Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  When the steam coalesced once more, it was with the image of time passing. The suns and moons raced across the sky in rapid succession, and Naia saw Aughra. Then Gelfling, rising from the land among the other flowers and creatures. They learned to channel fire and water, to turn the earth and to respect all life.

  “One thousand trine passed before the suns began another conjunction. The urSkeks, feeling they had done well, converged on the Crystal. Thinking that when the light of the triple sun struck it, the gateway would open once more for them to return home. But . . .”

  Naia saw the urSkeks, gathered around the Crystal in the castle where it floated, high above the floor in the chamber where she had seen it herself. In this vision, it was clear and brilliant. Pure as ice, singing with the voice of eternity. The song of Thra. As the three suns converged overhead, the light came once more—

  But then, chaos. Screams. Light and dark were torn apart, like twin shadows cast from a single sun. Where there had been eighteen, now there were thirty-six: the urSkeks, by the light of the Crystal, had split in two.

  “Skeksis and urRu,” Naia whispered. “You were once . . . one.”

  “We still are one. But split. The Crystal’s power did not deliver us to our home. Instead, it saw the imperfection that remained in our hearts. It saw we still were restless. It rejected us. And so our second lesson began.”

  Naia held her breath, heart pounding, as she watched the melee unfurl below the Crystal. The Skeksis and urRu—not yet lords or Mystics—newly born, shrieking and moaning. Clutching themselves and staring into the bewildered eyes of their other halves. Naia couldn’t imagine the pain and fear they must have felt—if they felt those things at all—couldn’t imagine what it might be like to be seared apart by the Crystal, awakening to find herself looking into the eyes of her worst self.

  Or the other way around. To see her best self staring back at her, knowing it meant she was the other half.

  A Skeksis fell, bleeding from a wound he’d taken in the confusion. At the same time, his Mystic half stumbled, and together the two died, having seen only moments of life in this new configuration. Naia watched in horror as the others hardly noticed, too embroiled in their panic and mourning.

  A flash of light broke the din. All stopped and gazed upward, where a dread shining splashed like a fountain.

  One of the Skeksis had struck the Crystal with a scepter. The immortal, invincible-seeming Crystal flashed and hummed, vibrating with light and power. Naia could feel the pain of the Crystal in that moment, even separated by so many trine. She could feel it in her heart, knew the song of agony.

  A single shard flew from the wound where the scepter had pierced it. All eyes tracked its spiral through the air. Then it dropped into the chute below the Crystal, glittering like an escaping tear.

  As it vanished, so did the vision. Naia let out the breath she had been holding and realized her hand was clenched around Amri’s. She let go and wiped the wetness on her cheek.

  “They cracked the Crystal,” she said.

  “Yes, we did,” urSu replied.

  “You didn’t, the Skeksis did,” Gurjin said, but the Mystic Master shook his head.

  “We are the Skeksis. As they are us. It was we who cracked the Crystal. We who lost the shard. We who left the Crystal incomplete, as we are incomplete. It is our final lesson. A gift from Thra, so we may be tested. For without the shard, we cannot heal the Crystal. And without the Crystal intact, we cannot return from whence we came. When final judgment comes, only then will we know whether we might leave this world as urSkeks once again.”

  “Do the Skeksis know this?” Tavra asked. “Do they remember being urSkeks, as you do?”

  “It is hard to say,” urSu said. “They did, once. But they have become consumed by desire for this material world. Distracted by riches and the adoration of the Gelfling. Drunk on the delight of power. It has been nearly one thousand trine again since we split in twain. In that time, many have forgotten . . . but not skekSo.”

  Emperor skekSo. The one who ruled even the Skeksis, who sat in the castle with the Crystal held in chains. Whose reign had enslaved the Heart of Thra, and upon whose orders the Gelfling were being drained of their essence.

  “You are his counterpart.” Naia’s statement could have come out a question, but she knew in her heart it was simply the truth. “You and the Emperor. You used to be one.”

  Gently urSu nodded, so low and long it was nearly a bow. “That is why I was the one charged with sharing this information with you, Naia of the Drenchen,” he said. “This you must know, so you may know what you must do.”

  Naia had met the Emperor only once, when she’d stood in the Skeksis throne room beside Tavra. She had been meek, then—hiding behind Tavra, unsure what to think of the burning eyes that looked upon her. But now, knowing what the Emperor and his lords had done to the Crystal, she wanted nothing more than to stand before him once more, dagger in hand. She would not be meek the next time they met.

  More than ever before, Naia wanted to obliterate them from Thra and every other world. Permanently, so they could no longer wreak their corruption upon worlds that did not belong to them. So they could no longer poison the world that was trying with all its might to endure.

  But could they be stopped? Were the Gelfling strong enough? And even if the Skeksis could be killed, a darkness waited on the other side. Naia had seen what happened to the Mystics when the Skeksis were harmed. What happened to one reflected upon the other. Cuts and scars. urSan’s missing hand. urTih’s bandaged eye. Naia had never paused to think how far their connection went. But now that she had seen what had happened in the shadow and light of the Crystal, she knew.

  “The Skeksis have to be stopped,” she said. “But . . .”

  She couldn’t finish. Couldn’t say the words out loud and bring them to life, not in the faces of the creatures who would ultimately pay the price for what she and the Gelfling were planning. She could barely look at the resting Archer, heart heavy with the knowing.

  “If skekMal dies, so will urVa,” Amri said, the first to say it out loud. “Same with all the Skeksis and Mystics.”

  The terrible truth hovered like the scent of death. Naia had known for a long time that the Skeksis and the Mystics were connected, but none of them could have guessed how or why. When urVa was hurt, so was skekMal. So was the opposite just as true. But no one had ever confirmed whether or not a Skeksis might die if their Mystic counterpart did—though she could have guessed it might be the case, Naia had never considered the thought too closely. Especially not when considering the larger goal she had kept in the forefront of her mind: unite the Gelfling and defeat the Skeksis.

  But what did that defeat look like? Surely, if all the Gelfling united and the Skeksis called them into war, defeat would actually mean death. Naia was not so modest to say she had never imagined killing a Skeksis before, especially not after what they had done to her friends and family. Had she been given the chance before to drive a dagger into Emperor skekSo’s heart, she would have done it without a second thought. What other way was there to make their defeat permanent? They were powerful and strong, and they held the Crystal captive. How could the Gelfling possibly defeat them, if not through force?

  Naia stared at poor urVa and the bloodstained bandages that dressed him at almost every joint. Fractured bones and torn muscles, cut and bruised skin. If skekMal had been killed by whomever he had fought, urVa would have died alongside him. urVa, who had helped them, taught them, and saved them. She couldn’t let that happen.

  Her chest hurt from holding her breath. The truth of their predicament came closer and closer to the surface until she couldn’t push it away any longer. She felt a tear roll out of the corner of her eye, laden with the sting of pain and despair.

  “We can’t win,” she said. “Anything we do to the Skeksis happens to the Mystics.”

/>   “That doesn’t mean we can’t win,” Gurjin said, almost silently. He was trying to be reassuring, but there was no strength in his voice. He was just as distressed as she was.

  “How are we supposed to defeat them if we can’t hurt them?” she asked. “If we can’t kill them? When they have no hesitation killing us? But we can’t kill them. It’s not right. If we do, we’ll be just as bad as them!”

  There it was. Out in the open, straightforward and simple. The tiny room fell into a deep silence, though Naia’s words seemed to echo forever. We can’t kill them. We can’t kill them.

  “But Aughra told us to unite the Gelfling,” Gurjin said. “She told Rian to find something. She and Thra must have a plan. We have to be patient and trust them.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Naia snapped, unspent emotions bubbling to the surface. “You really think that everything we’ve done so far—everything Rian is doing—can somehow stop the Skeksis without hurting them? Without hurting the Mystics? And if Aughra knows so much, then where is she, eh? Why hasn’t she said anything?”

  She bit her tongue. Her friends stared back at her with varying expressions of discomfort. Kylan licked his lips as if he were going to reply, but he kept quiet. Naia sucked in a breath, but it didn’t help. She felt as if every anxiety she’d pushed down was rushing out and she couldn’t stop it.

  “All this time, we’ve been rallying the Gelfling to rise. To stand up to the Skeksis. All this time, we’ve been preparing them to fight. But to what end? When we finally call on them to confront the Skeksis, how will we fight them? If not swords and spears, then what—songs and prayers?”

  Gurjin was the first and only to respond to her, and only in a tone of voice like one would use to scold a child.

  “Naia,” he said sternly. “Calm down. The last thing we need is you going off and doing something without thinking again.”

  The air in the chamber felt thicker by the moment. Before she suffocated, smothered by the dim light and the dispassionate look on her brother’s face, Naia shouldered past her friends, mumbling, “I’ve got to get some air.”

  With carefully calculated steps, she put poor urVa and the others behind her, escaping the dark chamber for the sunlit valley outside.

  CHAPTER 7

  Once she’d swung down the rope ladder to the dusty earth, Naia struck out into the ravine away from the center encampment, arms folded tightly across her chest, listening to her footsteps echo against the walls of the empty-seeming canyon.

  It wasn’t empty. Not really. She caught sight of skittering, furry lizards chasing bugs for their breakfast. Birds flying overhead. Shrubs and mosses growing from between the rocks, and the occasional smooth-barked tree winding its way upward with lacy golden leaves. She even saw urLii emerging from one of the caves with a wide yawn, his quill and book in hand. The valley of stones was full of life, but even so, Naia felt alone.

  Naia watched the slow movement of the suns cast shadows on the dusty valley walls. Her mother had told her that when her grandmother had been Naia’s age, it was extremely rare that all three suns were seen in the sky at once. When it happened, it was only briefly, with the third sun skirting just above the horizon. But now, many trine later, Naia could see all three clearly, even at the bottom of the canyon with the steep walls on either side. She had noticed it on her first days out of the swamp, but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Hadn’t paused to consider what the writing in urVa’s hut had meant, when Kylan had read it aloud.

  When single shine the triple suns, the writing had said. It had been meaningless then, written by a strange, distracted philosopher who lived in a hovel in the middle of the Dark Wood.

  “Or when single shines the triple sun,” Naia murmured to herself, remembering what urSu had called it. The triple sun. When the three suns became one. It was the light of that triple sun that had brought the urSkeks.

  Light glinted. Running through the smoothed walls of the valley on the endless streams of crystal filaments. They were nearly invisible, blending in with the rest of the dusty stone until struck full of light from the suns. Naia reached out to touch the thin crystal veins, but the threadlike mineral was so delicate she could scarcely feel it, much less hear its song.

  The crystal veins were what connected Thra to its heart, just as the veins in Naia’s body flowed with her lifeblood, in and out of her heart in an endless cycle. She touched the rock, wishing the veins might speak to her now. Pure white, yet untouched by the darkening seeping from the Crystal like a sickness.

  “Hear anything?”

  Amri picked his way over the rocks. Naia didn’t protest when he stood beside her, putting his hand where hers had been, pink finger pads soft against the rock.

  “No,” she said. “I’m . . . No.”

  “I tried that when we first came here. While Gurjin was healing you and we weren’t sure if you were going to make it . . . but I didn’t hear anything then. Haven’t tried since.”

  “I’m sorry I worried you.”

  He shrugged. He wouldn’t meet her eyes, though before when they’d been on skekSa’s ship, he’d been all grins and winks, even when they’d been trapped in the behemoth ship and chased by a Skeksis. It hadn’t been dreamfasting, but it was close—like they had begun to know each other. As if she could look into him and see inside and was offering the same to him when he looked at her.

  But now when she looked, she couldn’t see as deeply. What had changed? News of Domrak, maybe, or now the revelation that their plans to defeat the Skeksis were dashed to pieces? Either way, Naia didn’t blame him for the aloofness. Not now, anyway.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “It’s . . .”

  He narrowed his eyes at the wall, focusing in thought. He crouched, legs and back bending gracefully as he slid his hands down the stone surface. It reminded Naia of how her mother healed: tracing the lines of a living body, sensing its shape and energy. He pulled his hair back and pressed his bared ear against the stone, closing his eyes. Then unfolded and stood straight once more, tall and slender, and pointed.

  “I think I do hear something. This way.”

  Their path took them farther from the center of the valley, where the way narrowed into a thin passage barely wide enough for Naia and Amri to walk in single file.

  Amri stopped in front of a wedge-shaped hole, where the crystal veins they had been following interlaced, streaming together to form bigger ribbons of the glittering, rough mineral. The braided, tangled veins vanished into the tunnel.

  “I can hear the network of crystal growing stronger inside. There must be places throughout the valley where it happens,” Amri said as they stood before the cave entrance and considered its inky darkness. Naia nodded.

  “Let’s go,” she said.

  Almost immediately, the way fell into blackness. As they went deeper, Amri’s eyes widened, absorbing the shadows. He became almost another Gelfling in the dark; the timidness and squintiness melted away, revealing a confidence that bordered on audacity. Naia knew it was who he really was, coming to life like a night-blooming flower.

  As he guided her over jagged stalagmites and under hanging stalactites, Naia felt as if she were crawling between the fangs of another enormous beast.

  “I’m sorry about what happened in Grot,” she said. If that was what was bothering him, maybe now that they were alone, he would open up about it. She wanted him to. She wanted to comfort him.

  But all he said was, “Me too.”

  Just when it became so dark that she might as well have had her eyes closed, light came again. Softer, this time, the kind of light that came from within. Naia blinked away the shadows and focused as they neared, then let out a long breath of awe.

  Buried at the back of the tunnel, hundreds of tiny crystal veins converged, tangling in a dizzying swirl of white and blue and gold. Where they converged, a huge cluster of crysta
l jutted from the wall, piercing the shadows with its light. It was the biggest crystal cluster Naia had ever seen, aside from the Crystal itself—almost as large as her two hands folded together, pointed and glistening like the icicles that shone from the eaves in Ha’rar.

  “It’s beautiful,” she breathed. She wanted to touch it, feel the pure, gentle light that ebbed and flowed from it like the breath from a living being. The two of them huddled closer, letting the light of the crystal shine on their faces. Even Amri sat close, unflinching. This light was not the kind that strained or hurt his Grottan eyes.

  The elation of finding the crystal faded when Naia noticed a discoloration on one of the cluster spires. She curled her lips in, letting out a sorry breath when she saw the tinge of purple that crept across one of the tiniest facets. It was so small it looked like a tiny bruise. Something that might heal in time, fade away into nothing, only a blemish on the face of the stone. But Naia knew better.

  “Even here,” she said. “Somewhere so beautiful and hidden. Even here, the darkness of the Crystal spreads.”

  “I don’t think anywhere is safe,” Amri said quietly as they regarded the violet mark. “Not until we heal the Crystal itself.”

  “And we barely know how to do that,” Naia added. She sighed and tugged on her locs, wishing for all the world she could heal the Crystal like she could heal cuts and bruises, and even broken bones. Or at least, like she used to be able to.

  Naia looked down, holding her hands palm up and spreading her fingers, and focused, the way her mother had taught her even when she was very young. The light was dim and weak, though still there. Like a tiny ember in a dying bed of coals or the last bit of moss glowing at daybreak. Nowhere near the radiant beams of light that had come forth in the past.

  It really was true. Gurjin had absorbed her powers. Not everything, but enough that Naia wasn’t sure what she was capable of anymore. In the realm of healing, or anything else.