Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (19 page)

“You should rest,” I said, yawning widely again. “It’s been a long day.” Her chin began to wiggle, and I could see that she was trying hard not to cry.

“What if he runs off again?” Her voice was tiny and frail. “What if he somehow finds out how to jump, and then he takes you with him, and then—”

“That won’t happen,” I said. “Come over here with us. I’ll tie your wrist, too, ok?”

She didn’t answer, but she quickly moved over to us, lying down next to me and resting her head against my chest like a young, frightened child. Which she was.

I tied the last of the line around her wrist, making sure the knot was extra tight. And then all of us, side by side, connected like the chain-links in the ruby, found sleep together.
 

He hovered over me, concerned and a little confused. I tried to figure out where I knew him from. The lines of his face looked familiar, not unlike my own. But this wasn’t a mirror I gazed at, it was a man. Then, suddenly, my stomach dropped to the floor beneath me, and I recognized who he was.
 

My father.

I scrambled away from him on all fours until I found myself with my back against a cold, concrete wall. I searched the room. Where was I?
 

He approached, that same look of worry etched into his features.
 

“What do you want?” I asked, my voice smaller than I would have liked. In another time or place, I might have easily found the strength to rise to my feet, to stand against an enemy.
 

But not here. Not now.

He took another step nearer, and I slid sideways along the wall away from him. We were in a square, plain room. My stomach gave another jolt as I realized what this place reminded me of. A prison cell, or a room in an asylum.
 

But not in the Fold. This was a room one might find on Earth, somewhere in the dark, wicked reaches of hidden places. My brain struggled to comprehend this reality. No bars lined the side of the room. No door led to the outside world. We were trapped together inside a cube lined on all sides with cement. A square pocket of space with no way out.

“How did you get here?” I asked. “Get away from me.” I dashed to the other side of the room, my hands searching frantically against the flat, smooth wall for some hidden exit. When they found none, I turned and faced him again.
 

He moved in my direction, and I flinched, expecting some sort of hurt to come from his nearness. He reached out towards me, almost as if to comfort me, and opened his mouth to speak. But then he stopped, pulling back his hand and raising it up to his throat. For a moment he looked curious, almost like an unexpected cough had temporarily caught his attention, making it impossible to speak. Then his eyes grew wide, first with surprise, and then with terror.
 

A scratchy, whistling wheeze came from his airway, and thin tendrils of black smoke began to leak from his mouth in swirling wisps. I paused in my attempts to flee and stared at him, horrified. As I watched, the smoke grew thick, pouring from him as he tried in vain to staunch the flow, both of his hands around his neck now. His eyes met mine again, reaching out silently, asking me to help him.
 

But I recognized his need too late. As he fell to the ground, and I leapt in his direction, smoke burst from him. What remained fluttered softly down like an exploded balloon, and I dropped down after him, grasping with wild fingers the ash that remained.
 

I woke to Jade’s frantic cries, her fingernails digging into my shoulders as she shook me. Above us the night sky burned, the threatening storm blown away to soak another part of the land.

“Please,
please
wake up,” she sobbed, looking at me but not realizing that my eyes were now open.
 

I rolled over onto my side, and she fell on top of me, burying her face in my shirt. I gripped the stones on the beach as I tried to let the dream fall away, but the hooks of the nightmare dug deep into my core, and it took me a minute until I could speak.
 

“It’s ok,” I croaked, pushing up from the ground. “I’m ok.” A slick covering of sweat drenched my entire body. I wiped my face with the bottom edge of my shirt.
 

“You were yelling,” she cried. “And your whole body was shaking. I’ve never seen you like that.”

I was yelling?

“What did I say?”

She rested her forehead in her hands, overcome.

“You said,
‘I have him. I have him,’
over and over again. You sounded possessed. I didn’t know what to do.”

What?

Abruptly, I stood up. I tried to control the shaking of my hands, but the fear that was flooding through me was too strong.
 

“We have to get out of here,” I said.
 

“What?” she said. “Why?” She began turning on the spot, looking for danger in every direction.

“Something isn’t right,” I said. “Help me get him up.”

I knelt down and grabbed Almara underneath his arms. His eyes flew open, and with great relief I saw that they weren’t as cloudy white as they had been a few hours ago, though they still didn’t meet mine.
 

But my relief was short-lived. At the jostling, he raised his hands up to his head and began slapping his palms against his forehead violently.

“Stop it,” I said, gripping one of his hands. But his desire, or need, to hit himself was too strong, and he continued.

“What is he doing?” Jade asked, stepping backwards.
 

“I don’t know,” I grunted. “Can you just help me?”

Almara’s mouth opened, and I was surprised when words actually came out of it.

"He's—in—here!" he said each word in time with the slaps. His face tightened with the effort, and I felt sure that if he were capable of crying, he would be doing so in this moment.

Smack. Smack. Smack.

And suddenly, I understood.
 

The sweet dreams of this afternoon mingled with the sharp nightmares of tonight. I froze.

"He’s
inside?
" I asked.

He didn't answer me, just continued pounding his forehead. I knew Almara had been affected, that his madness was likely a result of the power of the Corentin, or the imbalance of the Fold, or both. But it had never occurred to me that we might have an additional traveler with us on our journey. One who hid behind Almara’s eyes. One who watched our every move. One who waited.
 

One who invaded my dreams.

"But if he's inside your head, then he—” Jade began, but when our eyes met, she didn't need to speak another word.

If the Corentin was inside Almara's head, and looking out through Almara’s eyes, that meant he knew everything. Where we had been, what we had done, and where we were going.

Jade and I acted at the same moment, gathering our traveling things and taking hands. I pulled out the ruby and, making sure I had a good grip on his arm, handed it to Almara. He didn't hesitate.

“Kaheerash!”
he shouted into the cosmos above.

The jump was long. Others I had taken in the past few months had lasted seconds, a dozen at most. But now I found myself spinning through space for well over a minute. Beside me the forms of Jade and Almara floated through the air like bodies in water. Finally, we landed on a jagged hillside.

I scrambled to my feet, quickly scanning the area for pursuers, but the place was empty. Late afternoon light painted the rocky sides of a mountain range in yellow shards. Below us, the setting sun made the greens and yellows of the valley grasses glow as they swayed back and forth. Above us the summit of the mountain jutted up from the land. As the range increased in size, the color of the rock became deeper and more complex until at the highest peaks a fiery orange caught the last of the dying sun.

Our link had succeeded.

Whether evil or beautiful, or both, the Fire Mountains now lay before us.

Were we too late? Would he know where we were? How closely was he watching, or controlling, Almara? Or, my stomach gave an uncomfortable flip, me? I tore my overshirt from my back and quickly began tying it around Almara’s eyes, my own flitting from side to side, certain that the Corentin must be hiding close by. Or if not the Corentin, himself, then some other evil set loose by him to bring us to our end. These were
his
lands.

Jade seemed to have come to her senses again, and she quickly took the ruby from Almara’s hands. Then she untied the rope that bound us all together.
 

I searched the area we had landed in, seeing a rockier section of the foothills where I hoped to hide. I pointed, and Jade’s gaze followed my outstretched finger. Without a word we dashed towards the rocks. Almara moaned behind us as we dragged him along, but his feet moved obediently in our wake.
 

For several long minutes we were a panting herd of prey, evading a predator we could not see or hear. As we ascended higher, the rocks at our feet threatened to trip us up. But our desperation kept out senses sharp, and we managed to avoid falling. Finally, we were at the mouth of the boulders. A thick crack ran through one of the largest rocks before us, and we were able to squirm inside the crevice it had left in the stone. As we disappeared, one by one, into the solid mass, the space widened slightly, just large enough for us to sit.

But we did not sit. We breathed. We slowly regained our strength from the flight. But we did not sit.

For the first several minutes, Jade and I peered out from our hiding spot, scouring every bit of land we could see in search of our pursuer, though we had no idea what to be on the lookout for. Was the Corentin a man? Was he a beast? A cartoon image I had once seen of a great genie, hovering, massive and mist-like in the sky above, floated across my mind.
 

What
was
he?

Slowly, we calmed down. The mountain was quiet, the only sounds coming from the occasional cheep of a bird, the scurry of a chipmunk.
 

I hadn’t noticed Almara sit, but Jade soon joined him. Her eyes were dry now, and alert, though the wear of the day’s events showed on her dirty face and clothes and in the unnatural sagging of skin around her downturned mouth.

I waited. I wasn’t ready to relax yet. I stood for at least another twenty minutes, scanning every inch of landscape I could see through the narrow crack. But my search was in vain. No monster appeared. No creature intent on our destruction made itself known. And all I was left with was the rattled, jittery feeling of impending attack, unfulfilled and impossible to shake.

I sat. Across from me Almara slumped, complacent and motionless, the blindfold still covering his eyes. I reached out to him, but when my fingers brushed against his arm he did not flinch. I carefully guided his body, turning the direction of his head to face the rock. I doubted that his seeing a sheet of solid stone would give our position away, and I felt cruel forcing him to remain blinded by our circumstance. I untied the knot of my shirt at the back of his head.
 

He blinked several times as his eyes adjusted to the dim light in the crack. Then he turned to look at me. I leaned back heavily against the wall, my eyes filling with tears of relief.
 

His eyes were clear again; not a hint of wispy white fog rolled across their surface. Now, crystal blue orbs looked deeply into mine, not sane, but not so lost as an hour ago, either.
 

“You’re back,” I said.
 

His eyebrows raised, and his lips smacked against his teeth.
 

“Are you thirsty?” I asked.
 

He didn’t answer, but took the water skein when I passed it to him and drank deeply from it. I wondered how much saltwater he had swallowed during his long minutes beneath the waves.
 

Jade wrapped her arms around her folded legs and rested her chin on her knees. I offered her the water next, but she declined.
 

Through the crack, the fading light of day filtered in. First yellow, then orange, and finally a deep indigo blue as night fell in earnest. Nobody spoke for a long time. We just sat and watched the world go dark from inside our tiny, safe sliver of the mountain range. Finally, I stood up again.
 

“I think we should go,” I said. “Now, while the dark will cover us. We won’t be as easy to track without the sun giving us away.” It was an unlikely possibility, but the combination of fleeing our enemy and being smashed up against each other in this cramped place was making me anxious again, and I was eager to be on the move.
 

Jade grabbed my hand from where she sat.

“I don’t think we should go,” she said. Through the dim light in the crack I could see that her eyes were wide, and she stared out through the opening for the predator beyond.
 

“We can’t stay here,” I said.
 

“Why not?” she asked. She stood up to face me. “I’m starting to think that this whole thing is a really stupid idea.”

“What do you mean?” I said, suddenly defensive.
 

“There’s no point to continuing on,” she said. “If we keep heading up this mountain, the Corentin will find us and kill us, or worse…” Her face glazed over, and she retreated momentarily into her head, to whatever place she went to help her deal with the long abuse she had suffered at Cadoc’s hands.
 

I felt for her. I really did. Something about pulling Almara from the ocean had shifted part of me and I realized now that all this was bigger than just us three. What would it matter if I were able to return to Earth, but nothing changed? The Corentin would still draw Earth closer and closer in, still wreak havoc on our weather, our existence, and in the end we would all fall to his sadistic desires. Maybe not tomorrow, or even next year, but soon enough. I wanted to go home, too, but to a home I had never known. A home where grass grew and the sound of thunder didn’t send chills of fear down my spine.