Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  “So that’s why,” I said.

  He’s like a child in a man’s body. I had thought the words before, but now I understood.

  Eyes flashed in my direction.

  “That’s why Cait was drawn to him in the first place,” I said.

  I felt a world of understanding blooming in my mind. I looked around for her, hoping that she was near and listening to all that was being told. But I didn’t see her face, and soon I recognized the form of her sleeping body nestled in next to Rhainn’s.

  “When Cait and I first met Father, she went to him almost immediately. She took his hand and told me that he was pure, even though my dad had just tried to kill me through him. I—I think he might be telling the truth.”

  An uproar of voices pounded against the still of the night.

  I turned to Kiron and Finian, both sharing a hollow stump for a seat.

  “You two know it,” I said. “All that time that Cait’s been leading us around. Has she ever steered us wrong? Even when she was hurt, when the Corentin attacked her through the beasts of Yunta, she still stayed true as she led us, unfailingly, to the location of every pedestal. No one else could’ve done that. Not even Elidor. Not like her. She sees things that other people can’t see. She can see people’s intentions, even if they don’t know them, themselves. That’s how she knows where to lead people, because she can see inside of them.”

  I paused, and for a moment I couldn’t believe that I was about to say what was on my mind.

  “I trust him,” I said. “I think I really do trust him now.”

  Father looked up at me, thanks and relief on his face. I had doubted him for so long, it seemed that he had given up on ever winning my trust.

  I stared into his eyes for what felt like a long time, and as a smile spread across his face, I felt one tickling the corners of my mouth as well.

  “So, what do we know, then?” It was Finian, on his feet now and addressing the crowd. “We know what Jared became,” he went on. “We know that he eventually became corrupted by the hate and greed that hides within every man. We know that he used his power, at first for play, and eventually for destruction. We know how much gold he stole, and with the help of Father we can hopefully find the resting place for the last piece. And,” he looked at me, “we now know that the good part of the Corentin, the part that existed before it became corrupted, is still alive, and that maybe it’s even trying consciously to help us now. We know that Father can hear Jared’s thoughts, can feel them. And even though Jared traveled to obtain his gold well after his mind began to darken, that the Jared in Father’s head remembers what he did. He remembers where he went. And maybe he even knows how we can destroy him.”

  He gazed at the blank faces of those who listened, and then turned and faced Father.

  “You, my friend, have just become our greatest weapon.”

  Chapter 23

  “I want to come with you,” Jade said. Her eyes were hard, and her hands only trembled slightly as she played with one of her uneven locks of hair. “I know you’re going out again. Tristan told us you still have Aria to balance. And I would like to see my home again. Maybe after he’s gone.”

  I sighed.

  “I want you to come, too,” I said. “You deserve to be there in the end, however the end goes. You deserve to see him die, if that’s what happens.” I looked over at Erod, who was sitting ten feet away, trying to give us some privacy to talk. “But I don’t see how that will work. Father’s coming, too. If you come, then Erod needs to, and if Erod gets near Father …”

  “I know,” she said. “I’ve been thinking about that. Maybe we could travel behind you.”

  I looked up, ready to argue.

  “It doesn’t need to be that far,” she said, cutting me off. “You know that. Erod just needs to be ten or fifteen feet back. I can walk with him.”

  “But it’ll be dangerous,” I argued. “For you, at least.”

  She snorted sarcastically.

  “Honestly,” she said. “I don’t think that any danger compares with being under Corentin control. As long as I’m myself, it doesn’t matter what dangers I face. If I have my mind, then I can handle the consequences of the journey.” She looked up, and I could see in her eyes that she truly believed her words. “You’ll need my help. I’m sure of it. I’m a stone wielder.”

  For a moment I didn’t know what she was getting at. But then I remembered.

  “Jared was a stone wielder, to,” I breathed.

  She nodded, a small smile on her face.

  “But you can’t use your magic when Erod’s around,” I said. “Isn’t that right?”

  “Actually, that’s been changing since you’ve been gone. The first time I tried it was an accident. I wandered too far away from Erod without realizing it. Before I knew it I had a fistful of pebbles floating above my palm.” She blushed as if she had been caught doing something wrong. “I don’t have complete control. But his power is getting weaker. I’m sure of it.”

  Hope swelled in my chest then. It was just like Father. His eyes had lost their blackness bit by bit, replaced instead with the pieces of my dad that were still inside, still sane. The Corentin was losing his control over those he once possessed, and that included Jade.

  “You’re right,” I said. “You should come.” I smiled in earnest then.

  Her face relaxed, her eyes growing wide with excitement. Suddenly we were two kids waiting for something wonderful to happen.

  I just hoped that we were right. And that we really did have a fighting chance.

  It didn’t take long for us to assemble, and by noon we were ready to go. Cait was staying behind with Rhainn, and though I’d miss her, I hadn’t expected her to come along with us on this last leg of the journey. She had been through so much with me, and though she had handled herself bravely, she really was too young to be forced to take any more. I walked up to where she was sitting with Rhainn and knelt down to hug her. She jumped into my arms, once again the little kid I had found her as, now unweighted with responsibility.

  “You happy?” I asked. I stared somewhat doubtfully at Rhainn. He still looked a bit bewildered, but was clearly enjoying her company.

  “Yes!” she exclaimed.

  She released her hold on me and went back to sit beside her brother.

  I turned to him.

  “I’m sorry it took us so long,” I said. “You know, to find you.”

  I felt like a fool. I hadn’t even had a chance to start looking for Rhainn before he had been unceremoniously thrown into our laps. There was guilt in my gut, but also a knowledge that I had done the right thing whenever it was possible. Instead of seeking the boy out, I had spent my time leveling the Fold, something that had the power to save everyone from the Corentin’s plans.

  I squeezed one of his shoulders and looked him in the eye.

  “I hope someday I have the chance to explain,” I said.

  “Oh, you won’t need to,” Cait said. “I’ll tell him everything.”

  I stood up to go, and suddenly I wondered if I would ever see them again. I didn’t know what future lay ahead for me, or whether life or death awaited me on the other side of our quest.

  “Thanks, Cait,” I said. “For everything.”

  “I’ll see you soon,” she said, smiling.

  It may have been her way of ignoring the fact that I might not be coming back. Or maybe she really thought that she would see me again, perhaps back here in just a few days.

  Larissa approached, taking my hand and drawing me away from the kids. Once we were out of earshot, she spoke.

  “He’ll be ok, I think,” she said, looking back at the two of them. “Kiron made him a brew like I asked, though we didn’t have every ingredient the selfish old man asked for. But it’ll help.”

  I stared into her face, eye to eye.

  “You’ll take care of them?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “I wish you could come with us,” I said.

/>   “So do I,” she said. “I’d love to see the look on that bastard’s face when you finally take him down.”

  I started, both from her use of the curse and her assumption that I would be the one to destroy the Corentin. But I didn’t argue with her idea of how our quest would end. I had wondered about how we would defeat him, myself. Would my staff and my desire be enough to take down the most evil wizard ever known in the Fold? Somehow I doubted it. But maybe, with all of us together …

  She put both hands on my shoulders then and looked me square in the face.

  “Don’t you worry about us,” she said. “You hear me, boy?” Her eyes looked glassy in the morning light. “You focus your mind on your task. Don’t ever let it wander. Things will work out one way or another after the whole thing is done, and you worrying about the future won’t change what happens in the end.”

  I couldn’t speak for a moment. Her words were like a knife, cutting into my chest and finding the things that I feared most.

  “I’ll try,” I said, noncommittal. She glared. “Really, I will,” I said, trying to appease her.

  “He will see whatever weakness there is in you,” she said. “Keep it to yourself, and keep strong. Yes?”

  Yes.

  She clapped her hands on my shoulders and moved off.

  And I tried to resolve in my heart and mind to do as she commanded. To really try. To focus all of my attention on the Corentin’s, on Jared’s, destruction.

  Maybe, in these strange worlds I had found myself traveling across time and again, it would be possible.

  Chapter 24

  We all stood side by side, waiting to jump. Tristan had refused to join us on any further quests, and I was happy with his decision. Actually, no one at all had complained when he had made the pronouncement of his intended absence. It seemed we all understood that bringing such a man, so full of distrust and frustration, would only endanger us further.

  Jade and Erod stood apart from us, and I noticed that he was the only one who seemed wary of the jump we were about to take.

  Then I realized; Erod would be seeing his people again on Aria. It was their home planet, and hadn’t he said that all the giants, even Druce, had been made slaves of the Corentin? The responsibility he felt to save them all visibly weighed on his shoulders. But as the moment neared, the look on his face changed from dread to determination.

  Erod and Jade watched for the signal that it would be their turn to jump. Jade held the chaser link in one hand. It was an artifact created by Owyn, though whether it came from him before or after his Corentin possession, I couldn’t be sure. Using it here would open up a new, permanent pathway between the Hidden Mountains and the lands of Aria.

  I wondered where we would land. Aria was a somewhat smaller planet than the others we had been to, but there was no guaranteeing we would end up where we intended. When Jade and I had first traveled through Aria, it had taken us days by ship to reach Riverstone. Would we be forced to make a similar journey now? I shuddered as I remembered Almara’s Torrensai, the spells of great protective power he unleashed upon his world against any who so much as thought of traveling to his hiding spot in Riverstone.

  But no, we would not have to face any of Almara’s spells on this trip. Because he, like so many others who had joined this fight, was dead.

  We held our hands together and made the leap.

  I had felt prepared for most anything in Aria, but I hadn’t expected a landing spot quite like this.

  We were drenched from our feet to our chests. I looked around and immediately recognized the swampland that lay a few days travel from Riverstone. The water, though cold and seeping quickly into my boots, had prevented us from stumbling in a pile to the ground. We all made for what looked like a shoreline, but really it was just a slightly less-deep section of swamp; as we climbed out to the shallowest part, we all still stood ankle deep in the muck. Once we were away from our landing spot, another, quieter splash echoed behind us.

  Jade and Erod had arrived, Erod’s glow lighting up the murky water from beneath the surface. The chaser link had worked just as expected.

  “Do any of you recognize this place?” Finian asked as Jade and Erod shook off their surprise at the water and made their way towards us.

  I was surprised by the chorus of “Yes” from the others beside me.

  “I came here once as a young man,” Kiron said. “It was the only time we ever left the mainland together, before my parents passed on.”

  “Yes, I’ve been here, too,” Erod said, peeling a layer of slime from one arm and flicking it back into the water. “It’s not so far for us. The village, or what’s left of it, is only a few days’ travel from here. I used to run against my brothers to see who could make it first.” He smirked. “I always won.”

  Of course he did. Erod, when he used his own brand of magic, could run nearly as fast as I could.

  “And I’ve been here, too,” Father said. “Or at least Jared has. He remembers coming here to find a being that resides in the swamp. I don’t know why he came, only that he did.”

  “The Watcher,” I breathed.

  “What’s that? The Watcher?” Finian asked.

  “The Watcher is the witch that lives in the swamp,” Jade said, her eyes growing large with fear.

  “She’s not a witch,” I argued. Though, did I really know for sure? I tried to remember what I did know about her. “Well, maybe she is a sort of witch,” I conceded, “but she helped me when I was stranded here. Pahana, himself brought me to this place.”

  “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 qui
et, 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.”