The Dark Crystal (13 page)

Jen was wandering toward a dilapidated doorway. He was enchanted by the ruins, which he now saw were more than just the one house. Through the doorway, other walls and courtyards came into view. The stonework was graceful, with the remains of carvings evident here and there. The floors, where they were not covered with debris from the caved-in roofs, were apparently tiled.

“Don’t go in, Jen.” Kira’s voice was suddenly tense.

“Why not?”

“I was told not to. Ever.”

“Why? What’s the danger?”

“I don’t know. The roofs might fall in on you. The Pod People would never go inside. Bad things happened here once. The Old Ones were killed by the Skeksis. Jen!”

“I have to.” Jen meant exactly what he said. No mere idle curiosity was luring him into the ruins but an affinity he immediately felt with the place. He could not begin to explain it. He was being drawn inside, that was all he knew.

As if to confirm his impulse, lying in the doorway among the leaves was the shard, the blade of its dagger shape pointing inside the ruins like a compass needle. Jen hesitated a moment, then decided not to retrieve it. That was a decision he would rather defer for now. He walked through the doorway.

Then he turned round, looking back at Kira. “Come on,” he said and held out his hand.

She gazed at him, doubtful and anxious.

More persuasively he repeated, “Come on, Kira. We must see what’s in here.”

With a slow shrug and pursing her lips, she crossed the glade. At the doorway she stopped. “I’m afraid,” she muttered to herself, almost in apology.

Jen did not hear her. He had already turned back and was stepping cautiously into the ruined building.

Kira, too, noticed the shard lying on the ground. She picked it up and placed it in her pouch. Then, scooping up Fizzgig and clutching him close to her, she followed Jen into the ruins.

Everything Jen saw delighted him, in its proportions and workmanship, in its deft taste in decoration. Though ruined, the buildings still possessed a dignity, a noble bearing. He walked along a passage, then another at right angles. Doorways opened onto small chambers that no longer bore any trace of their furnishings. The roofs, it seemed, had been thatched, or at least covered in some kind of vegetable matter, branches perhaps, to judge by the litter of dead wood and shriveled fronds on the floor. Where any roofing at all remained, it consisted only of a few joists, now open to the sky. Throughout, the floors were tiled in terra-cotta. On some of the tiles traces of a pattern could be seen, but never in sufficient number to convey the meaning of the grand design. Windows had been plentiful. In many places now, the wall had collapsed above the lintel, leaving a sort of crenellation. Bushes and grasses had taken up habitation, as had scuttling spiders.

Around the next corner, an open archway led into a much larger and lighter room than Jen had previously seen. On the walls were scraps of fabric, faded and tattered evidence of some richer hangings, tapestries possibly. Most striking of all, in the middle of a long wall stood a chair of curious and elliptical design. In size, it would have suited Jen handsomely. He was trying to clear it of leaf mold, fungi, and cobwebs when Kira joined him.

What he discovered, as he brushed and scraped away the debris of time, was not so much a chair as a throne. It seemed to be fashioned from a single piece of material, marble perhaps. The light struck iridescent gleams from it. No, it was not marble but some more delicate material, which softly glistened like mother-of-pearl. Was the throne hewn from the shell of one giant mollusc? It seemed to be so, for no joints were apparent. What could now be seen, fetching gasps of admiration from both Gelfling, was that the throne had been intricately inlaid with filigree designs in bright metal and gems. Kira started helping Jen clean the throne, while Fizzgig interestedly sniffed around the corners of the large room.

Finally, it stood revealed – chair, throne, seat, whatever it was – a thing so intimately responsive to the light that at the slightest movement of their heads they would see it shimmer through a thousand transmuted rainbows. Kira kept her head as still as she could, yet the iridian glitter continued to change as though answering the atomically measured dance of the suns.

While Jen looked around to see what other wonders he might discover, Kira, spellbound, approached the chair and, with reverence, seated herself on it. Its back reached exactly to the height of her head, and her hands lay comfortably on the arms of the chair. “It might have been made for me,” she pronounced.

Jen glanced back at her and gave her a respectful bow. “You look like a queen in it,” he said.

Kira nodded, smiling. She would not have confessed it to him, but the truth was that she felt like a queen. She closed her eyes. It was at once easier to imagine those who had dwelt here in their glory than not to imagine them. She could almost hear them – their voices, their music – and feel their touch. The Pod People, deeply superstitious about this place, believing it haunted by spirits, had not told her who its former inhabitants, “the Old Ones,” had been. Now, with a shiver of intuition, she knew for herself.

Jen had moved on through a grand archway at the farthest end of the room, where a magnificently carved wooden door studded with iron stood ajar. He was now standing in a long room, a gallery of sorts. The roof had collapsed, as had all the others, but the walls had remained nearly intact. And what he saw on one of the walls caused him to cry out. “Kira! Come quickly!”

“I know,” Kira said to herself, leaving the throne to join Jen, “I know. They were Gelfling.”

The plastered wall Jen was gazing at was covered with frescoes or, rather, one long fresco, framed within a broad, elaborately detailed border. Many creatures and events were pictured, but there was no doubt who the protagonists were. Gelfling, in costumes of an antique nobility, formed the centerpiece of each tableau. Apart from their robes, the figures could have been those of Jen and Kira. For both of them, it was like coming home at last. In awe, they stared at what they knew must be their ancestors, the lost-and-found story of themselves: a Gelfling queen enthroned, attended by an aged vizier and young courtiers bearing flowers, and around them Gelfling farmers, carpenters, smiths crafting jewelry, dancers, celebrants with pokals, and musicians, including a long-haired Gelfling girl playing a forked flute that replicated Jen’s. Between each tableau were emblems of trees or leaves.

As they gazed at the pictures, painted in earth colors, it became evident to them that not just a way of life was being celebrated here, but that a narrative was being unfolded. In the broad border, which ran around the entire perimeter of the fresco, they began to recognize images. A Gelfling village was destroyed by Garthim. Above a mountain, three concentric suns were depicted within a triangle – the Great Conjunction, Jen assumed, judging from Aughra’s demonstration. Depicted next was a Crystal emitting a beam of light, and encircling the Crystal were eighteen creatures – Jen counted them – which might have been Skeksis or even, he thought, the urRu. The Crystal was pictured again, but this time it was darker in color and an even darker dagger-shaped form had been painted in it. Alongside this was a picture of the shard. “Look,” Jen said astounded. “It’s my crystal shard!” He felt for it, to compare it to the picture. It was gone. Then he remembered having thrown it away.

Kira smiled at him and, taking the shard from her pouch, held it up to the fresco. Shard and image were a perfect match.

Jen and Kira looked at each other, trying to unriddle the meaning. Kira offered the shard to Jen. He paused, then accepted it. He stared at the shard in his hand, then at the shard in the fresco, and back again. He looked at Kira. She was watching him closely.

Still holding her gaze, he returned the shard to his tunic. Memory of what urSu had once taught him returned:
Life presents more alternatives than choices.
Last night, Jen had seen his vision of evil. Here, in this room with Kira, he had found his vision of good. He was suffused with intention, the courage to act and to control the fear to which he had almost succumbed. He took Kira’s hand and told her of his resolves. She nodded.

Their gaze returned to the riddles of the border. Next to the shard, two lines of creatures – eighteen in each line, Jen counted again – were pictured emerging from the Crystal, the lines radiating out in opposite directions. Unlike the earlier creatures, these were unambiguous. One line was of Skeksis, the other line of urRu. The mountain reappeared, this time transformed into the shape of a castle, at the center of which the Crystal was pictured once more. Kira and Jen then found themselves looking at the destruction of still more Gelfling by Garthim, and the three concentric suns, and realized that their examination of the border had come full circle.

Now Kira pointed to a series of hieroglyphs that ran all the way around the outer edge of the border. “What are those?” she asked. “They’re not pictures at all, are they?”

Jen looked closer. “No,” he said. “They’re runes.”

“What are runes?”

“A kind of writing.”

“Ah.” Kira nodded. “Can you read them?”

“Yes.”

“No one ever taught me to write or read,” Kira said. “The Pod People have no need for it.”

“I’ll tell you what it says.” Jen studied the hieroglyphs, wondering where the sentence began. Then he found a point at which the hieroglyphs were punctuated by a picture of the concentric suns surmounting the shard, and he read aloud starting from there:

“Shall be whole,” Jen repeated wonderingly. Make it whole, urSu had bidden him, heal the wound at the core of being. And urZah had added, reluctantly, make the dark light.

“Yes,” Jen declared, his voice excited by comprehension at last. “I now know what I have to do.” He looked at Kira and pointed to the frescoes. “Much of all this I still don’t understand, but now it doesn’t matter. I know what my part must be.” He pulled out the shard again. “In the castle,” he said, “there is a great Crystal. This shard was somehow broken from it. The consequence has been a wound in the world – evil. The Crystal has to be made whole again by a Gelfling. And I must restore this shard to the great Crystal in the castle.” He paused. “And I will,” he added quietly, placing the shard back inside his tunic. “I will.”

Jen found himself laughing with relief – the relief of solving a riddle and of taking from it the energy needed to act on the solution. He looked at Kira. “Will you wait here for me?”

“Why, where are you going now?”

“To the castle. I have to be there at the time of the Great Conjunction of the sun brothers, ‘when single shines the triple sun.’ It will be very soon now. Aughra told me so.”

“I’m coming, too,” she said.

“No, Kira. I already have the destruction of your village on my conscience.”

“And with no village now, where do you think I would go, on my own? Be brave, Jen. Accept what has happened and what must happen. Besides” – Kira smiled at him – “that prophecy you read there says ‘by Gelfling hand.’ Is mine not a Gelfling hand?”

Before Jen could answer, Fizzgig looked up from sniffing in the corner of the room and started to growl. Kira was about to go and see what he had found when a shadow fell across all of them. They turned quickly.

The doorway was blocked by the gray bulk of a Skeksis, who was looking down at them. On the Chamberlain’s face was an expression clearly intended to be ingratiating.

Fizzgig immediately bounded onto a windowsill and perched there, whimpering for Kira to follow him. She made as if to do so, in turn looking over her shoulder for Jen. He had not moved.

The Chamberlain raised his hand, talons sheathed, in a gesture resembling the one of the previous night. “Stay,” he hissed. “Am friend. Friend to Kelffinks. Last night I save you from Garthim. Am I enemy? Am friend. Stay, please.”

Jen looked up at the monster, which could have seized and crushed him in a trice. “I have been told that Skeksis kill Gelfling,” he answered.

The Chamberlain snorted. “Pah. Is because stupid prophecy say Kelffinks end power of Skeksis. Stupid.” He shook his head.

Jen was calculating that the Skeksis could not pass through the doorway unless he simply smashed down the walls, over which his head towered. But that did not seem to be the Skeksis’ way, else why did they use the Garthim? No, with luck he and Kira could make a dash for it through the gaping hole of the window. Surreptitiously he edged back a few paces, to distance himself farther from the talons. Before escaping, however, he needed to find out all he could.

“Stupid prophecy,” the monster was saying. “But Skeksis afraid. Fear Kelffinks, yes. Little Kelffinks! Mistake, much mistake. Stay, please. Am friend.”

“Don’t listen to it, Jen,” Kira implored him. “It’s a trick.”

“What do you want with us?” Jen asked.

“Listen, please,” the Chamberlain said. “Come with me, to castle. You will see, yes, I show to Skeksis you want peace, no? And not harm us. Please.” The Chamberlain gestured again, this time beckoning Jen to approach.

Jen remained where he was. “Why should we trust you?” he asked. “You destroyed our race before. Look.” He pointed to the frescoes.

The Chamberlain waved his hand dismissively. “Tired of killing. Tired of it. Of fear, too, yes. So am outcast from castle, you see?”

Jen nodded warily.

“But,” the Chamberlain continued, “if bring peace back to castle, show Skeksis no fear of little Kelffinks, if do this, am not outcast then.” He gestured again. “Come with me, please. Yes.”

“If I come with you and make peace,” Jen asked slowly, “will the Garthim attacks be stopped?”

The Chamberlain nodded vehemently.

“On the Pod People, too?”

“Yes. No more Garthim attacks. No more. Come, please, yes.”

Jen hesitated, swayed by the pleading voice of the Skeksis. He looked round at Kira, who was still with Fizzgig by the window. She held out her hand to Jen, begging him to escape with her.

Jen looked back at the Skeksis. “I don’t know,” he said.

The Chamberlain smiled again, beseechingly. “Garthim energy come from Crystal in castle. Skeksis control Crystal. All power in Crystal. Soon” – the Chamberlain lifted his hands expressively – “soon much new power for Crystal.”

“At the Great Conjunction?” Jen asked as casually as he could.

“Yes. You know of this?”

Jen shrugged and pointed vaguely to the frescoes again. “I have learned something of it from these pictures.”