enough to break the link free. Then I could get to Almara and avoid Cadoc altogether. Once I found Almara, he could come back for the girl. I looked up and found her watching me.

  “You see,” she said quietly as our eyes met, “you cannot free me. This is not your battle. You are best to go on your way. Go now, before he returns.” The tears that filled her eyes did not fall to her cheeks. The strength of two hundred years kept her sorrow controlled just enough to prevent her crying.

  What horrible things Cadoc had done. Not just to her, but to everyone he had ever come across. He had tortured, killed, or kidnapped anyone who had stood in his way. Or who possessed something he wanted. I realized that I, too, had something Cadoc wanted. I didn’t know what it was, but why else would he offer to help me get back to Earth? This girl had something he wanted, too, and look how he had treated her. For two hundred years.

  I couldn’t leave her.

  “We need to move,” I said. “How do I apply the key? Is there a dial somewhere or what?”

  “You are a fool,” she said. “You are making the wrong choice.”

  I sighed with frustration. “Look, kid, I don’t have any more time to deal with your attitude. You need me to get out of here. And I need you to get me to the next link so I can get home. Are you going to help me or not?”

  She glared at me, offended by my tone. But then, with some effort, she extended her arm past the edge of the bed and pointed at the floor a few feet away from where I stood. I hadn’t seen it before, but on the floor, carved into the rock, were four large squares.

  “You put the code there,” she said, “He always blinds me when he comes for me, so I can never see which characters he enters. I’ve never seen a single one.”

  I knelt in front of the squares. “Never seen a single one,” I mumbled as my hands traced along the borders. So many markings and symbols lined every page of Almara’s book; surely there were millions of different options to fill in these four pieces of code.

  Without asking her, I tried the first word that came to my mind. It was the same code I had entered at the stone wolf: J-A-D-E. This time, instead of golden light following my finger as I traced the letter, thick, black smoke trailed it.

  No dice.

  “What should we try?” I asked, flipping through the book.

  “Cadoc speaks in a strange tongue when he breaks through the wall,” she said. “It is the language of Sabellioc, or the language of the dead.”

  I held the book up so she could see the pages began flipping through, hoping she would recognize one of them as this Sabellioc. The last few pages of the book caught her interest, and I moved it as close to her as I dared.

  “That must be it,” she said, wheezing a bit. “It is the only one I do not recognize.”

  “What word?” I asked.

  “Try wood,” she said.

  “Why wood?” I asked. What did this have to do with me? But she did not answer. I flipped to the right page and deciphered the word from the alphabet I knew into the Sabellioc characters. I carefully drew the squiggly shapes into each square with my finger. Nothing happened.

  “No, that’s not it,” I said.

  “Try czar,” she said.

  I did. It didn’t work.

  “King,” she said.

  And on and on it went. For at least an hour she would spit out words to me, anything she could think of with four letters, and I would translate them into Sabellioc and enter them onto the stones. Nothing worked.

  Finally I stood up from the cold rock and threw the book at the far wall in frustration. How was I supposed to get her out of here? I sank down to the ground and put my head into my hands. She seemed to give up, too, and rolled over again.

  “I told you,” she said quietly. “There is no way out. Flee while you still can.”

  Maybe we had the wrong language, I thought. Maybe I should try all the words again with different symbols. But the more I thought about that the more unlikely that seemed, and the longer I spent buried deep in this mountain the less time I felt we had. She was right. If Cadoc spoke the language when he was here, the very language we had been trying for the past hour, then I was almost certain that it was the right one. What was I missing?

  I thrust my fist against my forehead, tapping it again and again, trying to crack a code that this girl, herself, could not crack after two centuries of effort. The last time I had tried to free Cadoc’s prisoners, the key to opening the cells had been right there, hidden in the treasure hold. It was so powerful that not even Cadoc could figure out what to do with it. But the prisoners knew. They had just been waiting for someone to come along who was willing to help them. But this girl had no such hidden power. She had no idea how to get herself out.

  The prisoners. I thought about them in their rags, their bony faces looking at me from behind their cages. Them all approaching the bars of their cells in unison, holding out their arms…

  Suddenly I was on my feet. I had been so stupid! How could I not have realized it before now?

  “Who says,” I said, approaching the edge, “that the code is made up of letters?”

  I knelt down at the base and quickly entered in the only set of numbers that came to mind. The only numbers that Cadoc tattooed every single one of his prisoners with, branding them like cattle. 3-3-3-3.

  The effect was immediate. I stood up and took several steps backwards as the rumbling started. The barrier between she and I began to glow brightly, like a pane of glass filled with light from the inside out, and the invisible sheet made little tinks and cracking sounds. Then, with a burst of force, the surface blew apart with a loud crash, the remaining shards of the barrier falling to my feet in a shower of a thousand pieces.

  The girl stared at me with wonder, completely amazed. “How did you—” she began.

  But it was my turn to interrupt. “We don’t have time,” I said. I moved across the space to her bedside and extended my hand to her. “Can you walk?” I asked.

  “No,” she said helplessly.

  “No worry,” I said. I bent over the bed and picked up her frail body, bony and too light. I walked with her in my arms through the narrow tunnel back out into the cavern, and I got a good look at her in the light for the first time.

  Her eyes were fixed on the light coming from the dagger in the center of the room. At first they were simply wide, her mouth moving silently as if she were trying to work out an impossible equation. And then a smile, a real smile, broke across her face for the first time. Soon she was laughing with delight, tears breaking the hard barrier of her resolve and streaming down her face.

  “Who are you?” she said finally, her enormous green eyes meeting mine for the first time.

  “I told you,” I said, “my name is Aster. Aster Wood.”

  Her pale, delicate finger reached up to her face and brushed away a tear.

  “It is a great
pleasure to make your acquaintance, Aster Wood,” she said through hoarse breaths. “I am Jade Aednat Enda Wood, Princess of Borna.”

  Chapter 20

  I gawked at her for a moment, trying to make sense of what she was saying.

  “You’re a Wood, too?” I finally asked.

  She laughed breathlessly, wheezing a little.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “But please, young Aster, let’s stop talking for now. You have brought with you a jadestone. Please hand it to me.” She motioned to the dagger on the floor, which was now spitting sparks and hissing with brilliance.

  How did she know that? I shook my head. “I can’t hand it to you,” I said. “It’s not safe. It’s hotter than anything I’ve ever touched. Look, I’ve already burned myself.” I held out my arm and showed her the red welt on the base of my wrist.

  She smiled weakly. “Alright, then, please take me to it.”

  I hesitated, then walked over towards it, still carrying her, and turned my head to shield my eyes as we neared the intense rays of light.

  “Closer,” she said. “You need to get me closer to it.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “Closer,” she replied.

  My eyes clamped almost completely shut now, I moved to within a few feet of the stone.

  “Closer.”

  I knelt down to the floor, and rested her body next to the stone. She reached out her hand towards it, clearly intending to grasp it.

  “Jade, no!” I cried, pulling her back from the light.

  She looked up at me, her big green eyes pleading. “Trust me,” she said.

  I hesitated, but then relented, pushing her close to the stone so that her hand could reach out and take it. Her fingers stretched out and clasped firmly around the golden handle of the dagger. A small cry rose from her, but she did not drop it. Then, with what seemed to be enormous effort, she picked up the heavy knife and brought it to her chest, holding it there with both hands.

  The light was too bright and the heat too intense for me to hold her. I released her onto the floor and stepped back several paces. I raised my hands up to shield my face, and caught occasional glimpses through my interlaced fingers.