The Crystal Curse

by Gin Hollan

  "Tinker with them..." She was thinking of her pistol and her grandfather's little box of shiny rocks. "Do you mean, they can be used as more than a battery?" That's all she'd heard anybody admit to. Her pistol proved there were other applications, beyond mental communication and power sources. This smacked of a class system, something Arabeth was dead against. "Why are they so regulated?"

  Andun scowled with his head tilted. "It doesn't take a psychic to tell me you're hiding something. You know more than you let on, don't you?"

  Sam glanced at her, mildly worried.

  "Not really, but sort of."

  That made Andun laugh. "You don't have the polish of a true politician, but that was definitely a deflection. Out with it, then. Show me the source of this question."

  "Our friend, Graham, had a crystal-infused pistol that when discharged at someone made that part of their body go numb."

  Andun smirked. "A gun your friend has?"

  Arabeth felt her face heat up, but nodded. "You're dodging the question."

  "The same kind of gun that you knocked me out with?" he continued.

  Arabeth opened her mouth then realized she hadn't thought about that. "Well, he had it. I have it now." Her face flushed crimson as she looked away.

  "My question is, what can weapons do when those shards are involved?"

  "Not much. Make you numb, that sort of thing."

  "Wait, if you're crystal sensitive, why did you wake up faster than others I've seen shot with it?"

  "That's a question for another day, I think. I'm not comfortable with you mulling the idea of shooting me."

  "Right." She sat down and crossed her legs, signalling for marbles to come relax. the little fox give her cheek a lick. "I'm normally braver than this," Arabeth whispered to Marble. What's wrong with me?"

  Sam sat down with his back to hers. "Lean back. I could use a rest too."

  "Still not willing to try the Lyar? They're not ghosts, and they won't know you're there until you touch one of them," Andun pressed.

  "Can they touch back?" She shuddered.

  "No, it's not like that. The touch is to close the distance gap, that's all."

  She closed her eyes and leaned back against Sam. With his warmth behind her and Marble's in front, her sleepiness was catching up.

  "We would be safer in the copse," Andun said, joining them in the tall grass.

  "The horses need food," Arabeth said with a sigh. As she sat, she continued to fiddle with the one shard. Melanie would contact them soon, right?

  The sun sat low on the horizon when Arabeth stood back up. Marble had already come and gone several times, apparently having forgiven Arabeth for her recent neglect. The mice in the field must've been plentiful. Several times Arabeth had seen marble leap up out of the grass to pounce on something.

  Sam and Andun had gone back into the copse to cook wild roots and other vegetables. Sam's rationale was that fire was fire, and the food would be fine. They kept it out of the smoke.

  As they came and went, Arabeth had another problem. None of their suggestions seemed like the intelligent course. No offence to them, she apologized. There was a detail or two she was missing.

  With her paralysed by indecision, the guys had set up a kind of low camp. Something else felt at work. She looked at Sam and he shrugged when she explained it. He explained to Andun that her intuition usually reliable.

  She pulled the tack off the horses and switched them to an improvised halter, tying their ropes to a stake so they could graze.

  And now, the crystals in her pack had started to glow. She stared across the ground at them, sitting only feet away now. The others hadn't noticed it yet. They would, as the light continued to diminish. She pulled a couple out and stuck them in the ground, wondering what it took to start an entire crystal field. As they sank, the ground around them radiated colour then faded. A few colour spots dotted out, away from them then faded as well. That was a good sign, right?

  The part that struck Arabeth strangest, as if anything with the crystals was normal, was that the light from them seemed to head towards the copse. She sat trying to decide if there was some form of relationship between them and the fire. Were they somehow drawn to each other, on a molecular or chemical level?

  Arabeth clutched the red crystal in one hand. Melanie hadn't said a thing yet. There had also been no sign of pursuit. It was as though they had fallen off the planet. This moment in time, in this place, felt like the one actual respite she'd had since this side of the mountains. She couldn't shake the feeling that when they left, chaos would descend. But what now?

  A motion off the horizon drew her eyes. An odd but distant glow had begun, and it had nothing to do with the sunset. She dismissed it as city lights.

  The wind shifted and she smelled the fire from the copse. What would happen when the crystals got closer to the fire? Before she noticed, Marble pulled a crystal out of the bag and was running toward the trees.

  "Marble, stop!" Arabeth jumped up to follow.

  Loud crackling and popping sounds preceded Marble running back out. A second later, fireworks shot out over Sam and Andun as they ran out. Marble slowed then as Sam neared, she jumped up and pushed off of him like using a tree to leap into Arabeth's arms. There was no sign of singeing when Arabeth caught her. She looked back to see if the horses had stayed. They were staring over, alert, but not moving.

  "What did your animal do?" Andun yelled.

  Sam looked just as panic-stricken but relieved.

  Arabeth hesitated to answer, having first to fight off the sudden flurry of licks to the face Marble was giving her.

  "Are you alright?" she asked as she looked Marble over. "What did you do, silly?"

  "Did you tell her to do that? What was she thinking?" Andun asked, puzzled.

  "I'm not sure what you mean," Arabeth said, defensive. The impulse to take the crystals to the Lyre couldn't have been externally suggested, could it? That was about as unlikely as Marble reading her mind. Suddenly the red crystal she'd been holding vibrated slightly and she felt a thought from Melanie.

  'Help, something's gone very wrong. Gregor is raving and throwing things. It's like he's lost his mind.'

  "Where are you?" Arabeth said.

  'I'll be leaving as soon as we're done talking. I'll head for that little house.'

  "What's going on?" Sam asked, standing nearer.

  Arabeth shook her head. "It's coincidence, right? Marble dropped the crystal and suddenly Gregor is violently angry, raving about things that no one can hear and making threats."

  "Like when Melanie had that thing in her head..." Sam said softly as though to himself.

  "I wonder if other Seers were impacted, and how long the effect lasts. This could be very bad," Andun said.

  "It's a good thing there aren't many Seers," Arabeth commented.

  "True, true. Until we understand what's happening. Arabeth, tell her we need to test something. Tell her to stay where she can watch Gregor, but safely."

  Arabeth relayed the request.

  'Uh... alright, I'll stay in the booth. Please hurry.'

  "Arabeth, did you see which colour Marble grabbed?" he asked.

  "Green, I think. She was fast about it."

  "Then I'll try red, like the one you have," he said, handing her the saddle bag. "Or rather, you will."

  "I'll do it," Sam lifted the flap and pulled out a yellow and a red. "May as well be thorough."

  "Sam, don't." Arabeth grabbed his arm. "I think this is something I need to do."

  "Really?" Andun's eyebrows neatly met as his brow furrowed.

  "I'm no coward," she snapped, setting Marble on the ground.

  "No one is suggesting you are." Sam kept his grip on the saddle bag.

  "It's not a matter of courage. Ladies aren't suited to adventure, by sensibility, not pre-disposition," Andun said with such conviction that Arabeth had to cover a smile.

  "By that definition, you're more of a lady than I am." Arabeth opened the
lid and pulled out the two colours he suggested.

  Andun didn't seem to know how to respond to that. Arabeth walked over and ruffled his hair. "I'm joking. Don't listen to me."

  "And then you mess my hair." Andun ran his fingers through to sort it back out. "Whatever. Go." He shrugged.

  Marble sat with her tail curled around Arabeth's neck as she walked toward the clearing again. "Why didn't you wait until I'd made my mind up?" Arabeth said to her. The fox licked her cheek.

  She slowed at the tree line and leaned in. It looked the same. Arabeth had a plan. This time she thought about the man who was chasing Andun, trying to steal his throne. As she did, a ghostly visage resembling him appeared. He was bent over a table. As Arabeth looked, the image of the table became clearer. There was a small, lidded wooden box. Suddenly the man looked her way, causing her to recoil and close her mind.

  He disappeared, but the table remained. Arabeth tucked the stones into her pocket and walked gingerly forward. As she neared, the box started to move away then was gone. She had wanted a look inside, so she let her mind follow the box. It didn't seem dangerous at first, but suddenly her heart started to scramble around in her chest and she felt weak.

  She forced herself to forget the table, to forget the box, reaching up to focus on Marble instead. Petting Marble, she felt herself calm down. Did the people she saw, also see her? That would at least be fair.

  She withdrew the yellow stone from her pocket and hurried to the edge of the clearing closest to the exit. Raising her arms, she aimed for the Centre of the Lyar. She only hesitated a moment, then threw it, turned, and ran to what she hoped was a safe distance.

  This time there was no sparking or fireworks. Arabeth took a step forward at a time, until she was close enough to see the crystal clearly. It hovered at about eye level in the Centre of the space. But, what was it doing?

  Arabeth, not willing to risk the other people she had met so far, thought again about the King's Advisor. She tried to imagine him in front of her, near the crystal.

  He appeared again, agitated. He didn't take notice of her this time. Arabeth walked forward, seeing that he clutched the box to himself as though priceless. How close could she get before she was spotted this time? Her heart was pounding in her chest, the memory of what happened the first time screaming from the back of her mind. She was safe, though. She told herself this was safe. He hadn't seen her.

  If the yellow stone obscured his ability to see her, she thought, she'd be unstoppable. Who in this day and time new how to stop this form of spying? Still, she shouldn't take chances when everything was an uneducated guess.

  The adviser slipped his hand into the box pulled out a long, stubby shape. As he turned it, she realized it was a metal stamp, like the kind used to seal wax on the back of letters. This one had a coat of arms. Was it his, or was it the Royal family's seal? Judging by the way he acted with it, it couldn't be his. Arabeth focused on the design so that she could describe it to Andun. Two lions, a horse, and a chalice.

  What else could she find out by following him?

  Suddenly she felt heat on her arm. Turning, she blinked to refocus her eyes and saw Sam.

  "What do you want?" she whispered then looked back to see if her voice carried to the advisor. She couldn't tell if he reacted or not. Not wanting to take a chance, she cleared her mind.

  "I just came to check on you. Did I see what I thought I saw? You were watching someone?"

  "Yes, and I need to speak with Andun immediately." She reached out and took the yellow crystal, slipping it into her pocket.

  // Chapter 34 //

  "Does a coat of arms with two lions, a horse, and a chalice mean anything to you? He seemed exceptionally cautious while handling it."

  He nodded slowly.

  “I was using the yellow crystal and looking in on your advisor. I saw what on a large metal stamp.”

  "Could you tell what he was planning to do?"

  "No, but he acted like someone had only just brought it to him. It's weird but, when I watched them without the yellow crystal, it seemed like he could see me, too. When I put the yellow crystal in, he couldn't. He didn't do anything interesting. Or maybe he was being cautious."

  "I'd rather he thought you were a ghost. Did you find out what the blue crystal does?" Sam asked.

  Arabeth shook her head. "They do seem to follow an order, though. If red is pyrotechnics, it would symbolize fire. Yellow obscures things, symbolizing airborne particles or fog. My guess is that blue is going to do something fairly wet. I need to test green, orange, and purple. There's a gorgeous sage green one, too. I don't think we have time to test them all, but we should know what the base colours do."

  "I can't see blue being useful... unless we need to drop somebody into the ocean." Andun sounded like he was kidding, but his face was serious.

  "Or are dying of thirst." Arabeth was thinking about her lack of long-term provisioning, and how Sam seemed to have left his back pack behind somewhere.

  "Do we want to take the time to test it, or should we stop for now?" Sam asked.

  "If we need to do it at all, let's get it done. I don't want to waste time if it's simple chronicling," Arabeth said. "There are other copses, other opportunities."

  "At least my assembly instructions make more sense, now." Andun went to the small container with his trinkets inside. "I'm supposed to use one particular copse."

  "Which one?" Sam asked.

  He shook his head slowly. "I didn't see one in the spot I was told."

  Frowning, Arabeth went to her satchel and pulled out the maps Clare had given them. "Would these help?"

  "Maybe," he took one and started unfolding it. "I'm good with maps, but I didn't get out much. Places look really different once you're there."

  "Wait, you've never travelled before this?" Sam asked, surprised.

  "To quote my guardians, 'It's too much to risk, after what happened to your parents,' and so forth." He didn't look up from his current map. I think they just didn't want people to be able to recognize me and confirm my identity."

  "Okay, that may be pushing it." Sam sneered.

  Andun's face had flushed beet red. "No one asked you to believe me." Standing, he grabbed up the bag of parts and stalked toward the copse.

  Arabeth went to the saddlebag and pulled out the colours she hadn't tested yet and wrapped them in a cloth before putting them in her satchel. About this, she had more trust in Andun. "Are you coming?" she asked Sam.

  Hearing the cue, Marble ran at Sam and used him as a tree again, vaulting herself up to Arabeth's shoulder.

  "I wonder what would happen if you imagined home," Sam said.

  Arabeth shook her head. "I... wasn't going to risk anyone there while testing."

  "Not the people. Your house. If the Advisor could see and hear you, can you touch things on the other side?"

  "That would be an assassin’s dream come true."

  "Wait... that went dark fast. I meant, can we just go home, and let the politics here proceed as it would have. Why do you need to get involved?"

  "You don't sound like the Sam I know." She turned and walked after Andun.

  "Think about it. There is no formal policing system out here. Even if we catch someone betraying the crown, who is there to punish them, or even lock them away? The guards will be loyal to the one paying their wages, and right now that is not Andun,” he said, following.

  "You may not have noticed, but there are a lot of old-fashioned ideals out here. People still love the idea of a monarchy. There are monuments to the King and Queen in every city."

  "That's nostalgia. That won't save a life."

  "It'll save his, and that makes it the right thing to do." This conversation was over if he was going to be myopic about this. Marble nudged her cheek. "You're right," she reached up to pet Marble's head. "We should go."

  She walked away, trying to focus on Andun's problem, not Sam's. He seemed to use law and rules to keep things easy, clearer, for him. A
rabeth followed a moral code, and that didn't always mesh with local laws. She was at peace with that.

  She heard him following and sighed. He'd been out of sorts since the chat he'd had with the local constabulary. Finding out there was no rule of law here, aside from Regional leadership, made him nervous. Arabeth wanted to know how the King stayed in power with such an arrangement.

  Did Sam have an alcohol problem? The question popped into her head, startling her. If he had been drinking as often as Melanie said while Arabeth was married to that schmuck, he may have developed a habit, even if it wasn't a predisposition. This trip was drying him out, if that was the case.

  Maybe that's why he was a bear right now. She shook her head again. There was no good excuse for bad behaviour. She would give him his distance and let them work it out. She glanced back at him, noting his steady walk, calm demeanour and focus. If this was a man drying out, she didn't see it. There had to be 100 other reasons he was being like this. And she wasn't curious about any of them.

  He had been burning a number of bridges recently, though. No longer a licensed police detective, he'd been following her around acting as a bodyguard and assistant with her own work. That was fine, because they got on well, but it wouldn't pay his bills. And then she found out he'd been working for her parents in a precisely that capacity. They had hired him without telling her. No one had thought to tell her. They would have to talk this out soon.

  "You know, I used to wake up every day with the thought that if I put in an honest daily effort, life would improve incrementally, and eventually things would function like a well-oiled machine," Sam said. “But it's not like that at all.”

  Arabeth nodded. What he said reflected her inner world as well.

  "I think we can make a difference here, by helping Andun and... even though this goes against our goal of getting back home, I want to help him start a national policing service. I just have to train a few people and make sure they have a plan in place to carry it forward,” Sam said. "But would you be okay with that? I'd be gone for at least six months. Maybe a year.”

  "Justice delayed is justice denied,” Arabeth said. She didn't want to admit it, but she hated the idea of leaving him behind. “As long as you'll be safe, I think it's worth it. I hate what I've been seeing here. No one trusts each other. I think the Lyar system is to blame, which makes it our ancestors fault. I've begun to think we have an obligation to help."