Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  “And?” Laesid asked.

  “The purple blight in the splinters faded,” Bellanji said. “I saw it myself.”

  But Maudra Laesid did not buy it, and neither did Naia.

  “But you say it’s only slowing it down,” Naia said. “That’s not healing it. That’s not final. You’re describing the amputation of an infected finger, not a healing of the infection itself.”

  “Not only that, but this vein feeds Great Smerth,” Laesid added. “Or it did, before it was darkened. Breaking off the crystal veins is the same as breaking Great Smerth away from the Heart of Thra.”

  “The Heart of Thra which has become darkened!” Bellanji cried. Naia knew his anger wasn’t toward her or her mother, but it bit nonetheless. “Would you rather Great Smerth die quickly and in agony?”

  “Of course not!” Naia cried. “But Mother’s right. Thra is sick. We can’t cut Great Smerth off from the Crystal, and we can’t heal the Crystal by healing Great Smerth.”

  “So what are you saying?” Gurjin demanded.

  “You know what I’m saying, Gurjin!”

  “We have to abandon Great Smerth,” Maudra Laesid interrupted. Nearly commanded. “As I said, and as I have ordered the Drenchen already. I do not relish it, but it is the only course of action.”

  “Then I’ll say as I’ve said again!” Bellanji bellowed. “I will not leave Great Smerth, not to fight the Skeksis and not even to join you, whom I love with all my heart! I will stay here with the healers and do what you will not. To save the tree that gave us life.”

  Maudra Laesid stood abruptly, shoving her chair back and snatching her spear.

  “I have traveled a long way without rest, only to have this argument again. And yet I leave this night at the same impasse as on the night I left with the warriors. I must rest. But we will meet again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next, until I can convince you of this tragic thing we must do to save the Drenchen and join the Gelfling resistance.”

  Bellanji stood, too. Usually he might offer his arm to Naia’s mother and they would walk together to their bedchamber to retire for the evening. But not this night.

  “Then I will see you again in the morning, Laesid, and convince the mother in you not to abandon the mother tree that surrounds us even now,” he said.

  Then the two parted ways, Maudra Laesid heading up the spiraling staircase with Chapyora while Bellanji stomped out the front gate. Naia got to her feet before Gurjin could beat her to it. She could barely wait until her parents were out of sight before the terrible feeling in her chest came out.

  “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me the darkening had reached Great Smerth!” she cried.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound sorry. “You would have just blown up, the way you’re blowing up now. I was waiting for the right time!”

  “The right time? The right time would have been right away, not as we’re walking into the hall!”

  Amri and Kylan, Eliona and Pemma remained silent as the big room seemed to shrink. As she looked into Gurjin’s eyes, she saw her own face looking back. She and he, reflecting each other like two halves, even after all they’d done apart.

  “How could you keep this from me for so long?” Naia whispered. “After everything you said about trust . . .”

  “Well, maybe I was wrong.”

  Gurjin’s voice cracked when he answered, and she felt a pinch of remorse. This hurt him, too, and all she was doing was yelling at him. It was his fault that he hadn’t told her, but it wasn’t his fault this was happening. It wasn’t his fault that the Skeksis had done what they had, and that the reach of their destruction on the Crystal had finally reached the one place Naia had believed to be safe.

  “I need to see it,” she said. It was like her heart was talking without waiting for her mind to catch up. Then her feet were moving, walking at a quickening pace. Out of the great hall, away from her friends and brother and sisters. Anywhere but there.

  CHAPTER 20

  Only a few perimeter torches were still lit by the time Naia exited the great hall, ignoring Kylan and Amri calling after her. The rest of the swamp had vanished into the night fog, with one or two golden flickers hanging in the trees where Drenchen had fires lit in their hanging huts. Two guards stood at either side of the great hall’s gate, nodding briefly to Naia when she burst out onto the Glenfoot. She skirted past the guards and followed one of the big old roots that curved down from the Glenfoot, sloping like a slide toward the deep water that pooled around Great Smerth’s base.

  The fishery was below, a network of reed pens to keep fish where they could spawn and live happily until it was time to catch and eat them. The root path twisted in an easy spiral and along the water, trained and shaped over hundreds of trine. Naia had always taken it for granted, as a child even believing it had grown that way naturally. But now as she followed it closer to the water, she wondered if the technique of training the root had been given to the Drenchen by Aughra—and if Aughra, in turn, had learned it from the urSkeks when they had arrived on this world. The more she knew, and the more she opened her eyes, the more it felt as if there was nothing that was untouched by them.

  The fish were nearly invisible in the dark water under the tree, floating lazily, since all the evening insects had either flown away or been eaten. Naia climbed down a rope ladder, dropping away from it and diving into the water. It wasn’t too deep. During the day it was easy to see the bottom, when the water was clear. Now it was dark, but she had played in the fish cellars many times as a child. Finding her way by touch and using her wings as fins, she swam down to where the mud had been cleared and large, flat stones were stacked into cellars for blindfish to hide in.

  Light glimmered between the stones of one of the cellars before she reached it. It was dim, its color difficult to make out in the nighttime water. Naia’s presence woke some of the blindfish, spooking them out of their silt beds so plumes of soft mud clouded the water. By the time it cleared, Naia reached the underwater cellar and looked inside.

  A crystal vein was exposed in the mud, about the width of Naia’s finger. It was just a ridge, peeking above the silt—not a cluster like what she and Amri had seen in the valley of the stones. She waved the last clouds of mud away and let out a big bubble of relief. The vein was clear, its light the color of the suns. It went straight under Great Smerth, buried in its roots somewhere far below in the mud and water of the swamp.

  Naia brushed away the silt on one end of the vein, revealing a jagged portion of rock where the vein suddenly ended. There were cracks in the stone where it had been struck by Eliona and Kipper’s cudgel, and where the fracture broke the rock, it broke the crystal vein, too. On the side that was closer to Great Smerth, the crystal was very dim but clear; on the other side, no light showed in the vein, dark or light. It was proof of Eliona’s words: They had severed the tree from the darkening.

  Naia gazed at the broken vein. It was bittersweet to behold. Though the darkening was stopped from spreading into Great Smerth, it also meant this vein was broken off from the Crystal. How many more veins spread under the earth and water? Here, and everywhere else in Thra? The Crystal was what bled life into the land. It wasn’t possible to cut it away. Not like this. What Laesid had said was true. This was not a lasting solution.

  But Bellanji wasn’t wrong, either. If they could slow the sickness, then didn’t they owe it to Great Smerth to do whatever they could to protect its life as long as possible? Naia didn’t know what to do. Though she had wanted to see the vein for herself, even knowing Eliona had been telling the truth didn’t give her any more answers. If only Naia could be in two places at once, doing two things at the same time. Healing Great Smerth and the Crystal. One hand healing the fingertips of Thra, the other pressed against its heart.

  Naia let out a big sigh of water and bubbles. Even if she could be in two places at once, she was
no longer a healer. Not enough for something like this. The blue light hadn’t come to her no matter how many times she’d tried, not since she’d failed at healing Amri in the cave.

  The water shifted from her sigh, blowing back mud and spooking a little blindfish that hadn’t woken when she’d first entered the cellar. It wriggled sluggishly, then shook itself free from the mud, long whiskers perking around its eyeless face, six white fins illuminated by the crystal vein’s light.

  Naia watched it, tilting her head. Blindfish were skittish and difficult to catch because of it. That was why the Drenchen kept the cellars, to make fishing easier. But this blindfish didn’t try to swim away like the others. It drifted listlessly in the water in front of her, as if dazed, or maybe still asleep.

  Then it darted forward and bit her.

  Naia yelped as its tiny teeth pricked her arm. She swatted at it, hard, and it finally flicked its fins and disappeared into the dark water. Blindfish barely had any teeth and its bite hadn’t even drawn blood, but the edges of Naia’s ears still buzzed with alarm. Blindfish never bit, and especially never bit Gelfling.

  A terrible feeling melted across Naia’s shoulders like a current of cold water. She reached out and pressed her fingers into the soft mud where the blindfish had been buried, clearing it to the bedrock. As she did, a familiar violet haze filled the cellar.

  No, no, no . . .

  She stood on the lake floor and spread her wings. With a few powerful thrusts, a wave of water burst through the cellar, blowing the mud out the holes between the stones until the bedrock was bare for her to see.

  The vein had surely been broken by Eliona and Kipper’s blue stone cudgel. But the complete result of their operation had been hidden by all the mud. Where the darkened vein ended, hairline splinters raced out in wide arcs, fresh and bright and violet. They stretched through the bedrock, reconnecting on the other side of the crystal ribbon, bleeding their darkened blight into it just as badly—if not worse—than before.

  Naia knelt above the veins, paralyzed by fear and horror. They were the same veins that crossed the swamp and the plains, traveled through the Dark Wood. Spread from that place where the Crystal was kept, where it shone down into the chute of fire and lit the world with its light and the light of the three suns. The veins were connected, as all in Thra was connected—the veins were part of the Crystal, as all the creatures of Thra were part of one another. Though she was far from the Crystal itself, its song reached her even here. It was a melody without harmony, a song broken into discord. The Crystal, reverberating with its powerful voice, incomplete in ruins without its missing shard.

  Where was that shard that had gone flying from the wound in the Crystal? Lost forever? Without it, could the Crystal even be healed, or was it doomed to remain incomplete forever, all thanks to the Skeksis?

  And the Mystics, Naia reminded herself. They were the same. Creatures from beyond Thra in a world that was not theirs. And now they were destroying it, bit by bit. The proof was just below her fingertips.

  How dare they. How dare they hurt what I love.

  Blue light glowed through the muddy haze. In her grief, her vliyaya had sparked to life. She gazed upon it, weakly pooling in her hands, lighting the water that swirled slowly through the cellar. Its dim light shone off the crystal veins like moonlight. The ability to heal. The will to mend.

  Why had it come back now? This special fire that had been given to her by Thra?

  Perhaps it was time to give it back.

  The crystal sparked the same way it had in the Mystic Valley, but this time Naia was ready. She gritted her teeth against the initial jolt of energy and pain, pushing her hands through it until they were flat against the darkened crystal. The lake vanished, racing away from her as she fell into the crystal vein, her mind overwhelmed by the droning, crackling, humming—then she was flying through the earth, along the rivers of crystal veins, fast as light and pulled by an irresistible, powerful force.

  She saw it. The Crystal of Truth, spinning in the chamber at the center of the Castle of the Crystal. Dark amethyst and red, the last ounces of purity all but gone from its rugged, faceted body. The color was the sign of its pain. The sign of its torture and madness, the blazing color of its corruption.

  Naia felt the light in her hand streaming out, taking with it her own life force. Pulled in like a fish on a line, bleeding her of it. The Crystal, that once gave life, now wrathful. Dying. Empty.

  But if that was what it would take . . .

  NAIA!

  The watery fish cellar crashed back around her, and Naia felt hands on her arms, yanking her back. She heard a terrible noise and thought maybe Great Smerth’s roots were collapsing above, plunging into the fishery on top of her.

  The thundering that pounded against her ears and against every bone in her body focused until Naia realized that the sound came from inside her. Her heart, pounding desperately, trying to keep her alive when she had nearly opened the gate and let the Crystal take everything she had.

  Currents flowed against her cheek. Before she knew what was going on, she broke the surface of the water. She heard coughing and retching and finally saw who had dragged her from the Crystal.

  “Amri,” she began. “Why—you could have drowned!”

  He coughed up a last mouthful of water. She flinched back when he glared at her, tears glistening on his cheeks between the droplets of lake water.

  “What were you doing?” he shouted. He knelt beside her and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her. “What were you thinking?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” she mumbled. Under normal circumstances she might have argued. But now, drenched in water, having nearly given her life’s essence to the darkened veins—and seeing the pained look in Amri’s eyes—she didn’t know how to feel. She just felt tired. Fearful and helpless, if those were even separate feelings and not just two halves of the same thing. The tears from before tried to come again, but it was hard to let them when Amri was there.

  He didn’t let go of her shoulders, gripping her like she might float away at any moment.

  “Naia. I know you want to heal the Crystal. We all do. And save Great Smerth . . . but . . . you can’t. Not this way. Not at the cost of yourself.”

  “I just thought if I could do it, then maybe . . .” She shook her head. She looked up, away from Amri and into the graceful, twisting forms of Great Smerth’s roots overhead. The tears did come, then, if only one at a time. “I thought Great Smerth would always be here. I thought the swamp was safe from the Skeksis. I never thought . . .”

  Everything about Amri softened. His eyes and his voice, his grip on her shoulders.

  “I know,” he said quietly. “I thought the same about Domrak.”

  Domrak. Naia shuddered. Beautiful blue-walled Domrak, glowing with moss and lake creatures, filled with the haunting song of the Grottan musicians by the hearth. Maudra Argot’s chamber had been lined with clear crystal. Were those crystal veins dark now, too?

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “No, no,” Amri said, stopping her. “Rian lit the fire there. The Grottan will endure. I know they will.”

  “But you still lost your home. I knew it, I just never . . .” Naia struggled to find the words. She sighed. “I knew it was difficult for you. But I never thought about it happening to me, or my clan. As much as I’ve seen hardships fall on the Gelfling’s shoulders, I never put myself in their place . . . in your place. And now that I am in that place, I don’t know what to do.”

  The confession came out jumbled. Not like hard-talk at all, tentative and guilty. Naia almost didn’t want Amri to hear her this way, see her this way, but she didn’t know what else to do. She felt as if she had tried everything else, but it hadn’t eased the pressure building inside her. Nothing had, until now. Not trying to heal the Crystal, but stammering simple, blubbering words to a Shadowl
ing as the lake waters lapped at their ankles.

  “I don’t know what to do,” she said again, and the pressure eased some more. She leaned into Amri until her forehead was against his shoulder. Though his clothes were still damp with the lake, beneath the scent of the water he still smelled like candlewax and stone. She took a big, shaking breath and shouted: “I don’t know what to do!”

  It didn’t echo in the narrow place between them, enclosed by Amri’s arms around her shoulders and the silvery curtain of his hair. She felt as if the emotions were draining from her, freeing room in her chest so she could finally breathe again. Breathe, and speak easier, even if the words were unflattering and embarrassing. In the safety of the night and Amri’s quiet regard, they spilled out one after the other.

  “Then what?” Amri asked softly.

  She leaned back. She knew how her gut wanted to answer the question, so she said the first thing that landed on her tongue: “Then what’s the point? Aren’t I a failure if I can’t lead? If I can’t heal? If I can’t defeat the Skeksis? We can’t fight them, but I feel like it’s the only thing I know how to do! But if I can’t kill them, and I can’t heal Thra—then who am I?”

  “You’re . . . Naia.”

  The answer was blunt and simple. Amri flicked an ear. She couldn’t see his face too well in the dark, but she could hear his breath quicken a touch, his fingers twitching on her shoulders.

  “And . . . I think you’re amazing. When you’re brave, it makes me feel brave. When you’re strong, it makes me feel strong. That’s what being a leader is—leading by example. You’re committed to doing the right thing. Doing good . . . even when you fail. And even when you fail, you keep trying. You bring flowers out of ash.”

  It felt as if the warmth from his hands was spreading into her shoulders and chest, soft and gentle like the light from a candle. That was what Amri was, she realized. A little fire that never went out, that was always by her side. Not so bright that it drowned out other light, but more than enough to illuminate a path in the night. Gentle and discerning, steadfast and loyal.