The Dark Crystal (14 page)
Authors: A. C. H. Smith
“Ah.” The Chamberlain nodded. “Now, please come, yes. Please. Must be quick. Soon, much new power for Skeksis. Peace for Skeksis and Kelffinks hard then, much more hard after new power. Must be quick, now, please. Come?”
“Where to?”
“To castle. Show you way into castle with me, secret way, no Garthim will see, through Teeth of Shkreesh, then we find Skeksis. Then we make peace, you and me together, and all good for Kelffinks. No more Garthim then. Come, please. Yes.”
Kira ran forward to stand directly in front of Jen, her back to the Skeksis. She looked straight into Jen’s eyes. “No, Jen,” she said passionately. “Look.” She pointed to the picture of the antique Gelfling civilization. “And look.” Now her finger reminded him of the picture in which Garthim destroyed a Gelfling village. Her eyes searched his. “
‘By Gelfling hand, or else by none,’
” she recited.
‘By Gelfling hand, or else by none,’
” she recited.
Jen reached out his hand to take Kira’s. Together, they wheeled round, grabbing Fizzgig, and fled through the window.
“Come back!” they heard the Skeksis begging them. “Kelffinks, no! Peace! Please! Peace!”
As they ran into the forest again, Jen turned his head to see whether the Skeksis was following them. It was not. It was simply watching them go, its head hanging in dejection.
D
eep within the castle, in his laboratory known as the Chamber of Life, skekTek the Scientist sorted through a load of Pod People squirming together in a wicker cage. He pulled several out to inspect them more closely under a magnifying glass and tossed them back into the cage with a shake of his head.
eep within the castle, in his laboratory known as the Chamber of Life, skekTek the Scientist sorted through a load of Pod People squirming together in a wicker cage. He pulled several out to inspect them more closely under a magnifying glass and tossed them back into the cage with a shake of his head.
Beside him, the Garthim-Master impatiently peered at each specimen and looked inquiringly at the Scientist. With each rejection, he bared his teeth and grunted in disappointment. He tried to help by pointing out likely candidates. The Scientist would glance briefly at each, then roll his eyes toward the ceiling with a dismissive flap of his hand. He was the specialist in this business. The Garthim-Master had no understanding of the mysteries of laboratory work.
Eventually, the Scientist found a specimen he thought might serve the purpose. Closing the top of the wicker cage to prevent the rest from escaping, the Scientist carried the wriggling peasant by one arm to a row of metal chairs fitted against the stone wall. He clamped his specimen into the chair by tightening a wormscrew. In a bracket at the front of the chair was a crystal to which a long glass tube was attached. The tube was slightly inclined, and beneath its lower extremity the Scientist placed a jeweled flask. Then he walked back to his control bench. The Garthim-Master watched, licking his lips eagerly and blinking. The peasant went on wriggling his limbs, but his head and torso were rigidly held. Only his black button eyes could swivel, in panic, and his mouth emit helpless little moans.
When the Scientist pulled a lever, a portal swung open in the wall opposite the clamped peasant. Behind the portal, a vertical shaft was revealed, down the center of which a continuous, beam of energy, violet in color, was visible. At the far bottom of the shaft, deep within the planet’s crust, the beam terminated in a lake of fire.
The Scientist, motioning the Garthim-Master to stand well clear of the area, pulled down another lever. A rod swung out from the side of the vertical shaft. To the end of it a prism of crystal was attached. The rod moved the prism into the beam of energy and held it there, refracting a violet ray across the laboratory into the peasant’s face.
Immediately, the peasant stopped squirming and became rigid. From his fingertips, at the end of his extended arms, a crackling force field jumped to meet the crystal in front of the chair. There, it condensed into thick, oily droplets, which ran down the incline of the tube and dripped into the flask. The peasant’s eyes were transformed from black buttons into milky, staring orbs. They remained like that when the Scientist reversed his levers, closing off the shaft again. The peasant’s body, twitching, sagged limply in the clamped chair.
The Scientist retrieved the flask with the collected droplets and handed it to the Garthim-Master, who drank off its contents in one impatient gulp.
The vliya had an immediate impact on him. His wrinkles smoothed, his neck straightened, his whole bearing became more vigorous. He strutted across the laboratory to admire himself in a mirror, holding his body at different angles to take in the transformation.
As he watched, and preened, the effect drained away as rapidly as it had arrived. His skin sagged, his spine curved, his eyes became yellow. He turned accusingly to the Scientist, his mouth trembling with bitter anger.
The Scientist spread his hands and shrugged. The Garthim-Master knew as well as he what the problem was. They were all too dissipated for the Pod vliya, which was no more than sap, to have any lasting salutary effect on their flaccid flesh. There was nothing for it but to await the Great Conjunction, when they would derive a tremendously renewed power from the Crystal.
The Garthim-Master hurled the jeweled flask across the laboratory at the Scientist, who ducked. The flask smashed into a cabinet, on the shelves of which were laid out the maimed and dismembered bodies of all kinds of creatures. Some of them were still, morbidly, alive, but the Scientist was not worried that they would escape. In none of them remained the will to do so. Elsewhere in the laboratory, recently captured animals, still healthy until they had been subjected to the Scientist’s experiments, were confined in cages or tethered to the floor.
The Garthim-Master stormed away. He had been depending on the Scientist, who, together with the Slave-Master, he had thought to be his chief support among the Skeksis. Now, without any assistance from the vliya, he would have to confront the Ritual-Master’s dangerous challenge for the throne. Sooner or later, it would come to
Haakskeekah!
And, his pride humbled by his recent humiliation, the Garthim-Master lacked confidence in his will to win the next duel. How clever the Ritual-Master had been, to let his two rivals destroy themselves! His stratagem would not have worked if the Garthim had brought in the Gelfling. Twice the spy crystals had located those puny animalcules – first one of them, now a pair of the things – and twice the Garthim had utterly failed to capture them. Stupid Garthim! Stupid, stupid Garthim! Once the Garthim-Master’s greatest pride, now his traitors.
Haakskeekah!
And, his pride humbled by his recent humiliation, the Garthim-Master lacked confidence in his will to win the next duel. How clever the Ritual-Master had been, to let his two rivals destroy themselves! His stratagem would not have worked if the Garthim had brought in the Gelfling. Twice the spy crystals had located those puny animalcules – first one of them, now a pair of the things – and twice the Garthim had utterly failed to capture them. Stupid Garthim! Stupid, stupid Garthim! Once the Garthim-Master’s greatest pride, now his traitors.
When the Garthim-Master had left the Chamber of Life, the Scientist released the peasant from the chair and threw him aside. The peasant picked himself up and walked meekly across the floor to stand in line with the other newly created slaves. All their eyes were milky blanks.
In the wicker cage, the untreated Pod People continued to squirm over each other, crying haplessly. The Scientist looked at them and found them tedious. It would take him several hours to drain the vliya from this load, and the Garthim were waiting below, by the castle gate, with more of the creatures, brought in from the latest raid. They were next to useless now. The Skeksis had more than enough slaves for the time to come, but that time would be seriously curtailed if Pod sap were the only vliya they had.
He searched his laboratory with his eyes, hoping to discover some alternative source of bodily energy. The place was littered with the rotten fruits of his work since the last Great Conjunction. From all sorts of living beings, bones and flesh, marrow, filament, leaf, and tissue had been subjected to every tortuous experiment the Scientist had been able to devise. He gazed skeptically at a retort full of Myrrhie fins he had steeped for weeks in two acids, distilling the resultant liquor. As soon as he had drunk it, he had become ill.
Aughra had cackled at that, the only sign of life she had shown from the cage where she was kept. The rest of the time she spent hunched in a brooding silence. Look at her now. Her eye, removed from its socket and sitting on a table, was beadily following him, as it always did, but the eye had taken on a life of its own, independent of the bloated body, slumped and sullen, it belonged to.
The Scientist began to calculate how he might extract elixir from Aughra’s eye.
K
ira knew where she was going. She darted along the paths of the forest, through brambles and thickets, as though she had spent all her life in the woodlands rehearsing for the day when she would have to escape from a Skeksis.
ira knew where she was going. She darted along the paths of the forest, through brambles and thickets, as though she had spent all her life in the woodlands rehearsing for the day when she would have to escape from a Skeksis.
“Is this the way to the castle?” Jen asked, panting.
“It’s not the most direct way,” she replied. “In fact, we’ve been heading in exactly the opposite direction all day. But it will turn out to be the quickest. You’ll see.”
“I hope you’re right,” Jen said. “Have you seen the suns today? They looked as though they were going to touch.”
“Yes,” Kira said. “It’s a strange light, isn’t it? I suppose it means we’re approaching this Great Conjunction Aughra told you about.”
“I’m sure it does. And everything I do seems to depend upon getting to the castle by the time that happens.”
“Don’t fret,” Kira told him. “You’ll see.”
Where the forest started to thin out again, the land became undulating. Jen and Kira found themselves running down hills so precipitous that they had to traverse, and then to do the same again to climb the next rise. Still, Kira knew the way, always found the trodden path. The Pod People had occasionally brought her this far abroad on their expeditions, she explained, when at certain seasons of the year there were rare fruits and nuts to be found for those who knew the isolated tree.
They came to a flowery lea where the large undulations settled down into a range of low hillocks. There, Kira halted at last. Jen was glad of the rest. He was more winded than she was. His upbringing in the valley of the urRu had never required sustained effort of this sort. He had seldom had to travel as far as a thousand paces. Kira was obviously quite used to it.
Now, she was standing on top of a hillock, uttering a strange string of chirps and clicks, like an insect in the hot weather.
“What are you doing?” Jen asked.
“Ssssh!” She raised a finger to her lips, then pointed with a small chuckle of pleasure.
Toward them over the hillocks four catlike beasts, three of them fully grown and one a cub, came galloping on long, stiff legs. Rangy in action, creamy in color, with long whiskers, they were like no animal Jen had ever known.
“Landstriders!” Kira called in delighted welcome. She turned to Jen, who was looking unnerved. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “They’ll take us wherever I ask them to. They hate the Skeksis. And the Garthim – they fight!”
“You don’t have to come with me,” Jen told her.
She looked at him for a long time. “I know,” she replied quietly.
Followed by Fizzgig, who was putting up his usual bold show behind her ankles, she went to talk quietly to the Landstriders. At once, hearing her request, they became frisky.
Kira beckoned to Jen. As he approached, he realized just how large the adult Landstriders were and how high off the ground he would be when seated on one.
The Landstriders docilely walked to the side of the steep little hummock, from the top of which Kira climbed onto one of them. Fizzgig, left on the ground, set up an incredible commotion when he saw that he was not going on the journey. Roaring, he bounced up and down beside Kira’s Landstrider, higher and higher with each bounce.
“No,” Kira said to him, “not you, little big mouth.”
Fizzgig redoubled his racket, bouncing so high that at the peak of his bounce he was level with Kira.
Relenting, she laughed and grabbed him out of the air. “All right,” she said. Fizzgig nestled down contentedly inside her pouch. Then Kira turned to Jen. “Choose your Landstrider.”
Jen looked at her face. It was quite lovely suffused with elation.
He chose the slightly smaller of the two remaining adults and, under Kira’s guidance, struggled onto its back and leaned forward, clutching the animal’s neck.
“Hold on tight!” Kira cried.
She clicked her tongue, and with a dizzying surge of power beneath him Jen felt his arms tugged straight. A wind was humming past his ears, and his hair was streaming behind him.
At first, he bounced around on the Landstrider’s back. It was extremely uncomfortable at best, and at worst he thought he might crash down to the ground far below him. Gradually, he and the Landstrider worked out a reciprocal rhythm, and after that the ride was sheer joy. As for Kira, the modest reserve of her normal manner had vanished. She was whooping and shrieking.
“Hold on very tight, Jen!” she laughed.
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