Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal Author Quest (3 page)

“Rise, Kairn. You are forgiven,” Donam said. Orritch repeated the same.

Kairn rose slowly. “Now, why do you question my loyalty to the Skeksis?” he asked.

“Because they're lizard villains, that's why! They aren't to be trusted! They're murderers!” the fat Podling shouted. Orritch nodded unintentionally.

Kairn swallowed deep breaths but couldn't exhale. He ground his teeth and clenched his lips.

Donam touched his hand to the chest of the fat Podling, who reluctantly slid back against his chair. “There have been very troubling reports about the Skeksis, Kairn, reports that they have done terrible things to Podlings—and to Gelfling.”

“What things?” Kairn said.

Orritch replied hesitantly, “They are almost unspeakable.”

Attempting to moderate his anger, Kairn said, “But you must speak them if I am to understand why the Skeksis—whom I have sworn to serve—have been slandered so harshly.”

“Very well,” Orritch said. “Over this past trine, Podlings have slowly been disappearing: mother's sons, husband's wives, children's siblings. They were farmers working in the fields, merchants traveling to other villages, children playing in the evenings. We lived in fear—we still do. We couldn't imagine who or what could have taken them. Podlings may not be at the top of the food chain, Kairn, but we also don't have any natural predators. Thra gives to us freely, and we give freely to all who are in need. We are a gentle race. Who would want to harm us?”

Kairn felt uncomfortable. Donam's steady scrutiny unnerved Kairn, and Orritch's grave tone didn't seem to fit him. Kairn was confused; no one in the castle had ever mentioned the disappearance of any Podlings.

Orritch continued, “Then reports began to arrive. They were vague rumors at first, but recently a Gelfling—from Hallis, in fact—came to warn us. He told us that a Woodland Gelfling, a palace guard, had learned a terrible secret. He fled the Castle of the Crystal to warn the other Gelfling clans and all the gentle creatures of Thra.”

No one spoke. The party still whirled around them; none of the revelers noticed the somber table of noblemen, where the Gelfling warrior sat paralyzed. At last, Kairn worked up the strength to ask: “What was the terrible secret?”

Orritch appealed to the other Podlings with his eyes, either for strength or permission—perhaps for both. “There is a Skeksis . . .” He trailed off, then tried again: “It is said that there is a Skeksis who has manipulated the Crystal for dark experiments, and that there is another Skeksis—they call him the Hunter, but no one has ever seen him—who has been snatching Podlings and Gelfling for these experiments.”

Orritch seemed exhausted from speaking just a few sentences. His stressed expression curled his long, patchy eyebrow hairs together into tangled clumps.

Kairn could not believe these allegations, but he knew precisely which Skeksis were the subjects of these rumors. SkekTek the Scientist was a great scholar. He charted the three suns and studied the Crystal, attempting to confine its power and mystery in formulas written on skekOk's scrolls. And skekMal the Hunter was the most vicious Skeksis. He had taken Kairn hunting once, but his ferocious demeanor on the hunt shocked Kairn. Although at court he was an urbane sportsman who delighted in recounting his exotic expeditions, on the hunt he was almost feral. While hunting, he rarely spoke, he breathed hungrily, he bared his teeth, his leathery green skin shined, and his black eyes were too alive. Kairn found any excuse to avoid those hunting trips.

“I'm sorry. That's simply impossible. There must be some confusion,” Kairn said.

Falavam held Orritch's hand. He looked too exhausted and perturbed to speak another word.

Parra spoke up in his place. “No one knows what the experiments are, but afterward, the Podlings and Gelfling are not the same. They are alive but not.”

Kairn squinted and at last exhaled. “Impossible,” he repeated. “It's all impossible. I have spent my entire life at the Castle of the Crystal, and I can assure you that it is not possible.”

“Have you ever been inside skekTek's laboratory?” Donam asked.

“No. It is forbidden for any Gelfling to enter the laboratory, but how could that all happen without my knowing? No, it is not possible. The Skeksis are not capable of such malice.”

Unable to contain his anger any longer, the fat Podling demanded, “If the Hunter isn't taking these Podlings and Gelfling, who is?”

“I don't know, but I vow this: I will not assume my position as the Imperial Guardian until I have discovered the answer. This scourge is not the Skeksis. I will find out whoever is doing this, and I will slay them with the sword made for me by the Skeksis. On that I pledge my family's honor.”

Kairn stood and thanked everyone at the mizzenmens. All courteously thanked him in return, except for the fat Podling, who begrudgingly thanked him as well after substantial prodding from Donam. Kairn then turned and walked cheerlessly across the banquet, dodging the cauldrons scattered haphazardly and the hopping Podling dancers and the pounding Podling drummers. Like most of the revelers, Kairn had forgotten that the banquet was thrown in his honor, and he felt quite alien.

Once outside, he slumped into the shadows. Thra was often peaceful but never still. It was mating season for the Fizzgigs. Kairn watched the two flashes of brown fur dart after each other in the tall lasciva grass. The playful lasciva couldn't resist interfering in their courtship games—concealing one Fizzgig with a blanket of grass only to uncover him as his new love passed. And the giant ansula bugs flew in slow loops, arcing gracefully to the treetops and swooping down to the ground, again and again in a dizzy, perpetual masterpiece. Kairn used to try to catch them on summer evenings in Hallis—never while he was at the Castle of the Crystal, of course. His father, Kiff, would not tolerate that sort of behavior there.

Parra appeared in the doorway. He slid up to Kairn, who smiled at him, though it took effort. “Kairn, have you ever swallowed an ansula?” Parra asked.

Kairn laughed. “No. I've never even caught one! I used to spend hours trying. It seems so easy. They seem so slow and predictable, but things are never as easy as they look. Do you have a song to call ansulas, too?”

“No, I think I'm just better at it.” Parra winked. It was funny to see a Podling wink—to squish the cheeks of his already-squishy face. Then he lay down in the lasciva and hummed. The lasciva fell down across him, cloaking him entirely. An ansula glided low to the ground, and Parra burst out of the grass. The ansula
instantly vanished.

With his hands cupped delicately, Parra walked over to Kairn. “Open your mouth,” he said.

Kairn obliged reluctantly. Parra put his hands up to Kairn's mouth and released a still-buzzing ansula.

Kairn's eyes opened wide. “Do I chew? Do I chew?” he tried to say with his mouth closed and the ansula bouncing off the insides of his cheeks. Parra rolled on the ground, holding his belly and trying to shout, “Chew! Chew!” between his laughs. Kairn swallowed the bug whole. He burped and felt one of the dainty ansula wings flutter onto his tongue. Parra sat up in the lasciva across from Kairn. Once their laughter subsided, they didn't speak for some time. Finally, Kairn said, “They hate me.”

Parra shook his head. “No one hates you. They are very upset. These disappearances have been terrifying Podling villages across Thra for two trines. Now even Gelfling are disappearing. We want truth. We want safety. We want peace. Thra was meant for peace. The Skeksis threaten all that. To hear someone defend them wounds us.”

Parra's attempt to reassure Kairn only upset him more. “I wounded you.”

“That's not what I meant.”

“I have. I do not blame them for being wrong, but they
are
wrong, Parra. The Skeksis would not do such a thing. I will prove it.”

“Maybe, Kairn. Maybe,” Parra whispered.

They walked silently home.

Kairn had a private ritual. Whenever he departed a village, he would don his armor in seclusion and polish away all the smudges. He would confirm once more that he was alone, and then he would unsheathe his sword and artfully swing his blade, practicing with precision each maneuver taught to him by Kiff and skekVar the General.

Normally this ritual gave him all the confidence expected of a young, strong, accomplished Gelfling warrior. He would not walk that day; he would march. He assumed that each passing traveler eyed him with envy. But the morning Kairn left Greggan, he did not feel so composed. He was troubled by what Parra and the other Podlings had said. He told himself that the Skeksis could never have committed the atrocities of which they were accused. He knew them too well. He respected them too much.

Still, regardless of the Skeksis's innocence, he could feel neither pride nor confidence when he knew how much pain he had caused the Podlings at the banquet. It was the first time in his life that he had been hated. Their manners wouldn't allow them to speak it, and almost entirely prevented them from showing it, but Kairn's inexperience in being hated did not prevent him from perceiving it.

The Podling fields continued for miles. The bright fruits and calm shades undermined the Podlings' claims of calamity. How could they be facing such a dreadful crisis during such a perfect harvest? How could such evil torment a race whose mere chants Thra obeyed? It comforted him to know that he would be home the next day. While the other members of the Spriton clan lacked the close relationship with the Skeksis that Kairn's family had, they respected his family's service to the castle. Kairn recalled returning to Hallis each summer: Gelfling bounded out of their homes and servants blew the horns. Women stared longingly at his father, a widower since Kairn's birth. Kiff feigned modesty, but even as a child, Kairn knew that his father lived for the attention.

Still, even the anticipation of this homecoming did not feel right. On the one hand, Kairn craved the warmth of his own community. He felt confused, alone, dismissed. On the other hand, the Podlings' disappointment had filled him with self-hatred. He couldn't imagine receiving adulation, no matter how impressive he looked in his handsome armor.

By afternoon he had passed the fertile Podling fields and entered the barren land between Greggan and Hallis. High red rocks rose on both sides. The Spriton clan lived in caves, but the caves in this abandoned territory seemed sinister. Perhaps the stories about the dangers in these borderlands were only legends, or so Kairn hoped. Perhaps they were just the tales Woodland guards told on the castle walls to stay awake on long, late-night watches. Still, he passed the entrance to each cave with his sword drawn, peering into the black and reminding himself again and again that no one he knew had ever been attacked in the caves.

That knowledge comforted him little. Although the Podlings' accusations against the Skeksis had to be rubbish, Kairn did not doubt that Podlings and Gelfling had in fact been disappearing. Whatever terrible creature was abducting innocents would likely hide out in these caves. The tall shadows left the area cold; an outlaw could conceal himself for many trines in the maze of midnight tunnels connecting the caverns.

To one side of him, Kairn heard a heaving breath and a quickly swallowed yelp. He paused and leaned toward the noises. They did not appear to come from a cave, but rather a large hole. He stared into the hole, but saw nothing and heard nothing. Perhaps he had imagined it in his fear. He started to walk away, but he was embarrassed. He doubted his entire education as a warrior. The only true combat he had ever seen was with the Sifa clan against the Thrakars, but they were a pathetic bunch. They were almost emaciated. They had become dangerous to Gelfling only out of hungry desperation. Kairn had felt sorrowful hunting them; he felt more like a herdsman putting down sickly Landstriders than a warrior saving a village from murderous monsters.

“I will find out whoever is doing this, and I will slay them with the sword made for me by the Skeksis. On that I pledge my family's honor.”

He recalled those words. He had taken an oath to the Podlings to find whatever was terrorizing them. He shouldn't hear breaths and yelps in this dead borderland. He had to discover their source.

He slid into the hole before his legs would have the chance to fail him. He could see nothing, and he had no torch. Kairn drew his sword and spun it around him. He was in a tunnel; he felt the narrow walls on each side of him. Keeping his sword in front of him, he gently pressed his fingers against one of the cave's walls to guide himself and moved forward noiselessly. After several minutes of slow, tense steps, the wall stopped. Kairn put his hand out and felt stone on three sides. He was at the tunnel's end.

A footstep echoed. Kairn checked his own feet, as if they might have moved without notifying him, as if he could even see them. He looked around but there was only darkness everywhere. The sound's source was unclear. He turned back toward the hole through which he had entered. A small beam of light beckoned from the hole. Kairn thrust out his sword and advanced slowly. His fear had calmed him and he felt outside himself, outside the danger.

Another footstep.

Kairn was certain it had come from the left. He turned and charged forward hastily, but there was no tunnel. He bounced hard off the wall and fell, his sword clanging against the ground. He scrambled on all fours to recover it in the darkness. His hands found the blade and he anxiously grasped it. The sharp edges tore into his palms. He dropped the sword and felt the blood racing down his wrists.

“Who goes there?” a voice shouted. Kairn was too dizzy to know from where.

He picked up his sword—this time by the grip. “The warrior Kairn of Hallis, son of Kiff, subject of Queen Silva, servant of skekSo, successor to the Imperial Guardian. Show your face if you dare stand opposite me.”

The sound of a gasping rush of air answered him. Suddenly the tunnel was full of blinding light. Kairn squeezed his eyes shut; he felt like a Grottan Gelfling at the rise of the first sun. He covered his eyes and slashed his sword through the cold tunnel air.

“Put out that light!” Kairn screamed. No one obeyed.

Overriding every instinct, he wrenched his arm away from his eyes and readied himself to attack whoever was in front of him. As he searched the tunnel through his squinting eyes, however, he realized violence was quite unnecessary.

“Father!” Kairn cried.

At the opposite end of the tunnel, a weathered Gelfling stood, holding a torch whose light gradually became tolerable to Kairn. Kiff wore the same robe as Kairn, but his was soiled and hung loosely from his bony shoulders. He also wore nearly the same armor as Kairn, but his was dull and speckled with scrapes and scratches, nicks and dents. Kairn sheathed his sword and ran toward him.

“Welcome to my palace, Kairn!” he said with a laugh that crackled like the rusty grind of wagon wheels on the first day of spring. He opened his arms wide to receive his son. Their armor clacked together as they embraced. Kairn pressed his cheek against the cool black stone of his father's breastplate. He hadn't seen him in nearly a trine, and he was quite relieved to find his father rather than whatever he feared had been prowling in that tunnel.

Kiff patted him on the back and whispered, “Good to see you, my boy. Welcome, welcome, welcome.”

He sounded gentler than usual, Kairn thought.

Kiff led his son into a small room hidden cleverly off the tunnel. On the far side a simple blanket covered the rocky ground, and on the near side a tin pan leaned against a fire pit. The room was cold and smelled of charcoal. Kiff wedged the torch into a small gap in the wall and bent down to grab small cloths, which he used to tenderly wipe away the small stream of blood running from Kairn's hands. Once he had finished dressing the wounds, Kiff said, “Please, sit.”

Kairn hesitated to sit on the dirty blanket in his fine robe and armor, but he would never disrespect his father.

“Strange home for the Imperial Guardian, no?” Kiff asked with a wry smile. “But I'm an old soldier, used to this hard living.”

Kairn started to speak several times but couldn't. “I'm sorry. I just don't understand,” he finally stuttered.

Kiff leaned across him and filled two chipped clay cups with water from a dusty jug. Kairn ignored the specks of dirt swimming in the water. “These tunnels are awfully dangerous places to take an evening stroll. Were you scared?” Kiff asked.

“Of course not. I've been trained. I've spent the last trine traveling as a warrior,” Kairn said. At times he thought of Kiff more as his commander than his father.

Kiff smiled and shook his head. “You can be scared. Why, I've been scared for you this past trine, and I have more faith in you than you do in yourself.”

“Thank you. I've missed you, Father.”

“And I've missed you. I've been worried about you. Seeing you safe, I feel like I'm back at the castle.” Kiff stared at Kairn with a heavy expression and sorrowful eyes. Then with a soft sigh, he said, “Son, they say that besides the Mystics and Aughra herself, no creature on Thra is more prudent, more reasonable, more level-headed than a Gelfling. That is what they say of Gelfling.”

“But what have you found?” Kairn said, knowing that his father wanted him to ask just that.

“Fickle slaves to rumor and emotion.”

They both sipped from their cups and stared at the torch's roaring flame. Kairn was glad to see his father but felt uncomfortable; Kiff was not himself. “When are you returning to the castle?” he asked—certain that his father was not returning to the castle.

“The journey isn't safe—you haven't been to the village, obviously. Have you faced any trouble in your travels?”

“There were strange accusations from some drunk Podlings last night in Greggan.”

“It's not Podlings you have to worry about,” Kiff hissed. The proud warrior's spirit flared out from the shrinking Gelfling in dull, scratched armor. “You have to worry about the Woodland clan and about our own village. If the reports are true, you must even worry about Queen Silva. We are no longer the pride of the Gelfling, Kairn. We are outcasts.”

“Father, I don't understand.”

“And I don't know how I could explain to you. We must dreamfast.”

“Are you sure?” Kairn asked. His father, once the greatest Gelfling warrior of his generation, now slunk around bare caverns beneath anonymous lands. Kairn worried that learning whatever drove his father to this point would devastate him, too.

Kiff nodded and softly took his wrist. Their forefingers touched. Kairn shook. He hadn't dreamfasted in at least a trine: the Skeksis did not have the ability, and he never knew any of the other Gelfling he had met well enough. In any case, regardless of how many times a Gelfling dreamfasted, each time still surprised him. Kairn's chest pounded. He shut his eyes so tightly that he thought his eyelids would slip over each other. A current ran through him, somehow both coming and going at the same time. He was no longer just in the cavern. And he was no longer just himself. It had begun.