Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  Their voices must have caught the attention of the others, for the sunlight flickered as Kylan and Gurjin came rushing in through the oval doorway. When he saw her sitting up, Gurjin’s expression faltered with emotion.

  “I was worried you weren’t going to wake up,” he said, trying to sound aloof, though his voice cracked. When he hugged her gently but firmly, she felt an invisible breath of relief.

  “I hear I have you to thank,” Naia said.

  “He’s been fretting every day,” Kylan added. He put his hand on Naia’s ankle and squeezed. “We’re all glad you’re better.”

  “I’ll go find Tavra and Onica and let them know the good news,” Amri said suddenly, and hurried out of the cave without another word. Naia watched him go, feeling a chill, though the air was warm and dry.

  “What’s wrong?” Kylan asked, seemingly unaware of the draft.

  “I’m fine. Where are we? How did we get here?”

  “The Swimmer. urSan,” Gurjin said. “She was waiting for us outside skekSa’s ship. She helped us dock Onica’s ship in Ha’rar and took us all the way down the Black River.”

  Naia closed her eyes, remembering her dream of the river. Perhaps her mind had known, at least in part, what had been going on in the waking world.

  “But the Black River flows north to Ha’rar,” she said. “urSan took us against the current? How, and how far?”

  A bigger shadow filled the doorway, nearly blocking out the light until the long-necked creature moved all the way inside. She had an indigo mane streaked with silver, tied in braids along her prominent brow that reminded Naia of skekSa’s beak. Her robes were silver and blue and green—hues of the Silver Sea—strung here and there with obsidian cord that shimmered like the Black River.

  Amri was at the Mystic’s back with Onica and their golden-haired Sifa friend. From how the latter walked, back straight and shoulders proud, Naia could tell it was still Tavra in control. Even after the journey that had given Naia time to recover, it seemed Tae’s mind had not yet healed enough to wake.

  “The Sifa Far-Dreamer’s ship could not navigate the shallow river, so I pulled a raft,” urSan said. “The Black River is broad, but it is not the swiftest in all the world. We should be safe here until you are well enough to continue your quest.”

  She flourished her four powerful arms and twitched her long tail. It might have been to demonstrate her prowess in the water, but all Naia could see was the stump on her right hand. The mirrored injury of the one Tae had given skekSa.

  Naia tried not to let it bother her. If they hadn’t taken skekSa’s hand, she could very well have been strong enough to keep them from escaping. And then where would they be?

  “Safe,” Naia echoed. “And where is . . . here?”

  urSan moved closer to Naia, lifting her locs and smoothing her forehead where her wound had been with a gentle, strong hand. Then she stepped back, out of the way so there was nothing between Naia and the doorway.

  “See for yourself,” she said.

  The cave was one of dozens clustered throughout a walkway that curved along a spiral-shaped canyon. The morning was cool in the bottom of the valley, with dew glistening, and the air was sweet with incense and wildflowers. The way the morning sun caught the dust reminded Naia of being below water, surrounded by rippling golden shafts and curtains of light. Punctuating the gentle valley were towers of stacked stones, conjoined into pillars by time and the elements. The boulders and monuments were of every size, some coming up only to Naia’s knee, while others towered high overhead. Some were covered with cloth, intricately embroidered and sewn, others painted and engraved with more symbols of time and space.

  A glitter caught Naia’s eye amid all the shades of gold and ivory and bronze. Something shining and white within the bodies of the beautiful rocks, catching the light of the Three Brothers as they passed through gauzy clouds overhead.

  “Crystal veins,” she said. “Healthy ones. Ones that haven’t been darkened by the sickness of the Crystal. So there are places still unaffected. Still healthy.”

  “Seems that way,” Gurjin muttered, almost as if he was bothered by it. Before Naia could ask what the problem was, he cleared his throat and added, “Amri’s been calling this place the Mystic Valley.”

  She glanced at the Shadowling. “Why?”

  “Well, it’s a valley, and—”

  Naia jumped when the stones that surrounded them moved. It was only then that she realized some of the stones were not stones at all. As if coming to life from the earth itself, three broad-backed, long-tailed creatures rose from where they had been sitting. One with a bandaged eye, in front of a hearth, lighting incense. One with a stringed instrument in hand. Another familiar face with eye-prisms perched on his rounded nose.

  “. . . it’s pretty mystical,” Amri finished.

  Naia glanced back across the faces of the Mystics—the urRu, the counterparts to the Skeksis. She had never seen so many of the magnificent, strange creatures in one place before. But she frowned when she took in urLii’s bespectacled face.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in the Sanctuary, guarding skekLi?”

  “I was, yes,” he agreed. “But as things change with the Gelfling—as you light the fires of resistance, as Aughra and Thra asked you to—things, too, have changed with the Skeksis.”

  “The Emperor sent reinforcements to the Caves of Grot. They overpowered the Grottan there and were able to free skekLi,” Amri said quietly.

  Naia didn’t know how to react. In her imagination she saw it all, thousands of Arathim crawling between the caverns and tunnels, leaving trails of sticky white web. The poor Grottan, already weary from losing Domrak, fighting with the last of their strength to save all that remained for them to call home.

  And the worst of it, that the Skeksis they had imprisoned there had been freed. A Skeksis they could have killed, if they’d gathered their strength. If skekLi had been destroyed when they’d confronted him in the Sanctuary, would this have happened? Had Naia and her friends made a mistake in leaving him alive? She tried not to think about what could have been or should have been, but it was hard not to imagine that the destruction in Domrak could have been prevented. How many Grottan they might have saved.

  In the end, it was just more proof that the Skeksis had to be defeated. Once and for all.

  “Did Maudra Argot manage to save some of the Grottan, at least?” she asked.

  “When I left, they had managed to flee,” urLii said. “I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do more. Maudra Argot and the Grottan are resourceful, though, and they can navigate those caves better without me. I could barely find my way back and forth to the Tomb, after all.”

  Naia tried to hold on to hope. Because of their travels to Grot, they’d found the Sanctuary Tree. They’d been able to send Kylan’s message dream-stitched among its pink petals. And of course, if they hadn’t gone to Grot, she wouldn’t have met Amri.

  She reached out and caught his hand, squeezing.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He pulled away and pushed his hands into his cloak. “Me too. We just have to believe in Maudra Argot. She didn’t get to be the oldest living maudra for nothing . . . she’ll figure something out.”

  “She will,” Naia tried to assure him.

  “There isn’t anything we can do right now, anyway,” he said. An awkward silence followed, filling with all the things Naia wanted to say but didn’t.

  Kylan cleared his throat. “I suppose you should be introduced. This is urZah the Ritual Guardian and urTih the Alchemist . . . urZah is connected to skekZok. The same way the Hunter skekMal is connected to urVa.”

  Naia took in urZah the Ritual Guardian, long and wide with his simple, sticklike instrument that was nothing like skekZok’s gilt scepter. The peaceful Mystic’s eyes were far away, as if he were looking past her into a space tha
t existed just out of sight.

  “Master urSu wanted to speak with you and your brother, when you woke,” he said. He hunched closer to the ground than the other Mystics, wide and low, and held a long instrument in his hand, parallel to the ground. The end of it was a cup, like that on a soup ladle, but it was far too shallow and small to actually eat from.

  The Mystic Master. Naia hadn’t known such a creature had even existed until that moment, but when urZah spoke his title, she knew there was no one else she wanted to meet more.

  urSan’s big head swept through the dusty air, her serpentine back curving to the very tip of her tail as she walked away. She pointed with three hands and a single stump.

  “Follow the ravine until you see a spiral stair overgrown with medicine moss. But you should be forewarned,” urSan began. “Here in the valley, a friend of yours has been recovering from a grave injury. We did not reveal his presence until now because we feared it might upset you. He is not well, and there is nothing you can do. But the Master is tending him, so when you go to see the Master, you will also see your friend.”

  Naia was already on her feet.

  “A friend? Who?”

  “It is urVa,” urSan said. “urVa the Archer.”

  CHAPTER 6

  The ravine stretched out of the center of the valley like two arms, one pointing east and the other west. Naia led the way, leaving the others behind as her stride quickened. urVa was here, and urSan hadn’t told them? Not even her friends, while she’d been unconscious?

  At least Gurjin and the others didn't know, either, Naia told herself. It would have been far worse if they had been holding out on her, too.

  Naia’s head throbbed dully at the thought, and she slowed her pace. She’d been unconscious and Gurjin had been healing her faithfully, if what Amri had said was true. Yet she still didn’t feel completely herself. Not yet, anyway. Her heart pounded, as if it hadn’t beat in ages, and her fingers tingled and twitched with exhaustion.

  Weak. That was the word for it. Weak and tired. She trudged on, slowly but no less diligently. She couldn’t be weak now. Wake up, body. Wake up, heart. We can’t let the others down now.

  A bulge in the canyon wall stuck out like a knot in a tree, overgrown with dusty golden moss and a few prickly flowering vines. A rope-and-stick ladder dangled below, wide and sturdy enough for a Mystic to climb. Naia had to stretch to reach each rung, her hands barely wrapping around the thick, sanded boughs. At the top of the ladder was a shallow landing and a simple carved doorway, shaded by the protruding rock form and its slinking vines. Without waiting for the others to join her, Naia brushed the foliage aside and went in.

  “urVa?”

  The winding chamber had pockets of sunlight, warm and golden, shining through round holes in the ceiling. The air smelled of water and herbs. Naia recognized some of the flowers and plants tied on strings to dry from the low ceiling: sogflower and mustleroot and bundles of gently glowing lichens. The tunnel barely widened before it ended, and there Naia caught her breath in her teeth.

  The stump of an old tree, just big enough to fit in the cave tunnel, sat before them. Its exterior had been sanded and whittled until smooth and was draped with quilts and fabrics. The stump rested on its side, roots that had once been in the earth now fanning out and upward, braided together by strong hands and tied with twine to form a kind of basket. Resting along the body of the stump, heavy head cradled by the basket of roots, was a Mystic with deep etchings in his face and brow over his closed eyes. Bandages packed with moss were tied to his four arms, along his shoulders, neck, and tail, and his white mane was stained auburn in places from the blood of wounds that refused to heal. His breath sounded like dry leaves in autumn.

  “urVa,” Naia whispered. She couldn’t move, as if she’d sunk into the hard rock floor up to her ankles, as she heard the footsteps and voices of her friends coming down the tunnel.

  Another urRu tended urVa. He was large, like all the Mystics, but still graceful and elegant, four long arms slightly spread so his hands floated over urVa’s body. This must be urSu, Naia realized. The Mystic Master. With great effort, she stepped closer, gingerly touching the matted hair along the Mystic Archer’s back.

  “What happened to him?” she asked.

  “We do not know,” the Master replied. His voice was not low, as Naia might have expected from the Master of the Mystic urRu; rather it sat higher in her ears, like wind blowing across the tops of mountains or through a canopy of tall trees. He didn’t seem to mind that Naia hadn’t introduced herself, nor did he seem surprised as her friends joined them. He waved a hand over the unconscious Archer, letting droplets of water fall from his square fingertips into the other Mystic’s white mane.

  “Was he attacked?” Kylan gasped when he saw. Gurjin and Amri came next, and by the time Onica and Tavra arrived, there was hardly any room left in the little chamber. A gentle breeze flitted through the openings in the ceiling, but other than that and the sound of urVa’s fragile breathing, it was silent.

  “All we know is that whatever befell urVa did not fall lightly,” Master urSu said.

  Naia held her hands over urVa’s wounds, afraid to touch him, as if he might break. She could see the shape of some of the injuries from the patterns of blood in the bandages.

  “These wounds are from blades and arrows and maybe teeth,” she said.

  “Who could have done this?” Amri asked. “And why?”

  “Maybe a darkened creature,” Onica suggested. That was a fair guess, based on the brutality of the wounds, but something about it didn’t seem right. Darkened creatures, as vicious as they could be, didn’t wield metal blades. Especially not the kind that would have cut so deeply and cleanly.

  “Or a Skeksis,” Gurjin said.

  Naia tore her attention from urVa, though her palms ached to try to heal him. She wasn’t even sure if Gelfling vliyaya would work on the urRu . . . or if she had any power left to heal, after what had happened on skekSa’s ship.

  “Master urSu,” she said, finally introducing herself. “My name is Naia. I’m the daughter of Maudra Laesid, of the Drenchen. This is my brother, Gurjin.” She introduced the others one at a time, and with each name spoken, urSu nodded gently, his careful, discerning eyes meeting each of theirs, as if locking the memory of their faces and identities into his mind forever.

  “Welcome, Gelfling of the seven clans,” urSu said. He gestured with one of his big hands for them to sit. There was meager room in the small cavern, but enough for the two Mystics and the six Gelfling.

  “We’re not seven yet,” Kylan murmured. “Our Dousan allies are fortifying in the Crystal Sea.”

  “And Rian of the Stonewood clan is off on a different journey,” Gurjin added.

  Rian. Naia hadn’t thought about the arrogant ex-soldier in a while. She wondered how he was doing, on his special errand from Aughra. While she and her friends had been sent to light the fires of resistance, he had been sent to find something, though what it was he was seeking had been kept a secret. Naia and her friends had heard nothing from him since then.

  “Hm. And rightly so,” urSu replied. “We know you have many questions, and we have much to share with you, young Gelfling. Ask.”

  “The Skeksis.” Naia asked the question that she had been asking for what seemed like forever: “How have they corrupted the Crystal of Truth, and why? And how can we stop them from hurting the Gelfling? How do we defeat them?”

  He was unsurprised by her barrage of questions, like a shore buffeted by waves. He reached up to lift a large, shallow bowl from a shelf and set it on the floor before them. The vessel was filled nearly to the brim with cloudy blue-green water, smelling of the salt and minerals that kept its waters misty.

  “Yes. Very good. Before we address the Skeksis, and how the world is now, we must understand how this world was once, and what it became. We must understand the
urSkeks.”

  “urSkek?” Tavra said. “What is that?”

  urSu waved a hand in a wide arc, dispersing the steam that rose from the bowl of clouded green water. Then he waved another hand, in the other direction. The steam spread, growing from the trembling water, spilling across the floor like a living thing. It reminded Naia of the dream-space they’d shared with Aughra, blurring the line between reality and thought.

  “Nearly two thousand trine past,” urSu began, “the Three Brother Suns aligned in the sky. One on top of the other, unleashing a pillar of light. Aughra was there that day. The voice of Thra.”

  Visions of shadow and light flickered in the wide pool of water that shivered in the bowl, and Naia saw images reflected in the water and across the rolling mist. Conjured by urSu’s magic, clear as a painting or a memory in a dreamfast: Mother Aughra, standing atop a high cliff. Watching the suns collide in the sky. A flash, a spear of pure light. Aughra’s screams as she tried to look away—and what remained when it was over. Eighteen glowing figures with long ivory faces. They wore shining robes the color of daylight, with slender arms like tree boughs and blazing shapes atop their heads that branched and tangled like fire.

  “The urSkeks,” urSu said, his voice like the sound of the vision itself. It was by his power they were seeing this unimaginable sight. “Beings from another world. Sent here on the light of the solar eclipse—the great conjoining of the suns in the sky. The gateway opened by the power of the Crystal of Truth, which connects this world to others . . .”

  urSu waved his hands once more, and the vision of the ghostly, glowing urSkeks dissipated. Eighteen, Naia had counted. Twice-Nine. The same number of Skeksis. Her hands clenched in her lap as she waited for the rest, though part of her already knew instinctively where urSu’s story would take them.

  “The urSkeks came from a world where one is all,” he said. “Where one is none. But these urSkeks were different. They were rife with discord, filled with desire. Desire for more. Because of this, they came to this place. They befriended Aughra. They showed her the wisdom of their race, which she, in turn, showed the Gelfling.”