Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara (Book 1)

by Cantwell, J. B.

  “I do not know for certain,” Chapman said. “It certainly sounds mad. The fight was hundreds of years ago. But the similarities between them are too great for any Almarian to ignore. He shows no mercy to those who oppose him. He is known, among the few who whisper, as the Dark King.”

  I had a feeling I knew exactly who this Cadoc was.

  “Why did Zarich hate Almara so much?”

  “Oh,” said Chapman, relaxing a bit, “men of power seem to always hate other men of power, don’t they? Like little boys they always want more and more. I suppose Almara flaunted his power somewhat, and it was just too tempting for Zarich to resist trying to wrest it from him.” He peered at us over his narrow glasses. “But tell me now, how did you come to be in Stonemore?”

  It was our turn to talk, but neither of us did. Clearly, Stonemore was a dangerous place for us to be. Was the mark in the window enough for us to trust this Chapman?

  “I’ll tell the story,” Kiron said, answering my silent pleas for help. It would be a delicate task, telling this man only what was necessary for him to know.

  “We thank you, friend, for takin’ us in at such peril to yourself,” Kiron began formally. “But we can’t tell you all you might desire to hear. We come to Stonemore to find one of Almara’s maps. Do you know of these?”

  Chapman laughed. “Why, yes of course I know of the maps. But straight off you are telling me that you wish to accomplish the impossible. The maps are lost, as you, yourself must know.”

  “It’s our purpose to find ‘em,” Kiron said. “We’ve charted a course to the link already, but searchin’ for it for the day and night has led us nowhere but to you. Tell me, what lies beneath the square?”

  It was as if Kiron had smacked Chapman on the top of his bald head. Chapman’s eyes bugged.

  “Why do you ask this, man?” he said, his breaths immediately quickening. He looked terrified.

  Kiron held out his hand to me. “The link, please.”

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the map of the city, handing it to Kiron.

  “I ask,” he said, “because we hold one of the lost maps. I’m its keeper and its guard, and have been for most of my life.” He unfolded the map and spread it out on the table between us and Chapman. Chapman stared at the page in stunned silence. Kiron pointed to the shimmering golden ring at the center of the square. “This is where our treasure lies,” he said. “But cobblestones are all that greet us out there. I ask you again. What lies beneath the square?”

  Chapman continued to stare at the map, and then sat back in his chair, eyes still wide.

  “The dungeons.”

  “Then that’s where we’re headed,” Kiron said.

  “But, you’re mad!” Chapman said. “Anyone who has ever been known to descend below Stonemore has never resurfaced alive. It is said that a treasure hold lies beneath the city. Within the dungeons lie the silver and gems of Stonemore. But, of course, once there you would have no hope of escape. Others have tried before you to gain the treasure. Their heads have been displayed in the square for all to see.”

  I shuddered.

  “It is the safest place for both criminals and treasure alike. There, the guards patrol in constant motion, and there is no hope for breaking either in or out. If any artifacts from Almara remain, that’s where they’ll be. But it would be suicide to attempt breaking in.”

  “How do you know this?” Kiron asked.

  “Everyone knows it. Fear and desire govern this place.”

  I sunk back into my chair.

  “What is the matter, son?” he asked. “Why do you need this map so badly? I mean, aside from the obvious reasons? You’ll never get to it, I’m afraid. It’s too well guarded.”

  “That map,” I said slowly, “is my only hope of ever making it back home.” His face fell with concern and I put mine into my hands. It was true. Now that I had been face to face with Cadoc, the man from my dream, I felt sure that the item I was looking for was a book. And without it, I would be stuck here in Stonemore. And Cadoc already knew my face. I would have to live out the rest of my days within the walls of this city, in hiding. Or on the run, forever trapped in Maylin. Maybe Kiron would take me in. I could be a sort of helper on his farm.

  “We’ll get to the link, boy,” Kiron growled. “I ain’t no master, but I have a few tricks that even this Cadoc won’t expect. I didn’t wait my entire life to be thwarted by the small issue of a locked door.”

  The three of us sat in silence for a time. Kiron finally relented and sampled the cheese from the plate, smacking his lips appreciatively, as if all this had been normal dinner conversation.

  I couldn’t stay here, that was certain. Whether I ever made it home or not, I would have to get out of Stonemore. I thought about all Chapman had told us, the Shield, the fear that the citizens here had to constantly endure. And for what? So that Cadoc could enjoy the feeling of power while everyone else suffered? It wasn’t right. It was sick. And because of this man, or whatever he was, I was stuck here in the middle of it, under his thumb.

  Well, I wasn’t going to tolerate it. I wasn’t going to just sit here and hide like a little kid. If I needed to break into the vault then that’s what I would do.

  I was going home.

  Courage began to rise in my core until it filled me like a balloon and I stood from my chair.

  Two things became clear to me in that moment.

  First, somebody needed to make things right.

  And second, I was about to become a thief.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  That night, after Chapman had propped his eyes open for as long as he could, I lay awake and listened to the little man snore. The small apartment where he lived, tucked into the back of the shop, was more like a furnished closet than it was a real home. But I suppose he spent the majority of his time out on the floor of the mercantile. He clearly wasn’t prepared for visitors.

  Kiron rested silently in his corner of the room, awake or asleep, I didn’t know. We had all stayed awake long into the night, occasionally nibbling on whatever scraps Chapman could find in the single, sad cabinet. It wasn’t a noble’s life, he’d told us, running a little shop here in the square. With no wife to care and cook for him, he would often take his meals down at the local pub and didn’t keep much in the way of food in the place. He wasn’t poor, exactly, but the city life left him with only what he could buy from the money his trinkets earned him. Sometimes he would get lucky, he said, making a deal that would keep him in bread and ale for weeks. Other times were lean. But he patted his round belly and told us, “I’ve had a good run of late.”

  As we talked and traded bits of information, we discussed the possibility, or rather the impossibility, of stealing Almara’s book from the hold below the square. He took easily to my story of travel; apparently such things were, while not the norm, not unheard of in this place. After all, Almara himself had been such a traveler. But when I showed him the powers the Kiron had brought forth and instilled in my backpack, his mouth dropped open and stayed that way for some time.

  “Never, in all my years, have I seen such a work,” he finally said.

  This seemed to soften Kiron’s edge.

  “You’ve never seen magic before?” I asked.

  “Baubles, yes,” he replied. “Things that shine and twinkle, a potion that brings peace to the ill of heart. But an object like this,” he gingerly touched the edges of the pack and lifted it, light as a feather despite its ample contents, “this is extraordinary.” He laughed as he raised it up and down with a single finger.

  “But the battle between Zarich and Almara…” I replied. “Certainly you’ve had experience with magical spells in the past.”

  His eyes widened as they fell on my face. “No, child!” he exclaimed. “I wasn’t even a twinkle in my great-great-grandfather’s eye when that battle took place. And in the days since, magic has been a dangerous trade in Stonemore. No,” he looked back at the pack, “this is something the likes
of which I, and probably anyone in this city, have never seen.” He turned to Kiron. “How did you manage this?”

  Kiron’s eyes betrayed the pride he was trying to conceal.

  “My pa,” he said. “He passed down knowledge of the spell to me when I was still a boy.”

  Chapman marveled at the pack for a while, but eventually his eyelids began to droop. Finally, when he could barely manage intelligible speech any longer, he set out mats and blankets for us and then shuffled over to his own bed. He muttered himself into sleep, and Kiron stayed silent, leaving me to contemplate the task ahead on my own.

  The last thing I wanted was to end up in some sort of jail or, my stomach knotted at the thought, a dungeon. How in the world were we supposed to get down there, much less back out again in one piece? I was no idiot, but I was still just a boy. Hatching such complicated and dangerous plans was surely the realm of some genius, not a kid. And what if the book wasn’t even there? Or worse, what if I had it wrong and it wasn’t a book I was supposed to be looking for at all?

  Another threat floated into my mind as I chewed on these problems: Cadoc. I had seen Cadoc in my dream and here he was, alive and real. Could I be sure that the book I ran with in that dream was the very same I must seek now? I was going to have to trust that it was; the similarities between the dream and what had happened yesterday were just too great. It’s not every day that your dreams literally become reality, and I would just have to accept that the other parts of my dream were becoming real now, too.

  I rolled over and tried to find sleep. But I couldn’t erase Cadoc’s dark eyes from my mind. That man, he wasn’t right. No light of kindness or humanity lay behind that black glare, and when I closed my eyes all I could see was his stare looking back at me. Every inch of my body was tensed, ready to fight him, but now, at the wrong time. I needed to sleep now, not prepare to battle. I rolled over again and again on the hard mat. Eventually, I tried an old trick my mother had taught me: counting sheep. She had described it to me one night in the hospital where I lay, scared and agitated, waiting for surgery.

  “Just imagine them,” she had said, “one by one. Close your eyes. Can you see their white fuzzy coats? Are they jumping the fence, one by one? Watch the sheep, love, and count them as they each take their turn.” Her cool hand rested on my forehead as I watched the imaginary sheep behind my eyelids.

  My chest hurt with the memory of her, but in a different way than when I overexerted myself. I turned over again and tried to see the sheep in my head. I imagined each individual sheep readying himself, and then clumsily jumping the fence, pushed forward by the flock behind him. I could start to feel my body relax, distracted by keeping count of the silly creatures. Slowly they made their way across the rickety fence, one by one, until I lost count.

  As my thoughts changed to dreams, the sheep morphed into other animals. First, a buck with a full rack of antlers. Then a horse who whinnied and jumped without hesitation, his long tail fluttering out behind him. The last beast I saw before I finally faded away was a slight, white wolf, very unlike they vicious faylons that had chased me. He gazed at me for a long moment, as if we were old friends, and finally leaped the barrier to follow the other animals into the darkness. I stared over the fence into the black forest all of the animals had disappeared into and watched the glow of the wolf fade away. I saw no more creatures that night.

  When I woke the next morning I was alone. Dusty light filtered in through the tiny window of the room, and I lay for a time watching the little bits of it dance around in the beam, happy to be safe and hidden. On the other side of the door I could hear Chapman milling around in the shop. I sat up and took a look around the tiny space in the light of day.

  The walls were lined with shelves from waist height to ceiling. Though the majority of Chapman’s collection was displayed in the front of the store, it looked like back here was where he kept his treasures. Silver twinkled down at me from the shelves and glinted off the shined leather bindings of ornately decorated books. As I stood up I saw a small plate of cheese and bread was laid out on the table. He must have gone out for more food while I slept, but where was Kiron? I took a slice of cheese and nibbled it as I made my way over to the door into the shop.

  I opened the door a tiny crack and peeked through the opening. Chapman paced back and forth, his eyes frequently scanning the square through the large windows of the shop. Nobody else was in the room with him, though judging by the light falling on the square beyond the windows, it was already midday.

  “Chapman!” I whispered through the crack in the door. He started and looked up, his eyes darting over to where I stood, and then to the front door. Before I could make another sound he waddled towards me, his hands outstretched and waving, hissing at me to get back into the room. I quietly closed the door. A moment later I could hear the faint tinkling of the chime at the top of the front door to the shop. The chirping of Chapman and the deep murmurs of whoever had entered filtered through the back door. I had hoped that I would be safe in the shop, but now I wasn’t so sure.

  I carefully made my way back to the table and took a piece of bread, chewing it silently as my eyes drifted along the walls, searching for ideas. Several minutes later I heard the chime once more and then a distinctive “click” of a lock. Chapman opened the door and slipped inside the tiny room.

  “You must be quiet, child!” he hissed at me. “The Shield is looking for you!”

  I started choking on the last bite of bread in my mouth.

  “What?” I said through a thick mouthful, pounding my fist on my chest to try to clear it. “But how? Why?” Why were they still after me? All I had done was run away.

  “This morning they were in while you and Kiron slept and asked me if I had seen a boy of your size and description. I said no, of course, but we were lucky that you were still sound asleep and they didn’t notice the door back here!” He slumped against the wall and clutched his hands to his chest. “Oh, my,” he sighed through deep breaths. Beads of sweat were popping up all over his bald head. “This is not what I was expecting. It will complicate things.”

  “But why am I so special that the Shield has any interest in me?” I asked, still alarmed. “I’m just a kid that ran from them in the square. They don’t know who I am or what I’m after, so why bother?”

  “I don’t know,” he replied, “but does it really matter? Somehow or another they’ve figured out that you are someone to bother with. And they’re dead serious. I’ve rarely seen the men look so threatening as they did this morning.”

  My heart sank. They were hunting me. How could they possibly know that I was worth the trouble of pursuing?

  “I think,” said Chapman, “that you had better stay back here for a few days. I’m sure that after a time of searching for you their interest will ebb. You are just a child, and to them it must appear that you’ve vanished entirely. Maybe their searching will lead them elsewhere, or to the conclusion that you’ve fled.”

  “But what about Kiron? Where is he?” I asked.

  He rested his back against the door, dropping his hands to rest on the wood by his sides, as if his will alone could keep the hunters out.

  “Kiron does not attract the same attention as you,” he said. “He is out in the market, seeking information. I daresay he doesn’t trust what I have to offer him. However…” A sly smile played on his lips as he pulled out from his overcoat a folded piece of heavy parchment. As he pushed the now empty plate aside, he opened it and spread it onto the table. It was a map.

  By this point I was starting to get sick of maps. Maps had gotten me into this mess. Now I had to rely on them to get me out of it again. But as I looked at the paper, a smile started dancing on my lips as well. Chapman had been quite busy this morning, it seemed. This wasn’t just any map. It was a map of the dungeons, and there, right in the center, was the treasure hold.

  Over the next several days I read and drew and noted every possible idea and crazy plan I could think of
to get us down into that space. Kiron was often gone during my brainstorming sessions. He made a habit of leaving early in the morning, not returning until late in the afternoon, and he mostly avoided talking to Chapman at all. My questions regarding his whereabouts were greeted with a lot of huffing, and I was starting to wonder what he was up to. Curious as I was, though, I was also getting irritated. Weren’t we supposed to be doing this together?

  Chapman, while blundering and easily flustered, turned out to be quite a brilliant guide in Kiron’s absence. He was a genius of sorts when it came to Stonemore, and from book after book on his shelves he found details to help me. The Shield guards did not reappear in the shop, and we both hoped that the time was drawing near that I would be ready to commence with the plan.

  The barman down at the tavern had disclosed that The Shield had been questioning all around the city about me, but that the questioning had begun to wane. Nobody seemed to have any details about who I was or why The Shield was so obsessed with finding me, and this remained the one piece of information that we absolutely could not get our hands on. We couldn’t seem to find a way around this roadblock, however, and we had plenty else to focus our attentions on as we planned the raid on the hold.

  On our sixth night hiding in the back of the shop, Kiron woke me well before dawn. Chapman’s rattling snores were loud in the cramped room, and I was surprised they hadn’t woken me before now.

  Kiron gently shook my shoulder. “Come with me now,” he whispered, so softly that barely heard him. I rose from my mat on the floor, and Kiron collected my shoes and pack from next to the door. He crept out into the dark shop and I followed quietly.

  “What’s going on?” I whispered to his back. He turned and pressed a single finger to his lips. Then, at the front door, he reached up and disconnected the tinkling bell. We slipped out into the night, unheard by the sleeping Chapman.