by James Comins
Pop.
SkekTek touched his wounded, socketed beak with a sharp finger and winced. The echoing voice of the Emperor had torn one of the barbed tacks loose. Couldn't be seen with a flange of metal sticking out. Tugging, he found the metal bandage was lodged firmly on one side, loose on the other. Yes, he would punish the Slavemaster. He needed patience. The Chamberlain . . .
Ducking out from the gallery, skekTek bowed broadly and approached the stone throne.
The Emperor's head was surmounted by a huge blue five-spired miter of beautiful ultramarine Partha fur torn from the bodies of the Parthim by the Hunter. It was twined with gold wire and bearing a cragraptor skull on each point. The throne spread around him menacingly like a pair of wings.
The Chamberlain stood in attendance, humming softly. The Glazier and the General observed from balconies.
"You," the Emperor told him, "have been accused of SEDITION! My Chamberlain attests that you have kept the secret of eternal youth to YOURSELF! You are ordered to share this knowledge IMMEDIATELY!"
SkekTek blinked. This was a trick. It was obviously a trick. SkekTek slowed himself down, looking for the source of the trickery, trying to pin the complexities of this little palace drama in place so he could research them, but there was no time. Furthermore, his carefully ordered thoughts seemed disordered, a filing system with the labels reversed. His brain was not tidy. He blinked again and examined the smug smile the Chamberlain wore, and began to speak:
"Your majesty is easily persuaded." SkekTek smiled in a patronizing way. "Ah, the foolishness of the unscientific. I have no doubt that our dear colleague has told our majesty many stories about my brilliant studies. Indeed, I should think that such an objective lump of raw intelligence--" he indicated the Chamberlain--"would be quite astonished at the advances I have made. However, the ridicule-worthy notion of eternal youth? Ha! Such a concept lies within the realm of fancy. Not science."
"SEDITION!" screamed the Emperor.
"And what's that on your face?" the Chamberlain hissed.
SkekTek ignored the Chamberlain. "Your majesty, such a notion is completely contrary to our current theories on--"
"SEDITION! GIVE ME ETERNAL YOUTH!"
"Your majesty, no such discovery has been made--"
"I'VE SEEN IT! BRING IN THE SLAVEMASTER!"
This was all spiralling out of hand far too quickly. Far, far too quickly. There was no alternative but to wait for the Slavemaster to be brought. SkekTek felt a certain curiosity about this business of eternal youth; surely the Chamberlain was playing tricks. That's all this was. Still, skekTek was surprised that the humming oaf was able to come up with a way to invent the outward appearance of eternal youth. Perhaps he'd put cooking oil in the Slavemaster's ragged hair and remarked on how glossy it looked.
The steel frame and bandaged, broken hand of skekNa turned the same corner that skekTek himself had rounded a few minutes ago. There was no sign that he had spotted the Podling slave. That was reassuring.
"Tek," the Slavemaster said perfunctorily. He bowed rigidly to the Emperor and stood at attention.
"SkekNa!" the Emperor roared. "Show Tek what that liquid did to you!"
"It's--it isn't--it's gone--" gibbered the Chamberlain, pointing.
"WHAT DO YOU MEAN IT'S--"
"Your majesty," the Slavemaster said. "The new hair fell out a toll ago."
"SHOW HIM THE ETERNAL YOUTH YOU FOUND FOR ME."
"Your majesty, there is nothing left of it," the Slavemaster said, standing at military attention. His breathing was rough and sore, skekTek noticed. He looked no more youthful than usual.
"I DEMAND ETERNAL YOUTH! YOU HAVE BOTH HUMILIATED ME! BRING ME MY PUNISHMENT CLUB!"
"Yes, your majesty, punish them. Hmmmmmm," said the Chamberlain.
But the Emperor swung at the Chamberlain, then the Slavemaster, and skekTek hurried back to his labs, feeling like hateful eyes were following him.
* * *
"You got out," said Rian as he pushed through the door to the labs.
"Not far enough out, not by a long centror and a half and another half. Quick, take me to the front gates. Every second here's a second too long."
The big hands of the Gelfling reached down. Lemny rapidly found himself on Rian's shoulder. His broken shell wound up in a leather pocket. At Rian's side, trembling, was a Podling child wearing a long shirt and tiny manacles.
"Got a job to do. I'm on a timeframe. It'll only be a moment."
"I don't like this," Lemny murmured as he was taken, once again, into the guts of the labs. "I really, really--"
"Neither do I. Let's get in and out, before we're noticed," Rian said.
"Before we're noticed? Are you up to something, then?"
"Just following orders. Like always. Let's see how fast I can--"
He began turning the capstan that opened the door to the Dark Crystal.
"Sticks about halfway down," Lemny hissed.
It stuck about halfway down, but Rian managed to slip inside anyway, carrying the squirming child into the long, violently violet chamber.
"Miss," Rian said, "you've been ordered to stare into the light."
"I don't like it," she said. "It makes me feel sick."
"Frankly don't blame her," Lemny said. "At least you've got eyelids."
"Look, don't be difficult. Stare at it, we'll see what happens."
Lemny noted that Rian himself did not stare at it. He turned away and kept his eyes closed. Lemny could only block so much of the light with his claws, but huddling into all four of them, he was mostly shielded.
"I--I don't like it--" the child said.
"What's this thing?"
The Gelfling picked up the yellow metal nose object from the floor and turned it over in his hands.
"I wouldn't touch it, myself. Likely to go off, that thing is. It's not safe," Lemny hissed.
As the carved-in words came into view, a spear of light shot once again from the handle.
"Look," Rian said, running a nervous hand over his scarred mouth, "boss says I need to focus the light into your eyes. Sorry about this."
"It's okay," the girl said, squirming.
Lemny didn't turn around, but he did hear some sounds come out of the girl that a Podling child shouldn't be making. It sounded like she was crying, but not a regular cry. A hurt, gasping cry. And then the sound stopped.
"Oh," said Rian. "Oh no."
And that is where Lemny was when skekTek returned.
* * *
"How much fur'ver have we got? Not that I'm the one doin' the walking, I'm not complainin', by any wise, Skymother knows I've walked far enough in my day, but--"
"The Netherssspiral hass four thousand sstairs. We've gone eight hundred twenty-sseven," said the Grottan ahead of him, carrying the stretcher.
"Right. What's your name?"
"We don't name each other," the Grottan Gelfling said. "We're satisfied with our identities."
"Odd. Well. Saves room in your remembery for other fings, I s'pose."
"Numbersss."
They went on.
The Netherspiral (Gobber took the spare ss's out, mentally) was a staircase. Each step was taller than it was long, and there was no light. The angle of ascent of the stretcher made Gobber feel like a ball balanced at the top of a hill--the slightest push and he'd slide down into the gangly arms of the nameless Gelfling behind him. His hands lacked grip, but he clung weakly to the litter's frame.
He couldn't open his eyes. Breath came loosely, wetly, and his nose grew dry and scratchy and hurt when he sniffed it. The two non-crouched Gelflings, the new ones who'd blown a hole in the Nethercroft, scurried ahead, talking between them, led by a third Grottan. They were out of chatting range, and seemed in a great hurry.
"You gennelmen seem to know a fing about this Starblindness," he said to the Grottans who carried him. "Does it--will it take long for me to get better, d'you fink?"
The Grottan did not answer.
"Um, chums
, do I--oh. It isn't. I'm not?" There was no reply. "You fink I'm not going to get better. No, you're wrong. You've got it all wrong about me. I'm a survivor, I am. I could take on a hundred sniffles like this one. Barely slow ol' Gobber down. Made out of, out of stuffing an' shingles, is ol' Gobber, and you can't scratch shingle. Or stuffing. Try to scratch stuffing, see how far it gets you. No, I'll get better. You just watch me get better. 'Still your voice,' he says to me. Well, you just--"
And no dreams came.
* * *
"I don't like this, Aughra, I don't like this at all . . ."
A pair of wild shrieks--one free and happy, the other miserable and nauseous--echoed into the Vale as the surfboard of enchanted land slashed across a muddy lake at the bottommost gully and swung back up toward the other side. The song slowed as it climbed the scabby road up toward the Swamp of Sog, and the Herbalist breathed easier. It was, he thought, not unlike being a fussbluster seed pod swooping away from the billwing plant that hosts it. First it drops, then it spins back up to drop again, farther--don't make yourself sick, urNol, you're thinking about motion again--
The grind up the plateau took almost a toll. Twice Aughra resumed singing, and the Herbalist covered his face as the ground beneath his feet sped up, zipping past angled terraces of summer-tangle fern forests whose green denizens he'd very much like to examine in more detail, if she could just stop the ride for a minute, Aughra, or maybe longer than a minute, certainly long enough to catch his breath and stop this up-and-down feeling in his belly. Why look, a yellow starfinder, they produce gum pods that are the exclusive food of a very rare species of gumshoe, they must be repopulating the Vale, he really did feel very ill . . .
The purple crooked towers of Crystal Castle began to rise over the lip of the valley, glowing faintly beneath the black sky. UrNol felt something stir in his throat, a feeling of loss. Why did he remember this place? Where did the memories come from? A haze in the back of his complex mind where the oldest memories lived. He couldn't reach them.
Cresting the sloshing mud, the surfboard landed in the Swamp of Sog. Keirkat made a nervy song in the pit of her throat. UrNol barked a word and stopped.
"We cannot waste time," Aughra hissed.
"Look," said urNol, stretching his long draping sleeve ahead to the rotting land.
Just as once, now long ago, he had looked out over the ocean and saw blue echoed between sky and sea, so now did urNol see dead black reflected between the Perpetual Storm and the black mud of the Swamp of Sog. The Castle lay in the center of a basin rounded by mountains, the plain of Skarith. The Swamp drained into the valley they had so unpleasantly traveled through. An alluvial blot of mud stained the rocky rim they stood on. On the other side of the Castle, high wind pushed the water away, turning half the basin to dry sand. Only a few cactulus stands, brunospires, jawbone-elms, and shrivelled hateloves remained.
"Weeds," urNol murmured to himself. "Crusties and dead things. Not a drop of sap comes from any of them, Aughra. The few drops that seep through their grasp are poison. Poison! All living things die from tasting those syrups. It drains the self of its juice if it touches you. Poor lad; if I had known, if I had witnessed it first! Brunospires, do you see? Their roots twine all the way around the roots of everything they touch, choking the water out of them. Cactulus juice will briefly blind you if you look too long at it. And the sixbuds? Create whirlwinds, trying to whip all their competitors out of the topsoil. This place is sick, Aughra. The land has been riven. The air breathes too slowly. I believe this plain will die if the Mystics don't tend it. If I don't tend it."
"And in the center, the heart of Thra," Aughra said. "The Great Crystal. Let us go to it, urNol. Hmp! Fix this mess. Heal the land."
"I don't know much about crystals, of course, but I'll know if I see the source of this sickness. The sickness doesn't have a song, Aughra, its voice is silent and its arm is long." UrNol tickled Keirkat under her nose. "Let's go."
* * *
". . . tell me about his visions," Yrn was saying. "I'd like to know if there was any truth in them."
Somewhere inside Loora's heart lived the cold-scalded slice of ice that was Cory.
"He--the vision was short, only in pieces. He said something about someone falling into gears, and about someone trying to break a crystal. And a knife. A metal knife. I don't know if it's important. I don't know if any of it's important, or even true." Jogging up the steep steps, Loora found herself tiring and worked on keeping her breath steady as she talked. "Aughra was sure it was, though. We made a vision-globe for him, so he could see his visions better while we--well, while we cured the Light Sickness. It was a basin full of this oozy water that--"
"I have seen into the Black River," Yrn said. "Chalo took me. I saw visions. I saw myself growing up healthy. Climbing mountains, swimming, dancing around bonfires, singing songs of suns' life with all the other kids. That's how I know you can't see the future. It's all a lie. Do you know if any of Cory's prophecies came true?"
Loora scowled. Somehow she didn't want Yrn to use his name. A feeling of irrational possessiveness rose up in her chest.
"I don't know anything, okay?" she snapped. "It probably was all lies. Probably none of them came true. Aughra's wrong about everything and nothing matters and there really isn't any point to us going and talking to the Mystics because it'll just be the wrong thing to do anyways."
"You're much more interesting when you're angry," Yrn said.
Scratching her short hair, Loora said, "I don't care."
The hunchedGrottan ahead of them said, "The bridge hasss fallen out. We will use the Leaper. Sstand here."
From nowhere, a dimly glowing yellow starfire appeared in her hand. In its light, Loora saw a chasm stretching across a rectangular low-ceilinged stone hall. Once, an arch had stretched across. Now it was a stub of rock pointing to the other side.
A mechanism of slate platforms sat on tricky gears carved out of some kind of strong, whitish material. The mechanism was attached to a counterweight cube of iron large enough to fit everyone Loora knew inside of it.
"Once, we used a smaller weight. It required precissse calibrations," the Grottan said. The litter was approaching, scratching on the walls as it rounded the spirals. "Then we thought, 'why not travel fassster, with lesss work?' Climb on, I will stay to operate it."
"It isn't safe," Yrn murmured.
A slash of white light as the Grottan smiled. "What issss?" she replied. A lever went tunk and Loora's legs seemed to crush beneath her as the Leaper shot her over the death-yawn of the pit.
* * *
"Out of your cage?" skekTek whispered.
"N-n-you'd unlocked it when you, ah, that is, when that odd screaming fit took you--" the bug said. "When you were hitting the ah, ah--"
"And you," skekTek said, standing several trors higher than Rian. "Assigned by the Slavemaster to infiltrate and needle and irk me, no doubt. Yes, I think I know what I want from you. Always have access to the kennels, yes, to feed your precious Mikethi, do you not?"
Rian cursed himself for revealing so much. "Yessir," he said. The beast-buzzard should've been gone for tolls!
"And who is this?"
The Podling child didn't answer. One eye was milk-white, and she stood more still at attention than any castle guard ever had.
"On a mission," skekTek slithered, "to identify the source of the enslaving light, were you? And how did you do it, may I ask, Gelfling?"
Rian gulped. No use lying--
"With, with this metal thing. It was, it was shooting out a beam, and I thought--"
"Yesss," skekTek said, "you did, didn't you? Clever. Very clever. An assistant clever enough to--hm, I rather think I'll keep you. Tell me, Gelfling, if I were to take this Mikethi from the Slavemaster, then you'd need to do what I say, wouldn't you?"
Mikethi. Brighteyes. His songbird, his heart. The feeding slot was angled, and they hadn't seen each other eye-to-eye in--Skymother, it was nearly the first anniversary o
f the raid. Rian found his hand touching his scars, remembered the first sight of the kennels, the smirk of the Slavemaster as he devilishly extracted the name of Rian's beloved. He remembered the slow healing of his wounds, remembered watching as they brought Mikethi in and built the cell around him, mortar and black concrete. The feeding slot, a long metal grate.
"I suppose I would."
They could speak, sometimes. Mikethi would shout through the slight gap in the concrete and Rian whispered back when no one could hear. Gotten so feeble lately, Mik's voice, and he could no longer sing. One of Rian's scars was earned by speaking to his brighteyes. Worth it, though.
"If you keep him where I can see him," Rian said carefully, "I'll be your assistant willingly, rather than unwillingly."
Willingly.
His father had vanished from the village too, and as a boy, Rian had wondered where he'd gone. The grave was no more than a box in the Castle's Subcroft with a name scrawled over it. And now he was following in his father's footsteps. Sometimes he wondered what the Skeksis had used to control Reuel. No answers.
"You will get me into the kennels. You will assist me in punishing the Slavemaster. I will take this Mikethi out with me. You will spend your life defending me and assisting me and guarding my lab, since this--" the Skek grabbed Lemny and squeezed, "has failed me so decisively." Lemny made a sound, and Rian gritted his teeth in sympathy. "Are we clear?" skekTek finished.
"Clear, sir," said Rian, breathing faster than a tamtail chasing leaves. "Um, the cell is made of concrete. How will you--?"
"That," said skekTek, "is not your concern."
* * *
"I feel a kinship with you. Would you hold my hand?"
A green arm and mottled brown hand reached for hers. Instead Loora walked faster, and Yrn's wooden leg creaked as he struggled to keep up.
"I understand why you recoil. When I look in the mirror, I can see that in my necrotic flesh I reflect the future deaths of everyone I meet. I am a reminder that we all die--"
She spun. "No. You're a chatterbox, and you get really touchy-touchy with me, and I'm--" I'm in love with a dead person, she didn't say. "I'm busy trying to save the world from the Light Sickness. Hurry. Up."
A scratchy sigh. Yrn creaked after her.