Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2)

by J B Cantwell

  But I don’t have magic.

  Ah, but I did. I had taken the book when she had been unable to. That was at least something.

  But I don’t know how to use it.

  That was true. I had experienced magic, had felt it coursing through my veins as I flew across the grassy plains, faster than any creature, man or beast. I had gripped the edges of the book easily, as if it were nothing more special than a library hardback. But I had no control over whatever this power was. I couldn’t use it at my will. Though, maybe I could try to learn.

  I can’t learn. Jade already tried to teach me, and I failed to create so much as a spark.

  But maybe, deep down, Jade hadn’t wanted me to learn. And I remembered that, by then, she was already wrestling with the power of the Corentin over her mind.

  As I wrestled with questions I had no answers to, the sun pierced through the night. I sat up and pulled my pack over, opening the wide, drawstring top.

  The book was more awkward than heavy, and time had all but crumbled its cover. I opened it, the one true hope that remained to me, and eagerly searched its pages.

  I nearly threw it off the mountaintop when I discovered that they were blank.

  My hands gripped onto the corners of the ancient parchment, and it was all I could do to keep from crumpling them inside my fists. But when I pulled my hands away, instead of empty pages, markings were left where my skin had touched the paper.

  I ogled at the sight, and then frantically rubbed the palms of my hands over the surface. Like bread toasting in the oven, deep brown lines burned into the pages everywhere that had made contact with my skin.

  The first page was a simple list. Eight planets.

  Aeso

  Aerit

  Aria

  Barta

  Dursala

  Grallero

  Thalio

  Yunta

  Then, sections for each planet split the book into chapters. Within each, drawings, measurements, maps, locations. I studied the drawings in the Thalio section, and a tiny line of text caught my eye.

  2 gold stones

  I flipped through to the next section and found a similar notation next to the drawing on that page.

  5 gold stones

  Fear tingled in my chest as I began tearing through the book, scouring it for the notations, adding in my head as I counted the number of gold stones required by each place.

  When I had finally flipped to the end, I had it. Twenty four. I wondered how big a stone was. I picked up a pebble that sat next to my foot and rolled it around in my fingertips. It was the size of a pea. Next to it on the ground sat another, larger rock, this one the size of a golf ball. I gulped.

  3 gold stones. 5 gold stones. 9 gold stones.

  My heart sank slowly, drifting gently downward until it rested heavily on my stomach. I turned the last page and rubbed my palm against it, hoping for an answer to the problem I knew made my task impossible.

  A small diagram was set into the center. A circle, not as small as a pea, nor as large as a golf ball, and two lines of measure along the top and side, was drawn on the page. I exhaled my held breath, partly relieved, partly distraught.

  To balance the Fold I needed gold. A lot of gold. It would be nearly an impossible task to acquire that much treasure here. I had seen the hungry eyes of the sailors on the ship, the shocked faces of the Solitaries in the village. Gold would be all but impossible to find. But as I eyeballed the golfball sized rock next to me, I was forcibly reminded that things could be worse. These units of measure, these stones, were really quite small. Maybe it could be done. Maybe a cache of gold lay somewhere in the Fold, yet undiscovered.

  But in my heart I knew it wasn’t true. The image of a solid gold dagger and a small chest filled with a life’s collection of thin, gold chains flashed in my mind. I had seen those things back on Earth, in Grandma’s attic. On Earth, the necklaces would be easy to collect over time. Valuable, yes, but not out of reach to one with determination to acquire them. They were, I was sure of it now, Brendan’s. Even though he was trapped on Earth for the rest of his life, he had never given up hope that he would one day return here. He had prepared for that day until he finally drew his last breath, and the treasure he had collected, the means by which he could balance the Fold, lay hidden in the attic still.

  I understood this book, this mysterious guide to saving our little piece of the universe. To do it would require connecting the pieces of the giant organism of the Fold carefully together so that they operated in harmony. Each planet had a balancing point, one that had been robbed of its center piece. The solution was laid out before me in these pages. It wasn’t rocket science. But it was impossible, nonetheless.

  I scoured through the book, hoping to find some other way, until the sun was nearly overhead. When I had reached the limits of my hope, unable to negotiate any further with the stark reality I faced, I finally put the book away.

  I looked up at the church, at the body that had been desecrated with Jared’s mark still splayed in the doorway. I stood and began searching through the abandoned dwellings. It wasn’t long before I found a thick-handled shovel near the side of town where the crops grew. I began digging into the dirt, softer here from years of tilling. Then, one by one, I moved the crumbling remains of the inhabitants of this land to their graves.

  And still I silently wrestled, fought for another answer.

  I was alone now.

  The dirt slid from the shovel blade as I gently sprayed it onto the dead.

  I needed help. I needed guidance.

  The sun burned the back of my neck as I worked.

  I needed gold. To jump anywhere or fix anything I needed gold. But where? There was none left in the Fold but for that in the Frame I carried. At least, I had never seen any. Even if I had dared use it for any of the many tasks ahead, destroying the frame in the process, it would never be enough. I had a journey before me that would require at least eight jumps, at the cost of eight pieces of gold. Not to mention the pile I would need to create the many balancing pieces needed for the job.

  I needed a friend. Someone else who could share this burden.

  This thought brought me up short. For the first time in my life, I realized that I had a few to choose from. Jade was gone, yes. And Almara. But if I could somehow reach Erod…

  Sweat stung my eyes and I wiped my brow with my old shirt, Almara’s blindfold.

  No, Erod was on another planet, and Jade had taken the Kinstone. Even if I had possessed the gold to try to make a link that could take me far enough to reach him, I didn’t have the knowledge to draw the power from the ground.

  But I was on Aeso.

  Hadn’t that been what Almara had said? ‘The Fire Mountains are not far. They lie practically in Stonemore’s backyard. But proximity matters not. It was the key to entry that we sought all along.’

  Just how close to Stonemore was this “backyard” I was standing in right now? I fumbled with the link necklace Kiron had given me before we separated. It had worked once before, back on the ship. We hadn’t been torn to pieces or ended up floating in space. Maybe I could use it to find my way back to the great walled city.

  When I had left Stonemore, the town was tangled in the heat of battle. Had Kiron, Chapman, Owyn, my friends, survived? And even if they did survive that one battle, what were the chances that Cadoc had murdered them after the fighting had quieted down?

  I gently placed the last skull, the one so roughly carved, into the shallow hole that would be this man’s final resting place.

  “Good luck,” I said to it. I didn’t know why. Good luck in the afterlife, if there was one? Good luck to the boy who carried the name carved into the skull? I gently covered the last piece of life from this place with the remaining pile of dirt at my feet.

  It was done. I leaned on the shovel and looked at the small mounds of earth that marked the place where the bodies lay. I wanted to say something, to honor their sacrifice in some way. But I was no
orator, had never even been to a funeral. So I settled for something simple and clear.

  “Be at peace.”

  Nobody was there to hear me. No mourners cried. No wind rustled the leaves of the shrubs dotting the mountainside. No birds called in response to my voice.

  I looked out over the vast, green valley below. Stonemore it would be, then, to start. Maybe there I would find the help I needed. And if not, well, I would just have to figure it out as I went along.

  I fumbled with the heavy stone necklace that rested on my chest. It could offer me an easier journey, an easier search. I had no map, after all. Only the tentative knowledge that Stonemore wasn’t too far. But after all I had been through, this detail didn’t trouble me much. I was once again setting out, without direction in a strange world.

  I would use Kiron’s link, but not yet. I needed time. Time to think. Time to understand.

  I turned and, gathering my things, took the first steps away from the small, shattered village. I wondered where Jade was, if she was alright. I hoped that, someday, I would be able to find her. Not just find her, but reach her. And bring her back.

  As I passed the last fencepost of the growing fields, I began, alone, the descent down the mountain, and into the wilds of Aeso.

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  Review Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling

  Aster Wood Book 3 is the next installment in the Aster Wood series, which follows the saga of a young man fighting to save the Maylin Fold from the evil of the Corentin.

  Everything in Aster’s world has fallen apart. The great sorcerer, Almara, has leapt to his death to protect Aster and Jade, leaving them lost and without a guide to the cosmos. Aster has won the Book of Leveling, but Jade is no longer able to resist the power of the Corentin. She has fallen to his power, hungry for more of the malice and cruelty she secretly loves.

  And hanging over Aster is Jade’s own threat of murder.

  Aster is alone again, unable to clear his head of the loss of his best friend and his mentor. But when he discovers the armies assembling to attack the cities in the Triaden, and sees how the children of the lands are being used to fuel the campaign, he is renewed in his resolve to set things right in the Fold. He must find his way back to the friends who will stand beside him in the great battles to come.

  And the time is coming when he will have to face Jade, for she holds the key to victory beneath the haze of evil that is wrapped around her.

  Turn the page to read an excerpt.

  Excerpt from

  Aster Wood Book 3

  by J. B. Cantwell

  Copyright © 2014 by J. B. Cantwell. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, contact Books@JBCantwell.com.

  I was wild.

  Leaves stuck to my boots like strips of wet newspaper, covering my legs with a layer of muted Aeso color. The dirt, which at first had bothered me, I had become used to. It lay over every inch of my skin like a thin, light blanket, and gritted between my eyelids when I rubbed them. Once along my journey, I had seen my reflection in a still pond as I knelt to drink, and the boy I saw looking back at me was unfamiliar. Cheeks hollowed. Eyes dark. Hair matted. Jaw squared and tight. What had happened to him?

  I was thirteen now. For six months I had been plodding around the interior planets of the Maylin Fold, and in that time a birthday had passed back home on Earth. Did she miss me? Was she still searching for me? I wondered about my mother more than anyone, and with each passing week that I wandered the forests of Aeso, her face became the only face I saw in my mind. Because everything else I saw in my mind had become too much to bear.

  Cadoc, the life draining out of him in a hundred angry wisps of smoke. My father, his fingers clutching at his throat in that small, concrete room of my dreams, crying out soundlessly for help I couldn’t give. Almara, leaping over the edge of the chasm to destroy the dragon, its lethal body covered in a thousand razors rising to meet him in midair. And Jade. Laughing. Sneering. The deep green eyes I knew so well now possessed with the intense hunger that came with all things evil.

  But Mom was untouched. Mom’s face was safe to look at from behind the lids of my eyes when I lay down on the hard ground to sleep each night. When I was hungry, my empty stomach cramping in protest, it was her look of concern that pushed me onward.When the rains started, it was her voice that kept me warm.

  “Don’t be scared, baby,” she had said, tucking the blankets beneath my outstretched legs. I was six, and outside, thunder cracked and lightning lit up the night sky. I sucked in my breath.

  “But what if it sets the building on fire?” I asked, my small voice quiet and fearful, certain that the next blast would split our apartment in two.

  “It won’t, hon,” she reassured, stroking the side of my face with a delicate, warm hand. “There’s a rod on the top, it catches the lightning. It won’t hurt us.”

  “But what if the rain doesn’t stop? And it just keeps coming and coming? And then none of us can get out? I can’t swim, mama, what if—”

  “That’s enough,” she said, smiling gently. “None of those things are going to happen.”

  “But how do you know?” A memory, not all that distant, of stinging, acidic rain burning the flesh of my arm made me pull my hands beneath the covers, ensuring that no skin was exposed but for the top of my face.

  “Because I know,” she said. “And that’s all you need to know.”

  She had taken care of everything. She had worked after my dad left us, making sure we always had enough to eat. She had carted me to doctor after doctor, searching for answers and cures to my rare heart condition, never quitting. She had told me everything would be ok. And it always was. Not always great, but ok.

  But not anymore.

  A small, scared voice spoke up in my mind each day, asking me why I didn’t move faster. I had Kiron’s link, a fat, gray stone that could move me along to my destination within days, maybe hours. But I didn’t use it. I had speed, my heart strong and my legs able to propel me at a cheetah’s pace. But I didn’t run.

  I chewed on the reasons why I moved so slowly, and there were many to choose from. I was overwhelmed. Chosen by unknown forces to be the champion to save the Fold, and Earth, from ruin had laid a heavy burden on my shoulders. I was frightened. Always. Sometimes just enough to set me on edge, sometimes enough to terrify me to my core. And I was tired. I wasn’t ready to face anything yet. Too much had happened. Too much had worn me out.

  But more than anything, it was simple sadness that resulted in my inability to get anywhere.

  When Jade and I met, we hadn’t gotten along very well. In fact, every day since the first we seemed to have some argument or another. But I had come to rely on her more than I had ever relied on anyone before. She was my guide, knowing the history of the planets we traversed together, driving our mission to level the Fold, whether she knew it or not. She was my sister, young and helpless, in need of protection, my protection above any other. This was remarkable to me when I, just a sick kid from Earth, had never been able to protect myself or any other before. She was my friend. My friend who, the last time I saw her, stood over a corpse after carving my name into its skull, laughing hysterically at the sickening end she was planning for me.

  And now, she was gone.

  And I was lost.

  I quickly shoved away the image of her face, distorted by the control of the Corentin, replacing it forcibly with that of my mother again. But nothing I could do could ever remove it completely from my thoughts, the scene that had awaited me after our escape f
rom the Fire Mountains. On that day we should have been happy, victorious, united together with the Book of Leveling, our key to setting everything right. With us should have been Almara, Jade’s father, in tow. But Almara was dead, Jade split open by his departure, and all I was left with was the scene of her before those corpses, burned into the back of my head, forever visible like a film that lay over my eyes.

  So, with nowhere to be and no one to urge me on, I walked. Stonemore lay somewhere up ahead, though where, exactly, I wasn’t sure. Almara had once pointed towards the walled city, and it was in that direction I now headed. It mattered little to me, most days, whether I was going the right way or not.

  When I had descended from the peak of the Fire Mountains, I had crawled through the great, grassy valley beneath them in a haze of misery. Over several days, I gradually became able to care for myself again. My appetite came back, and occasionally I would be troubled to forage for a meal. I had once helped my friend Erod, a giantish man from the village of the Solitaries, skin a whole deer and prepare it for cooking, but I didn’t know the first thing about hunting. Luckily, the lands of Aeso were still quite healthy, especially compared to Earth, and I was able to find enough food to keep me alive. First, in the grassy plains that stretched out in low, rolling hills, the occasional fruit tree would fill my pack and keep me fed for several days. Then, as the edges of the forest began to cover my path, mushrooms and berries filled in the void. Once, a chipmunk the size of my hand ran right up to me as I sat, motionless. For a quick moment I considered trying to catch him, but before I could even move my hand in his direction, he realized his mistake and bolted away. It was just as well. An animal so tiny would have given me little sustenance, and I didn’t know how to make a fire, anyways.