by J. M. Lee
“But Fara is stubborn as ever,” Mera said. She tilted her head. “Where’s your mother? I would have thought she would certainly join us at the chance to stand against the Skeksis.”
“My mother is here in us,” Naia said as Gurjin joined her. She held her chin up when Maudra Fara’s and Maudra Mera’s eyes softened with understanding.
“I see,” Maudra Fara said. She placed the flat of her palm on Naia’s forehead. A moment later, Maudra Mera did the same. “Then you know the pain that rises in my heart and prevents me from doing as Maudra Mera suggests. We have already lost once to the Skeksis in Stone-in-the-Wood. I could not bear to bring my clan there to lose a second and final time.”
The last time Naia had seen Maudra Fara, it was in Stone-in-the-Wood. The stern maudra had known she and Kylan were on the run from the Skeksis, and friends of Rian’s and Gurjin’s. Back when they had only been known as traitors. Maudra Fara had thought it too dangerous for Naia to stay within her village. She had even turned her back on Rian, one of her own, for the sake of the rest of the Stonewood.
Rian. Rian, the Stonewood soldier who had tried with everything he had to warn the Gelfling of the Skeksis’ betrayal—and been called a traitor in return. Exiled by his own people, forced to bear the burden of the terrible truth alone. His face had not been in the flames, as it had when he’d lit the Grottan fire. When she looked, Naia couldn’t find his sharp, determined eyes looking at her from among the Stonewood refugees. The seventh fire was theirs, and Rian’s—so where was he?
The answer was clear in Naia’s heart. He had been tasked by Thra, the same as she had. Though she hadn’t heard his voice or seen his face, she knew without a doubt exactly where they would find him.
“Rian,” Naia began. “Rian is waiting for us. For you, his maudra. We have to join him. So he can join us. So we can all awaken the power that Thra has given us. It worked in Sog. It has worked every time the Gelfling fires light. Thra is greater and more powerful than even the Skeksis. This is what Aughra has been trying to tell us all along.”
“Aughra!” Maudra Fara exclaimed. “You must already know what I think of that old witch. Haunting the hills near my Stone-in-the-Wood. She may have been brilliant once, but she no longer wants to offer the Gelfling any wisdom.”
“Rian said the same thing, and I thought so, too—but now I believe her voice was lost, because we turned away from her. Away from Thra. When the Skeksis divided the Gelfling, we began to fight among ourselves. We became fractured and weak. But that can change. I know you are tired, but we are here to support you. When we unite, I’m sure we will hear her wisdom again. The voice of Thra. It will heal us all.”
Maudra Fara was like one of the stone pillars that stood atop the rise in Stone-in-the-Wood. For an instant Naia wondered if she could not be swayed. Then Maudra Mera grabbed Fara’s arm, pinching it with her strong little fingers.
“I never thought I might say this, but I agree,” Mera said. She hesitated, then added, “I’ve seen the fires—two of them. They are of Thra. They may even be the fires of prophecy . . . Maudra Naia is right.”
A chill went up Naia’s neck. She held Maudra Fara’s hands with a last plea.
“Please, Maudra Fara. Heal the rift with Rian. He is waiting for you.”
After a long moment, Maudra Fara nodded.
She turned toward the Gelfling who waited in the shade of the stone, weary and worn and afraid. Yet when they saw the three maudra standing before them, wings half-splayed and eyes shining with confidence, they rose to their feet. Emboldened.
“Riders, warriors,” Maudra Fara called, “anyone who can. Get on a Landstrider and ready yourself. To Stone-in-the-Wood we go, to find the one we spurned from the nightmare he has called upon himself.”
Sunlight broke through the trees as the Landstriders found a path cleared through the wood. The scent of fresh smoke and the distant clashing of weapons were the first signs that they were close. Then through the green and gold leaves, Naia glimpsed a tall, rigid shadow, like a mountain amidst the trees. The ancient tower of boulders that marked the center of the once proud home of the Stonewood Gelfling. It was fleeting, at least at this distance, but unmistakable.
They had reached Stone-in-the-Wood.
CHAPTER 26
Only ruins remained of the once mighty village, lasting proof of the day Maudra Fara had declared war against the Skeksis. Naia gasped, holding back involuntary tears of emotion as she took in the crumbled houses that lay in shambles among trees blackened and spindly from fire. The only thing that looked untouched was the rise at the back of the clearing, a mound of boulders that had given Stone-in-the-Wood its name. Now it gazed across the remnants like the marker of a hundred graves.
He was where she knew he’d be. In the center of the village, sitting with a single companion in the dirt near a pyre of black stones that made up the Stonewood hearth. His cheeks were scratched and bloodied, his tunic torn. He was with a girl with pale skin and big black Grottan eyes.
Rian stood when the Landstriders, the Spriton, the Stonewood, and the Drenchen entered the clearing. “Naia—Gurjin—Maudra Fara—”
Maudra Fara flew from the back of her Landstrider to meet him, striding over the stones and broken rafters and shingles. Rian looked unsure as she approached him, as if she might even now try to turn him away. He held a long golden-hilted sword, though he didn’t raise the weapon as Naia and the others dismounted from the Landstriders.
“You’re here,” Rian stammered. His eyes darted from Maudra Fara to over her shoulder, where he caught sight of Naia and Gurjin. Naia nodded to him, saw Gurjin do the same. “Maudra Fara . . . Look! I got the sword. The one Aughra sent me to retrieve—she says it can stop the Skeksis. She says it will be our salvation!”
He held up the sword. It was Gelfling-size and asymmetrical, a double-edged blade that reflected the light of the flames like sunlight on polished iron. This was the sacred artifact Aughra had sent Rian to find in the Tomb of Relics. The answer to their questions, the object of their many dreams, though how such an instrument of war could help them heal Thra, Naia didn’t know.
Maudra Fara looked upon the blade and sighed.
“Oh, Rian. I am sorry you had to do this alone. I should have been the first one to believe you, but instead I turned you away. And because I did, so did everyone else . . . But all that was a mistake. Now I am here, even if I may be too late.”
A tense quiet followed, until the Grottan girl at Rian’s side nudged him gently. The trepidation fell away from him like an unamoth shedding a cocoon. He stepped out of it, transformed by the moment, into his maudra’s arms and embraced her.
“It’s never too late,” he said.
Smoke rose from the piles of stones that had once been Stonewood houses, from beneath the debris and charred trees. The sky flashed as if there were a storm in it, blue embers and light falling like rain across the stones and the broad leaves of the forest trees. The fires radiated green and pink, blue and gold. They did not consume, as the Skeksis torches had. Where the tongues licked, life sprang like water from a deep well. And as the color washed across the clearing, on the remains of every wall came the etchings. Burning and sizzling and complete, the stories of the seven Gelfling clans: Sifa, Dousan, Vapra. Spriton, Grottan, Drenchen. Stonewood.
The fire burned in its thousand colors, longer than it ever had before, louder with its drowning song. It reminded Naia of the dream-space that Aughra had awakened in them. So many hearts and minds, almost dreamfasted with one another, despite the distance between them. All together for the first time, in a place that had been destroyed by war. The menders, all there, listening.
Naia forced herself to breathe again, though every crackle of brilliant flame took her breath away. The warmth showered her cheeks and dazzled her eyes, the embers landing within her heart and revitalizing her. They had done it. After so long fighting with only h
ope as their guiding star, they had done it. The fires of the Gelfling had been lit.
“You should say something,” the Grottan girl said, startling Rian from his awe.
“What?” Rian asked. “What . . . do I say?”
No one answered at first. Not even Maudra Fara or Maudra Mera. Naia put a hand on Rian’s shoulder and told him what she had been told so recently.
“Your truth,” she said. “You are the one who saw. You are the one who was cast out. Now, we have come to you. We believe you. We are with you. Tell every Gelfling of the Seven Clans what you have seen, and what we will do.”
Rian drew himself up, facing the fire.
“Gelfling of the Seven Clans,” he began, awkwardly at first. “My name is Rian. If you’re gazing into these fires now, then you already know what I am about to tell you. But it needs to be said, so I will say it again. And again, until I cannot say it any longer.
“The Skeksis have betrayed us. They killed the All-Maudra. Broke the Crystal and caused the darkening. Have been feeding on our essence. I was sent by Mother Aughra to retrieve this sword, foretold to hold the power to overturn the Skeksis.”
Blue flame rolled along the gleaming metal of the golden-hilted sword. As he held it before the flames for all to see, it began to ring. Quietly at first, then rising so loud it was howling, vibrating with the song, its glimmering intensifying until it blazed so white in his palm it cast their shadows long and hard across the crumbling stone walls of the village.
“The Skeksis have kept us divided for a thousand years because they fear what would happen if we were united. Because they know that it is our calling to protect Thra and the Crystal that they have corrupted. And they were right to be afraid. You, the Gelfling of the Seven Clans, have lit your fires of resistance. I stand here in Stone-in-the-Wood, at the hearth of the seventh fire. As proof of our promise that we will resist the Skeksis and heal the Crystal . . . not as many, but as one.”
The voices came. The cheers of the seven clans. The fire blazed and the strange sword sang, and Naia felt the heat and the sound resonating in her heart, as if she were but one of a thousand flickering fires burning in a single hearth.
Yet in it, something was strange. Foreign, like someone watching her from behind. As if the fire itself had been tainted by the darkening, some smoldering ember burning black and corrupt amid the other shining coals. Whispers, in crooked, sharp tongues, and terrible black eyes.
“Interesting.”
The single word rolled out of the fire like black smoke. Malice and contempt, corruption and wrath. This was no Gelfling voice. Naia had heard it before, in the castle, at his banquet table. His word—his law—pervaded all of their world, it seemed. Now he intruded into their most intimate place, the Gelfling fires of resistance.
The roaring of the hundreds of Gelfling voices hushed.
“Emperor skekSo,” Rian growled. “How—”
“How?” skekSo scoffed, the word dripping from his tongue like poison. “These fires were given to you by the Crystal of Thra, which has given itself to us. To me.”
“It didn’t give itself to you,” Naia spat into the fire. “You took it. Just as you take from it even now!”
He ignored her as if she hadn’t spoken.
“Rian. Rebels. Gelfling traitors,” the Skeksis bellowed. “Give up this farcical resistance. If you do not, we will crush you. All the Gelfling songs—if any Gelfling are remaining to tell them—will tell how you were responsible for destroying your own race. Do you understand?”
“I understand you are afraid of what I have, Emperor skekSo.
“This is the weapon Thra has given us to stop you,” Rian continued, voice full of fire. He brandished the sword, thrusting its gleaming edge in the fire. “And I will not back down. We will not give up. We will rise against you until you have returned the Crystal to Thra!”
The violet and black flames surged so tall and hot that even Naia had to step back. What she saw next put a shudder down the full length of her back.
Emperor skekSo, bedecked in his obsidian robes, gazed back at them through the fire. To his left and right were the hulking black figures of the other Skeksis, backs and shoulders heaping with armor. The Emperor’s eyes glowed fuchsia, purple, and red—reflecting the light of the glowing thing into which he was staring. The thing that had allowed the Skeksis to take dominion over all that which was not theirs: The blighted Crystal of Truth. The Dark Crystal.
“We will see you soon, Rian,” Emperor skekSo said.
Then the sparks and tongues of flame subsided, and the channel through which they had been connected to the other Gelfling clans was gone.
Naia stared into the hearth where the fire had been, no one sure what to say or how to say it. She struggled to recapture the flying feeling of victory she’d had in the moments before the Emperor had spoken. She jumped when Amri grabbed her hand and squeezed.
“We still lit the fire,” he reminded her quietly. “We still united the Gelfling. No matter what he said, skekSo can’t take that away from us. Not now, not ever.”
“He’s right,” Maudra Fara said. She took a survey of the Gelfling there, a scattered collection of Stonewood, Spriton, Drenchen, and exactly two Grottan. “What’s done is done. The Gelfling are united and the Skeksis know. These things cannot be changed. So now, we will do as Rian has said we will. Resist until we can resist no more. Here in Stone-in-the-Wood, we will make our stand.”
“We’ve lit the fires as we’ve been asked,” Maudra Mera agreed. “If Thra truly has answers for us, it must sing to us now.”
“How long do you think it will be before they get here?” Naia asked.
“If they left immediately by armalig carriage, less than a day,” Rian said. “But without Gelfling guards at the castle to help them prepare, it will be longer.”
“Then we have some time,” Naia agreed. “Maudra Fara, please trust me to heal your weary. Rian, you and Gurjin should brief whoever can fight on what to expect when the Skeksis arrive.”
“That we can do,” Gurjin said.
The ruins were quiet as the Gelfling prepared. Maudra Fara and Maudra Mera lit a fire in the old hearth, a fervent red one that brought a much-needed warmth and dryness to the clearing. Naia assigned Drenchen healers among the Stonewood refugees, sending others to the lake adjacent to the village remains for fresh water. At her back, she heard Rian and Gurjin explaining the Skeksis’ heavy metal armor and strategizing how the Gelfling might use the tree cover and rocky pathways of the wood to their advantage.
Naia took a quick count. They had several dozen, between the three clans, and not including those too wounded to fight. That many, with the help of Great Smerth, had been enough to stop skekSa in Sog. But when skekSo came, he would not be alone. It was not impossible that he would bring every other Skeksis with him, from the sharp-eyed Chamberlain to the huge, hammer-fisted General.
Could the Gelfling truly endure them? Or was this the end? The future was terribly uncertain. There was no promise that they would prevail. Only that the confrontation would happen.
“Naia?” Amri’s voice brought her mind back to the present. He had removed his dark cloak and rolled up his sleeves, was covered from waist to shoulder in smudges and streaks of black soot. He waved, so she rose and followed him through the skeletons of two crumbled houses to a trench caused by a felled tree. In the pit of dirt below the drying, frayed roots, the Grottan girl was working tirelessly with a pile of black, twine-wound balls.
“I don’t think you’ve been properly introduced,” Amri said. “This is Deet. Deet, this is Naia! Drenchen maudra.”
“Hello!” Deet called up. Her cheeks were covered with dirt and soot from the black dust she was working with, but her dark eyes glittered with a hopeful smile. “Rian’s told me about you. It’s so nice to meet you!”
Amri hopped down into the pit and
Naia did, too, when he gestured. The acrid, sulfuric scent in the pit from the dust reminded Naia of something she’d smelled before. She tried to place it, splashing through the waters of her memory until she saw skekSa, hurling her explosive eggs into Great Smerth.
“Smoke bombs,” Amri said, a proud smile crossing his face.
“I used to make them, back in Domrak. We used them in smaller sizes to clear hollerbats when they’d roost in the chimneys,” Deet explained.
“Like what skekSa used?” Naia asked.
“Yes,” Amri agreed. “Deet and I compared notes. I think these will work quite nicely to give the Emperor and the other Skeksis a big surprise.”
Naia felt lighter. “This is good. I’ll tell Rian and Maudra Fara. We’ll figure out the best way to use these. Thank you, Deet. Amri.”
The two Grottan nodded, eyes twinkling. Naia took hold of a root that dangled into the pit and climbed out.
She found Rian taking a short break, sipping water from a skin carried by one of the Drenchen. The golden-hilted sword leaned against a tree near his hip, shining like a sliver of sunlight.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
“As well as it can, considering our circumstances,” he replied. “I’m sorry to hear about your mother. My condolences.”
Naia nodded her thanks. She wasn’t truly prepared to talk about that yet.
“Amri and Deet showed me what they’re working on. I think if we can ambush the Skeksis as they approach, we might have a fighting chance. But I wanted to talk to you about something else. Something we’ve got to agree on, before skekSo and the others get here.”
Rian’s brow rose below his dash of blue hair. “Which is?”
“We can’t kill them. Not a single one.”
He started to protest, eyes wide, but he closed his mouth slowly in understanding.
“I see. Because of the Mystics, you mean.”
“Yes, but not just that. The Skeksis have divided the Gelfling and pitted us against one another for a thousand trine. Just like you said. They did it to keep us weak. But the weakness came not just from being broken apart, but from the rivalry it caused. The corruption of the Crystal is because of its wound and the missing shard, and that wound has been deepened by the hatred and greed and fear of the Skeksis. They want us fighting—against them or against each other, it doesn’t matter. But we can’t give in to that.”