Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (22 page)

“What is
this
?” I said, pulling at his shirt. Several verses were inscribed into his skin.

“It’s the prophecy,” he said quietly. “I—when I first felt—
him
, I asked Foramar to do it for me. He completed it just days before the attack on him by the cats of Rohana. I was worried I would forget, you see. But I needn’t have. It was the one thing I never did forget. The words of Jared held the key to retrieving the book all along.

He of the line

Pure of heart

Lost in the wilds

From the start

Untouched by flame

He ventures through

In our world, untamed

To find the true

The last hope of men

He seeks to reverse

To find the end

To end the curse”

Jade and I stared.

“Say that again?”
 

He repeated the words, and I moved back to rest against a boulder, suddenly no longer able to support my own weight.
 

“That’s what you were asking about, isn’t it? Back in Riverstone? You kept asking if I had found him, but you never explained who he was.”

He nodded. “Yes, of course. It was Brendan’s purpose to find the champion. Only he was so brave as to jump as far as Earth. He always believed that the champion would be found there. The man who would lead us to the book, lead us to our salvation. The rest of us searched the Fold. We were meant to meet after he jumped back to Aerit.” He brushed his hands through his ragged hair. “But I was taken before we could. And Brendan. Well, you know.”

Brendan had never returned at all.
 

“But, what are we supposed to do now?” Jade asked hopelessly. “We don’t have the champion. How are
we
supposed to get the book?”

“We may yet, girl,” said Almara.
 

“My
name
is Jade,” she said angrily. “And where is this champion?” She gestured at the mountain range that surrounded us. “There’s nobody out here! The only people on this quest are the three of us!”

“Yes,” he said. “Exactly.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.
 

“Think of the verse,” he said. “
He of the line. Lost in the wilds.
Earth is known, among seers at least, as the wild planet. Perhaps our champion is, in fact, in our midst already.”

“What?”
I said.
 

“You heard me.”

“But
I
can’t be him.”

“He doesn’t have a magical bone in his body!” Jade protested. “It can’t be
Aster
. Father, just because he’s from Earth doesn’t make him the champion.”

Almara smirked.
 

“He is of the line. Jared’s line. He has magic, whether the two of you have yet discovered it or not.”

I may have resolved to destroy the Corentin, but nothing like this had ever occurred to me. Champion? And Jade was right: I didn’t have any power. Except…

I turned to face her.
 

“I can run,” I said. My talent at running faster than a cheetah seemed worthy of noting, especially considering I had barely been able to jog across the hallway back home without having an asthma attack. “And the dream, the dream about Cadoc and Stonemore.” Months ago I had dreamt a premonition about meeting Cadoc, running from him, and it had come true.
Very
true. And hadn’t my heart problems all but vanished in the last several months? I had to entertain the possibility that what I was experiencing
could
be related to magic.
 

There was only one problem, and my heart fell into my stomach as the reality of it hit me. I didn’t
do
magic. Not consciously, at least. Magic seemed to happen around me, to happen to me, but I didn’t actively conjure it.
 

“Those were coincidences,” she said. Her haughty attitude reared, and her pride spoke for her.
 

“You think I want to be champion?” I shot back, getting irritated. “What I
want
is to go home. What I
want
is for things to be normal again. But things aren’t normal, Jade! I can’t go home. You can’t go home. None of this is working out the way we’d hoped. So what are we supposed to do? Give up? And do what?”

“And have a normal life!” she shouted. “Can’t we just do that? Go off somewhere and live and be happy? Why do we have to keep chasing this monster? Father, you could create a link and all of us could go to Earth, away from all of this. Away from the Corentin. I bet that you’d get better, being farther away from him.”

“Maybe,” I said. “But I won’t be better. Nobody knows what will happen to me if I go back to Earth. I could end up back in the hospital. I could end up dead. And, even if not, Earth isn’t somewhere you would want to live. Earth is
so—”

“What?” she jeered. “Safe? Non-magical? Those are things I can live with, Aster. I’ve seen enough magic to last me several lifetimes.” Her voice cracked with her last words, and her lips began to tremble.
 

I sighed heavily and tried to take her hands, but when I did she jerked away from me.

“You don’t understand,” I said more calmly. “Earth is…sick. It’s not like here.”

She laughed sarcastically through her tears and gestured around at the landscape. “You don’t think
this
is sick?”

“This
is
sick. But so is Earth, just in a different way. Here we fight demons and monsters to try to make things right. On Earth you don’t even have a chance of doing that much. The Earth I know is barren.” And the Jade I knew would wither in a place like that.

“But on Earth I could hide.” Her voice was small and miserable, and her giant green eyes fell to the ground.
 

I put my hands on her shoulders.

“Listen to me,” I said. “There
is
nowhere for us to hide. I know it’s hard and it’s horrible, but it’s true. Things aren’t going to get any better by us doing nothing. We can’t get around this one.”

She refused to meet my gaze.

“We have to go through it to get to the other side. There is no one else.”

I released her and turned to Almara.

“So you really think I’m this champion person?” I asked. He nodded. “But I don’t know any magic. How can I get the book if I don’t know how?”

He shrugged. “We always thought the champion would know what to do. We didn’t think he would be untrained.”

“Ugh!” Jade groaned, her temper flaring again. “This is ridiculous!”

“Look,” I said, “if you want to break the book from whatever weird enchantment it’s under, be my guest. I’m just trying to figure out how to move us forward here.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and glared.

“Fine,” she sniffed, wiping tears angrily from her cheeks with the backs of her hands. “Father, show Aster how to conjure the magic so he can get the book. Go ahead.”

He smiled.
 

“Well, that’s not a
bad
idea,” he said.
 

She turned and stormed off, taking the rocks two at a time, mumbling curses to herself.
 

“We’ll do it tonight,” I said. “When we stop for the night. Ok?”

He nodded, then stretched out his hand, ready to move on.

It would have been helpful to talk as we walked, to be able to pick his brain. How do I do magic? How do I raise power from the ground with nothing but my fingers? How do I break a seven thousand year old enchantment with…
nothing
? But the climb was too steep, and instead of speaking, we spent all of our energy breathing. We stopped for lunch a couple hours later, but Jade was still so irritated that she sat away from us. Almara and I stayed quiet, chewing the stale bread that remained in the pack.
 

Later in the day, well before sunset, Jade suddenly fell flat to the ground. At first, I thought she had been struck by an arrow, but when she waved her arm frantically at us I realized she had seen something. Almara and I dropped to the ground and waited.
 

Slowly she raised herself to barely a crouch, and approached the top of the nearest rise. Poking her head over the top, she looked at whatever lay on the other side for several long minutes. Finally, she turned and walked back down to where we lay.

“There’s a village,” she said when she reached us. “It looks deserted.”

“Are you sure?” I asked.

“Pretty sure. There’s no smoke coming from any of the chimneys, and I didn’t see anybody in the streets.”

I crouched down low and made my way up the hill, peering over the top as Jade had.

Below, a smattering of stone cottages sat on a small precipice. Off the edge of the mountain, terraced gardens, overgrown with weeds, tumbled down the side. The place did look deserted. But why?

I waved Jade and Almara to join me, and when she lay down on her belly beside me, her eyes were hard and calculating.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I wonder why there’s nobody here. It looks like, whoever they were, they left in a hurry.” Apparently she was willing to forget our argument for the time being.

And she was right. Scattered around the tiny village, tools were left out to the elements. A cart of vegetables lay rotting in the afternoon sun. Nothing moved.

“Ok,” I said. “Let’s go check it out.”

“Wait,” she grabbed my arm as I made to head down the small hill into the town. “What if there’s something there, waiting for us? What if
he
is waiting for us?”

“We’ll be quiet,” I said.
 

“If anybody lies in wait,” Almara’s scratchy voice broke the tension between Jade and I, “they already know we are here.”
 

I felt each strand of hair on the back of my neck stand on end.
 

“Right,” I said, nodding. “Let’s go.”

We all got to our feet and made our way carefully down the steep hillside.
 

Once in the town, the eerie feeling of the place seemed to seep into our skins. My hands continuously scratched at my shirt, my back, my arms, to try to quiet the crawling feeling that covered me.
 

Eight small cottages, no bigger than small bedrooms in size, haphazardly made up the town. Doors were opened, chores left partially completed, meals unfinished on the tables.
 

“Where is everybody?” I breathed.
 

Almara stopped walking suddenly, shaking his blindfolded head from side to side. Then, he slowly raised his arm in front of him, pointed a shaking finger at one of the cabins. Larger than the others, it could have been a church.

“What is it?” Jade asked.

Almara’s lips trembled, and soon his whole body shook, his mouth opened in a silent scream. We moved behind the closest cottage, and he collapsed to the ground.
 

“Stay here,” I said.

I walked back out into the open and approached the church, its wooden door still slightly ajar. A sharp odor so pungent made me cover my nose with my hands. I slowed, concerned, the final steps I took until reaching the entry hesitant. It was too dark inside to see, and when I pushed it open it groaned on loud metal hinges.
 

It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light in the space. Bits of dust floated in the afternoon sunlight that poured through the doorway. Then I saw it. The black, charred remains of a skeleton lay stretched across the floor five feet in front of me.
 

I stepped back, startled by the find, but my eyes remained glued to the inside of the room.
 

There wasn’t just one skeleton.

There were twenty.
 

From the largest man to the tiniest infant, the bones burned black, the bodies strewn about. This was where they had died. Not a single scorch mark marred the surface of the walls. They had fallen in this very spot, in these very poses, as their bodies had burned from the inside out.

I backed away from the door, running, and then tripped on a stone jutting out from the hard dirt road. I turned over and vomited my meager lunch into the street. Then I scrambled back to my feet and ran.

It was all I could do to not flee the village, the mountain, and hide. The primitive animal in me had intended to do just that, but as I was picking up speed I caught sight of the faces of Almara and Jade, he with his hands over his eyes, his mouth wide with mourning, her next to him, holding his arm, confused and unsure.
 

Tears poured freely from my eyes. I took her arm and dragged the two of them behind a building, out of sight of the horrific scene. Almara slumped against the wall, sliding down to the ground. I fell down on all fours, sobbing.

“What was it?” Jade asked anxiously. “What did you see?”

“Why? Why did they settle here on this evil mountain?” Almara wailed. “He burned them! He burned them all!”

“Who burned them? Who is burned?” Her voice was high and alarmed.

“You
know
who,” I said through sobs, wiping my face with the back of my sleeve.
 

“You mean, he’s been here?”

“Someone has,” I said. Or some
thing
.

“He is gone,” Almara said. “He left them…for us.” He croaked out the last two words.

“What did you see?” Jade said, kneeling down in front of me. “Aster!” She shook my shoulders. “Tell me what you saw!”

“Bodies,” I blurted. “Bones. Burned. All burned.”

Her eyes glinted with rage.
 

“Why would he do that?” I said to Almara. “Why would
anyone
do that?”

“To send a message,” he moaned, rocking back and forth. “Stop the quest.”
 

For us?
The Corentin had burned all those people until nothing but bones remained
, for us?

“We have to get out of here,” I choked, standing up abruptly. I grabbed Almara’s arm and heaved him to his feet.
 

“And go where?” Jade protested.
 

“We have to get up that mountain.”