Scion

From the earliest time I can remember, I wanted to be from the House of Sapphire.

I mean, come on, BLUE, right? Shades of color, all sorts of tints and hues, and the whole huge family gets to either use a polish that brings out an amazing brilliance, or they somehow imbue each gem with a little something that makes them shine all the better.

House Amethyst, along with beautiful purples, gets to un-poison people through gems. Everything from those huge crystals that the doctors use, down to personal amulets for, yes, preventing you from getting drunk at a feast. The direct-line siblings have enough power to stop you from getting poisoned in the first place. That's why the king's seal, right above his heart, is a gem the size of your fist and so deep a color it's almost black.

House Ruby, of course, makes all those amazing love philtres and amulets. House Emerald is all about fertility crystals and sex enhancement. House Beryl split off centuries ago, and they do the other healing – somehow surgical and disease cures, some kind of business deal they made with House Obsidian. House Diamond can saturate their gems with cleverness and political maneuvering, to give you a silver tongue in negotiations.

All of them safe, thriving, vibrant houses. Many children, both of the direct bloodline, and many by-blows, pulled into the fold to add their half-talents to the family business.

Then there's me. Last direct-line blood of a slaughtered clan, since no one cared about House Topaz.

First, there's the color. It's not even a lovely true yellow like House Citrine, or a deep orange like the by-blows from House Garnet can work. No, we're a pale orangey-brown can't tell the difference between the two, like the stone itself is a by-blow. Only a few, small, precious gems that are Imperial Topaz show the unique color of a clear, deep blue-pink. Most Imperials are a golden yellow, deeper than citrine. I call the special ones True Pink, not that red-pink that you get with other gems. Small, rare, and few.

Like me.

Then, there's our city. Each House started off as a town near a mine, built by the founders of the dynasty. Somewhere over time, a quaint conceit sprang up, to make the town mimic the color of the gem they are famous for. So House Sapphire imported some bluish granite, House Emerald some green marble. House Diamond, of course, went for the pristine white marble, and studded it with shiny reflective mica-backed faceted quartz. There's a red granite outcrop on some misbegotten island that House Ruby snapped up and imported at huge cost, and a large mountain in the desert that House Garnet bought that has a dark red jasper studded with green malachite nodules that they can slab up for house facades. Even House Amethyst can't use slabs of its own gem. Their gem can come in slabs, sure, even some fine chevron patterns, but the purple fades in sunlight. So there's a purplish jasper somewhere that they buy and use. You get the idea.

What did my ancestors go with? Some pissy brown sandstone that has orangish hilights. Heck, rose quartz would have been impressive, and closer to the imperial color! Cheap. They would have said economical.

Whatever. Stupidity may be what got them all killed. My guardians say I was spirited out of the mansion at the top of the hill, through a rip in the wall that sealed itself up as soon as we were through it. That's our family's talent, you see - healing the gems themselves. And cracks or internal flaws, even up to fault lines, we can heal. If we have enough power.

And not just our own gems. All gems. See, the other Houses weren't exactly thinking about the future when they didn't persecute the merchants that slaughtered us and set up their own franchise on our corpses. Eventually, all gems crack and become useless. Unless you have a seam cranking out top quality gems, you eventually have to bring the worn out shattered crystals to us to fix. And then - we were gone. No one thought it through.

Now I'm about to reach my majority, and the other Houses have a rather large problem. Really, a bunch of small problems, from each and every shattered gem that they can't restore, sitting in pieces in the vault.

Or, rather, sitting in a usurper's vault. As usual, they shipped their shattered gems to my family's butchers, who simply refaceted them and sent them back. That didn't sit well with the owners! I've been told there were a lot of broken contracts. See, the blood lines of each House have never really told anyone what their House's powers are. There might be good guesses, but the Houses know how to keep their secrets. But whatever we used to do, the Houses know that their gems come back smaller and without the powers they used to have, when we used to do something to make them special. Or keep them special. Or brighter, or better somehow.

The bastards who killed my family never knew. They just saw a weakness in our political structure, and took over. Killed everyone. And my whole family took their secrets to their graves, even those who couldn't claim full blood.

Except for the ones who got me out. Servants, they say, but I say they're blood by right of claiming me and getting me safe. And they taught me everything they knew, everything they guessed, and everything they suspected. Enough to claim my birthright.

But first, I had to tame a dragon.

That wasn't covered in my training!

I can facet, and polish, and know the gem pricing for all fifteen precious gems. And quite a few of the semi-precious. I can read, and write, and do sums, and keep ledgers and funds. I've done a lot of reading, and can use big words. I'm not bad at supervising others, singly and groups. I can govern a keep, and keep track of stock and goods. Where in that list is there anything about dragon taming?

Where does it even say that dragons exist in the first place?

Well, I guess I'm going to find out, because I just got hidden in a hay cart and they're trundling their way up to the mansion. Lucky me.

At least the sandstone looks bluish in the moonlight. It almost looks pretty.

Security is as lax now as it was when my family lived here. They hadn't been attacked in my whole lifetime, so why would tonight make any difference?

My guardians got me to the outer walls, I slid out of the wagon, and they took off.

Now what?

I was in the shadow of a buttress, hidden from the moonlight and prying eyes. I was dressed in gray, and I blended in well. I put my hand out to touch the wall.

Oh. Oh!

It was like the wall reached out and gave me a huge, warm, welcoming hug.

It was like I was being hugged by my parents, and being told I was loved, and safe, forever.

I think I cried. I think I sobbed for forever, or maybe not long at all. I cried my heartbreak and loneliness into those walls, and they just took it away. Now I get why some like rocks more than people.

Somehow my life story bled into the walls, and I got centuries of memories in return. I saw the hill, the slow, deep thoughts of crystals forming. Animals, for long and long. Then, people coming, building houses, being wiped away as wars came and went. The land was swept clean, trees grew, only to be cut for the next wave of humans. Then war, or fire, or drought, or fleeing.

Eventually, someone did some digging at the cave-looking thing on the hill, and shouts and excitement as the mine was found. Then more building, and digging, and walls. Then bigger walls, more houses, more people, better walls covering a bigger area.

A growing awareness that these human things can talk to each other. Finally a connection is made, and the wonderment of a bonding, a communion, an agreement. And the same awareness of that human's spawnlings, a fine attunement of human and crystal. Learning how each other worked, and how they could fix each other.

My ancestors... Like a parade, people after people and who they were, through the “eyes” of the building they built for both humans and gems. These walls? The sandstone I hated? There was just enough calcium in the mix of minerals to call to the topazes and the humans, to create this unity. All situated at the top of a hill, also the topaz mine, where the crystals are nestled in their pockets of calcite matrix. The whole hill. The land, under the soil, in all directions, as far as can be seen.

People, my people. Servants, family, strangers that came and stayed, married in. Merchants, taking our gems into the world. Bringing them back, broken, spent. Being restored, and how. I saw how my family did it, how I can do it, by unlocking the power within myself.

Those stone arms still held me as time slowed a little. I saw my parents, and the genuine love they had for each other. How that love was made physical, and how my older brothers and sisters were born. Then me.

And how it all went away, one horrible night. How I was taken away by trusted servants, since my mom was with me when the fighting started. She went to help Dad, and fell with him in the grand hall.

Their bodies were still there, with the bodies of their killers, and those they killed, because the room sealed itself shut. The killers took over the mansion as the blood of my family mixed with the marble floor and calcite walls.

Long, lonely years. These invaders didn't talk like my people could, couldn't enter the sealed parts, didn't know they existed. Treated their servants like dirt. Would gladly kill each other if they could get away with it, just to take their possessions. Tried to find the mine, the treasure room, couldn't find either one, tried to smash the walls, were angry when it didn't work. Hard, nasty people, ugly in thought and deed. People the walls didn't like, and wanted to get rid of.

So, let's finish what they started.

From inside, I could see them. Warm blobs, with beating hearts. But cold, so cold.

Sandstone used to flow. It could do so again.

As the walls took me in, I let them into myself.

Once, years ago, my guardians showed me how to cast pewter. It was done to prepare me for silver casting, but one thing stuck with me: never, never, NEVER get the molten pewter near water! They showed me what happens, when moisture (like sweat!) is introduced at very bad moments. I kept a few of the pewter shards that had spiked in all directions, when the explosion shot them everywhere. The wooden wall we hid behind, with slit visors to protect our eyes, looked like a metal hedgehog attacked it over and over and left proof it had been there.

Sandstone with memory. Sandstone with that new thought.

Sandstone that wanted revenge. Sandstone that still had the blood stains on itself.

Sandstone that is alive does not need water.

All over the mansion, there were cracks and groans. Wherever there was a person, the stone split open, and spit shards of itself at whatever living thing was nearby.

There was much screaming, but to the walls and myself, it was far away and distant. We were not connected to these strangers, who took away our people.

More blood was splashed on us, but we refused to absorb it. We used the liquid to make more shrapnel, form it, shoot it farther and more accurately.

The walls had been flowing with me through the house, towards the great hall. I had to go there.

Did I step forward? Was I pushed out? I don't know, but when I figured out how to open my eyes again, I was facing a smooth sandstone wall. It only looked smooth, I knew – there were tiny designs carved all over it, that would show only when the sun came through the windows at specific times. It gave the pattern just enough shadow to make the carvings clear and beautiful.

In front of me was what I knew was the door. I got my legs to work, and stepped forward. I put my palm where I knew I had to touch.

Where so many others of my family had touched the very same spot.

There was an opening. I stepped inside.

I had already seen it from the inside, so to speak. I knew what to expect. But seeing what was left of Dad, and Mom, and the family and servants who stayed to help protect them... Seeing the invaders, dressed in armor, who had come to slaughter my people because of our secrets. It was very difficult.

I cried hard as I said my goodbyes.

What I did not do was shut the door.

The floor warned me. I ducked as a knife sliced through the space above me.

He stomped into the room.

The room hummed. Walls and ceiling spit shards at him, and I reached out a hand. The knife from my mother's skeleton leaped into my palm.

He just sneered through the holes in his face plate. The armor looked overdone, but it was all that was keeping the house itself from killing him. “I knew something was wrong. I heard the walls moaning. Luckily I was fast enough to get in my armor before I was attacked. So. It seems I missed one.”

I was too young to say anything profound, so I stayed silent.

“Well, I guess I have to finish you off too. Took long enough, but you've cost me plenty tonight. Brat, I wish I had gotten you with your parents here.” He spit through the grille at them, but I smiled.

See, marble is mostly made of calcite too.

I made a very rude motion with my hand, and he came for me – but suddenly stopped.

His legs had sunk into the floor, like there was a sudden hole. And them I closed the hole – with his legs still in it.

He screamed.

Others were coming. I waited till the first one almost got through the doorway, then shut the door. The parts of him that got through slid off the inside, and I could vaguely see through the wall's mind that the same was happening on the outside. Others skidded to a stop, only to have all the walls spit big sharp shards at anything exposed – throat, eyes, legs. Swords dropped as the pain sliced through.

The leader was still screaming in front of me, bleeding out his leg stumps. He beat the floor helplessly with his sword, trying to reach me.

There was a throne in here. Well, two, but a topaz crown was hanging from the slightly bigger one. I hopped onto my dad's seat, and put the crown on, waiting for him to die while I stayed out of range.

He started crawling to get me, and I had had enough. I let the floor open up and swallow most of him.

It was suddenly quiet.

The crown hummed, liking its new home. It was good to be home.

The harmonic changed.

Oh, right. Dragon. Where?

Behind me?

The thrones – okay, chairs, but thoroughly set with topaz crystals and faceted stones – were near the far wall from where the door was. There was room behind to walk, but again, smooth in a way I knew was deceptive. Though there were no windows. How could I see, then?

The wall opened into real darkness. The opening to the mine.

Humming. Lots of humming, high, low, voices blending, voices harmonizing.

Are these the gems? I walked down, fascinated. I couldn't see in the darkness, but I knew where the floor was.

I could feel the dragon all around me. When I stepped into a bigger space from a tunnel, it came into being.

It was made of people. My ancestors, my servants, my farmers, my merchants. All the people that had claimed this location as Home.

It surrounded me, hugged me, and it was like the mansion, only more so, if that were possible.

I was completely surrounded by love.

Somehow I knew, that the treasure room was further down in the mine. I could see what this dragon guarded, the jewelry and gems and crystals they had gathered. Gifts from other Houses, tokens from grateful merchants and traders.

Imperial topazes, glowing from inside, that beautiful pink-blue color that was the highest grade. Champagne, clear, blue. Knowledge of how to take the clear ones and heat them, and add a metal salt mixture to change the color. They had been developing the rainbow colors when my parents were killed, but the knowlege was still here, in the collective dragon-mind.

It was time to go.

Where?

I was on the dragon's back, and we burst ino a brilliant night sky, with the moon overhead.

How did we get here?

They flew me to the capital city. I don't know if anyone else saw my ride, but I was deposited at the base of the palace steps. I felt something on each cheek - kisses, from my father and mother. The dragon vanished, to return home. I marched up the stairs, and servants threw open the doors.

Why was the king sitting on his throne, with his entire court around him? It was near midnight.

Because the stones told him to, the answer whispered back to me. From stones all around me, worn and held and hidden. And broken, so broken. They tried to hum, and it only came out as off-key whimpering. Can crystals cry?

And they healed as I walked by. The huge pear-shaped gem on my forehead giggled, and the ovals around the band whispered back, like encouragement.

I walked down the empty carpet, and the courtiers bowed as I passed.

I gave the king a little bow, because the gems asked me to be polite.

He nodded and smiled. “Youngling, it is good to see that House Topaz was not obliterated as we thought. You have returned, and claimed your birthright, and I must say, it is good to see you well. We thought... I thought your line was gone.”

I coughed. I was being polite. “I would respectfully say, Your Majesty, that a bit of investigation would have uncovered the truth rather quickly. I spent the last twelve years of my life living in fear and in secret, praying I was not discovered. You could have dealt with the invaders, and I could have claimed what is rightfully mine much sooner.”

The king had the grace to look ashamed. “You are correct, I fear. I have wronged you.”

The gems were whispering. “Then make it right. I need to restore my House. As of now, I am alone, with a few old servants as my only help. Let me take whom I will, from whatever place I find them, with me. Together we will build and restore.”

There were quiet gasps and some muttering, but the chime of the gems was louder. To the crowd, as well. My crown's gems shone brightly, and the other gems around me flickered in agreement. The king sighed. “It seems we humans are outnumbered in this case. If it rights the wrongs we did to your House, then so be it. Please be careful not to choose those who are indispensable to their Houses.”

“The gems will choose. I think you will find they will only take the willing. What they are looking for, I can guess, but they see deeper. I think you will find their choices do not harm any House.” The king nodded, and though the courtiers looked nervous, they also nodded. It's not like they had much choice. They knew their own culpability in this mess.

I bowed again and turned to go, but two lesser courtiers and three servants stepped forward and bowed to me. They looked ready to follow me immediately, but I stopped them. “No, please, take the time to pack your things and join me in the morning. I am sure someone will be kind enough to put me up for the night, and give me clothes and such, for healing their gems tonight. And there are other people I must collect, here in the palace and in the city. I should stay for a few days and find them.” They nodded, the king nodded, all the courtiers nodded.

And it was so. I settled into a soft bed, courtesy of House Corundum. Somehow a branch of House Sapphire and House Ruby took all the other colors of the gem, and left the blues to Sapphire and the reds to Ruby. This House was very pleased to talk to me, since apparently pink sapphires were too easy to shatter when faceted. And House Emerald hovered about, and House Opal as well. They begged for meetings in the morning. Time tomorrow for all the collective troubles of the gems – the gems, as well as their people.

My crown didn't want to leave my head, so it stayed. I didn't even feel its weight as my head hit the pillow.

Tomorrow, I will begin to repopulate my home. Five people already was an auspicious start.

I slept.