The Dark Crystal (4 page)

“Hokkvatta skaun Kherron”
the Treasurer responded, leaning forward and bowing his head.

At a signal from the Ritual-Master a slave came forward, bearing around the circle a large copper bowl ornamented with silver. From it, each Skeksis took a smoking orb made of a translucent material that glowed with some inner combustion.

They faced the casket.
“Kekkon, Kekkon, Yazakaide, Akura, Teedkhug!”
the Ritual-Master screeched, raising his talons high above his head.

The Skeksis stood in a silent, watching circle as the gold-shot silks were consumed in flames and the casket was reduced to smoldering embers.

In the cave Jen stood quite still for a long time, gazing at the empty, runic garment on the sleepframe. He had seen death before, among the small creatures of the valley, but it had never been like this. His Master had seemed to evaporate, like a pure spirit. It was as though that weighty body had never been more than an idea in the mind of whatever it was that had inhabited the flesh, an idea that had now been forgotten, discarded. Whatever it was had passed on to another, invisible idea. Would that be in here? Jen wondered. Or somewhere else? He knew that for a long time, perhaps forever, he would have the sense that his Master was present wherever he went, always walking beside him. He could not have brought himself to say anything that urSu would not have liked to hear.

How long he stood there he did not know, but eventually he turned and walked to stand in the mouth of the cave, looking out over the valley. The storm had cleared away, leaving behind it a sky scrubbed clean and blue. The creatures of the valley were running around, sniffing the sunshine. Down below, in the thalweg, the bottom of the valley, he could see the urRu, gathering around the Standing Stones that formed a triangle there.

Directed by urZah, they set out what was necessary for a funeral. Down the spiral path, from urSu’s cave, they had carried his coat, which the process of de-materialization had now reduced to a cobwebby thing, frail and dry, an abandoned chrysalis. This, together with his few other personal belongings, they placed at the foot of the tallest of the stones. On another stone, which lay flat in the center of the triangle, they laid his walking stick, the Master’s staff of office, totemically carved from one thick branch of hard nutwood. At the upper end of it was inset a small, perfectly formed rock crystal.

Other connections the urRu made were figurative. When the wind was in a certain quarter, it blew down the spiral path; and filling tunnels and passing the mouths of caves, it resounded through the valley like a reed pipe. At such times, the urRu never tired of arranging their own bodies to stop some of the cave mouths so that the pitch of the wind would be modulated. Why bother? Jen wondered. On his own little bifurcated flute he could demonstrate the same effect and play a melody at the same time.

In their collective obsession with rituals there was something slavish about the urRu. It affected everything in their lives, even the ordinary business of a day – sleeping, eating, walking, talking. It was always too slow for Jen, this labored, mannered, painstaking connection of things. What was the point? Turned inward, away from the world, they were, Jen thought, collectors of knowledge for its own sake. Why did they never do anything with it? Why could they not make the only connection that seemed to him useful: applying all their knowledge to change the world?

The new spark of confidence he had, to his surprise, found in himself at his Master’s death was still there within him. But confidence to what end? “To forge a fate,” urSu had said as he lay dying. “To heal the wound. To make it whole.” What fate? What wound? What was expected of him? He had never been able to envision a future for himself except one in which his infant memories – his mother, father, other Gelfling – would become realities again. But whenever he had wished for that to happen – lying in bed at night, closing his eyes, pressing together the tips of his thumbs and forefingers – his concentration on those memories had led straight through to something he feared – some blackness, cruel pain, weeping. Was the past always stalking the present, waiting to destroy it? UrSu had told him that a two-dimensional question like that had no solution, and therefore no meaning. “Make a triangle with past, present, and future. Then each two will explain the third.”

“What do you mean, Master? It is hard to understand. Can you not put it more simply?”

When the first pale flush of dawn light tinged the mists rising around the stones, urZah gently pushed Jen’s flute away from his lips. At the same moment, urUtt struck a plangent harmony that resonated for a long time.

The next to sound was urTih the Alchemist, who used his right front arm – an artificial limb of wood, like the right leg – to make a bowl sing. It was a bowl he had fashioned from seven metals, and when he drew his wooden arm firmly around the rim, the bowl howled as though with the voice of a wandering spirit, ululating when he tipped the water inside it from side to side.

Meanwhile, the touch of dawn light had activated the small crystal at the end of the Master’s staff, where it lay on the central stone. First, the crystal glowed as though concentrating the light in itself. Then the wood around it smoldered and began to burn. The flame moved slowly down the stick, away from the crystal, leaving behind a line of white embers and a scorch-mark on the stone. The smoke curled into the mists, which were filling with light.

For years he had learned to leave the valley. The urRu had raised him with loving care: at the appointed times they had cut his hair, taught him to swim, to tie knots, to sharpen a knife; had initiated him into the mysteries of music and the principles of geometry; had tested him by tasks and isolation – but never had they allowed him to explore outside the valley. And now that he was bidden to leave, he wished to remain, to say he was not yet ready. The truth, he realized, was that he did not want to abandon what was familiar and customary. Besides, it was one thing to wish to explore. It was quite another to be expelled.

“You must go where the Master showed you,” urZah told him. “To the high hill, to the dome of Aughra, who watches the heavens and keeps her secrets.”

“UrSu showed me such an image in a bowl. But I don’t know where the place is. How do I get there? What am I supposed to do there? How do I know I can do it? And who is Aughra?”

UrZah replied, in his slow voice, “Your need is to go with questions, not with answers, as the cave needs the mountain.”