Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2)

by J B Cantwell

“This was our family’s home,” she said softly. “Father always told me that I would find him here. One day. That here we would meet.” She gestured to the empty room.

  All that remained here was the great stone fireplace. I imagined their little family, before the sickness began to spread. Maybe they had sat on that very hearth, planning out the day’s adventures. Jade would have been small, maybe five. Brendan just becoming a young man. Almara, in my imagination, had always been old.

  “He’s not here,” she sobbed. “What are we going to do now?” The haze she had been moving beneath seemed to release her, and her emotions spilled out of her.

  I put my arm around her shoulder, still taking in the details of what was once her home. A large picture frame hung empty on one wall. A single, tattered curtain hung from one of the windows.

  “One thing at a time, kid,” I said. “We just got here. We need to search around and see what’s left. And maybe Erod’s family can help us. Maybe they know something.”

  “I don’t trust him,” she shot, moving away from me. “He’s one of them. Father always said to stay away from the Solitaries.“

  “He saved our lives,” I said.

  “That proves nothing,” she said, crossing her arms. Her tears of sadness were turning angry. “You’re wrong about him. Whatever he told you was lies.”

  “You don’t know that,” I said, starting to get angry, myself. “And anyways, I’ve trusted you this whole time. I got on that stupid boat and came here because I believed that you were right, that you knew what you were doing. And you didn’t even bother to tell me about the threat of the Solitaries until it was way too late for us to turn back. Well now I’m the one who has the information, and I say you’re wrong. I don’t know about all of them, but I trust him.”

  We each stood there, glaring at each other, when a scuffling sound came from behind where we stood. Erod must have heard us arguing and was coming now to find out what was going on.

  “We’re in here,” I called, my eyes shooting Jade a warning. The last thing we needed was her offending him. He had saved our skins more than once in the past twenty four hours, and for all we knew we’d need his help again before this day was out.

  The scuffling sound stopped. I looked around, perplexed, and then back at Jade. Her eyes were still brimming with tears.

  I turned and tiptoed into the corridor, and I heard it again. In another room down the hall, the slight scratching sound, like someone’s boots scraping the floor.

  I turned to Jade and put my finger over my lips.

  Be quiet.

  Together we moved towards the sound. I saw over the railing now that Erod was still down below. He stood in the middle of the hall, slowly turning on the spot, like a tourist in a cathedral.

  If it wasn’t Erod, then what was making that noise?

  I grabbed Jade’s hand and we crept through the passage. Through an opening in the stone the noise became louder. We paused outside, listening, and then slowly pushed open a tall wood door.

  The room was big and brighter than any other room in the castle I had yet seen. Windows lined the far wall and stretched from floor to ceiling. Soft morning light lit an intricate mosaic floor beneath our feet. In the center, a tall, slim table stood empty.

  And before it, a figure clothed in a long robe shredded to rags swayed. Long, gray hair hung in matted snarls down his back. He rocked slightly from foot to foot, making the shuffling noise again as his steps scraped the floor. He muttered quietly to himself, his shriveled hands in the air making strange, jerking gestures like a sort of twisted dance.

  Jade stared.

  “Hello?” I said quietly.

  The man froze mid-step. Then he slowly turned around, his mad eyes round and bloodshot, and stared at us.

  “Father?” Jade breathed. And a moment later her face broke into a wide, awed grin.

  Almara.

  CHAPTER SIX

  He turned and raised his arms as if to embrace Jade. But his eyes were wild. She didn’t see it. She saw only the father she had longed for. She moved forward, her face crumpling, opening her arms as she moved, before I had a chance to yell out.

  “Torrensio!” Almara boomed.

  From the ancient, withered man came a power so great it knocked both of us to the floor. The entire mountain shook around us, sending chunks of rocks the size of baseballs tumbling to the ground. The force of the blast rolled over us, just as the previous Torrensai had, and I covered my head with my arms as the pebbles continued to rain down and dance around on the mosaic tile.

  When the rocks stopped falling and the castle was still, I squinted through the dust, searching for Jade. She was just two feet from me, and lay in a fetal position, protecting herself from the tumbling mountain.

  “Are you ok?” I hoisted myself up onto my elbows and crawled through the thick granite powder that now blanketed the floor over to where she lay. Her forehead wrinkled with surprise. I took her hands and helped her up to sitting. We turned to face Almara.

  But he was gone.

  My questions and anger about the unwarranted attack hung unspoken on my lips. My head whipped around, searching for him, for the next strike. But the room was empty.

  “Hey!” Erod’s voice echoed up from the entrance of the castle. “What’s going on up there?”

  I stood up and held out my hand to her.

  “What was that about?” I asked. But her face had gone blank, her hopes of a happy reunion dashed. Her temporary lucidity seemed to have evaporated.

  “Come on, get up,” I commanded, waving my hand impatiently in front of her face. Slowly, she reached out her hand.

  I pulled her up and over to the open doorway and peered out into the deserted hall. I turned to face her.

  “Where would he go?”

  She looked up at me, her eyes dazed.

  “Jade! You’ve got to get it together! It’s Almara! Where would he go?”

  Sudden tears began pouring freely down her cheeks as she bobbed between disbelief and pain.

  “Why?‘“ she began. “Why would he do that?” Panic now joined her other emotions, and she looked like she might scream.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “We’ll figure it out, but right now we need to find him. Where would he go?”

  She stared blankly ahead, her face confused and worried.

  “Is there anywhere in the house, anywhere where he used to spend a lot of time?” I asked. “I need you to focus. Think.”

  She searched around the room as if she hoped that an answer would reveal itself in the empty space to fill her empty mind.

  “Maybe the library?”

  “Where is it?” I had both hands on her shoulders now, demanding that she keep her attention on me and the task at hand. She raised her arm and pointed to the far end of the hall.

  “Come on.”

  I dragged her behind me and stepped as quietly as I could over the small pieces of rubble that littered the passage. The doorway at the end stood ajar, Almara’s symbol carved deeply into the surface of the wood. Not a hint of gold adorned it.

  The room on the other side was dark, almost pitch black. The mosaic room had been so bright and cheerful, but the library was dim and covered with the dust of centuries. Or maybe not. Maybe this was the place where he frequently set his Torrensai, and the dirt at our feet was the result of the castle crumbling around him, forced to rubble by his magic .

  Barely visible in the tiny shafts of light that peeked through the thick window hangings, rows and rows of books were stacked from floor to ceiling.

  I took a deep breath and spoke.

  “Hello?” I called quietly into the darkness. “Almara? We’re not here to hurt you. We just want to talk to you.”

  Silence.

  I took another step into the room, but Jade pulled on my arm, alarmed.

  “Aster, no!” she whispered. Her eyes were wide with fear.

  “It’s ok,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt. “Com
e on, it’ll be ok.”

  But she planted her feet and refused to take another step into the space, suddenly terrified of the man she had spent two hundred years waiting to see.

  I released her hands and turned back to the room.

  “Please don’t!” she begged in my ear.

  “Sir?” I called again. “Please. We have come a very long way to find you. If you could just give us a minute. We just want to talk.”

  “Brendan?”

  His voice was scratchy and quiet, and I saw a human form move from the shadows on the other side of the room.

  “Brendan, is that you?”

  A quiet gasp came from Jade behind me, and she scurried from the room.

  “No, I’m—”

  Before I had a chance to tell him my name, he was upon me. He thrust himself at me and threw his arms around me in a desperate hug.

  “Brendan!” he gasped, clutching at my jacket. “Oh, son! I thought I would never see you again!”

  He released me momentarily and looked up into my face, his decrepit, stooped body shorter than mine. His eyes were round and gray, and they searched my face hungrily. It was the wrong face, I knew, but it made no difference to him.

  “How did you get back?” he asked. “After you jumped, I saw the rift and I knew that I would never see you again. How did you manage it?”

  “I don’t think that I’m who you think—”

  “Did you find him? Did you succeed? Please tell me that you did, son,” he shook his head sadly, defeated by years of failure, waiting for me to disappoint him.

  I felt horrible. But I had to tell him.

  “Sir, my name is Aster. I’m not Brendan.” I felt sure that this fact would bring him to his senses.

  “Did you find him? Did you? And what of the ore? Was it waiting for you in the great mountains of Earth? Where is it?”

  It was like I hadn’t even spoken at all. Had he heard me?

  “I’m not Brendan.”

  I looked back at Jade, who peeked out from behind the big door, watching our exchange. Her face was so wet with tears it looked as if she had just had a shower.

  “What is he talking about?” I said.

  Almara turned away from me and began puttering around the room, mumbling nonsense to no one. I looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “Jade,” I began, but her eyes vanished from behind the door. I went after her and found her standing with her back to the wall outside the stuffy room.

  “What is going on?” I asked.

  “He’s mad,” she moaned, wrapping her arms around her middle. “He’s gone mad. He has the sickness.”

  “What?” I said, glancing back towards the library. He was just mistaken, thinking I was Brendan. He was an old, heartbroken man. And he had been holed up in this castle all alone for who knew how long. He couldn’t be crazy. Could he? “But how can someone with power like Almara get the sickness? No, just give him a chance. It’s been a long time. Maybe he’s just confused.”

  She was sobbing outright now, and fell to the floor in a heap. I knelt down beside her, but I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t help her. I couldn’t give her what she needed now. The only one who could was pacing around in the other room and currently thought that I was his long-dead son.

  “How could he possibly be sick?” I asked, partly to her, partly to myself.

  Her eyes remained on her fingers, twisted together now in a heap of tension and despair.

  “Power doesn’t matter,” she said. “Magic doesn’t matter. When the sickness comes, it comes for all of us, regardless of our abilities.”

  “But how do you know?” I asked, starting to panic.

  But Jade didn’t need to answer me. The truth of her words swirled in my brain and stuck there, refusing to let go. The old man in the other room reminded me of someone I knew, someone very familiar. I had a measure of madness, and the yard stick by which I measured it was my own father. As my heart fell into my stomach the truth crashed down upon me. Jade was right. Almara was lost, just as my father had been.

  I stood back up, trying to calm myself and work out a plan all at the same time.

  “It will be ok,” I said, pacing back and forth. “We’ll work this out.”

  She didn’t look at me again. Instead, her head fell into her hands as the tears streamed silently down her cheeks.

  I walked back into the library, taking care not to startle Almara, who was poring over a stack of documents on a long, wooden table.

  “Almara?” I said quietly.

  He looked up at me, startled and dazed. And then his eyes came into focus.

  “Son?” he said. “Is that you? Brendan?”

  He moved across the room to me once more, and thrust his arms around me, patting me hard on the back.

  “Oh!” he said. “I never thought I would see you again! Tell me, did you find him? Did you find he who can save us all on Earth?”

  He was recognizing me all over again, as if the last several minutes had never happened.

  I stared at him for a moment as the reality of what I was facing stunned me. Our guide and savior had no idea who his own daughter was, and he thought I was his own son. We were in big trouble. Who could help us now?

  Don’t freak out. Think.

  I needed to try to get through to him, to find a way into his fractured mind. Somewhere in there was the truth. Somewhere in there he had our answers.

  I tried a different approach.

  “No…father, I didn’t find it,” I said, pretending to be his lost son.

  His face fell with disappointment, and his hands released me.

  “Oh, no,” he said. “You were unable to find the champion or the gold? But you have been gone for so long.” His head drooped downward, his insane mind deep in thought about this new development.

  “Um…“ I stalled, trying to think of a believable answer. “Where should I have looked?”

  His head whipped up again.

  “Where the mountains meet the water. There lies the gold, shooting up from the great, hot core of Earth.”

  “The gold?” I asked.

  He looked at me, perplexed.

  “We need the gold to balance the planets.” He looked at me expectantly.

  “Oh, right,” I said, trying to follow along. “And how do we balance them?”

  He paced away from me to the other side of the room and peeked through one of the narrow slits in the curtains.

  “I know not. I have waited for you, so that we could move on to the Fire Mountains together. For there we will find the book. It will direct us in the ways of the ancients.” He turned to look at me and rubbed his hands together nervously. “But without the gold, I fear we shall not make it past the gates of Riverstone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We cannot jump to the Fire Mountains without the gold, and no gold remains on any of the planets in the Triaden.”

  “You mean, we need gold to make a link?” I asked.

  “Not just any link,” he snorted. I wanted to keep him talking; the conversation seemed to keep him lucid. “You know as well as I that the crafting of links to other worlds is no easy task, but without gold any attempt at all would be futile.”

  At that moment the door behind us creaked open, and I heard Erod’s muffled voice.

  “Aster?” he called softly. “What’s going on in there? You alright? What’s wrong with Jade?”

  “Aster?” asked Almara, looking between me and the door. “Who is Aster?”

  “Erod, can you come in here?” I answered. The enormous man lumbered through the doorway, and at his arrival Almara’s eyes became round and frightened again.

  “You!” he shrieked. He began to raise up his hands again, as he had in the sunlit room, as if he were about to release a curse.

  “No!” I shouted, approaching him with my hands in the air. “No, Father! Erod is a friend of mine! You musn’t—”

  “He is one of them,” he hissed. His
voice and eyes held the same fear Jade had shown just minutes ago.

  “One of who?”

  “A Solitary,” he said, standing up as tall as his crooked body would allow. “No Solitary has the right to walk the halls of this castle, and I swear on the Book of Leveling—”

  “No! He is my friend. This is Erod.” I stretched out my hand to Erod, hoping that he would be brave enough to take it and enter the space with us. “He saved us. We nearly drowned.”

  Erod took careful, heavy steps towards us, and Almara backed away, his head half-turned, like a dog expecting to be smacked on the nose. His momentary courage had vanished. His eyes narrowed wickedly at the giant man.

  “You fool the boy, but you do not fool me, Erod,” he said. “I know your kind. Your people have the book that could save us all, and yet you hoard it all to yourselves. Why? You broke my gates and you ruled this house for a time, yes. But only until I returned and drove you out.” He stretched out his bony arm and pointed an age-knobbled finger at Erod. “You have no place here.”

  I looked at Erod, unsure of what to do, but when he didn’t speak, I had no choice but to.

  “Erod is welcome wherever I go,” I said. Almara shifted his untrusting eyes to me, and the gray orbs softened at the sight of my face.

  “Son,” he said. “Oh, my son!” He approached me again, embracing me as he had done now twice before. “Brendan, tell me, did you find it?”

  How was I supposed to get past this? Every five minutes he was forgetting who I was. And that didn’t even matter, because I wasn’t Brendan. Not only did he keep forgetting, but he had it wrong entirely. I wasn’t, and could never be, the son he wanted to see.

  I stared at the man, the madman Almara, deranged from what, I didn’t know, and lied.

  “Yes, father,” I said quietly. “I found it.”

  Ten minutes later I sat with Erod and Jade in her old quarters. She was exhausted from both the sea journey and the huge disappointment she had just faced. I dug out the old ratty blanket Kiron had given me and wrapped it around her. She curled up into a ball in the back of a dark closet. She could rest here, hidden and undisturbed.

  Almara remained in the library, probably thinking himself left alone for another hundred years. He took little notice when we had left, and he’d begun muttering again, walking himself around and around the room. He wouldn’t miss us.