by James Comins
"Mother." A thought stirred. "You said--Does my mother really have two weeks to live?" Loora said.
A demented purple eye peered up at her.
"Do not hope," said Raunip. "Just work. Work as hard as you can."
Do not hope. Loora understood him.
"Do you know where Cory is?" she asked him.
"If he came this far, the Worshippers will know."
A head of black-purple hair began a descent toward the base of the tree. Loora followed.
* * *
The Storyteller adjusted her cloak, stretched, stoked the reaching fingers of the fire with more kindling.
What can be said of the Pod People? Good-natured, well-intentioned, they care nothing for power. They celebrate what's there, and should we not all do the same? After all, what value is there in pining for the impossible? Better, say the Podlings, to take delight in the lives we are given to lead. These are the things that are: Here are plants, stems of the land's own virtue pushing up through the surface. Here are animals, as wise and as foolish as the rest of us, to be provided for and befriended. Here is sky, blue and purple and unlimited. Here is love.
Only a fool could look at these and remain unsatisfied, the Podlings say!
Perhaps they are right.
Yet here there is a Podling wandering from village to village, asking for stories. There we see a Podling who delights in creating foreign-sounding music on non-traditional instruments. One might discover a Podling who has found a mountain in the desert and has built a lonely house on it. Why should this be? Why should even this most mild of all Thra's races develop these unsatisfied minds?
Perhaps all life remains unfinished. Perhaps they are driven by the crawling dreams that infest us. Perhaps it is the endlessness of the mind.
Here then, a village has been built from the seed pods of the Gnarled Stonetree. Hollow stone branches are chimneys. Fallen leaves wick rainwater into basins as roofs. Stonetree-nut-oil lanterns illuminate the night. Blocks of stone-hardened charcoal produces heat for an entire trine and then some.
What do the Worshipper Podlings do, in their houses beneath the Stonetree?
They believe.
* * *
"We really are very sorry, but there isn't going to be a way out of here for at least a week." The ur-Mystic patted Cory's hand, patronizing. At least there hadn't been any real need for Cory at Aughra's, he thought. He could probably even get some good meditation in while he was here. Maybe these three ponderers could teach him to control those bursts of emotion that came through.
"Why do you wrap your head?" Cory asked the Mystic.
"Keeps the sights and sounds out," the Mystic replied. "Important to have silence. Important to be alone. Keirkat here keeps me informed in case there are big developments. She says you smell like food." The Mystic indicated the long-nosed flouse, who cheeped apologetically. "And Pafaul mostly keeps house."
"Sometimes the drips migrate," the blue-glowing furry thing named Pafaul said. "And someone has to knock down inconvenient sap stalactites."
"What does the sap do?" Cory asked.
"Oh, it's highly informative," the Mystic said. "From here you can keep an eye on the entirety of Dark Wood. Everything seeps down to the bottom of the valley and up again through the sap. For example, these--" The Mystic indicated a nearby pile of ooze-filled bowls--"are from the area at the base of the tree, where the Worshipper gardens grow. The Worshippers are growing eflic this season, along with sweet tubers and shady broom. This--" he lifted a large tureen of slippery liquid--"tells me the state of the breadcorn fields--"
"Our breadcorn fields?" Cory murmured.
"Your fields--?" The Mystic rubbed his eyes. Some crusty stuff fell off his eyelids. "You're a Gelfling!" he exclaimed. "Haven't seen one in person since the last Conjunction. Forgot what you look like. I remember when you were waving sticks around and whooping in the woods. A Gelfling--marvellous! What an opportunity. Sensitive to the subtle energies of Thra. Here, taste this."
A bowl was thrust into Cory's hand. Dipping a finger in, he tasted a sour-sweet red liquid. Something about it made Cory think of rotting fruit.
A blue beam of tightly concentrated light shot from his heart, then stopped.
"Ooooh," the Mystic gasped, clapping in excitement, "data! Something in the Spriton garden causes a burst of the blue light! Fascinating. Now this."
It seemed like Cory always wound up doing what he was told. Sighing, he obeyed, dipping his finger into another bowl he was presented with and putting it in his mouth. A kelpy taste, salty and oceanic. The dusky blue-lit room briefly appeared sharper and clearer, as if his vision were focusing to cragraptor amplification.
"Look at his eyes," Pafaul said.
"Why? What's happening to my eyes?" Cory asked.
"That one came from a patch of saltwater lorrin at the Black River Delta," the Mystic murmured. "Now this one."
"Boss, I'm not sure it's wise," Pafaul said as the ur-Mystic climbed up on a countertop, scattering syrup bowls in his wake, and retrieved the distantmost bowl from a distant petrified-wood cupboard shelf. "He's not a walking laboratory, he's a person. At least he acts like one."
"We've got to know, got to know. Information. As much as we can find." The Mystic brushed dust and a dried-up crawly from the filmed surface of a blackish-purple liquid and proffered it to Cory.
"That doesn't look . . . healthy," Cory said. It smelled like sweet decay.
"Important data, my Gelfling friend. We need all the data we can find."
Reluctantly, Cory inserted his forefinger into the desiccated surface, felt the liquid's filmy skin pop unsettlingly, and found his finger in something that burned faintly like spicy food.
He tasted.
"That's not good," Pafaul said.
The Mystic gasped and began rummaging through his syrups.
"Boss, that's not good at all."
The flouse began cheeping and tried to hide its nose under its small hands.
"Something feels funny," Cory said.
It did. It felt bad.
"Boss, we need to get him out of here," Pafaul said.
"The lorrin, where's the lorrin?" the ur-Mystic cried, scattering slime and oil and sap as he overturned crusted dishes.
"I've got it--" said Cory, lifting the green-stained bowl.
"As much as you can get down, my boy! And quickly!"
Cory got a handful of the kelpy green stuff and swallowed it. It was less tasty when eaten by the handful, and gooey.
"Not enough!" Pafaul said. "Keep going!"
In his reflection in the green bowl and dozens of others, Cory saw a blinding blue light pour from his chest and funnel up like river rapids into his black dilating pupils, which were slowly consuming the whites of his eyes. He licked the lorrin sap directly from the bowl, and felt himself collapse.
"The source of the blue light is the Great Crystal itself," the Mystic murmured.
* * *
"Your majesty, permit me to tell you something of the utmost value."
The only replies were the guttural snorts of Skeksis pouring food down their throats by the plateful, splattering rare beverages down their dinner outfits by the flagonful, crunching small living things between the sharp edges of their beaks, and generally enjoying themselves.
SkekTek was not joining in the evening's gluttonous merriment. Preoccupied, his hands held a good-sized piece of glass that had once been part of a lens from the merchants' cart. It was attached to a length of cord. Up his voluminous sleeve was the still-bright shattercite crystal.
The Emperor had an entire live plucked flapbird in his beak and was slowly stripping it of flesh.
"Your majesty--"
The Emperor stopped with the bird's guts dangling and turned his head. The flapbird writhed; vague squawks echoed down the Emperor's throat. Irritated, he pulled the bird out of his mouth. It hopped off the table, bleeding, its guts dangling, and pulled itself onto the floor, where it was caught and held b
y the neck by a nimble house slave. The bird gave the slave a sorry look, and the slave returned it. Grimacing, the Podling flicked both wrists, and the creature stopped moving.
"Speak, skekTek," the Emperor roared irritably.
"If I may demonstrate a technique I've been perfecting? I think your august majesty may be amused."
"Good. Entertain me. Slave! Bring that piece of meat back."
The Podling shuffled forward with the dead flapbird's neck in his grip. It handed the bird to the Emperor.
"WHAT? This one's dead now!"
"It was the slave," the Chamberlain clucked. "Hmmmm! I saw it, your majesty, yes. Felt sorry for it, I believe."
"You snivelling slimefaced slave! Someone fetch my punishment club!"
"Your majesty," SkekTek interjected, "this slave may in fact be a suitable specimen for my demonstration."
A grunt of anger and malice belched from the Emperor. "Make it good," he exclaimed.
Leaping down from his seat, SkekTek got a finger in the slave's steel collar and dragged it before the high table of gluttony. The Podling shivered in his grip. Smirking, SkekTek took out the lens and pulled it down over one of the Podling's eyes, securing it like an eyepatch with the cord. Obediently the slave kept its nervous hands at its sides, clenching them and cracking its knuckles. SkekTek stood in front of the wretch and cupped his hands like a cone around the shattercite crystal.
A flood of purple light filled the eating chamber. Narrowing his grip, SkekTek directed the glare into the lens, which bent it further, focusing it into the slave's brain.
"I don't see anything entertaining!" the Emperor roared.
"It takes about four minutes to complete the process on a fizzgig," SkekTek said. "It may be as long as eight for a semi-intelligent creature like a Podling."
"Semi-intelligent?" the slave moaned. SkekTek slapped it.
Four minutes passed. The Emperor scowled and began chewing the dead flapbird. Several Skeksis continued to shield their eyes from the purple glare. The Skeksis grew restless as the seconds passed. Patience was a quality the great SkekTek cultivated, but it was not shared by these ignorami.
Another four minutes. The slave was shaking now, its body moving to some unseen frequency, its muscles flexing and twisting inside its body. Luckily it wasn't able to look away. A side effect of the Dark Crystal's power, SkekTek figured. It enraptured the eye of the weak.
Twelve minutes now.
"Well?" the Emperor shouted.
SkekTek closed his hand around the shattercite and secreted it away in his pockets. He took the lens off the slave and stood aside.
The slave's right eye was pure, undiluted white. Its body shook and its muscles skittered inside it. Its mouth hung open, lolling.
"On all fours and bark like a fizzgig."
"It would never!" skekNa the Slavemaster called out. "Too much pride."
Mindless yapping filled the hall from knee-level.
"Roll over!" commanded SkekTek.
The Podling spun and spun, coming to rest against the foot of the Slavemaster, who kicked it.
"Stick a crawly up your fat nose!" SkekTek shouted.
Without hesitation the milk-eyed Podling went to the cabinet, took out the snack cage and retrieved a tiny, twelve-legged creature with four rows of snapping teeth. Up it went. The Podling stood at attention as the thing burrowed inside its face and hid there.
From every corner of the room, Podlings ran. Pulling on their collars, crying out, they scattered in every direction. Breaking from their posts, they dove through doors into corridors.
"After them!" the Emperor called. "Not you, Slavemaster. Nor you, skekTek. The rest of you--retrieve them! Don't let them leave the castle!"
The feasting hall cleared.
Once the other Skeksis had begun their Podling treasure hunt, the Emperor faced skekTek. "Order that one to fetch my punishment club," he snarled. SkekTek merely snapped his fingers and the white-eyed Pod slave stumbled to the back room and retrieved the spiked bar, its nose twitching the whole time.
"You worthless thing," the Emperor hissed to the cowering Slavemaster. Detached, SkekTek observed the Slavemaster's behavior with satisfaction. "One task in the world, and you provide slaves with inferior conditioning!" Finding his grip on the punishment club, the Emperor swung.
* * *
"It sounds like the whole world is hidden inside the music," Loora said.
"Never had a taste for such sounds," Raunip replied. They trotted down a last grassy incline together to the outskirts of the Worshipper village. The Gnarled Stonetree rose up above them like an overcooked hand.
"You don't like music?" Loora said. "I'm not even romantic and I love it. It makes me feel awake."
"That must be why I don't like it," Raunip answered sourly. "I'm already awake."
Loora kicked a treecone at him.
From the round doors of the pod-houses, charming faces appeared, but they doured and dampened and went scowly, all except for the youngest Pod People, who were innocently pleased. The adults became unwelcoming, sharing knowing looks. The music stopped. Children were pushed inside and rainshutters slammed and latched. In moments the pod town was shut.
"Not very welcoming, are they?" said Loora.
"Perhaps we're dishonoring their tree with our presence," Raunip snipped. "Useless fools."
A sonorous string instrument tone seethed through the ground around them, an alarm. At once a central pod's doors burst open, and two Podlings with dangerous-looking spearbolt bows emerged. They were very small people, Loora thought, but seemed strangely fierce when armed with needle-tipped weapons.
"As tempted as I am to speak my mind to them," Raunip told Loora, "I fear death. Would you be my emissary?"
"Me?" Loora squeaked. The drawn spearbolts were tipped with heart-shaped seeds carrying points like daggers. She faced them down. Raunip began stepping slowly back until Loora was clearly in front. "I'm not a diplomat, I'm a mechanic," she hissed.
"Speak or we're dead," Raunip whispered, not at all in an encouraging way.
Two killing bolts aimed straight at Loora's throat. The cringing imp curled up behind her.
"Gelfling," one Worshipper warrior muttered to the other.
"Have you come to apologize and beg for mercy?" the second warrior said.
Loora felt the dizziness from the blackwater globe re-arise, and grew nauseous from nerves.
"I've come looking for my friend," she said, wincing at each word. "He was attacked at the top of the hill and maybe came by here. Have you seen another Gelfling--a boy my age?"
The guards eyed each other. They really were very small.
"A Gelfling spy, already dwelling within the shadow of the Sacred Tree," one hissed.
"Spread the word. He must be found," said the other.
Loora felt she was supposed to say something useful here.
"He's really nice," she told them. This sounded insufficient to her. "Aughra thinks he's important," she added.
"Aughra couldn't think much of anything," a guard told her. "She's been dead for centrines untold."
"She lives at the top of the hill," Loora said, indicating the hill. "It took me only a toll and a half to fly down. Just climb up and knock on her door."
"We People of the Boughs never leave the tree's sacred shadow," a guard said. "No one who enters her shadow may ever leave. Nor will you, nor your spy-brother, nor that crooked one behind you."
Behind her, Raunip made a series of flowing gestures and slid into the topsoil. When Loora spun to him, he was gone.
"The spies can hide inside the ground itself," a guard said. "Walking inside Thra. Slicing the Sacred Tree's roots. Killing it." They shared a terrified look.
Small hands took Loora's arms and drew her into the central pod.
* * *
More than once, the yenti coin slipped from his grasp and sent Gobber scrambling through the darkness looking for it. Each time, it seemed to shine up through the gloom at him. Und
er the rapid roaring roiling flames of fear that gripped his mind, he imagined a future where he returned to the castle and traded the yenti for Lemny. Perhaps that old Woodland Gelfling guard still patrolled late at night, and was fair, and could be bribed for a single coin. Or maybe there was a Skeksi who hated the Chamberlain and could be bargained with--no, thought Gobber wildly, no more Skeksis. Never again. Never, never again. Not for a sack of coins.
At the outer edge of the Perpetual Storm, a rise led up toward the junglelands at the edge of Black River. In the distance the Swamp of Sog could be seen laying on the far side of Skarith, the prickly scrub forest that surrounded the Castle of the Crystal. As Gobber looked out at the purple crystalline spires, shivering, he resolved never to set foot in the Castle's orbit ever again. But to rescue Lemny--
The road to the castle ran alongside the swamp, but if ever he had to visit the castle again, he'd make the climb up the dry cliff way in the lee of the rain.
The shady trailtree's longest limb hung horizontally, tipped with bundles of withered fruit, a bowed head. Gobber took himself up and lay across it, hidden under bursts of summer leaves, and held himself in his small arms until the shaking stopped.
* * *
"No time. Pafaul, what else will heal him?"
"You're the Herbalist! I don't know!" Pafaul shouted, flinging bowls aside with its paws, searching.
"Don't get them out of order! My sense of smell isn't quick enough to sort them," the Mystic said, shuffling the bowls around absentmindedly. The flouse cheeped helpfully. "Yes, my dear! Brainbane and sour kithrin."
The long nose unraveled and sniffed out a pair of bowls. Keirkat wasn't able to lift them, so Pafaul stumbled through the syrups, retrieved the bowls, and gave them to the Gelfling through the channelled blue lightning. The Gelfling got his hands into the sticky liquids and ate.
Slowly, slowly the panic and blue blaze fell away and calm arose. UrNol breathed easier. The worst was over. And so much information!
"Light's gone," said Pafaul.
"I can't see."
The Gelfling's hands began circumnavigating his face and the surrounding room. He looked, the ur-Mystic thought, very much like a Verduran Three-Handed Fern caught in a high wind.