Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (4 page)

But the connection she shared with jadestone was enough to obliterate evils too powerful for any common sword to pierce.

“Jade!” I shouted to her. “Your dagger!” She looked down at it and then back at me, bewildered for a moment. Then the realization came over her face, shortly followed by a look of fear. She was the only one who might be able to save the ship, which continued to splinter under the force of the snakes.

“Aster, I can’t do that!“ she said.

“You have to!” I yelled. Below us the ship gave a deafening crack. “Jade, now!”

This was the knife that had killed Cadoc when no other weapon could. It had to work.

I ran across the deck to the very same rope that had saved us just hours ago. I unfurled what seemed like enough and tied it to her waist as she argued with me.

“Aster!” she screamed, truly panicking now. “I don’t know how! Father never trained me to battle!”

“Just stab it!” I shouted. A handful of sailors still on the deck had taken notice of my efforts, and they took up the slack on the thin rope, preparing to lower her. Our battle of wills over the gold forgotten, I put both of my hands on her shoulders and looked her square in the face, forcing her to look into my eyes. “Jade, you have to do it! It’s your magic, not mine.”

Before she could argue further, one of the biggest men I have ever seen swept her off her feet and carried her over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes to the edge of the railing.
 

“Hey!” I called after him. “Be careful with her! She’s just a girl!” But he was already lowering her roughly over the side of the ship. I leaned over the edge and shouted to her.
 

“Just stab it! You have to stab it!”
 

Several other men did the same as I, focusing their attention on Jade, who was quickly becoming our only hope. Behind us another group of men screamed as the snakes tightened their bodies around our quickly splintering raft.

Jade’s eyes moved back and forth between me and the closest snake in horror. Just the one man had enough strength to handle her rope, and he lowered her closer and closer to the surface of the water. Jade dangled from the thin line as she descended. When her feet brushed the slick skin of the beast she screamed. Her boots slipped and flailed, trying to gain traction, and for a moment I thought this would all be too much for her. But I saw her fingers close firmly around the white dagger. Somewhere inside her, courage stirred.
 

When she was practically sitting on the beast, she raised her arms above her head and brought down the first blow with the force of her entire upper body. The stone dagger pierced through the skin of the animal as if it were no more than a slab of fresh butter. Jade pulled the knife towards her and sliced open a two foot section of slithering muscle.

An ear piercing scream came from the other side of the ship.
 

“MEN!” Shouted Storm over the noise. “Arm yourselves!” He had also moved to watch Jade’s progress over the railing, mesmerized by the attempt. But now his attention turned towards the scream.

Until now we had yet to see the heads of the snakes, but after Jade’s blow one raised up in the air and glowered down at us. Six yellow, furious eyes hovered over our heads, darting from sailor to sailor, and the beast opened its jaws to reveal rows of knife-sharp teeth lining its cavernous mouth. A terrifying sound somewhere between a hiss and a roar escaped its muscled throat.

Below, the tail Jade had slashed into disappeared under the waves. She hung flailing from the rope, searching for another target, as the head of the injured monster prepared to strike those of us on deck. We stood, dumbstruck, as it arched its spine and pulled back its head.
 

A glimmer of light caught my eye along the waterline. A faint glow, thin as a sidewalk crack, began inching its way up the monster’s neck. Before those rows and rows of teeth even came close to striking us, the skin of the snake began to split along the seam. The snake paused for the briefest moment, its eyes wide and bewildered. Then, all at once, as if a giant, invisible chef were preparing a slab of meat for cooking, the body of the snake was sliced completely open, cut in two by the magic from Jade’s dagger.

The men cheered as the snake fell, its death roar lost with the severing of its throat. Half of its giant head landed on the ship, and as the weight of its dead body began pulling it down, black, shining scales the size of dinner plates were stripped off its skin along the edge of the deck. Finally, the whole thing fell to the water with a sickening splash before sinking to the deep, dark depths of the sea.

I stumbled around for a few moments, my brain hazy and unfocused, the volume of the world around me muted. My boot slipped on something, and I looked down to see that I had stepped on one of the monster’s scales. I shook my head, trying to clear it, and remembered Jade, still dangling off the edge of the ship.
 

Sound and focus returned to me in a great rush, and I ran to the railing and stared down at the water. The man holding her rope hadn’t lost his concentration with the scene up on deck unfolding right behind him, and he held Jade’s rope tightly as he maneuvered her to the other snake. I shook my head again as I remembered that only half of the threat had been dealt with.

Jade hung quietly from the rope, no longer flailing. Something in her demeanor had changed. She waited calmly as the man swung her over to her next target, her arms stretching out longingly towards the great snake. When she was close enough, she mounted its long neck and sat astride it, as one might sit astride a horse, and swiftly brought down the blow.
 

Beneath us the ship jerked as though being tossed by a wave, the quake that came from the snake feeling the force of Jade’s power. I almost went overboard, myself, but the sailor, used to the ways of stormy seas, stood his ground and held Jade fast.
 

Relief washed over me as I realized it would be over now. In a moment this snake would split just as the other one had. I waited for Jade to look up, to find me in the crowd. I opened my mouth, ready to yell out to her, to encourage her, to let her know that everything would be ok now.

But she didn’t look up. She didn’t stop. She raised the knife again and again, hacking madly at the monster’s flesh as if its obliteration were all she had ever desired. Her face was twisted into a snarl, her eyes wide and hungry. The snake’s head surfaced just feet from where she sat. Tangled around the boat, its jagged jaws barely broke the surface of the water. The same glowing light seared through the center of the monster, finally breaking its head in two like its brother’s. The muscled body fell away from the ship in ribbons and sank out of sight, leaving Jade dangling from the bottom of the rope, her feet skimming the water.
 

She breathed heavily, still staring after the snake, gone now beneath the surface, as if willing it to return for another round.
 

“Pull her up!” I shouted, shocked. The sailor quickly hauled the rope up the side of the ship, carefully plucking Jade from its end and planting her squarely on her feet. She immediately fell to her knees and dropped the dagger, an innocent green once again, onto the deck. Her body shook.

Drenched from the thrashing of the snakes, I cautiously approached her slumped form. What had
that
been all about? I had only ever seen one other face look like that, several months before in a low, seaside cave.

“Jade?” I said carefully, kneeling down beside her. “Are you ok?”

Her body heaved as she sucked air. But when she looked up at me, I was relieved to find that the strange, maniacal look that had flashed across her features had vanished. The girl I knew looked back at me.

I sat back against the railing, and for some reason I felt the burning that often accompanies tears. I fought them back.

“Well,” she said, “I guess we know I can fight monsters now.”

“Nice,” I said, breathing hard. “Incredible, actually.”

She smiled wide, too winded to talk.

“You ok?”

She nodded.
 

Around us the crew gathered silently, and only the sound of Storm’s boots approaching wrested my attention from Jade.

“That’s enough,” came Storm’s burly voice. “We’re turning around.”

A grumbling rose from the men who surrounded us, some in assent, some in disagreement.
 

I rose to my feet, holding out my hand to help Jade up, and faced the captain as best I could.

“We had a deal,” I said, too tired to be having this argument again.

“There won’t be no gold for me to spend if my bones are at the bottom of the ocean,” he said.
 

“But it’s not about just you anymore, is it?” I said, looking around pointedly at the group of sailors. I hoped I appeared more clever than I felt.

Storm raised his eyebrows. His sharing the details about the gold with the men might just turn out to be the thing that saved us. Some of these sailors wanted to continue on; they wanted the treasure and were willing to overlook the danger.
 

Storm’s eyes narrowed as he realized his mistake. He should have never told them about the necklace. He turned to his men.

“If we continue on this death march, following this idiot here, we, all of us, will be feedin’ the sharks before long. We’ll be better off stickin’ to our original plan. We make the port of Avendar, make our trades, and return home to Ossenland.”

The grumbling grew louder, and at least half of the men began arguing with Storm in earnest.
 

“We want the gold!” one cried.

“You made a deal!” yelled another.
 

“Cap’n’s right,” piped a gray, withered man. “Torrensai, sea beasts, and who knows what else waits for us in the deep? I say we return.”

“I want my share of that gold!” one man roared.

For a moment I stood by Jade’s side and watched the men argue, trying to figure out my next move. But all at once the mood of the crowd turned, and I found myself backing up towards the ship’s railing, not able to think fast enough to come up with a new plan.

“I say we take it!” came a gruff voice from farther back. “We almost died already trying to get these fools to Riverstone. And the ship’s broke to boot. We take our gold and get back home.”
 

The owner of the voice approached, pushing through the crowd. I felt my back knock against the ragged wood railing. He pushed Jade aside roughly as he approached me, and she fell to the deck.

I grasped the gold chain in my pocket, and I thrust my arm out over the water, the necklace dangling from my fingertips.

“DON’T!” I shouted. “Don’t come any closer!”
 

Everyone froze, their arguments forgotten. All eyes watched the gold pendant sway back and forth in the breeze, and a collective intake of breath whistled through the lips of the men in the crowd.
 

“Back off!” I warned. “Or I’ll let it go! I swear I will!”

“You little
brat,
” the big man muttered, and came at me. I leaned fully over the railing, though what I intended to do I didn’t really know. If I jumped, I’d drown. Being deathly sick my whole life, my mom had never let me learn to swim. But if I dropped the necklace, the sailors would probably kill me, anyways.

One of the other men took the decision about the method of my death out of my hands. He barreled through the crowd and smashed into the brute when he was just a foot away from me, knocking him to the ground.
 

It was the tall man who had held Jade’s rope.

“Leave them,” he growled deeply, practically snarling at the crowd. The sailors all stepped backwards, clearly frightened. The only one who stood his ground was Storm, who wore an unmistakable look of disappointment on his face. He had been hoping to steal the gold, too. But even he wouldn’t wrestle with the giant who now stood between the group and us. The man stood a full head higher than the captain.

“We vote then,” Storm said, turning to his men. “Those in favor of continuing on this mad journey?“

“AYE!” shouted many of the men. More than half?
“Those opposed?”

“NAY!” came the answers of only a handful.

Storm huffed and walked to the captain’s post.
 

“Alright, then, boys. Let’s get back on course,” he bellowed.

Almost all of the men jumped into action immediately. Only the few who had shouted ‘Nay’ dared to linger a moment before joining in the work at hand. Soon everyone on the ship was busy again, and I outstretched my hand to Jade, who still sat on the deck where she had been pushed down.
 

I turned to the giant man.

“Thank you,” I said.

He shrugged.
 

“They’re going to kill you if you ain’t careful,” he said, his voice low and rough.

My stomach dropped like a stone. We were completely trapped on this ship.

“Can you help us?” I asked.

“No promises,” he said. He turned and walked away, picking up the corner of one of the sails that had come down in the attack. But I noticed that he didn’t stray far, and he remained between us and the other men.

“What do we do now?” Jade whispered.

“I don’t know,” I said. I shoved the necklace into my pocket, and my fingers played absently with the chain. That had been too close.

“How far did Kiron say that link would take you?”
 

“He wasn’t sure. About a mile, I think. But that was on Aerit.” I looked out over the ocean. Not a single sliver of land revealed itself along the undulating horizon.
 

“That’s not far enough,” she said.

She was right. My eyes glazed as I tried to hone in on the idea that had been tickling the back of my mind all day. When I spoke, it was through a sort of fog.

“You know the rocks? In the ocean?”

“In the ocean?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to figure out how best to put my thoughts into words. “I mean, on the ocean floor. There’s rocks down there. Right?”