by J. M. Lee
“I told you that already, little Spriton,” skekSa said as she brushed through her equipment. She found a large, bubble-shaped flask with a stopper, then kept rummaging until she procured a long tube, pulling it from under a pile like entrails from carrion. skekSa noticed the others standing around the table and barked,
“It’s too crowded in here. Ethri, take them out! Except for you, little apothecary. The rest, get out. Give us room to work.”
“Yes, Lord skekSa,” Ethri said. “Come on, Staya. Spriton.”
Amri tried not to shake while he stood beside the table, watching Maudra Ethri lead Staya and Kylan away. He didn’t want to remain in the room with skekSa, but then again he would rather have stayed than left Naia alone. At least skekSa hadn’t noticed Tavra hiding on his shoulder.
“Drenchen girl,” skekSa said. “Do you have a name?”
Naia paused. She had not given her name to the Mariner yet—the name that had been attached to the word traitor by the Emperor skekSo himself. Amri tensed, wondering if he could possibly defend them with Tavra’s sword in these quarters, buried deep in the behemoth ship’s belly.
“Naia,” she replied boldly.
“Yes. You have the gift, Naia, do you not? Come over here.”
No recognition salted skekSa’s command. Naia passed a glance back to Amri and did as the Skeksis directed, moving so she was under skekSa’s arm beside Tae. Amri hated how close they were to the Skeksis, but there was nothing that could be done now. Not if they wanted to save Tae and escape the living ship alive.
“Hands here. Yes. Close your eyes and focus . . . And you, Grottan. You’ll be our assistant. You must have a name as well?”
“Amri.”
“Amri, then. Fetch water from the spigot.”
In a cluster of steaming pipes near an iron woodstove was a pair of spigots. The pipe leading to one spigot was perspiring and cold, the other snaking from out of the stovepipes hot to the touch.
“Hot or cold?” he asked, picking up an empty basin.
“Warm. But not hot, or her skin will burn. Once you’ve filled that basin, grind some soothing salts into it. From the rack, something for hydration. Figure it out yourself, I’ve got to help your friend now.”
Amri wrenched on the spigot knobs, which were made for a Skeksis-size claw, not Gelfling hands. While the water trickled into the basin, some from the hot and more from the cold, he climbed onto the shelf under the apothecary rack. skekSa’s inventory was overwhelming, with everything from hooyim roe to nulroot powder. If Tae was suffering from a spore infection, with cold skin and pale face—
“Hold your hands here. The spores gather in the lungs . . . yes. Oh, you’re a quick study, my girl. It seems you’ve trained. Under Maudra Laesid, perhaps?”
skekSa’s crooning voice was like a wash of ink, filling in the fibers of a raw sheet of paper. Naia was reserved with her answers, though her hard-talking upbringing made her awkward with lies.
“Yes,” she said.
“The Blue Stone Healer. Her name is well-known. I heard from Lord skekZok that she had twins, one a son who went to serve my kin at the Castle of the Crystal, one a daughter who inherited her abilities with healing vliyaya. Oh, what I’d give to meet the two of them. Twins being so rare among Gelfling and all.”
Amri’s skin crawled. skekSa knew. Of course she did. They had been stupid to come here and stupid to trust her. Now they were trapped in her laboratory, deep in her disgusting behemoth ship and surrounded by water. They would disappear into the endless sea and never be heard of again. The fear in his gut writhed, trying to escape his grasp, trying to eat him from within.
“What are we going to do?” he whispered to the spider on his shoulder. For once, he wished she would tell him what to do. Anything to get them out of this awful place alive.
“We’re going to wait,” Tavra said, so quietly only he could hear her. “Right now the only thing we can do is to hope she truly can cure Tae and that we have an opportunity to escape.”
Her stoic voice calmed the panic. He browsed the jars and canisters, trying to both stall and hurry at the same time. There were endless containers of spices, dusts, and potions, some marked and some so old their labels had dissolved in the tide of time. Amri had no idea if they were all scents and salts, or if some contained poisons. Yet others could most certainly be both, given the right circumstances and time.
Like the Skeksis, Amri thought. He recalled for a moment the words of days past relived in countless songs: The Skeksis Lords gathered in the Castle of the Crystal, radiant in their decadence. They had been born to the world already godlike, with knowledge about the stars and the earth, equipped with the technological magic of science. For hundreds of trine they had watched over the Crystal and the castle. They had cared for the Gelfling, their favored wards. Cared for them even when Mother Aughra had disappeared.
Hundreds of songs over hundreds of trine told of their glory.
All lies.
Amri plucked a jar from the wall and opened the lid. A sweet, warming scent wafted out of it, calming and tingling a place in his forehead. It flooded his mind with the memory of Domrak—a dust made from the moss that grew under the roots of the Sanctuary Tree. The Grottan had lived since the beginning of time in the shadows and caves, making the dust and poultices. Alone in the dark. And look what it had gotten them. Forgotten and neglected, the first to fall to the Skeksis. The Shadowling way had failed them.
Now here he was, doing as skekSa told him without protesting. Despite the lies the Skeksis had told them all, despite how the Lords of the Castle had begun plucking from the Gelfling as he was about to pluck from the scented salts. He would never become a hero if he kept doing things the Grottan way. Alone and hiding in the dark.
So this time, Amri asked himself what a daylighter would do.
The room glowed blue. Naia was working her healing vliyaya, intently focused as skekSa put a hand on her shoulder, crooning into her ear. Amri hastily shook the moss dust into the warm water, letting the scent waft throughout the chamber. He wanted it to overpower everything else, especially the stench of the behemoth’s pulsating insides.
“What’s going on over there, assistant?” skekSa called.
“Coming,” Amri said. He didn’t pick up the basin. Instead, he drew his sword.
Tavra pinched him, hissing in his ear, “Amri, no. Don’t be a fool!”
“There are only so many Skeksis,” he whispered. “After tonight there could be one less.”
“She’ll kill you. She’ll kill us all!”
He looked at skekSa. Her back was to him, in between him and the table where Tae lay, guiding Naia’s hands and speaking gently in her ear. She was distracted, focused. Ignoring him, as everyone always did. He had to strike now.
“Amri, no!”
Tavra pricked him, then pricked him again when he ignored her. Each time it felt like a tiny sting, numbing his movement. But it wasn’t enough, and he didn’t need her telling him what to do. Heart pounding, he crept toward skekSa’s back on silent feet, hand sweating. She wouldn’t see him, and if he was quick, he didn’t have to be good with a sword. He just had to be fast.
“Assistant?” skekSa asked, turning. “Where’s that water?”
As skekSa moved her shoulder back to look for him, he lunged toward the Mariner’s fleshy neck, bracing himself for contact—
“Amri, stop!”
His blade tasted nothing but air. Every muscle in his body was rigid, unresponsive, held immobile by the tiny words echoing through his mind. Tavra had done it. His neck throbbed from the eight needles driven into his skin.
The blue light from Naia’s hands died as she yelped and jumped back.
“Amri—what in Thra’s name—”
skekSa grabbed the sword by the blade and, in his surprise, yanked it from his grasp. Quick as an eel snatchin
g a fish, she plucked the spider from Amri’s neck and dropped her on the table beside Tae.
CLUNK.
Down came a bottle, swiftly containing Tavra in a thick glass prison.
Amri’s mind flooded back to him, regaining control of his body, but all he felt was sick. He pressed his hand against his neck where Tavra had let blood. His heart pounded faster than his lungs could keep up with. He faced the Skeksis he’d tried to kill—tried, and failed. Now they were all going to die.
“Interesting,” skekSa said. She turned away from him as if nothing had happened. “Ah, there she is. Good evening, my dear.”
Consumed by his attempt to kill the Mariner, Amri had failed to notice that Tae was awake. Naia grabbed her shoulder and helped steady her as she sat up. The paleness was fading from her cheeks. She coughed, then wheezed, then spat when Naia held out a pail that had been waiting below the worktable.
“Where am I?” Tae mumbled, holding her head.
“Take it easy. You’re still weak.”
Naia rubbed Tae’s back and stared at Amri. He didn’t know how to explain what he’d done, what had happened, so he kept his mouth shut. He wasn’t sure who he was angrier with, himself for what he’d tried to do or Tavra for stopping him.
The Mariner stood back, pulling a lace handkerchief from her coat. She handed it to Amri and gestured.
“For your neck,” she said. “Now fetch that water, will you? Then we’ll discuss your little spider problem.”
CHAPTER 11
While Tae soaked her feet in the basin of water, skekSa left Amri and Naia to bring the others back in. Amri kept the cloth skekSa had given him pressed against his neck until the bleeding stopped, avoiding eye contact with the spider in the jar.
“I have a headache that’s something terrible,” Tae grumbled.
Naia moved her hands, blue light filling the basin and soaking Tae’s ankles and legs. “You’re dehydrated. I was able to remove the spores . . . or most of them, with skekSa’s help. You might be coughing up flowerets for a few days, but you should keep feeling better as time passes.”
“Tae!”
The laboratory warmed with life and noise again as Maudra Ethri, Staya, and Kylan reentered. While Ethri clasped Tae’s hands, Kylan pointed at the turned-over jar.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“We need to talk about that,” skekSa agreed. “Among a great many other things.”
She found a chair hidden beneath a pile of furs and scrolls, clearing it so the pile was on the floor in a heap instead, and took a seat. She stretched one arm to snatch a dusty decanter from where it was half-buried under books. The cork popped out between her teeth, and she took a long glug of the burgundy liquid. With a free hand, she gestured.
“Go on, then. Let it all out. All the pieces are here. I will preside, to make sure no one gets untoward . . . or tries to kill me.”
The last she tossed like a stick on the fire in Tavra’s direction, though the spider had retracted all her legs so she looked like any other gem resting inertly on the table. Amri soured with guilt. He had been the one who’d tried to kill skekSa, not Tavra. And after seeing how easily the Mariner had torn his sword from his hands, he realized the Vapra soldier had been right. There was no way he was going to put an end to skekSa, especially not here in her laboratory with a blade with which he had no skill.
He wanted to tell them the truth. Wanted to apologize to Tavra for putting her in this position, to Naia and Tae for endangering them, but held his tongue. skekSa had not retaliated. So long as she thought it was the spider’s idea, perhaps they could escape with their hearts still beating. He wished for everything this hadn’t happened, but it had. He only hoped they could survive long enough for him to make up for his foolish mistake.
But skekSa ignored the spider and Amri. She waved at Staya, inviting him to speak.
“First matter. You had a grievance, I believe? I bid you air it.”
The captain trembled and hung his head. Before responding to skekSa’s invitation, he turned to Tae, and Amri saw honest regret in his pinched cheeks and wrinkled brow.
“Tae, I didn’t mean for this to happen to you. I didn’t know. I wanted to ask you about the rumors I’d heard about Maudra Ethri. The zandir pollen was a mistake. If you had died, I would never have forgiven myself.”
“Then you are quite lucky, aren’t you?” Tae quipped, though it lacked energy. skekSa coughed loudly, waving her decanter so the drink inside sloshed impatiently.
“Enough apologies. I want grievances!”
Staya hesitated, eyes shifting to skekSa and then over to Maudra Ethri. Like the other Sifa on the beach, he was reluctant to confront her. No wonder the maudra wasn’t used to being challenged.
“Come on, out with it,” Naia said.
“There’s been a rumor adrift in the bay,” Staya began. “That because of the message in the pink petals’ dream, and the growing whispers that the Skeksis have betrayed us, you called us all here not to rally us to rise against the Skeksis, but to gather us to flee.”
All eyes went to Maudra Ethri. Amri thought she might lie, or at least speak another truth. One less cowardly than running away. She didn’t.
“It’s true. We sail tomorrow at sunset.”
Staya gasped, as if he hadn’t really expected to hear the truth.
“How could you,” he whispered.
Naia’s reaction was more intense. “What!” she exploded. “You mean you plan to sail out to sea and leave the rest of the Gelfling to fight the Skeksis?”
“You will restrain your tone with me, Naia,” Maudra Ethri bellowed. “If I choose to lead my clan out from under Emperor skekSo’s claws, that is my choice to make.”
Staya found his footing, raising his voice against his maudra, though not so bluntly as Naia. “But, Maudra, you ignore the signs! The wind is against us. The tide is against us. With every limb of its body, Thra pushes us back toward the south, yet you’d sail in the face of that? You’d trust a Skeksis over the signs of Thra?”
“I don’t need the wind or the tide! The Lord Mariner has looked after the Sifa since we first touched toe to the sea. Has sailed with us far from the Castle of the Crystal and the traitor Skeksis. We have our Sifa charts and navigators, and skekSa’s ship will break the waves for us. She has promised us this, and I believe her.”
skekSa’s only response was to take another swig of her drink, as if she were watching a performance and was pleasantly entertained. Staya turned, cheeks red, to the Sifa girl recovering on the Skeksis’s worktable.
“Tae, what do you make of this?” he asked.
Tae paused. Whatever she was going to say died in her mouth when Ethri spoke first: “Tae is my first-wing. She has known of this plan since we began making it.”
Amri’s mind reeled. They had come all this way to win over the Sifa, to bring their torch to the hearth fire, and only to find this. A Skeksis, and a plan to abandon the other Gelfling and save themselves.
Naia faced Ethri.
“Onica believed you were brave,” she growled. “I wanted to believe her. But now I know you’re nothing but a coward and a traitor.”
For a moment, Ethri looked her age. Only slightly older than Naia, maybe even as lost and confused as Amri felt himself.
“The first to stand are the first to be struck down,” Ethri said.
“But the All-Maudra—” Amri began, but Ethri would have none of it. Even if they’d had proof, Amri guessed it wouldn’t have changed her mind. The youth vanished, and she was bold again, the maudra of the brazen, wild Sifa.
“Staya, you are welcome to remain in Cera-Na if it pleases you. Stay here and die. But if you will choose wisely, then you will set sail with the rest of the clan tomorrow night.”
Ethri helped Tae down and bore her weight as she left. Staya hesitated, glancing to Naia a
nd then to skekSa. For a moment, Amri thought he might continue to fight—that he might take a stand for what he believed in. But instead, he looked away, shaking his head slowly before striding after his maudra.
When they were gone, skekSa joined the others around the jar on the table.
“Now then, on to other matters.” In a single garish movement, she lifted the jar and flung it over a shoulder so it crashed against the wall. She leaned in and sneered. “Tell me what you want, Arathim. Spider. Have you reported all this to the Emperor, then? Shall I expect he and General skekUng will arrive shortly to dispatch me? Or will it be skekMal, your mad pet?”
Tavra did not respond. If she spoke, her nature could be revealed—or even worse, her identity. Amri floundered as skekSa rooted through her tools and finally lifted a pestle from a granite bowl and cried, “Let’s see how well crystal-singers grind to dust!”
“No! She’s not Arathim!” Before she could bring the pestle down, Kylan scooped Tavra up and held her close.
“Of course it’s Arathim,” skekSa retorted. “It’s a spider, isn’t it? Sworn to Emperor skekSo. The crystal-singers, the silk-spitters, the whole squiggly lot of them. Make my scales crawl, they do.” She eyed Kylan suspiciously, but tossed the pestle over her shoulder to join the broken jar. “What’s going on here?”
Amri gulped. They couldn’t tell skekSa about Tavra, but if the spider race—the Arathim, was that their name?—were sworn to the Emperor, then surely skekSa would force them to explain what one was doing on her ship. Wouldn’t she? But what could they say that wouldn’t reveal Tavra to the Skeksis?
When no one spoke, skekSa shrugged. She reached down, plucking the sword she’d yanked from Amri’s grasp off the damp floor. She held out the sword to him, hilt first, and as he grasped it, she looked him in the eye.
“Try as you might to keep it to yourself, one day you will tell me,” she said, almost as a threat. “I will wait. After all, I have eternity.”
She let go, and Amri gingerly took the sword. If she believed Tavra was not Arathim, then she knew it was he who had tried to kill her. Not the spider.