Aster Wood series Box Set

by J B Cantwell

  Nobody came for me. Nobody helped. As the torturous moments passed, I felt sure that someone, Kiron, Jade, Father, would soon come to my aid. My stomach burned as if I had laid it across a hot stovetop. The sickening sounds of giants being blown back by the glider’s jolts seemed quiet, muffled.

  Then I heard the shouting.

  I looked up to find Father. He was twenty feet ahead of me, facing off on the glider all on his own.

  “Aster!” he cried, though I could barely make out the word.

  No more giants stood between us and the glider now. He had blown them all away from him. I wondered how many of them were dead.

  “Aster!” Father’s voice came again, more desperate this time.

  He turned away from me and held up his hands like he had done with the Coyle.

  And I understood.

  I wrenched my body over, clutching my belly with one hand and my staff with the other. Up ahead, the glider raised one arm, pointing a long, bony finger at Father. I knew what would happen next. I took aim and fired, just catching the bolt of power in time with the magic from my staff.

  Father spread his hands open as if he were pulling apart two heavy doors. The glider seemed to panic, releasing jet upon jet in our direction.

  But his magic was no match for the two of us together.

  I countered each blast easily, trying to breathe evenly despite the pain. Soon I found I was able to send a continuous blast of my own.

  The glider stepped back, shocked by the assault.

  “Do it now!” Father yelled through clenched teeth. His hair and face were sweaty with the effort of making an opening in the glider’s shield.

  I altered the trajectory of the staff just slightly, crouching to avoid the next blast that would leave me unprotected by my own power, and aimed right into the middle of the glider’s chest.

  It screamed, in pain or frustration, I couldn’t tell. Then came the explosion. A spray of acidic flesh, too far away to reach me, hit Father square in the face. He fell to the ground, clutching his eyes, and screamed.

  I held my own screams back, and instead curled up, whimpering in agony.

  I must have passed out, because hands were soon on my shoulder, rolling me over.

  “No!” I protested. The hands gripped my arms, pulling them away from my stomach, and I howled in pain.

  And then, an easing feeling. The pain was still there. But it was less now. I looked up and saw Jade working over my stomach, the tiny vial of healing potion expertly held in her hands.

  “I can’t heal it entirely,” she said, her face apologetic. “We need to save some.”

  “What about Father?” I asked, my voice cracked and dry.

  “We have already healed Father the best we could,” she said.

  “So he’s alive?” I asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But his eyes … he lost both of his eyes, Aster.”

  I understood the words coming from her mouth, but the dull pain still coming from my stomach was joined by the a feeling of immense dread and guilt. We had both been wounded. Together. And now one of us was injured beyond repair. We were both forever hampered now by the blows of the Corentin.

  I rolled over to my knees, clutching my stomach with one hand again. I tried to stand up, but I found my legs too wobbly to hold my weight.

  “You should rest,” came Finian’s voice from somewhere I couldn’t see.

  “No,” I said. “We have to keep moving. If we give him any more time to prepare—”

  “Neither of you can fight in your condition,” he countered. “Give it a little while, at least.”

  I couldn’t argue. The fact was that my legs refused to take the commands I tried to issue to them. I sat back against the boulder, and only then did I realize that I had hit my head on the way down, too. My hand went immediately to the wound, and it came away bloody. I stared at it, perplexed. Was I dying? There was so much blood.

  My head throbbed, but the pain of it was still quiet compared to my stomach. I steeled myself and looked down, not knowing what to expect.

  A gaping hole was burned into my shirt, the edges of it burned black. Beneath the wide circle of open fabric, a huge, round patch of bloody, burned tissue. The skin was lumpy where the bolt had hit me. And shiny, fresh.

  But better. It was better than it had been.

  In the distance I saw Kiron huddled over Father. Father looked dead from where I sat, though they had assured me he was still alive. I looked on with horror; his eye sockets had both been badly burned.

  Gradually, the giants who had survived the attack rose from the mountainside. They gathered around, towering over me like huge trees. I looked up into their faces and found Druce, and I sighed in relief. At least he was still alive, still here to lead his people in the fight that was to come.

  Nobody spoke. Only the whimpers of Father and the whistle of wind were audible.

  “Thank you,” I finally said.

  Druce’s face hardened.

  “There’s no need to thank us,” he said, his voice gruff. “The giants do not fight in service to you, a human child. What we do we do to protect the honor of our people. For millennia we have served one man as a god, one we thought was good. Misguided in his desire for gold, but good. Today we seek to right the wrongs we have supported for these many years.”

  I looked over and saw that Father was hobbling down the stairs, leaning heavily on Kiron, who looked more tired than I had ever seen him.

  If I had thought my belly was terrible to look at, it was nothing compared to Father’s face. My stomach turned at the sight of him.

  “Father,” I breathed.

  He came to my side, Kiron carefully settling him down next to me. Father groaned, but what was left of his face was soon set, determined.

  “We can’t rest long,” he said. “He will not stay so weak as he is now.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “You can’t come with us. You can’t be serious.”

  “I am quite serious,” he said. “I know him better than any of you. And without my power you will not be able to destroy him.”

  My mind reeled. Suddenly our plight seemed beyond hopeless.

  “We will go on ahead of you,” Druce said, looking between the men and women surrounding us, the remainder of his people. “Perhaps we can distract him from you. That is, if we are unable to finish him off ourselves.”

  Druce’s enormous hands were clenched into fists at his sides.

  “What will you do?” I asked. I wished so desperately for Erod to come, to still be among us, ready to wield his own powerful magic. The giants did not possess any of their own. Erod had been the only one among them to have the gift.

  “You underestimate us,” he said. “Men of power always underestimate us mere mortals, us powerless. But we have a power that you, you small men, cannot understand.” He raised one fist into the air, revealing a rippling, muscled arm the size of a tree trunk. He stared around at the others. “We need no rest. We need only to get ourselves to the fight. Let’s go.”

  The giants surrounding him all stamped one foot in agreement. Then they turned and began the rest of the climb up the long staircase above. I watched them go, daring to hope that he was right as the last of them passed the corner and out of sight.

  Chapter 29

  The sky began to lighten. Soon, dawn would break above us.

  I wanted to sleep so badly. My stomach and head throbbed painfully, and Father looked even worse than I felt.

  And the giants, sent into the battle without our support. It didn’t matter how strong they were; in the end they would need all the help they could get, even if it was just from the rest of our broken party.

  At the end of this day, one way or another, the fate of the Fold, and Earth, would be known.

  Jade stood beside Finian, where they kept watch over the valley on one side, the mountain on the other. I rolled over, trying to keep the groan of effort from my voice, trying and failing.

  �
�We need to move,” I said.

  We had been sitting for several minutes, recovering. Thinking. Breathing what we hoped would not be our last breaths. The time had come now, though. We had no choice but to face our fate head-on.

  I got to my feet, clutching my stomach uselessly. I felt like my insides were in danger of falling out and only the support of my hand was keeping them inside.

  “Do you have any more?” I asked Jade.

  She shook her head sadly.

  “No, we’ve used it all,” she said. “If there were jadestone here, I might be able to channel its power, but there is only granite.”

  I shook my head, disappointment flooding through me. So many times she had been able to use her magic to save us, to save herself. In the cave where I found her, her power over the jadestone had brought back the strength in her long unused limbs. On the ocean waves she called the stones up from the bottom of the sea to hold us afloat. And, of course, there was always her ability to use stones as weapons, protecting herself and anyone else in her charge.

  But without the jadestone …

  I craned my neck, trying to see if the castle at Riverstone was visible from where we stood. I saw nothing but mountains.

  “Jade,” I said. “Can you bring a stone to you that you can’t see?”

  “That I can’t see?” she asked. “What do you mean?”

  “In the ocean,” I said. “You brought up the stones from the ocean floor, remember?”

  “Yes, of course,” she said.

  “Well, what if you could bring stones to you from other places,” I pressed. “Riverstone isn’t far from here.” I pointed across the valley to the lower mountains on the other side. Riverstone was right behind them, I knew.

  She turned and followed my finger with her eyes.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose so, but why would I do that? There’s nothing—” She stopped short, and I knew she was thinking the same thing I was.

  Within the castle lay treasure. Loads of it. It had been carried there by the giants when both they and she were still possessed by Corentin power. He’d had the stones delivered to her, not for her to use, but for her to destroy at his whim. As a way to torture her.

  “Is there a jadestone in the castle?” I asked.

  She turned now, holding out both hands, her fingers claw like.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t remember if it survived. It could be that he destroyed it after I left. Wait now. Don’t speak to me.”

  She closed her eyes tightly, and her face became a mask of concentration. Her fingers moved in the air as if she were caressing something soft. I trained my eyes on the mountains, looking for any sign of movement, but I saw nothing. For several minutes Jade focused her attention on the castle beyond the mountains. We all stood watching, anxiously hoping that she would succeed, all of our thoughts as focused as hers were.

  Then, our attention was wrenched from the mountains beyond to the mountain we were on. A great cracking noise rose up from the rock, and the entire mountain shook with earthquake. Those not already down on the rock fell to their knees. We all gripped onto the steps of the stone staircase so we wouldn’t be thrown over the side. I looked up the mountain, half expecting to see the Corentin on his way down to deliver the final blow, but nobody appeared.

  “What’s going on?” I shouted. Nobody had an answer, and terror stricken faces were all I could see.

  On and on it went. Had it been seconds? Minutes? Hours? I couldn’t tell. I tried to move closer to Jade, who had fallen to the ground, her focus broken, but I could hardly keep myself on the mountain, much less move across it.

  A terrible wind rushed down from the sky, threatening our position even more. I clung to the rock with everything I had, desperate to stay on, to stay alive.

  My mind reeled. There was no escape for us here, not like this. We couldn’t jump away; none of our links worked in the circle of safety the Corentin had created for himself. And we could barely move; escape either up the mountain or down it seemed impossible. I began to think that the entire mountain would crack in half, that we would fall into its depths, never having had our chance to face off against this one last, and greatest, enemy.

  But it didn’t go on forever. As suddenly as the shaking began, it ceased. The wind didn’t stop, though. It continued, pounding into us relentlessly as we all crawled towards one another, not yet willing to trust our feet to keep us upright at this altitude. Relief flooded through me as we all met on our hands and knees, hair flying in all directions from the gale in the sky.

  Kiron hadn’t joined us, though. He had stayed in the spot where he had fallen, sitting dumbstruck, staring into the sky.

  And then I saw it.

  Looming far above our heads in the slowly lightening sky was something I never expected to see in a million years. Part of me hadn’t even believed it would be possible to move something so large, had thought that just maybe the stories about Jared and the Fold had been mistaken, embellished. But there was no denying this.

  Earth. Earth hung like an enormous second sun above us. There was no mistaking it. I recognized the geography of North America in an instant, brown from the ravages of drought. And it was unmistakably moving towards us.

  “We have to move!” I screamed. “Now!”

  I now understood what the cracking sound had been. The Corentin on top of the mountain, using his own rock power to draw Earth closer to us, to bend the fabric of space to bring it near. The force of his power must have been what had cracked the mountain. And the wind.

  The wind was from the great planet that careened closer to us with every passing second.

  I didn’t wait for the others. I stood and ran for the staircase. I couldn’t imagine what had transpired between the Corentin and the giants up above, but I knew that this would be our last chance, our last hope of defeating him.

  I left them all behind, sprinting up the rocks as fast as my feet could carry me, my lungs burning from the effort of the climb. Minutes passed. As I rose closer to the summit, the crack that we had heard before became visible. An entire side of the mountain looked to be hanging off the main body by just a thread. I felt then that, one way or another, we would all die up on this rock.

  As I climbed, the bodies of giants lay all around the sides of the staircase. The faces of the men and women blurred in my vision as I bolted past them.

  And then I was there. Just fifty steps above where I stood was the summit, was the fight I had been working towards all this time. I turned and saw the tiny figures of my companions ascending. Would Father be able to make the climb in his condition? For the first time since the shaking had begun I remembered my own wounds, but now so much adrenaline was coursing through me I couldn’t feel much of anything.

  Strange sounds came to me. Stomping feet. Deep cries of pain. Laughter. A deep, throaty sound, mad with glee.

  That’s him.

  My blood turned to ice in my veins. A dull thump came from above, and I saw a great, giant body roll over the side of the precipice. It fell awkwardly down, arms and legs splaying in odd directions, finally coming to rest against one of his already fallen brothers.

  The Corentin was tossing them away like garbage.

  It was then that I saw Druce. He and four other giants had hidden themselves beneath an overhang near the staircase. Their faces were furious, set into grimaces with eyes that screamed revenge.

  I made for them. I must have surprised them, too, because they didn’t make way for me to come beneath the overhang along with them. It was only after a few moments of silent pushing that Druce noticed me and made way.

  Every inch of the overhang was covered with the same symbol we had been finding at each pedestal. Almara’s symbol. Jared’s symbol. It was from here that he orchestrated his evil, the tendrils of it reaching out across the cosmos.

  I looked up at my companions. Five. Only five giants left. Out of how many? I hadn’t taken count of how many had survived the C
oyle. Of how many I had passed on my way here. Were those still alive? Or had he killed them all?

  Five giants. And my own party. Just ten in all to square off against the evil of all evils.

  “What are you doing?” I asked once I was hidden among them. I still couldn’t believe how they could think of taking on the Corentin without magic, but Druce didn’t waver.

  “We are giving him his lesson,” he said. “He cannot be let to get away with this.”

  “But you don’t have magic!” I argued. “This is crazy! Haven’t you seen how many—”

  “Don’t think me a fool,” he said, grimacing. “You think I have not seen my brothers and sisters fall down this rock?”

  He might have been the smallest of his people, but he was still five times my size, and he was glaring at me now. I took a step back.His severe gaze held mine for several long moments.

  “We giants do not have magic. Not in the form that you do,” he said. “Not in the form that our brother, Erod, did. But there is power in so many centuries of service. He cannot ignore us, cannot deny us. We can break him in places that you cannot.”

  “What will you do?” I asked.

  “We will die,” he responded, his voice harsh, but with no remorse in its tone.

  “What? Why? Why does anybody need to die?”

  “It is the best way we have to hurt him. I don’t know if he realizes it or not, but with each one of us he kills, he kills a tiny bit of himself as well. His protection, the protection we have given to him over the centuries, crumbles without us.”

  “You need to stop,” I said, pleading now. “Killing yourselves off won’t help us. It will only make you extinct. Don’t you see that? How could this world go on without the giants?”

  He shook his head, and I saw the first indications of sadness in the lines of his face.

  “The worlds have never known us, nor desired to,” he said. “For all these centuries we have worked alone, in silence. And always in service of Jared. We have guarded his teachings, his own knowledge of his rock power, in hopes that one day it might be useful to those trying to put right that which he unbalanced. And in that, we have failed. While we were weak and taken over by that monster. And you, a mere child, did the work of the balancing without help from us. There is shame in that, in our inability to break free from the man we had served, and from the monster he became. Now, we do the only thing left to us to do. I hope you are ready, child. Your battle is near.”