Free Aster Wood and the Blackburn Son by J B Cantwell Page B

kill me,” I said. Gold, a treasure back on Earth, was of immeasurable value in the Triaden. It was a force so great that its possession would make the weak wizard a mighty sorcerer. It launched people from point to point across an entire universe. And it would make my friend, already filled with so much raw stone talent, more powerful than them all.  
    “She will, or this army will,” he said. “Or maybe the Corentin, himself. I would not have you throw your life away for this cause. And yet you must go. There is no other who can.”
    Behind Owyn’s smile, the pain remained. The courage that had been required to survive two hundred years of torture at Cadoc’s hands still stirred behind those irises.  
    “But what about the children? What about Rhainn?” The pull of my commitment to him was painful as I imagined leaving here to focus on some other task. Time was so precious, and we had so little of it.  
    “If we face that army now, without the gold, we will lose,” he said. “All will perish then, and nothing will remain to save. Surely you must understand this.”
    It was all I could do to keep standing. The pain in my chest radiated out into the rest of my body, adrenaline and despair combined, torturing me.  
    I nodded.
    He smiled a thin, grim line. Then he lifted his hand out to me as all the other men had done before. I stared at it for a moment, a little surprised. Then I put mine into his.
    And Owyn Gildas, original of the Eight, leader of the Stonemore resistance, bowed his head.  

CHAPTER NINE

    That night, we sat around a fire deep within the grove of trees. Owyn, who had been traveling for some time beyond the reach of Stonemore’s spell, had some food with him. But while it would have been enough to last him a few days, split between eleven of us it had done little but whet our appetites for a meal that was not to come.  
    The group was quiet. Many sets of eyes trained on the flames as the minds of the men tried to comprehend all that had transpired. Nobody had much in the way of ideas about how to release Stonemore. And I, myself, wondered what would come tomorrow.  
    Kiron sat apart from the group, the Book of Leveling propped up on his knees. I had revealed the writings on most of the pages before giving it over to him to study. Now he poured over it, searching for the clue that would reveal how we could accomplish what was feeling more and more like an impossible task.  
    Owyn lay close to the fire, his eyes closed.  
    I didn’t know what to make of Owyn. Everybody else in the group seemed to accept him with ease. But to me, he seemed so different from the determined, tortured leader I had met down in the dungeons. He had been part of Almara’s original quest to travel the Fold and find the cure for the ailing worlds. Then, when Almara had been forced to flee Stonemore, he had been taken captive and held prisoner by Cadoc. For two hundred years his life had been artificially extended. Just like Jade’s.  
    But now he seemed so cheerful and flashy. Something about him made me nervous. He was not the severe man I remembered.  
    Over the scant meal, Kiron had explained how, with Chapman’s help, they had discovered those in the city who were sympathetic to Almara’s cause. There hadn’t been many, and fewer still who had any sort of magic they could bring to the group. But after a time they had gathered a respectable following, and once Cadoc was gone, things had become easier. The people in town were much less suspicious now that the tyrant who had overseen them for so long had disappeared.  
    Chapman waddled over and plopped down beside me. His pink suit had already gathered a large amount of dirt, and though he tried to keep himself clean, it seemed that each time he brushed some of it off he got even dirtier. Finally he settled and, smoothing the scant remaining hair left on his bald head to the side, smiled.
    “So how are you, child?” he asked.  
    Being in Chapman’s