The Ninth Shaft

“Jasan, LEAVE YOUR BROTHER ALONE, NOW!”

Jasan moved a bit farther away from his now-screaming brother, but it wasn't until his mother leaned in and hissed “Do you want me to tell your father?” that he jumped up and ran away. His mother pulled whatever-it-was out of Jasan's hand as he bolted, and returned them to the rightful owner. The screaming immediately stopped.

Lady Honey d'Citrina slowly turned to the nurses, and her name couldn't have been farther from her demeanour. The temperature in the room actually dropped; a side effect of House Citrine's abilities. “I thought I told you that the older boys were now forbidden from the nursery, to prevent this exact situation from happening again? Is there a problem that I'm not aware of? Something wrong with your ears?” Her words were soft, but the biting tone used to deliver them hurt more than the ear.

The head nurse shivered, but she was too used to the outbursts Citrine's family to be cowed for long. “You know the boys gang up to drive the youngest mad. They love his fits. Jasan wasn't the only instigator here. Flax and Cerux distracted us so the third could slip in and torture little Ash.”

“Not so little anymore.” This was one of the other nurses, feeling a bit bolder. “He's fourteen. About to reach his majority. Only because he talks so little, is obsessed over certain possessions, and doesn't want to interact with his tormentors, does it seem like he's still a child. No. His thoughts and studies are far beyond his years, he just doesn't see a need to talk about it.”

“Would you, with so many people bullying him? For their own amusement?”

“Are you saying that my children are horrid monsters?”

They could see their breath, but the head nurse was undeterred. “Of course I am. I have told you often and repeatedly that they're spoiled, entitled brats. It's beyond time to send them out into the world, where their arrogance will be taken down a few notches. Or send them into the mines, see if they actually have any usefulness to speak of.”

“Get out.” Soft words that carried all the force of a pysical blow. “Collect your things and leave.”

“Gladly. You know this city is dying. The disease is deep, and your denial runs deeper than the mines below our feet. Come, ladies, we've been waiting for this day for too long.” Through the door to their private rooms, Lady Honey could see that they each gathered a few bundles and hustled down to the gate. Apparently this development was anticipated, even welcomed.

She stared at the empty rooms. And Ash, sitting on the floor playing with whatever-it-was.

Her youngest baffled her. She'd assumed from the beginning he was touched in the head from being born so late in her life, and would need nursing like he was a child till he died. It happened, sometimes. But according to his tutors, he was smarter than the rest of the children combined. He knew five languages, and could read, write, and speak them fluently – if he wanted to. He could do difficult sums. When it came to research in the dusty stacks of the library, he could hunt down obscure pieces of information with determination and accuracy. He also rearranged the books and ledgers so that future generations could actually find things in a logical manner.

But social situations? Conversations? He retreated from the feast hall, and quietly ate in his rooms or with one of the nurses. The only time she could get him to speak on any subject is when he nattered on about what esoteric thing he found. In the attic. Or the library. Or the cellars. Or the barns.

The anger drained out of her, like it usually did when the subject of her ire was out of sight. The clattering of the horses in the courtyard told her the nurses were gone. Like so many others. She didn't understand. The nurses were correct; the city was desolate. People had fled over the decades, but the last few years were the worst. Everyone complained that it just felt horrible to live here. Like a pool of evil was expanding, and they would not raise families in this putrid atmosphere. Merchants, farmers, workers of all kinds.

All except her family. They were fine.

Though they lost their temper a lot. The servants were leaving in droves, no matter what incentives they were given to stay. And now trusted staff was part of the exodus.

They would have to shut the nursery now. She wondered how Ash would take it.

She learned the answer to that when Ash vanished.

At first, Lady Honey blamed her children, and had them beaten.

With the nurses gone, she had to admit they were a pack of spoiled... well, brats. And they had nothing to do, and no brother to torment who didn't immediately retaliate. She sighed, admitted in her head that they were right all along, but never aloud. Her husband wasn't well enough to undo her commands, so she used the heavy manpower of the guards that were left to enforce that the boys got training. And some late discipline. And then they could eat to earn their keep.

Hunger, for children that had never known want, was a powerful lesson.

But that didn't cause Ash to reappear.

She sent out trackers, and they came back empty-handed. If they came back at all. Some took the opportunity to leave on their own, with pay and possessions squirreled away in their packs.

Those that returned reported towns completely abandoned, with their goods and livestock. And forests devoid of game. Their gem merchants were living across the borders of their lands.

Even the wild animals fled?

She could not ignore this any longer. Wealth and the control of the mine was useless if there was no one to lord it over.

One of the braver cooks told her quietly that Ash was still around; he showed up in the kitchens for regular meals. She breathed a quiet sigh of relief. Probably hiding from his brothers.

She assigned a servant to follow him.

Now – what about her husband? And their missing people?

Obviously intimidation and incentives weren't working. Things were breaking and running down with no one to fix them. Scores of houses and rooms and outbuildings stood empty. And the fear of whatever they were feeling was worse than their fear of broken contracts or the anger of the ruling class.

She could hear her husband howling from his rooms. She sighed. They would lose more servants if he kept up his out-of-control raging like this.

Sure enough, he was raving about going to dinner. She waved the servants away, but kept the guards just in case. “Calm down, husband! You will work yourself into a frenzy yet again, and then we'll have to dose you! You can't go to dinner with your temper so out of control!”

“OUT OF MY WAY, WOMAN, I WANT TO GO TO DINNER AND I WILL DO WHAT I LIKE!” He tried to get out of bed, flailed around in the bedcovers. In a practised movement, she slipped the poppy syrup to a guard, he slid to one side of the bed while she moved to the other. For some reason he always fell for this feint, fixing on her as the soft touch. It gave the guard enough time to sneak behind him, grab his chin, force him to drink.

Dinner was a quiet affair with her problem children exhausted from new lessons and work. She almost felt calm, for the first time in weeks.

Time to check in with the accountant, the mine chief, and the major-domo.

The servant was waiting with them. “The boy is going into the mine. I followed him to the entrance, and of course I'm not allowed to go into the mine without the chief's permission.”

The mine chief shrugged. “And I don't know where he goes, but he's not in the way. We don't even see him. How did he even get a key?”

“I... I don't know, Giles. I'm stymied. Well. I will meet you at the gates tomorrow. I'll explore his new haunt.”

*********

It was an odd experience for her, to be putting on her mine clothes. When was the last time she'd been down in the mines?

Decades. Her husband had gone down regularly, till the rages kept him abed. He was a cousin a few times removed. The family tree was a bit intertwined, to keep the blood line strong. He was her third husband; the other two had succumbed early to the rages. The third was well on his way. She'd already decided there would not be a fourth.

She couldn't even remember his name. Hmm.

The passage was well lit with oil and fish lamps. She didn't need them, of course, but it was kind to let the miners see their way in the dark. The fish were a species so full of oily tissue that, when dried, were a candle that burned with a pure light. House Opal knew where they were caught and cornered that particular market. She was a bit jealous.

As soon as she stepped into the tunnel's mouth she knew. She could feel him as surely as if he stood in front of her. “Ah. He's in the ninth shaft.”

They shuddered. “I can deal with this myself, I think. I don't need guards down here. Go on back, and I will learn what this is about.” They nodded and trotted off. The miners went to work.

Shaft Number Nine. The old volcano vent that, when opened, didn't produce beautiful golden crystals. It produced black crystals bigger than her fist.

It radiated evil.

They never had to close off the opening. No sane miner would ever go there.

But yet, here was Ash, sitting comfortably in the dark like he felt completely at home. He was fiddling with a huge crystal.

She sat near him. “Child, why are you here?”

He could see in the dark, too, since he stared right back at her. “Not a child, Mama.”

She considered this. “True, that. But you are still my child. I remember you toddling around the nursery more than I remember you as an almost-adult. But why are you here, of all places?”

He shrugged. “The dead called. They need me to help.”

The words chilled her.

Ash nodded at the crystal in front of him. “People die. The good in them goes somewhere, but the bad, it stays. It doesn't go away. It stays, glops together with the other bad. It chokes out people, and they leave. Everyone runs from the bad stuff.”

Her jaw dropped. Is this what...?

He fiddled with the crystal again. “It's supposed to be in here, but it stopped in my great-great-great grandfather's time. When he banished the priests. They all left, including fifth-great Uncle Ambrose. The bad glop, it screams, it drives people insane. I've been trying to find the way to put the ethereal into the corporeal, bottling the essence in crystalline containment.”

Honey smiled at the change in language. So the tutors were correct - Ash wasn't stupid, just quiet. “Let me guess – you don't talk much because you're dealing with concepts you're trying to comprehend, so you let people think you're stupid so they let you alone.”

He shrugged. “You didn't assist when my 'loving' brothers took their teasing too far, why would I trust you with esoteric knowledge?”

Ouch. That one struck home. “Well, in my defense, I've been dealing with a lot.”

“The negative phlogistron divides houses, clans, septs. You will be left with nothing if it continues to force people away. And I cannot discern how to utilize these implements to facilitate the process. I am fatigued.”

“Does it have to happen down here in the mine, or can we go back to my rooms and discuss it in civilized conditions?”

He shrugged. “You're calmer down here,” he observed.

She blinked.

“I have scoured the annals and tomes. I have gleaned all the information there is to learn from those dusty volumes. The answers lie here, I think.” He tapped the large crystal with something rod-like.

Despite the stygian darkness, Honey could see this particular crystal was big, but not very dark. The crystals around her were completely black. “Ash, where did you get this crystal?

He pointed further down the tunnel shaft with his rod.

It wouldn't hurt to look, would it? She got up and traveled the gentle slope.

How long had it been since she was in the mine? Or, more specifically, in this shaft?

The answer was depressing. It was Ash's birth ceremony. They would bring the baby right from the christening to the mine, to show the “spirits of the mine” or something. She didn't remember why, just that it was The Thing That Was Done.

She could hear the whispering around her.

And then – it faded the farther she went. The crystals went from black to gray to clear yellowish as she walked.

Honey didn't like surprises. And she certainly didn't like mysteries. But she could feel that the wrongness on the surface of their lands was the same as was here in this shaft.

The end of the tunnel was filled with the ash-like stuff that Ash was named for. There were holes in it, where Ash had dug out some crystals, and there were many gaps in the walls around her. She knew that Number Nine had not been abandoned because of the quality of the crystals. There were some spectacular ones here, in fact. But Honey knew that most citrine was originally amethyst when it formed. The volcano that had formed these vents was long dormant, but vapors and trapped gases worked their magic for long centuries after the magma stopped flowing. But there was still great heat, and that turned the purple to yellow. A different vapor, one that was quite fatal, made the crystals brown or black. Generations ago, the House of Citrine decided that it was too dangerous to the workers to continue here, where they had to assume the gases were still seeping. They stayed close to the other shafts, and their sunshine yellow to cognac sparklies.

But Ash was here.

Something needed to be done, but what?

She returned to Ash, lost in thought. He was still tapping – first one facet, then another. Belatedly she realized that the rod was the thing she'd pulled out of Jasan's hands and given back. “Ash, what is that? Where did you find it?”

“A box of Uncle Ambrose's personal articles, tucked into a small corner of the attic. Cross-referenced with household lists in the library. Saleth-wood box of dimensions two hands wide, one hand deep, and one and a half hands long. One obsidian mirror, one silver goblet, an S-shaped steel, a purple flint and a gray flint, a glass bottle stoppered with linen pierced with a glass tube, a brass brazier, and a wizard's wand wrapped in copper capped with a smoky quartz crystal. And a tightly-wound scroll with six sigils, one for each side of the crystal. Used as evidence in his trial, and banished for it. They were afraid to destroy it, so they hid it. I looked for a book that is mentioned in the trial scripts, and I cannot locate it anywhere. Maybe he took it with him.”

“So we don't really know how he used these things to keep the balance.”

“I infer he scribed sigils on the crystals, most likely with this rod. Many of the darkest ones here in the shaft have them. He would remove them, scribe them, use them, return them. I can only do the first two tasks.”

“That's strong talent, Ash. Being able to take the crystals out of their matrix and return them to the same spot is a talent our family treasures.”

“But not for the moon-dark ones, just the sunny ones.”

She wondered what that meant. A secondary House forming, or a regular offshoot of Citrine that no one developed? Did her family ignore something this important for too long?

A breeze sliced through the shaft, with a high-pitched keening wail. They both shivered. Ash pointed up. “Dad's having another fit.”

“Hellfire and damnation!” Honey ran out of the mine, not knowing Ash had scooped up both rod and crystal and followed.

The castle was chaos. She could feel herself getting angrier the closer she got to the enraged roaring that she knew was her husband in full-throated tantrum. She could feel the energy wrapping around her, suffocating her. How dare he pull this nonsense? How dare he bring this negative whatever-it's-called into her family's domain?

“That's not what I said,” Ash murmured behind her, but she didn't hear. She was too angry.

She slammed her hands into the double doors, and they crashed into the walls. In the room beyond, the tableau froze at the shocking vehemence. Maidservants, huddling on chairs and couches. One holding her head where a slap was bruising. Guards gripping her husband by both arms, himself contorted in the bed, half-dressed. The household pharmacist sitting on the floor, obviously pushed. Manservants in various stages of being manhandled, with ripped clothing and bloody noses and dripping food and drink, and the platters with which those things were offered to their lord strewn across the floor. You could almost hear the echoes of their clanging.

The temperature in the room plummeted. Her husband-cousin's rages were hot, but hers were ice cold. They were afraid of her. There was even a flicker of apprehension in her husband's eyes.

She took in the scene, a scenario where only the wine and the blood were moving. And she had had enough.

“What. Do. You. Think. You. Are. Doing?”

The words lashed like whip strikes. Her idiot husband actually started whining: “But, but, the doctor is trying to poison me!”

“Really, have you become that childish?” She gestured to the disaster in his bedroom. “After this nonsense, husband, you should be much more concerned that I will poison you, just so we all have some peace. This is unacceptable behavior for a toddler, much less a head of one of the Houses of the Gems.”

Was that a pout? Dearest gods, spare me!

“Enough. You obviously cannot handle the responsibility. Doctor, where is his dose?” The poor man pointed to a bottle, only saved from smashing on the tiles by a dislodged pillow. “I will administer it to His Paranoia. Guards, ladies, gents, if you wish, you are released from service. Please go see the House Steward for dismissal papers, final wages, or reassignment as you choose. But he can now suffer on his own. Doctor, please see to their hurts before any other duties, preferably in another room.” She scooped up the bottle and a random goblet, poured one into the other. Shoved it in his direction. “Drink this, or be thrown out of the House, preferably by the battlements. Your choice.”

The guards still had ahold of his forearms; one slowly let go. And her husband, just as slowly, reached for the goblet, drank it.

The servants were helping each other stumble from the room. The pharmacist hesitated, but grabbed his satchel and followed them when Honey narrowed her eyes at him. Ash had already removed himself as if he'd never been there. She wondered if anyone had even noticed him? She collected both halves of the doors. “If you're decent in clothing, bathing, and attitude, you may join us for dinner tonight. Otherwise, I'll be back alone with your bedtime dose. But the reign of terror is over. It ends immediately. We need to do something drastic to save this House, and it starts at the top. We will discuss the rest later, when you are calmer.” She closed the doors gently.

She fought the urge to grab a guard's pike and barricade them.

First things first – attending to the wounded. She watched while the pharmacist ministered, even holding the bandages while he bound wounds and checked for broken bones. She sent one of the least wounded for the House steward to confirm in their presence what she said – and she meant it. Any who wished to leave, their servant's bonds would be let go with no penalty, and with full pay till the end of the year, with letters of recommendation. And His Donkeyship would have no servants henceforth. Food, clothing, and wash water would now be placed in the anteroom, and he could avail himself when the servants withdrew. She had half a mind to make him go to the kitchens and communal bath like a servant himself, but that would probably push things over the edge. Some separation had to be maintained, after all.

She found Ash in his rooms, staring dejectedly at a mostly-clear crystal. Then looked around in surprise.

Huge crystals lined the walls.

“Ash, did you dig all of these out yourself?”

“Mmm-hmm. I scribed them as well. But I am missing vital information, and success has proven elusive.”

“Should I bring the priests back?”

“They won't come till we fix this ourselves. I have written letters, and that is their unified reply.”

“Damn.”

“Indeed, I believe we are.”

Honey drifted over to the near wall, staring at the beauty of clear smoky crystals. It was a bit unsettling. She reached out as if to touch, but refrained. This was Ash's room, and people had treated his things like their own for years. She determined to treat him with more respect – and get her wayward children to do the same.

All of these crystals seemed attuned to one person in the room, and it certainly wasn't her. Quite disturbing to the person who thought she'd been in charge all these years.

She thought of the family history. There always seemed to be one child who was dark to everyone else's light. Not in an evil way, but in a personality way, somber and studious when the others were fair and fun and sunny in disposition.

Well, they used to be. Certainly not now, and not in living memory.

And Ash sitting there, looking so miserable. She impulsively hugged him, surprising him as much as it did her. Matronly affection wasn't something she'd been known to do, in, well... ever.

She watched him drink it in, hold on to it, as one of his brightest memories. It almost broke her heart.

She could have done better, surely?

This room felt different than the rest of the castle, and she assumed it was the presence of so many crystals. Long ago, House Citrine had been know for its lighthearted merriment. Now, they were avoided like they had plague. If Ash was right, and it started when they expelled the priests, that was a few centuries of collected misery that had gathered like crows waiting for something to die.

“Ash, have you discovered why we got rid of priests? I don't recall.”

“If the annals are correct, most were fake. But they... what is the colloquial?”

“Ah, they got rid of the baby with the bath water. We tend to do that.”

“Precisely. Uncle Ambrose protested, saying his calling was for the betterment of the family. I think they expected him to recant, since they thought it was all hoakum anyway. They were shocked when he just walked away after the verdict.”

“May I see Ambrose's box?”

Ash looked surprised at the request, but nodded. He crossed to a table cluttered with old books borrowed from the library, and moved a few to expose the box. It looked like he had a gift of hiding in plain sight. Unlike the rest of the family, who each demanded sole attention constantly, and each tearing down the rest, singly or in groups.

Ash opened the box in front of her.

Just as he'd described to her, of course. The mirror made her outright queasy, as if she were pregnant again. The bottle looked neutral, the goblet faintly hopeful. The tray holding those articles was removed, and below were the flints and striker, shallow bowl with a bit of ash still clinging to the bottom, and the small scroll, as well as a slot for the wand he carried with him.

“May I?” He noded again, and she picked up the bottle. “Hmm, not glass, this is made out of one of our palest citrines.”

Ash tilted his head, wrinked his forehead.

She pointed to the goblet. “So, there's water. I'm holding air. The bowl is for fire, and the wand is likely earth. Powerful articles. The mirror, that's just an awful thing. It hurts to look at.”

“It's worse if you look into it. I strongly suggest you do so, for edification.”

She didn't want to, but her son asked. He wouldn't if it wasn't important. So she grasped the handle, and it felt so cold. Ugh. She steeled herself, and looked at her image in the polished obsidian – but all changed. Old, ugly, evil. Bitter, sad, angry, hateful. Haggard.

Ash nodded towards his door. “Now look at yourself again, in the hallway.”

She did. And hustled back inside, slamming the door. All of that, plus a black cloud that billowed up out of nowhere and enveloped her, clung to her. She could feel the anger rising up inside her, which drained when she hid inside Ash's room again.

Ash sighed glumly. “The negative phlogistron. It is killing all of us.”

“This is what everyone runs from.”

“And what makes us angry and disagreeable.”

She thought hard, about what she knew about citrine, and life experience. “I don't think it's just the rod you use, it's likely all the implements used together. Or perhaps they're a method of containment. Like we can pull crystals with our hands, but the miners need pickaxes and shovels.”

“I would need to what, scribe a pentagram? Dance naked by moonlight, reciting poetry?”

“Ash, that was an image I didn't need of my son. No, dear, because you didn't need all those things to scribe the sigils on all these crystals. But perhaps for an assistant, especially for collecting the negative whatsis in a difficult area.”

“Phlogistron.”

“What I mean, is that it's not the tools, or the list of instructions. We became the House of Citrine because we had something in us that called us here, and the rocks responded to it. What if there's no book of instructions because Ambrose didn't need them? What if he just did it? By willpower, or by instinct? Our line always throws an odd duck or two each generation. My third brother was one. He left in disgust as soon as he reached his majority. You have much more determination, and the knack of finding things. If there's a solution, we will find it, I think.”

Ash smiled, a little. It was the first time she'd seen him smile since he was a baby.

“I don't think about turning rooms into ice boxes when I'm angry, but it happens all the same. If you can stand my anger, I'm a wonderful person to be around in the heat of summer. And it's why I'm usually in long sleeves. But when I die, the next lady of the house shouldn't use my clothing, unless she has a temper to match mine. But three generations down the line, if they find my gown in the back of the closet, I wouldn't expect them to wear it for midsummer celebrations.”

Ash got that wrinkled look again.

Fearful tapping on the door reminded her of unpleasant duties that she must return to. “Ugh. Duty calls. Ash, we'll work on this together? And may I borrow one of your smaller ward crystals to keep my temper in check?” He nodded, and she selected one that would fit nicely in her palm. She stuffed it down her prodigious bosom. “We don't have enough crystals in that shaft to put a cage around everyone left, so we'll have to find a solution. Take heart, one way or another, we must get answers. Someone figured this out before, we will do it again.”

Be careful what you wish for....

Honey watched the horrid antics of her children at dinner, and almost despaired.

Despite her best efforts, she could feel the pressure build. She tried to ignore their increasingly outrageous bids to outdo each other, even quietly dismissing the servants so they'd be out of the way of the abuse. Pans were set out, and they were told to serve themselves.

She could almost see the food fight that was about to break out. If so, she might just be the first head of a House to be convicted of murdering her own children. The air was cooling around her...

POP. And suddenly she could see her breath. And she knew.

So did her children, the terror etched on their faces.

Her husband came roaring into the feast hall.

And he never hesitated, went straight for the mob of adult children of the falling House of Citrine, and started swinging.

Everyone else in the hall scattered to the walls – but not before hastily filling their plates, Honey noted.

Her children, various cousins, with her husband in the thick of the melee, pummeling on each other. Wine and food arced in splatters like absurd bombs in a ridiculous war.

She was out of the way, still trying to eat one-handed. She was not surprised to find Ash at her elbow, also munching, casually watching the show. Roars, screams, curses, shouts, and the sound of body blows hitting home emerged in stacatto bursts from the bizarre show.

Until it didn't.

Her husband went from livid incoherent bellowing to a gurgling squeak, then a gasp. He dropped.

He was dead before he hit the floor.

Honey didn't scream, but she did drop her plate. As the rest of the fighters backed away, they all saw something rip out of him – a golden light that burst into sparkles and disappeared and a horrid darkness that poured out his chest, his eyes, his open mouth, and boiled into a shape above him.

Honey felt her brain splitting. Half was gibbering, but the other was coldly sizing up the disaster. Her eyes darted around – fire in the hearth and in the candles in the chandeliers, air around them and being breathed, food and tables and all were earth, and the spilled wine was water...

Ash shoved something cold in her hands. The mirror. She took a deep breath, turned her back to the scene, and stared at it within the obsidian circle.

Everyone was smothered in black, but her husband's evil part of his soul was blacker than all the rest. And it was reaching out, trying to take everyone with him.

Ash stepped forward in a little bubble of clearer air, huge crystal in one hand, wand in the other.

The blackness hesitated, as if to look for a crack, any opening, to take Ash out. Honey realized it wasn't enough, wasn't quite right – but how? What?

Crystals!

The angle was too shallow! Between crystal, wand, and evil spirit. For a crystal to be solid, it needed wider angles. A solid foundation allowed crystals to grow.

The mirror hummed. An idea. A golden, sunny insight!

“Ash! Put the crystal on his chest! Aim the rod at the mirror!”

Ash heard. He darted in, placing the crystal's base squarely on his stepfather's chest. The inky blackness pulled back from it, but surged after Ash. He jumped back, and swung his arm towards the mirror that Honey had facing the corpse.

Willpower, she thought, as a beam like a narrow band of sunlight shot from the rod, to the mirror, bounced, and a dark beam aimed at the core of the darkness.

It screamed.

People clapped hands to ears, but it didn't help. As they watched, the blackness was sucked into the crystal, making it as dark as what it absorbed.

And it pulled in all the blackness around it. Apparently evil wanted company.

“People! Go to Ash's room, grab more crystals! Place them around the body! Move, now!”

Servants were used to obeying, and scrambled. Her children, looking dazed at what was happening right in front of them, moved to support Ash and Honey. They could feel the power being used, and hugged their family, willing their own power into the fight. They could see the darkness being pulled unwillingly into the crystal, and it was filling up fast.

Relief! Servants reappeared, arms full of clear crystals. They lined the corpse, making sure each one touched the clothing or body in some way. And the darkness flowed into them.

Her arms were shaking with the effort. They were heavy. And then her children helped, holding them up. Others did the same with Ash.

It took forever.

And when they ran out of darkness being pulled into the crystals, they could breathe. They could think.

And the room seemed lighter, and happier, and golden.

Ash collapsed.

His brothers caught him before he fell. Flax, of all people, was holding the rod gingerly. Xanthur, her eldest, cradled the mirror she shoved at him. She checked for her son's breath.

He breathed.

The pharmacist appeared. He examined Ash, and nodded. “Just exhausted with effort, nothing more. He will live, hopefully to teach us this new magic.”

“It is not teachable, Doctor. It is the magic of the black sheep, the one that doesn't fit in with the rest of the family.” She looked around in tired despair. “Oh what a mess we need to clean.”

And her children stepped up. “We did this, we'll undo it. Is there a coffin somewhere?” And off they went, to be... useful. Helpful. She stared at people she had known all their lives, but didn't know. They were being polite. Kind! Cooperative. Unreal.

She stared at the darkness in the crystals glimmering around Aurand's poor body, and let the tears fall.

*******************

Funeral. Replacing the full blackened crystals in the mine, helping Ash pull out more. Writing letters, so many letters. Inviting people to return. Rescinding the expulsion. Apologizing to all and sundry for making them live in that mental filth for far too long.

Appreciating Ash for the rare treasure he was, and watching him finally being treated decently by his sibs.

And watching Ash prepare for a trip through their lands, with Ambrose's kit and some sibs and servants to support him. Their combined effort had cleared the city, but only the city. Their lands needed a thorough cleansing.

And she was alone, mourning a man she never had a chance to know.

Seeing the change in everyone's personalities, knowing she herself was different, mourning all that was lost. So much waste.

Never again.

Her family was turning out to be amazing. Xanthur was taking over many Head of House duties. Jasan, the head bully, was now training to enter the mines. Flax and Cerux were decent carvers and faceters. Some were talking about moving to the towns Ash would be cleaning, to help restore them.

And she was busy writing up what happened. So that they never forget their mistakes, and never repeat them.

House Citrine would shine brightly again.