Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2)

by J B Cantwell

  “Ah! I told you you would feel better!” she said. “You do feel better, don’t you?”

  I smirked at her and nodded.

  “Mmm, hmm,” she said, and turned her gaze back out to the ocean.

  “How much longer?” I asked.

  “Two days. They’ve agreed to let us out on one of the lifeboats when we’re near.”

  “You mean they’re not even stopping at Riverstone?” I asked.

  “No, it appears not,” she said. If she tried to hide the worry on her face, it didn’t work. Suddenly I understood her desire for speed, to get to Riverstone as quickly as possible. As I had been searching for Almara so that I could return home, she was returning home now, and hoping to find him already there. Maybe, with our arrival at Riverstone, our search for Almara would be over. And she would finally have her father back.

  “How do you know these guys will take us where they say?” I asked.

  “Because I know the way. I can read these stars as well as any map.”

  I looked up at the blazing night sky. Where I saw an impenetrable mass of twinkling lights, Jade saw roadmaps, street signs. We were in her neighborhood, and it was the first time she had seen it in two hundred years.

  “Does it still look the same?” I asked. I remembered visiting our old neighborhood back home once, the apartment block we had lived in before my dad left. Things had changed. Paint colors and traffic signals were different than I had remembered, and everything looked smaller.

  “The stars don’t change so much,” she said. “But the harbor wasn’t the same. The people were cold. When I was a child, the town was friendly, lively even. And passage to Riverstone was common, with ships leaving daily. It concerns me greatly, the lack of options we had today.”

  Yes, I was concerned about that, too.

  Months ago, when I first met Jade, I had been searching for the links Almara had left behind. Each time I found one I would use it to jump to the next location, and each jump would bring me closer to finding him. Together, Jade and I traveled for a time, and we had succeeded in finding several more of Almara’s links.

  But then our trail suddenly evaporated. The last link we found, which brought us from the forests on Aegis to the plains of Aria, had failed to give us any further guidance. Unlike the other links, no map had appeared, no driving heat or howl had shown us where to go. It had simply deposited us here on Aria, and no further instruction was revealed.

  Not knowing where, exactly, to journey to find the next link, we chose to move on to the only place on Aeso we could think of where we might find it: Riverstone. It was a guess and a gamble. Almara had originally left these links for Brendan. Had he hoped that his son would know to find the next link in Riverstone, his home?

  As the ship jerked up and down with the swells of the ocean, I let the spray mist across my face. In the distance the faintest glow of sunrise was beginning to light the horizon. It was hard to feel fearful about what awaited us in Riverstone just at the moment. I was too caught up in the relief I felt in this delicious, cool air. I leaned slightly over the railing, lifted my chin skyward and breathed long, slow breaths.

  But my respite was short-lived. Before Jade could say another word, a shrill whistle pierced through the night. I guess that the few men up on deck weren’t all as drunk as the driver of this great, lumbering boat. The lookouts high up in the sails had seen something, and several alarmed shouts echoed against the surface of the water.

  I turned, staring around for the cause of the disturbance. No other ships revealed themselves. Land was still out of sight. I couldn’t see any threat at all. What was the commotion about?

  Jade had gone silent amidst the chaos. I turned and saw that her hands gripped the edge of the railing, and her eyes were wide and fixed on a point in the distance I could not see.

  “What is it?” I asked, squinting in the same direction. She stayed silent, her mouth hanging slightly open. I searched and searched, but the darkness, still hanging on to the last hour of night, revealed little.

  The night had suddenly turned black again, whereas moments before the moonless sky had still been bright with stars, the promise of sunrise teasing the horizon. Now it was as if half of those lights had gone out. Where had the stars gone? What had happened to the early morning light?

  Then, with a sickening twist of my stomach, I suddenly understood. The stars hadn’t gone out or moved or changed in any way at all. The sun hadn’t sunk back down below the waves. The light was being obscured by something, something massive and black.

  Water.

  A great, enormous wave rose up ahead of the ship, much larger than anything we had voyaged over since coming aboard. Much larger, in fact, than any wave I had ever seen. And it was headed, fast, in our direction.

  CHAPTER TWO

  My jaw dropped open, and for a moment I stood there, still as the statue my friend next to me had become. Through the fog of panic that quickly stifled my brain, a single thought floated up to the surface.

  Stay on the boat.

  I wrenched myself away from Jade and the sight of our approaching death. My eyes found what they were searching for quickly; a long twist of rope was spun into a coil on the deck, and a good, strong rope was exactly what I needed.

  I grabbed Jade’s arm, yanking her from the railing, and flung her ahead of me towards the closest mast. She only made it a couple of steps before I had to prod her along again. Her face was still frozen in terror, her mouth moving but no sound coming from her throat. I knew she would be useless in the effort to save even herself. This was where Jade’s abilities always faltered. When faced with horror, time after time, she crumbled.

  I pushed her closer to the mast and began uncoiling the rope. I unwrapped several feet of it and then draped it around Jade’s midsection, tying a clumsy knot and then taking the end and wrapping it around myself. If the ship went down, we would be in trouble, tied to it like bait to a fishing line. But if it stayed afloat, we might have a chance of surviving. We each wrapped our arms around the great wooden post and turned our eyes to the new horizon line, which was now towering a hundred feet over our heads.

  The wave didn’t hit the boat as a slap might, but instead crept up on us, surging up like a mountain rising from the ocean. As it rolled underneath the ship, it lifted the vessel up with it until we were nearly vertical. We were tossed like children’s toys, no hope of holding onto the mast against the great force of gravity. Screams and shouts came from all around, and then were lost to the thunderous rush of water below.

  The rope cut into my side as I dangled below Jade. I couldn’t see. Saltwater choked in my throat and stung my eyes as I flailed at the end of the rope. Jade was screaming, the sound nearly lost against the angry roar of water colliding with wood. The boat creaked and groaned as several long beams of the deck split in two.

  And then it was over. As quickly as it began, the ship righted itself on the backside of the wave. The sky was suddenly bright with morning once again. We both hit the deck hard, panting for breath, sobbing dry tears. Jade moaned three feet away, where she lay sprawled on what remained of the deck. It had all happened so fast.

  “Are you ok?” I asked hoarsely. She didn’t respond. “Jade!” I reached out and grabbed onto her foot, shaking it to get her attention. She turned her body over and crawled towards me, weeping like a young child. When she reached my side, she gripped onto my arms and buried her head in my chest.

  She was ok. We were alive.

  Shouts broke out as the sailors from down below came up to the deck. When they realized the men who had been up top had vanished, they began to search the waters. The shouts and screams I had heard still rang in my ears, and I remembered how the sounds had stopped so abruptly.

  But the crew found nothing. The men I had heard had been swallowed up. And in the distance the giant wave rippled away from the ship, now darkening the sky along a different stretch of ocean.

  I sat up and began to untie the rope with my wet,
shaking hands. I was cold from the drenching of icy water, but I was in one piece.

  “What was that?” she said, trembling.

  “I don’t know,” I panted. “Rogue wave?” She looked at me, confused, so I went on. “You know, one of those giant waves out at sea that develop from thin air and sink ships.”

  “Where do they come from?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe from an earthquake? You know, underground?”

  She stared around at the men scurrying about the deck, a lost and unfocused look on her face. I released the last knot and we both crawled to our feet.

  The captain was out now. He stood at the highest point on the deck, giving commands and looking through a long, thin spyglass at the ocean surface. The sky was quickly brightening as the sun finally rose over us in earnest.

  “Daryl! Radley! Bring her about!” he bellowed. The sailors all heaved on the ropes that snarled the decks, and the great sails of the ship shifted their position. The wind hit them on the opposite side, and the boat began to turn.

  “Wait,” Jade said, suddenly driven to alertness. “Where are they going?” She began pushing her way through the men, fighting her way over to the captain. I trailed behind her, still trying to catch my breath.

  “What are you doing?” she shouted up to the captain. “You’re supposed to be taking us to Riverstone!”

  “I ain’t takin’ you anywhere, girl, but back to port. I just lost three good men to a Torrensai. I don’t plan to lose any more of ‘em. Once one of those waves comes alive, there’s sure to be more to follow. I ain’t goin’ that way.”

  “What’s a Torrensai?” I asked.

  “A blast of power so great that it swells the seas and breaks the mountains.” He looked out over the horizon. “I should’ve known better than to come through here.”

  “But we paid you to take us to Riverstone,” she protested, slamming her hands onto her hips.

  “You think I care about that?” he said. “You think a couple pieces of silver are enough to pay for my life and the lives of all the men on this ship? Take your silver, I don’t care. We’re goin’ back.”

  She stared at him in amazement. She opened her mouth to argue again, but I gripped her arm and whispered in her ear.

  “Arguing won’t help,” I breathed. “We need to give him something he wants. Something that makes it worth the risk.”

  My hand closed around the small, cold locket I carried in my pocket, stolen what felt like ages ago from around Cadoc’s neck. I stepped closer to the captain.

  “We have gold,” I said. He didn’t hear me, and continued to shout orders to anyone close by.

  “Aster, no,” Jade said, grabbing my hand.

  We had to get to Riverstone. We had run out of options. No other clues had made themselves known. We had to go back to the place where Almara’s quest had started so we could figure out how it had ended. If it had ended. Without discovering what had become of that place, we were lost.

  It was this, or give up now. Never go home again.

  “I said we have GOLD,” I shouted.

  The deck became very quiet. Twenty sets of eyes turned to look me up and down, and it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t have shouted quite so loudly.

  “You fool,” Jade said quietly, and jabbed me in the arm.

  “You’re lyin’,” said the captain. The men closest to him laughed. Many of them went back to their work, but a few still paused, waiting to hear if it was true.

  I looked at Jade.

  “It’s the only chance we have,” I whispered. “Do you want to get home or not?”

  She glared for a moment, but then her face fell. We would not be able to find further passage to Riverstone, not with rumors of this Torrensai wave that would surely follow us back to port.

  I climbed up on the platform where he stood and looked at him face to face.

  “I am not,” I said more bravely than I felt.

  He blew a puff of air through his lips and rolled his eyes.

  “Come with me,” I said. “I’ll show you.”

  He might not have believed me, but even the hope of true gold was enough to get him to follow.

  “You better not be foolin’ with me, kid,” he said. I jumped down to the main deck and headed for the ladder that led to the passages below. Jade followed both of us as we descended into the narrow hallway, now flooded. The captain’s wet leather boots were the last pair of feet to step into knee-high water.

  “I got twenty men up there need their captain, and three of our numbers just went overboard.”

  “I’m not fooling you,” I said. I took the locket from my pocket and held it out to him.

  His eyes bulged large as he took in what must look, to him, to be an impossible sight. Gold, real gold, was so rare this deep in the Fold that it was likely he had never laid eyes on a true piece at all. But there was no denying what I held out to him was real. The morning light that filtered down through the opening in the ceiling played with the edges of the Almara’s carved symbol, sending glittering reflections of the metal onto the walls of the hallway. I had stolen it from Cadoc as he hovered over me, threatening my life and Jade’s. I broke the chain and took it for my own, right before he broke my back with the heel of his boot.

  “Where did a kid like you get that?” he finally said, reaching out his hand to grasp the thin strand.

  I flicked the necklace out of his reach.

  “Never you mind where I got it,” I said. “But you and your crew will keep your hands off it and off us unless you want us to vanish from this ship.”

  Tied around my neck, tucked beneath my shirt, was the link that Kiron had given me back in Stonemore. It was a short-range link, meant to take the jumper about a mile in the direction it was pointed. The thick, hard stone was to be used for emergencies only. Kiron had crafted it back on Aerit, and hadn’t known whether it would work properly on other planets. But it was always there, my emergency plan, waiting to launch us out of trouble if things ever turned deadly.

  “Alright, alright,” he said, taking a step backward. But his eyes were still glued to the necklace, gleaming greedily.

  “I’m not kidding,” I said. “If you or any of your men come at us, try to steal this from us, we’ll take our chances on the waves. The two of us dead at the bottom of the ocean with this gold in my pocket won’t do you or your men any good. Do you understand?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I understand.” He tried to mask the flash of anger the shot across his face. He seemed to be falling for my bluff.

  “You will take us to Riverstone. And once you do, the gold is yours. Do we have a deal?”

  His eyes flitted back and forth between my face and the chain, and then over to Jade. He stayed silent.

  “I said, do we have a deal?”

  “It ain’t as easy as that,” he growled. “That was a Torrensai. It’ll keep comin’ back.”

  “What do you mean, it will keep coming back?” I asked.

  “That wasn’t no regular wave. Someone set that wave. And if they had the power to do that, there’s no tellin’ what other defenses they’re gonna send our way. Don’t matter how bad you wanna get to Riverstone. I don’t think we’ll live through another strike.” His eyes betrayed his fear and looked longingly at the chain that dangled through my fingers.

  We were in trouble now. I had given one of our most valuable secrets away. I looked at Jade, who looked back at me with both misery and determination. She understood what we faced, and the consequences of giving up now. We seemed to agree without speaking. I turned back to the captain.

  “Is there a chance?” I asked. “If we continue on, is there a chance that we can make it?”

  He stared at the floor, shaking his head back and forth.

  “I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe.”

  “Then do we have a deal?” I held out my other hand to shake his. He looked at it skeptically.

  “Look, kid—”

  “My name
’s Aster.”

  His eyes rose to meet mine, and something in his gaze shifted.

  “You and I both know this is more gold than you could ever hope to see. It’s enough to keep you and your crew in riches for the rest of your lives. Do we have a deal?”

  He heaved a big sigh and hitched up his pants, straightened his lumpy hat.

  His hand reached out and gripped mine.

  “Name’s Storm.”

  “Well, then, Storm, you’ll be the perfect guide to ride out whatever other horrible weather attacks us.”

  “I ain’t makin’ no promises, kid.”

  “I know it,” I said. “But I am. You get us to Riverstone, and the necklace is yours.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Storm climbed the ladder back up to the deck ahead of Jade and I. I dashed for our room and strapped my backpack to my shoulders. We needed to be ready to jump at all times now. When I returned to the ladder and grabbed for the rungs she held me back.

  “He’s going to steal it. You know he is,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said through gritted teeth. “But just let him try.”

  “Then why did you tell him at all?”

  “Because we’ve come too far. We’re two days away now, maybe less. If we can just hold out long enough, we might be able to make it.”

  “How are we supposed to fight off a ship full of grown men?” she asked, a note of desperation ringing in her voice. “You saw the look on his face. He looked like he was, I don’t know, wild or something. He wants the necklace. And when he tells the others what he saw…” Her eyes flitted nervously to the opening in the ceiling.

  “I know,” I said. “We just need to last until we get close enough to see the land. Then maybe we can jump.”

  “And what, swim to Riverstone? Aster, I can’t swim!”

  I couldn’t swim, either, but the beginning of a plan was forming inside my head, and I hoped I had a solution. What we needed was to get our feet back on solid ground, and right now the land was too far away. But Jade had powers over earth elements, stones in particular. If we could just figure out a way to use that to our advantage, we might have a chance.