From a balcony connected to Smerth-staba, Maudra Naia stared at the tree that had grown from her mother's sacrifice, and she pondered.
Twenty trine had passed since that fateful moment, a moment that seemed to exist in a time saturated with such importance. The Gelfling had been divided, marching toward unity and resistance, and stumbling along the way. Important political figures were murdered, an ancient being had made the ultimate sacrifice at the apex of several such sacrifices, and a path had been laid out in prophecy for Naia's entire species. The Crystal of Truth would be restored, by Gelfling hand or else by none.
Since then, they had waited in the swamp. Rian, Gurjin, and Kylan still hid near Stone-in-the-Wood, searching for Deet when last they'd communicated over seven trine ago. The Northern Gelflings were out at sea, so far away that they could no longer send messages back. Even after all their efforts, Naia's insistence that the urRu deserved to live had forced her people to scatter to the furthest reaches of the world. As soon as they had become one clan, they had split in two, the Northern and the Southern.
She had certainly not been idle in all that time, but it was easy to let herself succumb to peace. Though she kept busy with stately affairs and ensuring no Garthim soldiers penetrated far into Sog, she also enjoyed a simple family life. The pressure of war with the Skeksis was surprisingly light thus far, and the more Naia was convinced that her strategy was working, the more her thoughts turned to the people she was protecting.
Fostering cooperation between the old clans was slow-going. Her marriage to Amri, a Grottan, helped that immensely, but it wasn't enough for many of the malcontents. Maudra Argot had been beyond the age for concern over such things, and she'd passed peacefully in her sleep three trine ago. As for Mera, she had a female heir to take her place if she passed, and that heir was purely Spriton. Mera's two new daughters replaced the dead, and whispering of Thra's will to bring balance was causing trouble. It was said that Thra was reducing them to one leader, one Maudra, as they were now one clan.
Naia had mused that perhaps the old ways were as poisonous as the Skeksis ways, that her three sons had as much right to rule as any daughter, that a singular ruler for an entire clan was a dangerous arrangement. Only lately had she realized that her arguments were founded on a selfish impulse to maintain her family's power, merely her attempt to strike back at the rhetoric of Mera's supporters. Afterall, why should any particular family have more sway or importance than any other?
What troubled Naia most were strange nightmares she sometimes endured. She would awaken with daughters rather than sons, her position against Mera reversed, and she'd watch herself go through the dismissive motions that Mera practiced in the waking world. Naia wanted to think that she would have questioned the old ways of her people either way, but the lingering fear that she may not have done so in any other case disquieted her regularly.
The love of her life had been such a disheartening presence of late, too. Amri just went along with the traditional place of his sex in Gelfling society, and he often wore a look of immense guilt when they were alone. She could tell from intimate dreamfasts with him that he blamed himself for her position, as if her womb bearing only sons was the result of some deficiency in his own body. He silently stewed and thought of his virility as peasant seed, meant to produce workers and guards rather than Maudra or noble huntresses. Over the trine, Naia's attempts to console him had lost their potency, and he spent more time than ever despising himself.
As for the Garthim and their master's, Naia feared that they had already ended Rian, Kylan, and her brother. In the last few trine they had been probing the defenses of Sog, and many of the trained muski and nebrie being used to bury Garthim in the mud were being killed in the effort. Naia's healing vliyaya served to keep injured Gelfling guards and soldiers from being lost, but sometimes a detachment was killed outright, and Naia could not restore the dead, whose essence, whose vliya, had already returned to Thra. The Garthim were difficult to destroy, and those that were buried were dug back up by more of their number, for the diabolical Lord Scientist, skekTek, to reanimate once again.
All was not yet lost, however. Naia reminded herself that there was some good news to celebrate. There were many Sifan Gelflings who had donated their ships to others who wished to sail Northward, so they could in turn live in the care of Great Smerth in the heart of Sog. The change of scenery had been appealing to them then, and recently presented a solution. Their expertise in building and sailing ships was soon to be the salvation of the new Southern clan.
Naia had once speculated that there was another coast deeper in the swamp than any Drenchen had traveled before, and, though it had taken much effort to forge past the ever-thickening mire, she had been proven right nine trine ago. The Sifan secrets were being put to good use at the shore, while Drenchen methods created supply routes through the apeknot trees to keep the work moving. Already there were three ships, one fully stocked, filled with preserved foods, each waiting patiently for more ships to be built next to them. When there were eighteen of such size and supply, the entire Southern Clan would leave the Skarith region behind until the next Great Conjunction, as the Northern Clan had already done.
Naia decided that she had spent enough time musing from a distance and leaped to the ground from the balcony, her wings making her descent light and graceful, as a Maudra always should be.
With her hand placed on the Laesid Tree, as it had been named, Naia let her thoughts wonder to happier places, to the joy of the young and eager Gelflings. Eliona and Pemma, her younger sisters, had taken to the healing vliyaya that their family was known for rather quickly, and had helped Naia in teaching the next generation. Her eldest son, already eighteen trine old, had the adventurous spirit that his father once possessed, and was Naia's most attentive and capable student. In honor of her late mother, Naia had given him a male variation on Laesid's name, Lanar.
Lanar was as mischievous as he was capable, however. Even now he'd gone missing, again. As if to provide some compensation to his mother for his male birth, his inability to be her heir, he would stalk the borders with the soldiers to learn about the Garthim. He took lessons from every sort of teacher, learning to write from the Vapra, to man a ship from the Sifan, how one would survive and cross a desert from the Dousan, and the many animal calls the Spriton knew were now his as well. Naia's guards had already checked most of the usual places, so Lanar must have been at the farthest on that day, staring out at the Southern Sea from one of their vessels, dreaming of a glorious future.
What troubled Naia about Lanar most was his obsession with the Skeksis. Naia's stories of their ferocity and cunning had frightened her younger sons, cautioning them against being reckless or spending too much time alone. Perhaps Lanar, being the oldest and feeling more guilt over his sex than his brothers, was drawn to the Skeksis because of what they represented. They were obstacle yet to be overcome. The enemies that brave Gelfling heroes would have to subdue one day so they could restore the Crystal of Truth. For someone so determined and passionate, danger was more exciting and motivating than frightening or stifling.
"Oh mother, I'm sorry. I think I've lost my touch over the trine. I can no longer feel your presence lingering in the tree." Naia bowed her head and shook it slowly, supposing she would have to speak to the tree openly to feel at peace with her visit now. No longer could she enter a trance like dreamfasting with the remains of her mother's vliya. "My younger sons are disturbed by the Garthim, as are many of our people. They grow bolder each trine, and I fear they may reach us before we are ready to leave."
Laesid was not the only soul lost on this spot, and Naia found her thoughts wondering to skekSa next. Ever since Rian had divulged that a Skeksis and an urRu, working together, had created the weapon that once harnessed the power of the Crystal Shard, and that they had made it to help the Gelfling end Skeksis power, she had grown to doubt her treatment of skekSa. The Lady Mariner had once held Naia's hands, guiding her in the healing of Tae, teaching her secrets of her vliyaya that even her mother had not known.
"UrSan still guards our ships from the water, but she will not leave with us. She says she must stay here, with you and her other half, until the Great Conjunction comes. I worry that the Garthim will capture her and imprison her in the Castle after we are gone. Leaving you behind. Leaving urSan. Leaving Smerth-staba. I'm not sure I'm ready for it."
SkekSa, in spite of her tight confinement, was not deaf. She heard everything that Naia had to say, and it made her blood boil with rage. Long ago, when she had been free, she urged the Sifa to abandon the Skarith region, to sail out to sea with Vassa breaking the waves. SkekSa had thought she had a loyal companion in Vassa, the behemoth she'd raised for nine hundred trine, whose cavernous innards could be used as a ship. But Vassa had betrayed her, flooding herself with water in all the wrong places to ruin skekSa's belongings and force her out. Before then she had also thought she had the loyalty and devotion of the Sifa Clan, those she had stalwartly protected from skekSo's Gelfling harvests.
Betrayed, she was, by the entire Clan on the words of a handful of outsiders. Outsiders lead by Naia. Outsiders skekSa had embraced with hospitality, whose accusations she shrugged off, whose attempt to murder her in cold blood she attributed to one of skekSo's crystal singers. A Gelfling she had cherished as one of her own, Tae, had cut off her dominant hand, had lost her her favorite sword. Even now, her second favorite sword lie buried in the muck of Sog somewhere nearby. The severed hand still sat in a pouch at skekSa's hip, as she'd yearned to have her past trust in the Gelfling validated, for one of their healers to restore her hand one day.
All of that pain and struggle, skekSa's desperate return to skekSo's service to recover some form of belonging, and the betrayal of skekZok to have her banished from the court. All of it was enragingly pointless. When the Gelflings made their stand against skekSo, all they had managed to do was bring death to both sides, especially their own, before deciding to run from it all. Their plan was insulting, because it was skekSa's plan. They'd stolen it, pretended it was their own, and teased skekSa with the chance to rejoin them. Whenever she stopped to consider their words of peace, she was stabbed in the back by a swamp spear, the Gelflings punishing her for trusting them.
All skekSa had ever wanted was to be free of the collectivist culture of the urSkeks; to be her own person; to escape urSan and live her own life. The Gelfling wanted her to be part of a collective, too, it seemed. They had beseeched her to become their prisoner, to sail in chains alongside those bigoted against her, against her very species.
No. She refused. Her imprisonment in the tree had not stopped her from vampirically sucking down the vliya in it to sustain herself, and every day the Darkening weakened the trees of Sog. Now, with her prison flimsier than ever and her anger at its peak, the seafaring Lady of the Skeksis court burst free, splinters and branches buffeting Naia in skekSa's explosive escape.
Twenty trine ago, skekSa had charged at Laesid with dagger drawn, and now she pounced upon Naia at the apex of that same movement, pinning the Maudra to the ground, her wings and cloak suffused with mud. One of her smaller, secondary hands clutched Naia's neck with claws extended, her remaining primary hand holding the dagger to her throat. A flick of her thick, powerful tail uprooted what was left of the Laesid Tree, a plume of purple smoke from the Darkened tendril of Crystal beneath it rising to silhouette the grinning Skeksis. "Hello, dear."
Just as Naia recovered her senses, skekSa gripped her right wrist with her free secondary hand, lifting Naia's arm while her other limbs thrashed desperately. The other Gelfling weren't ready for this, gasping in shock and staring in confusion, but skekSa had eyes only for Naia in that moment, hissing dangerously. "You've been a very bad girl."
"You're surrounded, skekSa. Don't be foolish. The Skeksis will never be able to track us down at sea, so you may as well give up and leave with your life."
SkekSa bristled, her tattered Mariner's cloak lifted by her rising plumage and back-spikes. "That was my plan, you ungrateful bitch!" The roared admonishment echoed through the apeknot trees, giving every Gelfling pause and compelling Naia to be still and listen. "I wanted you all to leave in smaller groups, disappearing mysteriously from under skekSo's snout, but what did you do? You challenged him. You drew forth the wrath of every Skeksis! Then, in your infinite stupidity, you gathered into two massive groups, easily tracked for extermination, immediately after showing skekSo that you would stop at nothing to end his reign. Good job, heroine."
"How do you know all of this!?" Naia spat in anger, renewing her struggles, as useless against the strength of a Skeksis as it had ever been.
"Unlike you, I listen when someone speaks to me." SkekSa smirked in pleasure when realization finally dawned on Naia's otherwise dumbstruck face. Naia's dreamfasts with the vliya in the tree had fed skekSa intimate information, information that could spell the doom of every Gelfling if skekSo ever received it. Of course, Naia assumed at once that skekSa would seek to bring that information to the Emperor, and resolved that her people would prevent it. "Something is changing within you."
Naia cursed herself for being so easy to read, skekSa's head tilting as she tried to decipher what Naia was thinking. Amri calling her name from nearby brought the truth crashing in like waves in a storm. Naia had her own children to protect now. She may not have had the nerve to let urSan die for skekSa's mirrored death twenty trine ago, but times had changed. "Will you kill me, then, skekSa?" Naia asked coldly. "Have your revenge at last?"
"Death is too good for you." SkekSa felt her heart pounding in her chest as she lifted Naia's wrist in her grip, a moment she had visualized from within her prison for two decades finally becoming real. Her vicious teeth and firm beak pierced Naia's tough Drenchen flesh, skekSa shaking her head as she bit harder, gradually ripping tendons and separating bones. Amri was stumbling on his way to them, the spears and bolas that guards were holding trembling in their hands. An injury to mirror her own and urSan's was left for Naia, and to ensure that Naia's stump would never be restored, skekSa chewed the Gelfling hand into bits and ate it.