Aster Wood and the Wizard King (Book 5)

by J B Cantwell

  “If anyone here who has pledged themselves to help in eradicating the most sadistic being ever known in the Fold,” Kiron said, “if anyone wants out of their commitment, now is the time to speak up.”

  “I didn’t say—” Tristan began.

  “Now is the time to speak up,” Kiron repeated, glaring.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody breathed.

  “Fine,” Kiron said. “Larissa will make the links to Thalio, Barta, and Aeso before she seeks Donnally. Aster, get out the gold they will need on the journey. And add some extra in case they happen to stumble across a frame of their own to use. I recall that Elidor has a certain talent with casting links as well.”

  Elidor blushed from his bald head to his white beard.

  I took off my pack and dug out the gold. In the end, I gave them the sack I had been carrying the whole stash in, pouring what was left into one of the socks we had used to cover our eyes in the cavern. I handed the nicer sack to Kiron.

  Elidor took Larissa’s frame from her outstretched hand and moved away from the group, looking for a clearing to produce the next link.

  As I replaced the contents of my pack, Larissa squeezed Cait’s shoulder reassuringly and then came to me, kneeling down.

  “You must take care of the girl,” she said.

  “Of course I will,” I said. “I—”

  “She has been through too much,” she said. “You must care for her as you would a wounded animal.”

  “Larissa,” I said. “I understand that she is the most important person on our journey. Even if the others don’t.”

  “But it’s not just about her being important,” Larissa said. She dropped her voice low. “She’s damaged. Since the attack of the scorpion, she has worsened. I had hoped that time would heal her voice, but I didn’t realize that she is already fading.”

  This news hit me like a hammer in the chest.

  Fading? I had been so concerned about getting us to the pedestal, and then freeing us from the cavern, that I hadn’t even noticed how Cait was doing now.

  “What do I do?” I asked.

  “Get my brother to make more healing draft for her,” she said. “I don’t know how far it will go, but it will help to sustain her until we reach the end. If we reach the end.”

  A sudden fear began rising up in my chest at her words. If we reach the end. And what would we do without Cait? With no guide, and now no Elidor to use his own magic, we would be worse than lost.

  “I understand,” I said, my voice low. “I’ve done it before. I’ll carry her if I have to.”

  From the small clearing Elidor had found, the pinprick lights of a frame burst out. I would’ve liked to have watched, to sit back on the soft forest floor and marvel about how such intricate magic was done. And maybe I could’ve learned something to help me in my own link-making.

  But the angry buzzing overhead reminded us all that we didn’t have much time. It would only be so long before the wasps figured out how to penetrate the wall of trees that separated us from their angry stingers.

  Larissa left my side, ready to assist Elidor if he needed it. I stood, too, and strapped my old pack to my back. Cait followed Larissa, wrapping her little arms around the old woman’s legs. She knelt down and pulled Cait into a giant hug. Even from here I could see the tears streaming down her little cheeks as Larissa whispered into her ear. Then, finally, she released her. Cait dutifully walked, eyes cast down, in my direction. I held out my hand to her, and was surprised when she took it without argument.

  “Hey, kiddo,” I said, trying to use my best big brother tone. “It’s going to be alright, you know. You’ll see Lissa in just a few days.”

  She nodded solemnly, but her eyes did not meet mine. Guilt flooded through me. We shouldn’t be making such a young child accompany us on such a dangerous journey. But what choice did we have? The truth was there was no other who could get us to the pedestals as fast as little Cait could.

  “After this is done, we’ll look for Rhainn,” I said. She looked up at this, her eyes hopeful. “I promise you that we’ll find him. Or at least we’ll try.”

  She nodded again, holding more tightly to my hand now.

  “We should move on,” Kiron said. “Elidor has completed the first link to Thalio.” He turned to them. “Only work as long as it’s safe for you to. If you find they are getting too close, abandon the link and move on to Thalio.”

  Tristan nodded, and in the distance I saw Elidor preparing to make the second link, this one to Barta.

  “Elidor!” Kiron called. “Safe travels, my friend!”

  Elidor paused at the call, then stood tall and raised one hand toward Kiron, his farewell.

  Finian approached Tristan, holding out one hand and squeezing his shoulder as a father might, though Tristan stood nearly a foot taller than him.

  “You can do this,” Finian said. “You are the strongest of us all. Use that to help you through the trials that await. And do not despair about Donnally. If he is able to be found, Larissa will do it.”

  Larissa walked up to Kiron, then pulled back her hand as if she meant to punch him in the face. He flinched, but it was a joke.

  “Good luck, brother,” she said, punching him in the shoulder instead.

  Kiron huffed.

  “You, too,” he growled. “Do what you can to find our man, would ya?”

  Larissa nodded.

  Suddenly the noise from the wasps intensified, and the sound of falling trees echoed through the forest. All eyes grew wide at the approaching threat. Elidor closed the frame and pocketed it, the vehicle, a rock for the link, and the gold. He ran toward the group.

  “We must go,” he said. “Now, before they get too close. There isn’t time to make the next link.”

  “You’ll have to do it on Thalio,” Kiron said. “Safe travels.” He turned to the rest of us. “Gather close,” he said, holding out the Dursala link.

  Finian, Father, Cait and myself crowded around Kiron, each of us grabbing onto his arms.

  And we left Grallero, the strange planet where bees dwarfed men and giant flowers had sustained us, spinning into space, bound for Dursala.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I had expected to land painfully in a pile, as we had done on Yunta that first day. But instead I got the sensation of falling into fluff, like down feathers in a pillow. Something cold blew forcefully against my face, and when I opened my eyes I had to shut them again immediately as they were accosted by tiny, frozen flakes.

  We were in snow. And, it seemed, we had arrived in the midst of a blizzard. The wind stung my ears, the sound making them ring with the its roar. Across from me, Kiron shouted something I couldn’t hear. I saw Cait a few feet away, trying desperately to free herself from what I now recognized as a snow drift. But not just any snowdrift. These were five feet tall. No wonder it had felt like landing on a pillow, I thought. But the comfort I had felt upon landing was fleeting, quickly replaced with an onslaught of elements that seemed determined to strip away my defenses one by one.

  I made for Cait. She was nearly within arms reach from me, yet it seemed to take a long time for me to reach her. Finally, I realized that, instead of stepping into the snow, I should roll. I struggled to lay flat and rolled over to her, nearly landing right on top of her as I did so.

  “Climb on!” I shouted.

  Her cheeks were already red from the stinging wind. She clambered up upon my back, and I made my way over to Kiron.

  “What do we do?” I shouted.

  “Make for the trees!” he called.

  With Cait on my back I couldn’t roll, and the snow was so deep, I couldn’t imagine how we could bypass it.

  Kiron took out his disk, held it out in front of himself, and the snow blew away, forming an easy path for us to walk through. We picked up Finian and Father, both trapped in snowbanks of their own, and made our way toward the trees. The closer we got to the forest, the shallower the snow became. The adrenaline that had warmed me for the first fe
w moments upon arrival now seemed to drain away and I shivered. The snow on either side of our narrow path blocked a lot of the wind, but the freezing cold was just as bitter as it had been up top.

  Finally, we made it to the trees. The snow was only about two feet deep here, but the wind, though less within the relative safety of the forest, still blew hard against our backs. With every step, though, the wind had a harder time finding us, and soon only a gentle, freezing breeze blew. Thick flakes of snow fell around us like dancing stars.

  Once we were a hundred yards in, Kiron stopped and yanked his pack off his back. From it he pulled a large sheet of material, and I recognized it as the same fabric he had made my blanket from.

  “Finian!” he called. “We need wood! And you!” he pointed to Father. “Make yourself useful!”

  Now that we were within the protection of the woods, I could easily see Finian and Father as they tromped away through knee-high snow, searching.

  Kiron draped the wide cloth over the snow like a blanket. Then, in two swift motions, raised up his disk and cut through two large branches nearby.

  I dropped Cait to her feet and went to retrieve them. When I turned back with the first one in my quickly freezing fingers, I saw Cait shivering violently beside Kiron. Once I handed him the first branch, I dropped my own pack and dug out the blanket, wrapping it around Cait tightly. Almost instantly, her face relaxed as her body slowly began to warm.

  Kiron stuck the branch deep into the snow, then propped up one corner of the blanket onto it.

  I went back for the second branch, my own body warming a little now from the effort, and returned it to Kiron. He propped the other corner of the blanket up onto the branch.

  “Get inside,” Kiron growled, and Cait and I slid beneath the protection of the fabric. It was noticeably warmer in here, and soon our shivering stopped.

  Finian and Father returned with their arms full of wood, smaller branches cut from higher up in the trees by Finian’s disk. Finian had brought a sword, too, probably out of habit from the days he had spent as a soldier. But the sword was no match agains the frozen trunks of the trees. They both dumped the wood at Kiron’s feet, and he quickly formed a small pile at the widest opening of the fabric. With one whisk of his disk, a fire alighted. I realized that, with the fire situated at the widest part of the opening, its heat radiated back to us within the fabric, while the smoke drifted up and away from us. Soon, all of us were nestled in together, blowing our hands to warm them and trying to stop the chattering of our teeth.

  “It wasn’t this way before,” Father said.

  Kiron and I exchanged glances.

  “What wasn’t?” I asked.

  “When Jared came here,” he said.

  We all stared at Father, but none of us spoke. What were these strange memories Father was having? None of us knew, seemingly not even Father. We all stayed silent then. Nobody knew what to say.

  We were tired. Our long hike across Grallero’s meadows, followed by battling for our lives against the wasps, had left all of us exhausted. Cait snuggled comfortably within the blanket and was the first to stretch out. She faced her head toward the fire, and soon was sleeping peacefully before us.

  It wasn’t long before the rest of us followed suit. I doubted that any attacker, at least any like the beasts we had come across on Yunta and Grallero, would be able to find us in this snow. And, too exhausted to stand guard, every one of us was soon fast asleep.

  But it wasn’t a restful sleep, at least mine wasn’t. In the dream this time there was nothing but empty darkness. Then that same pain I had felt in my head back on Yunta seared through it once more, and I felt myself fighting it off for what felt like an eternity. The voice that I had heard was there, too, coaxing me now, bending me to its will.

  “Give up,” it said. “Let go.”

  No, I thought. I won’t.

  My head throbbed again, and I tried to push the pain down, to not let it affect me. My head throbbed as if I had hit it against a rock. I writhed beneath the power of it, desperate to make it stop.

  “Let go,” the voice whispered.

  I woke, sweat making my clothes cling to my body. Darkness had fallen around us. I sat up, searching all around for the unknown assailant, but finding nothing but the same thick snow that had been here when we had fallen asleep. My head ached.

  Only Kiron was awake. He sat beside the fire, stoking the last of the branches.

  “We should get moving soon,” he said. “It’s nearly light.”

  I looked out at the trees, searching for daylight, but all I saw was the same scene of gently falling snow, not a hint of sunlight.

  “How can you tell?” I asked, trying to shake off the dream.

  “I’ve been awake for a while,” he said. “It’s a lot brighter now than it was an hour ago.”

  This idea of moving on after just one night brought me despair. It was true that our shelter here was, while warm enough, not comfortable, and my stomach rumbled for the last of the dried meat we all carried in our packs. But I knew we couldn’t stay here for long without freezing or dying of hunger. Yet I didn’t want to leave. It seemed like we had been running for days and days, and despite having slept the night through, I was exhausted.

  “We’re going to run out of food before long,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “But if we can just last until Aerit, food won’t be a problem. You know that there are food trees near my farm, and if we can make it that close, we can take a detour to pick up the rest of the grain I have in my stores.”

  I sat for a moment, trying to weigh our options. One thing was certain; if we stayed here in this wood we would starve. With all this snow, any food source appeared to be either dead or hiding.

  Yet there had to be food we could find here. Somewhere. Who knew how long our journey across Dursala would be before we found the pedestal?

  “Can we look for food here?” I asked. “Maybe if we can get past this snow, we can find something farther out.”

  Kiron shrugged, looking around.

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “The kid’s right,” Finian said from behind us. “We only have enough food left to last us maybe two days, three at most. What happens if we end up blundering around through this storm for the next week? Or two? Or three?”

  “We don’t know that food can be found at all on this planet,” Kiron said, and I noted a tone of defeat in his voice that hadn’t been there yesterday. He was tired, too. “I don’t want to spend days heading in the wrong direction only to starve when we might have made it to the pedestal if we had gone the other way.”

  “I think there must be food here,” Father said, sitting up beside us. “I can … feel it somehow.”

  “You can feel it?” Kiron asked, sneering. “How?”

  Father didn’t react to Kiron’s tone. He seemed to not even notice it.

  “Aster, remember the storm back on Aeso? Between the valley with the trees and the Hidden Mountains?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Of course I do.”

  “This storm is like that one,” he said. “A false storm. It’s protecting someone. Or something.”

  A false storm?

  This gave everybody pause as we considered this idea.

  “But how do you know?” Finian finally asked.

  “How does anyone know anything?” Father countered. “How does Cait know which direction to take us in? How does Kiron know how to wield his disk, or you for that matter? I just … know.”

  Finian addressed me next.

  “Can we trust him?” he asked, glancing uncertainly between Father and myself. “How do we know he’s telling the truth?”

  “He hasn’t failed us yet,” I said. “I don’t know if he will help us or not, but—”

  A groan escaped from the small pile of blankets that was Cait. She had her head covered, and when I pulled back on the blanket, I saw her face was pale, and sweat beaded her forehead. I put my hand to her skin and found it burn
ing hot.

  My stomach sank.

  “I’d say we have bigger problems right now,” I said, sitting back. “We need to get her somewhere safe.” I turned to Kiron. “Somewhere where you can brew more of your healing draft. And soon. Larissa told me she was in trouble.”

  But I hadn’t noticed how badly she was doing until now.

  “We have to help her,” I pressed.

  Kiron turned to Father.

  “Which way is the way out of this storm?” he asked.

  Father seemed confused by this question.

  “I have no idea,” he said. “I can’t tell you which way to go. All I can tell you is what this storm is. And that somewhere within it is something we need.”

  Cait was stirring. I pulled her up by the edges of her blanket and held her to me. She shuddered.

  “Let’s get moving,” I told Kiron and Finian. “We don’t have much time. She’s getting worse. We need to get her out of here as soon as we can.”

  Either because of the urgency of my plan, or the strange fact that I was somehow in charge of this mad expedition, they each stood at once and began breaking apart our small shelter. I stood up, holding Cait in both arms now. She was limp in my grasp.

  “Kiron, do you have anything that goes farther than this?” I asked, motioning to the stone link that hung from my neck. As close as I could figure, it took me about a mile away each time I used it. But we needed to get much farther than a mile to get her out of this storm.

  “Yes, but only one,” he said, pulling out his odd necklace jeweled with links of different strengths.

  “Good,” I said, reaching for it.

  He pulled it out of my grasp.

  “Just a minute,” he said. “I’ve never used this one. I don’t know for certain that it’ll do what we think.”

  “Well, what’s it supposed to do?” I asked.