Aster Wood and the Lost Maps of Almara (Book 1) (19 page)

“Listen,” I said. “You have to help my friends. Find the man named Kiron and bring him with you. He will be waiting behind the soup lady in the square. And the other, Chapman. He runs a small shop in the square with a silver spinning sculpture in the window.
You must not hurt them
. Do you understand? If you want my help finding The Stone, you have to help my friends.”

He gave a curt nod of his ragged head. “Yes,” he said. “You have shown your worth to myself and my men today. I will find these friends of yours. Meet us outside the wall.”
 

Owyn turned and ran after the prisoners, and I followed. Then, in the outer passage, I waited for him to ascend the spiral staircase before I started up. I paused only to retrieve the black skeleton key, which now hung from the lock it had opened at the base of the stairs. I wrenched it from the keyhole and stuffed it into the one on the other side of the gate as I closed it, locking the keeper inside. I put the key my pocket before I crept back up the staircase to the surface, listening hard for any sign of pursuit. There was nothing.

On the last step I paused and glanced around the corner. The building that disguised the entrance to the dungeons was deserted. Morning had come at last, and outside people ran, panicked, in all directions. Men on horses galloped through the street, seeking the escaped prisoners. Townspeople screamed as they searched for cover from the chaos of the fight. I stuck my head out the door and looked in both directions, but I saw no more soldiers, just the dusty trail left by the horses. I left the safety of the doorway and started running, myself. I headed for the soup lady’s stand in the square, where I knew I would find my pack and Kiron close by.
 

As I hurtled down the street, I looked into every doorway, every side passage, for the man I sought. The man in black. I had to find Cadoc now, before we could leave the city and join Owyn. I passed a group of soldiers that were fighting spectacularly with three of the prisoners. The men, though thin and dirty from their years underground, were quick and light on their feet. They were running circles around the guards, tripping up their horses, who were whinnying and rearing from the snarl. Their antics reminded me of clowns in a circus performance, only with a much more sinister purpose.

He hit me like a wall. I never saw if it was a building he appeared from, or an alleyway, but in any case there he stood. I had been running so fast that I slammed into him and then backward to the ground. He bent over me and grabbed my jacket with two hands, pulled me back to my feet and then off the ground entirely, and stared at me with his cold, dark glare.
 

The man in black had found
me
.

My efforts to fight him lasted only a moment. I wriggled around, trying to break the iron grasp his hands held on my arms. But, fueled by some unknown power, Cadoc’s grip only tightened until I cried out in pain, certain that he would break my bones. He shook me roughly until I stopped fighting completely, and then put his face close to mine, staring into my unfocused eyes. His putrid breath filled my nostrils with its stench.

I was dizzy. His rough face floated in front of my vision, and as he spoke his voice sounded muffled to my ears, like someone speaking to me through a heavy door. I couldn’t make out what he was saying, only the anger with which he spat the words at me. My heart pounded in my ears, much louder than Cadoc’s voice. My blurry vision cast downward as he raged at me. He held my body up above the ground so that my face was level with his neck. A thin golden chain ran around his neck and over his solid chest, out of place on this enormous man. Something else wasn’t right about this, but my brain was bound by panic, and I couldn’t figure out what. The pendant that dangled from it was large and round, etched with the shape of a star.

As my eyes slowly began to focus, I met his gaze for the first time.
 

In an instant, his grip loosened on my coat. His face was shocked, surprised, as we looked at each other. He slowly lowered my feet back to the ground. His fingers grasped a lock of my hair, still dark from Kiron’s disguise, and wiped away some of the soot, revealing its white-blond color.

“
You
,” he said. His mouth remained open in disbelief.

I could feel the blood rushing back into my fingertips, his hands having all but released my arms.
 

“You were in the dream,” he went on. “But how is that possible? How are you here now? It was only a dream!”

What?

His grimace slackened, overcome by his memory, and for a moment I stared at him, confused. Then I came to my senses and realized the opportunity his distraction gave me.
 

“You,” he said, “you were over there.” He stood upright and pointed across the road, only one hand on me now. A sliver of green winked at me from underneath his overcoat. The book!

“And I was here,” he continued. “And you were running—”

Had we shared the dream?
 

 
I didn’t have time to ask the question of him, or even ponder it myself. I braced my feet on the hard street.
 

“And you were so fast!” he said, his eyes glazing now as he looked over my head at something only he could see. Perhaps he was remembering me running away from him down that very street.

I made my move. My free hand flew up to his jacket and snatched the book from the inside pocket before he could even register my movement. I put the book, no bigger than the palm of my hand, firmly between my teeth and ripped my arms out of my jacket, pulling the sleeves inside out as I freed myself from the canvas.

As I took the first frantic steps away from him, I could feel his hands grasp for me, but his fingers barely grazed my shirt as I flew down the street. His screams of fury echoed in my ears as I was ten, then twenty paces away, the prize now clutched tightly in my hand as I ran.
 

The world seemed to be moving in slow motion around me as I careened towards the square. Cadoc’s yells followed me as I ran, but with each step they were more difficult to hear. The city people who were left on the street stood, dumbstruck, as I ran by them. In the distance I could hear rapid hoofbeats reverberating off the walls of the streets, getting closer, closer. I ran harder and, sooner than I had thought possible, burst through the entrance to the square.
 

I was focused now. Somewhere in the back of my head I was aware that I was running fast,
really
fast, but it felt so natural that this thought caused me no alarm. I felt, for the first time since entering Stonemore, safe. They couldn’t catch me. Nobody could.

I shot across the square like a bullet. Ten yards from the soup lady I shouted, “Reveal!” and the backpack my eyes were searching for popped back into existence, propped against the wall behind her stew pot, the ax tied to one of its straps. I barely broke stride as I leaned over to snatch it. I strapped it to my back and held the ax out and ready as I continued towards the road to the outer gates of the city.
 

The entire place was erupting into chaos as I ran. Shield guards were beating the townspeople bloody, as if the release of the prisoners had triggered some sort of vicious, automatic retaliation against the citizens. As I careened through the square, I suddenly saw something that nearly stopped me in my tracks.

Kiron and Chapman both stood back to back, fighting off soldiers who approached from every side. Chapman held a simple metal shield, and he used it to protect himself from the constant blows of the guards. Kiron wielded his long, silver sword, and he slashed out at the men as they bore down on the duo. For an instant he saw me, and our eyes met.
 

“Run!” he yelled, alarmed at my stillness amidst the battle. I had stopped dead without realizing it. The fear and fury in his eyes jarred me back to my senses and I tore myself away from the scene, running towards the street on the north end of the square.
 

Once I rounded the corner out of the square, I found the path almost entirely deserted. Screams and slamming doors echoed off the buildings as the people hid from the violence. Dead ahead of me I could see the gates in the distance, already starting to close. The alert must have made it to the guards, and now they would try to cut me off before I could break through. The strip of daylight between the two enormous wood and iron doors was getting thinner and thinner with each step I took towards them. I didn’t let my eyes leave that ribbon of light as I ran for my freedom. The men shouted to each other as they heaved on the doors, but their voices I heard for only a moment. As the doors swung in earnest, first feet, then inches from closing, I blazed through them in a flash before they thudded shut, sealed against the world.

My feet ran on grass now, my whole body grateful for the soft turf. But I didn’t make it far. Soon I slowed to a stop and melted down into the cool blades, my chest heaving with the effort of the flight. I turned back to look at the city, elated by my increasing strength and glorious escape. But what I saw there quickly dashed my joy.
 

Over the rooftops the fireworks of battle raged. In one corner of the city a group of buildings burned. Explosion after explosion rocked the air above the square and reverberated off the walls. They would never make it to me in time. And their escape was closed off. Was there another way out of the city? I didn’t know. I contemplated scouting around the perimeter of the wall to look for another point where I might be likely to meet the men from the dungeons. But then something caught my eye on top of the city wall.
 

A cloud of smoke twirled on the spot, undulating back and forth. Curiously it danced and then fell twenty feet to the ground on the outside of the city, its form not breaking from the impact. I rose to my feet, alarmed, as the smoke unmistakably started in my direction. But it moved unnaturally fast. Before I could turn to run it was upon me, and then in front of me, and then it wasn’t smoke anymore at all.

It was Cadoc.

The sneer on his face was triumphant as he stood on the rocks above me, his teeth shining from under his lips as if he wanted to devour me. His magic, whatever it was, we had all underestimated.

I would not be meeting my party after all.

“You have something of mine,” he growled. “Little boys should learn that there is punishment when one steals.”
 

I slowly rose to my feet as he made his way, almost casually, towards me.
 

“I always told that fool Owyn Gildas that I would beat him in the end. He may have escaped his cage for the afternoon, but he’ll be in it again by sundown.”

My left hand gripped the book of codes tightly, the right my ax. I searched around me frantically for a path to escape.

“He could have chosen to follow me instead of that old fool, Almara. But then, we are not all born to make such choices. It takes a man who has left cowardice far behind him to recognize the road to true power.”

He raised up his left hand and twirled his fingers through the smoke of the miniature tornado that now spun on top of his palm.

“Had he chosen more wisely, things would be different for him now,” he said as he manipulated the smoke, “but he did not choose wisely.” His eyes focused on me again. “How, I wonder, will you choose, young friend?”

His lips curled up into a grimacing smile, and I took a step backwards.

“No, no,” he said, taking slow paces towards me. “Don’t you worry, now. I won’t hurt you if you don’t make the same foolish mistake as Owyn. Come with me now and we can explore together the wonders of what this place has to offer us. It’s not every day, after all, that one is so lucky as to share a dream with another.”

It wasn’t
any
day that people shared dreams, at least not where I came from.

“You seem to have a…sense about things that I haven’t seen in quite some time,” he continued. “And, as you might have guessed by now, I’ve been around for a long while. You and I, we could do…such
wondrous
things together.” The snakelike persuasion of his voice licked around the edges of my mind, but I rejected it with revulsion. His eyes lied underneath his black brows.

“Who
are
you?” I asked.

“I am the one,” he murmured, distracted now by the black wind in his hand, “whom you would best not keep waiting much longer. I am of the
Corentin
.” His eyes changed as he said this word, and within the black irises red streaked across from one side to the other. He lowered his hands to his sides, palms outstretched, and black smoke began to pour from them and onto the earth below his feet. At the first touch of the smoke, the grass shriveled and crumbled. The black air reached out across the earth between where he and I stood, coming towards me.
 

“Tell me, Aster,” his voice became slippery and smooth, “what is it that you desire? What are you searching for?”

I backed away, but found I could not shift my gaze away from his palms. The smoke was alive as it caressed the tips of each blade of grass.

“I want to go home,” I said, entranced.

“Where is home?” he asked, taking silent steps towards me.

“Earth,” I said automatically.

“Ahhh,” he replied. “I can help you there. So little gold remains in the Triaden. And without gold, you are bound here.” The thin gold chain shimmered against his chest. In the far reaches of my mind, I realized that was why the necklace had seemed so out of place before. We stood in a world without gold, except for that which hung around Cadoc’s neck. “I alone have the power to send beings along the pathways of this universe.”

This statement brought me up short, breaking the hold of the magic on my mind just long enough for me to use my own reason. He had not been the one to send Brendan Wood to Earth; Almara had done that. It might be a power that he also shared, but he was not my only hope. This terrifying man, a man who haunted my dreams and locked away my allies for centuries, was not my only hope.