Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  Naia took in a deep breath and let it out, and added:

  Heal it.

  The earth shook. The clouds knit together in a silver gauze, shedding a shimmering curtain of rain. The droplets sizzled as they touched the stones that littered the ruins where proud Stone-in-the-Wood had once stood.

  Steam and smoke issued forth from the broken walls and shattered boulders. The etchings that had appeared when the Stonewood fire had lit—the pictographs showing the tales of all seven clan fires—began to glow. As they had when they had first been carved, though now with a more radiant light than ever before.

  New etchings burst from the stones. Images and writing, stars and suns and moons. Light blazed and the Skeksis screamed as it burned them. Pure, bright, white—like the shard that flashed like a star as Rian held it aloft for all to see.

  The sound of the earth singing—the infinite voice of Thra—was all that could be heard. Naia felt it along the surface of her skin, straight into the marrow of her bones. She could feel the song as strongly as she could hear it—as plainly as she could see the light radiating from Rian’s hand.

  It was life. It was power. It was theirs.

  The Skeksis heard it. They saw it, and they knew.

  And then they ran.

  Stumbling and grappling over one another, they clawed their way past the rubble and stones and Gelfling, taking cuts and stabs from the Vapra swords and Sifa blades as they passed. In a flurry of black and indigo and crimson, they fled into the wood in the direction of the castle.

  The Gelfling had won.

  CHAPTER 30

  After the Skeksis were gone, Naia and the other Gelfling gazed upon the etchings.

  They covered every stone surface in the ruins, interlaced with the etchings that had already been cast by the lighting of the seventh Gelfling fire. In every nook and every toppled Stonewood structure, pictures of stars and suns and moons were emblazoned like brands. Naia traced her fingers over the shapes—many images, but many words as well—wandering silently from wall to wall. Every etching was different, bleeding into the next, in a chain of hundreds, if not thousands, of passages and illustrations.

  Naia had never fully learned to read, no matter how many times Kylan and Amri had tried to teach her. But she didn’t need to read to know what she was looking at. She and her friends and all the Gelfling had asked so many questions. Finally, Thra had answered. She knew without a doubt that the answer to every question was here. Somewhere, scattered among the remains, burned by the fires of prophecy.

  “Naia! Come look at this!”

  Kylan and Rian waved her to a long stone wall that had once been the rear of Maudra Fara’s meeting chamber. The other walls around it had been knocked down and destroyed, but the rear wall behind her stone maudra’s chair still stood. Five Gelfling figures were etched into the portion of the wall there, and arching overhead, words curved like a domed roof.

  Kylan stepped forward, letting his firca rest on his chest as he traced his fingers over the still-smoking etchings. As he did, they drew the attention of the Gelfling that wandered the ruins looking for survivors and taking in the wonder of the etchings.

  “The legacy of the Gelfling race,” Kylan read aloud for all to hear. “What was sundered and undone shall be made whole. The two made one.” He glanced at Naia, then at Rian, before he finished: “By Gelfling hand, or else by none.”

  “Look at those below,” Amri said, joining them. Along the bottom of the Gelfling tableau were more familiar shapes, these more ominous: Skeksis. urRu. urSkeks, and the Castle of the Crystal. One thing in particular caught Naia’s eye.

  “That looks like the shard,” Gurjin said.

  Rian looked at the thing in his hand, a miniature version of the Crystal of Truth that was trapped deep in the heart of the Castle of the Crystal.

  “The shard heals the Crystal,” Naia said. “It’s the missing piece. The real way for us to mend the Crystal. Stop the darkening and heal Thra again. It’s telling us what to do.”

  A red-haired Sifa stepped beside her, touching Naia’s shoulder. Onica the Far-Dreamer gestured, guiding their gaze across the wall with a wise, graceful hand.

  “It’s more than that, Naia,” Onica said. “Thra is older and wiser than we. These etchings are not just the answers to our many questions. How to, and when to. The what, and where. They are more than that. They are the signs of the future foretold. Burned by the fires of prophecy.”

  Naia shook her head. “I don’t think I understand . . .”

  “This wall reveals the future which will come to pass. The Gelfling will heal the Crystal. The Skeksis will be rejoined with the urRu. The urSkeks will return to the world from which they came . . . and Thra will heal. It is not a suggestion or an instruction.” Onica’s sea-green eyes passed over the wall once more, a bold smile crossing her lips. Naia shivered at the determination in the Far-Dreamer’s brow as a breeze ruffled her crimson hair.

  “It is our future,” she said. “And our legacy.”

  “And now the Skeksis have seen it.”

  The crowd of Gelfling parted around a familiar, waddling figure. She trudged out of the trees that surrounded the ruins, gray and black hair in tangled knots around her whorled horns. Her earthen-tone robes were disheveled, leaves and soil clinging to every part of her. She had been silent when the Gelfling had gone astray. And now that they had turned back, opened their ears to her song, she had returned. Mother Aughra, the Helix-Horned. The voice of Thra.

  “They know what it means, the Skeksis. And they fear it. They fear you.” She stood before the wall, casting her heavy gaze upon it, moving her entire body to turn her head on her short neck. “That’s why they ran. That’s why they will lick their wounds in the castle!”

  “You don’t think they’ll come back?” Rian asked.

  “Not today. Not tomorrow, either. Aughra can sense them. Through the Crystal. They’ll barricade themselves inside. You did well today, Gelfling.”

  She spoke over her shoulder, barely bothering to acknowledge the Gelfling except for the last, almost casual remark. Even so, Naia felt a weight slip from her shoulders. The Skeksis would not return that night. They had time, at least for now.

  “Then tonight we recover,” Rian said, facing the Gelfling that circled around the wall. “Tonight we tend to the wounded and pay respects to the dead. Build fires in this place and warm our tired bones. For when the Skeksis come after us again, it will be relentless. They have no reason to pretend to love us any longer. They’ll come after us with everything they’ve got.”

  Naia took Rian’s hand once more, holding it out so the shard gleamed in the light.

  “But the Skeksis saw the prophecy as we did. They know they can no longer divide us. These signs are proof of our unity, the shard a promise. The Gelfling will prevail.”

  As the suns climbed and then began to set, all three in the sky at once, Naia busied herself with healing the wounds of the injured. Around her, the Spriton and others rounded up the Landstriders and prepared them for the journey south.

  She exchanged greeting glances with Periss and Erimon as they helped the Spriton and Vapra repair Landstrider gear with remnants from Crystal Skimmer harnesses. She even caught sight of Mythra, Rian’s sister, as she and other Gelfling helped the Grottan and Dousan prepare the bodies of the dead for their final rite.

  When night approached, the edge of the clearing lit with small fires and circles of Gelfling. They shared words and provisions, finding one another. Somewhere, Naia even heard someone playing on a pipe.

  They had lost so much. Domrak and Stone-in-the-Wood. Great Smerth. And so many had fallen today, and in the days so recently past. Naia’s heart ached when she saw Maudra Ethri, Maudra Mera, Maudra Argot, and Maudra Seethi seated around their own fire, a hollow space between them where Maudra Fara and Maudra Mayrin would have sat.

  “Naia
!” called Maudra Ethri. Chimes and bells rang like rain against the ocean as she waved Naia over. “You’ve worked all evening. Sit with us. I’ve even got a flask of nectarwine.”

  Naia tried not to show her hesitation as she took a spot with the other maudra. The one her mother would never occupy again. Of the seven maudra of the once seven clans, only four remained. She took the flask Ethri offered her, tasting the sweet, pungent wine that smelled of fermented sogflowers. She pushed down a cough and handed it next to Maudra Mera, who was not so successful.

  “How fare you, young maudra?” Argot asked. She held her thin hands out to the fire, legs crossed, her cane leaning against her hip.

  “I don’t know,” Naia admitted. “I’m glad for this chance to rest. The Gelfling need it. But I can’t stop thinking about everything we’ve lost.”

  “It is important to remember what has been lost,” Seethi said. Naia had never met the Dousan maudra, but the time for first greetings had long past. They had seen battle together, and survived together. Now it felt as though Naia had known the blue-and-gold tattoos across the older maudra’s face forever. “But it is also important not to dwell on it. To dwell is to become attached. And it would not do to become attached to what is in the past.”

  Maudra Mera cleared her throat, waving away the last coughs from the nectarwine. “Precisely, Naia. My soggy dear. In these times, it is more important to value what we have. It is what Mayrin and Fara, and your mother, would have wanted.”

  Naia looked across the faces of the Gelfling around the fires, under the awakening stars in the ruins they had reclaimed. Still touching the dream-etchings from the fires, and the new one brought forth by their collective Far-Dream. Their cheeks were scratched and marred with bruises and blood, many with the weary sadness of battle imprinted on their brows. Yet in every face she saw, there was a flickering. A tiny blue flame within every one of them. As they looked on the prophecy wall they’d created together, and as they stared in awe and wonder at Aughra as she read the inscriptions, her gnarled fingers cupping her whiskered chin.

  They had come together. They had protected this place that they had lost. And now, they had brought forth the fires of the prophecy. And Aughra, the voice of Thra, herself. Though the towering figures of the past might fall, the Gelfling would endure. They were the protectors of this land. And they would resist.

  “May . . . may I join you?”

  The timid request came from a Vapra girl, who stood at the perimeter of the fire just outside the golden light as if she feared what might happen if she stepped within. She looked like Tavra, with long silver hair and pale skin. Naia recognized her from a Far-Dream she’d had long ago. This was Seladon. Tavra’s older sister, and the one who had taken All-Maudra Mayrin’s place after she had been murdered by the Skeksis.

  A strange stillness came over the ring of maudra. Seladon had sided with the Skeksis after they had killed Mayrin. But in the end, she had heeded Rian’s call. She bowed deeply, folding her hands across her knees.

  “I understand if you do not wish me to sit among you,” she said, voice muffled but no less sincere. “The crown of the All-Maudra was invented by the Skeksis to drive the clans apart. I accepted it when they killed my mother for fear of what they might do to the Vapra. But I know better now. I hope I can earn your trust, even after all that has happened.”

  Naia took in her tattered robe and bruises, the weary look across her wide, bare brow. No crown rested there. Just the sign of loss and loneliness. She waited for judgment from the others at the fire, and Naia reflected that the last time she had asked for their blessing, it had been Laesid and Fara who had withheld. Two maudra who were no longer with them.

  “Maudra meant something long before the Skeksis invented the All-Maudra,” Naia said. “So long as you wish to be true to that, then you are always welcome here.”

  The smile that crossed Seladon’s face was brilliant as sunlight on snow. Maudra Argot even moved her cane, making room, and then they were six around the fire. Ethri nudged Naia with an elbow.

  “You see? Waves recede, but only for a moment. The tide is ever changing, and yet it beats upon the shore as it has since the beginning of time. We are all part of the world, as it is part of us. We bear in our breast the sparks of the flame that lives in the heart of the world. Things change, but life goes on. We are that life. We are that song.”

  Naia’s mother’s words came out of Naia’s mouth, as if Maudra Laesid had been there to say them herself:

  “The forest is everlasting.”

  As if she had summoned them, Gurjin and Amri emerged from the dusky shadows, Rian a step behind. Naia moved to the side to make room for her brother and her friends. Though Gurjin could have easily taken the seat next to her, he went round the fire, wordlessly leaving it for Amri. The Shadowling slid down next to Naia, a pleasant warmth, familiar and comforting.

  “So what do we do next?” Rian asked.

  Naia realized with a start he was asking her. But for once, the answer came easily.

  “Recover,” she said. “Fortify. Realize the prophecy by returning the shard to the Crystal. Fend off the Skeksis until the next Great Conjunction and wait until the light of the triple sun unites them into urSkeks and sends them away.”

  “I have been discussing with Seethi,” Ethri said. “We found in fact we have much in common, the Gelfling of both the Crystal and Silver Seas.”

  Seethi nodded, quiet as death compared to her Sifa counterpart. “If we must endure the Skeksis for many trine to come, there could be no safer place than aboard the ships on the ocean or in the Wellspring shielded within the desert. We can take the Vapra who are accustomed to the north, along with anyone else who seeks refuge.”

  “We’ve brought Landstriders from Ha’rar,” Seladon added. “Along with what supplies we could. We are in your debt and at your disposal.”

  “I would like to offer Sami Thicket to anyone who wishes to come south,” Mera began, wringing her hands. “But our village is small, and the Skeksis have traveled easily to us for many trine. It would not be safe . . . I fear not even for us Spriton, any longer.”

  Argot sighed, tapping her fingers against the head of her cane. “It is the same in Domrak. The caves are in shambles after what the Arathim did. It is not safe. Not anymore.”

  “Then come further south,” Naia said. “Only one Skeksis has ever stepped foot in the glade under Great Smerth, and she was defeated. Though the darkening has touched the swamp, as it has touched everywhere, the forest is eternal. Anyone who wishes to come with us is welcome . . . so long as they can withstand the scent of my beloved swamp.”

  Naia winked at Maudra Mera. To her surprise, the wiry Spriton sighed and nodded.

  “Thank you, Naia,” she said solemnly.

  That left Rian and the tiny piece of crystal. It seemed impossible, that the little sliver of shining mineral could truly be the missing piece. The evidence of the wound that had weakened the entire world, small enough to fit in a Gelfling’s hand, its smooth facets rippling with firelight.

  “And I will find a way to return this shard to the Crystal,” Rian said.

  “You won’t be alone,” Gurjin replied. “Because I’m going with you.”

  Rian’s ears flattened, though a cautious hope sparked in his eyes. “You are? I thought after all this you’d want to go home . . .”

  It made sense, flashing like flint on steel. Naia smacked her palm with her fist.

  “He is,” she said. “The two of you know every corner of the castle. The Dark Wood can’t hide an entire clan, but it can hide two. You’ll be safe, and you can make a plan.” Naia faced Gurjin across the fire and felt a resonance she’d missed for a long time. Face-to-face with their mirrored eyes, reflecting a moment that had separated them once before in their childhood.

  “I will return to Sog and protect the Gelfling who go with us there. And y
ou will go with Rian. Take the shard. Heal the Crystal . . . It’s what Mira would have wanted.”

  “I won’t let you down,” Rian said. He glanced at Gurjin. “We won’t.”

  “In the morning, then,” she said. “The Gelfling can decide as they like. To go north with Ethri and Seethi and Seladon, or south with me and Mera and Argot.”

  The Gelfling worked steadily through the night. Naia rose with the others when the deep tone of a Dousan horn rang through the clearing. Erimon was calling. It was time for the final rite, to pay respects to the dead. Under the light of the moons, the Gelfling gathered a final time at the Stonewood hearth. The coals had smoldered, and it blossomed with blue smoke when Onica and Maudra Ethri anointed it with Sifa coral dust. Naia linked hands with the others, their voices in a tri-part lament led by Maudra Seethi.

  “We return you to Thra,” Maudra Seethi sang. To the Gelfling who had passed that day and in the days before. “May you sing the song of eternity in the light of the fire in the heart of the world.”

  After the rites were finished, an air of relief came across the clearing. As if a breeze had finally blown the last scent of darkness from the ruins, as the moonlight lined every rock and boulder in silver. Naia’s ears turned toward the sound of a lute, though the fingers that plucked the strings were not nearly as skilled as the ones she was used to. A Sifa bard was perched atop a boulder, playing and singing a ballad that she felt she had heard once before. Amri listened with a group of other Gelfling, ears forward and attentive.

  “Amri,” she said quietly, touching his elbow. “Have you seen Kylan?”

  “No,” he said. “Last I saw he was still looking at the wall at the back of Maudra Fara’s chamber.”

  Naia nodded. Of course he was. She made to go after him, but paused.

  “You’re coming south with us tomorrow, right?” she asked, anxious about his answer, though she didn’t know why. As if he might not be there when she came back.

  He only chuckled, brushing his silver hair over his shoulder.