2000s (or earlier) book/series set in a future where spacefaring people have magic powers granted by elemental symbiotic crystals [duplicate]

Question

I read this book probably close to 20 years ago (and even then I don't think the book was new). It might have even have been a short series.

It's in the future and the descendants of some spacefaring people have ended up on a planet and a small group of them have "magic powers." These powers are granted by symbiotic crystals that are tempered with various elements, e.g. fire/water. Depending on what type of crystal they bind with, it gives them control over the related element. I think this process of binding to the crystals happens in the spaceship that brought the original people to the planet.

I think that the main character binds with a crystal that wasn't tempered by any element and thus can control all of them?

Answer 1

I think I found it in the related thread section! Janny Wurts, "The Cycle of Fire" series. Summary of the first book, Stormwarden (1984), from Amazon:

This classic fantasy trilogy follows three young people struggling to free the Stormwarden, the last of the elemental power-wielding Vaere sorcerers, so that he can battle the humanity-threatening demonkind.

Far in the future, a human-crewed starship crashes on a distant planet, carrying alien POWs taken to help discover the secrets of a deadly foe, the group mind known as the Gierj. In time, the humans revert to a feudal society, the aliens are seen as "demons", and the starship's computer survives as a "magical" entity known as the Vaere.

In Book 1, Stormwarden, Auskiere, wizard of wind and water, binds the Mharg-demons with the aid of Ivan, master of fire and earth. But at the moment of his greatest peril, Ivan is betrayed and he swears a terrible oath against his betrayer—an oath so powerful that it begins a relentless "cycle of fire."