Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (3 page)

“Where do they come from?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe from an earthquake? You know, underground?”

She stared around at the men scurrying about the deck, a lost and unfocused look on her face. I released the last knot and we both crawled to our feet.
 

The captain was out now. He stood at the highest point on the deck, giving commands and looking through a long, thin spyglass at the ocean surface. The sky was quickly brightening as the sun finally rose over us in earnest.
 

“Daryl! Radley! Bring her about!” he bellowed. The sailors all heaved on the ropes that snarled the decks, and the great sails of the ship shifted their position. The wind hit them on the opposite side, and the boat began to turn.

“Wait,” Jade said, suddenly driven to alertness. “Where are they going?” She began pushing her way through the men, fighting her way over to the captain. I trailed behind her, still trying to catch my breath.

“What are you doing?” she shouted up to the captain. “You’re supposed to be taking us to Riverstone!”

“I ain’t takin’ you anywhere, girl, but back to port. I just lost three good men to a
Torrensai
. I don’t plan to lose any more of ‘em. Once one of those waves comes alive, there’s sure to be more to follow. I ain’t goin’ that way.”

“What’s a
Torrensai?
” I asked.
 

“A blast of power so great that it swells the seas and breaks the mountains.” He looked out over the horizon. “I should’ve known better than to come through here.”

“But we paid you to take us to Riverstone,” she protested, slamming her hands onto her hips.
 

“You think I care about that?” he said. “You think a couple pieces of silver are enough to pay for my life and the lives of all the men on this ship? Take your silver, I don’t care. We’re goin’ back.”

She stared at him in amazement. She opened her mouth to argue again, but I gripped her arm and whispered in her ear.
 

“Arguing won’t help,” I breathed. “We need to give him something he wants. Something that makes it worth the risk.”

My hand closed around the small, cold locket I carried in my pocket, stolen what felt like ages ago from around Cadoc’s neck. I stepped closer to the captain.

“We have gold,” I said. He didn’t hear me, and continued to shout orders to anyone close by.
 

“Aster,
no
,” Jade said, grabbing my hand.

We had to get to Riverstone. We had run out of options. No other clues had made themselves known. We had to go back to the place where Almara’s quest had started so we could figure out how it had ended. If it had ended. Without discovering what had become of that place, we were lost.

It was this, or give up now. Never go home again.
 

“I said we have
GOLD
,” I shouted.
 

The deck became very quiet. Twenty sets of eyes turned to look me up and down, and it occurred to me that maybe I shouldn’t have shouted quite so loudly.

“You fool,” Jade said quietly, and jabbed me in the arm.

“You’re lyin’,” said the captain. The men closest to him laughed. Many of them went back to their work, but a few still paused, waiting to hear if it was true.
 

I looked at Jade.
 

“It’s the only chance we have,” I whispered. “Do you want to get home or not?”

She glared for a moment, but then her face fell. We would not be able to find further passage to Riverstone, not with rumors of this Torrensai wave that would surely follow us back to port.
 

I climbed up on the platform where he stood and looked at him face to face.

“I am not,” I said more bravely than I felt.
 

He blew a puff of air through his lips and rolled his eyes.
 

“Come with me,” I said. “I’ll show you.”
 

He might not have believed me, but even the hope of true gold was enough to get him to follow.
 

“You better not be foolin’ with me, kid,” he said. I jumped down to the main deck and headed for the ladder that led to the passages below. Jade followed both of us as we descended into the narrow hallway, now flooded. The captain’s wet leather boots were the last pair of feet to step into knee-high water.
 

“I got twenty men up there need their captain, and three of our numbers just went overboard.”

“I’m not fooling you,” I said. I took the locket from my pocket and held it out to him.
 

His eyes bulged large as he took in what must look, to him, to be an impossible sight. Gold, real gold, was so rare this deep in the Fold that it was likely he had never laid eyes on a true piece at all. But there was no denying what I held out to him was real. The morning light that filtered down through the opening in the ceiling played with the edges of the Almara’s carved symbol, sending glittering reflections of the metal onto the walls of the hallway. I had stolen it from Cadoc as he hovered over me, threatening my life and Jade’s. I broke the chain and took it for my own, right before he broke my back with the heel of his boot.
 

“Where did a kid like you get
that
?” he finally said, reaching out his hand to grasp the thin strand.

I flicked the necklace out of his reach.
 

“Never you mind where I got it,” I said. “But you and your crew will keep your hands off it and off us unless you want us to vanish from this ship.”
 

Tied around my neck, tucked beneath my shirt, was the link that Kiron had given me back in Stonemore. It was a short-range link, meant to take the jumper about a mile in the direction it was pointed. The thick, hard stone was to be used for emergencies only. Kiron had crafted it back on Aerit, and hadn’t known whether it would work properly on other planets. But it was always there, my emergency plan, waiting to launch us out of trouble if things ever turned deadly.

“Alright, alright,” he said, taking a step backward. But his eyes were still glued to the necklace, gleaming greedily.
 

“I’m not kidding,” I said. “If you or any of your men come at us, try to steal this from us, we’ll take our chances on the waves. The two of us dead at the bottom of the ocean with this gold in my pocket won’t do you or your men any good. Do you understand?”

“Yeah, yeah, I understand.” He tried to mask the flash of anger the shot across his face. He seemed to be falling for my bluff.

“You
will
take us to Riverstone. And once you do, the gold is yours. Do we have a deal?”
 

His eyes flitted back and forth between my face and the chain, and then over to Jade. He stayed silent.
 

“I
said
, do we have a deal?”

“It ain’t as easy as that,” he growled. “That was a Torrensai. It’ll keep comin’ back.”

“What do you mean, it will keep coming back?” I asked.

“That wasn’t no regular wave. Someone set that wave. And if they had the power to do that, there’s no tellin’ what other defenses they’re gonna send our way. Don’t matter how bad you wanna get to Riverstone. I don’t think we’ll live through another strike.” His eyes betrayed his fear and looked longingly at the chain that dangled through my fingers.

We were in trouble now. I had given one of our most valuable secrets away. I looked at Jade, who looked back at me with both misery and determination. She understood what we faced, and the consequences of giving up now. We seemed to agree without speaking. I turned back to the captain.

“Is there a chance?” I asked. “If we continue on, is there a chance that we can make it?”

He stared at the floor, shaking his head back and forth.
 

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “Maybe.”

“Then do we have a deal?” I held out my other hand to shake his. He looked at it skeptically.
 

“Look, kid—”

“My name’s Aster.”

His eyes rose to meet mine, and something in his gaze shifted.
 

“You and I both know this is more gold than you could ever hope to see. It’s enough to keep you and your crew in riches for the rest of your lives. Do we have a deal?”

He heaved a big sigh and hitched up his pants, straightened his lumpy hat.

His hand reached out and gripped mine.

“Name’s Storm.”
 

“Well, then, Storm, you’ll be the perfect guide to ride out whatever other horrible weather attacks us.”

“I ain’t makin’ no promises, kid.”

“I know it,” I said. “But I am. You get us to Riverstone, and the necklace is yours.”

Storm climbed the ladder back up to the deck ahead of Jade and I. I dashed for our room and strapped my backpack to my shoulders. We needed to be ready to jump at all times now. When I returned to the ladder and grabbed for the rungs she held me back.

“He’s going to steal it. You know he is,” she whispered.

“I know,” I said through gritted teeth. “But just let him try.”

“Then why did you tell him at all?”

“Because we’ve come too far. We’re two days away now, maybe less. If we can just hold out long enough, we might be able to make it.”

“How are we supposed to fight off a ship full of grown men?” she asked, a note of desperation ringing in her voice. “You saw the look on his face. He looked like he was, I don’t know, wild or something. He
wants
the necklace. And when he tells the others what he saw…” Her eyes flitted nervously to the opening in the ceiling.

“I know,” I said. “We just need to last until we get close enough to see the land. Then maybe we can jump.”

“And what,
swim
to Riverstone? Aster, I can’t swim!”

I couldn’t swim, either, but the beginning of a plan was forming inside my head, and I hoped I had a solution. What we needed was to get our feet back on solid ground, and right now the land was too far away. But Jade had powers over earth elements, stones in particular. If we could just figure out a way to use that to our advantage, we might have a chance.
 

“I have an idea,” I said. “But right now we need to be up there with Storm. We don’t know what he’s telling them. I don’t like it.” I turned and began to climb up the ladder.

“I don’t like
any
of this,” she hissed.

“Just be quiet and play along,” I said impatiently over my shoulder. “If we let them turn around then we’ll end up back at port. You know they’ll tell everyone about this…Torrensai. And probably the gold, too. Then we’ll never make it to Riverstone. Short of building our own ship, this is the only chance we’ve got.”

She scowled, but didn’t say anything more.

“Stay close,” I said. “Just in case.”

Storm was up on the platform, his men gathered around him. They were all strangely quiet, exactly what I had feared. But I couldn’t keep them from talking twenty-four hours a day. They were going to make their sinister plans one way or another.
 

Jade rose up from below and I took her hand, leading her to the front of the ship. It was here that I wanted to stay. My stomach trouble forgotten, the reasons for staying on deck now were for protection. The last thing we needed was to be trapped in our cabin and robbed. Or killed.
 

We set up a camp of sorts at the head of the ship. The men had been released to their duties by Storm, and the boat swiftly turned back in our intended direction. Those who came near looked at us warily from the corners of their eyes, but I couldn’t decide if their intentions were to make good on the trade or not. But the greedy glints in their eyes told me they all knew that I carried a fortune greater than any of them had imagined in all their lives.
 

Jade sat next to me and picked at the dirt beneath her fingernails with the tip of her jadestone dagger. Its glow reflected in her cold, hard glare as she stared down anyone who dared approach us. I was glad for her anger, for her irritation at their glances. Because beneath what I hoped was a menacing scowl on my face, my own insides felt like mush.
 

The boat traveled without incident from man or sea for the entire morning. We nibbled at the slim rations of food that remained in the pack, too paranoid to accept meals from the sailors now.
 

I was dozing when the next attack began, finally having let myself drift off completely as Jade stood watch with her jade dagger at her side. She jostled me awake, and as I rubbed my eyes I saw the sailors were peering over the edges of the ship, confused and disorganized.
 

“What is it?” I asked, trying to appear more alert than I was. I stood to look over the side of the ship.

Below where we stood, the thick, muscled outlines of two giant, scaly creatures wrapped around the hull of the boat. Their sides shone black in the fading sun. They seemed to embrace the ship, almost lovingly, and for a moment I didn’t panic.

Then the wood began to crack.
 

“They’re sea snakes,” growled the closest sailor. “First Torrensai, now this. You’re gonna get us killed for sure, kid.”
 

The horizontal beams that knitted together to form the hull of the ship began splintering as if they had no more strength than a handful of toothpicks. Shouts echoed from all around me, and sailors began tossing thick ropes over the sides of the ship. Several slid down towards the beasts, rough swords in their hands. They hacked at the monsters when they got close enough, but their slashing had little effect. The touch outer skin of the snakes was too thick to penetrate.
 

Jade shook my shoulders and shouted over the din. “What do we do?”

I stayed focused on the men. They stabbed, poked and slashed their useless weapons. No sound came from the snakes, not even splashing. Their long, slithering forms seemed graceful against the clumsy, breaking ship and the vicious men who tried to protect it.
 

Jade gripped the railing with both arms as the boat heaved, her jadestone dagger held tightly in one hand. It glowed white hot, a vehicle for her power which poured from her now without her even realizing it. The connection Jade held with stones of all kinds resulted in a potent magic, unwieldy to anyone but her.