Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (6 page)

I had only a moment to think as we swirled through space. We would have to fight for the surface, and then Jade could bring up the rocks. It was our only chance. Even if Erod could swim, he wouldn’t be able to swim all the way to Riverstone.
 

Bright flashes of light popped in front of my eyes as our bodies were transported. When we hit the water, it was much colder than I had expected. It pierced my skin like a thousand tiny knives. The three of us all let go of one another instinctively, putting our efforts into staying afloat. After Jade released my arm, I had no sense of what was going on around me, only that I wasn’t faring well. The water found ways into my nose and mouth, and despite my flailing I was unable to breach the surface of the sea again once I had gone under.
 

I quickly became lost. Night still hung dark in the sky above, and I couldn’t see in any direction. The sound of the others’ splashing was quickly muffled by the waves and my own choking attempts to breathe. For a horrible moment I feared my companions would be lost to me, that we would all drown to the depths of the sea, our mission unfinished and forgotten.
 

But he grabbed me from the back of my shirt and pulled me towards the surface of the water. I spluttered and coughed as soon as my head hit the cold air, and Erod spun me around to peer into my face. In his other hand he held Jade. How was he staying afloat himself? The ways of swimmers were foreign to me, and for a wild moment I thought he must be some sort of wizard, himself.

But I didn’t have time now to think about
how
. I needed to think about
next
.
 

Erod spoke first.

“What have you done?” he bellowed.
 

“It was a link,” I coughed. “Jade! Bring up the rocks!”

“What?” she gurgled. Her long hair clung to the sides of her face, her teeth chattering from the frigid water. She was shaking violently, seeming to have forgotten our plan.

“Rocks, Jade, we need you to keep us afloat!”
 

“You are a stupid child,” Erod said, looking between the two of us. “I can swim, as I told the girl, but I cannot swim forever.” He turned in the water, searching the waves around us. “Look!” he bellowed at the empty sea. “No land in sight! Do I look like some sort of—”

But his words were cut short. Jade had been muttering while Erod ranted, and from the bottom of the sea now rose a thousand small stones. They spun below our bodies, slowly joining to create a lattice, woven together like a net. A moment later I felt the hard, sure surface of our raft scoop us out of the water from beneath, and I rolled over onto my stomach, stretching my fingers over the rocky platform with relief.

Erod sat, dumbstruck, on the raft of stone. The tightness of his grip on my shirt collar didn’t ease.

“Erod,” I said. He didn’t respond. “Hey! Erod!”

“Huh?” he said, turning his head.

“My neck hurts. Could you let us go now?”

His face remained confused as he released his grip on us, his swimming services no longer required.
 

The rocks undulated below our bodies, forming a kind of skin on the surface of the water. It wasn’t entirely dry, but anything was better than the frigid ocean choking in my throat. I crawled over to Jade.
 

“Are you ok?” I asked.
 

She nodded.

“You sure?” she wasn’t looking at me, but instead her gaze was distant. She nodded again.

I put my hand on her shoulder and gave her a small shake.
 

“I have to concentrate,” she said. Just that momentary lapse in her mind, just long enough to say the words, and the rocks began to separate below our bodies. The sea water splashed up between the cracks in the fine mesh of stone that had held us aloft.
 

She quickly regained her focus, and the rocks knitted themselves together again.
 

This was not good. How long could she keep it up, I wondered? My wet clothes pressed into my cold skin and I shivered in the ocean breeze.
 

“Erod, how well do you swim?” I asked. I looked over at him, and he sat staring at Jade, his eyes unbelieving. “Erod?”

“Forget how I swim. How is she doing this?” he answered, his eyes still locked on her.
 

“She has powers over stone. She can sort of, make rocks do what she wants. It’s hard to explain.”
 

His eyes drifted over to me.
 

“I can swim alright. But there ain’t nowhere to swim
to
.”

I looked out over the water, searching for any sign of land, for anything at all. But all that greeted me was the darkness of night and the black ocean swells.
 

“Jade, are you ok to do this for a while?” I asked. Through her haze she heard the question and answered, nodding slowly. I let out a deep breath and sat back onto the slick stones.
 

I couldn’t figure out what to do next. I had to think. I had formed the plan up to this point, but I hadn’t thought farther than this moment.
 

Come on, think.

But the minutes, and soon hours, passed by in a haze of chattering teeth. With no method of propulsion, we were simply adrift on the wide open sea, helpless to direct our movement. Whatever power Jade had, I hoped she was able to somehow push us towards Riverstone. But she couldn’t speak and keep us up at the same time. I would have to simply trust her and hope that she could somehow get us to shore.
 

After a while I became concerned about her condition; she must be freezing, too. I crawled over to her and felt her cheek and hand. They were hot to the touch. The force of her power radiated through her and lit her up like a burning torch.
 

“Erod,” I called. He sat on the edge of the stone blanket, huddled against the night. “She’s warm. Come over.”

He looked up. “What do you mean? How can she be warm?”

“Just trust me,” I said. I settled myself close to where Jade sat, not touching her, but close enough to catch the heat that came off her body. Erod made his way over, and soon we were both well on our way to drying off.
 

“Why did you help us?” I asked after a time. “You could have just let them take the necklace.”

“I, too, seek passage to Riverstone,” Erod answered.
 

“You do? Why?”

“It is my home. I have long since desired to return, but it has been some time since the ships stopped traveling that way. It was my good fortune that you two happened to hire ours. I have not been so close to home in many years.”

His home?

“Why not?” I asked.
 

He shook his big head slowly from side to side.

“Madness. The elders became sick long ago. I left when things became too much to bear. And my people are not friendly to men such as me. Not long after my departure, the Torrensai began, though the simple minded men on the docks do not understand them. To them, it was a simple matter of markets. With no markets, there is no commerce, and thus no ships are needed. And they do not question it, as they have come of age believing these waters have always been treacherous.”

“No markets?” I asked. “What do you mean? Where did everybody go?” Could Jade have been right? Maybe Riverstone
was
abandoned.
 

“I know not,” he said. He leaned back and gazed casually at the horizon, his shirt finally warm and dry. “Perhaps they all fell ill. Perhaps the place is full of naught but ghosts. But someone, or something, is setting the Torrensai.”

“Jade thought it was the Solitaries,” I said.
 

He chuckled. “No. My people do not hold the power to do such things. Nor do they desire to.”

“Wait. You mean you—you’re a—a Solitary?”

He peered down at me.
 

“You don’t need to say the word as if it, itself, is a curse.”

“I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “It’s just that, well, Jade said that Solitaries were, um, not normal.”

Erod sighed heavily.

“I do not know what she has told you, but hear me now. The people of different lands and beliefs often find the others around them to be undesirable, do they not?” he asked.
 

I shrugged.

“What one man knows of a society from the outside is quite different from what one might know from within. Because we prepare for war does not make us warmongers. Because we wish to defend ourselves does not make us set monsters on other men. No, whoever is doing this is not of Solitary heritage. It is all but impossible.”

We sat quietly for a time, and again my imagination began attempting to put a face to whoever was doing this. The closer we got to Riverstone, it seemed, the less I wanted to go.
 

“So why go back? If things were—are—so bad in Riverstone, why do you want to return? Especially after the attacks today?”

“Why does she want to return?” he asked, tilting his head towards Jade. “It is my home. Perhaps I can help. But no peace lies out there, away from it.”

I thought about his answers, and they seemed to add up, this last one more than any of the others. I had just one more.
 

“What about the necklace?” I asked. “Don’t you want it for yourself?”

He smiled and chucked.
 

“I have no use for gold, boy. I ain’t no link maker, and I expect I’ve traveled plenty.”

“But you could be rich. Why wouldn’t you want gold?“

“Because I ain’t a fool,” he said. “I see what you are, even if the others don’t.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do. Especially now.” He gestured to the rock raft we sat upon. “And don’t think I don’t know what’s going on out there. But when the end comes, I expect I would rather be home than anywhere.”

The end. He may have left his people, but the doctrine of the Solitaries had remained with him. My stomach gave a hollow twist as I realized that, zealot or not, he could easily be right. If Cadoc had had his way, he would have obliterated every beautiful, wonderful thing he could lay his hands on. And if Erod believed that a world like Cadoc’s was what lay ahead, why not go home? Why not spend your last moments among those you love?

It had been many nights since I had thought of my own home. On Earth my mother and grandmother, maybe even my father, awaited my return. Surely they thought I was dead by now. I had been gone, disappeared from the old lady’s attic, for many months. I wondered, if I had been away for years instead, would I still long to return?

My old life seemed so far away. My mundane existence of schoolwork and hospitals and the ever difficult task of keeping air moving in and out of my lungs, all now abandoned and forgotten by me as I jumped from planet to planet like some sort of cosmic superhero. On Earth the kids at the city school were probably back in classes by now. They would sit in stuffy, pale rooms, their noses pressed into books, learning about the decline of our world and how it led them to be in that very place. What did they say about me? Maybe nobody even noticed I was gone.
 

But Mom noticed. Mom would be there, waiting. Always.
 

After the agonizing hours of night, the faint glow of morning revealed itself through the misty fog. Twenty minutes later, with the sun finally threatening to rise in earnest, we saw it. A thin strip of land sat stable amid the waves. As the stone raft drifted nearer, a giant granite structure rising up into the clouds came into view.

“Ah! Boy!” whooped Erod, clapping me on the back with his massive hand. “I can’t believe it!”

I couldn’t believe it, either. My enormous gamble had paid off.
 

Jutting up from the hard mountain, the castle of Riverstone towered high, awaiting the return of its princess.

The stones beneath us fell back to the depths of the ocean as soon as Jade saw the towering structure.
 

“Father,” she called out softly, and then sunk quietly into the frigid water, her magical raft forgotten.
 

I splashed and sputtered in the swells. Erod tread water and plucked Jade from beneath the waves, her wet hair clinging to her face, her eyes lost in a blank stare. Then he grabbed for me, and I felt the power of his large, muscled arm rescue me from drowning yet again. He turned onto his back, floating, and held each of us under one arm. His feet kicked expertly at the water, propelling us towards the shore. As the waves rocked us up and down, he began to sing.

Tell the mothers to hold their babes

Darkness comes bearing wicked blades

Through the night past the stars’ retreat

Children dream of a swift defeat

‘Cross the meadow he’ll bring his tribe

O’er rock and sand, nowhere to hide

We will wait and not mark the score

He brings us death, we bring him war

“What does that mean?” I asked through chattering teeth. “Are all of your people like that? Always looking for war?”

“We do not seek war. The song is about our lives, and about what awaits. We sing what we know.”
 

“And you really think that war is what’s coming?” I asked.

“I don’t think it.” He breathed hard from the effort of the swim. “I know it.”

I rolled onto my back, staring at the sky and trying to forget how cold I suddenly was. How awful it must be to have a war song be the tune that calls you home. But Erod didn’t seem to mind that blood and death made up the song of his people. From what Jade had said, the Solitaries had expected war to erupt at any second for a very long time.

After twenty minutes or so, Erod suddenly turned his body upright. His feet had found the sea floor, but he continued to carry us along, my feet still kicking helplessly beneath the surface, Jade’s body limp as a wet rag. When he was so far out of the water that only his knees remained submerged, he finally released us.

I wobbled as I began walking towards the beach, exhausted from the effort and stiff from the intense cold. The sun on the back of my neck was the only part of me that began to warm. It was the hunger for more heat that kept me moving forward, resisting the force of the waves in the shallows to keeping myself standing.