Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son (30 page)

I sucked in a big gulp of air and held it in my chest as I realized what it was. I had seen that rock before. It was the giant chunk of gold that Jade now protected in Riverstone.
 

She made to grab the stone, but the Blackburn pulled it easily away as if it weighed no more than an apple.
 

“You must trade,” he said, his voice hoarse and raspy. I was surprised at how non-threatening it sounded. I had been expecting a screech.

Jade took a step back, her eyes still fixed hungrily on the gold, a treasure of unimaginable wealth in a land where gold had ceased to exist.
 

“What do you want in exchange?” she asked in a hiss.
 

“You may not kill the boy,” he answered simply.

She stood still for a moment, staring at him. Then she thrust her head backwards and cackled as though she had never heard anything funnier.

“Of all the champions in all the worlds that you could take for your own, you choose the powerless one from Earth?” she howled.
 

He didn’t respond. Only held the gold out again, waiting patiently for her answer.

She looked back and forth between his face and the treasure he presented to her.
 

“Nothing else?” she asked, her face suddenly wary.

He only stared at her with bright silver eyes, eyes that invited her to take his offering.
 

She held out her hand and then paused as it hovered over the gold, still deciding. But the draw of the powerful rock was too much for her to resist, and as she finally grasped it, the atmosphere surrounding them exploded outward, pushing Jade, me, every blade of grass flat to the ground.

When I looked up again, the Blackburn had turned and was walking silently away down the hillside. His skin burned red, splitting like the embers of a fire. I wondered how he could move, how he tolerated the burning. Gradually, as he faded into the grass, the red coals of his being cooled, transforming his skin once again into a sheet of ashy black.

Jade stood, surprise and anger mingling together on her face. Then she seemed to remember what it was she held in her hand, and her face cracked into a wide, nasty smile. She stared at the gold, turned it around in her palm, and then raised it above, making it hover in midair.
 

This time, the world did not turn upside down, but simply dissolved. I stood in the dark, rocky gully. The Blackburn had left his perch and now stood directly before me, as tall and mighty as Erod the giant. Twenty minutes ago I would have fled from him, certain of his betrayal, of his evil. Now, though, my eyes met his, so pure and bright, and I understood that I was looking at someone who had never done anything but aid those who desired good to prevail.
 

I opened my mouth to speak, but then found that all of the questions I had were stuck in my throat. Only one bobbed to the surface, demanding to be asked.

“The horse,” I said. “You saved that little colt. Why?”

The Blackburn looked at me, furrowed his brow for a moment, clearly surprised by my question. Then a look of great satisfaction came over his face.

“I see I have chosen rightly,” he said, his voice just as rasping as it had been in the visions. He stared for another moment, and then spoke. “I protected the colt because there was not another to do so.”

“But the cloud, it burned you,” I protested.
 

“Yes,” he answered. He looked as though he wanted to say more, but he didn’t.
 

I reached out, unable to contain my curiosity, and touched the skin on his arm. I had been expecting it to be crusted, hard like the burning wood it had so closely resembled in the visions. Or maybe for it to blow away like chalk dust in the wind. But it was only warm. Human.

“And all this time,” I said, shaking my head, trying to form the thought clearly. “You’ve protected others, too.”

He didn’t answer.

“And it burns you,” I continued. “It has burned you all these thousands of years.”

Burns him black.

His bright eyes were sad and resolved at once.

“It is my place,” he said.
 

“Why did you choose me?” I asked. “I’m no champion.”

“It matters little who the champion is,” he said. “But they cannot touch you now while they hold the gold. It is impossible for you to be killed at the Corentin’s hands. And the girl. You have the best chance of reaching her.”

“Who, Jade?” I asked, confused. “How am I supposed to reach her?”

“Someone must,” he said. “She of the rock power is the last hope for our worlds. For your own.”

“But why?”

“That, you will discover in time. She holds the knowledge within her. You must convince her to release it. She is lost inside,” he said, watching me, “tormented again by the visions of misery that the Corentin inflicts upon her. Her only relief is the gold which I gave. When the time comes, she will not let it go easily.”

“But maybe she doesn’t have to,” I said, grasping. “Maybe I can bring enough back to fix things without her.”

“You may find enough gold to do the job, that is true,” he said. “But without the aid of the girl, you are lost. Before the end, she must be convinced to give the gold willingly. It is the only way.”

I looked away, suddenly nervous.

“What if I fail?” I asked, staring at my feet.

“You know precisely,” he said.
 

Nothing. Nothing would happen if I failed. We would all live on, chained to our misery, until someday a force greater than all of us, greater than even the Corentin, would bring it all to an end.
 

But if I failed, it wasn’t what I stood to lose that was the problem. It was that nothing better would ever come.

“You are marked, perhaps unluckily, by my choice,” he said. “You will live, no matter what the Corentin throws at you. He can no longer possess your mind. If you fail, you can only stand by and watch as the rest fall, witness the misery of the others until your last breath.”
 

He turned, swept his gaze up over the dark mountain peaks.
 

“He will try to sway you to make things easier for him. But you alone have the choice. Your life alone is untouchable by his power. It is a part of the deal that, I believe, he does not yet fully comprehend. But he will. In time, he will discover just what it was Jade agreed to on that hillside. He will seek you with increasing desperation, to harm you in other ways, to hurt you.” He took a few steps away and then paused, thinking. “If you fail in your quest, if the balance stays lost, if you despair and give into his traps and games, then you will become like me, like she whom you met where the water and land mingle. You will watch it all.”

My stomach felt hard, like a big rock had dropped into it.
 

“You mean, I’ll live forever?” Nothing sounded worse to me than that. The idea of failing my friends, these worlds, and then sitting by for all of eternity and watching it crumble.

“No, not forever,” he said. “You will watch only until nature takes your life.”

“How do I do it?” I asked. “How do I succeed?” I had the steps laid out in front of me, but the thought of actually taking the first was terrifying.

“That,” he said, “is not for me to offer. You must do as you wish. You must make your choices. Just as you chose to eat the meal in the forest, just as you trusted, knew, that it was there for you and no other.”

My mouth dropped open, but no more words came.
 

He moved away from me then, walking slowly in the direction away from the mountains, away from our target. I wanted to call out to him, to ask him more, to beg him to give me all the answers. But as his back disappeared into the shadows, I knew that this audience was over.
 

So I did the only thing I could. I closed my gaping mouth, closed my eyes as he left me alone with nothing to protect me but the Hidden Mountains, and concentrated on the only words I could send him away with. I wondered if anyone, anywhere, had ever said them to him before. I let them ring through my mind, bouncing off the insides of my skull, willing them to permeate it, to fly free into the night air so that he could hear my last.

Thank you.
 

Sacha.

I didn’t sleep anymore that night. Instead I sat above the crowd of people who lay, exhausted and splayed out, in the valley below me. I watched over them like a shepherd tending his flock, now knowing that it was safe for me to go. They would be safer in the Hidden Mountains than anywhere else I could imagine.
 

When the first of the children started to rise and scamper about, I hopped down from my boulder and made my way down the rocky hill.
 

Cait still slept soundly in Larissa’s arms. Kiron had awakened, and he stared down at the two. Relief had replaced the pain of the day before at the return of his sister, and as I sat down beside him I knew I was sitting with a different man than yesterday.

“We need to make the link,” I said, rinsing my hands idly in the cold stream at our feet.
 

He didn’t answer, only shifted his gaze to his feet, staring.
 

“She should do it,” he finally said, throwing me a quavering, conflicted smile. “She always wanted to.”

I nodded.
 

“You’re safe here,” I said. “No one can find you as long as you want to stay hidden. I’ll try not to be too long, but I don’t know what things will be like when I get there, when I get home.”

“Just don’t forget about us, eh?” he said, elbowing me.
 

I took the chaser from my deepest pocket and passed it back and forth between my palms. The thin strips of gold shimmered in the morning light.
 

“Who will follow?” he asked. His face shifted, and the glint of adventure I once saw on it back in his tiny cottage shined in his eyes.
 

“Not you, old man,” I teased. My eyes fell on Cait. Little Cait. So fragile. The promise I had made Rhainn weighed heavily in my heart. “I have someone else in mind.”

An hour later I stood beside Larissa. The staff had easily brought dustfire from the depths of the mountains, a power of Almara’s I had feared I would never be able to match. But it shined now in a bright beam straight up into the sky.
 

Larissa took the tiny vial of gold dust from my hands and carefully opened it, pouring the contents of it directly on top of the beam, which sizzled and sparked.
 

I held out my hand and placed the item I had chosen as the vehicle, a chunk of Stonemore I had found lodged in a pocket, rubble from the fight that had rained down on me during battle.
 

I moved through the frame, which lit up the entire ravine where everyone stood, watching the process that had so long been a secret. There was Earth, vibrating violently along the outer edges of the Fold. Larissa came to stand beside me, and she gazed upon it with perfect concentration. It wobbled only slightly as her mind directed it over the flame. Slowly, perfectly, she placed it atop, the last piece in the puzzle.
 

Then she and I sat before the rotating sphere, and began.

“In fire and gold
 

The fortune sold
 

In dust and frame
 

To worlds untamed
 

Through dark and light
 

And endless night
 

We fly as one
 

Our wings alight
 

Lock path and line
 

Heavens align
 

Until our feet
 

The soil they greet
 

On parallel
 

With gods and spell
 

Time beats the core’s
 

Celestial roar”

Again and again we spoke the words, until at last the spell was cast. The frame disappeared with a cascade of pops, and the link fell heavily to the ground below. Larissa and I both stared at where it had fallen, neither of us grabbing for it first.

“Go on,” I said.
 

She looked at me uncertainly, but then seeing that I was serious, bent down and picked it up from the ashes. She held it up, twirling it in her old, wrinkled hands, taking in every angle of my precious ticket back across the cosmos. The gold dust was fused over the surface like glitter on a kindergarten page. Then, smiling broadly, she lifted it high into the air above her head.

At first, nobody made a sound. Then, Kiron gave a loud whoop, and all at once the crowd roared with joy at the sight. Larissa and I laughed, and she wrapped her arms around my middle. When we broke apart again, she held the stone out to me.
 

For a moment I hesitated, not quite believing that this day had finally come. I slowly held out my hand, and she placed the link into it, covering it with both of her own palms. Then she lifted one hand up to my cheek and looked at me with tear-drenched eyes. I thought she would speak, but she only smiled. It was her thanks.
 

I was tired. The last time I had made a link, nothing had sounded better than a long nap. But now, alongside the exhaustion, the buzzing of excitement twirled inside my chest. I was headed back to Earth.
Earth.
Finally. I would see my family again. I would get my wish, the thing I had been chasing since the moment my feet touched the ground in the Triaden. But not everybody was excited about leaving this place.
 

As Larissa backed up into the crowd, Cait clutched at her skirt, only peeking at me from the corner of one eye.

I walked slowly in her direction, and knelt down onto the rock. I tried to catch her eye, but she hid behind the fabric.

“Did you know,” I said, “that on Earth I have a mother?”

She looked at me, but didn’t speak.