by James Comins
"More light," the Slavemaster breathed. "It's good. It's good. Almost as good as that juice. It's--I must have a way to come in here. To bathe in the light. I will not rest a night without it. I must live in the light of the Dark Crystal."
"It's not the Dark Crystal, it's the Great Crystal," said Lemny knowledgeably.
And the steel-framed Skeksi spun, slipped the lens from his forehead, lowered his hooked weapon and charged.
* * *
"Even in spirit form, she possesses incredible power," Great Priestess Brin whispered. Bowstrings were tensed, and not merely by the guards, either--every Worshipper, even the children, pointed a deadly-looking spearbolt at Loora and Cory and Aughra and the three oddballs from inside the tree. "The tree can be replanted. They have broken its upper boughs, but that is nothing. As for these spies--"
"But we're the People of the Boughs!" the gossipy guard sobbed. "What are we without the boughs?"
"The boughs will regrow," Brin said. "The roots are as alive as ever. Until we've replanted the tree, let us be the People of the Roots. Now as for these spies--"
"All our gardens, dug up," one old Worshipper said. "Winter is not so far away. Will there be food?"
"The Sacred Tree has ever provided for us," Brin told him. "A year of hardship would not go amiss in our valley of perpetual plenty. It will make us strong. Now. This team of spies must be--"
Thwark.
A bowstring, drawn too tightly by too weak an arm, loosed.
A sound of intense pain. Aughra buckled to her knees and clasped her face. Loora ran to her, took her arm, lent strength, kept the old woman from failing completely.
Squaring her shoulders, she gently lifted Aughra's hands from her face.
The woman's white metallic beak slid out in her hands. The beak had a thin handle that fit inside her flat, misshapen nostrils, and prongs held it in place. The beak was not perfectly symmetrical, but slightly curved like a beanpod. The metallic-white surface was only a façade; underneath, Loora could see a handful of clear crystal shards that had been wedged together. Where the careless arrow had struck, the prongs had sliced into Aughra's true nostrils, leaving bleeding scratches. Loora put pressure on the wounds and found a long kerchief from the pocket of her morning jacket to bind the wound, tying it around the back of Aughra's head.
So her father's insistence that she carry around this dressy girl stuff hadn't been completely pointless after all.
The bandage was secure.
"I asked you what this was, before," Loora said. "May I ask again?"
"Important, is what it is. Maybe the most important. Hmp! Crystals are very special. Cory saw it. Some crystals more special than others! Keep them close to you when you find them. Where you'll never lose them. Don't let children have them. Always lose things, children do. All Gelflings are children." Snatching the false nose back from Loora, Aughra considered it, then held it by the bloodstreaked handle. "Can't let Pressela-Brin have them," she whispered to Loora. "Need a plan to disguise them. Hide them."
From behind Loora, a familiar sick voice: "I can't give you an escape, Mother. But I will take them for you and protect them."
"Raunip!" Loora exclaimed. He stepped out of the ground as if he were climbing stairs.
"You," Aughra sneered, "expect me to trust you? You who caused the breach? You who led wars on my friends the urSkeks? You who persuaded the Gelflings to abandon peace for weapons? You who shattered the simple tranquility of the Podlings? You who turned our world tizzy-top-turvy? Why should I trust you?"
"Because Pressela approaches," said Raunip. "I will protect it, and I will return it to you."
Loora saw that the Great Priestess was indeed hobbling forward. "I trust him, Aughra," she said.
The Worshipper priestess looked the white beak up and down and appraised Aughra's bandaged face. "How vain," she simpered. "A false nose. You escape from our prison as easily as your creature escapes into the soil. I should have bound your hands."
Aughra handed the white beak to Raunip. He sank and vanished.
"Pressela," she said wearily, "I cannot see the future without assistance. But I don't believe you'll be able to keep these Worshippers captivated by your words much longer."
"Be silent, ghost. Guards! Execute her."
Four Worshippers stepped tentatively forward, their bows ready, looking squeamish.
"Won't our bolts fly straight through her?" the gossipy one asked. "If she's a ghost . . ."
In the center of the circle, Aughra tore the redsoaked kerchief from her face and held it up for the guards to see.
"Ghosts don't bleed."
* * *
"Orders of the Slavemaster. Sorry," said the guard, manhandling skekTek through the upper corridors of the castle and down shallow stairs toward the lower reaches. SkekTek struggled and dragged his feet.
"I don't answer to the Slavemaster. I only answer to the Emperor."
"Well, I answer to the Slavemaster and the Emperor, only the Emperor doesn't stab me in the face when I don't do what I'm told. SkekNa does. And he told me to bring you to the kennels, so to the kennels we go. Stop wiggling, you're worse than a sock full of fizzgigs. Just follow me and take up your quarrels with skekNa when he gets there."
The kennels! SkekTek, dragged to the kennels by a mere servant on the orders of someone who had no power over him! It was quite intolerable. Quite intolerable.
SkekTek had never been to the kennels before. The Slavemaster's rooms were at the same depth belowground as the laboratories, only to reach one from the other, one had to follow a circuitous route to the upper floors and back down again. SkekTek had no idea what happened in there; it was rare for any sound to breach the crystal walls. Their resonant properties tended to wick sound away.
And here he was, facing the uttermost substrate of his world.
Much of the kennels was unlit, and the few braziers here glowed green instead of red. A vague prickle as SkekTek realized he had designed the green fire braziers himself some trines ago and had forgotten them.
A heavy pair of doors required a complex passcode, tapped out on six tubular bells. Naturally, SkekTek memorized the pattern immediately. As the doors fell open, the sound of wailing fell out, echoing down the outer corridors.
SkekTek was not at all averse to managing living things. In his lab, a dozen small cages held live subjects for experiments. He was quite very proud of the technological advancements he'd made. The obedient fizzgig, the six-legged tamtail he'd sewn together, the study of eyes, the vivisections . . . these were perfectly ordinary uses of living things.
The kennel was a tunnel of horrors.
Lit low by pale green fire, the shadows of Podlings and Gelflings in domed cages were flung large against the red walls. Implements hung from hooks. Weeping ran like rain. Detached voices called for loved ones. The smell of burnt hair ominously matched the irons sticking out of flaming braziers.
"Wait here. He'll be by," the guard told skekTek.
"Do you--" skekTek said.
The guard raised an eyebrow, as if he had better things to do.
"Do you visit here . . . often?" skekTek asked.
"Do I visit here often," the guard repeated in an approximation of good-naturedness. "If by that you mean, was I dragged here along with my beloved Mikethi as a young man in love, separated from him, forced to watch as he was thrown into a pit from which there is no escape and permitted to feed him gruel once a day and told that if I ever disobeyed, his feed slot would be sealed shut with cement, then yes, I'd say I visit here often."
"People live here," skekTek murmured. "In this place."
"Yeah, for example that family of Podlings you see? Was brought here from the outskirts of Balgertown a quartrine ago." The guard indicated a huddled family in a twisted cell. "Taken right out of their homes. Your colleague the Hunter works quick. No word to any extended family. These five protested pretty loud, but the propaganda machine pinned some unsolved and possibly uncommitted crimes on them
and Balgertown happily sent word that they were to serve their sentence. Even sent documents, if you can believe it. Once the Chamberlain's got his hooks into a town, there's nothing but the kennels for any citizens he chooses. This is their home now."
"The Chamberlain comes here," skekTek said.
"Well, not so much in person, but you might say his aura permeates. Prefers to keep his hands clean. Works with words. Closer to the Hunter than to the Slavemaster, not that it's for me to gossip or anything. Slavemaster keeps to himself."
SkekTek's mind was not made for keeping track of these social matters. He too kept to himself. But he could smell the Chamberlain's sticky slimy manipulative fingers all over his detention here in the kennels. The guard turned to leave, but skekTek stopped him. The guard rolled his exit into a posture and salute and waited for skekTek to speak.
"Why would the Chamberlain be close to the Hunter?" he said at last.
"Well now," the guard said. "An interesting fact about the Hunter is that he's not much for castle intrigue. And an interesting fact about the Chamberlain is that he's made of mush and tamtail fluff when it comes to fighting. So they've got a system. Each covers for the other in their respective areas of expertise, and both pretend they don't. Now," the guard said, bowing elaborately, "if you'll dismiss me I have other affairs."
SkekTek did not dismiss the guard. The guard spun and departed anyway.
There was much to think about.
* * *
"Let me make you a deal AHHHthatwasclose. No, please, if you would DON'TSTABMEDON'TSTABME I can find you a very good bargain on SHARP VERY SHARP I know I was eavesdrabblin' but it was well-meant NOT THE ANTENNAS."
The bent blade of the weapon was not made for jabbing through the narrow bars of a titanroot cage. Strictly speaking, it was almost certainly made for show, more for nudging and slapping than slicing. But when you have it thrust directly at you, you don't really appreciate that it's all for show. Far easier to accept that it's a sharp piece of metal and far too close.
"Eliminate . . . the . . . witnesses," the Skeksi said.
"I could help keep your secret," Lemny said, dodging another jab.
"It . . . saw . . . our . . . secret," the Skeksi said. "It . . . knows."
"I could be persuaded to forget," Lemny said quickly. "For a price."
"Price." The Skeksi considered this. "Price is death."
The blade lodged in the twig that Rian had cracked. The Skeksi grunted and tried to pry it out, but the metal was caught between two levers of titanroot and the hook was hooked on and it wouldn't quickly budge.
"Ah," said Lemny, "permit me to take this opportunity to express to you my heartfelt apoggolies for having uh heard more than was wossname, discreet. But. I shall make you the deal of a lifetime, a deal far better than, um, any deal Gobber would make you, were he here in my place. Here goes. You take me out of the Castle of the Crystal and let me out of the cage. I, in turn, will commit never to repeat what I've heard here, never to come back to the castle, and above all, never to open my big mouth indiscreetly ever again. Act now an' I'll throw in a fresh ruttidge plant. Or possibly a pair of lenses if Gobber hurries up."
The Slavemaster struggled with the captive weapon. He seemed to consider the flurry of words. "Ruttidge," he repeated. They really were slow creatures, weren't they?
"Yes! I'll throw in--"
"Bug's making fun of us." A twisted expression of anger, and the Skeksi began rocking the cage violently, trying to pull the blade free. The loop attaching the cage to the ceiling dropped loose suddenly, and Lemny was aloft and freefalling. The twig cage was still wedged onto the blade, however, and the Skeksi's wild gesticulations sent the cage soaring around the room, propelled by the long handle of the spear. Roaring, the Slavemaster tried to shake the cage off. Lemny got a sturdy grip on the twigs and held on as he careered into the low ceiling and in circles around the wide room.
A light.
The thrashing paused.
Something changed.
Lemny could see nothing different, but he shivered involuntarily, as if a draft of freezing air had slid past him.
The weapon and the cage hit the floor and lay there. Lemny, loosed from between the bars, landed on his leg clusters. He flinched, expecting violence, but none came.
Tranquility. The Slavemaster seemed to report back to his own head. In the relative peace, Lemny tried the snapped twigs and found them still squeezed tight around the blade without room to wiggle past. The Slavemaster struck himself in the back of the head a few times, as if dislodging water from his ear or a troublesome thought from his head. Then he spun, faced the open door of what Lemny very much suspected really was a Dark, rather than a Great, Crystal, and turned the capstan gear as quickly as he could. No words were spoken; the sickly purple light faded as the door shut.
At last the Slavemaster took his weapon, which lay haphazard on the floor with the cage wedged on the edge of the blade like an axhead on an ax. A stinking boot on the cage held it in place, and the now-silent Skeksi withdrew the blade with a swift tug. The Slavemaster exited the laboratory.
The cage was still largely intact, and it took Lemny the better part of a toll to squeeze his tender shattered shell past the single split bar. In the end, the crack in his shell turned out to be what Gobber would call a surprise blessing; it was only by folding his shell along the crack that he managed to slide through.
As he was setting his foot clusters on stable land, feeling unfettered and breathing with a relieved whistle through his six miniature nostrils, he rubbed the split patch of his shell.
The whole thing fell off in his claw.
* * *
"Why? Tell me why, you vapor, you shadow. Why should I not kill the six of you and replant the tree and permit the memory of your existence to fade into the world's past?"
Before Aughra could reply to the sharply scraping voice, and before Cory could come up with anything clever to say, Loora's voice filled his blind void.
"Tell me," Loora began in a sly, conversational tone. "Do any of you Worshippers have blue light coming from your chests?"
"She's trying to draw attention away from her crimes! Do not answer her," the sharp voice snapped.
"Do they fall asleep and not wake up?" Loora went on.
A young Worshipper voice piped up: "Just Mam. She won't even swallow broth anymore." The voice was shushed.
"Do you know how long she has to live?" Loora went on, finally digging in the metaphorical dagger. Cory took a step forward and found Loora's hip, then her hand, and took it. He couldn't see the blue light spreading out of his chest through his clothes, but he guessed it was still there. A sleep of death seemed to linger around him, as if he were being pulled toward the center of Thra, as if he had his own occult gravity.
"Great Priestess Brin says it's just a long daydream," a Worshipper said.
"Two weeks," Loora said immediately. "She has two weeks to live."
To this, nobody had any response. Aughra's crooked breath was just behind Cory's shoulder; the old woman's hand moved past him, landing on Loora's arm, and they were all connected to Loora.
"Two weeks to live?" the Herbalist exclaimed. "No wonder the Gelfling wanted to get out of the old bessie."
"We are on a quest to heal the sick," Aughra said.
The sharp voice called Brin sputtered, but the Mystic interrupted her.
"I recognize that voice. Why Mother Master, I haven't seen you since I left the Conclave. Hello," said the Herbalist.
"Enough!" cried Brin. "Gabebal. Kill them, one by one."
"B-b-b-but Great Priestess," a pitchy-voiced Worshipper stuttered. "They know about the Blue Daydream. They must have seen it elsewhere. B-b-b-but if they've seen it elsewhere, there must be more people like us out there. Where did they see it if there aren't more people like us? And if there are more people like us . . ."
"Don't dare finish your thought," Brin hissed.
Another Worshipper did dare finish the thou
ght: "If there's more Worshippers, then you lied to us," a little Pod girl said.
"That child will be our yearly sacrifice to the tree. We will plant her blood and bones to ensure a successful replanting. Isn't that right?" Brin said.
As one, the Worshippers sighed, "Yes, Great Priestess." Resignation haunted their tone.
"She's a child," Loora said.
"She's a sacrifice," a Worshipper corrected. A murmur of whispered agreement.
Cory heard Pafaul raise her or his voice: "Nobody is going to be killed in this village!"
The voice was earnest, carrying, commanding. It grew as it went, gathering courage like foraged forest food piled in a basket: "Listen to me, Podlings and Gelflings and other friends. I come from the Forest Depths, where Dark Wood grows darkest and most tangly. It's a place my family believed we'd be safe from the dangers of the world. It's full of caves and hollows and hiding spaces. Thickets so deep that you can climb between the briar branches for hundreds of trors, up and down and sideswise without finding open air. Pools of clear water that disguise the openings to cave systems where air and water filter through inf'nitely and people can live without coming up for breath. Trees with trunks that clot together into tall vertical houses where thousands of beetles and their children can happily swarm, all the way from beneath the forest floor to the leaftop level. That's where I come from, near the leaftop of the beetle trees.
"My people, the Parthim, have fur the Skeksis like to wear. Everybody knew it. Then came rumors that Parthim were being hunted for our fur. So we protected ourselves.
"Our house was inside of a larantine tree, with an entrance hidden within the roots. The tree was one of thousands just like it, with stinging plants surrounding the entrance, preventing anyone larger than a beetle from getting through unless they had our protective fur. There was no way in, we thought. But the Hunter came.
"The birds announced it, and the voices of the tornbark trees announced it, and the swarms of beetles announced it: there was a creature full of hate in the Forest Depths. The hate-creature carried knives, one for each of its four hands, and each knife had a different hateful use. One was for cutting throats. One was for cutting ankles and ham'springs and legs, so prey couldn't run. One was for skinning. And one was for pulling meat from bone.
