Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (20 page)

I faced her and forced her to look at me.

“There’s nothing for us back there. Nothing for you at Riverstone. Nothing for me on Earth.”

“Those places are our homes,“ she argued.

“Those places are broken,” I said.
 

“I don’t care,” she said, defiant. “I want to go home.” She glared at me, but beneath her iron gaze was a tired, scared child. And while I wasn’t much more than that, myself, I was clearer on what needed to be done than she was.
 

“We will,” I said. “You know how badly I want to go back to Earth. But we can’t live like that. You can’t live like that in Riverstone, like a ghost in those empty halls with him not even knowing who you are. You know you can’t.”
 

“I don’t want to
do
this anymore.” She stomped her foot hard on the ground, and around us the rocks shuddered. Almara sucked in his breath at the display of power. Then he, too, stood up.

“No choice, girl,” he said in a low growl. “The Corentin will find you, no matter where you hide. There’s no way around that.” He turned to me. “The shirt.” He gestured to the blindfold that lay forgotten on the floor. I picked it up and tied it around his eyes. Jade looked at me as I took Almara’s hand, envy etched into the creases around her eyes. I stared at her, wishing that she could understand, but nothing could take away the hurt his disregard brought her. I turned and led him out of the protection of the rock.

“What
does
he want?” I asked as we slowly started to ascend the foothills of the mountain. Jade trailed behind us beneath the light of the moon, helpless but to follow her father’s instructions, even if he didn’t recognize her.
 

“What all men of power want,” he huffed behind me. “More power.”

But that didn’t seem like enough to me.
 

“But why?” I asked. “Why ruin so many lives? Why destroy entire worlds? He’ll have no one left to brag to if everyone beneath him is dead or suffering. I mean, is it fun for him or something?”

“In a way,” Almara said. “To the Corentin, the power he wields is like a puzzle. He constantly seeks to understand it, to expand on it, to grow it and control it. He’s addicted to it. You could say it controls
him
.”

I chewed on this for a few minutes as we walked, studying the ground as we went, looking for the easiest path.

“What happened to you?” I said after a while. “In the ocean?”

“What are you talking about?” he said.

“Don’t you remember?” I stopped and turned to him.
 

“Remember what?” He tilted his blindfolded head in my direction. “You know as well as anyone that I rarely set foot in the water. Your mother might have enjoyed a dip into a cold pond now and again, but I am no swimmer.”

Jade perked up at the mention of her mother, and she jogged to catch up to us.
 

“Mother was a swimmer?” she asked.

“You mean, you don’t remember what happened today?” I interrupted.
 

“We made the link,” he said. “Then we rested. Then we jumped.”

I stepped backward, my mind trying to comprehend what he was saying.

To him, it was as if the entire episode, including the attempt he had made to take his own life, had never happened.
 

“How do you know all this?” I asked. “About the Corentin, I mean.” Jade hovered nearby, anxious to hear more about her mother.

“Oh, I don’t know all that much more than I did before you leapt to Earth. Though I did spend some time in Carenso, studying the ancient lore. There’s not much of it left, I’m afraid. It was very difficult to get anyone to discuss it with me, or to tell me where I could gain that sort of knowledge. But in the end, I found my way to the steward of the Chronicles. After that…” His voice trailed away, as if he couldn’t think of what to say next. “Hmmm, well, after that I suppose I just went back to Riverstone. Yes, yes, that was it.” He nodded his shaggy head, convincing himself that this was the correct answer to the blank spaces in his memory.
 

Almara’s story was coming into focus. He had quested to erase the damage the Corentin had done to the Fold, had gathered men and women, even his own children, to fight for his cause. But for all that time his efforts hadn’t been thwarted. It wasn’t until he had sought direct knowledge about the Corentin, his ways, his secrets, that his world had become fuzzy. I imagined his damaged mind, slowly taken over by the power of the very being he was trying to destroy. Almara, driven mad not by desire or abuse, but by the sheer will of a one more powerful than he was.
 

I gulped down the sticky lump that had formed in my throat and hoped that I wasn’t going to be the Corentin’s next target.
 

We walked and walked until the sky brightened with the rise of the sun. There was something calming about climbing up the mountain. We seemed to be more focused on reaching our destination, the treasure of knowledge that lay at the end of this journey, than fearing our possible pursuer.
 

As the sun drifted across the sky, the images from the dream of my father the day before floated into my mind. The feeling of fear I had experienced when I saw him in the dream wasn’t unusual to me. I had felt it almost daily, on some level, from a young age during the years we all lived together as a family. But as my feet found purchase on the rocky terrain, I remembered another, earlier time. A forgotten memory popped into my head as if just rescued from the far reaches of my brain.
 

I was three, maybe four. It was before he had really started to go downhill. Or maybe he already had, and my mom just did a good job of hiding it from me. But in any case, in the memory that came to mind I felt safe.
 

I sat on his lap in our tiny, yellow living room. Paper ribbons hung from the walls, and a small homemade sign hung over the door that read, “Happy Birthday, Aster.”

“Are you excited?” he said to me as his knees bounced me up and down.
 

“Yes!” I said. A party was coming. A party of friends just for me. Back then, I still had friends. No illness darkened my core. No madness darkened my family.

“So, what do you think you’ll wish for when you blow out your candles? A new truck? A train, maybe?”

“No, Daddy,” I said very seriously. “I want something better than those things.”

“Better than a new truck or train? Is that even possible?” He laughed. I nodded solemnly. “Ok, then, what will you wish for?”

I leaned in close to him, cupping my hand around his waiting ear, his stubbly whiskers scratching against my cheek.

“I will wish to
fly
.”

His eyebrows raised high onto his forehead.

“To fly? Well, now, that
is
a good thing to wish for. Will you fly like an airplane?”

“No, Daddy,” I giggled. “Like a bird.”

“Ah, I see,” he said, smiling. “And where will you go?”

“To the mountains,” I said, playing with the laces of my small boots, untied by my fumbling fingers. “I want to be so high!”

His face shifted then, and, just for a split second, sadness played heavily against his smile.
 

“To the mountains, it is,” he said. He wrapped his arms around me and tickled me under my arms. I laughed at the game and squirmed with glee.
 

I looked down at my feet as they crunched the rocks along our path and remembered the many sprints I had run since coming to the Fold. I realized now that maybe the game was just a cover for him to compose himself, to hide his pain. He must have thought then was that my wish would never come true; I would probably never see beautiful mountains, and certainly never fly.

He never could have known that I would make it beyond Earth’s wasted remains and do just that.

It wasn’t until the sun had raced all the way across the sky to the other end before we started to have problems. Hardy as he was, Almara’s strength had slowly drained from his body over the course of the day. I hadn’t been paying close attention to him or Jade. I was starting to feel as if the weight of our entire quest was being shifted onto my shoulders, and that fact had commanded most of my attention as the day zipped by. I turned over the problems we faced again and again in my mind, trying to put what lie ahead into some sort of order.
 

But when Almara’s body finally gave out and he fell to the hard stone ground, I was thrust back into my waking world.
 

Jade ran to him. His whole body quivered with exhaustion, and he flinched violently when she touched him.

“It’s ok,” she said softly to him. “It’s just me.”

“Who?” Almara asked, his head turning from side to side, trying to see her through the fabric.

“It’s Jade.”

His mouth formed the word, but he stayed silent. It was the closest he had yet come to saying her name.

She looked out at the valley, at the rocky precipice we had just climbed to, then at me.

“We have to stop,” she said. “He needs to rest.”

I didn’t feel tired at all, even after almost twenty-four hours of climbing. I looked up at the mountain, still hovering above us, with longing. I wanted that book. I wanted all this uncertainty and pain to end, and it seemed the only way forward was with that book in my hands.
 

I took Almara’s hand and started walking slowly over the uneven ground, keeping an eye out for shelter as we moved.

“Who is that?” he said, his other arm flailing out in front of him while he followed me helplessly. “Who is there?”

“It’s me,” I said. “Brendan.”

“Brendan?” he asked. “Are you sure?”

I had pushed him too far past the limits of his endurance.
 

“Yes,” I answered.

“Brendan, you say? Really? You sound so—”

I stopped and turned to him.

“I sound so what?” I asked.

“Young,” he said.
 

I turned back to the path ahead.

“Well, I guess I am,” I answered.

Jade followed us as we picked our way over the jagged boulders. Night was coming fast. The sun, just visible on the horizon, was slipping quickly beneath the edge, and deep blue shadows enveloped the valley and mountain crevices. Soon we would have no light to travel by.

“Let’s find somewhere to stay tonight,” I said. I tripped over a large stone I hadn’t seen and nearly crashed down to the ground, jolting Almara’s arm as I righted myself. Maybe I was tired, too, and just didn’t realize it. “The sooner the better.”

Jade stayed back and studied the area. Perhaps it was her talent with rocks that found our respite in the end.
 

“There,” she said, pointing to a dark outcropping of rocks a hundred yards above us. It was hard to see from here, how deep the cave was cut into the rock, but at least we would be assured of a roof over our heads.
 

We began climbing towards the mouth of the cave. Almara went right in front of me, and I outstretched my arms around his sides to guide him. Together, the three of us huffed our way up the side of our last incline of the day.

When we reached the top, all of us collapsed onto the flat platform. I, for one, was grateful that the old man hadn’t come crashing down on top of me, not to mention that I hadn’t lost my own grip.

I got to my feet and, grabbing Almara’s arm, pulled him up next to me.
 

Together we inched our way into the dark cave. The opening stretched ten feet across and a foot above my head. Crouching to avoid low-hanging rocks, I soon saw that it curved off to one side. When I turned the corner I was greeted, thankfully, by a dead end. I let out my breath in a long, low sigh of relief.

This was a cave, my first since traveling to the Maylin Fold, that appeared to hold neither monster nor prisoner.

I guided Almara to the back wall, sat him down on the floor and took off the blindfold. Back here he couldn’t see out through the front opening. Though, even if he had been able to, I doubted we could be found based on this slim view of the valley.
 

I shivered, the sweat from the climb mixing with the cold mountain air and my lack of an overshirt, and I hastily put the shirt that had been around Almara’s eyes back on.
 

“Can we start a rockfire or something?” Jade huffed at the request. “Or a regular fire?” My teeth were beginning to chatter.

She stood over the two of us, her hands on her hips. She didn’t seem cold at all.
 

“No wood,” Almara said. He, also, had his arms wrapped around his legs against the cold.
 

“But you’re a sorcerer,” I argued. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, conjure a fire somehow?”

“Not out of thin air,” he argued.
 

“You mean to tell me that a man who can unleash Torrensai, pull power from the ground with a wave of his hands, and make links to other planets can’t figure out how to make a fire with magic?”

“Obviously not.” His teeth had started chattering, too. “Did you see any wood on the way up here?”

I hadn’t. The mountain we were hiding in had very little vegetation of any kind, actually. Only a small spattering of green bushes had dotted the rocky ledges, and they probably wouldn’t burn anyways.

Jade began collecting small stones from the cave floor and made a little pile of them in front of where we sat, groaning irritably.

“What?” I asked. “You didn’t offer.”

She glanced at me as she bent over to pick up a larger rock with two hands.

“Well,
someone
needs to do something before you two brilliant idiots freeze.”

She carried the rock over to us and dropped it hastily at our feet.

“Hey!” I said. “Be careful!”

Her glare, barely visible in the dark cave, was her only response.
 

She bent over the pile of rocks and placed the palms of her hands on the largest one. Almost instantly it glowed red, and the heat that came off it was astonishing. I eagerly unclenched my arms from my sides and held out my hands.