The Crystal Empire Preview 2

Introduction

For your reading pleasure is an early look into an early chapter of The Crystal Empire, my upcoming epic fantasy project. It is a rought draft, and things will likely change between this and the published version.

This chapter is the first from the perspective of our heroine, Demara, and serves as an introduction to world beyond the Wall, a wild edge of the world known as the Fringe.

Demara 1

Beneath a slate gray sky, a young woman approaching her fifteenth summer clung to the wall of rock twenty feet off the ground, hoping desperately not to fall. That morning had been cold and damp, threatening snow, and though she had tied her furs tight about herself before leaving home this morning, the cold wind was yet another reason she could not wait to have a crystal of her own. Only one more day.

Secure in her footing she reached her hand up and smiled as she pulled herself onto a narrow ledge in the red canyon wall. There, several feet away, sheltered from the wind and rain by the ledge, was a nest with three rather large eggs inside. She had noticed their mother, a large, beautiful eagle had been fussing at this spot for the past several days, and Demara’s curiosity had won out over her better sense. Now that she was here, she thought it a bit silly, but she’d never seen an eagle’s nest, let alone one’s eggs before.

She sat for a moment before climbing down. Mother eagle wouldn’t be gone long and Demara did not want to be here when she returned, but something in the wind blowing through the rocks and trees of the Crystal Hills called to her, urging her to come find it. Whatever it was.

“Demara!”

Now that she actually heard.

“Demara! Where are you?”

Carefully, Demara peeked over the ledge to see Jantara appear around a bend in the path, her green crystal glowing for warmth. She too wore furs like everyone did when the Turnings got cold. Quickly, Demara hid, hoping that Jantara had not been taking any lessons from her sister when it came to observation. It was common consensus among the children of the Blossom Tribe that daily chores with the amiable shepherd were preferrable to the stern and industrious huntress, but Demara tended to disagree. Jantara aside, watching goats eat grass was just so boring.

“I swear…” Jantara grumbled as she passed below. “If that girl got herself lost nobody better try blaming me. It’s Liara’s fault for not knocking sense into her…”

Demara tried not to take it personally. Though she would have never said those things in front of Demara or her mother, Jantara could and would complain about anyone with anyone else. Just as she was walking below her perch, Demara tossed a loose pebble against the far wall, where it fell and it the older woman on the back of the head. Demara had to stifle a giggle as Jantara spun around, looking for the source of the stone, never once looking up.

A moment or two after the shepherd passed out of sight, just as Demara was going to finally climb down from the ledge, she heard another voice call out, “Okay, you can come out now.” Demara looked over the edge and smiled to see a slight figure looking upwards, a strand of vibrant red hair sprung loose from beneath her fur cap. “She’s gone.”

The girl looked her way, and Demara grinned.

“Boo!” Demara said as she popped her head over the ledge.

The other girl sighed.

“Really Demara? You’re hiding from work now?”

Demara let her feet dangle over the edge, taking a sitting position as she spoke.

“No, there’s an eagle’s nest up here! Come see Rayni!”

Her friend’s face lit up.

“Really? How many?”

“Three,” Demara called back down.

Rayni was already climbing her way up the wall, and a moment later Demara pulled her up onto the ledge. It was cozy up here, but plenty enough room for two fourteen-year-old girls to sit.

“Wow,” Rayni said, her emerald eyes wide as she inspected the three eggs. “They’re bigger than I thought they’d be.”

Demara laughed. “Well yeah, they’re not chickens. What’s that?”

Looking over the nest again with Rayni, she noticed something glinting in the nest and so leaned in to take a closer look. She reached out her hand to brush aside a downy feather and revealed a crystal, sky blue mixed with a dark onyx, and gasped.

“Don’t touch it!” Rayni hissed.

Demara rolled her eyes and retracted her hand.

“I just wanted to see. Did you know they did that? Put crystals in their nests?”

Rayni shook her head.

“Wow,” Demara said, thinking of the mother eagle who must have carried this crystal here and wove it into her nest. “We should go, before their mom comes back.”

By the time they reached the bottom, Jantara was coming back around the bend, muttering to herself about the cold.

“Miss Jantara!” Demara called when she saw the older woman. “There you are!”

Rayni shot Demara a glance, but couldn’t contain her laugh. The shepherd stopped and glared at them.

“I don’t know where you’ve been, and I don’t care, Demara,” the exasperated woman said, teeth chattering. She stopped, hummed, and Jantara’s green crystal began to glow brighter. “And you, Rayni, what are you doing here? Who is watching the goats?”

“Coldon,” Rayni said.

Jantara swore.

“You left… Never mind. Let’s go before one of the goats outwits him.”

The girls laughed and followed several paces behind her chatting to themselves.

“What were you going to do with that crystal?” Rayni asked in a low, conspiratorial voice.

Demara glared at her.

“I wasn’t going to take it,” Demara said defensively.

“Sure, but if you had?”

Demara had to think about it, but only for a moment. Among the Blossom tribe, to have a crystal was to be an adult, a contributing member of the tribe. You used them to gather food, to till the earth, to lift logs or throw stones. But one thing, even the hunters, never did was leave the hills. Two years ago, during the Year of No Rain, the elders had said the hills that now surrounded them were the home of their god Ulari, and by remaining there they would be safe under her Mother’s protection. There had been water here even that horrible year, and that had been enough to convince what remained of the Blossom Tribe they had to stay. To go down from the hills, to venture out into the world below, was death.

“Explore.”

“They’re not going to give you a crystal if you say things like that.”

“You don’t know that.”

Rayni gave her a sideways look that cut right through her. Her friend could always tell when Demara’s head was too far in the clouds. The nest had not been far from where they were grazing the goats that day, and they were already coming to that ridge, and it was time to snap back to the here and now.

“It’s okay,” Demara assured her. “You asked what I would to do with that crystal. I’m going to try to join the hunters tomorrow.”

Rayni sighed in relief, then gave Demara a too sweet grin.

“Good. I was hoping you weren’t going to do anything too dramatic this time. I know how much you looked up to him.”

***

That evening, after the sun had set, Demara sat with her parents in the small hut they called their home. It was a simple thing, a small, round room with two smaller rooms attached at different points along the outside, one for Demara and one for her parents to sleep in. Like most evenings, they sat around a central fire, passing bowls and pots made from clay stacked high with whatever good thing mother had prepared for them. Tonight was a bone stew, and a pile of grain boiled half to mush. Mother crushed up one of their last salt rocks in her mortar, and sat it down on the flat serving stone between her small family and the fire. It had hardly touched the surface before Demara and her father were racing for it to pour on top of their grain.

“Demin!” her mother warned. “You let her have some.”

Liara wasn’t a severe woman, thin and with an easy smile and Demara’s same brown hair only longer. It was hard to imagine how she could quell the large hunter that was Demara’s father as small as she was, but Demin obeyed his wife more loyally than any other man in the tribe obeyed his.

“So Demara honey, are you excited for the Turning tomorrow? Have you decided what you’re going to choose?”

Father, midbite, nodded in agreement.

Demara swallowed, knowing they’d hate the honest answer.

“I want to join the hunters,” she said.

Father was ecstatic, spitting out some grain onto the floor as he leaned over to squeeze her and cheer her on while Mother gave her a more discerning look.

“This is great news!” Demin said. “Another hunter in the family! What a great turning this one is looking to be! What is it, Liara?”

Mother shook her head and then smiled.

“It’s nothing,” she said as she poured herself a bowlful of the soup. “It’s a good choice Demara. I guess I just expected you to say something else.”

There was something else, but Demara knew she couldn’t say it. Not in front of Demin.

“Oh don’t you start on that now,” Demin said with an edge in his voice. “Be glad the notion is finally out of her head.”

Demara paid very close attention to her soup, observing the small bubbles of grease shimmering on the top of her bowl, dancing around the roots and tubers and cabbage that filled the broth out. She would have watched grass grow or watched the night’s sky for stars or any number of other things to avoid giving her father any inkling she had been thinking about the very thing only that morning.

Mother gave him a look, but said nothing else.

“I’m just excited to finally have a crystal of my own,” Demara said, trying to break the silence. Father smiled, and mother took her hand and squeezed it reassuringly before returning to their meal.

That night, Demara laid in her bed in silence for hours, listening to the world, unable to sleep. Tomorrow was the Turning, her fifteenth. It was the day she had waited for her whole life, when she would finally be given a crystal of her own. She would no longer be a child, and people would have to stop treating her like it. The only person left who never made her feel like that was Rayni, ever since Uncle Derin…

There wasn’t a single person in the Blossom Tribe that liked thinking back to those terrible days three years ago, when nearly a quarter of the tribe was lost in that year’s second Turning, and twice that to the demonic beasts and raiders that had chased them across the Fringe. A year like that had never happened again, but the Elders had vowed to never lose another member of the tribe, and so the prohibition had stood. The Blossom Tribe did not leave their hills, and even though the world changed and went on without them, they had no need for explorers.

But when sleep finally came to her that night, it was short and full of dreams of being chased down dark corridors and glowing red crystals and a figure made of brilliant white light reaching out for her begging her to take its hand. She awoke that morning, well after dawn, feeling as though she had hardly gotten any rest at all.

***

Each year at the Turning, the Blossom and many other tribes would gather together to hold a festival, celebrating the closing of the year. There would be music and singing and dancing and games and food all through the day, and by night, after the feast, they would begin the Rite of Turning to mark the end of the current year, and to welcome in the start of next. But that once joyous affair had turned somber for the Blossom tribe two years ago, unable to celebrate another year with so many of their loved ones lost.

Demara sat with her friends near the stream that ran along the side of their tiny village as they took turns tossing rocks at tree stumps, imitating the practice the hunters would go through learning to throw with their crystals. Like practically every day since the last turning, it was cold and dreary, with the sun hidden behind an unbroken blanket of cloud that always seemed to threaten rain. Elder Harus was already calling it the Year of Gray Skies. Even now, it was hard to tell it was almost sundown.

“I hope it rains blood next Turning,” Coldon was saying as he watched Rayni throw stones at the stump. He was a thin boy, about Demara’s height, with his black hair cut short to keep out of his eyes. “Not every day. Just once.”

“You say some of the strangest things Col,” Marco said as he shook his head, and knocking one his long wavy locks of black hair loose and forcing him to tuck it back behind his ear. “Why would you ever want it to rain blood?”

“I don’t know,” Coldon said. “I’ve never heard of it happening before. Could be interesting.”

“You don’t bleed nearly often enough,” Demara muttered.

Rayne grunted, throwing as hard as she could in a large motion. The rock flew true, and struck the post with a satisfying “thunk”. She turned, tossing her last rock up and down in her hand and gave Demara her most mischievous grin.

“I could help him with that.”

“Help me with what?” Coldon asked.

A rock bounced harmlessly off his chest to settle in his lap.

“You’re up.” Rayni practically skipped her way over to where they were sitting and then motioned for him to stand. When he did, she took his spot next to Marco.

“What about you Demara,” Marco asked. “You’re going to be a hunter too, right?”

“Children,” a voice cut in. They all turned to see the gray-haired old lady, Elder Garol, the crystalkeeper, dressed in her traditional headdress and paints, with her deep rose crystal hanging at her neck, glowing for warmth. “It is time.”

She didn’t need to say more than that, though Rayni did have to tap Coldon on the shoulder to stop him from throwing and to follow them through the village and to the crystalkeeper’s lodge, where they joined most of the tribe.

Demara’s eyes lit up as they settled on the many-colored display of crystals laid out upon the blanket, glinting in the light from the fire. She reached for a brilliant blue and green swirled piece the size of her big toe, only to have her hand swatted away by the old woman who kept them.

“Wait your turn girl. Don’t think I can’t see you.”

She swatted a young boy with her walking stick.

“All of you. Pay attention. You will each have a chance to see. Later.”

As soon as she was sure she had all the childrens’ attention, a dappled light of rose and amber and green shone from the hunk of crystal the size of her skull that sat on the elder’s small altar at the back of her lodge, bathing the inside and the dozen or so assembled childrens’ faces. Elder Garol grinned at the look of awe the children wore. The heartcrystal was said to be the body and home of their patron deity, Ulari.

“Crystals are a gift,” Elder Garol said in her most theatrical voice. “To us from our god. They give us light. They keep us warm. They protect us. They guide us. A tribe lives and dies by its crystals, and by its crystal bearers. For all adults of the tribe, use and skill with their crystal is a mark of honor and how we show our god thanks for her gifts.”

Ulari’s light began to clear into a soft white daylight.

“Today, for four of you, you begin your journey into adulthood.”

Marco chose first, settling on the blue and green one Demara had been drawn to at first, but decided against after a closer inspection. Then, Rayni chose a fiery crystal with a mix of red and orange that made it look almost like her hair. Coldon chose a green crystal with white and yellow occlusions. All three of her friends had picked their crystals already, but none of the options felt right to her. And that feeling was important when it came to picking a good crystal, her uncle had told her once. She found herself standing in front of Ulari, staring at the light pooled inside it. She was reminded of the dream she’d had the night before, and wanted to reach out to that light…

“Demara?” Elder Garol interrupted her thoughts, a look of concern on her wizened face. Demara hadn’t meant to, but her hand was reaching towards the heartcrystal. In recovery, she grabbed at a small, deep blue crystal flecked with gold that in front of Ulari instead and spun.

“This one,” Demara said, holding the crystal up to show it to those assembled. Rayni cheered and Marco gave her a knowing look.

“Our young ones have chosen!” Elder Garol proclaimed. “Now it is time to feast while they begin their first lesson. Go, Blossom Tribe. Eat. Be merry.”

In a matter of moments, only the elders and a few of the adults were left in the room with Demara, Rayni, Marco and Coldon. Demara swallowed, and shifted the crystal to her other hand to wipe her sweaty palm on her shirt. This was the moment she had been waiting for, and would determine the rest of her life.

“Take a seat children,” Elder Garol said. “It is time for you to learn to awaken your crystals. Sit sit. Cup your hands on your laps, resting your crystal inside. Close your eyes, and feel the crystal with your mind. You will feel an energy, a vibration from it. Follow that vibration, and you will feel the crystal accept you.”

Demara did as told, and concentrated on the small deep blue crystal resting in her cupped palms. In her mind she touched it, felt it, observed the way it reflected light, and she thought, perhaps, she could feel the tiniest of vibrations coming from the crystal, like the faintest breeze against her skin.

Beside her, Rayni gasped, dropping the stone into her lap before sheepishly picking it back up. On her other side, Coldon simply let out an amazed “wow”. It was another moment before Marco’s eyes went wide as he stared at the small stone in his hand. What were they doing that she wasn’t?

Elder Garol nodded.

“Now that you all have attuned your crystals, it is time for you to petition a mentor to oversee your training, and guide you to how you may best contribute to the tribe. I know by now each one of you young ones has already decided which path you will choose, still, it is customary to hear the words and consider your choice deeply.”

With a gesture from Elder Garol, the adults in the room stepped forward, offering one final plea for their role. First Elder Harus spoke for the builders, reminding them of the good work to be done building and maintaining shelters for the tribe. Next was Demin for the hunters, who spoke about bravery and persistence. Then, Jantara spoke for the shepherds, who urged diligence and patience. Elder Garol spoke for the crystalkeepers, about memory and guidance. Finally came Colhar the farmer, who simply said they would work in dirt.

There was one missing, she knew. In the years before, Uncle Derin or another explorer would have been there to talk about courage and new horizons. But there were no more explorers in the Blossom tribe. When they finally turned to her and asked which job she meant to apprentice, she almost misspoke.

“E-hunter,” she hoped nobody would notice her slip, but several of the elders passed looks between each other. Garol however, did not seem to have heard anything wrong.

“Very good. Very good. Two hunters this year, but it is always so. Does this please you Demin?”

Father was smiling one of the biggest, proudest smiles she had ever seen on him. “The hunters can take them both. One is after all my daughter.”

Elder Garol sighed and rolled her eyes.

“Go now, go feast. And practice with your crystals young ones, you four shall lead us in the Lighting this evening.”

Demara was the last to stand, and followed the rest of them absently as she tried to feel her crystal like it seemed the others had. Instead, all she felt was a faint tickle, something she could not be certain she wasn’t just imagining. She spent the whole of dinner trying to feel her crystal while father and mother and the whole tribe told her how proud they were, that she was going to make a great hunter. It was almost an accident when near the end of dinner she felt at that tickling focusing on it. It was difficult to keep hold of in her attention, as faint as it was, but once she finally got a grip, she imagined it was her crystal and told it in her mind to glow.

At first she felt little change in her mind, but when she opened her eyes she noticed the faint glow deep in the indigo crystal. The sun had long set, and Father smiled when he looked over to her, noticing the deep blue cast to her features in the firelight from her crystal.

“Very good Demara,” he said. “I knew you’d be a natural!”

The others turned to see, and they too began to smile.

Elder Garol nodded in agreement. “Indeed, it is time to begin the rite. Everyone, gather round, and light your crystals as this young one has, offer your light to Ulari our god, that her offering will grant us her father’s favor in the coming Turning.”

All around the small village square, lights of red and gold and green and blue and violet sparked to life in the hands of the adults of the Blossom Tribe. Ulari, the heartcrystal had been brought out during the feast, and on rested upon her dais to greet the Turning. And they began to sing.

It was a slow and ancient thing, more sounds than words to Demara’s ears. If there had once been meaning to the sounds they had long been lost to anyone in the Blossom tribe. But the melodies and harmonies were beautiful and ancient and seemed to resonate in her crystal. She could feel as light she gathered drained away, pooling with the rest of the Blossom Tribe in their heartcrystal, Ulari glowing brighter and brighter. Singing along, holding the crystal and drawing more power into it was one of the strangest sensations Demara had ever felt, but it felt secure. If there would be no moon and no stars to guide them this Turning, they could at least light their own way.

Finally, Ulari flashed a brilliant, pure white light that rushed out sweeping past the tribe to meet the Turning sweeping across the whole of the world. Demara blinked away the tears from the light, and when she finally did, she was happy to see the ever present blanket of clouds from the last year was retreating, revealing the stars against the familiar purple skies of the Turning night. She cheered at the sight, and was surprised when the rest of the Blossom Tribe joined along.

Want to read more? Check out the next Crystal Empire Preview Chapter