The Dark Crystal: Plague of Light

by James Comins

  The air grew colder as she scaled, although the stone remained warm. The ivy had suckers that stuck to the staggered walls, and every time one of them popped off, she heard a moan from the plant. The moans ceased when she let go. Each step was taller than the one below it, and after scrambling over ten or so, she saw the sheer wall that separated ur-Kalivath from the outside world.

  The ivy continued up. She continued up, too. Pop, moan, and faint apologies to the plants. Far below she saw Yrn looking up at her. Her hands felt powerful as she pulled herself up the surface.

  And the top.

  On a square ledge overlooking the valley far below, a view: plateaus, green quilts of forest, wiggly rivers, the wide soaring shapes of cragraptors, and clouds larger than planets. Sitting sandwiched between two megaliths that came together to form the first corner of the web-shaped partial roof, Loora sang:

  "It isn't fair to be alone.

  I want to hold his hand,

  Tell him life isn't always planned,

  Tell him I understand . . . him.

  It isn't fair to be alone.

  I want to understand

  How he's blown away

  When I needed him to stay

  When I wanted a friend.

  I want to understand.

  When I wanted a friend

  You had already shaken free

  It isn't fair to me

  You weren't there for me

  When I wanted a friend."

  Loora felt a sting of anger. Instead of singing her last verse, she muttered it:

  "Don't want to love you anymore

  Don't want ghosts over my shoulder

  Maybe when I get older

  I'll finally understand."

  And a bath of hatred for Cory began to burn, and she felt entirely departed from the real world, and then she began to wonder how she was going to climb down.

  She sat overlooking the world, feeling too much.

  The rocks of ur-Kalivath began to roar and sing a tone of despair. She had caused the entire valley to light up with her feelings. She--

  But no, it kept going, a rocksong that shook and quaked, a moan of no, and she scrambled to the edge and slid down the cliff, and Yrn called up to her, and she saw that all the ur-Mystics were gathering in a circle. The land quaked.

  The light in the Podling's chest had gone out.

  * * *

  "Run! We'll outpace them! Let's chase the sunset!"

  The black bug clung to the top of Rian's head, and Rian ran from a screaming riot that seemed to be following him around each turn. He couldn't be seen running, or it'd look like he was trying to escape. And then bad things would happen to Mikethi. Enough bad things had happened already. Running . . .

  The awful, droning cry of despair that the sparkling invisible creature had made (was he an ur-Mystic after all?) had changed something in Rian's gut. A new feeling. Despair that drove him to . . . what was the word?

  Escape. He needed to escape after all.

  He'd get Lemny out, get Mikethi out, and then . . . escape. Lemny first. Then Mikethi. Escape.

  But the primal moan of despair had changed the Skeksis, too. After the sound faded away and the assembled Skeksis had recovered, a new heat rose up from them. Their leader began screaming for someone to throw the woman and the invisible person in prison, using words like betrayal and rebellion and defiance, and then the whole crazy skek crew had flown from the labs and began following Rian.

  A small fuzzy thing with a long nose began scampering ahead of the pursuers and wound up clinging to Rian's leg armor. He hoped it didn't bite. Bet it didn't want to get put in a cage or wrapped up in iron like the bug. Couldn't blame her, really.

  The huge outer doors loomed ahead--

  "Oh, look who it is," a Podling in a steel collar said. "Ready to hear the rest of the story, is you, then? Happy to tell it, nuffing else to do. Look at my job. 'Open the door,' they sez. 'Close the door.' Like I haven't even got a name."

  "OPEN THE DOOR!" Rian barked, sprinting through the angular front hall.

  "There they goes," sighed the other attendant. "Might as well call me Plantsprout while you're at it. Give me a slap, too, it's me birthday."

  "Care and consideration. That's 'ut makes it all worthwhile." The first one bumbled to the door and took the handle. "I especially like the word 'please,' reminds me I'm a real person. Is it nearly dinnertime?"

  "I hear," the second attendant said, "that gruel's on the menu tonight."

  "My favorite--"

  Rian flung the two Podlings aside, followed by the doors.

  "Well, I like that, I don't."

  Flicking the steel collars, which fell from their shoulders, Rian grabbed the grumbling plantsprouts and skittered out into the night--

  Face to face with--

  "Leaving?" said an odious voice.

  * * *

  "Aughra, this isn't my fault."

  When the Skeksis had dragged them in, they had passed by several empty lunkwood cages in favor of a sturdier cage of steel. UrNol and Aughra sat on the steel floor. The light was corrosive in this underground place. Poisonous, unnatural. The wrong shade of green.

  "Well, we're here, and my mechanic isn't here to get us out. So. Spend some time telling me what you saw."

  "The Great Crystal, Aughra. It's--oh, words, I've never been good at words--it's dying. Dying completely. It's going out."

  "Great Crystal can't go out. Heart of Thra renews itself."

  "I don't know, I don't know! I can only tell you what I heard in its song, and what my eyes have seen. It isn't being renewed, Aughra. It may--yes, yes! I know what this blue light disease is. It's quite clear. Yes--"

  "What?" said Aughra.

  "The Great Crystal is cracked. It's gone Dark," he said. "And it's draining Thra of its Essence, trying to sustain itself. If it isn't restored, it may drain the whole world of its life. And everywhere it will be cactulus and sixbuds. And the winds will fly dead across the dead plains, and the trees will go black, and even the rot will stop as the Dark Crystal sucks the scavenging mosses dry of life. And Thra will go still, and our world will die."

  The old woman grimaced. "How long do we have?"

  "Those who have the will to stop the death of the Dark Crystal will all be dead before the next moontrine ends."

  "One cycle?" she murmured.

  "One cycle," he agreed.

  Aughra shook the steel bars, but they were steel.

  * * *

  "Loora!" came Yrn's voice up at her as she slid down the top step, scratch-streaking her workshoes, and began leaping from stone to stone, landing hard on her long legs. "The Great Crystal is dying! Something's wrong!" but she knew that already. The despair that had coursed through the stones had left an impression like a thumbprint in clay. The Mystics had surrounded the Podling, waiting for her and Yrn to alight. Taking Yrn's hand as she passed him, she swept up his lightweight frame--most of the weight was in his artificial leg--and carried him bodily down the remaining steps, over the cave mouths to the open center of ur-Kalivath.

  "Blind me blue, I fought me life was all over. Hallo, you two."

  "You're still here," Loora said to the Podling as she set Yrn on his mismatched feet.

  "Don't fink we met proper. Name's Gobber--"

  "Gelflings," interrupted the Speaker of the Mystics. "Podling. From afar, the great voice of our brother-sister urNol has proclaimed what is. The Great Crystal, heart of our planet, has begun to die, to go Dark. In its Darkness, it has begun to reabsorb the essence that it once granted to the dreaming beings of Thra. Soon, all those possessed of a dream will die. Without dreams, all life will follow to their ends."

  "Then stop it! Fix it!" Loora shouted.

  "Would that we could. It is not in us to leave ur-Kalivath. It is not in us to risk a confrontation with the Skeksis. Our purpose lies only in finding understanding. We begin our understanding by searching out the reason why the Dark Crystal is dying. UrNol spoke of a crack in
the Crystal, a strike of baleful anger that--"

  "Cory told me about this!" Loora interrupted. "It was one of his prophecies!"

  A circle of long sorrowful faces turned to one neighbor and then the other.

  "Speak to us of this prophecy," said the Weaver.

  "Loora," said Yrn, "it wasn't really--"

  But she thought back to his face--and she could see Cory peering into the sinister black water, and she realized that Cory's prophecy WAS something he'd left to her, something of his that she and she alone had kept--and the words became clearer than they had ever been.

  "He spoke of a metal knife, first. Then gears and machines, and they were all--"

  "Greasy," the Podling said. "Saved me life, that did. Would have slipped in."

  "How did you--? Oh, Aughra said that sometimes the future looks back at us. But if you're here, then that prophecy must have changed the future. Cory said that you didn't make it out alive. I think he saw you fall in."

  "Glad I didn't. Closer to that pit than a bucket to the water it carries, I was. Where is this prophet of yours, anywhat?"

  "He died," said Loora. Yrn took her hand. This time, she let him.

  "Then we must hear the rest of the prophecy. Already we see the shards of truth in it," said the Weaver.

  "The only other thing he saw was a purple crystal. He said it was damaged, and that someone was hitting it with something. He said--"

  "If the eye of urNol is still precise," said a Mystic, "then the crystal was not cracked recently but long ago. A centrine's course must have passed from the moment of the cracking to the present day before the high energies which sustain it could have--"

  "Rightsy and rightso, my chattery friend, let's get on wif it. So they hit the Crystal long ago to turn it Dark, now they're hitting it again. Am I right in finking that the Skeksis wouldn't be too dismayed if everybody else in the world was dust an' bones?"

  "Once all dreams are dead, no one except we Mystics would be left to grow food. Even the lack-minded Skeksis would not willingly choose starvation," said the Speaker.

  "And yet," the Healer broke in, "urNol's voice came to us from the Castle of the Crystal. I conceive that they may indeed let the world die, with urNol as their farmer, for is he not now their prisoner?"

  "Speak the rest of the prophecy, dreamchild."

  What had Cory said, just before the water burst from the font? "He said the Crystal wouldn't break, and he said they were angry. And I saw the anger push through his vision into the real world, and splatter this water from--what did you call it? The Black River?--all over the room."

  "No one can look into the waters of Black River. The presence of the Endlessness within it--" said a Mystic.

  "Cory could," said Loora.

  "We may take comfort that the Dark Crystal was not damaged further, then. We must confer--" the Speaker of the Mystics said.

  "Forgive the loudness of my voice," the Weaver said quietly, "but I now know precisely what must be done."

  * * *

  "Too close," said Lemny as Rian sprinted across the narrow bridge and into the chilly desertlands of Skarith. "What are larantines, anyhow?"

  "Big trees. Tek wanted someone to bring him a load of them, I can't dream why. I'm sure the Hunter is happy to leave the woodcutting to less important people."

  "But you'll have to go back," Lemny said. "For Mikethi."

  "Yeah. I will. If I see your partner, Gobber? Where should I send him?"

  "I can get to Balgertown from here. The mounders know me, they'll give me a ride. Or I could wait by the trailtree on the ridge and pick trailfruit till he gets here. But Rian. I can't speak for the flouse, or for Gobber's distant relatives here--"

  "Distant? He's me aunt's eldest, he is," said one of the Podling attendants.

  "You know Gobber?" said Lemny. "But at the door--"

  "Why, was ol' Gob here? I'm second shift, the first shift's on for mornings. They're a glum pair from the Worshipper village. Say life ain't'n't worf it unless they dwell within sight of the Gnarled Stonetree. Sure that kind of attitude does 'em lots of good. Always a joy to talk with, those Worshippers."

  "Gobber's my partner," said Lemny. "Be good to see him again. He'll make a new shell for me, soon as rainfall."

  Rian took out the split shell and handed it up to Lemny, but he waved it away. "Might as well let it go. Worth cobs an' flowers to me now, as Gobber'd put it. No, listen, what I was going to say was that I'd like to help you rescue Mikethi. You'd done more for me than you should, and if there's anything--"

  "There isn't, friend. He's mine to save, and there's nothing you could do except break my heart when they capture you again. I'll take you four to the trailtree, and then I'll leave for the Forest Depths. If it were on the way I'd drop you off at Balgertown, but it isn't."

  Lemny rubbed the back of his head and nodded. "All right. Are you Podlings headed for Balgertown, too?"

  "Best not," one of them said. "There's paperwork against us in Nander. They'd not be happy to hear I'm out of the castle."

  "Skeksis," sniffed Lemny, and no one disagreed.

  * * *

  "Through here."

  "Oh! Aughra has a workshop just like it," said Loora.

  The construction took almost six full tolls. The Weaver introduced her to the materials not in his cave of cloth but in a rooftop glassworking workshop hidden within the upper reaches of the cliffs, secreted beneath a glass dome. Most of the materials seemed like glass, too, but the Weaver struck one of the glass-like chunks with a heavy hammer and laughed as the hammer's handle split.

  There were fifteen large chunks of the unbreakable crystal, blue and off-green and almost black. The crystal smelter went down a centror into the mountainside and was heated by four ur-Mystics singing at a block of stone inside until it melted to magma. Following the Weaver's guiding voice, she clasped one chunk at a time in a chain of some rainbow-reflecting metal that never melted and dipped the crystals into the vat of magma. Counting aloud (twelve seconds for the blue crystal, fifteen for the off-green, and twenty-two for the almost black) she withdrew the now-red crystals and took the first to an anvil.

  Yrn was told to stand with his hands above his head. The Weaver placed a finger on the boy's heart and sang high-pitched syllables to him. He flinched as his good arm and leg twitched in different places according to the sound of the notes, and he cried out in pain as his strapped-down withered arm and braced artificial leg pulsed with some transformative energy at a set of lower-pitched syllables. Finally the Weaver permitted Yrn to lower his hands.

  The Weaver drew a pattern into the sand. It went like this: First, a perfect circle. Inside, a star of rigid lines that became a spiral. At intervals, several isolated loops. And what looked like a circular cage in the center. The Weaver explained that the object would be flat, except for the circular cage, which would open like a fishing net.

  Loora pulled the crystal through metal forming rings, stretching it from a rumpled chunk into a thick, ducted wire. The first attempt at a perfect circle went loppy, and Loora grumbled and dipped the slowly cooling crystal back into the lava. It took four tries to form a perfect circle, and another two before the ends lined up and fused seamlessly. She twirled the now-perfect hot-red-blue frame with tongs until the material cooled to blue-blue, and the first piece was done. Memories surfaced of Aughra squawking at her to turn the glass globe, "elsewise it'll go flat as it cools."

  And then the second piece stuck to the first piece and glooped onto the floor and then became too cool to work and the first piece and second piece were both ruined.

  "Snotblisters!" she cursed, and wrapped the unmeltable chain around both the crystals to dip again.

  The more patience she mustered, the more smoothly the work went. There was no stopping, every piece needed to be warm enough to forge a bond, but as she breathed in and let her breath out, wiping sweat from her arms and out of the flanks of her clingy shirt, a joyful and glorious exultation swept over her. Just pr
actice, was all. With practice she could create objects of unlimited power.

  Objects that could forever imprison a dream of death.

  For toll after toll she built the straight lines of the starspiral, then the small loops that held it together, and then the pinched shellfish-shaped cage in the center. Between the perfect circle and the net, the object became two concentric circles held apart by stellar infinity. Somehow this matched the demented dream that possessed Yrn.

  There were two more disasters. The last disaster was so close to total completion that she uttered a string of words she hoped her father would never hear her say. However, coming up behind her, the Weaver deftly struck the blazing object with the rainbow chain, and the central cage popped out whole, salvaging four tolls of work.

  Another two tolls and the cage was stable and cemented in the middle. Again she turned it and turned it until it became solid, and then the Weaver directed her to take it out of the domed workshop and into the open air of ur-Kalivath.

  Carrying the still-scalding crystal in her lucky pair of tongs, she noticed that the heat of the magma had reopened the ur-Mystic's sticky weeping wounds. How did he endure it?

  The Mystics had once again gathered, and the Podling was blissfully dangling his bare feet into a nearby pool and flexing his muddy toes. Yrn approached her from behind, and she examined the hand that was coming perilously close to perching on her shoulder. It retreated.

  The cool air of ur-Kalivath hit the two-tror-wide crystal object like wind across a stringsing, yielding delicate musical noises that resonated up the tongs and into Loora's arm. The object began vibrating as the cold air met the hot crystal. An immense sound. The object tore the tongs out of her hand and flew straight up with them. After most of a wide parabola, the circle-dream-cage-thing struck the arch of megaliths that roofed the valley and plinked like a raindrop to the ground far below.

  Loora thundered down the steps to where it landed.

  The object had shrunk. It was now the size of her palm, stony black, cold as snow, and perfectly intact.

  Dreamthing, she named it.