Flames of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  PENGUIN WORKSHOP

  An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

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  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019942634

  Ebook ISBN 9780399539893

  Version_1

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  Map

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Glossary

  Appendix AVapra

  Stonewood

  Spriton

  Sifa

  Dousan

  Drenchen

  Grottan

  Appendix B

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  We may meet in another life, but not again in this one.

  Master urSu, from The Dark Crystal

  CHAPTER 1

  Shadows filled every corner of the world.

  Naia could hear water. Could smell thick, damp air all around her. But no matter which way she turned, all she could see was darkness. Reaching out, she felt something wet brush against her fingertips. Then it was gone.

  Light flickered. Silver and flashing like a shooting star, or sunlight shining through the dense swamp foliage. Before she could react, it sped away.

  Naia burst through a cluster of branches and leaves, wings spreading enough to catch a current of warm jungle air. She was airborne only a moment before her feet struck the hard surface of an apeknot tree branch, and then she was off again. Leaping from branch to branch through the light-dappled canopy, chasing after the silver star that flitted like a bird in front of her.

  “Tavra!” she shouted. “Wait up, Silverling!”

  Tavra did not slow down. If anything, she took it as a challenge, spreading her gossamer wings and taking flight, zipping through the trees like only a Vapra could. Naia heard the swamp rumble below and grinned. Tavra might have the advantage of flight-worthy wings, but this was the Swamp of Sog. Naia’s home.

  She jumped from a branch just as a bubble of hot swamp gas jetted up, filling her wings and launching her high into the treetops. She tilted, riding the current, speeding closer to Tavra. She might catch up yet.

  Time slowed as she drifted. Though the swamp was beautiful in its greens and purples and golds, vibrant in the daylight and full of life, something was off. She felt as if she had done this before. But the last time she’d traveled this route, she hadn’t had wings. She had only watched Tavra from afar with envy. Wishing she might one day be able to do the same.

  And then . . .

  Pain lanced through Naia’s brow and she stumbled, nearly slipping from a branch. She fell to her knees and clung to the whorled bark to keep from falling as the world went dark for an instant, as if a bird had flown overhead and blocked all three suns at once. Then it was over, the light returned, but . . .

  “Wait,” she tried to say. “Tavra, wait—”

  The swamp and every tree in it shook at a deafening groan from below. The bog churned, bulging, as something enormous rose. Naia covered her ears and squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want this to happen. Not again. She had no other choice. She couldn’t look away forever.

  Naia looked down.

  A monster breached the surface. Black and purple, scaly and shelled, with tusks like a Nebrie and bone-hard spikes along its skull like a horner. Endless rows of legs of every size and shape emerged from the swamp, pincers and claws, hooves and bony hands. Its face shifted, one moment with bulbous, sad eyes, the next with a flat, reptilian head and a maw big enough to swallow the entire swamp. It let loose a roar, spraying spittle and gore, and Naia could see the blackness inside its gullet was endless, a cavernous tunnel into the abyss at the center of the world.

  Silver flashed again. Tavra had drawn her sword.

  “Tavra, no!”

  Naia’s voice was lost in another of the monster’s gruesome cries. A moment later, the monster smashed its jaws down around the tree where Tavra had perched. The towering apeknot splintered like a sapling, and Tavra was gone.

  Naia stared at the tree where it broke. Its white heartwood stained with violet. A sickness from within. When she turned her eyes once more on the monster, she saw the same illness pulsing through its skin. Violet, glowing veins streaking through every joint of its anatomy. An inky darkness pooling in its maddened eyes as it saw her.

  “No,” she whispered. “No—”

  The monster’s jaw unhinged and it lunged. The world shattered to pieces, and Naia was falling. Down, farther and faster, her wings refusing to open as water and debris rained down around her.

  Her body struck water, and everything went dark.

  Help, Naia wanted to say. Instead, she thought it, projecting it into the murky, liquid nothingness that surrounded her. Dreamfasted it, even, to whoever might be able to hear her. But she was alone. She drifted, sluggish, tired. Wanting to move, heart racing when her limbs refused to obey her. The gills on the sides of her neck and shoulders opened. The water was dank and brackish, but it was better than suffocating. She breathed it in, feeling its cold current revive her. Awaken her. Her fingers tingled, coming back to life.

  Her shoulders were sore. Someone was holding her, floating in front of her in the water.

  Thank Aughra, a familiar voice said, filling her mind. I thought you were gone!

  She opened her eyes, and she was no longer in the dark. Instead, she felt as if she were staring into a mirror. No, not a mirror.

  Gurjin?

  The last time she’d seen her broth
er, they had parted ways between Aughra’s orrery and the Grottan caves. He had been weary then. Exhausted from being a prisoner of the Skeksis and locked away at the Castle of the Crystal. Now he swam before her, his strength restored. The green hue in his skin was vibrant, the spots on his cheeks rich and dark.

  What are you doing here? she asked. Where—

  Her questions were like the key to a locked door that was suddenly flung open. Memories tumbled out: confronting skekSa the Skeksis Mariner on the cliff high above the snowy city of Ha’rar. Her friends, fighting for their lives. Amri and Tavra, sending a message to the Vapra Gelfling. And their escape.

  We jumped off the cliff, she mumbled, treading water. We were trying to get to Onica’s boat. But then skekSa’s ship . . .

  The waves had split around the ship’s bony, horned carapace. A living sea creature, a monstrous behemoth, enslaved and under the control of Lord skekSa. It had come out of the ocean and swallowed their ship. Naia shook her head and tried to dislodge the horrifying memory from her mind.

  But how are you—where are the others? Amri and Kylan, Onica and Tavra and Tae—

  skekSa captured them, Gurjin said. The behemoth swallowed the ship and everyone on it. We’re in the beast’s mouth right now. Look up.

  There was barely any light in the watery chamber, but Naia’s eyes were finally adjusting. Overhead, she saw the belly of Onica’s ship, floating aimlessly amid debris. From previous wreckages, no doubt.

  After the behemoth’s jaw locked shut, gas filled the chamber, Gurjin continued. It knocked everyone out except me. I was in the water. I was only able to save you before skekSa took the others away . . . Naia, we’ve got to find them. When skekSa noticed you weren’t with them, she said something about using them as bait.

  Naia shook out her hands. Her weary mind struggled to take it in, but she couldn’t while her friends were in danger.

  Right. Let’s go. For now I’m just glad you’re here.

  Naia and Gurjin climbed out of the water onto a fleshy ridge. The noxious gas had faded, but the air in the behemoth’s mouth was dank and musty. Naia shuddered as she noticed a proper walkway made out of wood planks had been built into the behemoth’s body. She could only imagine the agony this giant creature must feel. How long had it endured skekSa living inside its body? Treating it as a ship without a heart or soul?

  “She took them this way,” Gurjin whispered, gesturing to one of the many passageways that led deeper into the creature. Though Naia crept as quietly as she could, and the echoing grumbling and burbling of the behemoth’s body were loud enough to cover the sounds of their footsteps, she couldn’t help but feel she was being watched. The walls of every passageway twitched and undulated. The ship knew where they were, even if skekSa didn’t. It could feel them, just as she could feel an insect if it skittered across the top of her hand.

  Naia tried to remember their path so they could get back to the ship once they rescued her friends. Though once on the ship, she wasn’t sure how they would escape the locked jaws of the behemoth. One step at a time.

  “When Mother was called to Ha’rar with the rest of the maudra, I came with,” Gurjin offered as they scampered up and down the mazelike passageways. “Mother wanted me to find you. When the Vapra fire lit and the dream-etchings were burned across the citadel, I knew it had to be you. I went looking and found your Sifa ship out in the bay below the cliff. Got out to it just as it was swallowed by skekSa’s ship. Glad I did, too. If I hadn’t, you’d be with skekSa right now.”

  The comment rankled Naia, as if it were her fault they were in this predicament. She took a breath and let it roll off her shoulders. There was no point in arguing over who was the more responsible of them right now.

  “Mother wanted you to find me?” she asked. “What for?”

  Gurjin flattened his ears and hurried ahead of her so she couldn’t see the rest of the expression that came across his face.

  “I’ll tell you later,” he said. “I hear something.”

  It was a deflection, but an honest one. Voices drifted to her ears, muddled through the breathing and twitching of the porous passageway. Familiar voices. Her friends.

  After two more turns they stopped. A large circular membrane sat in the center of the wall. It was squeezed shut, like an upright eyelid. Naia had seen a similar doorway in the ship once before, back when she’d been skekSa’s guest. Now she leaned in closer. On the other side, she could see hazy lights and hear skekSa’s muffled voice.

  “We gotta get in there,” Gurjin said. He reached out to touch the membrane, but Naia pulled him back.

  “If it opens right here, she’ll notice,” she said. “There has to be another way in. The good news is, if skekSa’s in there, it means she’s not out here. At least, for now.”

  They searched up and down the adjoining passageways. The texture of every wall was different, some ridged and hard, some smooth and shivering and slick. With so many pieces of interlocking anatomy, it was hard to believe there wasn’t a single alternate way into the room.

  Naia felt a puff of air from above. An oval vessel, about the diameter of a barrel, protruded from the ceiling, snapping open and shut in time with the ponderous breath of the behemoth. When it opened, air puffed out, though when it was closed, it was almost invisible.

  “There,” she said. “That’s how we’re getting in. Give me a hand?”

  Gurjin nodded, bracing his hands on his knee as they’d done countless times climbing trees as children. Naia hopped up until she could grab the lip of the closed valve. When it opened, blowing more dank-smelling air in her face, she swung herself in and quickly turned around to grab Gurjin’s hand. She yanked him up, and his feet cleared the opening just in time for it to pop shut again.

  They crawled through the sticky air tube toward the voices. It sloped and curved, up and steeply down, until they reached a far end. Naia waited, crouched on all fours, ready to scramble out. She had no idea what was on the other side—would they be hidden from skekSa’s view, or would they tumble out right on top of her?

  The valve opened, and Naia made her move, Gurjin quick at her ankles. To their fortune, the duct opened near the floor in a crowded corner half obscured by a heavy red curtain. Naia ducked behind the curtain and paused there, trying to calm her breath as silently as possible as she took in the room.

  It was a domed atrium, with a vaulted ceiling in scaled panels over their heads where the inside of the behemoth’s shell must have been. Like the laboratory, it was lit by a chandelier, brightly glowing with fireless, gold light. Exquisite paintings covered the hexagonal scales of the ceiling, depicting sea Nebrie, hooyim, and other ocean creatures, and sprawled across the flooring was a thick covering of woven kelp or seagrass. Ornate furniture decorated the room in sets: a few Skeksis-size chairs with plush footrests, sculpted stands, and a broad table covered in maps and scrolls and books—all in the black, intricate, almost skeletal style that the Skeksis favored. Stone and metalwork statues accented several shelves and consoles, littered with Sifa trinkets and treasure in gold, silver, and abalone. Piles of jewels and glittering ornaments overflowed from barrels and chests, some of it simply mounded in heaps on the ground.

  “Now. You all wait there. Move and I’ll kill you . . . I need something for this blasted wound.”

  The floor shook with heavy steps as a shadow swept in front of the light of the chandelier, and then she came into view.

  skekSa. The Skeksis Lord Mariner, tall and plumed with green and blue feathers, cape drenched with seawater and melted snow and ice. She approached a cabinet on the far end of the chamber, her usually graceful stride broken with pain. The stump of her bleeding wrist was wrapped in a knot of black linen torn from her once luxurious gown. She tore through the contents of the cabinet with her three good hands, a deep groan rumbling from her throat.

  While she was distracted, Naia pulled back
the curtain. By the light from the flames in a crackling fireplace, she saw Onica, their Far-Dreaming ship captain, and Kylan the Spriton Song Teller. Further in the room, beyond skekSa, were two others, braced and alert: Amri and Tae, the Grottan and the Sifa, like a silver moon and a rosy sun beside each other. Naia could tell from the stern, joyless glare on Tae’s freckled face, however, that it wasn’t Tae. Not really. A tiny shape sparkled like blue glass at her neck, and Naia let out a cautious breath of relief. Tavra would keep them safe.

  Naia dreamfasted at Gurjin, speaking between their minds so skekSa couldn’t hear them.

  The chandelier. Even skekSa can’t see in pitch-dark, but Amri can. Maybe it will buy us some time to get that door open. If we can get everyone back to the ship, maybe we can figure out a way to escape.

  She drew the dagger that she’d kept at her side for so long. Gurjin’s dagger. She pushed it into his hand so he had a weapon. It belonged to him, after all.

  Got it, he said, and disappeared between the folds of the curtain.

  Naia turned her attention back to the Skeksis and tapped gently on the floor, hoping that Amri’s sensitive toes could pick it up. To her relief, his ear twisted back almost immediately. When skekSa turned her back, rummaging through the cabinet and pulling out bottle after bottle of dark-hued spirits, Amri stole a glance. He saw Naia then caught Kylan's eye just as skekSa whirled around with a bottle in claw. She uncorked it and dumped half the bottle down her throat before giving a beak-smacking grunt and drawing a twisted dagger from her belt.

  “Now,” skekSa said, jabbing at them with her dagger. “Which one of you will scream Naia’s name the loudest?”

  CHAPTER 2

  “How about you, Spriton? You’re quite the song teller, aren’t you? How about you do us all a favor and call Naia here so we can be done with this time-wasting farce.”

  The Mariner strode toward the group of captive Gelfling, dark eyes set on Kylan, but the blond Sifa in the group flared her wings.

  “Were I you, I would consider letting us go,” she said.