Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (5 page)

“I suppose,” she said. “Well, yes, of course there must be.”

“Could you bring them up?”

“Up?”

“Like to the surface. What if you could bring them up to the surface? We could use them to keep from drowning. Do you think you’d be able to do something like that?”

Her eyebrows knitted together as she thought about what I was asking.
 

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Now she was the one staring into space. “Yes, I think I could. But I don’t know for how long.”

“It just needs to be long enough,” I said. “I’ll have the link ready. Just in case.”

No further threats darkened our passage that day. The sailors, and even the captain, all worked furiously to patch up the ship as the sun fell below the sea. They lashed together the beams that had been ripped apart by the sea monsters, and the vessel was hobbling along. Each wave brought a round of creaks and groans far louder than they had been the day before, and as the boat crashed down after each crest, the ride felt more and more unstable. But she was holding. For now.
 

The glares that came from under the brows of the men gave no indication that they planned to honor their end of the bargain, and we prepared for the worst. The truth was that, however menacing we feared these men to be, every minute we stayed on the ship we were a minute closer to our goal. And ten times more likely to reach it if we managed to stay dry. All we could do was prepare for their inevitable attack, and hope that it would take them a while before they came after the gold. When they did, we would have no choice but to take our chances with Kiron’s link.
 

When most of the men went below decks to take their dinner, Jade made a move towards the giant sailor, who was still hovering nearby. The man, named Erod, had stayed close since the attack, and at dinner we offered him the majority of our own rations. He took the meager food without comment, but he made no move to join the men below, and they did not bring him a single bite of their meal. The sides in the argument had been cast, and he was stuck with us. In the faintest of whispers it was determined that he could, in fact, swim. If we could persuade him to come with us, maybe he could keep our heads above the water long enough for our plan to work.
 

I wondered why he had defended us.

The waves began to decrease in intensity, and my stomach, however hardened by the afternoon’s events, was thankful for it.
 
The sky slowly darkened, and then lightened again as a thin layer of fog settled on the surface of the water.
 

“Well,” I asked Jade, “do you want to sleep first?”

She sat with her arms wrapped around her legs, keeping careful track of every movement of the crew remaining on deck. Her eyes were wide, still carrying the shock of her violent acts of a few hours ago.
 

“You should sleep,” I said when she didn’t answer. I gave her shoulder a little shake. She looked up at me, a bit dazed, but then nodded. She curled up at my feet, using my backpack as a pillow, and gradually fell into a fitful sleep.
 

Erod didn’t offer to keep watch, and I didn’t ask. He slumped against the hastily repaired mast and slept, sitting up against it. I thought it unlikely that anyone would be able to make it through Erod, no matter what his intentions were. None of these men could overpower him, and I wasn’t even sure if a coordinated attack could bring him down. But what if he planned to steal the necklace himself? He had saved us once, but who knew if he would do so again? I watched him as much as any of the others during the first long hours of that quiet night.

I should have known better than to tell a group of thirty men that I carried treasure. Now we were in just as much danger staying on the ship as we would be out there on the water. Well, almost. Swimming wasn’t common in my city. Sure, there were a few elite that could afford to waste our clean water for their amusement and exercise. But even if we had had the money for such things, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. My fingers twitched absently over my chest as I remembered the squeezing feeling I would get on Earth anytime I so much as took a brisk walk. No, it would have been impossible for me to learn to swim back home. And to go over the side of this ship now would be suicide.

I looked out over the shallow swells, eerily calm after the battle, and wondered what had happened to the waves. Were there other monsters out there, waiting for the command to take us down? The stillness of the water was unnatural, and I shuddered as I tried to imagine the force behind the attacks.
 

We hadn’t bargained on this. Our plan had been to get to Riverstone, to search it for clues and hopefully find our next link. But now it seemed we were facing an evil much greater than we were prepared to handle.
 

I shook Jade awake several hours into the deep night, and as I lay my head down on my pack to rest, made sure she was within arm’s reach of where I lay. I had removed the twine rope from my neck that held the fat, gray rock that served as Kiron’s link. I wrapped the cord around my wrist and held the rock in the palm of my hand, ready to point and give the command if need be. It would be a huge gamble to take, and I would only use it if I had no other choice.
 

Sleeping was difficult. Even though Jade was wide awake and standing guard, my eyes kept flitting open, searching for the next threat to our quest, or our lives. Erod sat across from us, sleeping soundly. His giant mouth hung open, and a croaky snore rattled out of his throat. I watched Jade alternate between sitting, standing, then sitting again, her deep green eyes searching the deck for any sign of movement.
 

Finally I couldn’t take my own silence anymore.
 

“Do you think we’ll make it?” I whispered. She jumped a little at the sound of my voice. She was wound tight.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Whatever honor used to guide the men of Ossenland, it seems to have long since left them.”

I stared up at the sky. The absence of stars through the fog added to my uneasiness and left me feeling like a frog in a pot with a lid tightly fitted to the rim.

“I don’t know what they’ll do if anything else happens.” Despite the fear of those giant snakes still fresh in my mind, I found myself much more concerned about the water. The snakes, while terrifying, seemed to be part of the sea. But if the sailors were right, that giant wave had been set upon us. Someone was
trying
to bring us down. “Who do you think is causing the Torrensai?”

She looked frightened at my question.

“The Solitaries,” she said after a pause. “That is my guess.”

“What are Solitaries?” I asked.

She stared into space, her eyes lingering on Erod. When she spoke her words were soft, almost inaudible.

“When I was a child, when everything started going wrong, the Solitaries were very active. They lived on the island where Riverstone stands, and they normally kept to themselves, but when the weather started to change and people started getting sick, they rose up against us. They are the reason Father and I and Brendan all left Riverstone. They are zealots. They believe that the end of worlds is upon us all. But they have believed it for many, many centuries.” She paused, smirking slightly in my direction. “We are still here, you see, but the same belief has persisted in their people over millennia. To them, we are always on the verge of ruin.”

“Why do they think that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But I do know that they live their lives in constant fear of death. There is no peace in the hearts of those people.”

“What did they do when they rose up?” I was sitting propped up on my elbows now, happy at the distraction from my worries of attack.
 

“It was sudden. One day they were silent, invisible. The next they were breaking through the gates of Riverstone. They thought, falsely, that if they had the tools my father held that they could do his job better than he. Perhaps even some wished to bring on the end of worlds faster, despite their fear, just to prove themselves right. Foolishness. As if a plain mortal man with no magic in his blood could ever dream to wield such power.

“We fled the castle that night and took refuge in Stonemore. It was an early beginning to Father’s quest, but he had already laid the groundwork. The others were able to follow by morning.”
 

“And these people are waiting for us?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because, honestly, I don’t know if they’re still there at all. Things have changed a lot since I left Riverstone. At least, everywhere we’ve been together so far is very different from when I was little.” She picked at a loose piece of leather hanging from the heel of her boot. “And they were very sick when we left. I guess I hoped that they had all perished. But whether they’re still there or not, it doesn’t really change anything. We still have nowhere else to try.”

It was true. Almara’s trail had run quite cold. Though, as usual, Jade had left out some crucial details about the known dangers of our destination.
 

“If these Solitaries don’t have magic, then how can they be causing the Torrensai?” I asked, trying to stifle my frustration.

“They were fierce,” she shrugged. “Fiercer than most men, fiercer than Cadoc, even, in a way. They should not have been able to breach the gates, and yet they did so. How? I have asked myself this question over the many years that I have had to ponder all that happened when I was a young child. Why were they able to get through? And now, if they’re still there, defiling my own house after all this time, they seek to defend their prize. Perhaps, I do not know if it is even possible, but perhaps they have found some sort of magic they, too, can wield.” She hugged her legs with her thin, white arms.
 

“Or maybe they have someone else helping them now,” I said, finishing her thought for her. She nodded.
 

Cadoc weighed heavy on my mind. He had spoken, in the moments before his death, of three brothers. Three, we guessed, who were just as terrible as he was. If these Solitaries Jade spoke of didn’t have magic, could it be that these brothers were the ones responsible for the attacks today? I wished, not for the first time, that I had never set foot on this ship.

What a mess we were in. We sat, trapped on the front end of a massive ship full of men who wanted to rob us, even kill us. And these Solitaries that maybe waited for us on the other side of this journey, what would they do with us? The same as any of these sailors might? Clearly, if it was them sending the Torrensai, they didn’t want us to enter the castle. And if it wasn’t them doing it, if it was these brothers of Cadoc’s…

It seemed we had two choices. Death on the ship, or death in Riverstone. And had we stayed behind, abandoned our quest, neither of us would have ever been satisfied.
 

We never heard them coming. Jade’s attention had been focused entirely on the deck, never thinking that the men might approach from another direction. But just as my foggy brain finally started drifting into sleep, the first of the men climbed over the railing and jumped to the floor of the deck. Jade and I both scrambled to our feet, but it wasn’t us he was going for first, it was Erod.

The blow the sailor thrust at Erod knocked his giant gaping mouth to the side. He didn’t even flinch, but with his eyes still closed, his face scrunched into a frightening scowl. The sailor turned his back to face us, thinking him dealt with, but it was a mistake. As he bore down on us, Erod rose up from behind him, seven feet of muscular man, and with an alarming swiftness his hands wrapped around the man’s head and snapped his neck with a loud
CRACK
.
 

He tossed the broken body to the ground like a bag from a garbage can, and thudded to the railing. The second sailor was just making the top edge, his fingers gripping the edge as he hoisted himself towards the deck. Erod flattened his hand like a cleaver and brought a blow down across the sailor’s fingers. Several lighter clicks echoed through the night, followed by the scream of the sailor, his fingers broken. Another strike on his remaining hand and his broken hands released the railing, the sound of his pain falling with him to the icy waters below.
 

Jade and I stood rooted to the spot. It wasn’t until the third man appeared, combined with the noise from behind us on the deck, that I even realized what was happening. They were
all
coming for us.
 

I grabbed for my backpack and slung it over my shoulder, then gripped the link tightly in my fist, trying to decide what to do. I had known it would come to this, that we would need to jump, but now that the moment had arrived, I hesitated. This could be it, the moment of my death. But as I saw Storm approach, unsheathing a long, rusted sword, my resolve was hardened.
 

I wasn’t going to die like this, like prey ripped apart by scavengers.
 

“Jade!” I shouted. “Hang on to me!”

It took her a moment to process my words amidst the fighting men, but when she did, she understood. She gripped my arm tightly, and together we moved towards Erod, who was punching the third sailor to make the top of the railing. He held the man by the front of his shirt with one hand and pummelled him with the other.
 

“Grab him!” I yelled. He was coming with us whether he knew, or liked, it or not. I just hoped that he would remember his earlier inclination to protect us, and that he wouldn’t rip us apart like he was doing to these men.
 

“Erod!” Jade screamed. He turned, surprised, and dropped the sailor into the night. Jade gripped his arm with her other hand and I held up the stone, pointing it in the same direction that the ship currently traveled in. I hoped Riverstone lay that way. It would have to do.
 

“Forasha!”
I shouted.

Around us on the decks every eye stared wide, every sailor pulled inward towards us by a force they had never known. I smiled, hoping that they, too, would feel the painful pinch of Kiron’s inexpert links. Then, the power of the jump slammed the men to the deck, and Jade, Erod and I spun away from the danger.