Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  On the last step I paused and glanced around the corner. The building that disguised the entrance to the dungeons was deserted. Morning had come at last, and outside people ran, panicked, in all directions. Men on horses galloped through the street, seeking the escaped prisoners. Townspeople screamed as they searched for cover from the chaos of the fight. I stuck my head out the door and looked in both directions, but I saw no more soldiers, just the dusty trail left by the horses. I left the safety of the doorway and started running, myself. I headed for the soup lady’s stand in the square, where I knew I would find my pack and Kiron close by.

  As I hurtled down the street, I looked into every doorway, every side passage, for the man I sought. The man in black. I had to find Cadoc now, before we could leave the city and join Owyn. I passed a group of soldiers that were fighting spectacularly with three of the prisoners. The men, though thin and dirty from their years underground, were quick and light on their feet. They were running circles around the guards, tripping up their horses, who were whinnying and rearing from the snarl. Their antics reminded me of clowns in a circus performance, only with a much more sinister purpose.

  He hit me like a wall. I never saw if it was a building he appeared from, or an alleyway, but in any case there he stood. I had been running so fast that I slammed into him and then backward to the ground. He bent over me and grabbed my jacket with two hands, pulled me back to my feet and then off the ground entirely, and stared at me with his cold, dark glare.

  The man in black had found me.

  Chapter 15

  My efforts to fight him lasted only a moment. I wriggled around, trying to break the iron grasp his hands held on my arms. But, fueled by some unknown power, Cadoc’s grip only tightened until I cried out in pain, certain that he would break my bones. He shook me roughly until I stopped fighting completely, and then put his face close to mine, staring into my unfocused eyes. His putrid breath filled my nostrils with its stench.

  I was dizzy. His rough face floated in front of my vision, and as he spoke his voice sounded muffled to my ears, like someone speaking to me through a heavy door. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, only the anger with which he spat the words at me. My heart pounded in my ears, much louder than Cadoc’s voice. My blurry vision cast downward as he raged at me. He held my body up above the ground so that my face was level with his neck. A thin golden chain ran around his neck and over his solid chest, out of place on this enormous man. Something else wasn’t right about this, but my brain was bound by panic, and I couldn’t figure out what. The pendant that dangled from it was large and round, etched with the shape of a star.

  As my eyes slowly began to focus, I met his gaze for the first time.

  In an instant, his grip loosened on my coat. His face was shocked, surprised, as we looked at each other. He slowly lowered my feet back to the ground. His fingers grasped a lock of my hair, still dark from Kiron’s disguise, and wiped away some of the soot, revealing its white-blond color.

  “You,” he said. His mouth remained open in disbelief.

  I could feel the blood rushing back into my fingertips, his hands having all but released my arms.

  “You were in the dream,” he went on. “But how is that possible? How are you here now? It was only a dream!”

  What?

  His grimace slackened, overcome by his memory, and for a moment I stared at him, confused. Then I came to my senses and realized the opportunity his distraction gave me.

  “You,” he said, “you were over there.” He stood upright and pointed across the road, only one hand on me now. A sliver of green winked at me from underneath his overcoat. The book!

  “And I was here,” he continued. “And you were running—”

  Had we shared the dream?

  I didn’t have time to ask the question of him, or even ponder it myself. I braced my feet on the hard street.

  “And you were so fast!” he said, his eyes glazing now as he looked over my head at something only he could see. Perhaps he was remembering me running away from him down that very street.

  I made my move. My free hand flew up to his jacket and snatched the book from the inside pocket before he could even register my movement. I put the book, no bigger than the palm of my hand, firmly between my teeth and ripped my arms out of my jacket, pulling the sleeves inside out as I freed myself from the canvas.

  As I took the first frantic steps away from him, I could feel his hands grasp for me, but his fingers barely grazed my shirt as I flew down the street. His screams of fury echoed in my ears as I was ten, then twenty paces away, the prize now clutched tightly in my hand as I ran.

  The world seemed to be moving in slow motion around me as I careened towards the square. Cadoc’s yells followed me as I ran, but with each step they were more difficult to hear. The city people who were left on the street stood, dumbstruck, as I ran by them. In the distance I could hear rapid hoofbeats reverberating off the walls of the streets, getting closer, closer. I ran harder and, sooner than I had thought possible, burst through the entrance to the square.

  I was focused now. Somewhere in the back of my head I was aware that I was running fast, really fast, but it felt so natural that this thought caused me no alarm. I felt, for the first time since entering Stonemore, safe. They couldn’t catch me. Nobody could.

  I shot across the square like a bullet. Ten yards from the soup lady I shouted, “Reveal!” and the backpack my eyes were searching for popped back into existence, propped against the wall behind her stew pot, the ax tied to one of its straps. I barely broke stride as I leaned over to snatch it. I strapped it to my back and held the ax out and ready as I continued towards the road to the outer gates of the city.

  The entire place was erupting into chaos as I ran. Shield guards were beating the townspeople bloody, as if the release of the prisoners had triggered some sort of vicious, automatic retaliation against the citizens. As I careened through the square, I suddenly saw something that nearly stopped me in my tracks.

  Kiron and Chapman both stood back to back, fighting off soldiers who approached from every side. Chapman held a simple metal shield, and he used it to protect himself from the constant blows of the guards. Kiron wielded his long, silver sword, and he slashed out at the men as they bore down on the duo. For an instant he saw me, and our eyes met.

  “Run!” he yelled, alarmed at my stillness amidst the battle. I had stopped dead without realizing it. The fear and fury in his eyes jarred me back to my senses and I tore myself away from the scene, running towards the street on the north end of the square.

  Once I rounded the corner out of the square, I found the path almost entirely deserted. Screams and slamming doors echoed off the buildings as the people hid from the violence. Dead ahead of me I could see the gates in the distance, already starting to close. The alert must have made it to the guards, and now they would try to cut me off before I could break through. The strip of daylight between the two enormous wood and iron doors was getting thinner and thinner with each step I took towards them. I didn’t let my eyes leave that ribbon of light as I ran for my freedom. The men shouted to each other as they heaved on the doors, but their voices I heard for only a moment. As the doors swung in earnest, first feet, then inches from closing, I blazed through them in a flash before they thudded shut, sealed against the world.

  My feet ran on grass now, my whole body grateful for the soft turf. But I didn’t make it far. Soon I slowed to a stop and melted down into the cool blades, my chest heaving with the effort of the flight. I turned back to look at the city, elated by my increasing strength and glorious escape. But what I saw there quickly dashed my joy.

  Over the rooftops the fireworks of battle raged. In one corner of the city a group of buildings burned. Explosion after explosion rocked the air above the square and reverberated off the walls. They would never make it to me in time. And their escape was closed off. Was there another way out of the city? I didn’t know. I contemplated scouting around t
he perimeter of the wall to look for another point where I might be likely to meet the men from the dungeons. But then something caught my eye on top of the city wall.

  A cloud of smoke twirled on the spot, undulating back and forth. Curiously it danced and then fell twenty feet to the ground on the outside of the city, its form not breaking from the impact. I rose to my feet, alarmed, as the smoke unmistakably started in my direction. But it moved unnaturally fast. Before I could turn to run it was upon me, and then in front of me, and then it wasn’t smoke anymore at all.

  It was Cadoc.

  The sneer on his face was triumphant as he stood on the rocks above me, his teeth shining from under his lips as if he wanted to devour me. His magic, whatever it was, we had all underestimated.

  I would not be meeting my party after all.

  “You have something of mine,” he growled. “Little boys should learn that there is punishment when one steals.”

  I slowly rose to my feet as he made his way, almost casually, towards me.

  “I always told that fool Owyn Gildas that I would beat him in the end. He may have escaped his cage for the afternoon, but he’ll be in it again by sundown.”

  My left hand gripped the book of codes tightly, the right my ax. I searched around me frantically for a path to escape.

  “He could have chosen to follow me instead of that old fool, Almara. But then, we are not all born to make such choices. It takes a man who has left cowardice far behind him to recognize the road to true power.”

  He raised up his left hand and twirled his fingers through the smoke of the miniature tornado that now spun on top of his palm.

  “Had he chosen more wisely, things would be different for him now,” he said as he manipulated the smoke, “but he did not choose wisely.” His eyes focused on me again. “How, I wonder, will you choose, young friend?”

  His lips curled up into a grimacing smile, and I took a step backwards.

  “No, no,” he said, taking slow paces towards me. “Don’t you worry, now. I won’t hurt you if you don’t make the same foolish mistake as Owyn. Come with me now and we can explore together the wonders of what this place has to offer us. It’s not every day, after all, that one is so lucky as to share a dream with another.”

  It wasn’t any day that people shared dreams, at least not where I came from.

  “You seem to have a…sense about things that I haven’t seen in quite some time,” he continued. “And, as you might have guessed by now, I’ve been around for a long while. You and I, we could do…such wondrous things together.” The snakelike persuasion of his voice licked around the edges of my mind, but I rejected it with revulsion. His eyes lied underneath his black brows.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  “I am the one,” he murmured, distracted now by the black wind in his hand, “whom you would best not keep waiting much longer. I am of the Corentin.” His eyes changed as he said this word, and within the black irises red streaked across from one side to the other. He lowered his hands to his sides, palms outstretched, and black smoke began to pour from them and onto the earth below his feet. At the first touch of the smoke, the grass shriveled and crumbled. The black air reached out across the earth between where he and I stood, coming towards me.

  “Tell me, Aster,” his voice became slippery and smooth, “what is it that you desire? What are you searching for?”

  I backed away, but found I could not shift my gaze away from his palms. The smoke was alive as it caressed the tips of each blade of grass.

  “I want to go home,” I said, entranced.

  “Where is home?” he asked, taking silent steps towards me.

  “Earth,” I said automatically.

  “Ahhh,” he replied. “I can help you there. So little gold remains in the Triaden. And without gold, you are bound here.” The thin gold chain shimmered against his chest. In the far reaches of my mind, I realized that was why the necklace had seemed so out of place before. We stood in a world without gold, except for that which hung around Cadoc’s neck. “I alone have the power to send beings along the pathways of this universe.”

  This statement brought me up short, breaking the hold of the magic on my mind just long enough for me to use my own reason. He had not been the one to send Brendan Wood to Earth; Almara had done that. It might be a power that he also shared, but he was not my only hope. This terrifying man, a man who haunted my dreams and locked away my allies for centuries, was not my only hope.

  He began to approach me again, and I did the thing that had so easily become second nature to me; I swung my ax. It flipped, blade over handle, and soared through the air directly towards his chest. I watched with satisfaction and then horror as it met its mark…and then burst right through the other side. The center of Cadoc’s body split open in a giant puff of black smoke, and then closed itself again. He was completely unharmed. He looked down at his chest, a look of mild surprise on his face.

  “So be it,” he snarled, turning his murderous eyes to me. He advanced.

  I could not wait any longer. I could not fight this magic, and I doubted I could win in a race out here in the open, even with my speed. I held up the book, decorated with thin, golden paint, thrust it into the air, and screamed, “GO!”

  “NO!” Cadoc yelled as the pull of the jump enveloped me. His red eyes seemed to burst from his head and follow me into the spin, but in another moment they melted away like the smoke in his hands.

  Chapter 16

  I landed on my back in deep, soft snow. Snow? I had only ever seen pictures of snow, saved from the days before the famine. I gripped bunches of it frantically in my fists as I lurched to my feet. Above, a million burning stars punctuated the blackness of space. The cold was jarring, something I had never felt, but panic overpowered my wonder at this strange landscape. I spun, searching frantically for any sign that Cadoc had somehow followed me. Nothing but low, rolling hills stretched out as far as the eye could see. Not a single tree sprouted from the frozen ground for him to hide behind. I was alone.

  It wasn’t until my breath started coming in thin wheezes that I realized I couldn’t breathe. I opened my mouth wide and lifted my chin. I could not overpower my fear of his pursuit.

  This was different than the asthma that came with my bad heart, but I recognized the sensation. When I was three or so years old, before I had gotten sick, I had been jumping on my mom’s bed one night before dinner. Delighted by the heights my tiny body could reach, I bounced right off the edge of the mattress and landed on the carpeted floor, flat on my back. Every molecule of air that had been in my lungs was thrust out in a whoosh from the pressure of the impact. I lay gasping for what seemed like hours, but had only been seconds.

  I was doing the same now, but each gasp seemed to only bring on more panic as I scanned the sleeping land. I moved quickly despite the reassuring emptiness of this place, not thinking as clearly as I might have if I had remained still and allowed myself to calm down. But it was too much. I had faced too much danger to do anything now but continue to escape. I ran, panicking, through the knee-deep snow into the darkness of night, but it wasn’t long before I realized I couldn’t get far in the state I was in. My chest felt like a deflated balloon, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t suck in any air. I fell back down to the freezing earth.

  Cadoc. He wasn’t a man. Not a normal man, anyways. He had been flesh, and then smoke, and then flesh again. And his eyes, those red eyes had tried to follow me here.

  I lay down, unable to flee, my body trying desperately to obtain oxygen. As my chest heaved, my eyes drifted upward to the clear night sky. Two moons, one large and white like our own on Earth, and one small and dim with a purple glow, shone full. The white snow rose up all around me, the cold flakes brushing up against my cheeks and fingertips. As air slowly returned to my flattened lungs, my gasps made large plumes of vapor in the cold air with each ragged breath.

  My body gave an involuntary shiver and I crossed my arms over my ches
t stay warm. Slowly, so slowly, my breathing calmed.

  I slowly sat up and looked around. Yes, I was alone, safe, it seemed, from Cadoc. But I was in trouble. My teeth began chattering involuntarily. I wrestled free of the pack, revealed it and ripped it open with my quickly numbing fingers. There had to be something inside that might keep me from freezing to death. I grabbed at each item, hoping for the feel of fur, fleece, anything. My panic resurfaced as I threw aside apples, jars of jam, and the last of my dried meat. He had to have packed something, maybe a blanket for sleeping outdoors. Did they have such things as sleeping bags in the Fold? I was starting to despair, my body shaking with cold, when, at the bottom, my fingers brushed up against something that made me exhale a long sigh of relief.

  Kiron had stowed a wooly blanket at the very bottom. I pulled it out and spread it wide. The material was thin, but the piece was broad, much larger than a beach towel, and I quickly draped it around my body. Instantly I could feel warmth returning to the skin on my arms as the fabric insulated me against the biting night. I tied it at the base of my neck and got back to my feet, fumbling through the snow, picking up the items I had tossed aside.

  Once I had repacked the bag, I sat down in the snow and hugged it to my chest, holding on to the one piece of Kiron that was still with me. I was on my own now, and I held the pack protectively, as though someone might snatch it from me at any moment. Though cold, the air was completely still, and the blanket brought me incredible warmth despite its thinness. He must have done some sort of magic to it, or maybe the fibers themselves possessed some rare power.

  I pulled the green book from my pocket and inspected it in the moonlight. On the front cover was Almara’s symbol, but when I opened the little book the pages inside were blank. It wasn’t surprising, but it was disappointing. Where was I supposed to go? The other links had been maps, but this one showed no destination, no golden ring. I lay back into the snow, frustrated and exhausted.