Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  When I looked up I found Owyn wide awake, watching me. I dropped the staff back into the grass. I hadn’t even realized I had lifted it from the ground.

  “Better get moving,” he said quietly.

  “Sorry,” I said reflexively.

  He stayed silent for a moment, watching me.

  “No problem,” he said finally, his voice silken. He sat up, hoisting his pack onto his back. “Shall we?”

  My stomach gave a painful squeeze as I remembered where we were headed.

  I tried to imagine the village on the mountainside. It was the spot where Jade had jumped from, and it was where we needed to go now to follow her trail. I cringed as I remembered the burned bodies stacked like garbage inside the little stone church.

  But I had buried the bodies, I reminded myself. The mountain was destroyed. The dragons dead.

  Still, the feeling I had that I was plodding back towards a place that would trap me, kill me, would not go away.

  It took fifteen more jumps until the destroyed range of the Fire Mountains came into view. Owyn held out the scope to me, and through the glass I saw what remained of the once spectacular mountains. Where once a high peak had stood, burning orange in the sunlight, now only a crumble of rock and debris remained. It was as if a giant fist had come down on the jagged peaks, crushing them into a pile of stones no bigger than a man. It had collapsed in upon itself, and the spot where I had escaped the dark tunnel was completely gone. When I had left the mountain that day, much of the outer shell of it still stood. But now, months later, the weight of the granite had given way, and the huge, sheer cliffs were reduced to rubble.

  Five more jumps and we stood in the valley below the mountain. I held the link out, ready to give the command that would take us in range of the village, and Owyn looked at me expectantly. But when I opened my mouth to speak, no words came out. I stood there, silent, suddenly more terrified than I could ever remember being.

  Finally, I let the link fall heavily against my chest, turning away.

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t go back there. Too much had happened. This was all too raw. Too soon.

  I jumped when I felt Owyn’s hand on my shoulder. He squeezed it.

  “The princess will see you,” he said. “She won’t hurt you.”

  I stared back in the direction of Stonemore. I had trouble breathing past the lump in my throat.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “I could hear it,” he said. “In her voice. She still cares for you. She will listen to you.”

  Will she?

  “And what about you?” I asked, turning. “Aren’t you worried that she’ll lock you up again? Or kill you this time?”

  A flicker went across his eyes, and for a moment I thought I saw something there. Doubt. He dropped his head.

  “What matters now is that we get the gold. Only you can take it from her. What becomes of my life is of little importance.”

  “You really believe that?” I asked.

  He raised his eyes from the ground, stared hard into mine. And I thought I saw that flicker again.

  “I do,” he said.

  The lie betrayed him, flitting behind his pupils like a flag in the wind.

  I knew he was lying. But I didn’t know why.

  I focused, instead, on his words. They didn’t apply to him, but to me.

  And I suddenly believed that there was a chance, even if it was only a remote possibility, that I would be able to convince Jade.

  It wasn’t that his life, or anyone’s, was of little importance. It was that, when up against odds so great, only all of our efforts combined really mattered. If I died, the hand of the Corentin’s enemy would be removed. But that enemy would remain, would keep fighting, would keep opposing the evil until one or the other prevailed. Only then would hope be lost.

  I looked back up the mountain and raised the link, grabbing Owyn’s hand as I did so. It was time to face Jade again, and play my role. The role I finally understood, finally knew, I was destined for.

  Chapter 11

  We landed on the mountain, Owyn on his feet, me on my knees. I looked at the rocks beneath my hands, felt the thinness of the air from the height of the precipice, and knew we weren’t far from our target. When I stood up, Owyn was already walking ahead, up the familiar trail that led to the destroyed village.

  When we came over the rise and I saw the small buildings below, though, my breath caught in my chest. I didn’t want to go down into that place. Not again.

  But I did.

  My legs shook only slightly as I descended. My breath only rattled a touch as I reached the first abandoned dwelling. I held out my hand and ran it along the stone wall as I passed it by, remembering that once, not long ago, this place had held the innocent victims of the Corentin. And that he had burned them alive, not for his own benefit, but for mine. I seethed with the thought that so many were tortured and killed for the simple, disgusting purpose to frighten a kid.

  Owyn had stopped in the center of the small square, waiting for me and watching my movements. I took a deep breath and followed, pushing past him towards the church at the end of the town.

  The little building looked just as I had last seen it. The eighteen mounds that I had made over the bodies from the massacre were still there, but each little hill now had moss growing on top, like blankets draped over each lost soul. Something about this comforted me as I walked to the spot Jade had stood upon as I watched her jump from the mountain. I had stood on this spot before, had seen that the earth was bare, leaving no trace of her departure. Still, I was surprised to find no scar, no sign of her betrayal etched into the dirt.

  “Come on, then,” I said over my shoulder to Owyn. I held out my hand and waved it impatiently. He looked surprised, but then quickly broke into action. In a flash he had joined me and held his chaser up to the sky.

  “Orasco,” he commanded.

  A strange sensation, very unlike a regular jump, pulled at my insides. The feeling was tingly, almost pleasant on my nerves, and instead of the cosmos swirling around us as we leapt, they thrust downward around us as if we were being shot from a cannon.

  When we landed, we both tumbled over like children rolling down a grassy hill, unable to stop.

  “What was that?” I asked when we finally came to rest, slightly alarmed, slightly amazed. I was out of breath.

  Owyn picked several twigs from his knotted hair.

  “A chaser’s a lot faster than a regular link,” he panted.

  “Yeah, I got that,” I said.

  “We think it’s because path has already been made from one place to another, so the normal twisting and pulling doesn’t occur. But really, we’re not certain.”

  I looked around, expecting to see the castle of Riverstone hovering above. But I recognized, instead, a different place I had been before. We sat on a wide hilltop surrounded on all sides by tall pines. In the spot where we had landed, a scorch mark of burnt earth radiated out twenty feet in every direction.

  “Why are we here?” I asked. Far below, almost invisible at this distance, lay the bustling port town of Ossenland. “Why didn’t the chaser take us to Riverstone? Isn’t that where she went?”

  “No,” he said. “She came here first. I lost her after, but then I figured out who she was and followed. I had to guess, though, where she was headed.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Well, when I got here the first time, she was nowhere to be found. I scouted around for a bit, trying to pick up her trail, but she left no sign. I figured she had either left this place, or jumped a second time from here. So I tried following her with the chaser right from this spot.” He got to his feet. “But when I tried it, I only ended up back on the mountain. And the jump wasn’t so pleasant as the one we just made, let me tell you.” He rubbed the back of his neck, as if massaging an old hurt. “When I got back here, this great mark had burned the grass down to the roots, and I realized what had happened.”

/>   “What?”

  “I had been right,” he continued. “She had jumped again from here. But the chaser could only pick up one of those jumps. When I tried to follow her into the second, it backfired. Quite literally. So I had to guess where she was headed and make my way using more primitive methods.”

  “But why would she come here at all? Why not just go straight home?”

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe she was trying to mask the trail she had taken. Or maybe there was some other reason. But I didn’t have time to ask those questions. I simply made haste to get to her.”

  But this didn’t make any sense. When we had been in Ossenland before, when we were on our way to Riverstone for the first time, Jade hadn’t shown any indication that she had ties there. Why would she stop?

  “We should go now, while we have a chance,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because darkness is the best time to get a boat.”

  Oh, no.

  “Why do we have to take a boat?” I asked, suddenly distracted from my questions. “Can’t we jump across?”

  “With what?” he asked. “The link you possess is too short, and I have no other but the chaser. From here, we go on foot. Or, in this case, by sea.”

  “But that won’t work,” I argued. A queasy lump was threatening in my throat. “Nobody down there will take us to Riverstone. They all know about the Torrensai waves that Almara had been setting.” But then I stopped myself. I didn’t actually know if the sailors had survived after Jade, Erod and I had jumped away from the ship. Maybe news of the Torrensai had never made it back to Ossenland at all.

  “That’s of no concern,” he said. “We won’t be hiring a ship to take us.” He turned and walked briskly down the hill, not in the direction of the port, but off to the right.

  I stumbled after him. “If we’re not hiring a ship, how will we even get there?” I asked, trying to combat my rising panic.

  But I soon saw the answer to my question. A small, wooden boat floated beside an old, rotting pier when we finally made the water’s edge. No sailors tended the area, and not so much as a sail fluttered in the night.

  I stopped, staring, terrified.

  “How are we supposed to get across the ocean in that?” I asked.

  But he didn’t answer me. Instead he strolled down the pier and jumped deftly into the boat.

  “You can believe me or not,” he called. “But there is no other way to get there.”

  I heaved a heavy sigh. The last thing I wanted to do was get on another boat, especially considering the last one had been attacked not once, but twice on the journey to Riverstone.

  But Almara’s not there now, setting Torrensai.

  My heart tightened beneath the straps of my backpack.

  Hopefully Jade hadn’t adopted the same habits as her father.

  I relented, walking down the pier and climbing gingerly into the boat.

  “Alright then,” he said, untying the boat from the dock.

  “So what now?” I said. “There aren’t any oars.”

  He snorted so loudly it made me look around, worried that someone had heard.

  “We’re not rowing to Riverstone,” he said.

  He turned to face the front of the boat and, holding his staff up like the mast of a ship, we began to move.

  I was surprised despite myself. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he would use magic.

  The boat flew as fast as any speedboat, and though the waves were rough, it held steady as it skidded across the water. I was instantly drenched in salty sea spray, and I rubbed my stinging eyes with the sleeve of my shirt.

  Though we were out in the open air, it didn’t take long for the swells of the ocean to start to offend. When Jade and I had made this crossing, the ship we traveled on was large. It lumbered through the water, absorbing the power of the sea so that what we felt on deck was little more than a gentle rocking.

  But this, this was misery. Up and down and up and down. It wasn’t long before I was leaning over the edge of the little vessel, praying for the journey to end. The boat slowed when Owyn heard me retching over the side.

  “Do you want me to stop?” he asked.

  The boat bucked and turned on the waves, the sickening motion worse at a stand still, and my stomach gave another heave.

  “No,” I croaked. “The faster the better.”

  “Of course,” he said. We jolted forward with tremendous force, and I was thrown onto my back, where I stayed.

  The journey seemed to go on for an eternity. I faded in and out of consciousness, sometimes seeing a diamond studded sky, sometimes staring miserably at the roughly hewn wood I lay upon. Dreams mingled with reality. I tried to imagine my mother’s face, the only thing that had kept me sane during my long weeks alone in the wilderness. But I found that the image flitted back and forth with the face of the monster in the tent, her features morphing into cold bone, her comforting eyes dissolving into those bottomless black sockets.

  Then, I don’t know how many hours later, I woke. The ground beneath me was soft and silky, the sand of a fine ocean beach. It swayed slightly, an unpleasant reminder of my voyage, but it was solid and reassuring.

  “What happened?” I asked no one in particular. A muffled snore answered me, and I turned to find Owyn lying on his back, fast asleep. Somewhere in the sky, the sun was considering rising. Beside us, the little boat lay on its side where he had dragged it ashore. I briefly wondered how long we had traveled for, and then I fell back to the sand, grateful for the smooth, soft grains.

  Many hours later, when the sun was done with the day and saying its goodbyes, Owyn shook me awake.

  “I swear, you’d think the child did all the work himself,” he muttered. My eyes fluttered open.

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re up.” The skin on my cheeks felt tight, burned from lying in the sun all day, though I had no memory of it.

  “Yes, and it’s time for you to be as well,” he said. His tone was cold.

  “Yeah, okay,” I said, leaning over onto one elbow.

  The scene hadn’t changed, but everything felt more stable now. The world had stopped rocking, and I got to my feet, grateful I didn’t immediately fall down again. Owyn set off, away from the water, and I blearily began to follow. My stomach gave a pang, not of worry, but of hunger. I hugged it as I trailed after him.

  I wondered about Owyn’s plan. But if he had one, he wasn’t telling. Success would be lucky, miraculous. So instead of plotting, I focused on coming up with a reason why Jade should give us the gold.

  The problem was, there wasn’t a reason. She had nothing left. Her family was dead. Her home was destroyed. Her dreams of feeling safe and secure again had turned to the nightmares of the possessed.

  The only reason Jade had to give us the gold was…me.

  I kicked angrily at a rock along the trail we took across the island. Ahead, the sun was setting the sky ablaze with its departure. On either side of us, low mountains rose up beneath the gathering twilight. Far in the distance, the peak of Riverstone castle burst upwards.

  It wouldn’t be long now before I stood face to face with her, the girl, the monster, who wanted me dead.

  “How long did she hold you prisoner?” I asked. “Before she agreed to speak with you?”

  He didn’t stop walking, but it took a while before he muttered, “A month.”

  “A month?” I asked. “What was she doing for a month that she was too busy to talk to you?”

  He shrugged as I fell into step beside him.

  “A month to me wasn’t so long.” He lifted and tapped his wood staff on the rocks that littered the trail with every step he took.

  “How did you get your staff back?” I asked. His face turned from determined to perplexed. “I mean, didn’t she take it from you when she locked you in the dungeon?” Then, as I waited for his answer, I realized there was something else missing from his story. “How did you escape, anyways?”

  He did
n’t answer for many long moments, just kept plodding forward. The rocky edges of the island slowly turned to long, green grass.

  “I hid the staff,” he finally said. “Before I went in.”

  “Why?”

  He glared, and then quickly forced the look away and replaced it with a smirk.

  “Because I knew,” he said. “I knew that she wouldn’t take kindly to someone showing up with an instrument of power like this.”

  He held the wood out in front of him as he walked. It looked ordinary, but both he and I knew it was anything but. But it didn’t make any sense. I couldn’t think of a reason why a wizard would leave his greatest weapon behind when facing a known enemy. No, not an enemy.

  A known unknown.

  I looked up at the castle again, looming high above on the horizon.

  She was a known unknown to me, too. But not in a million years would I leave a potential weapon behind before meeting her, if I had had one.

  “And how did you escape?” I asked again.

  “One night as she worshipped over her rocks,” he said, his voice irritated. “The Solitaries had gone. Where, I don’t know. But I took my chance.”

  He picked up his pace, pushing forward away from me. I had more questions, but I didn’t ask them. She had held him in a dungeon for a month, and then he had slipped away one night when nobody was paying attention? The giant castle perched above us, so strong and solid, had not been able to hold our Owyn, even without his staff. Was he so powerful?

  I swallowed my doubt, tried to make myself believe it. Part of me wanted to. If it was true, then I might stand a chance at escape, too.

  I studied the mountain for a time, noting the different slopes and rock outcroppings, making the mental maps I might need during my own escape when the time came. Then, silently, a thin streak of white caught my eye. It traveled across the cliffs below the castle, making a zigzag pattern against the dark of night. I opened my mouth to speak, to raise the alarm. What was it?

  But then something stopped me. I looked over at him, curious if he had seen it, too. But his eyes were fixed on the ground, on the path before his feet. It was some sort of animal. My breath caught in my chest as I watched it, but I kept moving at a steady pace behind Owyn, not wanting to call attention to it.