The Book of Habidabad - The Prophecy and the Quest

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The Prophecy and the Quest

"In the winter of hope, the mind craves change."

When the Skeksis began to take Gelfling as well as Pod People as slaves, the Gelfling were dismayed. For once they took thought for the future. They sought to know if the Crystal might be healed, if the Skeksis rule must continue. They lit the fires of prophecy, they took counsel from the flames. Seven circles of seven Gelfling lay on the hilltops all night, their faces to the stars. Their dreams were made stone; the Wall of Destiny still stands. There the Gelfling were shown the Quest for the lost Shard, and they were shown the healing of the Crystal by the hand of a Gelfling, replacing the Shard by the light of a Great Conjunction. And there too they were shown the ruin of the Gelfling, the fall of their houses. And the Wall stood for all to see.

The Skeksis saw it too; and with bold cruelty resolved to foil the prophecy. Rage brought them cunning. Their first thought was to confuse the search for the true Shard; and for many years they sought to make a crystal of their own. They had made the great Haakskeekah Stone, which outdid the Crystal in impenetrable blackness; and they made fragments of artificial crystal without the higher virtues of the great original but not easily distinguished in appearance. (Had they quarreled less among themselves, they might have made a crystal of grater power; had they been less evil, they could have done more harm.) Of their artificial crystal they made five copies and scattered them on the slopes of the mountain beneath the castle, near where the Shard had fallen, so the Gelfling would not know which to place in the wound in the Crystal. The Gelfling found all six and brought them to me, hoping one was the true Shard; but no effort of mine could make it reveal itself. And it was better to live with the Crystal dark but nearly whole than to place the creation of the evil Skeksis in a position of such power.

Then the Skeksis made the Garthim from the memories of sea creatures in their first world, quickened by the light of the Dark Crystal, though the skill of skekTek the Scientist, the power of skekUng the Garthim-Master. The strength of the Garthim was unbelievable, their stupidity incalculable. Their sole purpose was to destroy all they found. The Gelfling understood this and lived in fear of them; the Pod People never understood this, never realized they had any connection with the castle from which no Pod slaves returned to tell their story.

As soon as the Garthim appeared, the creatures of the World turned against them. Foremost among the enemies of the Garthim were the Landstriders, beasts of swift passage for the Gelfling that allowed themselves to be tamed to be ridden and subjected to the will of their rider. Destruction of the Garthim became their fiercest joy; their speed, their slashing blows, would leave a Garthim crippled before it knew it had been attacked.

But not even the Landstriders could prevail against the multitudinous strength of the Garthim guided by the pitiless intelligence of the Skeksis. They bred the Crystal Bats to carry lenses of artificial crystal that sent images of all they saw back to the Crystal in the Skeksis' castle. At first the bats flew only in the dark, after the manner of their kind; but the Skeksis bred from the bolder and hardier strains, till no corner of the World was unknown to them. And when the Skeksis could direct the Garthim with their all-seeing crystal eyes, they made an end to the Gelfling.

Then the Skeksis exulted in the deaths of the last Gelfling and of the prophecy. They had been much afraid; they had even killed their Gelfling prisoners quickly, preferring safety to pleasure. They cared little that some Landstriders still hid and fought in the mountains; the loss of a few Garthim (I will not say their deaths) meant nothing to them. They thought the path to further darkness lay straight before them.

These terrors drove me away from all. I fled to my mountaintop; I studied the Three Suns above, and chose not to see the hordes of Garthim marching across the plains and the clouds of smoke behind them. I would have lived among the orbits of the Suns. I became one with them; I seemed to move in their great courses through the sky. The song of the Suns became my song, and I sang it to the rocks that they might vibrate to it as they had to the Crystal. At each conjunction I felt the song in my heart, pain and torment, yet beautiful. The rocks felt the pull of the Suns; and as the Suns combined in conjunction, the seams of the World were stretched. I was, at those moments, the fabric of the World.

Two Gelfling survived the slaughter, two infants unknown to the Skeksis. Jen was found and fostered by the urRu, Kira by the Pod People.

Jen was brought up with riddles and enchantments, music and dreams, covered with the protection of spirals of power so that he might be fit to restore the Shard. And when the Great Conjunction at last drew near, urSu the Master, who had waited till then, allowed himself to die. He knew that this would also be the death of skekSo the Emperor, that the Skeksis must then fall into utter division. And never was the instability of NINE more clearly shown, for with skekSo dead, the rivalries concealed for fear of his power broke out at once. SkekUng the Garthim-Master and skekSil the Chamberlain fell into open quarrel; skekSil lost the struggle, fled from the castle, and turned his mind to the last betrayal.

While the Skeksis fought, the urRu chanted and prayed. I heard the death chant for urSu; in its echoes I first saw Jen. He had been shown the crystal Shard in dreams and told to find me, Aughra, on my mountain. The urRu in their wisdom told him no more but sent him on his Quest; I in my foolishness thought it folly. But when he saw the shards I guarded, he sounded music on his flute. Then the true Shard shone with light, the false shards could be told apart. I rejoiced in my withered heart, for I saw that the Crystal could again be healed, the World restored.

And I rejoiced in my heart even when I saw the Garthim come that day, and I knew the Skeksis were hunting Jen; I rejoiced even when they brought ruin to the Observatory, when they carried me prisoner to the castle. Even when the Skeksis took my other eye -- bitter indeed the end of friendship -- I rejoiced, for I had seen Jen escape from the Garthim with the true Shard, I saw him flee to the swamp below my mountain, I foresaw the Healing.

If I had studied the stars more I could perhaps also have foreseen his travels: his meeting with Kira in the swamp, his welcome by the Pod People, the Garthim raid, Jen and Kira's flight together, their finding of the Wall of Destiny. I could have foreseen the Landstriders that carried them both with the Shard to the castle, and their entry into the labyrinth beneath the castle through the Teeth of Skreesh. But who does not know of their journey? If I had studied the Skeksis more, perhaps I could have foretold that skekSil the Chamberlain, outcast from the castle, would find them both and seek revenge; I could perhaps now tell whether he sought to restore his fallen state among the Skeksis by betraying the Gelfling to them, or to destroy the Skeksis and the Dark Crystal together. Who does not know of his infamy? Who now can look into his twisted heart?

And if the Skeksis had felt less fear when their Crystal Bats told them of the surviving Gelfling, would they not have seen the urRu moving in procession toward the castle? When Jen struggled in the labyrinth, when skekTek the Scientist found his last elixir in the Lake of Fire, when the Great Conjunction approached, the minds of the Skeksis were forever in turmoil, their eyes always turned in the wrong direction. And when Jen brought the Shard to its rightful place in the Crystal Chamber, when Kira gave herself to the Skeksis' swords to win Jen's freedom, the hearts of the Skeksis were filled with terror. In vain then were the strength of skekUng the Garthim-Master, the wealth of skekShod the Treasurer, the cunning of skekSil the Chamberlain, the swift lies of skekShod the Ritual-Master.

As Kira lay felled beneath the swords of the Skeksis, as the Three Suns came to conjunction in glory, as the urRu marched into the castle, JEN HEALED THE CRYSTAL.

The Shard Restored

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