by J B Cantwell
“What do you think of this new turn of events, young champion?” Finian asked.
I bristled at the word. Almara had once spoken to me about a “champion,” a savior sent from another place, or in this case another planet. I didn’t know that the knowledge of the myth went beyond Almara, and I wondered who had spoken it into Finian’s ear.
He of the line
Pure of heart
Lost in the wilds
From the start
Untouched by flame
He ventures through
In our world, untamed
To find the true
The last hope of men
He seeks to reverse
To find the end
To end the curse
It seemed like a lifetime ago that Almara had recited these words. At the time, Almara had thought it had been me. But I knew the truth then, just as now.
I was no champion.
Kiron stared into the flames, unspeaking.
My eyes met Jade’s across the fire. She was nestled beneath one of Erod’s enormous arms, held so tightly I wondered if the two would ever separate again.
Tiny bits of wood crackled between us.
“I don’t know,” I said, staring. “I don’t know what to think.”
And it was the truth. I didn’t know what to make of all this. Jade was the last person I had expected to see upon my return, and certainly not under these circumstances. The tension between us spoke of stories we had yet to tell one another. Explanations. Apologies. Because, if I was really being honest with myself, I had some apologies to make, too.
Tendrils of shame licked at the edge of my mind, and I broke our gaze.
I had left her there. Alone. I had seen that she was still inside, that the Corentin hadn’t ruined her completely. But instead of staying and trying to help her, I had fled that castle as fast as my legs would carry me.
I looked up again and found that she had buried her face in Erod’s side. She, too, couldn’t stand to look at me for long.
We had failed each other. And whether we could come back from that, I wasn’t sure.
I took a sip from the cup. I don’t know what I was expecting to find. Hot water, maybe. Instead, the liquid that filled my mouth was as thick as hot soup, sweet like cream, and coated my throat on its way down.
“What is this?” I asked, distracted.
Finian laughed.
“Kiron’s brew,” he said, elbowing the old man. “Calls it ‘tea’.”
Kiron snorted.
“Whatever it is, it’s kept us alive,” Finian said.
“Barely that,” Kiron said.
My first instinct was to gulp down the entire cup of the stuff. I could feel it warming my stomach from the inside as if it were a hearty meal filling me up. Then, seeing how the firelight played with the deep circles beneath Finian’s eyes, I handed the cup back to him.
“You take it,” I said. “You—well, you need it more than I do.”
Finian sighed, but he didn’t deny the cup.
“So what else has been happening while I’ve been gone?” I asked.
I looked around at the wizards who had congregated on the outskirts of the fire. It seemed that the numbers were fewer than the last time we had met, but I couldn’t tell if that was because we had lost a few lives in the battle of Stonemore, or if my memory was playing tricks on me.
Finian drained the rest of the liquid in the cup, then rested it in his palm before him, circling one finger slowly around the rim.
“We have gradually fallen,” he said. His pretense was gone suddenly, and true sadness shone deep in his eyes. “Once the impostors started, all hell broke loose. I suspected them. Every one of them. But the others … it took them longer before they became guarded. It took the first death before they even began questioning the Asters that came knocking at our mountain door.”
“The first death?” I asked. “Who…?”
Finian sighed heavily, turning to look at me. But it was Kiron who spoke.
“Chapman,” he said, his voice a growl.
“No,” I said. I automatically searched the small crowd around us, hoping that somehow he was wrong. “You just said there had been attacks. Dillion and Finian. You didn’t say—”
Prickles of tears stung the corners of my eyes.
“When the first impostor arrived here,” he said, “the first time, he had everybody fooled. Everybody except Finian, of course.”
Finian smiled, an unexpected gesture given the nature of our conversation.
“Well, I wanted to believe, didn’t I?” he asked.
“We all wanted to,” Kiron said. And in that moment there was no reason for us to question the boy who stood before us. Even Jade. She had questions for the boy, and he must have answered them all to her satisfaction. She never raised the alarm.
“But Chapman,” he went on. “Chapman seemed more excited than any of us that you had finally returned. The food shortage was just beginning to be a problem around that time, and he might’ve had a little extra weight around the middle, but he was just as hungry as any of us. I think he was hoping that your arrival meant the end of our time in these mountains. He fretted over the impostor for three days, making sure he had tea to drink and a spot close to the fire to sleep at night.”
My heart hurt as I remembered Chapman. The silly, bald little man had become so much more than just a follower of Almara in the days after Cadoc’s rule fell. He had stepped up to every challenge, fought at Kiron’s side again and again. He had proven himself as a warrior in that way. As much as a simple merchant with no power to speak of ever could. But I wasn’t surprised by the idea that he would have wrinkled his nose at the discomfort of these mountains.
“Then, one night, he simply failed to show up for our evening tea,” Kiron said. “And Chapman was never one to miss tea, especially after the rest of the food was gone.”
He tilted his head slightly, sharing the joke he knew I would understand. Then, his eyes grew far away as he stared into the fire.
“We found his body at the base of the ravine, just over there.” He pointed behind us into the dark. These mountains were tall and dangerous, and I imagined deadly ravines must have fallen away beneath every cliff.
“But how did you know?” I asked. “How did you find out it was him, the impostor?”
“It was Jade, actually,” Finian said.
We both looked up then. Jade’s eyes were closed, and her chest moved up and down with the slow, rhythmic motion of sleep. Erod was leaning back against a rock, staring up into the night sky.
“She came to me soon after Chapman was discovered,” Kiron went on. “She said that she believed it was the impostor who had thrown Chapman over the edge. She had asked him a question, something only the two of you would know. He answered wrong.”
“What happened then?” I asked.
“He vanished. By the time we thought to go after him, by the time we realized what had happened, he was already gone.”
“He knew,” I breathed.
“Yes,” he said. “Somehow, he knew he had been discovered. Those that came after him had more information, different tricks.”
“How many were there?” I asked, amazed.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking to Finian for confirmation. “Ten? Too many. Gradually, they began dropping names, places you had been, things you had done. Now we believe that the Corentin’s slaves were out there the whole time, searching for clues about what made you, you. Eventually, it was decided that I, the one who knew you best out of the others in the group, should be the one to approach anyone who might arrive, claiming to be you.”
We sat in silence for several long minutes. The fire was dying now, and the little heat that it was giving off was dwindling quickly. Around us, the murmuring of evening conversations had ebbed. I shivered.
“Finian?”
“Yes?”
“How do you know that I’m the real Aster?”
He
shrugged, groaning to his feet, rubbing one hand through his stubby beard.
“For one thing, we haven’t seen an impostor in a while. It’s been weeks since the last, and we thought they had all but given up on breaking through into our camp. For another, you seem too young to be a fake,” he said.
I grimaced.
Kiron made a sound between a moan and a laugh.
“No, don’t take it the wrong way,” Finian said, smiling. I imagined he might give a son the look he was giving me now. “The others, though. They were so…perfect. So well spoken. So proper. It just didn’t seem right.”
I sighed.
“No, I’m not perfect,” I said.
I stared at the dirt between my feet. When I looked up again I found Finian kneeling before me. He locked his eyes on mine, putting one hand on my shoulder and squeezing it hard.
“I’d take the real Aster over perfection any day of the week,” he said.
I was going to have to reexamine my opinions on Finian.
He squeezed once more, and then was up and gone, leaving nothing in our view but the last of the embers on the ground, and Jade and Erod snuggled together like little children, fighting off the dark.
Chapter 7
I woke the next morning at dawn. Cait snuggled against Larissa, sharing our blanket with her. My backside felt frozen, having stuck out from our meager covering for half the night. I was full of questions as I lay there watching her sleep. After a few minutes, with nobody else in the company up to distract me, I shook her awake.
“Hey,” I whispered, careful not to wake anyone else. Larissa groaned next to Cait, but Cait’s eyes popped open, immediately awake.
“Hi,” she whispered back. She struggled to free herself from Larissa’s grip and sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“How’d you sleep?” I asked. I still felt shivery from the long, cold night.
“Good,” she said and smiled. “What are we doing today?”
I looked around at the sleeping mounds. Jade and Erod were still holding tight to one another. He had retained his glow throughout the night.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess planning what to do next. I think we’ll be traveling more. Soon.”
She frowned, glancing down at Larissa.
“It’s ok,” I said. “You don’t have to come. I’d rather you be out of danger.”
“But it’s dangerous everywhere,” she said. “I heard them talking last night.”
I sighed. I had hoped she had been so distracted by her reunion with Larissa that she hadn’t heard about the ills that had befallen the group since we had left.
“Still,” I said. “It’s safer here than out there.”
I stared at the sheer rock faces all around us and wondered if the storm still raged just beyond the mountains, trapping us. I knew that it must.
“Hey, I wanted to ask you,” I began. “About her.” I pointed to Jade’s sleeping body. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t seem to find the right words to ask the question.
I didn’t need to.
“None of you are perfect,” she said, tilting her head toward Jade and yawning. “Nobody is pure except Father.” She had taken to calling him Father, too, though he wasn’t hers. And the man who resided in that body wasn’t mine, either.
“You don’t understand,” I said. “She tried to kill me.”
She thought about this for a moment.
“So did he,” she finally said. “It doesn’t change anything.”
“Funny that I keep running into this situation,” I said. She looked up, a question on her face. “You know,” I went on, “the situation where first someone tries to kill me and then you tell me I should trust them because they really are good on the inside.”
I said the words in frustration, but as they came out of my mouth I suddenly found the humor in them. I took a playful jab at Cait’s belly, sending her into a fit of giggling. We wrestled for a moment, and I let myself chuckle along with her. But as our laughter died away I started to wonder. Should I be taking the advice of a little kid on who to trust? What if she saw good in not just Father and Jade, but everyone? What if she, unlike the rest of us, was always able to see the good, even in people who were mostly evil?
“Why do you think he came after me yesterday?” I asked, nodding toward Father. “Are you able to tell?”
She stared into space for a long moment.
“There’s something wrong with him when he’s not Father,” she finally said, “when the other one comes out.”
“You don’t say,” I said, grimacing.
She gave me a disapproving glance.
“It’s something like what was wrong on Earth,” she went on. “He’s sick.”
I knew he was sick, of course. I had watched him grapple with madness since I had been a young child.
“He’s sick like the ground around your Grandma’s house is sick,” she said.
This brought me up short. It had never occurred to me that my dad’s illness could have been caused by anything other than the terrible combination of bad genes and a stubbornness that prevented him from taking his medications. But if what Cait was saying was true, if it was possible that the sickness of Earth was actually caused by the imbalance in the Fold, then maybe there was a chance to save him after all. If we succeeded in balancing the planets, shouldn’t that result in the reversal of the strange illnesses that had plagued the people of this place since the days of Kiron’s youth? Kiron had long told stories of not only the people becoming ill, but of the planets themselves becoming less and less hospitable. Slowly dying. Like Earth.
But still, there was power in these lands unlike any Earth had ever known, and when I had first come here I found myself cured of the ailments that had followed me since birth.
Was there really a chance that my dad could be cured, too?
“Do you think—” I began, then stopped. The question I wanted to ask seemed childish, pathetic, even. But I couldn’t stop myself. “Do you think that he can be cured? Of his sickness?”
Cait didn’t speak. Her eyes searched the group of sleeping bodies, finally landing on that of Father. He had awakened without me realizing it, and he gazed serenely in our direction now.
“I don’t know,” she said. She turned back to me. “All I know is what I see. I can’t tell what’s going to happen.”
She was right, of course. She couldn’t tell the future any more than I could. All she could see was her perception of whether someone was good or bad, deep down. But no matter how good my dad was behind his possession, and behind his madness, the fact was that he attacked me every time the opportunity arose, every time that his possession waned.
The time was coming, and soon, when I would need to leave Cait behind and start judging people for myself.
More tea served as our breakfast, and though I was happy to have it, it seemed that my stomach was too empty after having felt so full the night before. It seemed the tea was merely a trick to make us think we were happily full. That is, until the liquid finally left our systems and we were left as starving as ever. Kiron’s magic over a pot had been used on me before now. I knew that it was quite within his capabilities to fool us into thinking water with a few leaves floating in the cup was actually a hearty meal.
Slowly, as the morning fire died and the villagers began to rise, several wizards I recognized from Stonemore began to make their way to the circle around the fire pit. I recognized every one of them, though I couldn’t remember their names. I had met them only once, after Kiron and I had wrestled our way through the enchanted Stonemore, kicking the men made fools by the spell until they came to their senses. These were the men who had guarded Stonemore during the battle against the Coyle’s army. They came together now, all faces hollow and sunken, steely resolve in every pair of eyes.
I noted with irritation that Jade and Erod joined the meeting as well. They sat on the outskirts of the group, taking their seats as far from me as they could while still being inclu
ded in the meeting.
Kiron spoke first.
“Now that you’re back, now that we know it’s really you, we can make our plan,” he said to me. “Did you succeed in your mission on Earth?”
A tiny bubble of hope, hope that had been absent since reconnecting with him, flared inside my chest. My gold combined with Jade’s would be more than enough to do the job. I opened my pack and fished out several pieces of the stuff. Some little bits inside bags. Some nothing more than a fine dust in one thin, glass canister. And one enormous piece, the one Father had contributed, significantly larger than even Jade’s.
I placed it all in front of me on the stone floor. Everyone, even Jade, gasped at the pile of riches that lay before us.
“That would be a yes,” he said. “But you still have some explaining to do. I believe you are the real Aster, that our time of being made fools is over, at least by that particular trick. But you must explain why this one is in your company.”
He inclined his head toward Father, who sat tranquilly beside me now, eyes as black as the deep of space.
“This is my father,” I said. “We were … reunited on Earth.”
“I determined as much,” Kiron said. “But why is he here. It was your job to find the gold and return, and now you’ve brought another. Why should we trust him?”
“It’s only when he’s not possessed, when he is truly himself, that I’m in danger.”
A murmuring broke out among the men.
“I don’t understand,” Kiron said over the hum.
I sighed.
“When I first found him, he was mad,” I said. “He came at me, tried to choke me. Then, when his eyes clouded, he became calm. Normal. Well, not normal. He doesn’t remember anything from before his possession. But, honestly, he’s been really helpful.”
