Aster Wood and the Book of Leveling (Volume 2) (12 page)

“Druce,” Erod said. “I see you’re back home again. I can’t say I’m sorry about it.”

“Hmph,” Druce said. “Not sorry, eh? Not sorry that your brother in evil has returned to our lands? Throwin’ his curses off the top of the highest tower for all to see?”

Brother in evil? Did he mean…Almara?

“He knows not what he does,” Erod said.

“Maybe, but you ain’t done nothin’ to stop him, have ya?”

“It is not my place to stop him,” he said. “And I could not, in any case, were I to try.”

“Your place more than any,” Druce grumbled. He glared at Erod, his nose crinkled in disgust as if smelling something foul.
 

Erod met his glare for a moment in the flickering light of the fire. Then he turned to me.
 

“Druce of Darkmist, I present to you Aster Wood, bearer of gold and friend to the men of the Triaden.” At his words, several gasps erupted in the crowd. In my pocket, my fingers caressed the smooth skin of the medallion. “I believe that his purpose and your own, to silence the madman, might…
intersect
.”

I looked up at Erod, surprised and suddenly more frightened than I had been since arriving in this strange, violent town. One thing was for sure: these people didn’t just fear magic, they
hated
it. What had he gotten me into? Silence the madman?

“Aster Wood,” Druce said, looking down at me with mistrust. “So you’re the one brought Erod back here to curse our people.” It wasn’t a question.

I didn’t respond.

“You don’t fool nobody,” Druce sneered. “You ain’t the first thief that tried to get at that book.”

“Let us sit,” Erod said abruptly, looking uncomfortably between the two of us.
 

Druce didn’t release me from his steel gaze, and while I tried to hold it with equal strength, I eventually crumbled beneath it and looked away.
 

Several round tree stumps circled the fire, serving as seating for those of us at the center. The remaining villagers gathered around to listen.

Druce walked over to his seat, larger and more polished than the others, and addressed his people.

“This boy says he got a tale to tell,” he growled at the crowd. “Let ‘im tell it.”

Then he sat. Erod elbowed me in the side and whispered, “Get up. So they can hear you.”
 

I stared up at him, and fear must have outlined my face, because his own softened almost immediately. He looked at me with a concern I didn’t expect.
 

“You’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “Trust me.”

And, suddenly, I did. I did trust the man who had saved our lives, though he had had little reason to do so. And remembering that fact sent a current of relief through me strong enough to get me to move. I climbed up on top of my stump and looked out at the crowd.

“Um, alright,” I started. “My name is Aster. I came here from Earth.” Grumbling swept over the crowd. My stomach seemed lighter than normal, and it danced all around my insides as I talked. I suddenly wished I hadn’t eaten quite so much dinner. “I came here by a link that I found. Since then I have tried to find a way to get back home. But the longer I stay, the more I realize that, unless I help to set things right here, things will only get worse on Earth.

“Over the past hundred years, Earth has changed from a place like here to a wasteland. First, the weather started to change. Droughts caused half the population to starve. Then, when the rains did come again, they were poisoned. Food couldn’t be grown in the fields like before.
 

“When I found out that the same sort of things had happened here, I started on my journey to find Almara. At first I just wanted to get back home. On Earth, we don’t have magic. We don’t have links, and without his help I had no idea how to get back. Well, I did find him, just today, actually, up in that castle.”

Druce grunted. “He’s mad. Dangerous. I say we get rid of ‘im, take back that castle.” A rumble from the crowd.

I stared, my train of thought lost.
 

“Actually, I was hoping you could tell me what happened to him,” I said when the people quieted.
 

“Don’t care!” Druce bellowed. “We took Riverstone when he and his
seers
,” he sneered the word, “wouldn’t stop their sinful dealings. Ain’t it funny, though, that when we had a thousand men at their gates, they took their magic and ran!” He chortled and several people in the crowd laughed with him. “Maybe they ain’t so powerful after all, eh?” Loud hoots erupted from the villagers at this.
 

“A thousand men?” I asked, looking around at the village. There couldn’t be more than fifty people here.

My question broke his laughter, and he snarled at me again.
 

“Once, before the darkness came, we had a thousand,” he said. “But even ten thousand men couldn’t have broken through stone gates full of magic. But they feared us just the same! An’ they fled away from the city, takin’ their evil with ‘em. An’ we broke through and claimed our due.”
 

I imagined a thousand, eight-foot-tall men crawling over those thick, stone gates like a swarm of insects. The idea gave me chills.
 

“But why? Wouldn’t they help you? Almara has always tried to help the planets in the Fold. He has always tried to set things right.”

“Help?” he boomed. “We didn’t go there for help, you fool!”

“But in the stories—”

“What stories? Those that the evil ones tell their children? I’ve heard these stories, about how we rose up when the sorcerers wouldn’t
share
their magic with us. They’ve taken our history an’ twisted it up. It’s nothin’ now but a snarl of lies. Our only purpose was to stamp their
gifts
down into nothingness.” His eyes fell on Erod.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Erod’s shoulders hunch. If he had expected a warm homecoming, it wasn’t meant to be.
 

“An’ you call what he does up there ‘right’?” Druce continued. “That fool draws the Corentin to us. Always did, the idiot. He practically begs him to come here, to undo the work our people have done over thousands of years. We’re ready to fight the darkness. But we ain’t stupid enough to provoke ‘im.
 

Provoke him?

My stomach stopped doing flips and I faced Druce head-on.
 

 
“You think he is
calling
to the Corentin?” I shot, angry now despite my fear. “His own daughter was imprisoned and tortured by the Corentin. And you think he wants to side with him? No. Something happened to him, and I need to find out what. We can’t win this fight without him. We need to find a way…inside.”

“Your friend up there is the
same
as the Corentin,” said Druce. “Corrupted. Ruined. The filth. An’ we need to take him outta that tower and stop ‘im.” The crowd around us continued to get more agitated.

“You’re not listening!” I shouted. “I rescued Almara’s daughter, Jade, from Cadoc of Stonemore. He tried to kill us both, but we were able to fend him off. I took his gold medallion as he beat me to a pulp. I killed him myself. The Corentin is dead.”
 

Druce openly gaped at me, and the crowd fell silent.

“You killed Cadoc?” Erod asked.
 

“Yes,” I said, feeling weirdly defensive. “And I would do it again.”

“I don’t understand,“ Druce stumbled. “How’d you do this?”

“Jade’s knife,” I said. “It has powers, and I threw it.” I gulped as I remembered the dagger spinning through the air before it hit Cadoc’s chest. “And my weapon hit its mark.”

Druce looked wildly between me and Erod.
 

“Is this true?” he said to Erod.

“I was not with them when they confronted the madman Cadoc, but I have seen the gold of which he speaks,” Erod said.

Druce stood up, puffing his chest like a frightened turkey.
 

“Show us this treasure that you describe, boy,” he commanded. His eyes had a wild, hungry look.

I looked doubtfully between him and Erod, but when Erod nodded I dug the chain out from my deep pocket and held up the medallion for the village to see.
 

Large eyes stared at the shimmering golden trinket from every direction. Druce took a step towards me, but instantly Erod was on his feet between us.
 

Erod was…there is no other way to describe it…glowing. His body pulsed with power from the bottom of his shoes to the topmost strand of hair on his head, the hint of which I had seen at the table just minutes before. A misty blue light wrapped around every part of him like a thin, shimmering blanket.
 

The villagers gasped and stepped away from both of us, frightened of the power, but Druce stood his ground.

“I have a right to see it,” he snarled at Erod. “I’m the Guide of the Solitaries.”

“No one has a right to anything to do with that medallion but for the boy who holds it,” Erod said, taking a few angry steps towards Druce. Druce backed up, and despite his clear command of the group, his eyes grew wide with fear. Then Erod turned to the crowd. “This boy has shown to me that he is on the path of truth. His desire to level the Fold is entwined with every part of his being. Solitaries, I ask you, tell this boy of the Book.”

The crowd looked uneasily between Erod’s glowing form and myself, with occasional glances towards their insulted leader. The silence dragged on for what seemed like hours, but only a minute or two passed before it was broken by a loud, clear clap of two hands. The people surrounding the source of the noise parted, and out stepped a man, ordinary but for his size. He took careful steps in our direction and then clapped again.

Then another clap came from my left. I looked down from my tree stump and saw an aged woman standing with her two hands pressed together as if in prayer.
 

Then another clap from the far side of the circle.

Soon there were ten, twenty villagers clapping all around us until the sound became confused and out of sync, like the applause of a crowd.
 

Druce’s gaze fell to the ground, and he stepped back from Erod and I, outnumbered and denied by his people. He then raised his face up to the sky. The clapping halted at once.
 

His people had spoken. And now he had no choice; he would tell the story.

“Aster Wood, hear me. The story I tell you ain’t none but those you see here have ever heard,” he said to the sky. “We’ve protected the secrets of our ancestors for seven thousand years. Tonight that secret becomes yours. May your shoulders be strong enough to bear the weight of it.”

His eyes, hard and full of his commanding, fell and met my own.
 

“Jared the Father,” he said.
 

“Jared the Father,” the villagers repeated.

“Jared held knowledge that none could’ve glimpsed or guessed at. He was the first of the Charmers. You know, boy, of the lack of gold in the Triaden?”

I nodded and grasped the chain tighter in my fingers.

“Jared knew it. In the tiny fortune of gold he had once, he saw the power that could be drawn from it. He used it for good, travelin’ the planets, helpin’ the people, keepin’ harmony in the Triaden.
 

“But he was foolish.” The crowd murmured unhappily. “Yes, I call him foolish, not because he was a fool, but because he allowed foolish thoughts to invade his mind. He believed he could change things for the better in the Fold, but the method that he chose to do so was more powerful, wilder, than he ever realized. He was foolish because he leapt so blindly without first understanding
why
.

“Have you, Aster Wood, ever taken a leap without understandin’ the consequences?” He stared at me, waiting.

“Yes,” I said. “I have. But where I come from that’s called a leap of faith. It’s not a bad thing.”

“Maybe,” Druce said. “But maybe your leaps of faith ain’t so great as to hold the power to destroy huge swaths of the universe.” He glared at me condescendingly.
 

I didn’t move or speak.
 

“Yes,” he said. “Jared had come to the end of his power. He searched and searched, and eventually he was led to the Fire Mountains. Legend told of a cache of gold buried deep in the rock. Thinkin’ it was a mine, like silver or marble might be able to be picked from the stone, he traveled to the place. What he found there was no mine, but a chamber of light. He later told that had he not covered his face with every cloth he wore that he would’ve been blinded, and when he returned his skin was covered in blisterin’ burns.

“But he continued, and in the center of the chamber he found it. Gold. Restin’ in the air, a piece maybe the size of that trinket you hold, twirled around. Usin’ his magic, he wrested it from its orbit an’ brought it back with ‘im to this very place.

“At first the people were happy with his discovery, an’ he immediately began usin’ it to heal, to travel, an’ to share his knowledge. Over time, he discovered other chambers, other gold. Over time, his treasure, an’ his powers, grew.

“But soon the trouble started. The Fold had been thrown out of alignment from the theft of those small pieces of gold. It was already too late for Jared. The gold had been split, an’ it had spread far and wide across the planets. Had he tried to find it, he would have died tryin’. It would’ve taken millennia to get all the pieces back.

“Jared knew he needed to level the Fold, to balance it again as it had been before he’d taken the gold. He made a plan to find the gold he needed, and at the same time wrote a guide for ‘imself, tried to remember every place he’d been, every piece he’d taken. He wrote the
Book of Levelin’.
 
What he didn’t know was if he’d left well enough alone, there’s a chance the planets would’ve realigned on their own.”

“But he didn’t leave well enough alone. Instead, he made the mistake of men, and sought to find more gold from the cosmos, to bring it home to Aria and attempt the Leveling. He sought Earth.”

I sucked in my breath, unable to stop myself. Druce looked at me knowingly.