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

by Cantwell, J. B.

  The jade knife, the last thing she had managed to hold onto, glowed brightly with a pulse of power. But too late. Finally overwhelmed, she dropped it to the floor and lay lifeless in his arms.

  “What did you do to her?” I bellowed at him.

  He dropped her to the ground like a bundle of rags, turning on me next.

  “And you,” he spat, approaching me in the fading light.

  I stood helpless, searching everywhere for an escape. But I was completely trapped. He stood in front of the only exit from the lair.

  “What do you want with me?” I asked, much more bravely than I felt. My eyes darted back and forth from him to Jade’s form on the cave floor.

  He reached me in three long strides, towering over me and bending at the waist until his eyes were level with mine. I could smell his rotting breath and see the tiny droplets of sweat on his face and neck as he addressed me.

  “What do I want with you?” he breathed into my face.

  He smirked, his eyes full of madness. I flinched with each syllable he spoke.

  “You thought you were so clever, didn’t you? You thought that releasing my captives would, what, somehow defeat me? Well, your friends are all mine again, locked up below my city where they belong. And what I want with you now is simple, boy.” His lips curled upward in a snarling smile.

  I stared at him in shock, trying to make sense of his words.

  And then he hit me. Pain like nothing I could remember feeling suddenly blazed across the left side of my face and echoed off the insides of my skull. He had backhanded me, his fingers covered with jagged rings that cut my skin as his fist met my cheek. Wet with blood, I fell to the ground, hitting my head against the stone. The world became a blur as Cadoc flipped me on my back and hovered over me. His lips moved and I could hear muffled sounds coming from him, but I couldn’t rouse myself from the force of the blow. He was yelling at me now, his face so close to my own, but I couldn’t concentrate on him, on the imminent threat of him, surely preparing to kill me.

  I thought only of my friends. Owyn. Kiron. Chapman. All his again. Locked up forever. And now Jade, crumpled on the floor.

  NO.

  He couldn’t have them back. They were free now. I had made them so. Anger filled my entire being as I searched through my haze for a way to hurt him, to lash out.

  My eyes caught a glint of gold hanging below his neck. Dangling over his chest, the trinket twisted on its chain, catching the little remaining light that came through the cave opening. As he raged on, his words still muffled to my ears, I realized I had seen it before, in Stonemore when I had last been in his clutches. Only now I understood its immense value. The tiny amount of gold contained in that single piece of jewelry would be enough to make a hundred men rich beyond their wildest dreams in this place.

  The pendant was the size of a walnut and round, and on the face of it was carved a six-sided star. As he shouted at me it twisted with his movements, and I saw, undeniably, Almara’s symbol scratched into the other side.

  NO.

  Nothing with Almara’s symbol belonged to this man, if he even was still a man. And no one who followed Almara belonged to him either. That symbol represented me. My family. My people.

  I focused my blurry brain as hard as I could on the necklace, and right as he began to stand, I shot out my hand and grasped the pendant. As he moved upright the chain snapped and fell into my palm.

  Shock and fury outlined every inch of his face. He came down hard on me, but I rolled out from his under his massive weight, crawling towards Jade. If I could just get to her, maybe if I gripped her as I gave the command then we would be able make the jump together. Hadn’t it almost happened once with Cadoc? And he hadn’t even been touching me. It was the only chance we had to escape.

  I was fighting, hard, to live. My attention was entirely focused on reaching Jade. But when I felt his iron fingers close around my ankle I became wild. He squeezed my ankle so hard I thought it would break, and then dragged me backwards across the floor to him, my hands hopelessly reaching out for the broken girl in front of me. I thrashed around, trying to escape, but his grip held me fast, trapping me. He flipped me onto my back with his enormous hands, and when I dared glance up at him an unmistakable look of joy shadowed his face. Raising his foot high into the air above, he brought down his boot with the full force of his body and struck me on the chest.

  I both felt and heard my ribs crack, and for a moment my insides seemed to be mixed up; ribs jostled with my heart and lungs, each searching for their proper place in my chest. Then I found my voice and let out a wail of agony. Suddenly everything was perfectly, vividly clear. Each tiny sound in the cave registered clearly in my ears; Cadoc’s panting, Jade’s quiet, ragged breathing, my own gurgling attempts to keep air coming into my lungs. After the first shock of the blow, the pain faded, feeling far away now as the rest of the cave came back into focus.

  Cadoc grimaced at me, a knowing look on his face. His work with me was done. I was dead, or would be soon. He moved away, back over to Jade, releasing me, not even bothering to collect the gold chain that was still in my fist. I was free of his grip, but the damage to my body kept me pinned down to the floor.

  As he walked away from me, my brain urged my body to act, to help her. I remembered her face, smiling as it lifted to the falling rain. She deserved to live, to be free of the misery he had laid on her. But I lay there, broken. He murmured to her in a sickening hiss as he approached her limp form. I watched helplessly through the gasps of my blood-filled lungs.

  “Princess,” he cooed, “why did you do this? You know you belong to me. Your power keeps us both alive and strong. Were you meaning to kill me, little darling?”

  “Don’t do this,” I croaked. “She was Amelia’s friend. Don’t do this.”

  He turned and stared at me. Perhaps it had been two hundred years since he had heard her name.

  “You’re sick,” I choked. “That’s all this is. You’re sick and we can make you better. You can come back and be the man you were, Zarich.” It was a lie. If Jade’s elixir hadn’t helped Amelia, I doubted it could help someone as far gone as Cadoc. But I was determined to keep him away from her.

  My heartbeat was erratic. From moment to moment the pounding of it changed in my ears, sometimes too many beats at once, sometimes several seconds between each one. My fingers and toes became cold, and tears rolled down my face. I could feel warm blood trickling out of the side of my mouth. Slowly, painfully, I lifted my knees off the floor and pushed myself closer to Jade with the heels of my boots.

  Cadoc’s face changed from shock to hatred.

  “You dare speak to me of Amelia,” he spat. “Precious Amelia. It was his fault. He killed her. Almara.”

  “She wouldn’t have wanted this for her friend,” I said. “You know that. You must release her.”

  Cadoc looked down at Jade, and carefully picked her up from the floor.

  “No,” he hissed, possessed by the sickness that held him. He breathed into her ear. “She is…mine.” His body shuddered involuntarily as a strange spasm shook his muscles.

  Jade’s arms hung limply at her sides. She began to whimper in fear or pain, her eyes still closed, like a child in the clutches of a nightmare.

  My breathing came in gasps as he held her, as if I were under a heavy weight and was having the air squeezed out of me. As I watched the scene playing out in front of me, my heartbeat quickened with fear for her, and then quieted and slowed as my blood drained away. I pushed against my heels again and was two feet closer to them. My hand reached out and grabbed the burning, glowing dagger. Cadoc didn’t see the light, he only saw his prize, now secured firmly in his clutches.

  “Your friend, I fear, is dead,” he said in her ear, a wicked smile playing on his lips. All of his attention was on her, as if she and he were the only two people in the universe. I scooted closer as his large hands fastened around her neck.

  I was dead. He was right about that. I did
n’t think that even a fine hospital back on Earth would have been able to save me now. But I wasn’t going to let him kill her, too. I didn’t need him anymore. I wasn’t going home, not ever. I wasn’t going to make it five more minutes, not on any planet.

  But she still had a chance.

  I stopped breathing, giving up on my own life and concentrating every piece of my being on saving hers. I didn’t have enough strength left to raise my body off the floor, but that didn’t mean I was done fighting. I hoisted my torso up on my elbow and drew back the knife. The heat from the handle seared into my palm, but I didn’t care. I had my target in sight. For a flash I remembered the tree trunks back at Kiron’s farm, and I focused now, as I had then, with everything I had left. I released the knife, hurling it with every last bit of energy I possessed.

  Time slowed to almost a stop. As the blade turned through the air, each rotation brought a new revelation to my mind.

  Almara is lost.

  One way or another, to despair or to death. His letter, so full of misery, and the violence of his story, told me no hope remained that we would find him alive. He could not help us.

  The knife spun along its trajectory.

  There goes my chance.

  I would never see home again. I would not survive my injuries. Even if I could, by some miracle, Cadoc would never send me back.

  The blade caught a glint of the setting sun.

  I am a hero.

  How unlikely it was that I, just a sick kid from a place that had long since stopped believing in magic, would do something to change the lives of the people in these worlds. And yet I had. My whole life the odds had been stacked against me, but deep in the Fold I had managed to defy them.

  The point of the knife split the fabric of Cadoc’s shirt.

  Goodbye.

  Goodbye. Goodbye. The word echoed soundlessly in my brain.

  Goodbye Jade.

  Goodbye Mom.

  The dagger stuck firm in Cadoc’s side.

  At first he looked at me with surprise, then mere irritation. He yanked the blade easily from his side and tossed it to the floor. I fell backwards to the ground again, knowing my life was over. My arms and legs were cold and more difficult to move with each passing moment, and my throat was choked shut with blood. I moved my head upward, trying to open my airway, to move the air in and out. I was sure now that my heart had been punctured by a rib, and I felt its beating sputter beneath my skin.

  “You little piece of vermin,” he spat as he approached me. He raised his foot over my skull and I braced for the final blow.

  But it didn’t come.

  A tiny trail of thin, black smoke was seeping from the hole the knife had left. The smoke slowly reached up to his face, and when he finally became aware of it his eyes grew wide and he stumbled backward. His head jerked down, and he scrutinized his side, poking his fingers furiously at the pit the dagger had left. Not a drop of blood fell from his body, only smoke poured from the hole. Jade got to her feet, suddenly awake, and stepped aside, avoiding the smoke that hung in the air in front of Cadoc now.

  Cadoc’s fingers continued to work over the wound, and his face wore expressions of increasing panic, but there was no stopping the flow of evil that poured from his body. He fell backwards and slammed into the wall of the cave. Smoke now seeped from his nose, mouth and hands, giving him the appearance of being on fire without any flame.

  “You have not won,” he shouted to the cave, blinded by the smoke that flowed from his eye sockets. “Four brothers are we, joined by the Corentin. You have not won!”

  Then he fell silent, unable to make any further sound through the inferno raging inside his body. His jaw hung open in a mute scream as the smoke left his body, which crumpled without it to hold him upright. His lips moved inaudibly, speaking a name only he could hear. He form was eaten away by the vacating vapor, just as a sandcastle might blow away in a strong wind. He melted against the cave floor, and then he was gone entirely, only a pile of black clothing remained where he had fallen.

  I became aware of a jostling, and in the far reaches of my mind I could hear Jade’s frantic voice as she shook my body. Her face hovered directly above mine as she spoke words that no longer held any logic or form to me, and the deep green eyes for which she was named pierced into my own. How pretty they were; wisps of green and black and the occasional fleck of orange entwined together in her irises, so deeply woven that they hinted at something much, much greater than this life.

  I moved my own eyes back upwards and watched the ceiling of the cave. Nothing moved there, but a lightshow danced in front of my vision as my body approached death. First the colors were muted, flowing across my field of view as a fog would roll across a mountaintop. Then the hues changed, brightening as the wisps of light danced together. Pinpricks of white were born from the masses of color until I was staring at an expanse of twinkling lights, each not more than a pinprick in size.

  My eyes met Jade’s again. All around her the tiny white suns dazzled my eyes. Her gaze held mine as my heartbeat slowed. Beat after agonizing beat pumped the last bits of life into my body. I stared at those wide green eyes floating in a field of twinkling lights. Then the green began to fade, growing darker, disappearing. Finally those deep jade eyes dissolved completely into a sea of black, leaving me, alone, in a never-ending wilderness of stars.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I don’t know how long I was truly gone for. Had I been dead? Asleep? These were answers I never received, not then or in the many years since. But I was gone, really gone. I floated in that cosmos of stars for what must have been years, decades, comforted in knowing my place among them, at home in the heavens. I did not think or speak or move, I just observed. I did not interact, I just was; a peaceful entity floating for centuries, millennia, on the fiery plains of the universe.

  I came back to life, back to this place of awareness where one feels and breathes and stirs, slowly. First, before I experienced any other sensation, I became aware of gravity. Gradually my floating being became pinned down, wrestled into the submission that a body must tolerate in order to exist. I didn’t like the weight of being held to a place, and at first I fought against it. But as time moved on I became aware of something else; myself. Specific memories did not float around in my brain, nor could I remember who or what I was. But a feeling of urgency began to creep in upon my peaceful existence, and I suddenly had a desire to move, to find consciousness.

  When I first began to feel sensation on my skin I started to awake in earnest. Below me a soft, gravelly, warm substance nestled around my fingertips. Above, a gentle breeze stroked my cheek. I could feel air moving in and out of my lungs, though it was a movement I had no control over.

  Next came sound. It began not from a muffled place, like I had experienced when Cadoc had crushed me into death, but simply a quiet one. The beating sounds of water and earth mingled with that of my beating heart, and soon joined together as one deafening roar in my ears.

  And then my eyes. On another day, in another place, I would have been sad to see the stars around me disappear, extinguishing themselves in little pops until there was nothing left but black emptiness. But there was that sense of urgency I was feeling, and as I followed it, desperate to determine why it existed, I barely noticed the vanishing of the cosmos. Strange blotches of dark and then bright red swam beneath my eyelids. Then, finally, a white so bright that its sting pierced my eyes. Soon I could feel my own arm, shielding my face from a blinding sun overhead.

  I was gasping. I rolled over onto my side and took in enormous gulps of air as if I had never tasted it before. My hands gripped the ground underneath me as I fought to fill my body with oxygen, and I found that the ground slipped right through my fingertips. I had been lying on sand.

  As my breathing slowed I became aware of a pressure on my back, and when I looked up the first thing I saw was those green eyes, the ones that had faded from view so long ago, looking down at me with concern. Jade k
nelt on the beach next to me, her hand resting on my shirt, supporting my weight when I couldn’t. As I slowly caught my breath, her face relaxed into a smile.

  “I thought you were gone there for a while,” she said.

  I tried to speak. I had been gone. But when I opened my mouth I found it so dry that only a hoarse croak passed my lips.

  “Don’t try to talk yet,” she said. “Here, have some of this.” She held out a small stone cup filled with water.

  Nothing in the world had ever tasted so good. The water soothed my throat and I quickly gulped the entire cup, wanting more. I sat up, determined to support my own weight, but I fell back to the soft sand.

  “How—how long—” I tried to say, but she cut me off.

  “Don’t,” she said. “You’ve been through a lot in the past few days. Best to let me tell you the story.”

  I gave a slight nod.

  “After Cadoc…well…after he left, I thought you were going to die,” she began. “In fact, I thought you were dead for a little while. He had all but broken you in two.” I nodded, remembering the blazing pain of my cracked ribs tearing apart my insides.

  “Well,” she went on, “I panicked for a while. And after you stopped breathing I really thought there would be no hope. But as I began to accept that you were dead I sort of came back to myself. We were in a cave; a cave made of granite.”

  I didn’t understand what she meant, though she was surely talking about something that I should find significant.

  “Granite is the stone that I’ve used for centuries to make the elixir of life,” she said. “So, once I came to my senses again, I got to work. It wasn’t easy, mind you. There was no light in the cave by that point, so I could only see by what little light I was able to conjure myself. But I made do, and eventually I was able to make the draft.”