Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  “You had a feeling that made you let go of a mountainside eight thousand feet up from the ground?” Finian said, unable to keep his silence further.

  “Well, yes,” he said. “I’ve felt it more here than the other places. Everywhere we’ve been so far, every pedestal, has felt familiar to me as if I had been there before.” He glanced around at the vistas surrounding us. “But here, this is the first place I feel certain I’ve been before. Like a child knows its mother, I know this place in my bones.”

  “But how?” Kiron asked. “Your body is that of Aster’s father, Jack. You can’t possibly have ever been here before now. Jack has spent his entire life on Earth.”

  “Who are you?” I demanded again, my teeth clenched.

  Cait’s little hand tugged at my shirt, and I looked down to find her staring up at me, tears in her eyes. I moved to push her behind me, to protect her from this new threat, but she resisted. She pulled my arm until I relented, dropping to one knee to face her eye to eye.

  “I didn’t know if I should tell you,” she said, dropping her eyes.

  “Tell me what?” I asked.

  “He’s been talking to me,” she said. She still wouldn’t meet my gaze. “Since before, when I couldn’t talk.”

  “He was talking to you? But we didn’t hear anything. What do you mean?”

  “He talked to me in here,” she said, pointing one finger to her forehead. “And he could hear me, too. Even though none of you could.”

  “What did he say to you?” I asked, frowning.

  Father was, as ever, unknown to us. And now, up here on this sliver of a mountaintop, that lack of information suddenly seemed threatening. If he had been able to talk to Cait secretly all along …

  “Cait, you have to tell me,” I said. “What did he tell you?”

  She shrugged.

  “Nothing, really,” she said. “A lot about the landscape, especially on Grallero. He liked Grallero a lot. He said he remembered the bees, and he had been really excited when Larissa convinced you all to ride with them.”

  I looked up to find Father smiling, nodding his head at the memory.

  “And he told me something else,” she said. “He told me who he was. His name.”

  Father looked down at her, his own face curious, not threatening, as if he couldn’t remember ever having had that conversation with her. Cait stepped away from me and approached him, taking his hand in hers in that same familiar way she had done since first meeting him in the mine back on Earth.

  “What is it, then?” I asked, standing up to face him.

  But it was Cait who spoke.

  “Jared,” she said, smiling up at him. “His name is Jared.”

  Chapter 20

  It took a minute for me to understand her, to put it together.

  Jared?

  Jared. Jared. Jared.

  I said the name to myself over and over again, trying to grasp its significance.

  Beside me, Kiron’s jaw had dropped open, and he seemed unable to move at all. Finian stayed alert as ever, searching for the unseen threat to his party. Whether he understood what Kiron seemed to, I couldn’t tell.

  I understood nothing. I just stared into space, occasionally looking up at this man.

  Father.

  Dad.

  Jared.

  “It can’t be true,” Kiron finally said. “You can’t be Jared. You can’t be the one who started this all. The reason we—”

  And then it clicked into place in my brain.

  Jared. The mad wizard who had unbalanced the Fold in the first place. Hadn’t Father seemed to know his way around every planet we had visited better than any of the other travelers? He had never shown fear, even in the face of great danger. He had acted like a man who had just arrived home after a long journey, gratefully taking in the vistas he had missed in the years since he had left.

  “But you’re possessed,” I said, trying to wrap my brain around what was happening. “And Jared’s been dead for thousands of years, dead from his last spell on the mountaintop. On Mount Neri, right?” I turned to Kiron to ask the question.

  We didn’t know who was possessing Father at all. I had had my suspicions that it was the Corentin at the beginning, but there was the fact that Father was always so calm, so kind.

  “There were rumors, turned to myths over the years, that he had survived,” Kiron said, not taking his eyes off Father. “That was part of Almara’s lore, but a nearly forgotten detail, only. I only remember it from looking through my father’s things centuries ago. The papers Almara had left with him before his original quest.”

  “But how can he be alive now?” Finian asked. “Jared lived thousands of years ago. We don’t even have a record of the years he lived and died. It happened so long ago that we only know the mythology now.”

  “Jade,” I breathed.

  They stared at me, confused.

  “When I first met Jade, she was a prisoner of the Corentin’s, kept alone in a cave for two hundred years. She kept herself and several others alive by a potion she brewed. Her power over stone was so intense that she could make a draft using nothing but granite and water. Back then, nobody dared bring her birthstone, a jadestone, into the cave. They knew she could use it to escape, and so they kept it from her century after century. But they took the potion, came back for more again and again. She told me that if one were to drink it, they could live for centuries. Maybe forever.”

  Kiron stared back at Father.

  “But he can’t be Jared,” he said. “This man is your father, bred and born on Earth and brought to the Fold with you just weeks ago.”

  I stood up and approached Father, his eyes flickering between black and blue now.

  “No,” I said. “My dad is not Jared. But the one who possesses him is.”

  “But—” Kiron spluttered. “How—”

  “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” I asked. I could tell by the confused faces around me that the others weren’t getting it. I was barely getting it myself as the pieces of the puzzle slowly clicked into place in my brain. “You never died. Even after so many thousands of years that they’ve lost count now. You lived on.”

  I turned to my companions.

  “Didn’t Jade ever tell you the story of her power? Of how the rock power had come to her, the first in thousands of years? The first since Jared’s time?” Their faces stayed blank. I turned back to Father, telling him a story he surely already knew. “Jared had the rock power, himself,” I went on. “That was how he was able to survive so long. He could make a potion just like Jade could. And you did, didn’t you?”

  “I see flashes of things,” he said quietly. “I don’t know what is true and what isn’t. But yes, in memories I recognize as mine, I see myself making the potion you speak of. Yes.”

  “But this isn’t Jared,” Kiron protested.

  “No,” I said, keeping my eyes locked with Father’s. “This is Jared’s spirit only.”

  “But the Corentin,” Kiron went on. “The Corentin is the one who is possessing him. We’ve suspected that all along, haven’t we? Nobody else in the Fold has the power to do something like that to another person.”

  But was that really true?

  I had seen those black eyes enough times in both dream and reality to recognize the Corentin’s work when I saw it. But I hadn’t had proof this time.

  “His possession is reversed, though, remember?” I said. “Usually those he possesses are mad with violence and try to kill those who oppose the Corentin’s rule. But this time, the spirit of possession is mild, friendly.” I turned again to Father.

  “So tell us,” I said. “Is it the Corentin who is possessing this body?”

  There was so much opportunity here, for him to scare us, for him to kill us. A simple smile would have been enough to turn all our blood cold in our veins. But instead he just nodded, looking down at Cait with her hand in both of his.

  “The girl saw it all along,” he said, “though I didn�
��t. Even now I’m not sure it can be true. It’s so unlikely, so farfetched to be real. But the memories, they are coming fast now, with several new ones each day. I believe you are right. I believe that it is Jared who possesses me. Jared and the Corentin. Because they are the same man. I have come to understand that Jared, the good man who became entranced by the riches of the Fold, became the dark monster you call the Corentin. Over time, centuries and centuries, his goodness failed him. Only to be replaced by the sadistic monster we fight now. I believe a piece of Jared survived inside of the Corentin. When the Corentin tried to possess this body, it was his intention to create a killer, someone who could get close to your quest and do away with you one by one. But the piece of Jared that remains, however small, was able to fight the overwhelming evil and come forward. It must have been then that, in the swirl of power that cut through space to find me, the good of Jared was able to conquer the evil of the Corentin just long enough to take root in me.”

  “He’s only good,” Cait said, looking up at him. “He’s only the good part. I’ve never seen anything else.”

  “But how do you know for sure?” I asked.

  “Because it’s him I’ve been following this whole time,” she said. “The paths I’ve found have been from him.”

  Him? Father? I thought it had been me, my own desire to level the Fold, that had led her along.

  “So it’s his deepest wish to lead us to the pedestals? For us to level the Fold?” Finian asked, his face skeptical.

  “I didn’t know it before,” Father said. “But today, just now, I started to realize a desire for that, yes. And the memory of this place is strong within me.” He stepped to the edge of the precipice and pointed his foot, swirling the toe of his boot around in the air as if he were dipping it into a cool pond of water.

  Silence fell among us all. After a few minutes of thinking, it became obvious that none of us knew what to make of this new information. It was so overwhelming. The Corentin, the one who had caused so much pain and devastation, had at his heart the soul of a good man. Jared, the man who had gone astray, still existed within the evil and malice of the Corentin we now faced.

  And it was Jared’s possession that had kept the evil the Corentin had intended from entering Father’s body.

  What should we do now? Was there a way to use him? To read the thoughts of the Corentin somehow? My brain swirled so quickly it made my head hurt. I needed time to think, time to walk, or maybe run, so that I could get it straight. But as I looked out among the many pointed peaks in the distance, I knew it would be a long time before my feet touched flat ground again.

  Finally, Kiron came out of his stupor.

  “We should move on,” he said. “We are running out of time.”

  “Yes!” Father said, animated and clearly delighted that someone had suggested it. “We don’t need to walk down, you know. Here. Watch me.”

  Again, he took that heart hammering step off the edge of the cliff, making my insides scream with a desire to pull him back, to yell out to make him stop.

  But he only floated gently on the breeze as if he stood on a great, dense cloud we couldn’t see with the naked eye.

  “We can just float down,” he said. “Cait!” he called, and before I could grab her hand, before I could even understand what was about to happen next, she was gone, jumped off the cliff after him as carelessly as a child splashing in a rain puddle.

  She floated happily in his arms as the two of them began to descend.

  “How are you doing that?” I called.

  “Come on down with us!” he called back. “It will take no time at all, and the view is magnificent.”

  I stared between Kiron and Finian, at a loss for what to do next.

  “How do we know we can trust him?” I asked no one in particular.

  “I’ll go first,” Finian said. “I have my disk if I get into trouble.”

  And he stepped away from the solid rock. As he turned, a small smile played on his lips.

  “It’s—it’s wonderful,” he said. He flapped his arms and legs out like a child making a snow angel as his body began to descend.

  “Well,” I said to Kiron. “What do you think?”

  “I think,” he said, “that there are things in this universe that we don’t understand. There are powers at play that we can’t combat, and there are those we can, too. Will he let us all fall to the ground if you and I step away from this rock? I don’t know.”

  He held out one foot and touched the air with it, just as Father had. Then he held out his hand to me.

  “Let’s do it together,” he said.

  That was all it took. If I was going to die, at least I wouldn’t die alone.

  I took Kiron’s hand and we stepped away from the edge of the mountain.

  What happened next surprised me. A warm, tingling feeling enveloped every inch of my skin, as if a shower of tiny stars were caressing me. I soon found a smile on my own face. Even looking down at the vast space between us and the ground didn’t worry me. I felt certain that everything would be alright. That we would not only make it safely down from the mountain, but that everything else I desired would somehow come to pass, too. Our journey. Our fight. My dad. All would be resolved.

  Our descent took only a couple of minutes. Soon, the strange aura that had delivered us to the crevice floor was gently setting each of us onto the rock. And then it was gone. The tingling feeling no longer covered my body, though something of the warmth remained.

  I stared up at the sliver of sky still visible between the mountaintops, and it struck me how far we had come based solely on the the trust of Father’s story.

  I sat up and looked around. A few feet behind me, Father and Cait giggled like two children upon the discovery of a new, amazing trick.

  “Alright,” I said, getting to my feet. “Where do we go from here?”

  Both Cait’s and Father’s heads whipped around in the direction of our travel, and it was even visible from here. A few hundred feet away, the symbol was carved right into the rock.

  Soon all were on their feet, and we made our way silently to the pedestal. When we got to one of the outer ovals that made up the sign, we stopped. I looked first at Kiron, then at Father. Father’s face had lit up the closer we had come, and now a wide smile stretched across it.

  “I remember this,” he said. “This one had just one piece of gold. But it was beautiful, only the second that I had ever seen.”

  If he had been acting the least bit anxious, I might have paused here. For once, we were all about to descend into the chamber together in no easily discernible danger. No wild beasts or vicious storms threatened us. All there was in this place was silence and the expanse of rock that stretched to the heavens above our heads.

  Maybe his intention was to steal the gold, I thought, remembering his hungry eyes back on Dursala. But that didn’t make sense. He had been the one to give me the gold he had found in the first place. In a way, it was already his. And he had made no move since the beginning of the journey to take it from me, or even shown a desire to see it at all.

  I would have to trust him. Though who “him” was at any given moment seemed confusing enough. Was he my dad? Father? Jared? I would have to trust all three.

  At least for now.

  Chapter 21

  Father insisted on coming into the cavern with me, but I wasn’t the only one whose trust had been rattled. Kiron and Finian were both unwilling to take their eyes off him after his pronouncement, especially during such an important moment as a leveling. Everyone had reason to want to descend into the cavern, and so we had to wait for Kiron to make our link to exit it once the leveling was done.

  Father sat beside me, staring around at the mountains as though they were the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

  He stared at the mountains, and I stared at him.

  I wanted to talk to him, to ask questions, but I couldn’t form any, somehow. His story was unbelievable, or would have been
if I hadn’t seen so much magic during my time in the Fold.

  Kiron’s efforts with the link were soon completed, and we got to our feet and headed for the symbol.

  “I never thought I’d be so anxious to leave my own planet,” Kiron said. “But all I can think of right now is getting back to the Hidden Mountains.” He looked up, his face wary. “I’ve never liked this place.”

  I didn’t much care for it, either. I worried with every step that I might stumble onto one of those shards of rock sticking up all around us. Just one wrong step and we would be sliced open by the mountain.

  “Oh, but there’s so much magic here,” Father said. “Can’t you feel it? It’s in the air, surrounding us. You can almost touch it.” He lifted one hand, caressing the air as though it were made of silk.

  “Yeah, well,” Kiron said. “We’ve got other magic that needs attending to at the moment.”

  We all piled onto the diamond at the center of the symbol, and immediately the mountains shook around us. I reflexively held my arms up, hoping that none of the deadly stones would fall on top of us while we were descending.

  Before the platform had even come to rest on the cavern floor, Father had jumped off and headed right for the pedestal. For a moment I thought he might upend it, or somehow break it, or maybe use some magic within him we didn’t yet know of to destroy our ability to balance Aerit. But he didn’t. He placed his hands on either side of the basin, but didn’t touch it. His face glowed, both from the light coming from the basin, and from his own excitement.

  “What do you remember?” Kiron asked, coming close now, watching him.

  “Only snippets,” he said. “My consciousness only comes from the shadow of Jared that remains. I don’t carry all of his memories. It’s more like his … values, I guess I would call them. His desire to balance the Fold is strong within me.”

  He looked back down at the basin, and slowly a cloud came over his face.

  “The last time Jared was here, it had been to steal. This idea brings me shame, even though we work to reverse the effects now.”