The Dark Crystal: Plague of Light Read online

  " 'Sa shovely, trowely sort of fing," said Gobber, turning it in the light.

  "Don't know the gardener who'd want it. Be like working in the garden wif somebody's finest porcelain," Lemny replied.

  "Is it a giant seashell, do you fink?"

  Gobber rotated the thing through the waving shadows. It was day out, but the Perpetual Storm made it darker in the outer swamp than any night. Night's got moons and stars in it, at least. Candlelight lit up the concave underside of the thing. Ancient words were carved there . . .

  As the candlelight lit up the metallic letters, a violent violet glow burned out of them. The poison purple congealed into a sharp lightning bolt and shot up past Gobber's blunt nose into the Perpetual Storm. Hastily dropping the thing, the Crabbit and the Podling stared up at the boiling sky as the purple bolt bounced from cloud to cloud, getting bigger with each strike. The clouds began shrinking, like the bolt was wossyoucallem, absorbing them, Lemny thought. The light of the three suns even broke briefly through the Storm like golden arrows before being swallowed again in clouds. The purple bolt continued shocking its angry way across the sky.

  Then it struck the Castle of the Crystal and set the tallest tower on fire. Purple fire.

  "Well, fly me to the sky," Gobber murmured. The two shared a look, and Lemny shook his head. "Mm. Better yet, don't."

  "Best cover that up, so's it doesn't do it again," Lemny said. The Podling obliged, wrapping the thing in an old bit of burlap and wrapping the burlap in a pair of trousers too shredded to wear anymore. He pushed the thing under his wares, down to the very bottom of the cart, and exhaled. Then he hefted the handles and pulled the two cartwheels out of the sucking ooze of the swamp.

  " 'Shovel o' Doom,' I'd call it," he muttered, and walked on.

  * * *

  SkekTek waddled as fast as his stubby, stiff legs could move. Down the castle's tortuous, messy corridors, corridors bending in every direction but the one he wanted to go, he strode. His arched beak bobbed as he went, and he wrapped his robes tighter around his exposed front pair of arms.

  Which way? Which way? Such a nuisance--he had things in mind he'd like to do to the architect of this place--oh, his old, stiff legs--where was a window? A staircase?--hopeless, it was all hopeless--here! At a bare face of wall, he pulled a lever disguised as a decorative spiked candelabra, scowled as he nicked himself on a jagged point. Foolish thing to disguise a lever as. Bah, so many things in his way. It was all in his way! A perfectly tuned incisive mind, able to calculate the energies of the Dark Crystal to the twentieth nano-frequency, and he couldn't find his way to a window when he needed to.

  Things were in his way . . .

  Hobbling into the Chamberlain's bedroom, he passed the snoring lump and the silent house slaves and bustled across the room and threw open the shutters. Curses, these new glass windows didn't open! SkekTek unscrewed the nearest bedpost, hefted it, and smashed the glass panes with the new wooden club. Shards showered down into the chasm beyond. Behind him, the sleeping Chamberlain snuffed and said, "hmmmMMm!"

  SkekTek leaned out the window, coughing in the fresh air. The smell of sour rain and the distant nidor of swamp drifted to his beak.

  Purple light in the darkness. An explosion. The room shook and the stone ceiling let out a sift of crystal mortar. A flicker of purple flames.

  "I could feel it," skekTek muttered to the sleeping Chamberlain. "Something large. Something quite very large. Quite very." When the Chamberlain failed to respond, even after the shuddering stopped, skekTek clubbed him in the gut with the bedpost and repeated his words to the dazed busybody.

  "Is it the revolution?" the Chamberlain cried in alarm, springing to his feet on the bedcovers. "Has it begun?" Flinging the sheets aside, he wrapped himself in a shawl and, noticing skekTek's weapon, pried the other bedpost off, holding it up to defend himself. The bed broke, landing on its corner, and the Chamberlain slid down the mattress to the floor. The house slaves stood impassively on either side of the entrance. The Chamberlain brandished his bedpost at them, ready for war.

  "No, you dolt, there's been an unprecedented release of power!" skekTek snapped. "All my instruments went crazy. It was like nothing I've ever seen! A source of power . . ."

  "Then what--what--" blithered the Chamberlain. "What are you doing in my room?"

  "It was the closest place to observe the energy discharge," skekTek sniffed, and waddled out, muttering to himself.

  The Chamberlain looked around at his shattered bed and smashed bedroom window and scowled. Dropping the bedpost club, he instructed his attendants to find a carpenter and SkekLach the Glazier and then get to sweeping.

  He'd fix things with that skekTek, he would. Punish him. The Chamberlain excelled in only one thing in all the world: plotting.

  * * *

  "Well, what are your names, then?" Aughra demanded as Loora and the boy carried buckets of clean water and washcloths and got to scrubbing the oily Black River water off the walls, ceiling and everything else.

  "Cory."

  "Loora," said Loora. This was not the sort of work she'd been looking forward to this morning.

  "Now, why don't you tell me why you were causing so many problems? The sky hasn't gone black and the trees haven't fallen down and our dreams are still juicy and the world is full of life and Aughra's important work is being interrupted by Gelflings! Tell me why, you two--and don't lean on the orrery, thank you, Cory."

  The boy removed his elbow from a slowly turning sun and began sheepishly scrubbing the wall with the sopping washcloth. He was very thin, as light as a leaf, Loora thought. The black water glared up at her as she scrubbed. It still seemed to hint at danger with every driplet.

  "I don't mean to cause anybody any problems," Cory said. "It's just . . . the future seems so full of things to think about, and--"

  "What's wrong with now? Is now so small a place, that only the future is big enough for you?" Aughra asked. "Do you even know how wide Thra is, or what it's full of?"

  Cory shook his head.

  "Or is it something else?" she said, hustling over to them and looming over them with her long purple whiskers. She made Loora feel smaller than she was. "Is there another reason?"

  Cory cringed and kept scrubbing.

  "Hmm?" said Aughra, leaning in.

  Cory sighed and turned to the old woman.

  "Everybody can see what's happening now," he muttered, wringing out black water into the bucket. "But I'm the only one who can see the future--"

  "Is that what you think?" Aughra snorted.

  "Well, the only one in Quillpine, anyways," he said, shrugging. "And I guess it makes me feel . . . special, to be the only one."

  Loora swung around the base of the orrery to observe Cory more closely.

  "Nobody even believes me," Cory said, tossing the washcloth into the bucket, sighing, and pulling it back out. A green face seemed to peer for a second from the puddle of water, but it was just a reflection from the green glass windows, Loora figured. "Nobody believes I can see the future."

  "I believe you," Loora said.

  "That's really nice of you," Cory said, rubbing the back of his head, "but I kind of prefer being alone. I feel safe being the only one who even knows that the future is out there. People are fine to be around, I suppose, but they're never really on your side. If I can live in the future, then nobody can find me now. Does that make sense?"

  "And what happens when people in the future can see you back?" Aughra said.

  But it didn't matter what Cory might have said to that, because at that moment a persistent hammering came at the door. The second time before breakfast. Aughra hmped and told Loora to answer it.

  Loora rose and hopped down the steps to the door. The bolt slid back with a squeak. She'd have to oil it later, she decided. That was something even her dad let her help with. Turning the wavy brass handle, she pulled on the heavy door just as the hammering began again. Wide open it swung.

  Up the hill from Quil
lpine, following along the edge of Dark Wood, came a procession. Into Aughra's house marched all those too-respectable elders who lived in the Chiefly Grand-Gelf's longtree. They were all awful. They ignored Loora's family, kept to themselves, and primly discussed matters too important to share with the rabble. Elders, notaries, notables, dignitaries, aldermen, celebrants, and other famous Gelflings pushed ignorantly past Loora into the front hall, assembling into neat standing rows.

  On two gilded litters they carried the supine Chiefly Grand-Gelf and her husband. Blue light shone from their hearts.

  "Aughra!" came a sonorous voice from the center of the crowd. "Mother Master! We have need of you."

  The procession continued to press in, filling Aughra's house and lining the stairs.

  A long puff of purple hair and a white beak appeared above the empty Future Font. Aughra leaned over the railing, peering down at the assembly.

  "Yes?"

  "Mother Master," the sonorous voice said, "our village is in peril. Disease has struck, a disease most terrible, responding to none of our medicines. Twelve of our citizens have become afflicted, including our Chief and her consort. They will not awaken." The voice took a deep breath and shouted, "Please, DO something!"

  "Quiet down," Aughra replied. "Who is that? Is that young Simoon, Frann's son?"

  The sonorous-voiced Gelfling stepped forward and took off a small hat. "Um, yes'm. Granny Bee's holding a public speaking class." He took a deep breath and, in a very deep and impressive voice, said, "Forsooth and to be sure, 'tis it not the very breadcorn that provideth for us? Saideth not the Skymother that the raineth falls and the snoweth sweeps--"

  "Very nice, very nice, Simoon. Yes. Exemplary. Now, all of you, out of my way!" Aughra bustled down the wing staircase and stood over the litters. She peered into the prone faces of the Chiefly Grand-Gelf and her husband, pried their eyelids apart, opened their mouths, and tapped their knees with a stick. Muttering to herself, she pressed an ear to the blue light coming from their hearts. "Well, they're living," she said. "Loora, fetch me brainbane and tonguewort from my cupboard, would you?"

  Loora pressed ineffectually through the crowd--she wished she were more imposing, but she wasn't--and got to Aughra's herb cupboard.

  "I can't read any of the labels," she said. "They all just say 'thump thump thump thump thump.' "

  The old woman shoved Loora aside and retrieved the herbs herself.

  Taking a good pinch of herb from each, Aughra chewed them together into a pair of soggy lozenges, dipped them in spiderhoney and pushed them into the lolling mouths of the two sick Grand-Gelfs.

  "That should wake 'em up," the old woman said.

  A roomful of breath fell, and a waiting silence descended. Cory hurried over from the far side of the mezzanine with a wet washcloth and started to ask what was happening, then said "oop" and stopped talking as the vast crowd came into his view. Loora took his hand and led him to the back to watch.

  The Grand-Gelfs let out a matching pair of groans. Two sets of eyes opened.

  The blue lights in their chests went out.

  A cheer went up from the assembled Gelfs. Simoon took an official-sounding deep breath, and said, in his most respectable baritone, "On behalf of the assembled, the Chiefly Grand-Gelfs, and myself, thank you, Mother Master for--" but his voice cracked and he squeaked, "saving us from this plague." Embarrassed, he covered his mouth and saluted, then spun and marched out.

  One of the elders asked Aughra to prepare more of the lozenges. She stuffed the whole jars' worth of the herbs into her mouth at once, chewed as hard as she could, spat them back out and handed the mush to the elder, who took it reluctantly.

  As the assembly filed out with the awakened Grand-Gelfs on their litters, Loora stroked the cheek of the Chiefly Grand-Gelf.

  Eyes turned to her. Loora squeaked and stepped back. The eyes had enlarged pupils like bottomless pits, and the irises seemed . . . different. Jagged. As if black stars were emerging from inside the eyes.

  * * *

  Kchoo! Gobber wiped his nose on his sleeve and shivered violently. "Din't do me a bit of good, getting me gloves wet." He rapped on the Crystal Castle's front door with a short stick. "Caught a bad 'un this time. Caught a bad 'un indeed." He rapped on the door again, harder.

  "There's a bit of ruttidge by your foot," Lemny said. "Skeksis eat it. Pull it up, they'll give you a quarter-yenti for it. Ignorant buzzards."

  Gobber stooped and pulled the mustard-smelling flower bush up by the woody stem. He shook the blighted black dirt from the roots and tossed it on the cart. The day had gone cold, colder than bones. Luckily the rain was blowing away from the castle entrance and . . . kchoo! A bit drier, anyways. That was good. Good to get out of the rain--and then out of this place.

  "Like to sell somewhere it never rains at all, next," he muttered. "Desert, maybe. Crystal Sea." Then, after a moment's thought: "Lemny? How'd you spot the ruttidge? Candle's gone out."

  "Just saw it, is all. Must be the castle. Got its own wosscallems, refractive properties, hasn't it?"

  There was a faint light in the vicinity of the door. Gobber shrugged and called out, "Open this door before we catch our deaths, you miserly stenching featherbellies!" He clocked the door with the stick twice and waited. The door creaked open and two eerie attendants admitted him.

  "Blind me, it's good to get indoors," Gobber said, dragging his cart up the clunking steps and into the hall. " 'ere, what's your story, then, my fine friend?" he asked the nearest attendant as he wiped his mudcrusted feet on the carpeting.

  "I serve the Skeksis in whatever capacity they desire," the Podling answered tonelessly.

  "Well, whatever suits. This is Lemny, I'm Gobber, we've got a fing or two to sell." He and the Crabbit shared a quick look, but didn't hold it. Not wise to let on too much, not when those shining coins were still outside of their tatty pockets.

  The attendants bowed and pivoted and went to speak with the Skeksis.

  "What d'you figure? A whole tinker's turn this time? Twelve yenti, even?" said Gobber when the hall was empty.

  "Let's not get greedy," Lemny replied. "I've a bad feeling about this place."

  "Why's that?" said Gobber.

  "Too purple," Lemny muttered. "Too purple, too much of the time. Unnatch'ral color. Bruises is purple."

  "So's cabbage," Gobber said.

  "Unnatch'ral. Unhealthy. Gives me the leaping willywogglers."

  "It's the smell I don't like," Gobber said. "Smells of tiny jumping things wot live in your hair."

  "As it happens, my thoughtful friend, I AM one of those tiny jumping things, an' I resent that," Lemny sniffed, adjusting his nubby antennae.

  A huge shadow filled the chandelier-lit entryway, and the hunched, high-collared form of a Skeksi appeared.

  "Hmmmm! Why hello," the Skeksi said, shuffling forward. "I am the Chamberlain of the Castle. Won't you follow me?"

  As Gobber lifted the cart's handles once again, Lemny whispered, "Wants to get first crack, in case we've got anything good."

  "What was that?" the Chamberlain asked.

  "Said, erm, how good it is to be back, your magnificence," Gobber said, bowing quickly, which made the lantern and Lemny's cage swing. The Chamberlain smiled accommodatingly and led the way to an interior chamber. As the cart came to rest on its wheelbarrow-posts, the Chamberlain rubbed his feathery hands together and cackled.

  "Let's see, let's see." The Chamberlain practically leapt into the cart, scattering fake jewelry, tailor's discards, cured skins of half-animals Gobber'd eaten on the road, inedible bundles of herbs that Lemny'd taken the tasty seeds off of (except the ruttidge, which he hadn't gotten to yet), a few unidentified glass vials and stoppered ampules they'd sifted from an abandoned workshop, innumerable amber-colored beads that Lemny rolled from sticky plant sap and flower parts when he was bored, a length of new rope Gobber had spent each night weaving before bed from the abundant ropeweed, lumpy clay bowls he'd palmed together and kilned ineffec
tually over the campfire, a few bones (bleached by setting them on top of the cart's awning under the suns), stone knives with sharp knapped blades and handles sopped out of plant latex and heated to gummy rubber, a glass lens--whoop, the Chamberlain let it slip and smash on the floor in his haste, one big chunk and a powder of broken glass--

  "That'll be a yenti and a nick, under our 'you break it, you bought it' policy," Lemny said politely.

  The Chamberlain's eyes flicked to Lemny, then spotted the ruttidge and lit up. "Haven't had ruttidge soup in months!" he remarked, stuffing the end of it in his mouth and sucking the flavor out.

  "Likewise, half a yenti, I'm afraid." Gobber and Lemny shared another glance.

  "And what's this?" he asked, pulling the Shovel o' Doom out and unwrapping it.

  "Um, I'm afraid that's not for sale," Gobber said quickly, covering it back up with burlap. "Not cheap. I mean not yet. Erm, it's for someone special. A gift--"

  "A gift for me?" the Chamberlain said, with malicious wonder in his voice. An evil glint appeared in his eye as he slid the metal object out of the rags and held it up to the light. Both of the merchants flinched, expecting another purple blast, but the object seemed completely inert. "But you shouldn't have."

  "Er, not to be too specific, as it were, but we didn't," said Lemny. "That piece, um, if we were to let it go at all, would have to be--"

  "A gift for me," the Chamberlain repeated to himself in a stage whisper, nodding. He tucked it into his robes. "Now then. I'll give you a yenti for the rest of it. Bring it to my room."

  Gobber began to breathe heavily. He preferred the last time they came by, when they'd bargained with a bright-eyed young Gelf warrior for hours, winding up with eight yenti and nick for nearly half a cartload of odds and ends. This talking to the Skeksis directly business was giving him the writhing gullivers. Didn't play fair, Skeksis. Hardly be able to restock on a single yenti, let alone turn a profit.

  "Begging your pardon, but you've already spent nearly two, your munificence," Lemny said. Gobber gave him a ghost of a glance, but Lemny knew from fair.

  "Have I," the Chamberlain whispered, his tone changing.

  "No, your hyperbolic sizeness, no, a yenti will do very nicely indeed. If you wouldn't mind paying up front, and perhaps providing a warm bed for the night, we'd be happy to unload it in your room--"