Free The Dark Crystal by A. C. H. Smith Page B

together. Others disappeared during the crackling radiation, presumably having withdrawn into their lairs for self-protection. Everywhere, from branches, a hairy fungus swayed, palpitating, now and then exuding a pustule that popped and left dust floating down in the still air.

    Nothing here seemed to be gentle. The chain of predation was rapid and unnervingly candid. It was obvious to Jen that he would soon meet something that would seek to destroy him, even if he eluded the Garthim. Nothing here could enjoy a long life. It was all too vivid. It was visibly decomposing.

    And yet, he was too exhausted to go on and too frightened to return to the open country. He had to rest. If the Garthim caught up with him here, so be it. The urRu had taught him to look upon life – his life, like all other lives – as a cycle of fate.

    He sat down on a tree stump, trusting that it would remain inanimate, and took out the crystal shard. He was entranced, not only by its refractions but by something else – the suggestion of some greater power it held, some higher intelligence stored in it. Certainly this mineral object possessed a property by which the vibrations of noise and of light were united. That he knew by the glow it had given off in response to his flute.

    For a long while he gazed at the shard, all the time wondering where he should go from there. The Skeksis, a Great Conjunction, evil, the three suns, a Crystal, fate, “make it whole,” “heal the wound at the core of being” – all these were words he had heard said, but to him they were words without a syntax, without a dynamic relationship to each other. He was, he realized, in an even more precarious situation now than he had been in when he left the valley. Then, at least, he had a destination: the high hill. Now he simply had the shard and a nagging suspicion that, sooner or later, his journey’s end would be that castle of which Aughra had spoken. “They do things there,” she had said. A premonition filled him with deathly fear.

    Would the shard glow again? he wondered. He put it beside him on the stump, lifted his flute to his lips, and played the notes. The shard again glowed, quite softly, and again it returned the notes raised by an octave, though with a less piercing ring than it had given under Aughra’s dome. But staring into it as it lay on the stump, Jen noticed something else.

    An image formed inside the shard, as the images had formed themselves in urSu’s bowl. But this was a different image. Within the crystal he saw another crystal, glowing even more brightly than the first. He thought perhaps it was a refractive trick of the light. But then an event was enacted in the image: the inner crystal appeared to suffer a great blow. The prismatic pattern of its light was shattered all over the shard. The high-pitched resonance ceased and the image of the inner crystal turned dark. Then it faded. Jen was left blinking, unsure whether he had seen it all or not.

    He recalled Aughra’s tale of the shard – how it had broken off, with a great noise, from the large Crystal the Skeksis had hammered. If his eyes were not playing tricks on him, that must be the event that this shard had the power to shadow forth when he sounded the notes that urSu had conjured up. He felt sure it was a clue to what was expected of him.

    He returned the shard to its place of safekeeping inside his tunic and lay down flat on the stump, his eyes closed. He intended to concentrate on the information he had, hoping that he might decipher a pattern there, a guide for his journey… .

    The next thing he knew, he was suddenly awake. He sat upright, with no idea of how long he had been asleep. He puzzled over what it was that had awakened him. A strange noise in the swamp? Or just the strong sense he had of being watched? He looked around nervously. Perhaps the noise, or the uneasy feeling, had been part of a dream in his fearful body.

    As his eyes darted about, he caught a