Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (28 page)

“Jade!” I hollered. I got to my feet and quickly stashed the book in my backpack. It just barely fit. Then I went after her. Her blue light was already disappearing around the corner of the tunnel.
 

“Hey!” I yelled. “Wait up!”

But she didn’t wait. I started running again, and with the next lurch of the mountain was knocked sideways into the tunnel. I didn’t care. I had to catch up to her. Had to explain…somehow…that things weren’t what she thought. I had to win her back. We had the book now. We had a chance.

The floor shook again, and quickly my thoughts shifted to saving my own life. Pebbles pried loose from long ages of supporting the mountain rained down on my head, and I struggled onward. As I approached the entrance to the cavern, the screeching screams of the dragons washed over me. Beyond the protection of the tunnel, I could see them flying haphazardly through the air, crashing into one another in their panic.
 

Jade was walking determinedly towards them.

“Wait!” I yelled.
 

But she walked on. Purposefully, quickly. She betrayed no panic as she entered the cavern, and both of her arms raised wide and high above her head as she reached the place where the bridge had stood less than an hour ago. She turned back and glared at me.
 

And suddenly I understood.
 

She was mad.

Her brows angled downward over her malicious, near-black eyes. Her whole body glowed with a sickening green, and the tendrils of her power cut long, jagged lines deep into her flesh. She seemed not to notice or care, and walked away from me, out into the fray of the canyon.

Rocks the size of bowling balls flew upwards at her silent command, and the bridge reformed in an elegant arch beneath her feet. She strode onto them fearlessly as they swirled up from the floor thousands of feet below, fitting together over the great chasm as if an artist had spent years connecting them. She glided with an elegance that wasn’t her own across it.
 

When I reached the cavern I stopped, watching her retreating back, eyeing the panicked dragons. They paid me no attention, instead screeching as enormous boulders tumbled from far above. Then the far dragon was knocked down beneath one, and his brother dove after him as he plummeted to the roaring water below.
 

The sound of tumbling rock brought me back to myself. I looked back to Jade and saw with horror that the bridge was crumbling in her wake. She released the stones from their positions as she moved across to the other side until she was standing atop a bridge that was floating in midair.
 

The ground far below seemed to buck and sway beneath me, threatening to undo me. It had to be
now
. I took a deep breath and leapt onto what remained of the path after her. I scrambled and stumbled to keep up and stay standing. The stones slipped from beneath my boots as I ran, barely able to move fast enough to keep my feet on the solid portion of the bridge.
 

In moments, Jade had reached the other side, and the bridge was falling faster, all at once now. I was ten feet from the edge. Five. Two.

And then the last of the stones were gone, falling powerless to the misty depths below. I leapt just in time, grasping the ledge on the other side of the chasm.
 

“Jade!” I wailed. “Jade! Help!”

But she didn’t come.
 

My legs flailed as I tried to find somewhere to place my feet. My toes found purchase on a slim shelf of rock, and I balanced precariously.

“Jade!”

Around me the place was coming to pieces. The mountain came down in chunks as large as skyscrapers, and in the back of my mind I noticed that the dragons had gone silent. The roar of the falling rock outstripped every other sound, and I could barely hear my own voice as I called for her.
 

I dug my fingernails into the rock and pushed off my toes, hard. I was able to plant both elbows on the flat ground above, and then swung my leg around the edge, hoisting my body over until I lay, panting, on the edge of the precipice.
 

My rest was short-lived. Above, a boulder broke loose and crashed against the chasm wall as it bore down on me. I rolled to one side, the chunk of mountain barely missing me and hitting, instead, the edge of the rock that had once been the footpath to the bridge. The massive weight of the stone tore away the ledge, and I scrambled towards the tunnel that had brought us here. As I ran, the chasm collapsed in earnest. As the last of the light that shone down from the peak of the mountain was blotted out by a mass of stone, I reached the tunnel.
 

I didn’t stop. My arms held out in front of me like a blind man, I moved through the black tunnel as fast as I could, wishing for the daylight on the other side. The mountain shuddered and jolted, tossing me like a rag doll up against the jagged sides of the tunnel. My arm bashed against the hard rock. Then my temple was cut open as I was thrown to the other side.
 

But I ran on, wishing to find Jade’s light up ahead, willing it to appear before me. I had, strapped securely to my back, our salvation. I knew it for certain now by the crumbling mountain around us. And we both needed that salvation now more than ever, for in her eyes roared a new emotion: hatred. Hot, angry fire.
 

Corentin fire.

I had to get to her.

But I only made it a few steps farther. I stopped, my breath coming in ragged gasps, tightness clenching my chest for the first time in many long months. My mind reeled. I wasn’t sure I wanted to get to her. She had left me hanging from that ledge, dangling an inch from certain death, and she hadn’t even looked back. My chest burned with anger at her betrayal.
 

Through the darkness I saw her black eyes staring back at me, and I was reminded that it wasn’t her fault.
 

But part of me was happy she was gone. Let her go. Let her get out there and see that facing the Corentin, alone, was the wrong choice. Let her learn for herself what she had lost when she turned her back on me.

Almara.

My insides grew heavy with loss again as I remembered his absence. If only he had remained. He was the last thread, Jade’s last slim link to sanity, and that thread had broken along with his brittle body as he had jumped from the ledge to ensure our success at retrieving the book.
 

Jade.

In so many ways she was still just a little girl, and while I was only a few years older, I could see her youth clearly. Maybe the torture of that mountain prison, for her, had continued all along, was still happening right this moment.
 

I pushed myself off the wall and continued slowly down the black tunnel towards the outside world beyond. If she hadn’t left me behind, if she was still on this mountaintop and able to be found, then I would stick with her. I would follow her if she refused to travel alongside me. The image of her gripping the Kinstone flashed in my mind, and I realized that my chances were slim. Surely she must be already gone, jumped away to someplace new, searching for a new kind of salve for her wounds. I shuddered as I considered what types of relief the Corentin’s power might drive her towards.
 

The only thing that kept me moving forward was the fact that I now held the book. A chance at victory swung awkwardly in the pack, bumping against my back as I walked. I had no idea what was written in its pages. No idea if I would have the power to use it to set things right. But just knowing that I had the thing was enough for now. I had succeeded beyond the conquests of any who had come before me. Seven thousand years it had been locked away in that tiny room, and now it was broken free, a weapon to be used against our enemies.
 

I gulped, hoping that Jade would not fall so far to the Corentin’s fire as to be counted on that list.
 

When I finally saw the light of the fading afternoon up ahead, relief flooded through me. The hot, sticky air of the bowels of the great mountain suddenly became stifling with the promise of the cold, crisp breeze mere steps away. I emerged from the tunnel exhausted, like an aged man forced to run a great distance. Dropping the pack from my back, I collapsed to the ground. I scanned the mountainside, but Jade did not betray her location. I lay back and breathed deeply, the view of the darkening sky above an immense relief to my tattered spirit. Then I heard it.

Laughter.
 

The sound was high and strained, like a guitar string pulled to the verge of snapping. I scrambled to my feet and started down the mountain in the direction of the noise. It became louder and louder, practically ringing in my ears as it echoed off the boulders. The sound sent shivers across my skin, growing louder with each step I took. My stomach turned uncomfortably. As I crested the small hill on the edge of the destroyed village, I saw her.
 

Jade stood in front of the small church, her face stretched into a wide, wicked smile. She was staring inside, and I knew what she was seeing. That same pile of burned bodies that had made me recoil and flee, she now found humor in. I stood still, gaping at her in horror and disgust.
 

Slowly, lazily, her head turned, and her eyes met mine. Her laughing ceased as she regarded me, as if considering the possible solutions to a puzzle. But then, as I lifted my boots from the granite and ran towards her, she raised the Kinstone above her head and vanished.
 

I slowed as I reached the bottom of the hill, bending over to catch my breath when I got to the front of the church. On the ground something caught my eye. A figure from inside the building had been brought out, the bones arranged in a disgusting spectacle at the doorstep. The legs were set at odd, bent angles, as if the bones were frozen in time, mid-flight. The arms folded over the chest, both hands cupped together where the heart, had any remained, would reside.
 

I raised my hands over my own chest, the memory of being unable to breathe forever entwined with that gesture. How many times back on Earth had I struck that very pose?
 

And the skull, twisted backwards, as if glancing back at a predator.

Why had she done this? I moved closer and, leaning over, saw the message Jade had left for me. Cut deep into the forehead of the skull, the shadow of Jared’s symbol stared up at me in the fading light.

I fell to my knees as realization washed over me.
 

It was me. This broken and burned victim of the Corentin was me. Would be me.
 

Her threat hung in the air all around, weighted me to the mountain so that I could barely move. Finally, the truth of what had transpired, and the truth of what was to come, hit me. Loss has a greater impact, sometimes, than fear. And now I truly understood.

Jade of Borna, my friend, was gone.

I must have slept, because I didn’t become conscious again until late into the night. I lay sprawled at the feet of the skeleton that bore my name and watched the sky.
 

In the end, the Corentin had never come for us at all, never shown his face to prevent us from gaining the one prize that might be his undoing. Instead, we had scurried through his maze like little mice, falling right into his carefully laid trap. Perhaps he was watching us from afar somewhere. Or perhaps his attention had already moved elsewhere, to more important targets.
 

Though I now held the book, it didn’t matter. His deed was done. Our party, our quest, our family, was destroyed. Without them, I couldn’t see how I could make one bit of difference in these speeding, reckless worlds, book or no book.

For a while I didn’t move. Hopelessness belonged to this night. Maybe tomorrow I would rally, but tonight I mourned. As the stars twinkled and shimmered in the heavens, I was reminded of my long sleep, taken without choice after Cadoc had smashed my chest, and my life, with the heel of his boot. I was technically dead then, and I had floated among the stars, becoming one of them after the the last bit of life had drained from my body.
 

But, after a long, long time, Jade had wrestled me back into the living world. Bit by bit, her magic had pulled me from the peace and serenity of the stars and returned me to my body. Maybe, a tiny, hopeful voice said, I could do the same for her.
 

But I don’t have magic.

Ah, but I did. I had taken the book when she had been unable to. That was at least something.
 

But I don’t know how to use it.
 

That was true. I had experienced magic, had felt it coursing through my veins as I flew across the grassy plains, faster than any creature, man or beast. I had gripped the edges of the book easily, as if it were nothing more special than a library hardback. But I had no control over whatever this power was. I couldn’t use it at my will. Though, maybe I could try to learn.

I can’t learn. Jade already tried to teach me, and I failed to create so much as a spark.

But maybe, deep down, Jade hadn’t wanted me to learn. And I remembered that, by then, she was already wrestling with the power of the Corentin over her mind.

As I wrestled with questions I had no answers to, the sun pierced through the night. I sat up and pulled my pack over, opening the wide, drawstring top.

The book was more awkward than heavy, and time had all but crumbled its cover. I opened it, the one true hope that remained to me, and eagerly searched its pages.
 

I nearly threw it off the mountaintop when I discovered that they were blank.

My hands gripped onto the corners of the ancient parchment, and it was all I could do to keep from crumpling them inside my fists. But when I pulled my hands away, instead of empty pages, markings were left where my skin had touched the paper.
 

I ogled at the sight, and then frantically rubbed the palms of my hands over the surface. Like bread toasting in the oven, deep brown lines burned into the pages everywhere that had made contact with my skin.