Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  “He is a member of the White Guard,” Jade had said, six months earlier in her cavern prison. She was explaining the arrival of the giant white wolf who had once saved me as I jumped through Almara’s worlds. “To have a member of the White Guard reach out to help a human is very, very rare. I misjudged you. Perhaps there is more to you than what is apparent.”

  Suddenly my chest unclenched, and it felt like I could breathe clearly for the first time in days. The silvery glow that came from the animal lit up the mountain like a beacon of hope. Maybe we would have more help than I had thought. Maybe there was a chance after all.

  My toe caught on a boulder, and I fell to the ground with a grunt, smacking the side of my head into the soft earth.

  “What are you doing?” Owyn said. He strode over to me, hoisting me up by one arm. “We don’t have time for this.” He was growing more and more agitated.

  My eyes automatically went back to the spot where I had seen the animal, but the mountain was empty.

  “Sorry,” I spluttered. “I—”

  His gaze followed mine.

  “Did you see something?” he asked, scanning the land.

  I watched him as he searched, his hands curling around the wood, gripping it as if he expected attack at any moment. Why was he suddenly so nervous? He had been so casual before, almost like he had known how things were going to go with Jade before they even happened. But now his eyes darted around, searching the wilderness frantically. For what, I didn’t know.

  I made a decision.

  “No,” I said, deliberately brushing bits of grass off my clothes, as if nothing concerned me more than the state of my appearance. “I just wasn’t looking where I was going.”

  “Well, mind yourself,” he said sharply, turning away again.

  I followed his stiff, quick gait, still searching for where the white beast had disappeared to, though something in me knew I wouldn’t see it again tonight.

  Owyn plodded on ahead, but I was in no such hurry. There was something he wasn’t telling me. But it wouldn’t be long now before whatever truth he was hiding was revealed.

  He could keep his secrets.

  And I would keep mine.

  Chapter 12

  The closer we got to the mountain, the more flustered Owyn became.

  “I know a way in,” he whispered hoarsely in my ear. “It was the path of my escape from the witch.”

  I cringed at the slur. She was just a little girl.

  But I had seen Jade at her worst. I knew the black that now clouded her eyes, the snarl that hung from what had been fresh beauty not long ago.

  “Why bother?” I asked. “She’s just going to have us captured from inside the castle anyways. We’ll end up in the dungeons no matter what.”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “But those Solitaries, they’re not so gentle, and I would like to arrive at my jail in one piece.”

  We climbed. With every step now, we were getting closer to her. And closer to the wisp of white I had seen. The cold night air stung my lungs and bit at the tops of my ears, but I didn’t slow. Warmth and comfort would not be found in this place at any speed.

  Finally, we reached the lowest part of the castle, the spot where the stonemasons had abandoned their carving into the mountain and the walls of the great fortress became jagged rock once more. We turned and walked along the side, Owyn running his hand along the rock wall, searching. Above, the castle stood dark, as if no one had set foot inside its halls for a thousand years.

  Suddenly, Owyn froze, and I was following so close I nearly knocked into him. He stood staring into a thin, black gap in the stone.

  “This is it,” he whispered. “We will head straight for the mosaic room. Do you remember it?”

  “Yes,” I said. “That was where we found Almara.”

  Owyn’s eyes flickered at the mention of the name. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. Then, his face fell into a snarl.

  Something in my stomach gave an unhappy twinge.

  “Yes, well, she likes her stones, you know.”

  “Are you alright?” I asked.

  “Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he said. “I wouldn’t miss this.”

  He turned away and walked briskly into the dark passageway, lighting his path with the tip of his staff.

  For a moment I watched him go, uncertainty returning. I looked back down to the valley we had just walked across and considered my options for retreat. On the other side, the range that became Mount Neri above the Solitary village petered out as it meandered towards the sea. In the far distance, the water glimmered in the starlight.

  I suddenly felt like there was a beast writhing around inside my body that could not escape, battling my resolve to enter the castle. I hadn’t wanted to come here at all. I could just go now. Owyn couldn’t catch me. Maybe Erod could, if he were here. I wondered if he was here, hiding somewhere in the mountain, biding his time. Or if maybe it had been his shape I had seen on the mountainside, glowing white with the force of his power.

  I turned and peered after Owyn, his light already growing dim as he moved away from me down the passageway.

  I stepped inside, my blood screaming for me to run in the other direction.

  The tunnel was narrow, but tall, and I was relieved to not have to duck the entire way through. We no longer spoke as we approached. Had Owyn offered his counsel, I doubt I would have taken it anyways. I had been there when Jade fell. I knew what to expect now.

  But what I expected was not what I got.

  We emerged into a dim hallway, the rock walls intricately carved from floor to ceiling. Owyn stole across the passage, but every tiny sound seemed to echo off the massive, soaring walls. He turned back every few moments to gesture at me, show me the way, not realizing or caring that I didn’t need his help.

  The great atrium of the castle was all but black with the night. We started up the staircase, and I tried to keep my breathing quiet, but I would have been better able to silence an angry bull.

  Beneath a single, closed doorframe glowed the only light in the place. It gave the illusion of softness, comfort, and in another time I would have opened the door eagerly. But now, as we both stood before it, both wringing our hands with our nerves, I did not want to open that door.

  But it was wrenched open before us nonetheless.

  I stopped breathing.

  For the briefest moment, I saw my old friend standing in front of me. Her hair, chalk white, billowed out behind her and floated down around a deep green gown draped over her childish frame. Her hands were dainty, tiny, and I remembered the feeling of holding them during our time together, when our purpose had been the same.

  I opened my mouth to speak, emotion flooding through me.

  Come back.

  Stay with me.

  But when I saw her eyes, as black as the darkest onyx, no words came. Her white lips rose over her teeth in a snarl.

  My heart seemed to fall through my chest and out of my body, down to the intricately decorated floor below. Despite how dire the situation was, a small, illogical part of my brain had hoped that I would find her whole again.

  She took a step back, gesturing for us to enter the room.

  Where are the guards?

  Owyn went first, a smile and an unmistakable relief all over his face.

  Relief?

  I froze.

  “You brought him,” she said, not to me.

  “What?” I asked, looking between her and Owyn, whose own smile grew wider at her words.

  “Of course, princess,” he said, and bowed.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even and sure.

  Jade swept across the room, not bothering to contain me in any way, and for the first time I saw the mountain of stones piled high against the walls. When she and I had faced Cadoc in the dragon’s cave, it had been stuffed with every type of stone the creature could hoard over its lifetime.

  But it was nothing compared to this.
r />   From every surface, baseball sized stones of every color glistened. The deepest pink, striped with thin lines of white. Blues and greens with flecks of charcoal gray. A prism of color lined the walls. And black, the darkest black one could imagine, its matte surface taking in all light and giving back none. It reminded me of the skin on the coal-black man who had stood on the bluff, watching Almara drown.

  The stones were specimens. A collection. I had once seen another collection like this, made by a different soul inhabited by the Corentin. But that collection had consisted only of human skulls. I shivered.

  When I looked up, I realized she was staring at me.

  “Well?” she demanded. “Do you?”

  “What?” I asked, confused. I hadn’t heard her speak.

  “Do you have the Book?”

  I looked towards Owyn, hoping, I guess, for guidance. But he simply raised his eyebrows as he waited for me to answer her question.

  “Why do you care?” I asked, turning back.

  She ignored my question. Instead, she raised her arms out to the side and admired her rocks. “Do you like my collection?” Her little feet padded across the room, slow and methodical. “It’s so much better than what we found in the dragon’s lair, don’t you think?”

  So she did remember.

  “Jade, I—”

  “I’m surprised you have nothing to say about it,” she cut in, “considering that my stones are the entire reason you’re here.”

  She walked up to the tall, round table that stood in the center of the room. Upon it lay a silken sheet, deep green and shimmering. She raised one hand slightly, as if she were about to remove it, but then dropped it back to her side, teasing.

  “Owyn,” she said. “I don’t think he’s understood why he’s here. Do explain.”

  “Of course,” Owyn said, turning to me. “You are here to give us the Book of Leveling.”

  “Us?” I asked, looking between the two.

  And my suspicions were no longer just suspicions. I had hoped I was wrong. I had hoped I’d have his help.

  “Why would I give you the Book of Leveling?” I asked.

  “Because I want it,” Jade hissed. Her face had turned dark, gray, and behind her black irises burned her hatred, red and unforgiving. “Just as you want this.” Her hand whipped out again and pulled the cloth from the table. Beneath it lay the single stone that could change everything. Everything in my life. Everything in hers.

  “The gold,” I said quietly. Every crevice glimmered, every millimeter shone with untapped potential. It wasn’t any bigger than an apple, but it had the power to do so much.

  Jade was staring at it, too, mesmerized by the slow, undulating force that came off the rock in her presence. Suddenly, something in her face changed. The dead color in her cheeks flickered pink, and her eyes swam with their natural green. I stared.

  Jade?

  But in an instant it was gone, and the red pupils darted up, glaring at me as if I had slapped her across the face. She hastily covered the gold again, turning her back to it and forcibly taking a few steps away.

  “I am not to be too close to the gold, you see,” she said to the wall. “It’s power and mine together, they are too much to be mingled.” She looked back to the table, clear longing on her face.

  “Quite right, princess,” said Owyn, moving to stand between her and the gold.

  It happened so fast I almost missed it. One of the rocks stacked on the far wall dislodged and flew at him like a cannon, hitting him in the stomach and knocking him to the floor. The chaser fell from his palm and rolled across the mosaic. He had been carrying it this whole time.

  “Don’t you tell me what I should and should not do,” she roared, immediately upon him, her skin pulsating with power. She was more terrifying than I ever could have imagined her becoming.

  Owyn lay on his side, clutching his stomach and gasping for air.

  “You should come with me,” I said, distracting her from her fury, swallowing my fear. “We can both take the gold, fix it together. The Book can show us how.”

  She paused, not taking her eyes off Owyn, but listening to me. Pink threatened her cheeks again.

  “We can balance the Fold together.” I held out my hand to her. “I know how.”

  A battle raged inside her tiny body. Flashes of black and green, pink and gray, rippled across her flesh like the bands of light across the surface of the gold.

  “Come on, Jade,” I whispered.

  She turned from Owyn, looked at me. For a split second, her eyes shone green, full and bright. Then the black covered them like a curtain closing over a sunny window.

  The rock moved so fast that I didn’t see it until it was an inch from my head. Pain seared across my brain as it struck its target, and I fell to the floor, lost in the dark.

  Chapter 13

  I was in the attic. Light filtered in from the one, dirty farmhouse window, and I looked down to find my hands on the sides of a large, cardboard box.

  What I wanted was in here. I was sure of it.

  I opened the lid. Books. I began stacking them on the bare wood floor. I had to hurry.

  Then the books were all out. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand, panting. Grandma’s old, moth-eaten linens were stacked beneath them. And somewhere even deeper, the prize. I dug, burrowing down into the box, throwing bedsheets and tablecloths over my head, trying desperately to reach the bottom, to find what was inside.

  But with each piece of fabric I removed, more seemed to appear. Formal shirts and overcoats poured in from the sides of the box like dry sand falling into a pit. The hole refused to grow deeper.

  Finally, I dove headlong into it. If I could just get through the mass of fabric, I would have it.

  I hung upside down, suspended, the pressure from the clothing above holding me tight. I dangled and the box opened up beneath my head, stretching down as deep as a well.

  At the very bottom a small, wooden box sat alone on the bare cardboard.

  I wanted it.

  I struggled, shifting ancient things away from my sides, trying to free my legs, to get deeper, to reach it. My fingers dangled down, stretching towards the box as if I were a drowning man reaching my hands up towards the surface of the sea from the depths below.

  I woke, but did not open my eyes. The nightmare still held my body clenched. Slowly, I relaxed as I realized it had been a dream.

  A cracking sound echoed in my ears, and the smell of smoke drifted to my nose.

  I must be at Kiron’s.

  How long had I slept? Unconsciously, I reached for the blanket on his lumpy mattress, trying to remember why my head hurt. But my fingers only found thin air. No comfort. No warmth.

  I was lying on a hard, cold floor.

  Sitting up in a daze, the mosaic pattern of the castle floor stretched out in front of me. I had never looked at it before. A man stood on a mountaintop, hands raised above his head, stretching, reaching. And above him, a planet hovered.

  Earth.

  I gasped as if coming up for air after minutes below water. I suddenly remembered everything. I stood up, too quickly, and soon hit the floor again. I lifted my hand to my temple, which had begun throbbing in earnest, and it came away bloody.

  A quiet laugh came from the other side of the room.

  I got onto all fours and crawled towards the sound, my left hand leaving a bloody track across the tile like a wounded animal.

  But what I found confused me. A fire had been set, but it wasn’t in the large, ornate hearth. Instead, the wood was piled high right on the floor of the room. The light from the flames bounced off the walls, pierced through the more transparent of the rocks in Jade’s collection, painting rainbows into the shadows. Jade stood, her hands on her hips, a triumphant smile on her face. Beside her, Owyn tried to smile, but clutched at his middle as if he wanted nothing more dearly than to curl up into a ball and sob. His staff lay forgotten on the floor.

  And then I saw the fire, an
d I lost my strength once again.

  The last, charred pieces of the Book of Leveling lay within the flames.

  Jade laughed again, this time a much higher, sickening sound. She walked around the fire and crouched before me.

  “Yes,” she crooned. “It was a good thing your friend Owyn, here, found me when he did.”

  I looked at Owyn, who appeared ashamed, but only because of his weakness compared to her. He showed no sign of remorse, only humiliation. She went on.

  “He had come here to try to help you. Imagine my delight when I realized that someone you knew and trusted had shown himself so willingly to us. It would be so much easier to kill you if a friend were the one to deliver you to me.”

  “How could you?” I asked, my eyes still on the remains of the Book, her threat hanging between us. Only the cover remained, and the interior edges of a few of the remaining pages. “After everything we did. After your own father sacrificed his life to make sure we succeeded.” I looked up, and her face fell into a snarl.

  “I don’t think you understand,” she said coldly. “You are about to die.”

  “After all those months together, you and I,” I went on. “We gave up everything, you gave up everything. For that book.”

  Her teeth flashed white like a tiger about to strike. She stood up tall and towered over me.

  “But I understand now,” I went on. My head pulsed with pain. “You’re still in there. This isn’t your fault. Just come with me. We can set you right. You just need some time to remember.”

  Deep green flashes passed over her irises. Her mouth opened again, as if the real her were struggling to speak over the weight of worlds. But the voice that came was not her own.

  “Owyn,” she called over her shoulder. “Bring your staff.”

  “Yes, princess,” he said automatically, his face miserable and pained. He crouched, groaning loudly and clutching his stomach, and retrieved the wood.