Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  Father lowered his head, his eyes on his feet as he walked.

  “I don’t know how good he really was,” he said, his voice forlorn. “It seems to me that he was always arrogant. At least once he became a man. He always felt that he was above the others around him.”

  “Well, he’s helping us now,” I said. “There must have been some part in him that at least considered doing the right thing.”

  “I hate him,” Jade said. She squeezed my hand so tightly it hurt, and I noticed that the other one was clenched into a fist at her side. “Jared, the Corentin; they’re just different versions of the same man, aren’t they? The same corrupted child that turned himself into a beast as time and riches and power took him over.”

  Father looked up at her, pain clear in his eyes.

  “What does that make me then?” he asked.

  The question hung in the air between the three of us. None of us knew how to answer it.

  “It makes you a guide,” Finian said. He had been walking ahead of us, and I guess he had been listening, too. “You said it before, Aster. He’s a vessel. Through him we learn about the people who inhabit his body. He shares their mind. Sometimes their actions.”

  Kiron turned from the front of the group.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “When I first met you I was as suspicious as any of us were. But since the Shattered Mountains, that trick you pulled with the fall, I understand better now.”

  “But it was Jared who created me,” he argued, his voice forlorn. “And the Corentin emerged from Jared. I must have that same evil within me.”

  I thought back to my first meeting with Father, deep in the gold mines of the wasteland of California. I had experienced a kind of evil on that day, the kind that arises when a father seeks to murder his own son.

  “Maybe you do,” I said. “But have you ever actually done anything evil? Or even wrong? You know that it was my dad who attacked me through you all those times. And aside from that, what have you done? Nothing.”

  “The only thing any of us need worry about right now is finding the Corentin and taking his power away,” Finian said. “Does it really matter if Jared had the seed of evil within him, even when he acted with respect to the lands and people of this place? Everyone has the potential for evil. But there is always a choice.”

  “Just focus on getting us the information that we need,” Kiron said. “You’ve been to these places before. Tell us where to go and how to find the last pedestal. That is what your purpose is now.”

  All at once, Finian dropped to the ground. He shot one hand out as he did so and dragged Kiron down with him. Then the rest of us, looking around in panic, saw why.

  Through the trees, far off on the horizon floated a lone, terrible glider. It made its way lazily across the land, searching.

  Did it know that we had defeated its brother?

  We didn’t wait to find out. Kiron brandished his disk and then turned to us.

  “Whatever you do, don’t use magic,” he warned. “And you,” he directed his gaze at me. “Don’t even think about magic. Not even for a second. You must hide your powers at all costs.”

  Hide my powers? I could barely imagine how to even use my powers, much less hide them. But I nodded in assent, gripping the staff tightly in one hand.

  We moved as quickly as the underbrush would allow, no longer caring much about the noise we made. That glider was still far away. We were banking on the possibility that it was still too far to sense our presence or hear our flight.

  We came to the end of the wood. Up ahead, across a painfully exposed expanse of grass, were the spattered outcropping of rocks that made up the beginning of the Neri Mountain range. Somewhere farther up along this path our tormentor awaited us. I felt sure that he knew we were here by now. Maybe he had sensed our presence, just as the first glider had. Or maybe he knew that that same glider, one of his most powerful weapons, had already been lost in the battle.

  “You all ready?” Kiron said, indicating the rocks on the other side of the field.

  “Are you mad?” Jade gasped. “We’ll be caught for sure!”

  “We can’t hide here,” Finian said.

  “We can’t hide anywhere,” Kiron grumbled. “But I think we’d be best off continuing to move. I hope you’re all well rested. I don’t think sleep will be a possibility anytime soon.” He directed his hard gaze once again at the rocks.

  “Finian?” he asked. “You’ll be ready?”

  Finian nodded curtly, raising up his disk, but not yet igniting it with his power.

  “You,” he said to me. “You go first. Don’t stop running, but don’t go so fast that we can’t find you on the other side. Search for a place to hide once you’re there. We’ll follow you. Remember, regular pace. He might be able to sense your magic if you sprint.”

  I nodded, my heart thudding in my chest. I felt blood coursing through me, in my throat, in my ears. I didn’t wait. I gripped the staff and took off running as fast as I dared.

  It was difficult to keep a steady pace, to not give in to the desire to run full-out, away from the danger that seemed to be lurking around me on all sides. But as I ran, I searched for a threat, turning my head back several times to check that I wasn’t being pursued. All I saw when I did this was Kiron’s anxious face poking through the trees.

  And then I was across. The rocks on the other side were just tall enough for me to hide between, a crevice nearly hidden from most points of view.

  Jade came next, and though she didn’t have magic in her gait, she was surprisingly fast. It seemed only moments before she had made it across and joined me behind the rocks.

  Kiron and Finian came next. Kiron seemed winded from the effort, but the steely resolve in his eyes was as resolute as ever.

  Then, just as Father was stepping out into the light, I saw something that made my heart stop beating in my chest.

  Another glider.

  And this time, it had something curious hunting with him. From this distance it looked like a dog. A big one. They weren’t close. But then, it seemed that proximity wouldn’t matter much to their hunting abilities. Could they see us? Smell us? Was the magic we carried within us enough to give them a trail to follow?

  As the glider turned its head in the opposite direction, I stepped out into the open, flagging Father down and pointing to the glider. He got the message at once, retreating back into the relative safety of the trees, and I slunk back behind the rocks.

  The glider scanned the area, and the dog sniffed the air around them as they patrolled. They reminded me of a radar machine, sweeping the ground with a signal, looking for discrepancies. But somehow they did not see us. Or, if they did, they did not follow.

  When the two hunters had turned their backs, Father dashed across the expanse. I could tell that running did not come naturally to him; his steps were awkward and almost wobbly. But he made it to us soon enough.

  “We must act now,” Kiron whispered, scanning the meadow and then fixing his eyes on the glider’s receding back. “While he is not expecting us. We can’t be caught off guard again. We can’t afford it.”

  He stepped out from behind the rock and brandished his disk, aiming it squarely at the glider’s back. It wasn’t a gentlemanly thing to do, to attack from behind, but it was life or death now. Kiron’s bolt of lightning burst from his disk, and Finian’s soon followed. The two together hit the glider squarely in the back, and it jumped from the surprise attack. Just as it was turning to launch its own attack, my beam joined the other two, and it was obliterated just as its brother had been.

  Beside the remnants of what had been its master, the dog howled, the sound ringing through the valley, clear and shrill. Then, unmistakably, it turned its eyes toward us.

  We dove for cover behind the rocks. The space between them was snug, but we all managed to pile in.

  The others wore smiles of triumph at the destruction of the glider, but I had been struck by another, quite different,
feeling.

  Dread.

  Because I recognized that howl, and I knew in that moment that the Corentin had left no stone unturned in his attempts to destroy us. To destroy me. It was the giant wolf from the snow planet I had landed on long ago, the friend who had helped me run from the monsters of that place, and who had protected me to the last.

  The terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach combined with a sort of electricity in the rest of my body. With each passing moment, our danger grew greater than before. I tried not to think about how close, with every step, we all were to death. I tried not to think about Erod. I fought the urge to run far away from this place, to somehow retreat back to Earth and bury my head in the sand for the rest of my days.

  But I was much too far along this journey to quit now. I would have to channel that energy, that urge to flee, into focused, resolved attack.

  We all stood silently for a time until everyone had caught their breath. Then, it was Kiron who spoke.

  “We can’t stay here,” he said. His voice was taking on a hoarse quality I hadn’t heard from him before, and his eyes were tired, his movements sluggish.

  “Let’s just stay until we’re rested up a bit,” Finian said, eyeing him. Though he clearly had the survival of the group on his mind, he, too was beginning to look physically exhausted.

  My blood was still pumping with the terror of the night. Like Kiron, I didn’t want to stay, either. And I didn’t think it was a good idea to rest now. I was starting to look forward to this final … what would it be? Meeting? Battle? The tension was getting to me, not even knowing if we would make it far enough to have the opportunity to face off against the Corentin.

  “No,” I said. “I think we should go. It’s not far now. Let’s just do this.”

  Everyone stared at me, though I couldn’t quite figure out why. Beside me, Jade took my hand in hers, gripping it firmly. I looked down to find her face hard and determined.

  I was ready. Ready to end this, one way or another.

  “So, what’s the plan then?” Finian asked, looking at me.

  “We keep moving,” I said. “Disks and staff out. After what we’ve seen tonight, I’m sure we’ll have to fight our way to him.”

  “It worries me.” This time it was Father who spoke. “Moving along this way. He will figure it out.”

  “Well, he hasn’t figured it out yet,” I said.

  Or, he hasn’t found us yet.

  “We’ll stand and fight if he does,” I continued.

  “The pedestal,” he said. “We won’t get to it until the last. It is at the very top of the mountain, and I feel sure that is where he awaits us.”

  Then to the top of the mountain we would go.

  Father continued to look wary, but he didn’t argue as I took the first steps toward the small opening in the rock. But when I looked up, the two shining black eyes of the wolf stared back at me. A low growl came from its throat, and immediately I realized that it must have caught our scent when it had passed by with the glider.

  I stumbled back against my companions, frozen with sudden fear.

  The beast snarled, a low, terrifying sound. Standing as tall as me, its fur rippling on its raised back, so real, though I had known him to be stone as well as flesh. He was so convincingly alive that my yelp of recognition died in my throat.

  If the wolf had helped me the first time we had met, shielded me from the echoes of the dogs on the hunt, it was clear that he would not do so now.

  His lips raised over his shining teeth, and he clucked his tongue as if getting ready to devour us all. I felt sure that he could do so, that he would make short work of tearing us to pieces. But when Kiron raised his disk behind me, I found myself laying a hand on his arm, not willing to let this beautiful animal give any more of himself to me. Not willing to be the final reason behind his death.

  We backed into the corner of the rock as one.

  “What are you doing?” Finian hissed in my ear. “We have to attack!”

  My brain seemed to jam with panic. I searched around us, trying to see anything we might use to defend ourselves that wasn’t deadly magic. I tried to think, but I found myself only searching for a way out, for a way to escape this impossibly tight place I had stranded us all in.

  He moved as we did, taking step after step with his enormous paws. They thudded against the ground, heavy with the weight of the great stone animal. We were getting tighter and tighter, hopelessly trapped between the rock wall and those glistening teeth.

  I put one hand on my chest, trying to slow down my breathing, but it was no use. I backed further and further away. My hands gripped my chest harder.

  I felt certain in that moment that I had lead us all to our deaths, and it would only be a matter of time before the Corentin rose to total power again, before he stole back all the gold we had replaced.

  I felt something hard in my hand and squeezed it. It seemed that it was my own heart, now solid and outside my body, as hard as rock.

  With a start I realized what I was gripping onto, and suddenly I knew what I needed to do. And though it might be the opposite of staying hidden, I couldn’t see that we had any other choice.

  It would be unpredictable. I didn’t know where we would end up. Somewhere out of sight, safe? Or somewhere visible and exposed, fighting for our lives?

  The wolf struggled to squeeze its enormous body between the rocks, snarling and snapping its teeth. My heart gave a pang as I recognized that the Corentin had turned this animal, who I had known as a good and pure beast, into just another one of his slaves.

  I ripped the link from around my neck.

  “Hold on!” I called over the growling monster.

  And we jumped, blind, into the unknown.

  Chapter 27

  We were more exposed than I had counted on. We landed on a hillside farther up the foothills of Mount Neri, and from here we could see the entire thing, every piece that was in play. And there, in the distance, the great castle of Riverstone.

  Beasts, warriors, giants, and monsters were scattered around us on all sides, on the land below, up in the hills above. They guarded the mountain, where I knew our enemy waited.

  Immediately, the onslaught began. The Corentin’s defenders had seen our arrival and were focused on us with enormous intensity. They must have been fine tuned to our magic to find us so quickly. Down below, the army of giants that was stationed to protect him began moving in our direction, like some sick flock of birds following a song I couldn’t hear. Only one thought broke through the haze of indecision I now felt.

  They’re coming for us.

  We stood no chance fighting against so many. Already one glider and five giants were storming down the hillside in our direction.

  I gripped the stone hard and we jumped again.

  This time it was even worse. We were farther up the mountain now, the dirt having given way to hard rock beneath our feet. We would have to climb from here.

  But something was in our way. Someone stood between us and our ascent.

  The Coyle.

  He stood before us, as tall and foreboding as the last time I had met him. But this time he had something with him that even I didn’t expect.

  Children.

  Scores of children spread out behind him like horrible, undulating wings. They stared us down, hissing at us and to one another in a terrible language only they could understand.

  “Wait, my children,” came the Coyle’s terrifying voice, calm and victorious. He held out his two bony hands, a command not to strike yet.

  My stomach turned as I realized who his choice of warriors had been. Little children, every pair of eyes as black as empty space, possessed. These were the ones he had taken captive the last time I had met him, only now there were many more than I had last seen. These had been Cait’s cellmates in the prison that the Coyle had created for them.

  At last, as the hissing died down, he turned to us, a horrible smile spread wide across his gaunt face.
>
  I couldn’t take it. It was too much to be facing down such an enemy. I held out the link, pointing it in the direction to his left.

  And nothing happened.

  I spoke the word again.

  “Forasha.”

  Nothing.

  “FORASHA!”

  Our feet stayed glued to the stone. We all moved backwards as a group, and I could tell that none of us had expected this. None of us had a plan.

  The Coyle laughed now, his voice a dangerous, high cackle.

  “Yes,” he purred. “Your little trinkets will not work here. Did you really think that the Master would not take measures to protect himself? Did you really think that a crudely made link would be enough to get you to his doorstep?”

  Movement caught my eye, and I looked down to see the swarm of giants clawing their way up the hill towards us.

  “Oh, don’t worry about them,” the Coyle breathed, barely audible over the hisses of his warriors. “This is my fight.”

  I stared around at his children, the children stolen from the people of the Fold. I hardly dared to believe what I was seeing.

  But I didn’t wait for an explanation.

  I raised my staff and aimed it at the Coyle’s chest. As ever, I didn’t know what to expect to come out of the end of the wood. I only knew that I wanted, more than anything, for all of us to be safe. To be away from this place. And I wanted this monster, standing before us with his terrible sneer, to be gone. Obliterated by any force. Mine. Kiron’s. Finian’s. Any way to rid the universe of this abomination was fine with me.

  As the jet of light reached out for him, he raised one hand, almost lazily, to block the flow of power. On either side of me, Kiron and Finian unleashed their disks onto him. But the his own power encircled him in a sickening green light, and he stayed protected within his bubble.

  The children were alert again, and this time he didn’t hold them back. They unleashed upon us, clawing and biting at our legs with a force I did not expect. For the time being, we could hold. But soon they would take us down.

  I hadn’t seen Jade’s face in the moments since we had come face to face with the Coyle. I heard the thunderous cracking of stone from behind me, and soon daggers hewn from the rock were racing towards him. Jade really was back from the beyond. Her abilities with stone had not been dampened by her months of imprisonment at the Corentin’s hands.