The Dark Crystal (8 page)

Read The Dark Crystal Online

Authors: A. C. H. Smith

BOOK: The Dark Crystal
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“I don’t know. They seem the same.”
“Must choose.”
“Could I have all three?”
“Bad habit, that. No. Choose. All life is choosing.”
“But you want me to be sure I have the right one, don’t you? You said you needed me to do that.”
“Maybe. Gelfling, huh!” She snickered. “You not first one, you know, coming here for shard. Seen plenty, I have. And, you know? Not one ever knew which. Huh!”
“So they never did find it?” Jen asked.
“Look at world. Of course” – Aughra mimicked him – “they never did find it. Lots to choose from, always have been. These outcrop crystals now, entire ones, new that is. But shards. You know what I think? Skeksis scatter them all over place so right one don’t get found.”
“What happened to those other Gelfling who came here?” Jen asked. “Could you tell me where they went?”
“That’s easy. They went
ffffft!
Skeksis picked them up on spy crystal, sent Garthim …” She ended with a shrug.
“Garthim?” Jen asked.
“That’s right. Tell you a thing, shard you want is indestructible one. But that don’t help.” She cackled. “Try hammer on destructible one! Ah-hah!”
“How about fire?” Jen suggested. “Or, or …” He looked around. “You must have things here. Chemicals.”
“Breaking only test. That’s how shard was made, don’t you know that? Don’t you know anything? When Skeksis hit big Crystal –
Kakoi
they call doing that – bang, cracks, and bits, but this shard flies off, huh? Oh, such noise! Tone-deaf, Skeksis went then, that time. I think that sound still going on in castle. Must be. Too big to decay. On and on.”
As Jen gazed at the three shards an idea began to form. Aughra’s talk about the sound of the crystal had reminded him of the high-pitched, double notes that had resounded in urSu’s cave as the image of the shard was disappearing.
He lifted his flute to his lips. Aughra peered at it. “UrRu token, that firca,” she remarked, “if I know.”
Jen blew the notes he remembered. They hung shrill in the air for a long time, under the dome. And then, like an overtone, the same sound raised an octave became audible. It was a very pure sound.
Aughra looked around, not sure what was going on, watching the ringing dome, beneath which the orrery continued to rotate its spheres. When she glanced back at Jen, he was bent over one of the shards, listening to it with a rapt expression. Then he looked at it. Unmistakably, it was glinting, catching the light in a vibrant, glowing twinkle. Jen picked it up and stared into it. He was fascinated by the infinity of refractions, turning it in his hand.
Aughra was watching him. She rubbed her hands and cackled. “So that’s it, Gelfling.”
“Yes,” Jen said, still staring into the shard. “It’s beautiful. I wonder what I’m supposed to do with it now.”
“Give it to me,” she said, holding out her knotted hand.
Jen held the shard to his breast, protectively. “You said I could have it.”
“Don’t know,” Aughra said, “don’t know.” She was shaking her head anxiously. “Give to me. Let me see. Long time I’ve wanted to know which one.” She thrust out her hand again.
“But–” Jen started to say, with some animosity.
Jen was interrupted by a loud clicking sound. Then suddenly the wall on the far side of the observatory crashed in. Through the gap monstrous Garthim swarmed, nine or ten of them. They advanced in a straight line, smashing aside benches of glassware, chairs, bits of the orrery, anything that lay in their path. The straight line they chose led to Jen.
An old horror buried deep within him stirred. Petrified, he watched the gigantic black invaders smash their way toward him.
He might have remained there until the end had his mesmerized attention not been distracted by Aughra. Screaming, she had furiously scurried across, in front of the Garthim, trying to save her precious belongings. “No!” she howled desperately. “No, no! Out, Garthim, out of my house, out! No!” She threw a frenzied glance over her shoulder at Jen. “It’s you, Gelfling, Let spy crystal see you, didn’t you? Oh,” she groaned.
The Garthim took no notice of Aughra. They advanced past her, knocking her over.
Jen, his wits returning, leaped to his feet and onto the table. He stuffed the shard into his tunic. Behind him was only the wall. He could not save himself by hiding in a cupboard. In front of him were the Garthim.
The cosmic cycle of the orrery was moving more swiftly, having lost pieces to the Garthim, and a planet was approaching Jen, on the long arc of its trajectory.
Jen waited. The Garthim were a few yards from him now. The planet swung closer, but it was starting to rise in its orbit. By the time it reached him, it would be too high for him to grasp it. He did the only thing that was left to him. He ran along the table toward the oncoming planet and, jumping into the air, wrapped his arms around the shaft on which the planet was extended. Garthim claws snapped just below his boots.
The planet carried him up and around, toward the dome of the observatory, over the heads of the Garthim. Behind him, the Garthim had upset the table with its pile of shards. The small retort that had been bubbling there fell to the ground. The viscous liquid in it spilled onto the floor and at once began to burn fiercely. The table caught fire, and the flames began to spread.
As he swung around, Jen saw Aughra below him, standing with her hands to her head, weeping and cursing. “My house,” she wailed, “my house.” He saw her pick up an astrolabe and hurl it vindictively at the Garthim.
The planet was moving rapidly, but Jen had no fear other than of the black crustaceans below. They were swiveling around to watch him, some of them standing in the flames, which seemed not to touch them. He would soon be orbiting back down to them.
At the farthest point of its trajectory, the planet passed by the high telescope gallery under the dome itself. Hanging on to the shaft, Jen swung his legs in readiness; then he propelled himself through the air and onto the gallery.
The combined velocity of his jump and the forward motion of the shaft destroyed any chance Jen had of landing steadily on his feet, and he was hurled against the wall of the dome.
The wall cracked open. Whatever material had been used to construct the dome was as brittle as an eggshell. Jen crashed through the wall and fell out of the Observatory, into the air. His momentum took him on, clear of the dome, and landed him on a hillside sloping steeply away. Terrified, with no control over his body, Jen rolled head over heels down the hill. He landed in a bush far below the Observatory, shuddering.
It was some moments before the power to move his limbs returned to him. When it did, he moved them gingerly, in case they were no longer working. He winced with bruises but wept with relief to find that he was still alive, could still walk. Gradually he caught his breath.
Above him he heard an explosion. He jerked his head in its direction and saw the entire dome go up in flames against the night sky. Above the roar of the fire and the clatter of smashing objects, he could make out Aughra’s high-pitched screaming.
“Oh, Aughra!” Jen cried out in sympathy.
He put his hand up to his breast. At least the crystal was still inside his tunic. His flute, too, had survived the ordeal.
He turned away from the hill and fled headlong into the darkness.
Far away, from across a deep ravine, Jen’s flight was observed by a scaly monster of primeval appearance, decked in rags. The Chamberlain glanced back at the distant Observatory. Against the blaze he could see the Garthim silhouetted. He turned and started to force his unwieldy body through the thick, jungly brush, taking the same direction as Jen had, into the wilderness.
A
s soon as Jen had left the valley and the funeral rites for urSu had been completed, the urRu commenced another ritual ceremony. Indeed, the new ceremony was effectively a continuation of the funeral.
UrSol the Chanter sounded a new, more staccato theme, which the rest took up as they moved out across the thalweg, under the rising suns. UrAc the Scribe fetched prepared pots of natural-colored sand; and, near the tallest of the Standing Stones, he spread it out over a circular area of which the radius was his own body length. He smoothed the sand over with a weaving batten.
Meanwhile, the others staked out the valley floor with long lines of string, carefully measured and reckoned for intersections. All the strings crossed urAc’s sand circle and were plucked in turn, making both a sound and an indentation in the sand. The sound was incorporated into the chant. Each indentation urAc filled with turquoise-colored sand. As he worked, he never ceased to chant, and what he chanted was a narrative. He described the journey of a hero.
UrAc had sand of four other colors: white, red, black, and a creamy, iridescent mother-of-pearl. He now began to use them to create his sand painting. The general form of the picture was a spiral, but across it urAc created long arcs, and at its head the icon of three concentric circles in a triangle. Along the journey of the spiral he represented some events with objects: a bird’s wing, an insect’s claw, a horn, a tooth, a burnt stick. He depicted twins, flames, and Jen’s flute. He added a number of symbols, such as the pentacle, the tetraktys, and the double helix. All the time he chanted, with the other urRu, while the suns crossed the sky and the three shadows of the Standing Stones began to converge, encroaching on the sand painting. Layer upon layer of description, prayer, anecdote, and song were laid down.
Toward the end of the day, urAc completed his work by placing bowls of water here and there, laying out small pebbles with holes in them, and, at intersections, inserting prayer sticks. As the three shadows crept closer to their point of conjunction, at the head of the sand painting, the Scribe finally drew in wavy, fiery lines of energy around the icon of the Great Conjunction. Now the sand painting was a thing alive. The power of conceptual thought that urAc had poured into his work had to be consummated very quickly before it dispersed.
The three shadows met, touching the icon. UrAc stood erect on his heavy hind legs and uttered a great cry. It was a cry of end and of beginning. As it was echoed by the rest of the urRu, around the valley, urAc obliterated the sand painting with one great sweep of his tail.
Facing the suns low on the horizon, the urRu set up a full-throated nine-tone diapason. All the rocks and stones of the valley rang to it.
H
aving escaped the evil claws of the Garthim, Jen was alone again. Through darkness, through wilderness, he had staggered away from the blazing Observatory until he reached marsh ground, where trees offered a kind of sanctuary from the dangerous world he had entered.
He wished he were back with the urRu, playing in the waterfalls. He had been at peace, there – one with the valley and with them. Everything had been in its place, harmonious. Now, it seemed as though all that life had been a sleep, a forgetting. Expelled into knowledge of the world, he did not like it much. He feared that all his acts would prove to be widows of the dreams he had once had. He felt himself to be vulnerable, piecemeal.
It was good to test oneself, and climbing the cliff had been a good test. Never again would he see anything as wonderful as what lay beneath Aughra’s dome. But the dread, the black Garthim, the doubts that Aughra had put into him, all that had fractured the soul he had carried intact within him from the valley.
He was haunted by what he had seen of the Garthim. It was as though he had known them before, in nightmares. Had Aughra summoned them? he wondered. Certainly she had not wished them to destroy her Observatory, but perhaps she had expected them to attack Jen only. Then there was the question of the shard. Would she have let him take the shard away? And she had been frightened of the Skeksis, from whom, she had said, the Garthim were sent. Should he be frightened of them, too?

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