The Dark Crystal (6 page)

From the top of the grassy knoll he saw a shimmer of movement far ahead of him, beside the stream that wriggled across the plain. It looked like a line of shadows flickering first one way, then the other, back and forth. He walked down toward it. Coming closer, he saw that the shimmering was caused by a crowd of insects, nearly as large as himself. Each of them had ten long and sticklike legs. Their small bodies, high above the ground, were the color of silver gilt. As though obeying an invisible director, they were performing a curious dance, taking a few awkward steps together in one direction, and then all together reversing their movement.

Jen was not sure if they had registered his approach. They betrayed no sign of fear, yet the locus of their lateral movements began to edge closer to the stream, until several of them were dancing on the water itself.

A playful impulse prompted Jen to join their dance. He took up a position at the end of the line and stepped sideways with them and back again. Each time the movement was completed, he found that he was a little closer to the stream; and the moment came when he had to put one foot on the surface of the water if he was to maintain his position in the line. He did so with confidence and found that his foot, unlike theirs, broke the surface and sank into the soft, silty mud.

That appeared to alarm the insects. At once they abandoned their stately prancing. Each of them folded its ten legs together, and from its body spread a pair of deep-damasked wings, striped red and gray-green. In a pack, they buzzed up into the sky and circled above Jen, who stood, one foot in the mud, craning his neck to watch them.

They remained there, wheeling above him, until he had set forth again toward the hills. At some distance he looked behind him and saw that they had resumed their gaunt ballet.

He was a wanderer in a strange country, but a wanderer with a purpose or, at least, with a destination. What he was supposed to do when he arrived was a thought he kept suppressed during the day. But as he entered the foothills, the sight of a dome high up on a peak, glinting in the sunlight, sent a thrill of determination through him. He knew he had made a start in the right direction. He would find the one called Aughra and hope that from her he could gather some explanation of that other vision his dying Master had shown him: the crystal shard.

As he climbed the cliff toward the dome, he noticed a bird – or was it a bat? – hovering near him. What he did not notice was that in its talons it grasped a small crystal, violet in color, in which his image was a tiny reflection.

Jen reached a cliff ledge broad enough to afford him a rest. Sitting there, he allowed himself to gaze down and compare the distance he had climbed to that which remained. It had been hard going, and risky, this climb. Although his fingers were already sore and his thighs ached with fatigue, he reckoned with disappointment that he was only just past the halfway mark. There must no doubt be an easier route up to the dome, but urZah had impressed upon him that he had no time to spare, and walking around the foothills in search of a less arduous path to the top might take days.

He tried to relax and enjoy the view. It would have pleased him to pick out, in the terrain spread beneath him, the valley of the urRu, but he found it impossible. The far side of the plain corrugated itself into a great volcanic expanse filled with valleys, craters, and ravines.

The strange bat-bird thing was still hunting the cliff. Probably it had its nest there. No other birds could be seen. That, Jen reasoned, would be because the bat-bird was their predator. The only living things he saw on the cliff were rock spiders. He was intrigued, also, to notice that the cliff was studded with outcrop crystals of all colors. Some of them were large enough to offer him a climbing hold.

Jen took a series of deep, slow breaths to relax his muscles and prepare for the final ascent. He realized he was hungry. There had been pools and streams to drink from in the plain, but he had recognized nothing that he knew for sure was edible. Perhaps the one called Aughra would turn out to be kind and offer him food.

He started to climb again. Foothold, test it, fingerhold, test it, and up. Take it easy, a small step each time, no need to hurry. Plan ahead when you can. Keep your head upright. Foothold, test it, fingerhold, test it, and up. He had had some experience rock climbing among the waterfalls in the valley. There, if he fell, he would land in the pool. Here …

When he had recovered, he stood up and looked around for the dome. He could not see it because the top of the cliff was not yet the top of the mountain. In front of him was a craggy mass of rocks, with shrubs and grasses growing thickly. The turf where he stood was on a path that led around the rocks and, presumably, to the top. He walked along it, following its gently rising curve.

Giant hanging tendrils blocked his path. As he brushed them aside, he felt himself seized around the arms. Before he could see who his assailant was, more thongs wound around him, binding him tightly, helplessly. His feet left the ground as he was carried into the air, into the leaves of the trees, and there suspended. His writhing and kicking were all in vain, since he was gripped much too closely by the snare.

He did manage to stretch his head far enough forward to see what it was that bound him. It was the tendrils. He must be their prey. Were they carnivorous?

Then he heard some animal approaching on the ground below the trees. The undergrowth crackled beneath its feet. Its breath was loud, rasping, rheumy.

He could not see through the foliage to determine what it was. He ceased writhing and froze, scarcely breathing himself.

His heart almost stopped when a single eyeball emerged through the leaves and stared at him, un-blinkingly. All he could do was stare back at it. Very pale blue, it was heavily bloodshot, like a broken-veined leaf.

As the initial shock diminished, he could see that the eyeball was held in a gnarled hand. Now the hand withdrew the eye, and below he heard a sound that might have been the smacking of lips.

Gradually, carefully, the tendrils lowered him down through the leaves, but not as far as the ground. He hung there, still bound fast, looking at a hag who was screwing the eyeball back into her face.

When she spoke, her voice was a ruin. “You Gelfling?” she asked in his tongue.

“I am,” Jen said.

She shook her head, with its lank gray mane, and loudly sucked her teeth in doubt. “Can’t be. All dead. All destroyed. Long time since.”

“My name is Jen.” He paused for thought. “Jen the Gelfling. I have not been destroyed.”

“Ha,” she said. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Are you Aughra,” Jen asked, “who watches the heavens?”

“How you know about me?”

“I was sent by my master, urSu, the wisest of the urRu.”

She looked around nervously. “Where’s he, then? Huh? With you, is he?”

“He is dead,” Jen told her.

She sniffed. “Could be anywhere, then.”

Although her eye was back in place, her appearance was not less terrifying than her eyeball alone had been. She was stout, clad in a ragged, stained wine-colored tunic that smelled of strong chemicals. Her arms were like weathered walnut branches; he could not see her legs. Above her broad shoulders, unkempt hair straggled down a face that not only was hideous now but could never have been better than ugly: a broad nose, with hair sprouting from the gaping nostrils; a single swiveling eye; no eyebrows above either her eye or her empty socket; and two rows of blasted black stumps for teeth. Was she a woman? Jen wondered. Since the long-ago day when he had lost his mother, he had never met a female of any species that could talk to him, and he was not entirely confident that he knew the difference between the genders. UrSu had never been helpful in the matter when Jen had put questions to him. All he had answered was that the urRu had evolved as a species of neither gender, and that it was therefore a subject of which he had no concept. And since Jen had not known whether he would ever meet a female, he had not pressed his questions. About Aughra, there was something he could not name that struck him as what “female” would mean. And urZah, in speaking of Aughra, had said, “who watches the heavens and keeps her secrets.” Yet, this voice of hers, harsh and broken and short of breath, was that the voice a female had? Well, Jen reflected, although it was a brisk voice, she did speak Gelfling, however haltingly. That gave him some reassurance that, on this mission of his, those he met might know his language.

“Can you release me from these tendrils?” he asked.

“Could do,” she answered but did not move. “Where you come from?”

“I have come from under the mountain, where I dwell with the urRu.”

She reacted only by muttering, “Gelfling, hmm?” and nodding. She pinched the flesh of his arms, where they were free of the tendrils’ embrace, then thrust her snout forward to sniff his body. Involuntarily, he gave a little cry of nervousness.

After a few yards, Aughra wheeled to her right, apparently walking into the rocks. Bushes and tall grasses drew aside for her, and revealed a hole leading into the hills. She ducked inside. Jen hesitated for a moment before following her. But there was nothing else for him to do.

The hole became a tunnel through the rocks. Blinded by the darkness a few steps in, Jen stumbled along, guided by the sounds of Aughra’s clomping feet but afraid of crashing against the stone. Several times he called out to her to wait for him, that he could not see where he was going, but she neither answered him nor paused. With his hand outstretched before him to protect himself, Jen was dimly aware that the tunnel was a circuitous maze.

Suddenly there was a brief blaze of light ahead of him. Aughra had opened a door at the end of the tunnel and passed through it. Darkness enfolded Jen again. He blundered against the tunnel’s walls, close to panic, until his hands encountered the door and pushed it open.