Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It wasn’t possible. We had just found him not but a week ago, after months and months of searching. I gaped at the smoke that rose up from the floor of the ravine, not willing to believe my own eyes.

  Gone. He was gone. Our guide, mad as he may have been, was now dead, lost to us and our cause forever.

  Slowly, my entire body filled with cold, hard dread, and I lay weighted to the ground with the enormous mountain pressing down on me from above. From far below another sound, an impossible sound, pierced through my haze and reached my ears.

  A dragon’s cry.

  How? The dragon was dead, incinerated by its own power, its threat permanently removed by the only man who could have ever faced a dragon and defeated it. My chest squeezed painfully at the thought of Almara, the images of his fall flitting erratically through my mind.

  But suddenly, new images, nearly just as horrifying, replaced them. From far below, three awkward sets of wings inflated like parachutes, pushing through the smoke from the destruction of their leader, who now lay smoldering at the bottom. Their screams of fury echoed throughout the mountain.

  They were coming.

  No, no, no.

  “Jade!” I screamed, not even realizing that I had opened my mouth at all. I turned to find her twenty feet back, splayed out on her back. “Jade! We have to move. NOW!”

  But she didn’t move. Her eyes floated back and forth along the stone ceiling, unreachable. I ran to her and hoisted her up, fully dragging her towards the thin stone walkway and the doorway beyond. I pushed her ahead of me, forcing her to put one foot in front of the other, as she stumbled numbly along.

  Time. This was Almara’s gift to us. Through the calls of the dragons and the rush of water, I heard little but my own breath as I ran for our lives. On the other side of that bridge lay our survival. We were thirty feet away. Fifteen. Then our feet hit the stone.

  The walkway wasn’t more than three feet across, bridging the gap cut by millennia of rushing water. I swayed as the height threatened to bring me to my knees again. I pushed at Jade’s back. As the highest dragon approached, his burning orange eyes became visible, and he opened his jaws wide.

  “Move!” I shouted. “They’re coming!” The dragons swarmed painfully closer with every heartbeat as we crossed the exposed arch. Their shrieks screamed up the ravine walls, and I clapped my hands to my ears, more to block out my fear than to protect my hearing.

  Jade’s feet were leaded, her fastest speed a reluctant shuffle. Was this shock?

  Please, I thought. Please move.

  The three lizards, their scaled skins a horror of knives, got closer and closer. They released their fire, but as it blew by us it dissipated, still too far away.

  Jade whimpered, but I didn’t relent. I jabbed mercilessly at her back. The other side was close, so close.

  As our feet crossed the threshold, the dragons shrieked again. I rushed in front of her, grabbing one of her hands and running as fast as I could, dragging her along. A narrow tunnel opened ahead, and I headed for the protection of its walls.

  Finally, we were in, fleeing the vast open space behind. I pushed her farther, expecting fireballs to be right behind us. But instead of the roar of fire inside the tunnel, I heard explosions back in the cavern. I turned.

  The dragons, instead of focusing their attention on killing us, were attacking the bridge. They were trying to cut us off, to block our escape. Fireball after fireball hit the thin sliver of rock that had held the two sides together, blasting chunks of ancient stone to dust, until, finally, the entire thing crumbled. The remaining pieces of the mountain, still attached by either chance or magic, fell to the ravine below.

  And then, through the opening made smaller and smaller with every step we took, I saw them turn towards the tunnel. The first opened his mouth wide, and from deep within his throat rocketed out the flame I had been running from all along.

  I felt my hair stand on end as I turned and fled. I yanked on Jade’s arm, hauling her behind me. Off to one side a small crevice jutted into the rock, and I pulled her into it. Just in time. Red heat flew past our hiding spot, the rock between us and the tunnel sparing us the worst of the burns. Again and again, blast after blast, fire flew through the tunnel, disappearing further into the depths of the mountain as we shielded our eyes from the heat.

  It seemed to go on forever. I pushed Jade down to a low crouch in the tiny space, and I draped my body over hers. My pack protected my back from the heat, but the underside of my arms seared with pain and I cried out.

  Let it end. Let it end.

  Let me live.

  We seemed to exist without time or space. The light of each blaze flickered all around us, turning the mountain molten beneath our feet, and the air to acid that clung in our throats. I wondered if this was the beginning that Almara had spoken of, what the burning of the Corentin would feel like. And in that moment I felt the same fear he had told me of. I didn’t want to die like this. I didn’t want this burning to be the last sensation I would ever feel before closing my eyes to life. I wanted it to stop, and I feared it would never end, that I would never again feel the cool, crisp air at Kiron’s homestead. Or the cold, freezing air of Stonemore. Or the salty, sticky air of the sea.

  Eventually, it did end. The cries of the dragons faded away as they descended back into the ravine, their revenge expelled for their lost brother.

  I pulled my weight off Jade, slumping to the floor in agony. The skin on my arms was sticky and crisp, like a potato chip just removed from boiling oil. I held my arms out to the sides, unable to do anything more to ease the pain.

  The tunnel was black, the only life in the darkness the hoarse breathing that poured from each of us. Gradually, the air cooled. Gradually, our breathing quieted. Until, finally, we lay side by side, silent, devastated.

  Almara was dead.

  Our escape destroyed.

  And our hope lost.

  Chapter 21

  Maybe it was hours later. Maybe it was minutes. Slowly, as the imminent threat of the dragons disappeared again into the depths of the mountain, my brain started working.

  We had survived. Somehow, we had made it through. I pulled out the water skein and trickled water down the backs of my arms. The relief was immediate, if temporary.

  I got to my feet. Reaching down, I found Jade’s arms in the darkness. I slid my hands down to hers and gripped them, pulling her up.

  “We need to go,” I said quietly into the black cave. She didn’t answer, but a sniffle escaped from her, and I felt her tiny form crash into me.

  I held onto her. Her face was drenched with tears, but she did not sob.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to the top of her head.

  She stood still, her body rigid. If she felt comforted, I couldn’t tell.

  The entire midsection of my body was in pain. Not the stinging, burning pain of my arms, but the aching pain of the truth, of realization, of loss. It felt as if I would never feel light again.

  But in the deep, somewhere in the back of my mind, I was aware of the danger we were still in. In the deep, I was still fighting.

  “We need light,” I said. “Can you? You know, with the rock? Jade?”

  She stayed silent, but a moment later a dim blue light lit the space between us. Behind where the rock hovered I saw her face. It was hard and smooth and chalk white. Her tiny hand brushed her nose, and as her eyes dried, they stared ahead, cold and lifeless.

  I moved her back into the tunnel and stared down into it until the light faded away and only black remained. Somewhere down there was our last piece of hope. I moved towards it. She followed.

  We walked for a long time in silence. Every once in a while I would reach out for her hand, just in case she needed the support of knowing that I was there with her. But she refused to grasp it back. Her fingers hung limply in my own, lifeless and without response.

  “Let’s take a break,” I said after an hour. Even the subt
le movements of walking chafed my arms, and I ached to rest. She moved her body mechanically and turned to face me. She didn’t respond. I passed her the water skein. She drank. Then I motioned for her to sit. She sat.

  I did, too, and rested my back up against the uneven stone.

  Her voice pierced through my haze, small and unexpected.

  “Did you see?” she said.

  “See what?”

  “The way he looked at me? Like he—” She didn’t seem to be able to finish the sentence.

  “Like he remembered you,” I said.

  For the first time since Almara’s leap her eyes met mine.

  “Do you really think he did?”

  I hesitated. I didn’t know the answer. But I did know that there was only one answer for her now.

  “Yes,” I said.

  Her eyes searched mine, and instantly grew hard.

  “You’re lying,” she hissed. I pushed away from her, suddenly alarmed.

  “I’m not lying,” I said. She started to get to her feet again and moved away from me. I scrambled up after her. “Look, I’m not trying to lie, it’s just that I don’t know.”

  She turned and walked away, so quickly and with such finality that it surprised me. Where did she think she was going? I stood watching her, unsure of what to do as her orb of light vanished around the corner ahead of her.

  I jogged to catch up.

  “I’m sorry,” I said when I got close enough behind her. “But, you know, he was crazy. And I—”

  She turned and slapped me hard across the face.

  “Hey!” I spluttered.

  “He wasn’t crazy,” she said coldly. “He was tortured. Do you think I’m crazy because of what Cadoc did to me?”

  “No, of course not, I just—”

  Her eyes narrowed, pure hatred clear in the hollows around them.

  “I’m going to get my hands on that book. And when I do, when we get out of this place, I’m going to make a link and send you back. You don’t belong here.”

  “But Jade—”

  “I don’t want you here.” She seethed with anger. And she said the next words slowly, so that there would be no mistake, no misunderstanding. “I want you gone.”

  Her wish struck me like a two by four, much more forceful than her slap. I stepped backwards, as if she had actually struck me.

  “Jade, I lost him, too,” I said. “This whole thing, this whole journey, is lost without him, and so am I.”

  “It’s not about the journey,” she yelled, stomping her tiny foot on the stone path. Around us the walls of the mountain shook with her power. “This isn’t some game. This is my family. Don’t you understand?” She lowered her head and looked up at me from beneath her brows. Chills ran down my spine. Her voice was low and dangerous. “My family is gone.” The rock all around us buckled, pushed away from her as a magnet repels against its brother. Stones the size of watermelons fell to the floor, ripped free from the cave ceiling.

  I took several steps backwards. “What about me?” My voice sounded frail, weak, even to my own ears.

  She stood up tall, taller than usual, and the bitterness behind her tirade slammed down on me, more forceful than any physical display of power.

  “You are not my family. You are a child who came here by horrible accident, nothing more. And when you return to your planet, you will be a child still. You have no power.” Her stony glare gave no hint of a lie. She lifted her face to the air, emanating superiority. “You are nothing.”

  I dropped my eyes, shamed despite my anger. No one had ever said it outright to me before, but I had felt this way so many times in the past that I didn’t doubt her. I was incapable. Unworthy. Abandoned. In my core, I knew that her words were true. They must be true, because I could feel their validity in my swirling stomach.

  And as I studied the granite floor of the mountain, I barely noticed when she walked away, taking her light with her.

  I stood for a time, watching nothing, in the darkness. For what felt like hours, I was alone in the black. I didn’t think. I barely moved. Not unlike my time spent among the cosmos after Cadoc had finally stopped my heart, I simply existed, though here no stars twinkled to keep my eyes alight.

  Then, slowly, a strange thing began to happen. A sound, faint and thin, penetrated through the dark and reached my ears. Maybe it was a dragon’s cry from far off down the tunnel. Maybe it was an echo of the torrent of water that fell down the slick cavern wall. I didn’t know, and I never found out, but the jolt from that tiny vibration through the air awakened me. A cascade of thought began to spark in my mind, and a cascade of steady beats began to thump in my chest. And one thought, more than any of the others, floated up to the surface from the depths of my soul.

  Jade is wrong.

  I pushed off the wall and began following her through the pitch black tunnel, absently stumbling along in the miserable wake she had left behind. The path was narrow, and if I held my arms out wide I could feel the stone beneath my fingertips, guiding me along.

  Back in Stonemore I had become lost in the alleyways that snaked between the buildings. I had panicked then, passed out, even. But I didn’t panic now. I wasn’t lost.

  She doesn’t know me.

  I was different now. When I got lost in Stonemore so many months ago, I was so frightened that my fear had completely overtaken me. Now, having just witnessed some of the most horrifying things of my life, I was somehow able to keep the fear at bay. Beneath the skin on my chest my heart thudded a steady, even rhythm.

  Hadn’t the doctors always told me that I was too ill to do anything? That my heart would give out, that I should fear that moment when it came, and that I should focus all of my efforts on protecting myself?

  And I’m not nothing. Not by a long shot.

  Well, they had been wrong. My heart was healed now, stronger than the doctors or I could have ever imagined possible.

  They were all wrong about me. All of them.

  She had just stood there, spewing the hateful words born from her pain, trying to convince me that I was worthless, trying to tell me that everything I had ever feared was true.

  But I wasn’t worthless. I knew I wasn’t. And the reason I knew was pounding harder and harder in my chest right now.

  She could try to deny me my rights to be part of this family. She could take out all of her misery on me, blame me for everything. But no matter how harshly she criticized me, demeaned me, she wasn’t right. I was part of this family, whether she liked it or not, and there was no denying it. She could accuse me of being powerless, and it was a feeling I knew well. So many years of my life I had been powerless, I really had been.

  But I wasn’t anymore. I didn’t know if I would be able to take the book, if I would ever learn the magical ways of this land beyond my unexplained health and speed. But I wasn’t powerless.

  My pace quickened, and soon I felt my feet begin to pound hard on the stone floor. I ran as fast as I dared after Jade, after the book, after the life that I and everyone deserved. I was going to beat this thing, beat the Corentin, and there was nothing Jade or anyone else could do to stop me.

  And once I did, once the dust had settled and everyone was able to think clearly again, I was going to set things right with Jade. If that day came and went, and she still believed the words she had just slung at me, then I would return home, alone, and she could keep this fold in the universe all to herself.

  But she couldn’t take away what my time in the Fold had given me. She couldn’t take away who I was, who I would become, or the hope that slowly inflated my chest now as I ran after her.

  Nobody would ever take that hope from me again.

  Chapter 22

  When I crossed the threshold into the room at the end of the tunnel, filled to the top with exhilaration and determination, I hadn’t expected to find Jade as I did. She was sprawled out on the floor, leaning on one elbow, rubbing the back of her head with her other hand. I looked around the room, trying to
figure out what had happened.

  And my bubble of hope deflated with an almost audible pop.

  This place was familiar, very familiar. Books lined up along the cut stone walls, and a pedestal in one corner held propped up upon it the largest of them. The leather tome stood on the platform, and cut deeply into the cover was the mark I had come to know, the mark that said we had succeeded.

  But joy did not flood me as I had expected at finding the prize. No feeling of satisfaction permeated my chest, and instead I almost fell to my knees. This was the room from my dream. No good could come from this place. All of that effort, the climb, the bodies, Almara lost, Jade’s hope destroyed, and this was to be our reward.

  Gasping, I searched around for the goblin who had haunted me the other night, reeling from the lingering threat of his long, sharp teeth. The attack would come from…where? Above?

  Within?

  But no other being joined us in the room. And my insides seemed intact. I cautiously knelt down to where Jade lay, my eyes darting from wall to wall, waiting for the attack to come.

  “Are you ok?” I breathed. She shoved me away and rolled over to her other side.

  “I’m fine,” she grunted. “I don’t need your help.”

  “But what happened?” She didn’t speak. I searched around the room for the answer she wouldn’t give.

  I stood up, transfixed. What did this mean? When I had dreamed of Cadoc so many months ago, a lot of what I had dreamt had come true. Was this what was happening now? Was I somehow able to see the future? I shook my head to clear it, but the questions only multiplied in my mind.

  “What happened to you?” I asked again, harder this time. She stared away from me at the rock wall, heaving with emotion or effort, I didn’t know. She stayed resolutely silent.

  I slowly approached the pedestal. Reaching the ancient volume, I reached out to feel the tattered, crumbling leather. A sizzling sound filled the tiny space, and I snatched my hand back from the book. The sizzling stopped, and I inspected my hand, expecting to find a burn I hadn’t yet felt. But it was unchanged, not injured in any way. I reached out again. The sizzling echoed again and I heard Jade gasp behind me, but this time I didn’t pull back my hand. Instead. I grasped the book with both hands and removed it easily from its throne.