Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  The planks of the Glenfoot cracked when skekSa tossed her sword to the ground. She looked upon the glinting spearheads with a challenging smirk, a jade gaze that finally rested on Naia with the weight of nine hundred suns.

  “Get that sword away from her,” Maudra Laesid ordered.

  Naia let out the breath caught in her throat. Gurjin handed his spear to another Drenchen warrior and approached the Skeksis’s blade, ears angled and alert as he stooped to pick it up. It was so big, he could barely lift it, even in two hands. Once he had it, he stood before skekSa, close enough to look her straight in the eyes.

  “It’s over,” he said. “The Drenchen—”

  “Gurjin!”

  skekSa’s claw shot out, snatching Gurjin around the waist and yanking him back to her so quickly, he dropped the sword. Before urSan could react, skekSa leaped backward, stealing Gurjin into the lake below with an enormous SPLASH.

  CHAPTER 22

  Naia raced to the edge of the Glenfoot, nearly dropping her dagger.

  skekSa surfaced on the other side of the lake, on a raised root of a large apeknot. She had Gurjin wrapped in her arm, her wrist around his neck, one of her smaller claws holding a short dirk to his belly.

  “Don’t move or I’ll open him up right here,” she crowed, though her voice and entire body was wrecked by the poison of the wound in her shoulder. The glade came to a standstill, except for the roaring of the flames and the shouts of the Drenchen who were trying desperately to extinguish them. Their shadows danced along the gentle ripples of the lake, the heat of the fire washing overhead, carrying huge flakes of black ash and soot.

  “Let him go,” Laesid said. “Let him go, or your death will be more painful than you can imagine.”

  “Then I’ll make sure his is the same!”

  skekSa pricked her dagger into Gurjin’s side enough to draw blood. He grunted in pain, though he couldn’t staunch the bleeding with his arms pinned by skekSa’s grip. His blood soaked into his wet tunic, creeping like a spreading illness.

  Naia looked to urSan. “Can you stop her? urLii and urVa were able to halt skekLi with their song—”

  urSan shook her head grimly. “I cannot. If it happened as you describe it, it was because two urRu’s song overpowered the single Skeksis . . . in this place, we are equal.” She spread her arms, though the demonstration of balance was flawed by her missing hand.

  “Is it true?” Bellanji asked. “They’re connected?”

  “Your friend who would die if we killed skekSa,” Laesid murmured, sizing up urSan. She leveled her spear, and a dozen more followed in the hands of the Drenchen warriors that surrounded Naia and the Mystic. “If hurting this beast could hurt that one—”

  “How quickly they turn on us, urSan!” skekSa sang, flourishing with her dagger. “Oh, how quickly the little Gelfling betray us! As soon as they know how we are connected. As soon as the Sifa saw the shape of Emperor skekSo in my face, they turned on me. It is only fitting that the Drenchen see my shape in you.”

  urSan didn’t retreat, regarding the Drenchen and their spears with a stoic, wise face. She did not raise her fists against them, rather opened her hands and looked to Naia.

  “We have no more time,” she said.

  Naia felt short of breath, as if skekSa’s claw were wrapped around her throat as well as Gurjin’s. “What are you saying?” she stammered. “You can’t possibly be telling me to—”

  “Now what will you do, Naia?” cried skekSa. “Oh, she’s opened her hands to you. Will you take her life to save your brother’s? Sacrifice your goodness by killing—or perhaps it’s not a sacrifice at all! Perhaps it’s merely the brave thing to do. Destroy these beasts come from another world and another time. Ruining this place and your sacred Crystal. Perhaps you see in her the evil you see in me. Perhaps you think that it would be better to do away with us all—the Skeksis and the Mystics both. Kill, then. Kill us both. Wreak your violence and your war. Show me the darkness within you. Unleash it. Oh, it would be my honor if you would.”

  “Does she want to die?” Bellanji gasped in disbelief.

  “She wants Naia to doubt,” Kylan replied sternly. “Naia knows better than to listen.”

  Naia did know better, but she couldn’t look away from the dark spot on Gurjin’s side. It was growing, dripping across skekSa’s clawed feet and onto the surface of the root she stood upon.

  “urSan . . .”

  The Mystic returned Naia’s gaze with one of calm acceptance. Whatever Naia chose, she would allow. Even if Naia chose to bury the dagger in her heart.

  Don’t.

  The strained voice was Gurjin’s, but it had come not through her ears, but in her mind. As if they were dreamfasted, as they had before, briefly, but unmistakably. Naia tried not to react, for fear that skekSa might notice. It was no trick of her imagination. She could hear Gurjin from across the lake.

  If I don’t, she’ll kill you! She’s so full of hatred that she’ll do anything to take revenge—

  And you’re not like her, he said.

  “You are taking too long.”

  It was the only warning before skekSa plunged her dagger into Gurjin’s side. His cry of pain was blunted by the knife in his side, his dreamfasted voice falling away like he’d slipped from the branch of an apeknot. Now he clung to Naia’s mind with only a finger’s touch. She held on to him with the only thing she had—her heart. She could barely hear him when he said, I’m sorry I took your powers on the ship. I was just trying to save you. I love you, Naia. I hope you can have them back when I return to Thra.

  Thra. Thra had made Naia a mender, granted her the ability to dreamfast. Not just her own kind, but with all creatures. With the flying eels and the finger-vines. With Olyeka-Staba the Cradle Tree. Thra had given Kylan the gift of song and dream stitching, Amri the gift of rock singing. And to Gurjin, although it had come late, the gift of healing, as it had given Naia and their sister Eliona.

  Thra had given its gifts to them all. Not just to Naia—that was their bond. The gifts of Thra were to be shared, with Thra and with one another. To unite what was fractured. To heal what was ailing. To save what was corrupt. To mend what had been broken apart. To protect what was most important. That was the key to awakening those gifts. It was all part of the same cycle. The same web that connected the Gelfling to Thra and to one another.

  Dreamfast, Naia said to Gurjin suddenly. She reached out to urSan and said the same words aloud to the Mystic: “Dreamfast with me.”

  “The Mystics and the Skeksis do not . . . ,” urSan began, but trailed off and instead offered her hand. Naia took it and shouted across the lake to Gurjin what she had said in dreamfast before:

  “Dreamfast with her, Gurjin! We’ll do it together!”

  Trusting him to find the strength to do it, she faced urSan. She took the Mystic’s big hand in both of hers, closed her eyes, and threw open the door between their minds.

  At first she was alone, standing at a brink as she had when she’d touched minds with Vassa, skekSa’s ship. But the stars that swirled in the galaxy lake rippled over her, thousands of inverted waves in the liquid of space. As if the air were on the bottom and the abyssal ocean of the other mind were hanging over her.

  Is this . . .

  Gurjin stood beside her. In the dream, he was not wounded, though his figure was translucent, as if he might disappear at any moment. When he loses consciousness, Naia reminded herself. They had to hurry. They had to get up there, into skekSa and urSan’s mind—

  THIS WAY.

  A hand broke the surface, large and strong. urSan’s hand, beckoning to them from above. Together, Naia and Gurjin reached up, clasping the Mystic’s square fingers and letting her draw them up, enveloped by the thick space filled with all the stars of the heavens. When they broke through the other side, Naia expected thickness, like water. But it was not an ocean
they were entering; it was a space like the cosmos itself.

  Stars exploded all around them, the atmosphere alive and alight with the burning colors of the universe. Gold and pink and blue sizzling against the pitch-black of endless space. A vibrant humming crackled through the place, all around them like lightning in a storm. With every burst of light, every snap of energy, images ignited in Naia’s mind: fleeting glimpses of urSan and skekSa’s arrival in Thra through the light of the Crystal and the Great Conjunction.

  She saw an urSkek. Ancient and powerful, with the potential for balance that had not been fully realized. For deep inside this urSkek was lust for individuality. Lust to be recognized as herself, to be loved uniquely. To be separate from the collective of the urSkek race. To be I instead of we; me instead of us.

  Naia saw the day the urSkek returned to the castle, as the second Great Conjunction neared. Waiting for the suns to join overhead. Waiting to return home.

  Then, chaos. Confusion. And more than anything else, betrayal. Betrayal by the stars and the suns themselves, which should have opened the gateway to send them home once again.

  It had been foretold, by the spheres, urSan said. She was beside them, over them, all around them. Not in form but in mind, a shape and a voice that was everywhere at once. But the spheres had lied.

  GET OUT OF MY MIND.

  If the dream was a storm, then skekSa was the thunder. A black-clouded cyclone, roiling bigger and bigger at the center of the space, blocking the light from the stars and suns that spun around them like the figures in Aughra’s orrery. It grew until she blotted out the light and the images and memories, trying to push them away. Push them out, eject them from the place they had entered without invitation.

  For a moment, Naia lost her place in the dream, opened her eyes. She saw skekSa across the lake, holding her head with one of her smaller hands, though she hadn’t yet released Gurjin. They hadn’t done it, not yet.

  Something moved in the shadows over and behind skekSa. A long, serpentine creature bearing a Gelfling on its shoulders. So distressed by Naia and Gurjin’s intrusion, the Skeksis Mariner didn’t notice.

  Naia closed her eyes, tightening her grip on urSan’s hand. Plunging herself back into the dream.

  Just a little longer . . .

  Back within the dream-space, skekSa’s storm had nearly surrounded them, twisting and snarling and slashing. Naia held on to Gurjin as they stood in the center of it.

  GET OUT, skekSa thundered. GET OUT!

  urSan materialized beside them, protecting them with her arms as skekSa’s storm closed in. Naia huddled against the Mystic as the storm smothered out the last remaining memories and lights. Soon there would be only blackness, only skekSa’s rage, and they would wake—

  Remember who you were, Naia begged. Remember what you loved . . .

  A final memory flashed across the dreamscape, blue and green and glittering. The ocean they had loved when they had been one. The Silver Sea filled with infinite mysteries. The Gelfling rising from the land, eventually attaching and venturing onto the sea. Teaching them how to read the stars, to chart a course with no land in sight. How to read the clouds in the sky and the rough patches of water that rippled across great calms.

  When they went to the castle during the second Conjunction, it was those moments that they remembered. Waiting for the suns to join overhead, ready for the shaft of light to open the gateway back to their world. They felt a seed of hesitation nestled deep in their breast. The tiny, four-fingered print of the Gelfling on their heart. They had recognized them for who they were.

  Were they really ready to leave all that behind?

  I LOVE NOTHING.

  skekSa’s face burst from the cloud, as big as the sky in the dreamscape itself. Gnashing beak and shining scales like knives, eyes cold and burning all at once. The memory dissipated, broken away until the only thing holding them in the dream was urSan’s arms. Naia held on to Gurjin, but even he began to fade.

  It’s time to go, urSan said. Naia saw blood on her shoulder.

  The dream fell away to the sound of skekSa screaming.

  CHAPTER 23

  Chapyora’s sharp teeth were buried in the Mariner’s shoulder, Maudra Laesid’s spear penetrating a narrow gap in her shoulder armor. Naia’s mother gave a sharp whistle and Chapyora snatched Gurjin from skekSa’s writhing arms, spreading her gliding fins and bursting away into the lake.

  Laesid remained, standing on skekSa’s back with her single leg, driving her spear deeper into the Skeksis’s back. skekSa’s scream went from surprise to pain to rage as she tried to reach the Drenchen maudra, grasping and grappling and failing.

  “Get off me! Get off me, you swamp-sucking mud-brained blindfish!”

  Laesid did not let go of her spear. Didn’t look away from the Skeksis until Chapyora breached the surface of the lake, gently lowering Gurjin into a puddle of lake water and blood as Naia and Eliona rushed to heal his wound. Blue light flowed forth like a summer storm, rushing from her fingertips and lighting her entire body. Gurjin’s eyes flew open at the incredible speed with which his wound closed.

  “Your power . . .”

  “You never took it from me,” Naia assured him. “You awakened your own. To protect me. And all this time I’ve been so preoccupied blaming you for it. But now I remember what I’m here for. Why I have this power—why we have this—”

  “GET OFF ME! I’LL KILL YOU!”

  skekSa threw herself backward, trying to smash Laesid against the trunk of the big apeknot she stood beside. Laesid was too nimble, holding the spear jutting from the Skeksis’s back and swinging to the side so the only thing that crashed into the tree was skekSa’s shoulder.

  Naia rose to her feet, leaving Gurjin with Eliona.

  “Finish healing him—I’ve got to stop Mother!”

  skekSa let out a piercing, ragged scream of frustration. The Skeksis were powerful, strong, and huge—but they were not used to being challenged. Even now, Naia’s mother used it to her advantage. It looked almost as if she were dancing across skekSa’s shoulders, deftly avoiding her claws and slashing knife.

  “Mother, stop!”

  skekSa cried out in pain when Laesid drove the spear in even deeper. Beside Naia, urSan dropped to her knee, blood pooling around her shoulder and rippling down her arm. Naia knelt by her, though she knew there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could do except stop her mother from killing skekSa.

  But if skekSa survived, then what? It was the same terrible dilemma it had always been. This time it brought tears to Naia’s eyes.

  “Mother—” she cried. “Mother, don’t—”

  “I’m sorry, Naia,” Laesid called back. “I understand what urSan means to you. I understand what the Mystics mean to you. But we have to put our clan first. We have to survive as Gelfling. Look at Great Smerth. Look what she’s done to your brother. Look what she’s done to our home!”

  Naia looked back. Gurjin’s chest rose and fell under Eliona’s healing hands, becoming steadier, lit by the blazing fire of Great Smerth burning all around them. Even if they stopped the fire now, so much damage had already been done.

  “But it’s not right,” she said, but she couldn’t find the strength to shout loudly enough for her mother to hear. She could only remember what Gurjin had said in their dreamfast.

  You’re not like her, he’d told her. Not like skekSa. And what Amri had told her, when he’d pulled her from the lake. Her eyes landed on the Shadowling, whose pale skin and silver hair were smudged with mud and crimson. He held the sword he’d used to protect her, though its tip nearly touched the scorched planks of the Glenfoot.

  The one he’d used to protect. Not attack.

  Doing good . . . Bringing flowers out of ash.

  “Eliona,” Naia said. “Can Gurjin sit up?”

  “Yes, but he’s weak.”

 
; “Then he’ll have to be strong for just a little longer,” Naia said. “You two. Quickly, this way. Any Drenchen with the gift of healing. Join me. Help me save our maudra and Great Smerth.”

  Naia pressed her hands down on the wood of the Glenfoot. It was a part of Great Smerth, as every root and apeknot in the swamp was. As Laesid plunged her spear into skekSa, killing both her and urSan slowly, Naia raised her voice. Called out in a song that came from deep in her heart, whose words she had heard on the tongue of Onica the Far-Dreamer and Mother Aughra the Helix-Horned. The voice that sang the song of Thra.

  “Great Smerth. Smerth-Staba. Tree that has protected me and my clan. Like a mother in our beloved swamp. Even now as your body is overtaken by flames . . . Deatea. Deratea. Kidakida. Arugaru.”

  She felt someone kneeling beside her. Amri and Kylan, pressing their hands against the bark of the Glenfoot, though neither of them were healers. Saying the words.

  Naia looked up as Gurjin joined them. Battered and bloody but determined. He fell beside her on his hands and knees, bowing his head as his healing light joined hers.

  “Deatea. Deratea. Kidakida. Arugaru . . .”

  Eliona came next. Then Kipper. Even Naia’s father. All the Drenchen, though they did not all know how to heal, heard the words and repeated them. Did as Naia did, although they had no idea why. They saw her and they saw Gurjin, and they did as she called on them to do.

  Great Smerth groaned. A sound like the singing of the earth, the creaking of its massive limbs. Naia felt tears on her cheeks at the sound of its voice, old and tired and in pain. Sick, though it wanted nothing more than to be healthy, to spread its boughs across the Drenchen glade. To provide shade and food and shelter. That was what the world wanted to be; that was Thra’s only desire. Great Smerth had been a gift to that end. Thra, trying to care for the Gelfling, as they had cared for it.

  Naia had nearly forgotten skekSa’s screams until they suddenly stopped. Maudra Laesid had ceased her attack, frozen on the Skeksis’s back and staring at the Drenchen gathering at the Glenfoot as blue light spread from the roots and trunk of Great Smerth into the water. Racing through the lake toward the root where skekSa stood. Where the light touched, the water cleared, the fire waned. Green life sprang forth, vines and saplings and branches.