Read The Dark Crystal Online

Authors: A. C. H. Smith

The Dark Crystal (19 page)

The Skeksis had profited prodigiously from the knowledge and from their control of the Crystal within the fortress they had carved from the mountain that contained it. Along all the ley-lines of energy around the planet, they had continuously fed noxious pulses, fomenting misery and weakness throughout their world. And along the same ley-lines they had sucked in the geodynamic energies. The lightning Jen had seen was focused into the Standing Stones and transmitted to the castle. The Skeksis controlled the nodal points of the planet by terrestrial acupuncture.
Thus it was that the Skeksis had always been able to ignore the urRu. The spy crystals had never monitored them, nor had they been visited by Garthim. Apart from the Standing Stones, nothing at all in that valley ever could have represented a threat to the empirical tyranny of the Skeksis. The valley of the urRu was an enclave of notions, the province of clouds, nothing more.

I
n the sky, the three suns were no more than their own diameter apart. With infinite weariness, leaning on their sticks, the urRu filed slowly down the slope toward the castle gate.

I
nch by inch, Jen climbed the shaft, clinging grimly to any holds the rock offered his fingers and toes. He tried to keep his concentration fixed on the stone walls, watching out for dangerously loose patches. He did his utmost to resist looking upward to see how far he still had to go to reach the Crystal, or downward to see the lake of fire that awaited an error of judgment, a moment of weariness. His limbs ached horribly.
He became aware of an intermittent noise not far above him. Sometimes it sounded like snorting, at other times like a cackle. He risked a look upward. Just over his head, he saw an opening in the wall of the shaft next to him. He took heart. It would afford him a place to rest, at least. The noise was evidently coming from whatever lay behind the opening.
When he was level with it, he gripped the ledge with one hand and swung his other hand over to join it. Hauling himself up, he crawled into the Chamber of Life, through the portal that had remained open since the Scientist’s fall.
The chamber was deserted, though it was apparent that, shortly before, it hadn’t been. Cages hung open; straw littered the floor; retorts, jars, and cabinets lay smashed. Jen heard the snorting sound again and wheeled around to see what it was. Amid the chaos sat Aughra, scrutinizing the Scientist’s books with keen appetite. The pockets of her tunic bulged with pieces of apparatus and veined stones which she had appropriated from the abandoned laboratory.
“I” – Jen began – “I thought you were dead. In the fire at your Observatory.”
Aughra cackled. “Better hurry,” she replied. “Not much time now, Great Conjunction. Miss that, wait another thousand years, ha!”
”
‘When single shines the triple sun,’
” Jen quoted.
“Yes, yes,” Aughra said impatiently. “No time. Get to Crystal.”
Jen stretched his tired limbs. With a deep breath of determination he moved back toward the portal and the shaft leading up to the Crystal.
Aughra intercepted him. “Not there.” She pointed to the doorway. “Easier way, through there. Got shard?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Very, very interesting. Your friend said you got it.”
“Kira?” Jen asked quickly. “Was she here?”
“Yes.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Was, in here.”
“Where is she? Where did they take her?”
“Went on own, through there. Looking for Crystal, perhaps. Looking for you.”
Jen went sprinting through the doorway.
“Go, Gelfling,” Aughra muttered to herself.
T
he Garthim-Master retired to his bedchamber. Scepter in hand, he admired himself in the mirror and began to feel calmer.
It was, after all, understandable that the Skeksis had lately been subject to hysterical fears. At the very end of the solar cycle, their energies were predictably flagging. Soon everything would be under control again. The Garthim-Master would go out and lead them in the ceremony of the Great Conjunction. Freshly endowed with superb strength, the Skeksis would then have nothing to fear. Skeksis rule over the planet stabilized once more, the Garthim-Master’s own position as Emperor would be reaffirmed. Just to be sure of that, he would eliminate the Scientist, and he would reward the Slave-Master’s loyalty by appointing him to the newly created post of Patriarch, which would be a rank senior to that of both Ritual-Master and Chamberlain. The Garthim-Master wondered if he should not cultivate new allies. The Ornamentalist, perhaps, could be weaned away from the Chamberlain’s party.
Deeply moved by his rededication of faith, the Garthim-Master continued to gaze at himself in the mirror and clutched the scepter more tightly than ever.
O
utside the castle entrance Garthim formed a solid line of defense against all intruders. Their claws bristled out in front of them.
At the foot of the slope, the approaching urRu resembled pilgrims completing the penitential journey of their long lifetime. Their great, tired heads were now held much lower than the hands with which they gripped their walking sticks. So dusty were their garments that nothing could be seen of urUtt’s complex weaving and knotting. Led by urZah, they looked neither to the left nor right. Their eyes were fixed on the ground in front of them. Their tails dragged behind. They headed straight for the castle entrance.
Overhead, the three suns were almost touching.
When the urRu were but four weary steps away from the Garthim, urSol sang out a mighty note. The other seven raised their voices with his in a polyphonic chord of the utmost majesty. It was the nine-toned chant, the resonance of the great Crystal. From where did the ninth voice come? It might have been that urSol himself was chanting a chord. Or the ninth voice might have responded from within the castle itself. Only the urRu knew. But whatever the explanation, the effect was immediate. The Garthim, creatures of the Skeksis, abominators of the sound of the unclouded Crystal, lowered their claws and shuffled meekly away from the entrance, allowing the chanting urRu to pass through without hindrance.
I
n Jen’s hand, the shard was glowing with a cold, pale fire. He looked at it in awe of the shard’s intrinsic power and of what the shard told him. His time had come. Whatever his doubts and weaknesses hitherto, there was no turning back now. He was irrevocably committed to accomplishing the final stage of his quest. No longer did he feel any fear. All he felt was that, like a spear launched, he had a single objective. He would succeed or he would fail: those were the terms of his existence, and no others.
With the marvelous, dispassionate clarity of the concentrated mind, he was fully conscious of what else he valued. He hungered for the sight and the touch of Kira, or at least the knowledge of what had become of her. Yet Kira, and his care for her, was as if part of another life, an alternative life, past for sure, possibly a future to come, infinitely more desirable than what he had now to do; but until he had accomplished his mission, he had no more choice than the spear in flight.
Running from the Chamber of Life he had encountered only a few Pod slaves, who had taken no notice of him. He came to the balustraded lower gallery of the Crystal Chamber and from there stared up at the great Crystal suspended in air. Wondering how to reach it, he caught sight of the high balcony beside the Crystal and realized that there must be a way up to it.
He left the gallery, made his way along a corridor, and turned a corner. In front of him stood ten Garthim, five on either side of the foot of a staircase leading upward.
Jen spun around in midstride and sprinted back to the corner of the corridor, his heart thumping, his hand grasping the shard like a dagger. At the corner he threw a glance over his shoulder. What he saw was that the Garthim had not moved. They were still positioned exactly where they had been.
Jen waited to see how many of them would pursue him. Still none of the Garthim moved. They stood at the foot of the staircase like hollow suits of armor. Nor, he realized, were they emitting the ticking noise that always preceded their onslaughts.
Very tentatively he took a step back toward them, then another. Not one of the Garthim moved or showed any sign of life.
Knowing that he had to find his way up to the high balcony, Jen steeled himself to go on stepping, on tiptoe, toward the staircase between the Garthim. Coming within a claw’s reach of them he held his breath. Then he skipped between the two lines and ran up the stairs. Still none of them gave any indication of registering his presence.
The truth, which Jen could not know, was that Garthim did what the Skeksis ordered them to do and nothing more. Those from whom Jen had narrowly escaped in the Garthim pit had recently returned from the raid on Kira’s village and so were still under orders to seek and destroy Gelfling. But these, stationed around the corridors of the castle, had no orders at present. They had been posted in readiness for any emergency that might arise. Until the Garthim-Master or another Skeksis commanded them into action, they were lifeless.

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