Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son (19 page)

Our feet sunk into the deep sand, and I struggled to keep myself upright.

“What about the gold?” I asked, panting.

“Huh?” she puffed.

“You didn’t say where you got the gold. For the link.”

She paused, eyeing me. For a moment I thought she might drop me back down to the ground, she looked so angry.

“My gold is my business,” she said.
 

“But if you have gold—” I argued.
 

“
Had
,” she corrected. “I had gold. But I used the last of it to get me to this stinkin’ planet. Worst idea ever.”

My heart sank. Excited as I was to be heading home, the entire situation would be much easier, much less risky, if the gold could be found here, instead.

We walked off the beach now, up a path that led away from the water, but ascended in a gentle slope up the side of the cliff. I stumbled over the rocks and fell to my knees.

“Ugh,” she complained. “This ain’t gonna work, and we ain’t got time.” She put both arms underneath my armpits and hoisted me upright again. “Crane! Home!” she commanded. The dog whined and gave several loud barks.
 

Then, before I realized what she was doing, the pebbles beneath our feet started darting away from the place we had been standing a moment before. Air seemed to boil all around us without heat or flame. And then we were airborne.
 

It would have been so much better if I had been able to enjoy the flight in a healthy state. Larissa was a sailer, someone who could fly just by using the force of her mind and the magic in her veins to lift her off the ground. When I had met her last, she had started to show me her trick, and despite Kiron’s warnings I had wanted to take to the air with her. When else would I have a chance to
fly
?

But now, the loss of the steady ground beneath my feet only made my stomach turn over. I closed my eyes, trying not to think of anything except the comforting blackness behind my lids. But when I did, the pounding in my head seemed only to increase. I couldn’t win.

The ocean slipped away, and in the distance plumes of black smoke billowed up from Ossenland. I caught the scent of fire. I wanted to ask after it, wanted to know what had happened to the bustling port town, but my stomach flipped again and I stayed silent.

Five minutes of sailing across low, grassy hills, and we arrived at the outer edges of a forest that stretched wide across the land. Hidden from view, just behind the first row of trees, stood a small wood shack. Like the little hut in the swamp, it blended nearly perfectly with the surrounding trees. But the land was dry here, and the mistress of this tiny house did not possess the eerie beauty that the Watcher had.
 

She set us down carefully in the dirt, dead branches snapping under our feet. My body wanted to collapse to the ground, but Larissa held me firm.
 

“Nah, not yet,” she said. She forced me up to the door of the little hut, pushing it open, my body ahead of hers. A single chair sat waiting in the corner. She shuffled me to it and I slumped down, grateful for the end of the journey.
 

I must have passed out, because when I woke I was stretched out in the chair, a blanket tucked firmly around my legs and feet, and Crane’s blocky head laying heavily in my lap. A small table had appeared next to the chair, and on it a half-empty bowl of liquid sat. I raised my hand to my forehead and felt the hard, dry cracks of a large scab.
 

“What happened?” I asked. But only the dog answered with a huff and a lick from his giant tongue. Larissa was nowhere to be found.
 

I felt calmer. Clearer. Though the knot of worry over my mother refused to leave me entirely.

I sat up, relieved at the lack of dizziness, the pain in my head now only a twinge, a memory of what it had been. I looked out of the small window that sat next to the chair, and Larissa’s lumpy shape came into view. I raised up one hand and knocked on the rippled glass.
 

She started, whipping her head around at the sound. Then she turned and opened the door, shuffling inside.

“We’re alright for now,” she said. “But I don’t think for much longer. I’m glad you’re finally up.”

“What’s going on?” I asked, slipping out from underneath the blanket and testing my feet on the rough wood floor.
 

“She’s comin’ for ya,” she said. “Last night they burned the town, like you saw. But I don’t think they know I’m here, or if they do, they don’t know you and I have met before. For now, they won’t be after me.”
 

She let out a long, rattled sigh and sat down across from me.

“
She’s
coming for me?” I asked.

“Your girl,” she said. “The crazy one up in the tower.”

“How do you know?” I asked.
 

“Saw her men,” she said. “The giants all stormed the town late in the night. They came with the storm. And when they got there, they started searchin’ the village. Now I see they were lookin’ for you. At the time I didn’t care what they were after, I just got outta there.”

My heart dropped into my stomach. I was in the thick of battle again already.
 

“Of all the thousands of miles of beach, you just happened to find me,” I said. “How?”

She looked up at me through the straggly strands of hair that hung over her face.
 

“Saw somethin’ weird,” she said. She ran both of her hands over her thighs nervously. Then, seemingly unsure of what else to do with them, put her knobby fingers together, folding them in a gesture that made her look much less offensive than usual. Almost pleasing. “Ain’t never seen somethin’ like that.”

“What was it?” I asked.

“An animal,” she said. Crane walked up beside her and put his head in her lap. She looked down into the dog’s face, and then broke apart her laced fingers to scratch him behind the ears. “A dog, actually.”

“You found me because you saw a dog?” I asked.

“Wasn’t no ordinary dog,” she said, shooting me a glance. “I was on my way out, away from the fire, hidin’ behind buildings as I made my way to the edge of town. And there he was, a big ‘ol white dog standin’ between the trees, lookin’ at me.”

My heart, which had started to feel squashed and deflated, suddenly came back to life. I sat up straighter.
 

“You saw a White Guard animal?” I asked, shocked.
 

“And what might that be?” she asked, curious.

“They’re protectors,” I said. “It glowed?”
 

She nodded.
 

“It walked away, and I followed him. Crane didn’t care for it much. He held back, followed pretty far behind us. But the beast got me outta there. And then when we got to the water’s edge, I saw what was really goin’ on. I saw you, fightin’ your way through the sea, and the sea…well, it fought to take you under. And when it couldn’t, a big wave came and bashed you against those rocks. I never so much as dreamed of that kind of magic.” She folded her hands, again unsure. “When I finally looked back toward the dog, he had disappeared.”

I felt a small smile fight for space on my face. And finally I let it break through, grinning with relief at what she was telling me.

To be visited, much less led, by a member of the White Guard, you had to be someone worthy of their attention. You had to be good. My fears about Larissa’s intent, propelled however unfairly by her brother’s opinion of her, evaporated instantaneously.
 

But her face remained grave and worried.
 

“I don’t know what you can possibly think of to smile about,” she said harshly. “There’s an army of possessed giants out there, huntin’
you
from what I can tell.”
 

She was right, but I couldn’t help myself. Here sat possibly the only person I could trust in this place.
 

“Do you have a plan?” I asked, trying to wipe away the grin.
 

“Nah, of course not,” she said. “‘Cept to get outta here as soon as you’re able. Where you headed, anyways?”

I stood up and started shuffling through my things, strapping my pack on. I looked down at the staff, still partly wrapped in the fabric Larissa had used to protect herself from it when she wrenched it away from me. I reached out my fingers, then stopped, deciding.
 

The pain in my head was all but gone. There was still fear in me, but it mingled now with the light, airy feeling of hope.
 

I picked up the staff, and it felt slippery between my fingers. I smiled again.

“Back to your brother,” I said, evening out the straps on the backpack. “And you should, too. We’re going to need all the help we can get.”

After a brief scouring of the house, including a spell Larissa did to hide our presence there, we set out. I wasn’t sure how we would find the precise spot Owyn and I had landed at when we had left the Fire Mountains together. The warmth coming from the chaser, now in my hand, lessened my worry, and I tried to push the concern aside. I would have to trust that the strange little ball would glow hot when the place was near.

But as we skirted the edges of the forest, I suddenly remembered something I had forgotten. I still had no idea why Jade had come to Ossenland before going to Riverstone. Maybe she wanted to see it again. Maybe plot some new, horrible deed for the future. But something about the strange detour didn’t sit right with me.
 

“We need to do something before we jump,” I said, stopping and turning to Larissa. “I need to find out why Jade came here before returning to Riverstone.”
 

She stopped, her breath heaving. I guess I had been walking faster than I’d realized.
 

“What? Now?” she asked. “Why?”

“She must have had a reason not to go straight home. And it must have been a good one. Jade was obsessed with making it back to Riverstone and staying there. Why didn’t she go straight back?”

Larissa looked around nervously, searching for pursuers.
 

“I don’t know, kid,” she said, exasperated. “Can’t we deal with this later? Seems to me the thing she’s obsessed with now is killin’
you
.”

I thought about her words, and something I hadn’t considered before popped into my head.

Jade didn’t
want
to kill me.
 

That wasn’t her purpose at all. Maybe, after a while and a lot more effort on his part, the Corentin would be able to force her to do it. But it wasn’t in her nature to kill, especially not me. I remembered the shocked, horrified look on her face when she had struck Owyn down.
 

But she left you there, hanging on that ledge.
 

Yes, that was true. But in those moments she was more possessed than I had seen her before or since.

What would happen to her if she murdered me now? Her friend? Her brother?

I shook my head.

“She doesn’t want to kill me,” I said. “He does, but she won’t do it. Not yet. She wants me for something else, but I don’t know what. What I do know is that there was a reason she stopped, and it was a good one. We need to know why.”

Larissa barely looked at me as I spoke, still scanning every inch of ground she could see from our hiding spot in the trees.
 

“You should go on without me,” she said. She looked up with a familiar, condescending glint in her eye, one that I had seen many times from both her and her brother. She clenched her fists and put them on her hips. “You’ll just mess it up, ya know,” she went on. Acting superior seemed to bolster her courage. “I’ll stay. I’ll find out.”

“No,” I said. “How will you get to me after? What if they catch you? What if—”

“We can’t risk losin’ the both of us, and there’s too much that needs doin’. You go. I’ll stay and dig up the reasons.
If
there’s anyone left alive in that town to tell me.”

I weighed the options. If I went now, I might be able to head off the army before it reached Stonemore. With the attack from the Solitaries on Ossenland, I had a feeling that the men I had seen gathered in the field would be on the move by now. But if I weren’t able to meet up with Larissa again, if she found out the secrets behind Jade’s travels, and then she was discovered by the enemy, we would lose out on what could be critical information.
 

Rhainn’s face suddenly burst before me. On the boy’s face I saw the hurt, streaks of blood and mud mingled on his hollow cheeks. And standing with him, with that huge army of vicious men, were hundreds, maybe thousands of other children just like him.
 

“Alright,” I said at last. “Where will we meet?”

“I’ll head for Stonemore,” she said, changing direction. Crane walked beside her, tripping her up as she stumbled through the undergrowth.
 

“And what about him?” I asked, pointing to the dog.
 

She looked down at the mutt’s big, square head, and sighed. Then, I was surprised to see tears spring up in her eyes.
 

“I wish he’d never brought ya,” she said quietly to the dog. Crane whined and licked his lips, dancing back and forth on his front paws. Then she bent down and grabbed a large stone from the forest floor. She had already raised it above her head before I realized what she was about to do.

“Stop!” I shouted. “What are you doing? You can’t kill Crane!” I covered the distance between us in an instant and put my body between the rock and the dog. She lowered it, but did not let it go.

“They’ll kill him,” she said simply, misery outlining her face. “Only they’ll do it slow and painful, just for the pleasure of the thing.” One of the tears had broken free from her lid and slid down her dirty, wrinkled cheek.
 

“No, they won’t,” I choked. “Maybe…maybe they like dogs.”
 

It was a lie.
 

“You get outta my way now,” she said, trying to shove me aside with her elbows. “There ain’t no other way. A dog will call too much attention. We got bigger problems to deal with right now, and he’ll give us away if we take him along.”