Crystal Throne (Book 1)

by D. W. Jackson

  Thad didn’t know how he felt about sleeping under the same roof as members of the Brotherhood, but there was little choice in the matter without causing trouble.

  After a night of not so restful sleep Thad and the others gathered in a large center room that easily fit all of them. The room was split into three groups. The first was his son Bren and his friends. The second were the gods and the last was Thad who sat alone with Crusher, unsure of where he belonged. At first he moved toward Humanius. He didn’t know why but even though it had been a short time he felt a connection to the god akin to that he might feel towards a brother.

  Bren was his son, but he knew little about the young man. He had watched him grow in spurts thanks to Humanius, but having now spent time with his son he felt more and more disconnected from him. In the end Thad found himself sitting at the edge of a large table sitting in-between the two groups.

  “You think making the door larger so you can walk through is the best idea,” Cass said leaning forward. Thad liked the young man, but he was too direct and upfront. He had little in the way of tact when it came to discussions though. Crusher had often compared people to weapons and in Cass’s case he would have been a mace. Strong, hard, ridged and good at bludgeoning.

  “I can understand your concern,” Humanius said calmly. “Opening the doorway will make it harder to contain, but if we do not then we will never learn how to close it off for good. A small risk now is better than simply letting the gates of hell open.”

  “You think that just because you are a so called god that you know what is best?” Cass asked his voice raised.

  “Yes we do,” Belaroan said with a sneer. “We have lived for longer than your oldest history books. Do you think your few years on this earth can prepare you for what waits on the other side of that door?”

  “Fighting will get us nowhere,” Thad said standing before Cass could make another response. “As Cass has said, he is worried about opening the door, and as you have pointed out it is our only chance. You must understand that we do not possess your knowledge, so if you could enlighten us about what is waiting on the other side, then we might be more understanding of your point.”

  “That is an old and long story, and it is not what we need to talk about right now,” Humanius said dismissively. “We need to plan so that we can gather what we will need and gather the people to get it accomplished while we are gone.”

  “Humanius, you know I understand, but you out of all of them have watched humans. You know that without a clear reason that they will never simply follow you. Give them the answers they want otherwise you will find them fighting you every step of the way,” Thad said, his voice calm but his eyes pleading to the god.

  “Very well,” Belaroan said almost laughing. “Tell them what they want to know brother. History has never been my passion.”

  Humanius looked around the room, then let out a small sigh. “As I have told Thad, long ago our ancestors were just like you. They were simple humans and lived off of their own kind of magic that they called science. They created a world of wonders, but at the same time they slowly destroyed their world. As the land and people died everyone sought a way to find a new home. Some reached for the stars beyond their own world, but another man searched for another solution. He found it in opening doorways to other worlds.”

  “You mean like the one that is now open in the valley,” Bren said leaning back in his chair.

  “Yes and no,” Humanius replied his voice showing his annoyance. “The doorways were small and he couldn’t control where they opened too. Each time he found a world that could sustain life, he sent through as many other humans as he could. If the stories are true this went on for years. Then he opened the doorway to the center of all the worlds. Unlike the other doors, this one didn’t weaken over time, instead it spread. At first, the spread of magic was slow. There were more than a few odd things happening because of it but the most important was that children were born who could use magic to their own desire. The more magic was used the wider the door opened and the more magical energy that came through. Until there was enough magical energy to support the scions and the first of them came through the doorway. The scion killed thousands before they were able to take it down. It was then that they started working on a way to close off the door. I don’t know how they did it, but it took years to figure it out. During that time, other scions came through killed most of the population. After the doorway was closed and they felt safe my great grandfather found out how to imbue infants with strong magical powers. Over time, they perfected it and my kind were born. My father was one of the first, but he learned that the wall was weakening with the more gods that were created. At the time, my family had made themselves the kings of the new world, and he forbade any more gods to be created. The others didn’t agree with his laws and a rebellion was formed and our father was killed and we were forced out of our home. My sister was bent on revenge,” Humanius said his voice droning on in a bored tone.

  “They deserved it,” Belaroan said hotly. “Father was right and they ended up killing themselves.”

  “Just as my sister said, they must have created more gods and broke the wall between the two worlds,” Humanius said looking at his sister. “The magic in this world has been leaking through for generations, and while most of the world is too weak for a scion to live sooner or later they will do just as they have done to our old world and it will be destroyed. Now do you understand why it is so important that we fix this? If a world of gods could not stop the scions what do you think will happen to this world once they begin to come through?”

  “That doesn’t sound very good,” Cass said leaning back.

  “Now that we have that out of the way we need to figure how we are going to move enough glass to fill the valley,” Humanius said.

  “If we fill the valley with glass then won’t that completely close off the doorway anyway?” Bren asked.

  “No,” Thad said in reply drawing the eyes of his son. “Glass can’t completely sop magic. I used to use glass balls to contain magic but I did that by forcing the magic through the glass. If it got too strong the glass would break. It would slow it down, but the magic would get out sooner or later. We need something more powerful.”

  “I get all the bellyaching, but I don’t think anything ya say is gonna change the mind of the gods and I don’t think ya can do it by force. What ya can do is get this moving so that we don’t spend our entire lives arguing over it,” Crusher said rolling his eyes.

  “What do we need?” Bren asked.

  “People,” Humanius said. “Those who can move the glass and those who can bring in anything else we might need. Metal, stone, gems, wood, or anything else that might be required.”

  “You have the gods of all the magical races, I am sure that they can get most of what you need. And most of the Brotherhood is not far away, or at least they weren’t when we reached the valley. My and Jin’s mothers can transport most of the goods if that’s the problem.”

  “That was my thought as well, but I figured it would be easier for you to reach the same conclusion without me,” Humanius replied. “I didn’t want you to feel as if I was the only one in control. Now with that settled, once we have enough glass ready to be brought into the valley we will leave. There is no point in putting this off for longer than we must. It will be hard enough to kill one scion and more will gather over time.”

  “I understand that, but why can’t any of us go along?” Phena said the same fire in her voice as she had when she had talked to Thad.

  “Some of you might already be feeling it,” Belaroan said looking around. “The magical energy is stronger here than anywhere else in the world. What lies on the other side of that door is much stronger. It will rip you apart from the inside out.”

  “Yet you are letting Thad go,” She said her eyes flashing with pent up anger.

  “I don’t agree with that either, but my brother wants him along,” Belaroan said giving her
brother a sideways glance. “It would seem that their time together has warped my brother’s mind. I think he will be a liability, but it was not worth arguing about, but no others will travel to the other side. I will take no more risks than I have to.”

  I would have thought that you would have caved in and begged the god to allow the girl to go with us. It seems that you time alone in the dark has changed you.

  Thad laughed, making everyone look at him. Thuraman had been mostly silent since Thad had exited the vale. Thad wasn’t sure that he had changed, but he was sure that Thuraman had. The staff still hated women, but it was surer of itself and seemed less cocky. From what Thad could tell, his son had a positive effect on the staff.

  You would think that. I can promise it was not your son that has changed me, though I can understand why you think I have changed. The truth is, I have though it is more recent. When we first entered the Deadlands I had to save your son’s life and I pulled in far more magical energy than I should have. It has affected me.

  Before Thuraman could say another word, Thad focused his attention and looked at it through his magical sight. Thuraman was right, there had been a change in the staff, and it wasn’t a small one. Thad couldn’t remember how many times he had looked at the staff through his magical senses. Before there had always been small links of energy connecting each gem, but now, where there had been thin threads it looked more like beating veins and the diamond on top was the heart. “You have changed,” Thad said inside his own mind.

  The gods and Bren were discussing what to do next, so Thad excused himself and left the large room and headed outside. Thad opened himself to the magic energy, but found that the amount surrounding him was far more than he could control.

  I am glad that you are smarter than you son. He didn’t even think before he tried to pull in magical energy and he let it overwhelm him.

  “He is still young,” Thad replied trying to excuse his son’s action though he knew that it was foolish. He had learned magic mostly on his own and he had learned to look at the magic surrounding him before using it without help, and Bren had a whole tower to train him. Most likely Bren had been too strong and forgot to care about the fear that most mages had about burning out.

  You can try to convince yourself of that, but we both know the truth. Bren is strong, but he has little respect for the power itself.

  Thad refused to respond to Thuraman’s taunts. They were nothing new to him and, in all honestly, he had missed them greatly. As much as the staff annoyed him, when he was without it, he had felt as if part of himself had been ripped away. Knowing that he couldn’t draw in magic himself, Thad lifted Thuraman into the air and pulled in magic through it. The diamond glowed as it pulled in the magic and he could feel Thuraman as if he were holding a beating heart. Once he had gathered enough magical energy, he created an illusion of Maria. He gave a faint smile then let the illusion disappear. “I wish you would have been this useful when I was younger.”

  That would have made things too easy. Just as if you had been as strong as your son, things would have been much different though that does not mean in a good way. You never liked the idea that others were controlling you, yet more often than not, you let them do just that. At first I hated that dual nature of yours, but now I think I see something I have never seen before. I don’t think it is the so called gods that control us, but the world itself. I think there is much more going on here than we might see.

  “You might be right,” Thad admitted. “Things have not always worked out perfectly, but they have worked out, and in some cases even when there was no reason for them to. If there is something steering us then there is little reason to think about it. We will do what we must. To its design, or our own, that is all that we can do.”

  CHAPTER III

  It took Humanius six days to get his children to help with the effort to bring the glass in from the Deadlands. Getting in contact with them was the easy part; getting them to work with mages without trying to kill them was the hard part. Even with their god telling them, it was hard for many of them to set aside their swords and many of the mages, who had been trapped in the void, didn’t make it easier as they held grudges for the action of the Brotherhood as most of them were from the time of the Fae war.

  Thad spent much of the time while he waited talking to the mages from the long past. At least the ones of them that still lived. Within the first three days, a good number of the mages tried to use magic causing them to either go insane or burn out. They knew the risks, but the call of the magic after being cut off for so long was just too much for them.

  What he learned after talking to the remaining mages was that there was much more to the Fae Wars than he had believed. He also learned that mages back then were not as strong as the ones that are around now. The same was to be said of the other magical races. The longer the bloodlines stretched the more magic seeped into them. It was almost like a gradual progression, and made Thad think of the things Humanius had said about the weakening of the vale and how mages had first been born in their world. If Thad was right, then even without Belaroan’s help, a new god would have been born eventually though most likely not before the vail had completely fallen and the door to the other world had been completely open. That also meant something else to Thad other than the obvious dangers. If they shut off both doors, then the flow of magic would greatly decrease, and mages might disappear completely given enough time.

  Are you just now figuring this out?

  “Don’t act like you already figured it out,” Thad said almost laughing to himself. “You always do that. Whenever I figure something out, you act as if you had already know about it. I wonder how many times in the past you have done that and I just went along with it.”

  You just now figured that out. I thought it would be good for you to think I was always a little ahead of you. Kept you from getting too full of yourself. No reason to worry about it now, I think you have enough to care about. What are you going to do about this current one that has caught your attention?

  “Nothing much I can do at the moment,” Thad admitted. “I will just have to think, and hope to find a solution. The wall has to be built, but I would hate to see mages fade from the world. If that must happen then so be it. The world lasted over a thousand years thinking that magic was nothing but a fairytale, it can do so again.”

  You are thinking too small again. It wouldn’t just be the mages that would disappear. What about the elves, dwarves, and the other magical races? Without magic they wouldn’t be able to survive in this world.

  “Not to mention that anything born of magic such as a certain staff would die along with them,” Thad added with a sneer. “We can’t fight the scions. If there are things that must be sacrificed then that will be the cost.”

  You have changed. There was a time that you worried about every cost, every loss, as if it were your own.

  “That may be true, but there was also a time that you never cared about losses,” Thad replied. “I can tell that you are worried about more than yourself. You have grown a heart since I have last seen you.”

  For the first time since Thuraman had first spoken, Thad found that it was the staff that chose to remain silent. Thad found it slightly vexing. The staff could almost always see into his thoughts yet the connection never went both way. True, Thad could get some sense of the staff when they were talking, but it was nothing as strong as what the staff could do. It made Thad think, that if he spent more time maybe he could strengthen that bond and allow himself more insight into the staff, but that would take a lot of time and that was not something he had readily available at the moment.

  “Thad,” a voice said from behind him, drawing Thad’s attention. “It is time.”

  Turning around, Thad found Belaroan standing in the doorway. She was very unlike the picture that her brother had planted in his mind. He expected her to look like some half crazed devil but in the end, she looked much the same as any other woman, though h
er skin was a light silver and her eyes were a deep golden color that seemed to shine in the faint light streaming into the room from the window. “I would have expected that Humanius would be the one who came to get me.”

  “My brother is busy trying to explain to his children that they are no longer allowed to hunt mages,” Belaroan said happily. “That, and that they are not allowed to go with him. I was having fun watching, but it quickly grew tedious so I thought I would fetch you since you have been preoccupied with your own thoughts.”

  “You seem different than I expected,” Thad said as he buckled on a sword that the dwarven god had acquired for him. It wasn’t his but given that that one was in the Farlan palace it would have to do.

  “That is true,” Belaroan said, her eyes somewhat sad. “For years, I dreamed of my return to my home, but it was at the front of a conquering army to take vengeance on those that had wronged my family. It would seem that they have already suffered their fate. Even so, I do wish my brother had not held up my designs for so long. I really wished to see the faces of pain the other gods would have shown me.”

  Thad walked past the god and kept his head down. “I think that’s enough of that talk,” he said as he walked down the hall leading to the door outside.

  As soon as he walked through the vine made door that the elven god had made, Thad found most of the gods and Bren waiting on him. Once everyone was gathered, Humanius led the way to the door to the tunnel on the outskirts of the town.

  Just as the trip back through, it didn’t take too long to reach the center of the valley. As soon as they walked through the large double doors they didn’t find the serene valley they had left a handful of days before. There was no noticeable grass as now the entire floor of the valley was covered in piles of glass that had been moved from the desert.