The Crystal Mountain

by Thomas M. Reid

  With cries of glee the wretched things swarmed outward from their broken cocoon and raced toward the celestial denizens.

  Eirwyn stared at the game board before her, frowning. She could see several possible moves that might create an advantage for her position, but none of them felt right. She could gain no insight into her path.

  No, that’s not quite right, she admitted. I can’t focus.

  “You seem restless,” Oshiga commented, sitting across from Eirwyn. “Have I backed you into a corner?”

  Eirwyn smirked. “Not yet, but I can’t seem to concentrate. I’m not certain this is working.”

  Oshiga nodded. “Perhaps we should rest.”

  Eirwyn shook her head. “That’s not it. I know Erathaol wants me to relax and get back in the habit of divining in small ways, but this doesn’t feel right.”

  “How so?”

  Eirwyn frowned and shrugged. “I shouldn’t be here,” she said finally. “All this”—she gestured around herself at the sumptuous chambers that had been prepared for her stay—“is too …”

  Oshiga gave her a puzzled look. “I do not understand. The rooms are not to your liking? How can we make you more comfortable?”

  Eirwyn sighed. “No, the accommodations are wonderful. That’s the problem. They are too nice.”

  Oshiga looked more confused.

  “Something terrible is coming,” Eirwyn said. “Something I need to be a part of. I shouldn’t be here, enjoying such luxuries, when trouble is brewing.”

  “Erathaol believes that you cannot find yourself until you release this anxiety. You will not know your role until you stop fighting it.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s quite a conundrum. The more I remove myself from the threat—the more I escape my troubles and cares in order to make peace with my unconscious and unearth this mystery—the more confused I become.”

  “I will speak to Erathaol about this at once,” Oshiga said, rising. “Perhaps he can offer you some sense of how better to proceed.”

  “No, do not trouble the Seer with this,” Eirwyn said. “I will muddle through it somehow.” She stretched and rose. “But let us leave off from playing board games for a while. I must seek some other ways to relax.”

  Oshiga bowed. “As you wish.” He turned to go. “If you have any need, I am at your disposal.”

  “I know,” Eirwyn answered, and she smiled in appreciation. “You are most kind, generous, and patient with me.”

  Oshiga bowed again and departed, leaving the angel to her thoughts.

  Eirwyn peered around the chambers once more, trying to decide what she wanted to do. Fly away, she thought. Return to the surface. Find something meaningful to do. Help.

  She threw her arms up in frustration and decided to swim. She moved to the pool. As she entered the water, Eirwyn thought of Tauran. She remembered how he rarely chose to swim in the Lifespring merely for pleasure. She could see him, in her mind’s eye, diving from high above the enchanted waters, honing his skills, practicing.

  He never let up, the angel recalled. He was always preparing for the next development. That’s what I should be doing.

  Much later, Eirwyn awoke in darkness, panicked. She fumbled to rise, could not, and finally realized she had become entangled in the covers. She was drenched in sweat, and her heart pounded.

  Another nightmare, she thought. About what?

  She sat in the darkness of her chambers and concentrated, trying to remember anything at all.

  Images flashed through her mind. Pictures of danger, of dark creatures. Of prisoners. There!

  Eirwyn focused on one particular image, a place that seemed somehow familiar, yet not a place she recognized. I must go there, she understood. But what—and more importantly, where—is it?

  She rose from her bed and dressed. I must do some research, she thought. Somewhere in this massive library is the answer I seek. I need Oshiga.

  Eirwyn left her chambers and went in search of the trumpet archon.

  Aliisza watched Kaanyr pace from one side of the rotunda to the other. She could see the cambion’s mood grow fouler with each lap. Beyond him, barely visible in the dim light, her arcane cage still stood, holding the creature that had once been Micus and Myshik. The aberration had finally ceased his attempts to batter his way out. He sat near the back of his enclosure, watching Kaanyr.

  Aliisza rested against one of the columns between Tauran and Kael, with the planetar nearby. Zasian stood over all three of the wounded companions, watching over them.

  Aliisza and Kaanyr had decided to move the three unconscious forms into the center of the chamber, where the priest could tend to them more easily. Kael bucked and groaned when they removed Aliisza’s sword protruding from his gut, but he did not otherwise awaken, and Zasian managed to close the wound with his unusual healing power. The half-drow seemed stable, but Aliisza refused to leave his side until she was certain he wasn’t going to succumb to his injuries.

  From time to time, the priest would place a hand upon one or another chest, close his eyes, and murmur something Aliisza couldn’t quite make out. He had been at his vigil for quite some time, and Aliisza marveled at how he kept it up. Her own body ached with fatigue.

  “Is he ever going to waken?” Kaanyr asked, standing in the middle of the chamber and staring at Zasian.

  The man cringed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I’m trying. This one”—he pointed at the planetar—“is badly hurt and I can’t seem to heal him. But those other two are much better. They should be awake by now, but for some reason, they just aren’t. I don’t understand.”

  Kaanyr’s sigh echoed through the room. “This is ridiculous! We’re getting nowhere!”

  When Aliisza didn’t answer him, he returned to pacing. Aliisza glanced over at Zasian. He was watching Kaanyr with a mixture of fear and curiosity, his eyes wide. The strange childlike innocence that the priest exhibited continued to intrigue Aliisza. Beyond her distrust of the man, the youthful attitude belied the maturity of his face. If it was a hoax, he was carrying it off perfectly.

  “I just wish I could remember,” Zasian said as he returned to monitoring Kael. “I must have done something very bad to make him so angry at me.”

  Aliisza just watched the man next to her. Finally, when he looked up, she said, “Be glad that you can’t.”

  She turned her attention back to Kaanyr. He returned her stare, but his mind seemed far away. Aliisza rose to her feet and crossed the floor.

  “Hey,” she said, taking Kaanyr’s hand in her own. The preternatural warmth of his skin felt good. She had forgotten how much she used to seek out his touch. “What is it?”

  Kaanyr shook his head. “It seems like we’ve been out here for days. Who knows? Maybe we have.”

  “And?” she prompted, pulling the cambion around to face her squarely. “What of it? We already agreed that waiting for Tauran to wake up was the best choice. Perhaps Tyr will have seen fit to grant his blessings to Tauran once more. But even if he hasn’t, we won’t be any worse off. Just be patient.”

  “I’m just so tired of feeling … helpless.”

  Welcome to my world, Aliisza thought, but she resisted the urge to snort in derision. Standing close to him, sharing that moment, felt familiar and comfortable, and she didn’t want to lose it. Instead, she just watched him. Her mind flashed through a series of memories, of a happier time for the two of them, back in Amarindar, when they were master and mistress of their world. A lifetime ago, Aliisza mused. Several lifetimes, perhaps.

  When she turned her attention back to Kaanyr, she was surprised to find him smiling at her. She could tell by the twinkle in his eye that he was thinking lascivious thoughts.

  Aliisza returned the grin, though she felt slightly embarrassed. Must have been thinking the same things I was, she thought. “What?” she asked him.

  “I was just remembering when you used to come find me in the throne room,” Kaanyr said. “How you used to sit on
my lap and squirm, trying to distract me, and I’d pretend not to notice just to aggravate you.”

  Aliisza chuckled and punched Kaanyr gently in the arm. “Infuriate me, is more like it,” she said. “I should have known.” She rolled her eyes playfully, then stepped into his embrace and snuggled there. “Mmm,” she purred.

  “Let’s go,” Kaanyr said abruptly, that old mischievous tone in his voice. “Just you and me, right now. Let’s just take off into that silver void and find our old lives again. What do you say?”

  Aliisza felt her smile turn sad as she pulled back to look him in the eye again. “You know I can’t do that,” she said, “and neither can you.”

  Kaanyr nodded and said, “I know, but would you if we could? Is there still enough of the old you in there somewhere that you could see yourself slipping away with me, starting over again, without … without all this?” He gestured around the two of them. “We didn’t have such a bad life together, did we?”

  You’re just figuring this out now? Aliisza fumed. Only now, after using me as your personal skeleton key? She looked away and fought her frustrations at her lover’s misguided ambitions. Instead of answering his question, she asked, “Where would we go? How would we escape this?”

  Kaanyr shrugged, and a look of consternation crossed his own face. “I don’t know,” he said. “Does it matter? I just thought—”

  “I’m sorry,” Aliisza said, realizing she was spoiling the moment. “Yes, of course I would go with you. If none of this was happening, if there weren’t other lives dependent on us for survival, and we could just slip away, steal back our place in the world, I would go with you.” Maybe.

  Kaanyr’s smile returned. “I miss us,” he said. “I really do.”

  That time, Aliisza couldn’t help herself. “Then why in the Nine Hells would you do what you did to me?” she asked, her voice plaintive. “Why would you put me through all this? I never crossed you. I deserved better.” She looked down, biting her lip.

  Kaanyr laughed, then, a deep, long chuckle that made him shake. Aliisza glared at him, but she knew why he was laughing. That didn’t make her any less angry about it.

  When he finally caught his breath, he said, “You may never have crossed me, but you were hardly loyal, wench. You plotted your own course all the time, my instructions be damned.” He saw her fury and softened his tone. “But that’s exactly why I loved you so much,” he said, taking her face in his hands. “That’s what always drew me back to you, time and again. You may have kept your own counsel more than I would have liked, but you always had spirit.”

  Aliisza tried to cling to her anger, but his praise made her blush, and she couldn’t help but smile. “You always knew how to flatter a girl,” she said. “You know, maybe, after all this”—she gestured around the ruined chamber—“is over and we get away from everything, we can—”

  A thump in the floor interrupted Aliisza. Kaanyr felt it too.

  “What was that?” he asked, spinning in place.

  “Let’s find out,” Aliisza said and walked to the opening in the wall.

  As she strode to the hole and peered out, another thud, stronger than before, reverberated through the rotunda. It came from overhead, and it dislodged a chunk of stone from the fractured ceiling that landed very near Tauran’s head before bouncing away.

  “What is that?” Kaanyr demanded, moving beside her.

  The other bubbles that had been drifting along beside their refuge had gathered together. They all jostled one another as they bobbed and flowed in the wake of the massive bubble with the mysterious figure inside. To Aliisza, it felt as though the current they followed had picked up speed, and the wash streaming behind the massive form had grown more turbulent. She had nothing by which to judge it, of course. No landmarks drifted by to give her any sense of speed or scale. It was just a gut instinct.

  “I think we’re getting close to something,” Aliisza murmured, trying to stare in the direction she thought they were traveling. The effort was made more tricky due to their constant rotation in the void—it hurt her head too much to try to imagine the rotunda doing the spinning. “It feels like we’re about to go down a drain or something.”

  “Wonderful,” Kaanyr grumbled.

  He turned and cast a withering glance at Zasian. “Is the bubble going to hold?”

  Zasian shrugged. “He’s dying. I can’t stop it, only slow it down.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  The priest shrugged again. “I don’t know.”

  Aliisza could sense that he was afraid of saying the wrong thing. “Leave him be,” she admonished when Kaanyr started to stomp toward Zasian. “We’ve got enough to worry about without you putting him in a panic again.”

  Kaanyr stopped, but he continued to glare at the priest. “He’s lying. I know it. I just can’t figure out what he’s up to.”

  Aliisza sighed. She had long since given up trying to figure out the veracity of Zasian’s behavior. If it was a trick, nothing they had said or done yet had caused him to slip up.

  She turned back to the view beyond their little shelter. They had stopped spinning, and everything beyond her jagged little window remained in view. When she spotted something dark on what might have been a horizon, she blinked in a double take.

  Could it be?

  She waited and watched, not trusting her own vision enough to call Kaanyr over. After a few more moments, though, she was certain.

  “Kaanyr,” she said. When he joined her, she pointed. “What is that?”

  Kaanyr stared at the darkening line for several long moments before he spoke. “It looks like land,” he said. “And we’re drifting right toward it.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense!” Eirwyn shouted, slamming the book down upon the table. Her voice echoed through the great chamber and came back to mock her. “In my mind, I can see this place as clearly as the Court, and it’s not to be found anywhere in these books. Why not?” She closed her eyes and pressed her hands to her lids, rubbing them.

  Beside her, Oshiga shifted. “Perhaps we are simply not meant to find this information,” he said. “Not all divinations are meant to be.”

  Eirwyn lowered her hands and glared at the celestial being. “You’re not helping,” she said crossly. “I know this is part of the dream I’ve been having. Even though I can’t recall anything else about it, I know it has something to do with this place. Maybe we’re just not hunting for it the right way. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”

  Oshiga drew himself up and said haughtily, “Quite certain. But let’s start again, from the beginning. Describe the place you see in the most exacting detail as you can muster. Leave no feature out.”

  Eirwyn sighed and calmed herself. Yelling at him isn’t helping either, she told herself. “Very well,” she said. “Up close, it appears to be a crystalline fortress, roughly formed. It sits dark and brooding upon a plateau. Although it is night, a green glow fills the sky. It’s very eerie. The glow comes from what I can only describe as a snowstorm composed of jagged green shards or flakes. The place feels very sinister and … alive. It’s hard to explain any better than that.”

  “Go on,” Oshiga said, furiously scribing into a blank book that rested before him. “Tell me more.”

  “From a greater distance, the plateau is actually a floating island, much like many of the places here in the House. But this feels dark and sinister. It also feels abandoned, or … incomplete.”

  “Which is it?” Oshiga pressed. “Abandoned or incomplete?”

  Eirwyn sighed. “I’m not sure. I can’t tell. It’s just not clear enough. But I know it has something to do with my lost vision!”

  Oshiga held up his hand to forestall another outburst and continued to write. Finally, when he was finished, he set down the quill he had been using, held his hands over the page, and began to chant.

  Eirwyn watched the archon, careful to remain quiet to avoid disturbing him. He had used that method three times al
ready to attempt to discern where in Erathaol’s great library they should research her mysterious fortress, but every time, they had hit a dead end.

  Oshiga finished his chant and turned the page. A listing of texts and their locations within the library appeared on the page. The archon scanned them for a moment, frowning.

  “We have three new sources to examine, plus five more that appeared previously. I’ll retrieve the new ones.” He rose from his seat. “You should begin again on the sources we already have.”

  Eirwyn tried not to sigh. I’m doing that too much of late, she decided. She nodded and pulled the magic book toward her, selecting the first resource from the list and flipping through it.

  “I think he’s very near death,” Zasian said from behind Aliisza.

  Aliisza had been watching as the landform had steadily grown larger. The priest’s words sent a chill down her spine, and she turned away from the gap in the wall. She saw Zasian kneeling over the planetar, with his ear pressed to the celestial creature’s mouth.

  “He’s barely breathing,” Zasian said. “I don’t know how much longer. Not long.”

  From across the room, Kaanyr rose from the spot where he had been brooding by himself. His brief moment of affection with Aliisza had not held his bad mood in check for long, and she had left him alone. Kaanyr moved toward Zasian and his three patients and stared down. He was not frowning quite as much as he had been before.

  Aliisza knew what he was thinking. If the planetar dies, the bubble pops. One way or another, we’re forced to act. She grimaced at her consort’s impatience.

  The alu turned away and checked the confines of the bubble. It was definitely shrinking, she saw, and she took a step back from it where it formed a “window” in the broken wall that allowed her to see into the Astral beyond.

  Can we breach it and survive? she wondered. Even if we can, how do we travel?

  Aliisza wracked her brain for memories of tales of great sorcerers and demons traveling the plane. She had heard the stories, but rarely did they explain much about the magic involved in moving through the silvery void. And she had done no research at all in her years of magical training.