Tides of the Dark Crystal

by J. M. Lee

  Naia drew herself up, still clenching a fist around her dagger.

  “Don’t call me your dear, Skeksis,” she said. “I know about you and your kind. I know what you’ve done.”

  So much for not challenging the Skeksis.

  skekSa placed a hand against her breast, leaning back and raising her brows as if scandalized.

  “You know what I’ve done! So then, you know that I left the Castle of the Crystal hundreds of trine before you were born, when I was disgusted with the way skekSo chose to rule? Hmm? You know that I’ve spent the last seventy trine alone on the Silver Sea, as far from the land as I can sail? Only returning to Cera-Na to gift my little ones with the treasures I’ve found abroad?”

  Amri felt the sarcasm thick as salt air. He didn’t feel bad for her, and she was probably lying, anyway. Naia’s cheeks twitched where she clenched her jaw. She was angry, too, but like Amri, she held her tongue.

  “That’s enough,” Maudra Ethri said. “Please, Lord Mariner. Do you know what’s happened to Tae?”

  “She’s been drained, that’s what,” Naia said. “Just look at her face and her eyes, the way they see nothing. This is exactly what it looked like when I saw the Gelfling in the tower of the castle. After they’d been drained by the Skeksis Scientist.”

  Amri felt ill watching skekSa brush Tae’s hair back with her talons, then touch her cheek. It was eerily gentle—more deceit, as sweet as nectar and deadly as poison.

  “She hasn’t been drained, little Drenchen. Look closer. Look at her eyes. If she’d been drained by skekTek’s diabolical machine, you’d see the milk of death upon them. Isn’t that so? But not here. No, she’s been drugged. By what, I’m not sure, but she can be cured if we can find out what has poisoned her. But we must be quick. The toxins are taking their toll, and she may become very ill if we don’t find an antidote soon.”

  skekSa held Tae’s hair away from her face, beckoning them closer. None of them moved, until Naia stepped bravely into the Skeksis’s reach. She knelt beside Tae, almost touching skekSa’s leathery claw, daring her to make a move. In the face of the fear pinching all his insides, Amri joined Naia. He was afraid, but he refused to let her stand before the Skeksis alone.

  “I hate to admit it, but she’s right,” Naia said. “Look.”

  He’d seen the milky blue haze on Tavra’s eyes, when she’d been controlled by the spider. He’d seen it in Rian’s dreamfast, overtaking Mira like a frost. But Tae’s eyes were clear and bright, reflecting the starry sky and the fire that roared nearby.

  Still, this had to be the work of the Skeksis. It couldn’t be a coincidence.

  “How can we know what poison?” Maudra Ethri asked. “If we don’t know and give her the wrong antidote, it could make her condition worse.”

  skekSa leaned one aristocratic elbow on her knee, tapping a talon against her snout.

  “It would be quickest to simply determine who poisoned her,” she said. “That person would be in the best position to know which poison they used. Who here in Cera-Na has motive to poison your dear Tae?”

  Ethri paced, kicking up sand in her distress. It was not the stoic countenance of a maudra but the worried agitation of a friend. Though it betrayed her inexperience as a leader, her concern for Tae was the first thing that endeared her to Amri.

  “I don’t know! Everyone loves Tae. She has no enemies, makes friends wherever she goes. I can’t imagine who would want to do this to her.”

  “She said she had to meet someone when she left us on the docks,” Kylan said. “Whoever poisoned her must have done it after she left us. It wasn’t that long ago.”

  “But she didn’t say with who, so all that does is tell us it’s a poison that works quickly,” Amri added. He thought over every poison he had learned of, smelled, and even tasted in the Tomb of Relics. There were herbs and venoms that could cause the cold skin or the paleness, or even the waking sleep, but none could account for them all. And who was to say what he’d found in the Tomb was exhaustive? More likely it was just a tiny collection representing an infinite world he’d never seen.

  skekSa didn’t seem concerned about any of this, but then again, she was a Skeksis. She snapped a claw, waving Naia closer.

  “Drenchen girl. Do you possess the healing talent of your clan?”

  Naia glanced at Kylan and Amri, then nodded.

  “Some,” she replied.

  “Then come closer. Use your Gelfling magic. Use your vliyaya. Tell me what you sense about her. Perhaps you can unearth a clue that will help us save her.”

  Naia was wary, and Amri almost told her not to do it. Using her vliyaya in the presence of a Skeksis was dangerous. Vliyaya meant flame of the blue fire—the blue fire of Gelfling essence. What if it piqued skekSa’s appetite? But Tae was dying and they needed answers. Amri shouldered his coat back, the way he’d seen angry Captain Madso do, to make sure skekSa saw the hilt of the sword at his hip.

  skekSa took note of it, sniffing as if he’d said something amusing. But all she said was “Go on, then. Hold out your hands. Sense it.”

  Amri nodded to Naia and she nodded back, releasing her grip on the dagger. She settled closer to Tae, holding her palms out, and Amri waited for the blue glow. Before it came, Naia wrinkled her nose. She leaned in and gave Tae a big sniff.

  “She smells like Drenchen nectarwine,” she said.

  Amri frowned. “That doesn’t sound like a poison. That sounds like the opposite of a poison.”

  “It’s made from fermented sogflower nectar, used in recipes for healing and merriment.”

  “Hmmm!” skekSa crooned, stroking the feathers under her chin. “And here in the north, there must be so many other merriment potions that are easier to come by. Only someone with a taste for sogflower would make the effort to have it on hand.”

  For an uncomfortable moment, Amri envied the Skeksis captain’s knowledge. She had lived for so many trine and traveled so far and wide. Her mental compendium of medicinal knowledge had to be staggering. Maudra Ethri’s gaze narrowed, her gem eye glinting.

  “Staya.”

  She turned toward the docks and put two fingers in her mouth, signaling with a series of short, ear-piercing whistles. Moments later, two Sifa alighted, sounding of bells and chimes. They bowed to Ethri and to skekSa.

  “Find Staya,” Ethri ordered. “Bring him to me, now.”

  “Grand, simply grand,” skekSa said. “Our first clue. Perhaps Staya could bring some to share. I could use some potions of merriment m’self.”

  Amri regarded the Skeksis, thinking about Tavra’s warning. The Vapra on his shoulder had gone utterly silent, hidden in his hair. The Skeksis Lords would all know the names of the All-Maudra’s daughters. Perhaps even their voices. What problems could it cause if one of them found that Princess Katavra lived? How easily did the Skeksis communicate with one another? Dozens of questions Amri had never even thought of sprang up as he stood on the beach, paralyzed by circumstance.

  Kylan caught his arm, squeezing gently.

  “Don’t panic,” he whispered, surprisingly calm. “She won’t do anything in the open with so many Sifa about, so long as we don’t give her a reason to. Act like everything is normal and don’t challenge her.”

  Amri gulped and tried to calm himself, told himself Kylan was right. It was the song teller who had faced down skekLi the Satirist, had told songs before the Skeksis Lords when they’d visited the Spriton village. The Spriton, the Stonewood, the Vapra—and apparently the Sifa, too, were used to the Skeksis. Respected and revered them. Even if Lord skekSa were part of the Emperor’s scheme to harvest Gelfling essence, it would be foolish for her to betray the Sifa so publicly. And if the Skeksis were anything, it was not foolish.

  Act normal. What was normal, anyway?

  “Let go—Ethri! What’s all this about? Lord skekSa—”

  Staya
yanked away from the Sifa who had brought him and dropped to a deep bow. As soon as his formalities were complete, he strode toward Maudra Ethri, sand spraying from his boots. The two met almost nose to nose, Ethri with a cool gaze, though Staya was taller and broader. Ethri stared the Drenchen down, then turned to the side and pointed at Tae.

  “You’ll answer my questions first, Staya,” Ethri said. “What do you know about this?”

  Staya took in the scene, unconscious Tae resting under the silent gaze of a Skeksis. “What’s happened to her?” he asked.

  “You tell me. She smells of nectarwine, and you’re the only one in a day’s flight who drinks the sweet stuff. What’ve you done to her?”

  “I didn’t do anything.”

  “It’s unbecoming to lie to your captain maudra,” skekSa reminded him mildly. “Even by omitting the truth. Especially a truth that may save little Tae’s life.”

  Staya gulped audibly, then tossed his hair back.

  “Tae came to me this evening. She wanted to talk. We drank. That’s all.”

  “And then?” skekSa asked.

  “And then she left! Not long ago. She must have come straight here. She was wobbly when she left, but I only thought she couldn’t hold her nectar!”

  “Did she leave with all her jewelry intact?” Ethri asked.

  “Her jewelry? Ethri, now you call me a common thief? What need have I for her dainty lassywing metals?” That much was plain. Staya was laden with twice the number of bangles and jewels Tae had been. He didn’t need any more.

  “Her pulse is growing weak,” Naia said. “If we don’t find out what’s poisoned her”—she shot a look at skekSa—“or drained her, soon, I don’t know if she’s going to make it.”

  “Staya, if you know anything . . . !” Ethri warned. “At least, think of Tae!”

  “And the penalty for deceit,” skekSa added, narrowing her diamond-shaped pupils. Staya turned away, clenching his fists, and Naia shouted,

  “Out with it!”

  When Staya turned back, the apprehension was gone from his face.

  “I put zandir in her nectarwine,” he confessed. “To make her tell the truth. And I’m glad I did, because she told me what you’re planning, Ethri!”

  Ethri went rigid like she’d been struck by lightning, every facet of her gem eye igniting with light and fire.

  “What’s he talking about?” Naia asked lowly.

  “Ah, the truth, the truth,” Captain skekSa sang. She rose and swept closer to Tae, stooping to once again lift the unconscious Sifa into her arms. “It all comes out in the dark.”

  “Staya, that’s not—” Ethri was on her back foot now. She watched skekSa wrap Tae in her coat. “Staya, I’ll explain. Lord Mariner, where are you taking her?”

  “Now we know what is wrong with her. Come, quickly. To my ship.”

  “Why do we have to go to your ship?” Amri cried.

  “I have the means to heal her there. More reliable means, that is, than burning colored dust and reading bones over her slowly dying body. If this little Drenchen healer comes with me, we’ll have Tae back on the wing in no time.”

  Amri didn’t want Naia or any of them to go anywhere with the Mariner, especially not some Skeksis ship where they’d be trapped, floating out on the wide sea. skekSa could do whatever she wanted to them there, and no one would notice. They’d sink to the bottom of the ocean, forgotten as the Grottan clan, nameless to history and remembered by no one.

  But Tae was dying, and Naia wasn’t afraid.

  “I’m not letting you take Tae alone to your ship, that’s for certain,” she said. To Ethri, she added, “And you. After this, I want to know exactly what Staya is talking about.”

  Maudra Ethri pinched her lips, indignant as a seabird trapped in a net.

  The five of them followed skekSa down the dock, Maudra Ethri and Staya in the lead while Amri and Kylan held closer to Naia, who marched ahead, shoulders squared and jaw set. Amri tried to be like her. He hated being afraid. As he watched skekSa’s massive shoulders swaggering ahead, he tried to grab his fear in the hands of his heart. Squeeze it like clay, molding it into something else.

  None of them spoke; the Skeksis ahead seemed to hear all that happened around her. Even Tavra was silent, though Amri felt her holding his shoulder as tightly as he gripped the hilt of his sword.

  skekSa led them down a long dock that stuck straight out into the ocean from the end of the headland, far away from any of the other Sifa ships. They gazed out into the open, endless water, and Amri remembered the moan he’d heard when they’d first arrived in Cera-Na.

  “I don’t see any ship,” Kylan said.

  “Surely, you wouldn’t let your eyes deceive you.”

  skekSa held out the claw that wasn’t cradling Tae. A smaller hand emerged from inside her coat—one of her four. It dropped a shining metal pipe in her other palm, and she lifted it to her mouth. A long, high-pitched, almost inaudible note rang out over the ocean. Amri’s sensitive ears flattened on the sides of his head, and Tavra latched on to his neck in pain.

  When the note ended, a rumbling, low moan replied.

  “That sound . . . ,” Amri gasped.

  Waves churned in the deep water off the end of the headland. Under the pale light of the two Sisters shining above, the ocean split across the spined ebony back of an enormous beast. They all watched as the thorny shell of the biggest creature Amri had ever seen rose from the water. Its carapace glistened in the moonlight as the ocean water streamed down its sides. Its shell alone was as large as the Omerya, though its obsidian color stood in contrast to the brightness of the maudra’s coral ship.

  The moaning grew louder and louder until the behemoth’s cavernous head breached the surface of the sea. Waves sloshed against the dock. It groaned again, the sound so loud, Amri felt it rattle in his chest.

  Moments later, a small boat detached from the great beast’s shell, pulled by an armored, spiny fish with glowing spots along its back. The fish brought the boat to the dock.

  skekSa gestured casually, taking care not to jostle Tae.

  “All aboard.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Amri did not want to board the ship.

  It wasn’t even a ship. It was a living, breathing, heaving, groaning monster. But he didn’t have a choice. Before he knew it, the small boat thunked against the side of a scaly dock carved into the creature’s thick, barnacle-covered shell. Kelp and seaweed were strung from every prickling spike that jutted from the enormous thing, and in some places fish flopped where they’d been marooned as the creature had surfaced.

  “This way, my dears,” skekSa said. She pushed open a scale, revealing a doorway big enough for her not-insignificant figure. In the Skeksis went, leaving them little choice but to follow.

  The passageway inside was a slope reinforced with metal and shell, and Amri committed the path to memory in case they needed to escape. The flesh that made up the artery twitched and spasmed underfoot and all around, circulating the fluids in the wall and giving off the occasional draft of tepid, thick air smelling of fish and blood. Glass lamps filled the passage with an ethereal, mysterious gold light. As reluctant as Amri was to be treading inside the behemoth’s body, he couldn’t help but stare as he passed.

  “It isn’t far,” skekSa called over her shoulder. “We’ll bring Tae back to her good health soon enough. Watch your step here, looks like the cleaners have not reached this far up the corridor, hmm . . .”

  skekSa took a wide step over something that lay across the way. It was a big bloodred worm, its slick skin drying up even in the damp air. It twitched, nearly dead, as they stepped over it, one at a time.

  Aside from the dying worm, they saw no crew or accompaniment aboard the dank, dark ship. skekSa reached a widening in the tunnel and blew a series of chirps on her whistle. The flesh in the wall tremble
d, scales folding back and spines retracting to reveal a chamber.

  “Welcome to my laboratory.”

  They must have been deep under the behemoth’s shell, for the ceiling was high and structured with beams and rods and poles. A large chandelier of the golden lamps glowing with a fireless light hung from the center of the ceiling, illuminating a long row of shelves stacked with bottles and jars and flasks, and on the other end an expansive library of books. Crystals, looking glasses, lenses, and other objects littered every surface.

  skekSa found a table stacked high with scrolls and cleared it with a single swoop of her free arm.

  “Come, bring that cloth. Make a pillow for her sweet flutterling head.”

  Kylan and Ethri did as she asked, and they gathered around Tae. The Sifa girl’s skin was nearly white now, her breath so shallow, Amri couldn’t tell if she was breathing at all.

  “Will she live?” Staya asked, almost equally as pale with guilt and worry.

  “She needs cleansing and hydration,” skekSa said. “Water to flush the toxins from her body, and life to replace that which has been sapped away.”

  “Zandir wouldn’t have caused this,” Amri said. “It’s a truth dust. It—it doesn’t have this effect, and neither should nectarwine.”

  “Astute, my little Grottan apothecary. However, the zandir flower, known to unlock the mind, is less commonly known to be a distant relative of the sogflower. When taken together, the fruit of the sogflower is awakened by the zandir pollen. It results in a spore that causes the worst effects of both plants: dehydration, loss of blood pressure. And of unlocking the mind, yes—to a degree most severe. Had Staya known this, surely he wouldn’t have given both to Tae in one cup.”

  Staya looked away, ears flattening. “I didn’t know. I wasn’t trying to hurt her.”

  “So she wasn’t drained,” Kylan said, eyeing the refracting lenses that rested on a tray nearby. Even though the contraptions all around them had the sophistication of Skeksis design, there was no way skekSa could harness the power of the Crystal. Not from here, so far from the castle.