by J. M. Lee
“Oh yes. From the death-stingers to the crystal-singers.”
This was news to Kylan, though on reflection he’d never had a conversation with any spider before. The idea that an entire race might loathe his own was discomfiting. He wasn’t even sure what a crystal-singer spider was.
“Why?”
Tavra thrashed a fern with her stick so it wilted back from the path. She pulled away, ending the conversation with a final suggestion:
“Next time you see one, maybe you should ask.”
The way became rockier before long. Hundreds of round rock spires lined the winding path, some shining with veins of clear crystal still untouched by the darkness spreading from the castle.
By midday they slowed their pace, weaving single file between the stone mounds, shoulder to shoulder with the mist that cascaded over the cliffs.
Kylan would have liked to rest, but Tavra tirelessly marched on, glancing over her shoulder occasionally to make sure the others hadn’t fallen too far behind. The Silverling’s face was as pale as ever, but she was even less winded by the climb than Naia, who was otherwise the most hardy of the group.
“We’ll reach Aughra by the evening,” Tavra said. “Have you prepared what you’re going to say?”
Naia crinkled her brow at the question.
“I plan to tell her the situation and see if she has advice. Is there more to it than that?”
“You’re about to speak to Mother Aughra, the Ram-Horned. The mouth of Thra. She was born of the world, both child and mother. She has seen Thra before the Gelfling were but sprouts in the garden of all creatures. You would speak to her so casually?”
“I’ll speak to her like I’d speak to anyone else,” Naia said. “With respect—if she deserves it.”
Gurjin’s voice was a continuation of his sister’s, carrying the same cadence and reasoning.
“If she is as old as they say she is, then she will respect hard-talk. It’s the language of the natural world, after all.”
Tavra shook her head in disapproval, but didn’t push the topic and marched on.
Kylan had nothing to add. Aughra was said to be wise, to know all things—but as Tavra had said, she might already know about the Skeksis. Worse, she might already know and yet have done nothing. The Gelfling were her favored children, as their lore sang time and time again, but those songs had been written by the Gelfling. Did Aughra think of the Gelfling as much as any other flower in her garden? Would she be equally content to see one creature devour another, if it, too, were part of the circle of life?
More importantly, no matter what Aughra had to say, if anything—could they trust her?
“You’re very quiet, Kylan,” Gurjin remarked, second from the back and nearest to Kylan. It was strange to be around the boy, whose presence felt like Naia’s, but wasn’t. It was not hard to believe that they could share vliya, if their auras were already so similar. Maybe they really did share the same life energy between two bodies.
“I don’t have much to say,” Kylan replied.
It was a small lie, but might as well have been the truth. Naia cleared her throat, reassuring him that she had overheard and had the same concerns. He wondered whether she had shared the message with her brother, perhaps silently in dreamfast during their trek. Gurjin’s dismissive shrug indicated she hadn’t.
“If you say so,” he said. He chuckled at his own joke. “Oy. I never got a chance to thank you for keeping Naia company. We were raised to be stubborn and never let go of the things we had. I think if it hadn’t been for you, she might not have let go of me back in the wood. And we’d all be up a creek now, wouldn’t we?”
Kylan nodded.
“I’m glad you’re alive. I’m glad we all are.”
Gurjin patted Kylan’s shoulder warmly. Both of them stopped when Tavra turned back, pointing up the trail. Kylan couldn’t see far past the Silverling, but he could tell that the path widened and ended. He realized the High Hill was nowhere in sight, and hadn’t been for some time. It was out of view because they had arrived.
“Don’t touch the vines.”
Kylan and the two Drenchen followed Tavra to where the trail opened onto a shelf large enough for them all to stand. Thick orange vines covered the cliff wall in front of them, finger-shaped and tangled like rope that had been left too long to its own devices. No further pathways led deeper into the crag, but Kylan could feel a draft coming from behind the vines. There was a tunnel there, but they would have to pass through the overgrowth, and if one part of Rian’s instructions had stayed with Kylan, it was to stay away from the finger-vines.
Tavra plucked a rock from the path and tossed it underhand into the vines. As soon as it hit, the vines shivered and tangled, grabbing the rock and constricting around it like tentacles. After a minute of tasting the rock and deeming it inedible, the vines loosened, and the rock fell to the ground. Kylan expected it would not be the same for them, should they become entrapped.
Tavra turned to Kylan and Naia, brow peaked with skepticism.
“Now what?”
Kylan didn’t have an immediate answer. Before he had to come up with one, Naia shouldered past and approached the protected tunnel entrance, wary of the vines but defiant in the face of Tavra’s challenge.
“Aughra?” she called, her voice lost in the tunnel beyond. “Mother Aughra? We’ve come to ask your advice. Are you there?”
They waited, but no response came but the echoes of Naia’s voice and the distant whistling of wind. The vines slithered among themselves, anticipating an early supper. Naia called again and again, but nothing happened. Tavra was unimpressed and unsurprised, almost smug at the situation.
“Don’t you want Aughra’s help?” Kylan asked her. “Even if you think she won’t help, isn’t it worth your time to hope that she might?”
“It would be worth my time if it weren’t a waste of time,” the Vapra replied. Then she raised her voice to Naia. “How long will we wait before you agree?”
Naia shot a glare back and flicked her wings in annoyance. She was about to do something brash, Kylan realized, but before he could stop her, she stepped right up to the finger-vines and put her hands upon them. They rustled and moved to grab her—but stopped. They dangled, unmoving, as Naia touched them.
“What’s she doing?” Tavra whispered. “Is that . . .”
Kylan held his breath. The vines, so ready to ensnare their prey, had become transfixed.
“Yes. Dreamfasting.”
Kylan had learned the language of the Landstriders, as all Spriton did. Tavra had certainly learned the tongue of other creatures as well, in her training to serve the All-Maudra. But those were languages spoken on the tongue, in sets of words and phrases. Naia’s unique ability to dreamfast with creatures other than Gelfling let her speak in the universal song of the heart.
It worked. The vines calmed and drew back, opening like a curtain on either side of the tunnel. Naia turned back with a triumphant wave and gestured widely for Tavra to enter.
“After you.”
The tunnel was windy and dark. Kylan kept a hand on the wall as he walked, feeling the pressure change as they ascended. He was sure the tunnel remained the same width the entire way, but the dark and confined space still felt as if it were closing in on him. He kept reminding himself that when they reached the exit at the top, they’d be on the High Hill. Where they would meet Mother Aughra, no less—that is, if she showed herself to them.
A bug chirped from somewhere in the tunnel. Their footsteps were the only other sound. Tavra stopped, and they all bumped into one another in the dark.
“There’s a door. We’re here.”
With a great groan, the mouth at the end of the tunnel opened. Kylan squinted as light flooded upon them—light, and a sound that he couldn’t place: the scraping and grinding of metal and wood, of air and space. Whe
n his eyes adjusted he gasped.
The four of them stood at the entrance to a round domed chamber. The ceiling was made of frosted crystal, letting in the light of the suns above. Tables and shelves were scattered about, cluttered with mysterious devices, and flasks and bottles filled with even more mysterious liquids.
But most impressive was the enormous moving contraption that occupied the center of the chamber. It filled the space of the room with dozens of huge spheres, mounted on poles and swooping arms. The machine rotated and gyrated like a living thing, spheres orbiting spheres, circling yet other spheres, all of it shining in bronze, copper, iron, and glistening stones. Clearly, the grating sounds emanated from the machine, and the movement of its pieces stirred the air so it felt as though there were a breeze, even inside the crystal dome.
“Amazing,” Kylan breathed.
He recognized some of the symbols etched deep into the metals: the symbols that represented the Three Brothers, others that represented the elements of the earth and water, air and fire.
“It’s the path of the stars,” he said. “The suns, and . . .”
“Gelfling!”
The hoarse shout brought them out of their reverie. A stout figure, hidden among the towers of papers, books, and other artifacts, raised a dark gnarled head with leathery and heavily wrinkled skin, like the bark of an old tree, and a knob in the middle of her forehead. A deep scar took the place of what was once her right eye. She had a mane of black and gray hair, tangled and matted around a pair of whorled horns on either side of her wide-browed face.
“Gelfling!” she repeated, her voice flavored with a strange, ancient accent that made some words alien in Kylan’s ear, though she spoke the Gelfling tongue. “What, you just gonna stare? Walk right into my home just to stare, did you? Maybe you should draw a picture, take it with you!”
Naia took the lead when Tavra said nothing; the All-Maudra’s daughter held rank among them, but they were the ones who had resolved to come here.
“My name is Naia,” she began. “I’m from the Swamp of Sog. We’re here to ask for your help, Mother Aughra.”
Aughra—for that was the only thing the disheveled old creature could be—stared at Naia with a focused glower. She let out a big grunt and stood, pushing a table out of her way and lumbering close enough that her whiskers brushed Naia’s chin as she sized up the Drenchen girl. Naia stood firm, though Kylan saw a tiny tremble in her hands when Aughra gave her a good sniff and then a swat on the chest before she finally backed away.
“Mother Aughra, eh? Ask for my help, eh? Why is it you Gelfling only call Aughra Mother when you need help? That’s what children do, I guess . . . I guess that’s what they do.”
Aughra put her fists on her bulging hips, releasing Naia from her appraisal and taking note of the other three who stood near.
“Hmph! A Spriton. A Vapra—maybe? Another Drenchen. Hmph. Three out of seven ain’t bad. It’s still soon. Where are the others?”
“What others?” Kylan asked.
Aughra scoffed, loudly and forcefully enough that spit flew out from her throat. She turned her back to them and stomped over to where she had been working when they had arrived, waving her hand and muttering to herself.
“What others, he asks? What others? The other clans, of course! Gelfling gathering. What else is there to know?”
Aughra sat heavily on her table stool, as if hoping they might go away if she ignored them long enough. Kylan’s head spun, trying to make sense of the words. Was this what Rian had warned them about? She was not the Mother of Thra who Kylan had expected—she was rude, ungainly, and undecipherable. They hadn’t even asked their questions.
“Please, Mother,” he said. “We need to know what to do about the—”
“Please, grassling!”
Kylan snapped his mouth shut and bristled. They were rewarded for the persistence, though. Aughra waved a knobby hand, this time beckoning them closer.
“Come on, then, Gelfling. Children. Aughra already knows what you want to know. Whether it’s what you want to hear, though, hmph! Might not be.”
CHAPTER 11
Aughra did not offer them ta or even a place to sit, so the four Gelfling stood under the metal spheres of the heavens. Tavra kept her distance, leaning against the wall with her arms crossed, while the rest of them approached Aughra’s worktable, hesitant even though they had been invited to do so.
Kylan began to feel light-headed if he watched the machine’s movements too long, so he watched Aughra grumbling and grunting, sorting through the artifacts—or was it junk? It was hard to say. When she couldn’t find what she was looking for, she let out a growl of frustration and swiped, knocking a pile of cluttered objects to the ground.
“Eh!” she barked. “Eh! Where are they? Probably buried somewhere. No matter. Not the time yet, no point. No way to know which one it is yet, anyway. All right, Gelfling. What you want to know? Too much to tell if I tell you everything, so you’ll have to ask it one question at a time.”
Kylan stooped to collect the items that had fallen. It was mostly scraps of paper with writing in letters he didn’t recognize, a few pieces of sculpted metal, and a leather-bound book tied shut with a braided black cord.
“The Skeksis have betrayed the Gelfling,” Naia began. “I’ve seen the Crystal where they’ve darkened it. We need to send a message to all the Gelfling, all at the same time, so everyone knows what the Skeksis have done.”
Aughra stared at Naia with her single eye, flat face unreadable except for a general sense of disdain. Kylan worried suddenly that she would not have an answer—or if she did, that it would be impossible to interpret or understand.
“And what’s the question?” she barked.
Kylan jumped in. “Is there a way to send a message like this? Something that will reach every Gelfling, but that the Skeksis won’t be able to interpret?”
“Would be, if all Gelfling could read, eh!” Aughra interrupted herself with a gruff laugh, then went on. “Oh yes, sure there’s a way. There’s always a way. Could be this way. Could be that way over there.”
“Well, what is it, then?” Naia asked.
“Who knows. That’ll be something Gelfling will have to figure out, isn’t it? If it’s something only Gelfling can understand, how can you expect Aughra to understand it?”
“It would be all right if you could understand it . . . You’re helping us.”
“If Aughra can understand it, so can the Skeksis! Who do you think taught Aughra to read? Well, it wasn’t the Skeksis, I suppose. Not exactly. They weren’t the Skeksis yet . . .”
“What do you know about the Skeksis?” Gurjin asked, before they lost her down the trail of her own thoughts. It wasn’t the reason they’d come, but if she had information about the Skeksis, Kylan would take whatever she would give.
“I know they love a good crawly. What do you want to know?”
Naia bit at the end of the question, finishing Gurjin’s thought.
“Everything!”
Aughra was a creature of constant motion, but here she paused long enough to stare. Kylan thought maybe she was angry, with the way she fixed them with her single eye. When she answered, he still couldn’t tell if she was irate or amused.
“Everything!” she exclaimed. “HA! Didn’t you hear what I just said? Everything’s too much! Small questions, Gelfling. Small questions with small answers for your small head!”
Kylan held Naia back before she said something she regretted. Aughra’s way of conducting conversations was like expecting them to find their way through a maze every time she spoke, and they would get nowhere relying on Naia’s Drenchen sensibilities. Kylan gathered his words and put them in order before he stepped in, hoping to make it as easy as possible for Aughra to answer the question in an understandable way.
“We met a wanderer in the Dark Wood. An archer na
med urVa. He had a scar on his hand. We saw the same scar on the hand of skekMal, the Skeksis hunter. As if they’re the same—shared one life force, but in two bodies. At first I thought it might have been just skekMal and urVa, but . . . all the Skeksis are after Naia and Gurjin because they’re the same. Twins. One life force, two bodies. It was important enough to them that they didn’t place Gurjin before the Crystal, and tried to get Naia to come to them first. Can you tell us how they are connected?”
Again, there was a long pause. Aughra steepled her brown fingers, joining them at the tips so they looked like tree roots growing from one stumpy wrist to the other.
“Skeksis were born at the last Great Conjunction. That’s when the Skeksis appeared, and the Mystics. Can’t have one without the other.”
Kylan remembered skekMal the Hunter’s rabid screams when Naia had guessed as much—that skekMal and urVa were somehow connected, the same entity, in two vastly different forms. What affected one affected the other. They were, somehow, the same, though urVa was gentle, wise, strong, while skekMal was vicious, shrewd, and unforgiving.
“Mystics—is that what urVa is? Are you saying each Skeksis has another half—a Mystic?”
Aughra’s yellow eye went back and forth between Naia and Gurjin. Kylan could hear it clicking in the socket, and it made him grow tenser by the moment.
“Eighteen Skeksis. Eighteen Mystics. That’s one for one, isn’t it? If the numbers are right.” She grumbled, talking to herself more than to the Gelfling in her observatory. “Twins, eh? I can see what they’re thinking, but they’re wrong. Twins are two souls, two lives, two bodies. A close connect, yes! Same blood in your veins, same Gelfling essence! But you and you, you’re two, eh? Skeksis and the Mystics are one, split. What happens to one happens to the other. And the other way around, too.”
It still wasn’t a straight answer, but Kylan had to take it. It seemed she was confirming what he was asking, and he wasn’t likely to get more out of her. It explained what they had seen with skekMal and urVa. It also meant there were other Mystics, as Aughra called them. One for each Skeksis. Where were they, and could they help, as urVa had helped?
