by James Comins
* * *
"Hold off! What're you thinking? I've a good mind to--oof--give you a word or two off the bottom of my mouth, I do--OW!"
Gobber's wrists were tied. Two of the fiercest-looking Gelflings he'd ever seen--scars up and down their faces, missing teeth, and unassuaged hate in their eyes--bore him like a small sack of grain on their shoulder toward the Castle.
This was it. Should've kept moving. Now they were going to do all those nasty Skeksi-ish things to him that he'd so narrowly avoided with the Chamberlain. They'd--they'd--trounce him, prob'ly. Poke him with somefing sharp. Force him to exercise. Whatever they did to those two maître d's at the door, the ones who said they did whatever they were told. Didn't bear finking about. So of course it was all he could fink about.
At a knock, the doors parted and Gobber was dragged down a crooked staircase to a pit. No, it wasn't a pit, Gobber fought, it was more of a dungeon, or perhaps what you might call a chambers, not to say a boidoir, mind--
"Ahhh," said a voice that put the chill of rotting death into Gobber's heart. "The partner."
Into view stepped a long-legged humpbacked filthy Skeksi wearing some sort of woolly wintry robe. Fine cloth. If only he could get a piece of--Gobber stopped his merchant's line of thought when he realized that the Skeksi's wintry robe was in fact made of material he'd sold to the Chamberlain earlier that day. Work quick here, they do, he figured.
"Gobber? Is Gobber here?" came a muffled voice.
"Lemny!"
As Gobber raced past the Skeksi, his movement was arrested by two long-fingered left hands.
"Ah, I propose a simple trade, merchant. I need two clear glass refracting lenses. The Chamberlain smashed the old one. I will trade you this--" The Skeksi flung back a piece of cloth--"for them."
Beneath the cloth, Lemny's dear shell had been pinned to the ceiling of the twig cage by four vicious needles. Looked cracked--oh Skymother, he'd had his shell cracked by these beasts! Gobber fell backward at the sight, caught himself on the leg of a workbench. They'd cracked his shell, oh my love, they'd stabbed right through the shell.
"Lemny," Gobber murmured, turning to the cold dead eyes of the beaked monster whose fingers still curled around his shoulder.
"Gobber, it doesn't hurt, he hasn't hurt me, only get me out!"
The Podling's mind cleared and he repeated, "clear glass refracting lenses. Two. Have 'em before you can blink, your greatness."
" 'ats it, Gobber," Lemny called. "Try the distiller's, they've got those nice windows now, they know some 'un who can work glass. Or the observatory--"
Still gibbering slightly, Gobber noticed a pair of glass windows in the door to the dungeon chambers. "P-p-pardon, my lord an' greatness, but haven't you got glassworkers here?"
"Another smart one," the Skek snarled. "I'll tell you why I need you, you pathetic creature. Only SkekLach can forge glass of this quality, and he demands payment. Whereas I have payment enough for you right here." He jostled the twig cage, and Lemny let out a very worrying sort of sound that suggested he might not have been telling the whole truth about it not hurting him.
"Yessir, yessir, I unnerstan' completely. I'll be on my way, won't take but a week or somewhat. Before you can count on both hands, that is. Or all four hands, or--"
"One week. Then the bug starts getting more of these." A fistful of pins was held up for Gobber to see.
Gobber's mind skipped ahead, plotting a course. Without the wagon it'd be a day to the edge of Skarith, then the road to--no, the Podlings of Balgertown didn't have glass, neither did the Dousans of the Desert. "There won't be time," he moaned. "The Observatory's through the Swamp of Sog, an' I can't rightly squelch through it in a week one way, let alone both. An' that's taking the surefire route."
The Skeksi seemed to consider this, then nodded, deciding something. "Then take the Nethercroft." A gesture, and the Gelflings began dragging Gobber away. As he called out for Lemny to wait, to not be afraid, that he'd make it back in time, he caught a glimpse of a distant operating table with a scene on it he couldn't quite make out but desired never, never to see again.
* * *
"Clean up the whole room, by yourself, without any of your weak-headed slaves to help you!" the Emperor roared as he hung up the red-stained punishment club and departed the dining chamber.
SkekNa the Slavemaster was not someone who misunderstood. Meekly piling cups and plates on filthy serving platters, he took the dishes to the scullery and began scrubbing. The lines of pain down his back and flank were reliable motivators. Every living thing needs motivation, orders, someone to obey, a reason to obey. Find the reason and give it to them and you have a slave.
Obedience. Absolute, unquestioned obedience. That was SkekNa's life. Finding it, enforcing it. And now that preening monster Tek had bested him at his own game.
"MmmMMmmm."
SkekNa's hands felt the slime of soap against them as he scrubbed flapbird blood off pewter. He did not turn around as the Chamberlain slunk in.
"Come to gloat?" he snapped, not pausing his cleaning in case the Chamberlain was spying for the Emperor.
"Hmmmmmmm."
To think he was reduced to sullying his feathers in the kitchens. Blackened-brown water twirled from his arms down the drain in unclean rivulets. Soiled. Soiled!
"That was quite a performance by our dear colleague. Hmmmmm!" the Chamberlain whispered.
The Slavemaster was inclined to tear out the Chamberlain's throat as he repeated that musing-pandering-toadying-obsequious humming sound. "You have something important to do. I don't know what it is. Go and find it." SkekNa's voice was guttural and soulfully displeased.
"Mmmmmm. I do have something important that I have to do."
The Chamberlain stood almost silently. He was watching skekNa stack cups like a Podling child, making that unctuous sound of . . . whatever his sounds meant. The Slavemaster found an old broom and returned to the high table with it. The Chamberlain scampered after him, staying right at his heel.
"Am I entertaining you?" SkekNa roared, sweeping.
"What I have to do is to make our colleague SkekTek as unhappy as possible, my dear SkekNa. Very unhappy. Hmmmmm!"
For almost a full second, the Slavemaster stopped sweeping.
"You want to make Tek unhappy."
"Would that put us on the same agreeable side, do you think?" said the Chamberlain.
Furious at his own disobedience, SkekNa resumed sweeping. "Then go make Tek unhappy," he said. "I'll reward you."
"YOU TWO COWARDLY WORMS ARE PLOTTING BEHIND MY BACK!" screamed the voice of the Great Emperor, who ducked out from behind a pillar. His strides were loping and his pinhead eyes were narrowed under his crown. He was using his big tone of voice. The Slavemaster despised it.
"Your majesty. I was not," he said decisively. SkekNa did not lie to the Emperor.
"Oh, but please, your greatness, I was merely advising my friend here about a--er--mutual acquaintance, not you, your most handsome-beaked majesty," the Chamberlain added.
"YOU WERE PLOTTING."
"Yes, your majesty. But not against you," said the Slavemaster.
"LIES! Prove your obedience by . . . LICKING UP THE MESS THE ENTERTAINMENT LEFT BEHIND!" the Emperor roared.
There was, in fact, a sticky oily patch on the floor where the light show had taken place. From a place outside of conscious decisions, SkekNa hurled himself at the ground and began to lick at it. It tasted salty and dusty and--there was another taste--
"What's happening to him?" cried the Chamberlain, backing away.
"HE'S--" but the Emperor stopped shouting and watched.
From the sandstone floor, a purple light gleamed and poured into the Slavemaster's calculating eyes. His body shivered around him, and an angular warmth began to grow. Muscles that had not loosened in a hundred trines became soft, forgiving, supple, unclenched. His brow seemed to unknit and became a forehead of relaxation. His feathers straightened, and the slimy residue of soap
nearly jumped off him as his body shed its ratty unkempt feather-hair and regrew it, sleek and shining and unwontedly fashionable.
"WHAT JUST HAPPENED, YOU MISERABLE CLUCK?" the Emperor screeched, tugging the Chamberlain up by his collar.
The Chamberlain merely babbled. The Slavemaster answered instead: "Your majesty, I've just discovered the true secret of that purple crystal. The fool SkekTek thought he'd found its use. He didn't. I did. Just now."
"USE?" roared the Emperor. "WHAT USE DOES IT HAVE?"
"The purple light squeezes a liquid out of the Podlings. The liquid provides eternal youth."
* * *
"Aughra--"
"Better not to speak."
And so Loora found herself wordless and shrinking as the cage around her rose along the black trunk of the Gnarled Stonetree. The shapes of camouflaged insects became apparent as she peered across the surface of the trunk, and a patch of furry red moss--
"Ah, a good source of pungulates," Aughra said, reaching out and plucking a handful of red fur from the moss.
"What are they?" Loora asked.
"Better not to speak," Aughra repeated, crunching some red fur into her mouth. She offered Loora some, but Loora didn't want any. She had other things on her mind. Gritting her teeth, she watched the ground depart. As they gained height, she wondered whether it was true that the land below her had once been married to the sky, and whether Aughra--no, it was absurd. Aughra was a nice old woman with a funny nose, and the ground didn't cry, and the watery tentacle that had spoken to her had no business being inside a Podling, and she'd get herself out of this cage before a littel could make that gurbly sound they make.
Idly, Loora wondered whether Raunip had escaped. He didn't seem to be on very good terms with his mother. Would he climb up in the night and cut them free anyway?
The rope snagged as the ring at the top of the cage struck the branch. The cage began swinging, then stopped rising, and Aughra was silent, and Loora was also silent. A strange bare spot on the tree peered through where bark had been cracked or stripped away in a perfect rectangle.
"Hmp! We've got them just where we want them!" said Aughra. "Now. Little fixer of things, please unfix this cage."
* * *
"Through here."
Gobber was shoved feetfirst down what he was certain was a garbage chute. The last thing he saw before facing the dark was a mess of Gelfling scars and a face lacking some teeth. Then a hatch shut and . . .
As he slid down the sticky steep flume, a distinct blue light reflected back at him from the near surface. It almost seemed to be coming from--but a wave of dizziness struck him, not at all related to the slide, and sleep seemed oddly near for someone who was about to land on a . . .
Yes, sleep . . .
"It's changing again. It's . . . Aughra, I saw that poor . . . whatever-he-was . . . he didn't make it out . . ."
An image of a young Gelfling's face appeared for only a tick in time, then Gobber snapped awake, completely invigorated, just as he landed with a clunk on a flat silvery metal surface. A layer of assorted trash and debris had accumulated. It WAS a garbage chute.
". . . and levers and wheels, and . . . greasy . . . there's someone caught in the gears!"
Random words. Sounded like an echo, and not a very good one. Like calling into a rusty bucket, it did. Who was caught in gears? Didn't make any . . .
Oh.
The metal floor tilted and Gobber flatly fell through an opened pair of metal doors. Poured out of this box onto a clockwork tangle, he saw a thousand spinning gears, their sharp steel gear-teeth grinding apart a few pieces of trash that had fallen with him, the gears birthing a sound like the destruction of joy. His flailing hands grasped at anyfing that'd keep him above the--
The word from his brief dream echoed around in Gobber's skull--greasy. Greasy! It was too greasy to--
In the split of an instant, just before his hands lost their grip on the filthy, greasy metal ledge, Gobber pushed off and landed on the largest of the gears below him and began running and it was oily and black and scudded-through with bits of trash and just behind him was a dropoff where thousands of remorseless jaw-blades met and crushed and shredded, a metal mouth. Surrounded by darkness, fighting this unplaceable sleepiness, Gobber pushed his small frame into heavy motion and dashed to the top of the gearwheel and stepped off the slick driveshaft and jumped directly to one horizontal drivewheel after another, the discs extending in every direction without walls or ceiling, his short body turning on flat turntables, and he repeatedly faced his only means of egress in the symphony of clockwork, which was a wall of vertical wormgears, spinning by what force he did not know. Dizziness grew. There were gaps between the skinny grooved posts, and beyond the wormgears lay a stable platform, but the squeeze would be tight. He took a moment to inhale, spinning on the turntable gear, the blue light from his chest painting the naked metal blue, and he huffed a mouthful of mental bravery and squeezed through--his coats were snagged!--pinned like poor Lemny, caught against the sharp wormgear teeth--tightening as they pulled his coats into their slow rotations--couldn't rip the coats off, his arms were both caught behind him at a funny angle and in moments his arms'd be torn right off his shoulders and then where would he be?--struggling, couldn't brace his feet against the gears or his shoelaces would catch, that'd be no improvement, a crawlyweb's no better than a flyswatter to an absent-minded dancerfly, that's what Lemny always said--he had to survive for Lemny's sake, he had to survive--no one was coming to save him, there was no one to save either of them, no one would ever come this way--his arm pulled back suddenly, and then there was nothing else for it, he put his feet up against the wormgear, felt his shoelaces thread into the grooves and catch, and, remembering how greasy it was, propped up both feet and pushed--
Gobber heard the sound of fabric tearing away. Lucky his coats were so threadbare. He quickly tore them off with his no-longer-pinned arms, he was free, and now for the shoes, shut like an angry fizzgig's jaws, no time to untie, he shoved but his feet weren't coming free, the laces were tied tight to keep the cold out, he had to cut them off, somefing sharp, somefing sharp, come on Gobber fink--what was in his pocket?--junk, soft squishy junk--the edge of the coin, yes, it was sharp and cut straight frough the old leather and worked as a shoehorn as well and ow cut his arch but the shoe was off and here the other one slipped off and Gobber fell like a wrinkly trailfruit onto the platform behind him, breathing like he'd never breathed air even once before in his entire life.
The platform snapped open and he fell straight frough it, howling all the way down.
* * *
"Calm down, Gelfling, there's no need to panic. Here, take Keirkat on your shoulder, she always makes me feel better."
The flouse jumped onto Cory's shoulder and wrapped her nose around him. He tried to calm himself down. Panic and the sense of unreality at his new blindness had become anger, seething rage, a desire to smash everything. They had killed his ability to see out of his own eyes. It wasn't fair! It wasn't right. His vision was the only thing that gave him joy. There was nothing else. Just the future, the seeing. That was his joy. That was his whole life. Nothing else even mattered. He had nothing else. And--
"You did this to me!" he screamed. "You and your data! You and your poison sap! This didn't have to happen."
As he thrashed, Keirkat made a flousy sound and hopped nervously off him again. Cory stormed through the black void that surrounded him and there were things in his way and he kicked them and the Mystic voiced some "now really!" noises and Cory couldn't find a place inside of himself to care what this Mystic thought about him. He didn't need anything from the person who stole his eyesight. Wrathful words he wanted to say bounced around in his head. Words like--
"Open for me, shake your bark, let me out, by the Sacred Spark!" he shouted.
"Oh, gracious, you can't do it just like that. You need to run a finger up the--"
Before the Mystic could finish, Cory had stumbled t
o the wall, run his finger up the side, and repeated the spell.
"No, you flying fool, you gullible old Mystic, you can't just tell him how to--" barked Pafaul from somewhere to Cory's left. "Now it's done, and he can't take it back. You've--"
A groan deeper than valley canyons resounded through the floor and walls and ceiling, and Cory heard an unbearable crunching and snapping and somehow didn't care that he'd--
"You've killed the tree," murmured Pafaul with sadness and wonder in his voice.
Shuddering ran up from the floor into Cory's spine. Pushing forward, stepping into a sticky bowl, he discovered that the wall was starting to open. A window in the trunk, just as when he'd been caught by the vines. Clear fresh air came through. He braced himself on the windowframe, but in seconds he could no longer find the top of the window. The groan continued. His hands explored the space around him. Ebbing evening suns'shine warmed his face, probably from the dying sun. The great and rose suns must have already set. Then:
"Cory!"
"Loora?" Her voice had come from somewhere to the left.
"The whole tree is caught on our rope, but not for long! Help us down before it all comes apart!" she shouted to him.
"I can't see!"
"Aughra, why can't he see?" Loora asked.
"No time. There's no time! Grease your hands and slide down the rope!" said Aughra's voice.
"Cory, throw us one of those bowls!" she said. "I'm right here. I'm a good catch."
He found a bowl and aimed it. "Just don't swallow any," he said with acid in his voice.
"It was an accident!" came the ur-Mystic's voice indignantly.
The first bowl missed. "Further left, but take a step to the right so it doesn't hit that big splinter!"
The groaning was accelerating, and Cory threw three bowls blindly in rapid succession. Behind him, the Mystic was complaining and Pafaul was saying something to calm everyone down, but on the fourth throw--
"Caught it! Aughra, you first."
"Guide Cory down, girl. He'll need to slide, it'll be too high to climb. AND YOU THREE, COME DOWN AFTER!" she called past Cory to the Mystic, Pafaul and the flouse, who cheeped.
"We're quite happy where we are--"
"Go!" shouted Loora.