by J B Cantwell
Back in Stonemore I had become lost in the alleyways that snaked between the buildings. I had panicked then, passed out, even. But I didn’t panic now. I wasn’t lost.
She doesn’t know me.
I was different now. When I got lost in Stonemore so many months ago, I was so frightened that my fear had completely overtaken me. Now, having just witnessed some of the most horrifying things of my life, I was somehow able to keep the fear at bay. Beneath the skin on my chest my heart thudded a steady, even rhythm.
Hadn’t the doctors always told me that I was too ill to do anything? That my heart would give out, that I should fear that moment when it came, and that I should focus all of my efforts on protecting myself?
And I’m not nothing. Not by a long shot.
Well, they had been wrong. My heart was healed now, stronger than the doctors or I could have ever imagined possible.
They were all wrong about me. All of them.
She had just stood there, spewing the hateful words born from her pain, trying to convince me that I was worthless, trying to tell me that everything I had ever feared was true.
But I wasn’t worthless. I knew I wasn’t. And the reason I knew was pounding harder and harder in my chest right now.
She could try to deny me my rights to be part of this family. She could take out all of her misery on me, blame me for everything. But no matter how harshly she criticized me, demeaned me, she wasn’t right. I was part of this family, whether she liked it or not, and there was no denying it. She could accuse me of being powerless, and it was a feeling I knew well. So many years of my life I had been powerless, I really had been.
But I wasn’t anymore. I didn’t know if I would be able to take the book, if I would ever learn the magical ways of this land beyond my unexplained health and speed. But I wasn’t powerless.
My pace quickened, and soon I felt my feet begin to pound hard on the stone floor. I ran as fast as I dared after Jade, after the book, after the life that I and everyone deserved. I was going to beat this thing, beat the Corentin, and there was nothing Jade or anyone else could do to stop me.
And once I did, once the dust had settled and everyone was able to think clearly again, I was going to set things right with Jade. If that day came and went, and she still believed the words she had just slung at me, then I would return home, alone, and she could keep this fold in the universe all to herself.
But she couldn’t take away what my time in the Fold had given me. She couldn’t take away who I was, who I would become, or the hope that slowly inflated my chest now as I ran after her.
Nobody would ever take that hope from me again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When I crossed the threshold into the room at the end of the tunnel, filled to the top with exhilaration and determination, I hadn’t expected to find Jade as I did. She was sprawled out on the floor, leaning on one elbow, rubbing the back of her head with her other hand. I looked around the room, trying to figure out what had happened.
And my bubble of hope deflated with an almost audible pop.
This place was familiar, very familiar. Books lined up along the cut stone walls, and a pedestal in one corner held propped up upon it the largest of them. The leather tome stood on the platform, and cut deeply into the cover was the mark I had come to know, the mark that said we had succeeded.
But joy did not flood me as I had expected at finding the prize. No feeling of satisfaction permeated my chest, and instead I almost fell to my knees. This was the room from my dream. No good could come from this place. All of that effort, the climb, the bodies, Almara lost, Jade’s hope destroyed, and this was to be our reward.
Gasping, I searched around for the goblin who had haunted me the other night, reeling from the lingering threat of his long, sharp teeth. The attack would come from…where? Above?
Within?
But no other being joined us in the room. And my insides seemed intact. I cautiously knelt down to where Jade lay, my eyes darting from wall to wall, waiting for the attack to come.
“Are you ok?” I breathed. She shoved me away and rolled over to her other side.
“I’m fine,” she grunted. “I don’t need your help.”
“But what happened?” She didn’t speak. I searched around the room for the answer she wouldn’t give.
I stood up, transfixed. What did this mean? When I had dreamed of Cadoc so many months ago, a lot of what I had dreamt had come true. Was this what was happening now? Was I somehow able to see the future? I shook my head to clear it, but the questions only multiplied in my mind.
“What happened to you?” I asked again, harder this time. She stared away from me at the rock wall, heaving with emotion or effort, I didn’t know. She stayed resolutely silent.
I slowly approached the pedestal. Reaching the ancient volume, I reached out to feel the tattered, crumbling leather. A sizzling sound filled the tiny space, and I snatched my hand back from the book. The sizzling stopped, and I inspected my hand, expecting to find a burn I hadn’t yet felt. But it was unchanged, not injured in any way. I reached out again. The sizzling echoed again and I heard Jade gasp behind me, but this time I didn’t pull back my hand. Instead. I grasped the book with both hands and removed it easily from its throne.
I turned to Jade and found her eyes wide, staring at me as if I had just pulled the sun from the sky with my bare hands. Then her face changed, a shadow falling over her features, and her eyes became as hard as the stone she was named for.
“It doesn’t mean anything,” she growled.
“What do you mean?” I asked, looking from her to the book and back again.
“It doesn’t change anything,” she continued. “It’s nothing more than a trick. Cooked up by Cadoc or the Corentin or you, even.” She got to her feet and smoothed out her clothes with shaking, pale hands.
She tried to take it, I thought.
Tried and failed. That was why I had found her on the ground when I had entered.
Then how did I do it?
I stroked the leather of the book absently as I studied its cover, trying to solve the puzzle of how the book had come to rest in my hands. Was it true, then? Did I possess some magic I didn’t know of?
The jolt that rocked through the mountain came so hard and fast that I almost lost my footing. Jade did, and was launched against the doorway. Another one came, cracking through the rock, and this time I hit the ground. When I looked up to see if Jade was alright, she had fled the tiny room.
“Jade!” I hollered. I got to my feet and quickly stashed the book in my backpack. It just barely fit. Then I went after her. Her blue light was already disappearing around the corner of the tunnel.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Wait up!”
But she didn’t wait. I started running again, and with the next lurch of the mountain was knocked sideways into the tunnel. I didn’t care. I had to catch up to her. Had to explain…somehow…that things weren’t what she thought. I had to win her back. We had the book now. We had a chance.
The floor shook again, and quickly my thoughts shifted to saving my own life. Pebbles pried loose from long ages of supporting the mountain rained down on my head, and I struggled onward. As I approached the entrance to the cavern, the screeching screams of the dragons washed over me. Beyond the protection of the tunnel, I could see them flying haphazardly through the air, crashing into one another in their panic.
Jade was walking determinedly towards them.
“Wait!” I yelled.
But she walked on. Purposefully, quickly. She betrayed no panic as she entered the cavern, and both of her arms raised wide and high above her head as she reached the place where the bridge had stood less than an hour ago. She turned back and glared at me.
And suddenly I understood.
She was mad.
Her brows angled downward over her malicious, near-black eyes. Her whole body glowed with a sickening green, and the tendrils of her power cut long, jagged lines deep into her fle
sh. She seemed not to notice or care, and walked away from me, out into the fray of the canyon.
Rocks the size of bowling balls flew upwards at her silent command, and the bridge reformed in an elegant arch beneath her feet. She strode onto them fearlessly as they swirled up from the floor thousands of feet below, fitting together over the great chasm as if an artist had spent years connecting them. She glided with an elegance that wasn’t her own across it.
When I reached the cavern I stopped, watching her retreating back, eyeing the panicked dragons. They paid me no attention, instead screeching as enormous boulders tumbled from far above. Then the far dragon was knocked down beneath one, and his brother dove after him as he plummeted to the roaring water below.
The sound of tumbling rock brought me back to myself. I looked back to Jade and saw with horror that the bridge was crumbling in her wake. She released the stones from their positions as she moved across to the other side until she was standing atop a bridge that was floating in midair.
The ground far below seemed to buck and sway beneath me, threatening to undo me. It had to be now. I took a deep breath and leapt onto what remained of the path after her. I scrambled and stumbled to keep up and stay standing. The stones slipped from beneath my boots as I ran, barely able to move fast enough to keep my feet on the solid portion of the bridge.
In moments, Jade had reached the other side, and the bridge was falling faster, all at once now. I was ten feet from the edge. Five. Two.
And then the last of the stones were gone, falling powerless to the misty depths below. I leapt just in time, grasping the ledge on the other side of the chasm.
“Jade!” I wailed. “Jade! Help!”
But she didn’t come.
My legs flailed as I tried to find somewhere to place my feet. My toes found purchase on a slim shelf of rock, and I balanced precariously.
“Jade!”
Around me the place was coming to pieces. The mountain came down in chunks as large as skyscrapers, and in the back of my mind I noticed that the dragons had gone silent. The roar of the falling rock outstripped every other sound, and I could barely hear my own voice as I called for her.
I dug my fingernails into the rock and pushed off my toes, hard. I was able to plant both elbows on the flat ground above, and then swung my leg around the edge, hoisting my body over until I lay, panting, on the edge of the precipice.
My rest was short-lived. Above, a boulder broke loose and crashed against the chasm wall as it bore down on me. I rolled to one side, the chunk of mountain barely missing me and hitting, instead, the edge of the rock that had once been the footpath to the bridge. The massive weight of the stone tore away the ledge, and I scrambled towards the tunnel that had brought us here. As I ran, the chasm collapsed in earnest. As the last of the light that shone down from the peak of the mountain was blotted out by a mass of stone, I reached the tunnel.
I didn’t stop. My arms held out in front of me like a blind man, I moved through the black tunnel as fast as I could, wishing for the daylight on the other side. The mountain shuddered and jolted, tossing me like a rag doll up against the jagged sides of the tunnel. My arm bashed against the hard rock. Then my temple was cut open as I was thrown to the other side.
But I ran on, wishing to find Jade’s light up ahead, willing it to appear before me. I had, strapped securely to my back, our salvation. I knew it for certain now by the crumbling mountain around us. And we both needed that salvation now more than ever, for in her eyes roared a new emotion: hatred. Hot, angry fire.
Corentin fire.
I had to get to her.
But I only made it a few steps farther. I stopped, my breath coming in ragged gasps, tightness clenching my chest for the first time in many long months. My mind reeled. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get to her. She had left me hanging from that ledge, dangling an inch from certain death, and she hadn’t even looked back. My chest burned with anger at her betrayal.
Through the darkness I saw her black eyes staring back at me, and I was reminded that it wasn’t her fault.
But part of me was happy she was gone. Let her go. Let her get out there and see that facing the Corentin, alone, was the wrong choice. Let her learn for herself what she had lost when she turned her back on me.
Almara.
My insides grew heavy with loss again as I remembered his absence. If only he had remained. He was the last thread, Jade’s last slim link to sanity, and that thread had broken along with his brittle body as he had jumped from the ledge to ensure our success at retrieving the book.
Jade.
In so many ways she was still just a little girl, and while I was only a few years older, I could see her youth clearly. Maybe the torture of that mountain prison, for her, had continued all along, was still happening right this moment.
I pushed myself off the wall and continued slowly down the black tunnel towards the outside world beyond. If she hadn’t left me behind, if she was still on this mountaintop and able to be found, then I would stick with her. I would follow her if she refused to travel alongside me. The image of her gripping the Kinstone flashed in my mind, and I realized that my chances were slim. Surely she must be already gone, jumped away to someplace new, searching for a new kind of salve for her wounds. I shuddered as I considered what types of relief the Corentin’s power might drive her towards.
The only thing that kept me moving forward was the fact that I now held the book. A chance at victory swung awkwardly in the pack, bumping against my back as I walked. I had no idea what was written in its pages. No idea if I would have the power to use it to set things right. But just knowing that I had the thing was enough for now. I had succeeded beyond the conquests of any who had come before me. Seven thousand years it had been locked away in that tiny room, and now it was broken free, a weapon to be used against our enemies.
I gulped, hoping that Jade would not fall so far to the Corentin’s fire as to be counted on that list.
When I finally saw the light of the fading afternoon up ahead, relief flooded through me. The hot, sticky air of the bowels of the great mountain suddenly became stifling with the promise of the cold, crisp breeze mere steps away. I emerged from the tunnel exhausted, like an aged man forced to run a great distance. Dropping the pack from my back, I collapsed to the ground. I scanned the mountainside, but Jade did not betray her location. I lay back and breathed deeply, the view of the darkening sky above an immense relief to my tattered spirit. Then I heard it.
Laughter.
The sound was high and strained, like a guitar string pulled to the verge of snapping. I scrambled to my feet and started down the mountain in the direction of the noise. It became louder and louder, practically ringing in my ears as it echoed off the boulders. The sound sent shivers across my skin, growing louder with each step I took. My stomach turned uncomfortably. As I crested the small hill on the edge of the destroyed village, I saw her.
Jade stood in front of the small church, her face stretched into a wide, wicked smile. She was staring inside, and I knew what she was seeing. That same pile of burned bodies that had made me recoil and flee, she now found humor in. I stood still, gaping at her in horror and disgust.
Slowly, lazily, her head turned, and her eyes met mine. Her laughing ceased as she regarded me, as if considering the possible solutions to a puzzle. But then, as I lifted my boots from the granite and ran towards her, she raised the Kinstone above her head and vanished.
I slowed as I reached the bottom of the hill, bending over to catch my breath when I got to the front of the church. On the ground something caught my eye. A figure from inside the building had been brought out, the bones arranged in a disgusting spectacle at the doorstep. The legs were set at odd, bent angles, as if the bones were frozen in time, mid-flight. The arms folded over the chest, both hands cupped together where the heart, had any remained, would reside.
I raised my hands over my own chest, the memory of being unable to breathe forever entwined with that
gesture. How many times back on Earth had I struck that very pose?
And the skull, twisted backwards, as if glancing back at a predator.
Why had she done this? I moved closer and, leaning over, saw the message Jade had left for me. Cut deep into the forehead of the skull, the shadow of Jared’s symbol stared up at me in the fading light.
I fell to my knees as realization washed over me.
It was me. This broken and burned victim of the Corentin was me. Would be me.
Her threat hung in the air all around, weighted me to the mountain so that I could barely move. Finally, the truth of what had transpired, and the truth of what was to come, hit me. Loss has a greater impact, sometimes, than fear. And now I truly understood.
Jade of Borna, my friend, was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
I must have slept, because I didn’t become conscious again until late into the night. I lay sprawled at the feet of the skeleton that bore my name and watched the sky.
In the end, the Corentin had never come for us at all, never shown his face to prevent us from gaining the one prize that might be his undoing. Instead, we had scurried through his maze like little mice, falling right into his carefully laid trap. Perhaps he was watching us from afar somewhere. Or perhaps his attention had already moved elsewhere, to more important targets.
Though I now held the book, it didn’t matter. His deed was done. Our party, our quest, our family, was destroyed. Without them, I couldn’t see how I could make one bit of difference in these speeding, reckless worlds, book or no book.
For a while I didn’t move. Hopelessness belonged to this night. Maybe tomorrow I would rally, but tonight I mourned. As the stars twinkled and shimmered in the heavens, I was reminded of my long sleep, taken without choice after Cadoc had smashed my chest, and my life, with the heel of his boot. I was technically dead then, and I had floated among the stars, becoming one of them after the the last bit of life had drained from my body.
But, after a long, long time, Jade had wrestled me back into the living world. Bit by bit, her magic had pulled me from the peace and serenity of the stars and returned me to my body. Maybe, a tiny, hopeful voice said, I could do the same for her.
