Aster Wood and the Wizard King (Book 5)

by J B Cantwell

  “Well, what is she then?” Finian asked.

  “She’s a … well … not a woman, exactly,” I began. “More like a being. Almost like a god. She’s old, as old as the planets, and she’s watched them since they first came into being. She doesn’t normally appear.” I glanced around us, wondering if she might magically arrive, gliding over the swamp waters to meet us. “She probably won’t now, though. She’ll know we’re moving through.”

  Everyone looked around, looking to catch a glimpse of the strange entity who had helped me when I had last been in this swamp. I realized that, though they knew who she was, none of them had ever seen her themselves.

  I looked down at my feet. The longer I stood in one spot, the softer the mud seemed to feel beneath them. I tried to lift one foot and the boot squelched through the sick floor of the swamp.

  “I think we should get moving,” I said.

  Kiron nodded, lifting one of his own legs and realizing the same thing I had. If we stood too long in one spot in this place, the swamp might just decide to swallow us up whole.

  As I looked around once more, though, I couldn’t decide which way we should go. I knew where we were headed, of course, but how could I tell which direction was the correct one in a place that was so thickly shrouded by trees and moss?

  I looked doubtfully towards Kiron.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  He looked up at the little bits of sky that were still visible through the tree branches.

  “It’s high noon now,” he said. “It’ll be a while before we can sense any direction at all.”

  He pulled out his disk and rested it on his hand. With a little movement of his palm, the disk lifted slightly from his palm and hovered there, not unlike the basins in the pedestal rooms.

  “Which way is it?” he asked.

  “I told you. I don’t—”

  “No,” he corrected. “I mean is it north? West?”

  I thought about it, but I had never seen a map of Aria before. My knowledge of this country was limited to what I had seen on the ground with my own eyes.

  “It’s north.”

  I started, turning to find it had been Jade who’d spoken. I raised my eyebrows. She grimaced at me in return.

  “You think I can’t find my way out of the Black Swamp on my own planet?” she asked. “You forget I studied here for most of my childhood. I could draw you a map by hand.”

  All of us fell quiet, outwitted by the girl who looked so young, but who was older than every one of us.

  “So?” Kiron asked. “Which way?”

  “North,” she said, her face filled with pride. “And just a touch west.”

  “That’ll take you to Riverstone,” Erod said. “We want to go to Neri.” He turned to Kiron. “It’s due north.”

  Jade’s face fell at his words.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I guess I got confused, thinking we were going to Riverstone, not Mount Neri.”

  “It’s alright, child,” Finian said. “I think if any of us were on our own planet, our minds would be on getting back home, too.”

  He smiled at her, and she lowered her eyes sheepishly. But I thought I caught just a hint of a smile beneath her lowered gaze.

  Kiron spoke quietly to his disk, and it vibrated gently in the air as it turned on its side. It pointed in the direction Kiron had asked it to.

  “It’s this way,” he said, pointing into the trees.

  We all looked in that direction, and it seemed I wasn’t the only one feeling a little nervous about taking that route out of the swamp. Of all the ways we might’ve gone, this one was the darkest, had the worst snarls in the hanging vines, and had no visible signs of land anywhere. Not even a place where we could stop to rest. The last time I had walked through this place it had been along a pathway made by the Watcher, herself, a magical bridge that sat right on the surface of the water, keeping me dry the whole way through.

  Now, without her help, we would be wet and cold the whole way. I was forced to trudge through the muck like every other person here who had never met her before.

  “Keep yourselves quiet,” Erod warned. “He could have giants stationed anywhere, waiting. It would make sense to have them surrounding Neri, but even though we’re not that close yet, you never know when a spy might be watching.”

  Kiron nodded, and obediently raised one finger to his lips to indicate that all of us should remain silent.

  As we set off, my feet squelched in my boots, which sunk deeper and deeper into the mud. Soon, the water rose to my stomach and, looking back at Jade and Erod, had risen to Jade’s chest. Though Erod was barely hampered by the water, it only rising to his giant thighs.

  Moving was difficult, and not a little frightening. Though I had never seen water creatures here before, my skin crawled continually as I waded, and I jumped at the slightest sounds. I had never learned to swim. Back on Earth, luxuries like swimming pools were a thing of the past.

  We made progress. Slow and drenched, we crawled through the swamp. My fingers were pruny from the hours spent in the water, and I shuddered to think of what my feet must look like. The water was cold, even though it might have been refreshing on a hot day. But a quick dip into a pond on a day like that would have been just that: quick. Here, the weather was pleasant enough, but hour after hour as we trudged along, the cold began to seep into our bones. I found myself longing for a rest, but land was nowhere in sight.

  “I hope you’re sure this is the way, you two,” Finian whispered back to Erod and Jade.

  Jade’s skin was pale, and her lips were tinged blue. I stopped walking.

  “Are you ok?” I asked.

  She looked desperately around, and I could tell she didn’t want the others to know about her struggle.

  But Erod was quick to respond.

  “Oh, little one,” he murmured. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  He bent down and scooped her up into his huge arms. Her tattered robes dripped with swamp water, and she shivered visibly.

  Erod’s body gave a particularly bright pulse of light, and soon she was clinging to him.

  “Heat?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  I turned back, wishing that I had my very own giant to carry me through the cold.

  Hours later, the swamp had gradually darkened as the sun made its way across the sky. A small strip of land appeared before us, rising up like a dream come true amidst the water. It was all I could do to not whoop with joy at the sight of it. I felt my feet rising up the shallow embankment, and as soon as I stood on land, I collapsed into the mud.

  Everyone else followed suit, all of us exhausted from our journey. Everyone except Erod, for whom this had probably seemed like an easy day by comparison. Jade’s robes were dry now, and the color had returned to her cheeks.

  I sat shivering in the mud.

  “We shouldn’t stay here long,” Erod said, looking around.

  During our time in the swamp, Erod had slowly gotten closer to Father, testing the boundaries. Now he was allowing himself to get just five or ten feet away.

  Father looked nervous, too, but not about Erod’s proximity. Like the rest of us, he had stayed silent along this part of the journey, but now he seemed unable to keep his thoughts to himself any longer.

  “We should move on,” he whispered. “I don’t think it’s safe here.”

  Just then, the crashing sounds of feet through vegetation made their way to our ears.

  I froze, trying to determine what it was. But part of me already knew. Erod had been right. Giants guarded this place.

  We all looked around for a way out, a direction to run in. But aside from the narrow spit of land behind us, there was no way out that wasn’t in the water, and moving through the water in a hurry would make more noise than we could get away with.

  Kiron and Finian had their disks out in a flash, and I untethered the staff from my pack. Father stood behind us, and I could tell he was terrified. Maybe deep in his m
emories he had an inclination of the danger that lived in this place. A danger that, until now, had let us be.

  The crashing got louder. And then a strange hissing sound was all around us. I stared, mouth open, in horror as every slithering creature that lived in the swamp suddenly made itself known. Snakes skimmed the surface of the water. Enormous bugs the size of my fist swarmed in the treetops above. Water lizards made their way to the spit of land we stood upon, and it was all I could do to keep from screaming as they scurried over my feet.

  And then they were there. Two giants from Erod’s village came through the trees, stopping just thirty feet from where we stood.

  This was it. We were doomed. My hands felt sticky on the staff as I imagined what fate awaited us when these men, now made into monsters by the Corentin, delivered us to him as instructed.

  “I heard it,” one of them boomed.

  He seemed to be staring in our direction, and yet he didn’t move towards us, or even startle. His eyes searched around through the trees, looking for us I was sure.

  His traveling companion, a giant a foot smaller than he was, was a woman. She peered around his shoulder, also searching. Then, she angrily punched him on the arm.

  “You idiot,” she scolded. “There ain’t nothin’ here.”

  We all exchanged glances, bewildered.

  Could they not see us?

  It seemed impossible, but as we stood there, completely still and silent, the giants didn’t come. Their eyes moved over where we stood again and again, and yet they did not see.

  Finally, the woman grabbed the arm of the man, and with a sharp tug, dragged him away. Their great feet splashed through the swamp, heading in the other direction.

  I allowed myself to breathe.

  “What was that?” I whispered to the group.

  Nobody had an answer for me.

  With the sounds of the giants echoing somewhere behind us, we began the careful walk along the dry ground, our eyes and ears alert for any sign of a threat. We moved as quickly as we dared, as silently as we could. Soon, the narrow path of earth expanded out, and we no longer needed to balance in order to stay upright.

  And finally, an hour or so later, with night falling around us, we moved out of the swamp completely and onto dry land. The group, though still quiet, was all smiles. It hadn’t been just me suffering along our journey through that dark place.

  We kept walking, grateful to be out of the clutches of the water. I turned back to take one last look, keeping an eye peeled for any more giants who might be cleverer than the first two. What I saw surprised me.

  Standing waist deep in the swamp water was, unmistakably, the watcher, herself. I stopped walking, my mouth hanging open with surprise. She slowly began to sink into the pool then, and as she did so, she raised one hand out to me, as if to say goodbye.

  The others noticed that I had stopped, and they turned, too, just in time to see her shoulders sink, and then her face, quiet and serene, back into the depths that held all her secrets.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  We were on the lookout for giants after that, but we were pressed to decide between traveling under the cover of trees, or out in the open in the grass, bathed by the light of a full moon.

  We chose the trees.

  We were right. Moving through the trees did make more noise than was wise for such a journey. But just an hour or so in, we saw something in the field that told us our decision to stay under cover had been the right one.

  A glider.

  We froze, silent but for Jade’s gasp of terror behind us.

  It was one of the very same that had been of the group of three that had attacked Stonemore during the battle we had fought in. It glided across the grass, silvery white, translucent. It’s robes disturbed the blades and, I noticed with horror, wilted the grass as it moved across them.

  It passed, seeming not to hear us. My staff was suddenly electric in my hands, sending a particularly strong jolt of power that radiated from my fingertips all the way up my arm. The glider stopped then, looking about as if it, too, had somehow felt the power. Maybe the jolt of the wood had changed the feeling of the earth beneath our feet. I quickly raised the staff off the ground, hoping that it would be enough to make it second guess itself, to move along as if it had felt nothing.

  After a few tense moments, it turned its head away and continued its march across the field. I turned to find both Kiron and Finian held out their disks, ready to strike. Erod stood tall, pushing Jade behind him, shielding her. Only Father remained unprotected, and a pang of guilt ran through my chest.

  Father. The vessel. The powerless. And here all I could think about was myself.

  When the glider seemed far enough away, we began moving again, taking extra care to not make a sound, and to do what we could to hide our power from those able to sense it.

  I fell into step beside Father, daring to start a quiet conversation as we moved along.

  “How are you feeling?” I asked. His eyes were almost completely blue now, and yet it was still Father I spoke to.

  “Oh, nervous,” he said. “I remember these lands. I remember how Jared defiled them just for the sake of practicing his newfound power. They still ring with the hurt inflicted upon them at his hands.”

  I looked around, trying to sense the same thing he did. He may have been without power as I knew it, the kind which you could use to defend yourself, or to call up the power in the earth’s elements, or even to fly. But instead of witnessing the wonder of magic, he felt only the scars. Maybe I would have, too, if I had seen what he had seen.

  “Has my dad been speaking to you?” I asked, at once hoping to distract him from the danger we were all in, and also to find out the answer to my question.

  “No,” he said. “He remains silent.” He glanced at me, appraising. “Though his demeanor remains positive. There seems little desire to hurt you anymore. Only the last pieces of that strange, possessed being still remain.”

  I looked up at him, and I could tell that last part had been just for me, to appease my worry over the man within the man.

  A ripping sound bit through the air behind us, and as I turned I found Erod sinking to the ground, a long, magical spear sticking out of either side of his great, glowing form.

  Behind him stood the glider.

  We had been wrong. His moving on had been a trick.

  Finian and Kiron raised their disks, clearly hoping to distract the glider while it was still engaged in the violence of its attack on Erod. They fired those same white bolts of lightning that they had used in Stonemore’s last battle, striking the beast squarely in the chest. It faltered for a moment, but then fought its way forward again. Its gaping mouth upturned into a ghastly smile as it moved closer, as if it were mocking our attempts to keep it away from us.

  As if it enjoyed the feeling of power penetrating its chest.

  Kiron and Finian fought to stop him. Their eyes wide, the power pulsed from their disks with greater and greater ferocity. Each step the glider took, they fought harder. I watched in horror as it neared Jade, reaching out one bony hand toward her as if to caress her cheek before obliterating her.

  And that was too much for me.

  The slipping sensation in my hand reminded me of the staff. I held it in the crook of my arm, like a rifle, and took aim at the monster.

  With the impact of my power the glider stopped, bewildered. It stared down, horrified now instead of gleeful. I had surprised it, and now I gave everything I had over to the beam of light connecting the two of us.

  At the last moment, when it looked up at me again, its face fell slack, and it looked almost sad.

  It blew into a thousand pieces of pale white flesh, smattering the trees on all sides of us, and our faces and hands. Immediately, my face began to burn. The shock of the obliteration of the beast lasted only a moment before the pain on my skin took over and sent me scrambling for Kiron. Despite my terror at what had just happened, in this moment I felt compl
etely clear, able to understand what had occurred, the pain of what was happening now, and what needed to be done.

  I ripped Kiron’s pack from his back. He was clutching his face, moaning. I saw that the material had landed in one of his eyes, and he cupped it miserably.

  I found the tonic quickly, pouring some into my palm and quickly wiping it over the places where the flesh had attached itself to my skin. Immediately the pain subsided, and I filled my hand again, using the other to pry Kiron’s palm away from his injured eye. I wiped the tonic all over his lids, and, prying the swelling skin apart, poured a tiny amount into his eye. His sigh of relief told me that I had hit the mark. I yanked his hand out and poured a small amount of potion into it.

  “Use this for the rest!” I shouted. I couldn’t help it. Adrenaline was still pumping through me as I surveyed the group.

  Finian was closest, clutching his arms as if they were on fire. I grabbed one of his hands, repeating the pouring I had just done with Kiron. He had been watching and knew immediately what to do.

  Then I turned to where Jade had hit the ground, writhing in the underbrush. Beside her, Erod lay, his brightness beginning to fade, his hands grasping the stake that stuck out horribly from his stomach. He had somehow been untouched by the flesh of the glider, so I went to Jade first, tearing away her hands from her face and rubbing the potion onto her skin. Her tightly shut eyes began to open, and as she sat up she realized all at once what had happened.

  “Erod!” she gasped, scrambling over to his side. Her fingers touched the stake gingerly while her eyes scanned him. Then, realizing what was truly happening, her eyes grew wide with terror. She looked back at me.

  “He’s all I have,” she said. “He’s the thing that keeps the Corentin from controlling me.” Tears streamed down her face, and she knelt over him, kissing his cheeks, trying to bring him back to himself.

  But it was no good. Soon his eerie, golden light faded completely.

  “It’s alright, child,” he said, raising one hand to brush her uneven hair away from her face. “You are nearly healed.”