The Dark Crystal (17 page)

Read The Dark Crystal Online

Authors: A. C. H. Smith

BOOK: The Dark Crystal
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I
n the tunnel, Fizzgig had been sniffing at the pile of rubble. He began to dig, but it took a long time for his small, rubbery paws to make any impression. After much work, he had uncovered one of Jen’s hands. He sniffed at it, licked it, and even gently nibbled the fingers, to provoke life. The hand did not move.
Fizzgig sat down again and kept guard.
T
he Scientist’s hands were trembling with excitement as he clamped Kira into the chair on the wall of his laboratory. Fumbling, he half dropped her once but snatched her up before she hit the floor. It was not only the satisfaction of extracting the true Gelfling vliya again, after years of Pod sap, that was agitating him. He also knew that the Garthim-Master would not remember the exact amount of vliya a Gelfling could yield. But the Scientist did remember and was confident that he could cache a large portion of it without being discovered. He glanced at Aughra in her cage. He did not trust her. Given the chance, she would have informed on him out of spite. But she seemed scarcely awake now. She had tried to bite him when he had taken her eye, the malicious old hag. Since then, she had been squatting in a silent huddle. He had placed her eye on his workbench but had not yet decided what to do with it.
Controlling himself, he fitted the crystal and inclined glass tube into its bracket, beneath which he placed a large collecting jar. From it he could decant the vliya into the jeweled flask for the Garthim-Master, and the rest of it would be his.
He went to his controls and pulled the levers.
The violet ray penetrated Kira’s eyes, which began to cloud over more gradually than Pod eyes did, as the force field crackled from her fingers to the crystal in front of her. The precious, viscous droplets started to run down the tube and drip into the collecting jar. Unlike Kira’s eyes, those of the Scientist were aglow.
Struggling in the chair, Kira called out, “Jen! Help me!”
T
he agony in her cry reached Jen, although he was too far away to hear her voice. Beneath the pile of rubble, he stirred and groaned. The weight on his back was crushing him. With his mouth pressed on rock, he called out, “Kira! Fight them!”
Fizzgig was alerted. He tried digging again, frantically, but was discouraged by the minimal effect he was having. Sadly, he licked Jen’s fingers.
The rasp of Fizzgig’s tongue was the first indication Jen had that he was not totally interred. He wriggled his fingers, then tried flexing his arm that had the moss still bound to it. The rubble shifted, then sloughed off.
With his free arm, Jen could grope blindly at pieces of rock, and, once grasping them, throw them off himself. The effort made him grunt, but with each chunk that he removed he was able to breathe more easily. Once his head was free, he leaned on his arm and levered his body against it. More rubble slipped down from his back, allowing him to kneel upright and use both hands. Fizzgig was in ecstasies of barking.
Jen had started to clear his legs when Fizzgig stopped barking and instead set up a low growl. By this time Jen thought he understood Fizzgig’s language. “Ssssh!” he said and listened keenly.
From farther up the tunnel he heard the sound of heavy bodies approaching and the hiss of their breathing.
With a last effort and a wince of pain, he straightened his knees and the remaining rubble ran off. He felt dizzy, but his body still worked.
“Ssssh!” he repeated to Fizzgig.
Painfully, Jen ran on tiptoe back down the tunnel. When he reached the junction where the tunnel split off he doubled back up a different branch. Fizzgig stayed with him and remained blessedly silent.
J
en! Jen!” Kira called out again, transfixed by the violet ray. Her eyes were burning, her body felt like lead. What power of will remained to her derived from anger at what was being done to her. She fought to keep her anger blazing. Once that had left her, she knew she would have left herself. And then Jen’s fervent exhortation to “Fight them!” traveled back to her, and her courage rose. The milky film over her eyes started to recede.
She heard a voice calling to her across the Chamber of Life. It was an old woman’s voice.
“Gelfling,” Aughra croaked. Her eye, though removed to the Scientist’s bench, was watching Kira. “Call on those around you, in this place. Help you, they can, if you call on them. You are Gelfling, you have powers of Gelfling. Use them. Speak to those who are here with you. Stronger than Skeksis, they are, all together, if you can speak to them. You can.”
Kira concentrated all her strength into focusing her dazzled eyes. In the gloom beyond the ray, she could make out cabinets and cages, but it was impossible for her to identify the morbid shapes lying there.
In all the tongues of the animals of the wild, learned and practiced throughout her childhood, she cried out. She cried for help, she cried for freedom.
Around the room, there was a rustling, a stirring. For the first time in many years, the voices of the captive and drained animals began to speak in the Chamber of Life. First one started to trill, then another was barking, and others took up the refrain. In a swelling chorus, more and more prisoners answered Kira’s cry.
The Scientist was startled. Looking anxiously about, he picked up a stick and scuttled around, banging on bars and doors, hissing threats. It made no difference. A sweet cacophony of screeches, yelps, hoots, squawks, and roars rang out. Bodies were moving now, rattling their prisons, louder and louder. “Yes, Gelfling, yes, yes. All together, they can be free. Oh, yes!”
Kira, hope fluttering in her throat, redoubled her cries.
The Scientist, coming to his senses, attacked the root of the problem. He crossed the laboratory and put his gray, scaly, clawed hand across Kira’s mouth. She bit with all her might. Now his cry of pain was added to the concert.
Under the combined assault of a multitude of creatures, cage doors were springing open. First singly, then in scores, the prisoners were breaking out, and the maimed were recovering some strength. All of them made it their first task to attack the Scientist. Their wills, their dignities, which he assumed had been cauterized, were reawakened when their names were called, their languages spoken to them.
Birds flew up and flapped in the Scientist’s face. He staggered, in vain waving his hands to get rid of them. He stumbled on animals milling around his feet. In his ears was the cackle of Aughra. Off-balance and half blinded by a coronet of birds, he lunged vengefully in her direction. Missing Aughra’s cage, he crashed into the open portal, knocking askew the rod with the crystal prism.
As the violet ray beamed off Kira’s face, the Scientist teetered on the brink of the portal, then dropped down the vertical shaft into the lake of fire far below.

T
rekking through the wilderness, across the powdery crater, the long, weary file of the urRu saw urTih the Alchemist suddenly burst into flames. Within seconds, he was reduced to a pile of ashes.

“
T
ell them release you,” Aughra said.
Kira spoke to the animals. With beaks and claws they untwisted the wormscrew of the clamp. Kira fell to the ground.
Aughra gestured in the direction of the collecting jar. “Drink that stuff,” she told Kira. “Yours, it is.”
Kira picked up the jar and drank the vliya. In the mirror she saw a blurred image of herself. As she watched, the image became sharper. Her eyes had quite lost the milkiness that had filmed them. She started to feel stronger, though dazed. But when the vliya had completed its work, not all the effects of her ordeal had been reversed. The skin around her eyes and mouth remained lined, and her hair was paler in color. She looked older than she had.
Aughra was still squatting in her cage. “You see my eye?” she asked. “Up on that bench?”
“How can you see where it is with no eyes?” Kira asked her.
“Can’t. But it can see where it is, can’t it?”
Kira picked up the eye delicately and, stepping through the flocks of rioting animals, went to open Aughra’s cage. She handed Aughra her eye.
Aughra screwed it back into its socket and squinted up at Kira. “Good Gelfling,” she said. “But” – she shook her head – “you not the one with shard.”
“No,” Kira acknowledged. “What do you know about the shard?”
“My shard,” Aughra said with a little pride. “What
you
know?”
“Jen has it.” Kira was finding it hard to think straight. Her mind was still numbed. “Aren’t you coming out of that cage?” she asked.
“Do for now,” Aughra replied. “This Jen, where he, huh?”
“We were in a tunnel. He was buried by a fall of rock. He might be dead.”
Aughra clicked her tongue. “Tsk-tsk. Too late, then.”
“Too late for what?” Kira asked, trying to remember what she was doing here at all.
“Oh.” Aughra shook her gray head. “Not know prophecy? Such power for Skeksis soon, power over the stars. No one fight them, then. See suns? In sky? Soon, huh?”
“I’ve got to find Jen,” Kira said. “Do you know the way to the tunnel?”
In reply, Aughra merely sucked her teeth.
Kira looked around in anguish. Then, still dazed, she ran through the doorway of the Chamber of Life and along any passages that promised to lead upward. She found herself running across a gallery that overlooked a triangular chamber. Below, she saw several Skeksis. She ducked beneath the balustrade. Skeksis, Garthim, whatever she met would now certainly destroy her on sight. But unless she could find Jen, it was all finished anyway.
From beneath the balustrade, something above the chamber caught her eye. She gasped. She was looking at a gigantic dark crystal, suspended in air.

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