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Chapter Text

“Oh Grot take me, it’s true,” huffed SkekVar the General, in tones of mixed pique and dread, when they beheld the little caravan approaching them and their carriage.

It was a bizarre sight: one road-dusty Mystic of a deep twilight hue, trudging stoically along with their heavily-clothed tail dragging behind their heavily-clothed body, hands bound together in front; one Skeksis, garbed in black leather, a bone carapace and breastplate, a skull-mask, and various mummified bits of slaughtered creatures that hung on its belts like fetishes—sitting astride said Mystic as if they were riding a steed; and a second, light-bluish Skeksis, wrapped in an indigo shawl and skirts, heading up the procession on foot with a stormy expression in full brew on their sharp-beaked, sawtoothed face.

The black-clad Skeksis let out a chuckle of uncharacteristic amusement and dismounted. Both the Mystic and the other Skeksis groaned and stretched a little as their weight lifted off at last. “Just making the delivery, General. Not responsible for the contents.”

“This isn’t funny, Hunter,” the General shot back, turning a narrowing glare first on them, then on the third Skeksis, who replied with an exactly mirrored glare, “Agreed.”

SkekVar scowled. Still, they spoke more calmly to their fellow warrior than they had to the Hunter. “Glad to see you taking it seriously, Conqueror. This is going to have to be a very good one indeed.”

“Yes, I’m aware,” said SkekGra. They carried the air of a gravely offended dignitary who was nevertheless choosing to exert heroic courtesy—for now.

The General came over to pace around the Mystic for a full circle, ending up squarely in front of them.

“Disgusting. Terrible,” the bulky Skeksis pronounced after a few sniffs of the surrounding air. “How have you put up with it?”

The Conqueror shrugged. “I’ve been around.” (If the Hunter noticed they hadn’t been asked, they opted not to mention it. The odds that the Fizzgig blood they’d doused themselves in wasn’t overwhelming any scent the Mystic could theoretically be giving off were extremely low.)

“But it’s yours, is it?”

“Yes. My counterpart, the Wanderer,” confirmed SkekGra with an impassive nod.

“Pathetic. I’d offer condolences, but mine’s probably worse…” They glanced at the Hunter and asked rather grudgingly, “You joining us? No room in the carriage, but you could ride atop the goalong if you wanted.”

They gestured to the little two-wheeled enclosed car that was hitched by long bars to the back of their carriage. It was built along the same kind of sinuous lines as the larger vehicle, but visibly without anything like as much spring in its suspension.

“I make my own way,” the Hunter answered shortly, and indeed, they were already checking the straps and belts on their outfit in obvious preparation to light straight out of there.

“Of course. Safe roads, SkekMal. The Empire thanks—you.” The Hunter was gone by the time they finished the formula.

SkekVar snarled a bit, then turned their attention to the remaining two. The question they were asking themselves now was all but written across their plump, warty face: Which ‘guest’ to put where?

The Wanderer was no tactician, but even they could see the dilemma. Should the General worry more about an escape from the goalong (closely confining, but harder to keep an eye on, since it would be behind them)—or from the carriage itself (more opportunities for mischief, but much better for keeping a close watch)? What would either half of the pair do if the other half got away? Which face would SkekVar less hate looking at for the next…however long it was? Did they want to try to learn anything, and if so, from whom, or was keeping strategic ignorance the wiser choice?

Under normal circumstances, UrGoh highly doubted this would even be a question. Surely the Conqueror was used to having pride of place, and they knew from personal experience that a Conqueror of wounded pride was a fearful thing to have around. That SkekVar so much as hesitated on the matter was…ominous. Thin veneer of civility notwithstanding, they did not trust SkekGra to stay put.

The General clearly being a bit of a plodder upstairs, working through the options took a while. But at last they caught rough hold of the Mystic’s arm. UrGoh could feel the claws pressed inward as a silent threat through the cloth of their shirt. “Come on, creature.”

They turned to SkekGra. “Your baggage can go up top. And be Grotting quick about it, I’m watching.”

The Seeker gave the General a somewhat perfunctory hiss, but obeyed. Knowing SkekGra, they were probably at least peeking hastily in the tops of bags as they got the chance, looking for anything useful. The Wanderer couldn’t think of anything in there that would answer this situation, but they wouldn’t be unhappy to be proved wrong on the point.

When they were done, SkekVar pointed a crooked talon at a spot some way off to the side of the carriage. They instructed the Seeker, “You stand right there. A bit further back. Further…there. Now, not one twitch.”

“Treating a fellow Lord of the Crystal and commander of the Empire’s armies like a criminal?” the Seeker sneered. “I will not forget this insult, SkekVar.”

If this was meant to rouse a competing challenge, it failed. “I hope to have to apologize to my fellow Lord later,” the General grunted. “In the meantime, I’ve got my orders.”

Then the big Skeksis moved to put UrGoh inside the goalong, or rather, stuff them inside. It was immediately apparent why they’d made that choice: the goalong was even harder for a Mystic to fit into than it would have been for a Skeksis, and with UrGoh faced forward, they had no way of turning around to try to open the back latch, even if their bound hands weren’t more or less forced down between their legs. The only air came in from some long slits along the top.

The Wanderer caught one excruciating glimpse of their dark half’s face, fallen into absolute unguarded dismay, on the way in—advance sympathy for the hideous cramping that would be settling into UrGoh’s muscles all too soon in this position. (And doubtless some saved over for themselves, for the echo of that agony they’d be receiving in turn). Then they weren’t seeing anything at all but a near-black stretch of inner wall, their neck pushed back into a most unnatural curve. Well, it would be a good time to practice centering and breathing through pain. If the Wanderer could slow their galloping heart and reach even a light trance, it would help both of them.

Beyond that, SkekGra would just have to look out for themselves up there. The Wanderer certainly felt some distress at their own straits, but it was their other half they actively feared for, trapped in close quarters with one of those monsters—one of those other monsters. Those different monsters. The scary ones.

You mean, one of their own kind? The Master’s voice in their head, followed by UrMa’s: The Skeksis you say can save Thra?

They tried to drive those thoughts out. No. These beings weren’t actually monsters. Not in that way at least. And yes, they were like SkekGra; but like the SkekGra who’d once been, before the profound changes that had come to pass since the vision. There must be better aspirations in the half-hearts of the others as well, waiting to be reawakened. In fact that was the whole point of the endeavor here, just as UrGoh had told their kin back home.

Back home? What home?

Never mind. To stop believing in the possibility of reunion now would be to suddenly decide that Thra had led them astray, that GraGoh had led them astray. And did they really think that? No, of course not. Fine, then why all this nonsense?

(Nonsense? The Wanderer never derogated anything by calling it nonsense; why, true nonsense was one of the few joys in mortal life on this strange world. Nonsense was…SkekGra’s word. But they, whoever ‘they’ was in this case, had a point.)

The shards of GraGoh had to stay committed to their course, no matter where it led.

The General wore the look of a tracker eyeing some unfamiliar species of animal, trying to determine from its anatomy how dangerous it was or wasn’t; and it was making the Seeker’s hair and feathers want to stand on end. After all, this wasn’t what they’d have ever called a friend, exactly—but certainly they and SkekVar had known each other for hundreds of trine. Certainly they’d spent countless unum together on campaign for the Empire. It was damned hard to force even the most amiable Skeksis into a lengthier or closer companionship than that. Even the few who cherished what passed for an intimate bond among their kind often found it needful to take breaks from each other, to keep accumulated tiffs from souring over into something more permanent.

So, if not a friend, then a very well-established acquaintance. They knew each other’s annoying tics, their peeves and minor indiscretions. They knew the sound of each other’s snores from the adjoining tent, for Thra’s sake (and even the bizarre speech and speech-like noises Skeksis occasionally emitted during a restless night’s sleep, but categorically refused to discuss or even think about). SkekVar was hardly the soul of tact, but in the field at least, SkekGra had always been able to rely on their cooperation and deference.

So this being stared at, as though the General didn’t even recognize them, was disconcerting as all Grot.

At a certain point the choice was no longer whether or not to break the silence, but whether to break it with conversation, a piercing screech, or the sweet crunch of broken bones. SkekGra took the first course.

“Can I help you, SkekVar?” they offered coolly.

The General expelled a snort like steam escaping and looked away in momentary chagrin, then reluctantly met the Seeker’s eyes.

“I’m not the one who needs help,” was all they allowed themselves.

“You’d have fooled me. Last time I saw anyone this nervous she almost dropped a plate of roast Nebrie in my lap. What’s got you so frightened?”

“I fear nothing! Look to your own troubles. You have plenty, SkekGra.”

“Not fear. All right.” SkekGra gave a little graak of consideration. “Anger? You’re angry with someone.”

“Not yet.”

“You need to water a tree, then. You should just say so. I don’t mind.”

SkekVar’s wordless growl was surprisingly eloquent. They struck a sharp elbow against the wall beside them too for good measure, with a force that would likely have cracked non-upholstered wood. But after so many days in Mystic company, this very ordinary display of Skeksis temper seemed almost…quaint to SkekGra. Baffling. Pitiable, even. They blinked.

“Well then, tell me what the matter is, General. Or else stop gawping at me like the newest Castle Guard recruit,” they returned in their very best beleaguered-commander tone of strained patience.

It worked. (Especially stinging because SkekVar did most of the training for the Castle Guard. Not that the Gelfling couldn’t handle that just as well or better on their own by now…the same way the Conqueror’s troops could probably roll on indefinitely, like the well-tuned machine they were, with no Conqueror or any other Skeksis help at all. A humbling, almost melancholy thought, but true nonetheless.)

The General growled again and then finally made themselves say something with real, if scant, content. “I…don’t see how you could bear to be in the company of that thing. Or any of its kind. For days!”

“There’s not much I can’t bear, if my duty to the Skeksis requires,” said the Seeker.

“How could this have possibly been required??”

SkekGra lifted a bright-colored brow. “You do remember who the UrRu are, yes?”

“Of course I remember!”

“Then who are they?”

SkekVar was increasingly displeased with the turn of the conversation. “You know Grotting well, Conqueror. What is this?”

“Well, we can’t discuss it if you’re too cowed to even state facts we’re both perfectly aware of, can we. You don’t have a Gelfling stuffed under your seat? Is the Emperor hanging outside your door over there? Listening at the keyhole?”

“I serve our Emperor loyally, I don’t have to fear them!” the General spat back.

“Relieved to hear it. Then who are the Mystics?” The Seeker scrutinized SkekVar’s face, wreathed in resentment and confusion—which granted was a pretty typical expression for them, but still. “I’m asking quite seriously, General. I don’t remember our ever settling the question one way or another. Do you? Or even trying to, for Thra’s sake. It’s very odd. For all the inventive little tales we’ve told the lesser peoples about them, we’ve barely so much as mentioned them amongst ourselves.”

“That’s because we all know—!”

“Do we, though? Do I actually ‘know’ it in the same way you do, or vice versa? How can we be sure, if we’ve never compared notes?”

“Compared notes?” boggled SkekVar. “Why in Grot would we do that? The less time spent thinking about those slithering mollusks, the better! They do enough to try to sap our strength from afar as it is.”

“There, you see, I don’t think we can have agreed on the subject, or you wouldn’t even have to ask me that. A bit silly of us to be finding all this out at this late date, really.” The Seeker leaned back now—assuming a posture of relaxation they certainly didn’t feel, but this was how Skeksis dominance-haggling worked, and anyway, performing it on the outside usually helped conjure it on the inside. SkekVar was almost impossible to intimidate physically, but intellectually was another matter; and that was absolutely SkekGra’s best bet for building any pliability here.

After all, the Conqueror routinely got sent on mysterious missions of intrigue and cunning the Emperor would never in a million trine have trusted the General with. The General was eternally, jealously curious of the Conqueror on this point, and on whatever secrets of genius the Conqueror obviously hoarded that bought them that privilege. So implying that this’d been something along that line, and especially that the General might be granted an inside peek for once, was a good hook to bait.

SkekGra also knew that as much as the General preened themselves on their gormless loyalty to SkekSo, they nourished a real envy of the Conqueror’s self-confidence in pushing both the boundaries of their remit and how they were supposed to go about it. On multiple occasions SkekGra had directly disobeyed the Emperor and ended up covered in plaudits regardless, simply because the result both met SkekSo’s overall goals and enhanced their personal glory. For that, the Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor would generally happily pretend to forget they’d ever wanted anything else. All of these were advantages the Conqueror—Seeker—possessed in this skirmish, as unenviable as their position might otherwise be.

A delicate business, though. Nettle SkekVar too closely and they’d shut down in a fit of Swothel-stubborn hostility. Nothing could be done with them after that.

And they were already in sight of that threshold. “What do you mean, ‘I wouldn’t have to ask’?” barked the General.

“I mean, you’d already understand what I’m saying about the relevance the Mystics to our interests, as Skeksis and rulers of the Empire. And I’d already understand what you just said about having your strength sapped. How are they sapping your—"

“Well, I never said they weren’t relevant!” the mountainous Skeksis broke in with almost a panicked look. Then they immediately started hedging. “But maybe…like you said…we’re not talking about…the same things. Fine, you tell me then, what this has to do with anything we’re meant to be working on!”

So far so good, thought SkekGra, but now came the real irrevocable decision: how much to tell (and how much to lie). They knew they and UrGoh were to be dragged to the Emperor’s feet, though under what precise circumstances wasn’t yet clear. Leave that aside for the moment, then, and focus on what was clear—the Hunter already knew far too much. That constrained the strategic options.

For one thing, that baying lunatic had plainly overheard at least some of the Wanderer’s and Seeker’s talk after leaving the Mystic village—and they wanted their two prisoners to know it too, or else they wouldn’t have quoted from the conversation. SkekMal also knew that it was the Mystic village SkekGra had been visiting, although they probably couldn’t get past the boundary of the standing stones and winding path. (That being, after all, a lot of what such protections were for. It was SkekZok the Ritual-Master who might be capable of breaking those from afar to scry, but even there success was dubious. The UrRu patently remembered a lot more of their metaphysics than the Skeksis.)

And if SkekMal had seen all that, then they’d likely also witnessed that…unfortunate display a little while back, with UrGoh giving into unbecoming emotions and the Conqueror—failing to punish that as it deserved. Worse yet, the Conqueror touching their Mystic’s shoulder to offer comfort. If the Emperor commanded, as they almost surely would at some point, the Hunter would obediently if unenthusiastically give them the detailed report. Extremely compromising, but also inalterable.

The Hunter needn’t necessarily have shared it all with the General, however. In fact, they literally couldn’t have shared the very last—there wasn’t time. And SkekMal wasn’t known for gossiping, or indeed for concerning themselves with anything beyond their perpetual Grotting suns-cursed Hunt. So SkekVar might have no idea how far things had really gone, simply because the Hunter hadn’t volunteered it.

And here was the Seeker, sitting across from a captive audience of one fellow Skeksis, leagues away from the Castle. The very scenario they’d told the Wanderer they wanted to try contriving next…just with completely the wrong Skeksis. Nevertheless, it more or less decided the thing. SkekGra had a brief window of opportunity to sniff out some lingering particle of a soul inside SkekVar—or at minimum, to make things trickier for SkekSo by giving a third party their version of events before SkekSo crafted the official lie. But once they reached the Castle, the opportunity to appeal to anyone other than the Emperor themselves could very well vanish. Indefinitely.

And there were only two Skeksis below SkekVar on the Seeker’s mental list of potential converts: the Hunter and the Emperor.

If they could make any headway with the General now, as slim a chance as it was, then they might get to influence arrangements for their containment, or confinement, or whatever it was to be on arrival…especially for poor UrGoh, who as UrRu was both a contemptible lower lifeform and (somehow, simultaneously) a crafty, treacherous sorcerer. So that was that. Decision made and die cast.

“Well, let me start with the most direct relevance,” SkekGra began. “Tell me, how is UrMa these days?”

The way the General instantly went rigid was much more gratifying than the Seeker dared show. So the Seeker wasn’t the only Skeksis to be utterly discombobulated by the mere idea. Ha!

“As if I’d have a clue! How’s yours, Conqueror? Think they’re cozy back there?” the other Skeksis mocked. SkekGra bit back a poorly-timed twinge. UrGoh was not cozy back there, and SkekGra felt it, and SkekVar knew they did.

“I doubt it. Feel free to ask them when we get there. They speak excellent, if somewhat—protracted Gelfling. But this is exactly my point, SkekVar. I know right where mine is and how they fare. And here’s the amusing part: I now know where yours is and how they fare, as well…far better than you do. Which is slightly creepy, when you consider that you literally share a soul with them, and their life or death is also yours. So. Would you like the news, such as it is?”

“I would not.”

SkekGra nodded just as affably as if they’d said the opposite. “For starters, I understand they’ve become an excellent carpenter. Had no idea that was something VarMa even took an interest in—but maybe that’s because we already had such a wonderful builder before the sundering? And very briefly after, I suppose. Poor HakHom. Anyway, I’m surprised. All these Ages and you never told me that was a hobby.”

“It’s not my hobby!”

“Isn’t it? Now that I think of it, it might be just a bit of a one. You did always fuss over these carriages, and all the war-machines as well. Used to drive the Scientist half mad. Now it makes sense. Oh, and you’ll love this. Do you know what the other Mystics call them?”

“No! I don’t need to hear any more beak-flapping about that pitiful creature.”

“You really want me to know more about it than you do—? Well, suit yourself. At least the Emperor will be fascinated.”

“This drivel is what you’re bringing the Emperor?? You’ve finally taken leave of your Grotting senses, Conqueror! I always said it would happen!”

The Seeker waited, in the best imitation of pain-free serenity they could manage, while the General made noises to put a herd of spooked Landstriders to shame.

After the other Skeksis fell silent and their mossy stone-colored countenance had thoroughly beetled over, SkekGra said mildly: “The Peacemaker.”

SkekVar clenched their talons into knotted fists, visibly restraining themselves from standing up and belting the Seeker across the face. At last they replied through a gritted beak.

“You tell anyone, anyone!—besides the Emperor!—about that, and you will wish you’d never seen this miserable planet.”

“The miserable planet with the glorious Empire spreading swiftly across it, I’m sure you mean,” the Seeker remonstrated in a tone of calm disapproval, pulling their old rank once again.

“…Of course.”

“I wouldn’t say a word, SkekVar. It’s none of those worms’ business anyway. There was one final thing—oh no, listen, this part you will like. UrMa is one of UrSu the Master’s most trusted…lieutenants.”

The General’s small eyes widened, and they ducked their head slightly, but they didn’t speak.

“You know. UrSu. The other half of our Emperor,” supplied SkekGra. “Born of SoSu who was our master before.”

“Yes…I suppose they must be,” SkekVar rumbled musingly. “And high in their counsels, you would say?”

“Oh yes.” This might be a slight exaggeration; UrZah and UrSol were probably the most senior as far as counsel went. But the Seeker now knew firsthand that UrMa’s loyalty to the Master was the most vehement any UrRu could hope to aspire to…and for their own part, UrSu had shown the Peacemaker a great deal of visible affection in return. Looks, smiles, little touches of the hand. Their friendship was an old one, and the trust indisputably deep.

The trust the Emperor has never granted the General, they suddenly realized.

Well, not suddenly (they’d begun this line of persuasion with something like that already in mind, after all)—but perhaps better to say, they suddenly realized that the matter truly carried a certain…weight.

In SkekVar’s…heart.

It wasn’t just egotism, just the usual carnivore scrambling for supremacy. SkekGra had seen that fervid look UrMa was always giving Master UrSu before, seen it a thousand times over in at least as many trine—just projected onto two other, very different bodies. One made of folded light, and the other of lumpy flesh. They had recognized it, without recognizing they’d recognized it. Till this moment.

Gah—of all the unnerving things, a fleeting splash of pity for the Grotting General. But UrGoh would say this was exactly the feeling to unearth. SkekGra had always had something from SkekSo that the General coveted and couldn’t possess, namely, professional respect. But both UrGoh and UrMa had received something else from SkekSo’s counterpart…and it was something no Skeksis would ever, ever receive from SkekSo themselves.

The Seeker wasn’t sure if they’d ever really wanted it from that tinseled tyrant in any case, but…who knew. Maybe they had, once or twice, long ago? In any case, it was a lack they and the General had in common, and that the General still felt keenly. That was the true meaning of the look. What SkekVar desired most in all Thra was the thing that only UrSu could still give them.

How (touching) interesting.

“And no wonder there really—they seemed a steady level-headed sort to me, even being a Mystic and all,” SkekGra went on, omitting much more from their personal opinion of UrMa than they were including. “What was it you said you had against them, anyway? I didn’t know you’d had a run-in.”

“We haven’t!” protested SkekVar. “Or…I’ve seen them once, but just the once, long ago on campaign. They were watching our battle at the scourging of Wickenmire.”

“Oh, Thra. That takes me back, Wickenmire!” It wasn’t till halfway through the sentence that the Seeker remembered that this memory was no longer free of the stain of guilt, which was probably a lucky thing given the circumstance. “But I don’t remember you mentioning it at the time.”

“Because it was just watching, you know they don’t interfere in our business! From the bluffs overlooking. We didn’t speak. I could just tell…that it was that one.”

“Then I still don’t understand the grudge.” SkekGra gave the General a heavy-lidded, evaluating gaze. “Certainly don’t see how they can have sapped your strength; you look well enough.”

“They haven’t! I’m in fine fettle!” The other Skeksis looked bewildered now, practically breaking a sweat—which did make some sense, given that SkekGra was obliquely pointing out the utter incoherence of everything Skeksis had ever claimed about the UrRu. “But you know what our Emperor has said about these creatures.”

The Seeker waved an airy hand. “Oh, most of that is just what we tell the silly Gelfling for their bedtime stories, you know that, SkekVar. Or what they’ve made up themselves since. Evil spells, talking rocks, singing sticks? It’s always courting disaster to start believing your own propaganda,” they scoffed.

“You’re calling the Emperor a liar?” The General made a fist again and got ready to shake it.

“Of course not!” SkekGra answered, with an unsubtle wink and a talon laid alongside their beak. “Don’t be absurd! But Gelfling and so on can hardly comprehend the full situation. Our gracious ruler has had to…simplify the narrative, for simpler minds. We understand that. Wouldn’t want them getting themselves in trouble, would we?”

This was less than half true, and not just because SkekSo was neither gracious nor especially concerned with Gelfling safety. There were two bodies of propaganda about the Mystics: one that the Skeksis (especially the Chamberlain) had concocted for the other races of Thra, to discourage their curiosity; and a smaller, hidden, but equally grim catalog that the Emperor and to some extent the Ritual-Master had foisted on the rest of the Skeksis, back when everyone was young and imaginative, and SkekSo hadn’t yet realized that every single one of their subjects would rather cut a foot off than pay their UrRu counterpart a visit in any case.

That latter body of legend was where all this folderol about Mystics seeking to corrupt and vitiate and “sap the strength” of the Skeksis had come in. But the Seeker was deliberately blurring the border between the two mythologies now, to give their graceless companion some mental room to maneuver without terrifying themselves with things that were complete phegnese dung anyway. Dismissing them all as harmless fables to keep more gullible peoples in line—stories in which the Emperor, the General and the Conqueror had co-conspired, like the wily cadre they were—should dispense with the whole thing handily. (And honestly—as if any of them could likely even remember exactly what was true and what a fossilized lie anymore. It was, after all, Skeksis under discussion here.)

“Well, yes,” the General allowed. “Gelfling will find mischief when they’re not being put to good use.”

“Exactly. You and I have to make judgments on larger matters they can barely conceive of, and take risks they know nothing about. For the good of the Empire.”

“That is very true, Conqueror! For the good of the Empire.”

SkekGra peeked sidewise out of the window, trying to gauge their travel speed and thus how much time they would have to work. This argument, if you could call it that, had to touch on several points to have a decent chance. And alas, SkekVar couldn’t just be whisked past all of them. They were not someone who whisked. Even if you could speed some of it on by helping them feel very intelligent for nodding along.

“Right,” the Seeker said more briskly. “And that’s exactly what my mission is, General. I’ve come to learn of a great danger for the Empire, for the Skeksis. Perhaps the greatest danger we’ve ever faced. One that is going to require talks with our counterparts to defend ourselves against, so the sooner we get about it, the better.”

SkekVar made an obligatory vomitous noise and shook their head. “Still don’t see how that can be a good idea, but go on.”

SkekGra chuckled. “Remember that they’re not actually our enemies, SkekVar, and that what happens to them happens to us. They don’t have to be someone you want to banquet with for negotiations to be an extremely good idea. You’ve seen me do it more than enough times to know, haven’t you? And understand, the Mystics didn’t come to me with some proposal. They didn’t tell me about the threat I speak of. I went to inform them of it. I approached them.”

“You!?”

“Yes, of course. Has there ever been anything I wouldn’t do for the Skeksis?”

“But what could this danger be, Conqueror—?”

Well, they now had the big lump’s attention, beyond a doubt. SkekVar wore something very like SkekAyuk’s astounded expression whenever they listened to the Conqueror recounting one of their adventures. Or those of Gelfling troops, hearing SkekGra’s firsthand account of a war they only knew from old village songs. All the more remarkable when one thought of how…extremely used to all the Conqueror’s other stories the General was. So the ground was at least somewhat prepared here.

But time was running short. It was going to have to be, as the General themselves had said, very good indeed.

Thra be with them.

The Wanderer had long since lost all sense of time. For some of the journey they’d actually succeeded in meditating, which always made the hours dissolve together. (UrZah would have been proud on that point, if no others.) The rest of the time they were fully conscious, but unable to register anything beyond the eternal present of severe pain. All they knew was at least one sun had to be out now, probably two, going by the light in the narrow roof-slits of the goalong.

They could certainly tell when they got close to the Castle, however. First some kind of Gelfling escort showed up on their Landstriders, causing the carriage to stop very briefly. They had indistinct words with the General up front and proceeded to ride along beside them the rest of the way. UrGoh wondered what would happen if they were to scream for help from in here, whether the escort would hear them, or care. Surely Gelfling were still…Gelfling? As gentle and merry a people as Thra had made them, as UrGoh had always known them—no matter how long they worked for a Skeksis? Then they remembered what Gelfling had gladly done in the Conqueror’s armies, and despaired.

Later came a call on a pair of Mounder horns for which the carriage didn’t pause at all; and soon after that a gradually increasing clamor of voices began, and the quality of the sound changed to suggest they’d moved indoors, or perhaps underground, and the carriage slowed to a final halt. Gelfling and Podling attendants carried on bustling parallel conversations in their two languages as the suspensions and door-hinges squeaked, the entire conveyance swaying and rolling slightly with the General’s dismount.

“No, not that cart, the other one, the big one! Don’t you see all that extra baggage?”

“If they don’t hurry up the General will be late for dinner and we know what happens then—”

“Worse yet, I’ll be late for dinner—”

“Her foot is acting up again I think, can you check on it before you put her up or—”

“Captain, permission to resume our patrol.” “Granted.”

“We don’t usually meet the carriage down here, what’s going on?”

“Sh! That’s not your concern. You’re here to watch and learn, not gabble.”

“You take the Armaligs, poor things, ridden hard and fast it looks like…give them some merdeep and love, eh?”

“Attention—! We welcome the General’s safe return!”

“Out, all of you! Return to your rounds. We will deal with this baggage ourselves.” That was the General’s voice. And then a deep, resonant, silky one that UrGoh did and didn’t recognize, with a quality to it that made them hold their breath in some futile, half-conscious wish to stay hidden.

“General. Thank you for making excellent time.”

“SkekZok.”

“Is the rest of the…baggage…inside? Or in the goalong?”

“Both. They’re in there, I just rolled the shades down so the rabble wouldn’t see. And then we have—additional baggage in the goalong.”

“Interesting…do we need to keep a detachment with us after all, or can you keep it in hand?”

A gusty snort. “They’re—no. It’s not going to fight, trust me.”

“Good. Discretion is desirable.”

“I’d Grotting well say so. If the Gelfling hear—”

“Never mind the Gelfling, if our follow Lords hear. This is not to be announced in court for now. Do you understand?”

“…Of course.”

The two voices came closer to the goalong and lowered themselves to cautious murmurs, even though the noise of the other people that had been present was fast dissipating down a nearby hall or tunnel.

“And our Conqueror?” the silky voice pursued.

“I—I don’t know. You’d better take a look. For a while they were mostly like—themselves, but then they started going on about this vision, wouldn’t tell me the details, but it’s the ‘end of the world and the end of the Skeksis’ if we don’t listen.”

“I see. Well, that’s…unfortunate. It’d best be the laboratory for now, then.”

“For them both?”

“Yes, well, about this other—”

“It’s theirs.” Even more quietly: “SkekGra’s.”

There was a brief silence. “I see.”

“So we have them both under control—they didn’t resist because we had the other. At least there’s that.”

“At least, yes. But this, this raises both novel problems and…novel possibilities.”

“Ahh…” The General sounded even more uncomfortable. “Yes, Ritual-Master.”

“Report to the Emperor as soon as we have them secured. I and SkekTek will take over from there until our sovereign makes their will known. Let me make sure the corridor is clear of patrols, and then I’ll rejoin you.”

“Yes, Ritual-Master.”

It was a bitter thing to entertain, but the Wanderer tried to picture how the other Mystics would have reacted to hearing this conversation. It would frighten them, of course, especially given everything SkekGra had told UrGoh about the General and the Ritual-Master. And the Scientist, the dark half of TekTih? Anyone who could bring themselves to torment a world’s very Crystal had to be made of grisly stuff indeed, so to be secretly cast into their realm was not a happy prospect.

But just now, it more deeply struck the Wanderer that the Skeksis’ talk was as unlike what they would have expected, as it was like. Yes, the subject matter was vile enough; they referred to UrGoh and their dark half as ‘baggage’ and plotted to imprison them for Thra only knew what awful fate. Yet their tone wasn’t the slavering mania UrGoh had imagined for such discussions—the tone Gelfling and Podling storytellers always used for the speeches of villains, in their colorful tales that UrGoh had passed on down the road in turn. No, not the slightest resemblance.

Instead, it all sounded so chillingly…reasonable. As though UrMa’s and UrZah’s other halves honestly felt they were dealing with a legitimate worry in a perfectly rational way. Fulfilling their entrusted duties, nothing more.

They heard the back latch open behind them, but the rush of fresh air they hoped for was a bit later in coming. They were still too crammed in for that, and SkekVar had to pull their tail out of the way and put an armored arm under their waist to support them as they clumsily backed out at the General’s direction, then stepped down onto the cold, slightly damp stone below.

At last they stood, chilled and sweat-sheened at the same time, their hair and hat askew from getting snagged on various things during this business, involuntarily flexing and crimping as their screaming muscles and sinews tried to find their natural positions again. (Nothing could be done with their poor still-bound wrists, however.) Not the state they liked to receive introductions in. Nor the circumstances. But that feeling gave way to a kind of appalled fascination as a curtain of golden fabric, red brocade, and cabochon-jeweled ornaments in the High Imperial style swept into their view.

They looked up to see a new Skeksis face, as dark as theirs or darker, but hued more toward a sooty grey-green than their own slightly purpled blue. The eyes in the face were startlingly pale by contrast, blue and keen and stabbing UrGoh straight through with an uncanny sense of familiarity. They wore an enormous hook-shaped metal crest atop their head, and carried a staff topped with a reversed gold triangle that bore a great red gem in the center. So different in style and air from either the closely-draped Seeker or the ironmongered General: these heavy gilt robes should have been ridiculous in their utter flamboyance, and yet as UrGoh’s low-slung gaze traveled higher, it ceased to be amusing, traced briefly through majestic, and finally landed squarely on macabre.

That icy stare, which seemed to find all it beheld wanting, subjected the Wanderer to a short but equally stringent inspection. Then SkekZok the Ritual-Master gracefully inclined their gaunt, almost flensed head and said, “Welcome back to the Castle of the Crystal. On behalf of our beloved Emperor, I extend to you the protection and hospitality of the Skeksis. May I have the honor of a name to know you by?”

Well, as the Seeker often said, here we go. Gelfling usually smothered a giggle when they first heard how slowly the Wanderer talked; Podlings laughed out loud; SkekGra fumed and fussed. Now to find out what other Skeksis did. It was hardly worth a preemptive cringe, but they found themselves flinching a little anyway.

“I am…UrGoh, the Wanderer.” They considered, sure they were about to be interrupted regardless, but when they weren’t they decided to go on: “Shard of GraGoh that was, of the UrSkeks.”

The stare bent down harder. “Bold to begin with such names, the names of the ancient dead.”

UrGoh shrugged. Their attention was becoming divided between the Ritual-Master before them, and the scene at the carriage door where the General was ushering SkekGra out of the vehicle and immediately wrapping a voluminous black hooded cloak around their shoulders. (“Wear it. No arguments,” they hissed, and the Seeker stiffened but acquiesced, their minor Z’nid noises of discomfiture falling quiet.)

“So be it, then. No doubt your legs could use a stretch after your journey. Shall we walk together, UrGoh the Wanderer?” SkekZok gestured with an elegant fan of the talons toward the rough passageway that wound out of this cavernous space—which was barren, except for a few crates and pallets of what looked like travel and military supplies pushed up against its walls, and minimally lit with rough candelabras. Their other talons, of course, held the lead end of the rope binding UrGoh’s hands, so the invitation was a formality at best. Apparently with this Skeksis there’d be a lot of those.

“Of…course,” the Wanderer answered, matching courtesy for courtesy. They craned to catch any glimpse of their twin shard’s face as the Skeksis priest began moving them away; but SkekVar had pulled the cloak’s hood down so low they were having to physically guide the Seeker’s uncertain steps as they followed along into the swallowing dark.

Welcome back to the Castle of the Crystal, the Ritual-Master had said—accurate, if cruel, but so far UrGoh saw nothing at all that they remembered. Nothing their limited store of GraGoh’s memories could recognize. It might as well have been a foreign planet. Perhaps as they all made their way upward out of whatever these tunnels were, things would start to ring a bell or two. Start to fall into some kind of arrangement.

…Or not. It could also be that the home they’d once dwelt in for a solid thousand trine was nothing to call home any longer, soiled and distorted into some horror they’d be gladder not to find anything familiar in. At least if they were headed right for the laboratory, they might be able to see the great Crystal for the first time in so long, see how it was faring? That was crucial information to learn, on its own merits—and might be something even UrSu or UrZah would willingly set an informal correspondence up again to hear about.

But if this was the Wanderer’s first day under Skeksis protection and hospitality, they hardly dared think what half an Age of it had done to Thra’s wounded heart.

Chapter Text

At a certain branch in the tunnels, the Ritual-Master stopped and turned to the General, who had to bring both themselves and the Conqueror-that-was up quite short in order to avoid a collision. UrGoh, being on a rope, was quick to notice the change in SkekZok’s direction, but found it tricky to get turned back around with their tail and all; the passageway was still Skeksis-height, but had narrowed somewhat.

“Slight change of plan,” the Ritual-Master said amiably. “You go ahead to the lab, General. I will attend to our guest.”

SkekGra, their bowed head still completely covered by the deep hood of the cloak, gave a small but noticeable start. The General double-checked their grip on the Seeker’s upper arm and then peered at SkekZok, blinking. “You said secure them both, Ritual-Master,” they pointed out.

“Oh, this one seems secure enough to me,” replied SkekZok with a benign tilt of the head toward the Wanderer. “I can take responsibility for them. They must be hungry after all, thirsty, and that will hardly do.”

“I’m hungry and thirsty, you—” the Seeker began to protest in a low hiss. SkekVar shook them to shut them up, then administered a light blow across the back of the skull to remind them to keep that down as well.

The Ritual-Master tsked. “Ah, but you’re not a guest, are you, Conqueror? I wouldn’t have our courtesy found wanting, but the General and the Scientist can tend to your needs well enough. We will speak later.”

“We’d Grotting better,” SkekGra growled, though the intimidation value of the thing was perforce a bit muted by the dark cloth. UrGoh felt another stab of anxiety, mainly on their twin shard’s behalf. If they could only exchange a glance before being parted for Thra knew how long—try to give some meager reassurance. The Wanderer didn’t know if saying anything would worsen the Seeker’s position (could it be worsened any further?), or possibly…conflict somehow, with whatever they might be planning to give their fellow Skeksis for an explanation. Had SkekGra been UrRu, there’d be no question about what they’d say, but as they’d pointed out to UrGoh more than once, Skeksis lied. The Wanderer couldn’t just assume the Seeker would tell the tale exactly the same way they had in the Mystic village.

Not that UrGoh intended to help their dark half lie, of course; but perhaps, just not getting in the way of a potential lie. Not until they had a little better idea of how things worked among Skeksis, at least. The Seeker presumably knew all about that. The Wanderer did not.

“Fine. On your head be it, SkekZok. I’ll let the Emperor know you’re—entertaining. Come on, let’s go…” SkekVar began roughly turning the Seeker around.

“Wait,” UrGoh found themselves blurting.

The General halted, not just surprised at the interruption, but seemingly astonished to hear speech issuing from the hunched creature before them at all. They eyed the Ritual-Master for a cue.

“Yes?” the priest prompted UrGoh, gently enough.

“We’re…unhurt,” was all the Mystic could think to say. They just wanted SkekGra to hear their voice, hear them being calm. “The bruising is…just from the ropes. It should…be better soon.”

SkekVar snorted. The Wanderer didn’t look up at SkekZok, but could feel the avid attention in their stance and stillness.

The Seeker hesitated, then gave a nod, exaggerated enough to be visible. It would have to do. The General steered the Seeker off down the left passageway. The Ritual-Master stood a moment, watching almost meditatively along with UrGoh as the two of them rapidly disappeared into the dark. Then with the slightest of tugs on the rope lead, they conducted the Wanderer away to the right.

“Well! Again, welcome, and a hundred welcomes,” reiterated the priest with a modest echoing arc of their arm that, as yet, took in only dark tunnel walls tiled in large triangular stones. “As you heard from the General, I am SkekZok, whose profound privilege it is to serve our beneficent Emperor and all Skeksis as Ritual-Master.”

“Shard of ZokZah that was,” UrGoh said with a hum of acknowledgment.

The Skeksis’ pale piercing eyes slid briefly downward to meet the Mystic’s. “That was, yes.”

For all the courtly generosity in their voice, their gaze was one that took voraciously and gave back almost nothing in return. The Wanderer had met them just moments ago, yet already they were guarding themselves so tightly. From what? From Mystic scrutiny? From fear of the unknown? From fear of knowing?

UrGoh asked this only of themselves for now; it required more contemplation and observation before speaking aloud. Instead, they simply nodded. “And other half…to my own kin, UrZah.”

“Mm. And how is that old fraud? Hale and hearty, I trust. Being careful with themselves?”

“They are well…” the Wanderer rumbled, their mind for just a moment far distant. Then they belatedly caught up with the rest of what SkekZok had said. “Old…fraud?”

The Ritual-Master answered with a smug little scoff, “If there’s one thing I cannot abide, it’s hypocrisy. And the others of your—kin? How do they fare?”

Even more to contemplate there. Fraud? Hypocrisy? And they nearly sounded as if they believed it. Well, there were certainly ways in which SkekGra had indignantly accused UrGoh of being hypocritical, a few of which had…turned out to be true.

“They are…all well, thank you. They dwell in peace…and obscurity. As they…prefer.”

“Good, good. As we too prefer it.”

“And…our Skeksis halves? How fare you all? It has been…so long.”

“Oh, no doubt you’ll see for yourself,” answered SkekZok in a pleased, almost conspiratorial tone. They stopped at one of the great wall tiles and with the tip of their staff traced a looping sign on it. A glint from the dark-red gem on the staff’s head was answered by the faintest glow from deep within the stone, and it obediently recessed into the wall and then slid aside to let them through. (UrGoh made the technical mental note—not just that there was a secret passage here, but that at least one Skeksis remembered how to formulate this kind of arcane geometry. They didn’t think this tunnel had been there in the UrSkek era, at least, nor did the sigil look at all UrSkek or UrRu in style.) So that was how the priest felt free to abscond for a little while with the prisoner, and didn’t worry about causing a stir by it. No one would know where they went now.

No one will know where we went now. The thought recursed on itself with an added note of unease. Even the Emperor might have no idea about this secret passage. They had just for all intents and purposes disappeared off the face of Thra.

The Ritual-Master touched the back face of the tile door as it shut again, making sure it had sealed properly before moving forward. Their staff’s head shed fiery-hued illumination on the otherwise unlit path ahead. “Now. If you’ll kindly pardon my asking—exactly what do UrRu eat?”

“We…ah.” The Wanderer found themselves suddenly unable to remember a single UrRu dish, distracted as they were with what they considered more urgent questions. Their mind spun fruitlessly round and round on this for what was probably much too long, but at last it occurred to them that they didn’t have to make an actual list.

“We can eat…so far as I know…anything a Podling might cook.” There were Podlings enough here, after all. That should be easy.

“Podling cuisine is your desire?” returned SkekZok in droll surprise. “You’re at the Castle of the Crystal, Wanderer! What is ours is yours, and I assure you it’s no imposition. But truly, you don’t care to sample the riches of the table of Thra’s Emperor?”

“Our…palates…are not so…refined…as yours, I think. And we do not eat…meat.”

“Not at all?”

UrGoh opened their mouth and, as best they could with hands still bound, tapped at one of their teeth to show the Skeksis. All molars. One of SkekZok’s scaly, wisp-haired brows lifted.

“I see. Remarkable. The Scientist will be fascinated to hear,” they said. (The Wanderer was uncertain just what valence to put on the word fascinated in this context, but there also seemed little point in worrying about it.) “Well, well then. As you wish, of course. And to drink? We have unparalleled pommerfruit wines, cherry-squash and Alfen-fruit liqueurs. The latter perhaps an acquired taste, but…”

“Oh. No…no, thank you.”

“Ah. Sap-brew then? We have Stonewood.”

As unused as UrGoh was to manipulation, and especially to being the concentrated target of a manipulator, even they grasped why a captor might like to get their captive tipsy. Fortunately, having now established that Mystic biology and diet were naturally very different from Skeksis, anything else they refused was less likely to be questioned or taken as an insult. Good thing the Ritual-Master had been punctilious enough to inquire—

Why didn’t anyone at the village ask SkekGra what Skeksis ate? they wondered all at once.

Then they ran things completely back through their head, almost unable to believe the recollection. Had no one indeed asked? Was that indeed right? Good Thra, it really was. Not one of the Mystics had asked the Seeker. Or even the Wanderer.

Well. And that might have had something to do with the Master’s little agenda, and their pressing the poor Cook into reluctant complicity with the same. Or it mightn’t. But either way, looking back now, it did seem a rather glaring omission. UrRu normally did all they could to try to accommodate beings who weren’t made of…stern enough stuff to endure the kind of austerity they imposed on themselves.

Which was itself a slightly arrogant attitude to take, come to think of it.

They were still absorbing the full depth of the realization that on this one lone particular, Skeksis hospitality was superior to Mystic, when a discreet throat-clearing alerted them to SkekZok, still waiting beside them for a response.

“Oh. Pardon, Ritual-Master. Ah, water…will do fine. Or I do love…black-broom tea…if you…have any.”

“Do we have any! You’ll have the finest in the land. Tuta can see to it.”

“Tuta?”

“One of my personal staff.”

“Ah.”

“It has, as you say, been a long time. And what brings you to us after all these trine, Wanderer?”

“The General and the…Hunter, I believe.”

“Ha! Adroit.” The Skeksis didn’t seem offended, though from their questioning look they were probably wondering if the obtuseness was deliberate or not. It was, of course: UrGoh was still debating what account to give of themselves, and wanted to buy all the time they could in the meanwhile. Perhaps the Mystic reputation for being ridiculously elliptical could aid them here—if they played the wise-fool soothsayer convincingly enough, SkekZok might even decide it was something intrinsic to UrRu, that couldn’t be helped.

Which it wasn’t, of course. It was a very conscious choice. Where a Mystic did not know an answer (and there was much they couldn’t answer), they never just guessed, but simply left the unabashed gap wide open in their speech. In addition, their ancient fears of ‘interfering’ in ‘native’ business had given rise to an unofficial tradition of creative hinting. One could call that cheating, perhaps. But to the UrRu, it was a way of offering help without forcing it—and of making sure that whoever they were nudging had the discernment to make the crucial leap of deduction or induction on their own. In theory, that made what knowledge they did share less likely to be misunderstood or abused.

In theory.

And there were other reasons as well. Pain, in great part, was one. When so many truths were too painful to say, yet lying was unthinkable, riddles and silence were the only shelters left. Mystics knew this reticence frustrated almost everyone of every other race on Thra. They accepted that, however, as the sad but necessary price of what they considered the only right path for alien penitents like themselves.

Still, it was a choice, not an immutable trait of their nature.

“Then you wouldn’t say the Conqueror had anything to do with it…?” the Ritual-Master tried again, without visible strain on their affability.

“I would not…not say it. SkekGra has always…had a great hand…in our fate,” replied the Wanderer, “even when I…neither saw nor knew it.”

“True. They’ve had a great hand in many fates, as you may have heard. We Skeksis have much to thank SkekGra for.”

“I would expect so,” grunted the Mystic.

“Nation after nation brought to its knees, but only that they might rise again as part of a new and glorious whole, under the rule of SkekSo. An army to rival all armies, such as Thra had never seen, built and placed at our command. Every threat to our power either subdued or crushed—to the point where now, the mere rumor of their name is often enough to secure fealty in advance. Have they told you the tales?”

UrGoh shook their head. “There was…no need. I’d…already heard them.”

“Of course. You must wander a lot, I suppose, thus the name.” The Skeksis drummed their talons lightly against the wall a few times as they went, considering. “At any rate, and in short, your other half is a hero of the Empire. I do hope they’ve made you proud.”

The Wanderer smiled faintly. This was probably meant as a goad, so it gave them no small pleasure to be able to answer: “They have, yes.”

“—Oh?” The Ritual-Master drew up a bit. “You are proud of their conquests?”

“I am proud of…their courage,” the UrRu said. “And of their…determination…to protect all Thra.”

“Well,” was all SkekZok could evidently bring to mind for a reply. “I’m very happy to hear it. That is, of course, the goal of all Skeksis, our one hope as keepers of the sacred Crystal.”

“So I have been told.” The Wanderer frowned and slowed. They’d been climbing a meandering upward path all this time, headed for some more habitable section of the Castle, surely…and yet there was a strange warmth now beginning to radiate from the wall on their left. A strange and familiar warmth.

They turned instinctively toward it, resisting the slight pull on the rope’s slack as they reached out to lay the back of a hand against the stone; fortunately, the Ritual-Master elected to stop and allow them their curiosity. They took full advantage, lightly touching the wall with their long knobby fingertips, then their forehead too.

Warm indeed, and almost—yielding somehow, even though the stone palpably remained stone. And undulating so very slowly, like the flank of some immense sleeping beast.

“Oh, yes,” murmured the Skeksis priest. “We’re quite close here. The shaft. Do you feel it?”

“Yes,” the UrRu murmured back. “Oh yes.”

Awestruck, UrGoh didn’t spare their captor another glance before turning their head to press their long, soft ear to the wall. They’d been seized with a shockingly powerful and peremptory yearning to hear the Song. Something must be left of that very inmost sphere of it, of the nine hundred and ninety-nine eggshell-thin layers of secret counterpoint and descant that had always spun in euphoric fugue here—their fibers twining with delicate precision round the ostinato bass notes of this planet’s fundamental, eternal Subject.

The inner sphere that, to some extent, the cursed (Fallen) UrSkeks had built the Castle to…not so much conceal, as blur. That was a contradiction GraGoh had never entirely managed to reconcile in their soul: for a thousand trine, the Twice-Nine had reassured themselves and each other that nothing in their many experiments was actually harming the Crystal, so it wasn’t that they had something to hide. It was merely that—the Thra-kind might not quite understand. That they might misinterpret. Mistrust, quite unnecessarily.

They’d had reason to fear. It was a fine line between the awe and the detestation of this world’s peoples, as they nearly got to find out for themselves once or twice. Not even the Gelfling, the closest to Thra—no, not even Aughra herself could see into as many dimensions as it would have required to adequately explain their science and the ethical constraints they’d self-imposed for it. And as for explaining the, ah, more personal necessity…

Well, they just couldn’t. They couldn’t bear to speak of it, especially not to alien lifeforms who again, wouldn’t understand the contexts, the complexities. How could anyone have successfully painted that full picture—that technically, yes, they were convicts and criminals, but not in that sense; not in the dangerous, violent sense that the simpler peoples of Thra would be thinking of? How to convey that UrSkek ways were so much more exacting and…honestly, confusing than that?

Confusing not least of all to the Twice-Nine themselves, who’d never felt completely certain what their true crime, their true “heresy” even was. SoSu had had the high permissions, the administrative access to Homeworld’s Crystal to do what they were attempting to do. The experiment was unconventional to be sure, but past that it should have been fine! UrGoh still didn’t really understand the Eldest’s objections to the whole thing, and they didn’t think it was a fault in their memory. They suspected that GraGoh had never figured it out either.

To be fair to the departed, though, neither the Skeksis nor the Mystics had been any more able to make themselves confess that painful past to the Thra-kind. Not in all these trine since the sundering. UrGoh had worn their lungs out only yesterday pleading with their kin to finally tell the truth—just to the Gelfling, just what was needful, just that—and even now the idea was, ironically, received as blasphemy.

They leaned more heavily into the wall. The warmth was so delicious, so generous, blithe as sunshine, enfolding the Wanderer like a bodily embrace, sating a deep nameless thirst they’d forgotten they had. Healing energy seeped into them, soothing rickety joints and coaxing circulation back to choked muscles. And it was synesthetic, too: the warmth had taste and smell as well as tactility. To the Mystic’s Thra-born fleshly senses, it smelled like a dewy meadow, and it tasted like mintcure…no. Like hope.

Now UrGoh looked over at SkekZok, at the dark half of UrZah, and was unsettled to find something even closer to outright recognition there—on both their parts. The Skeksis had their hand on the wall as well, and their stern blue eyes almost twinkled, offering UrGoh the smile their beak couldn’t convey, a shared understanding that needed no words.

This is it, this is us, this is the source. To this we are sweetly, eternally bound. This is what we need, what we love, what we…

Resent??

No, not resented, never resented. Surely not.

They’d never wished Thra’s Crystal the slightest ill; on the contrary, they’d always cared for it with keen attention and a deep, grateful sense of duty. It was a remarkable Crystal, of exquisite spectrum and clarity, relatively easy for UrSkeks to attune to—in many ways, so very like their home Crystal.

…In many ways, yet not enough. It wasn’t home. It was close, and most days that resemblance had been a balm and a relief. But other days it had seemed almost a mockery, a constant, cruel reminder of what they’d been exiled from and deemed unworthy of. Unworthy of their own Crystal, their own loved ones, their entire species, their entire world. Unworthy of its communion of life. Polluted and outcast.

And they’d never been able to earn the fullest trust of Thra’s Crystal, no matter how diligently they tended it—perhaps on some level it sensed they weren’t there because they wanted to be, or maybe…oh, by all the stars, maybe it shared Homeworld’s low opinion of them?—but whatever the reason, that too had hurt. Perhaps they had resented the Crystal, just a little? They’d tried so hard not to, because of course they knew none of this was the Crystal’s fault…but perhaps. SkekGra might have a better idea. Or SkekZok.

The music of the inner sphere was different now, however. Off-balance. The interweaving melodies held identifiably alien motifs, built on non-native scales. Yet as they listened, they realized that wasn’t actually the cause of the imbalance. There was a gap in Thra’s very Subject now, a periodic silence where material that had once been supported collapsed and went mindlessly astray, colliding into tangled dissonances that never resolved; a cumulative, slow-growing error in the mathematical process. UrGoh wondered if they were the only one to perceive it. The sense of kinship in the Ritual-Master’s eyes was so complete in this moment that the Wanderer truly felt as though they were looking at ZokZah, and ZokZah were looking back at GraGoh. But the real ZokZah would have heard the false notes and known them for false.

They decided to ask. “So much more…dissonance, than I…remember…from before?”

The priest gave a satisfied chuckle. “It stands to reason, does it not? Dissonance is the engine of song, after all, and our Empire is a fleet one.”

So they did hear it. They just didn’t see the problem. UrGoh rumbled their disquiet. “But harmony…is its strength.”

“Too much harmony is stasis, and stasis is death,” SkekZok smoothly countered.

“True. But…too much dissonance…obscures meaning, and…” The Wanderer was again astonished that the Ritual-Master didn’t break in or even make any burring little squawks, but they didn’t. Perhaps SkekGra was not actually typical of their kind on this point? Was that too much to hope for?

“And life without meaning…may as well…be death,” they finished.

“Ha! I must say I’m now looking very forward to our tea,” observed the Skeksis. They stepped away from the wall and began walking again.

UrGoh reluctantly followed. They found it took a real effort to turn aside from that bewitching emanation. Of course, SkekZok got to have it whenever they wished, so maybe it was easier for them. “And…will I have…hands free…for that?”

“Eh? Oh, I’ve a proper rope-knife upstairs,” returned the Ritual-Master. (The Wanderer noticed that was not a yes, but said nothing.) “As for meaning, well. I’d only reply that for us, life is its own meaning. It justifies itself.”

“Mm.” UrGoh gave this due consideration. “My friend…your other half…would not agree. They often say…that there’s more to life…than life.”

“There, you see,” SkekZok exclaimed. “That is what I mean. Stuff and drivel. Rotten mountebank. Up is down, left is right! And we’re supposed to take that for wisdom? It’s nothing but an excuse not to live. —That’s all any of it was, excuses.”

The Wanderer shook their head, almost amused. Oh, to see either or both of their faces, if one were ever to meet the other. It might be an even stranger spectacle than UrGoh and SkekGra must have made. They mildly suggested, “A shame that…it’s me here…and not them. Then they could…speak…for themselves?”

“Ah, but it is you that’s here. Something is clearly going on with—with the two of you, that isn’t happening to any of the rest of us. And why? Well, I suppose that’s our mystery to unravel. Here we are.”

A short branch off the tunnel had come to an abrupt end. SkekZok once again inscribed on the blank wall-face with their staff, and it gave way onto what at first looked like it might just be another tunnel. But once the Wanderer stepped out and the initial flare of new light died down in their readjusting eyes, they could see lit golden sconces and tapestries hung along the sides of the hall, and polished tilework on the floor. Still unrecognizable, still all in the Imperial mode, an exuberant play of sharp angles and asymmetrical thrusting shapes and deep colors. Had the Skeksis covered over absolutely everything of the old Twice-Nine’s dwelling? And was it simply because they preferred this style—or was it also to put long-dead trine out of sight, out of mind?

They looked around nervously, but could see no one. The Skeksis priest led them on with perfect confidence some little way down the hall, then through a fine wooden door, so tall that even the ridiculous crest atop their head easily cleared it.

The oblong room within was a touch chilly, though someone had recently set a small fire going in its corner hearth. There was modest lighting as well, which came from several stands of large glass baubles with glow-flits living within, not dissimilar to the traditional lamps of the Stonewood Gelfling. By the fire waited a cozy table, of plain wood but laid over with a fine gold-threaded tablecloth. There were a few short bookcases and bureaus, and rugs on the floor—some thin, some plush, one that looked like slightly dusty Mounder-fur. A pulley and chain incongruously hung suspended from the ceiling on the room’s other end; but no sign of its purpose, one end being empty and the other wound up onto a little frame on the nearby wall.

And there was also, the Wanderer noticed with a start, a Podling—standing off to the side in an attentive posture with a towel over his arm. An old fellow with pale flyaway hair, covered by a straw-colored coif of the sort Podlings liked to wear to bed on cold nights, with flaps that tied under the chin. He was clad in some indifferent layers of brown trouser, homespun shirts, and vest. One hand held a gnarled little cane. His eyes were thickly misted over with cataracts, but his ears were obviously in good order, because he hastily adjusted his towel and then sketched a quick bow. “My lord.”

UrGoh looked up to find the Ritual-Master now watching their ‘guest’ very closely indeed, though there was also more than a trace of merriment in the arch of their brows.

“Tuta,” they said, “my company and I would like some black-broom tea. And if you could lay on something like a Podling luncheon but, oh, I’d say several times bigger? And then let’s see, what else…”

The servant had been facing in the Wanderer’s direction, but his head and body turned to follow his master’s movements as the Skeksis dropped the lead end of the rope and went to rummage in one of the bureaus, coming up a moment later with a short, but brightly-honed, serrated knife. They dandled it idly and gracefully in one hand, still gazing at UrGoh over the Podling’s shoulder, while they made a paper-thin feint of considering dining options.

It was a test, the Wanderer suddenly realized. Or—something like a test?

At any rate, somehow it carried the feeling of two Landstrider matriarchs circling, contending for their broods’ browsing rights over a flowered grove. Or of the way SkekGra and SkekMal had eyed each other during their little chat back in the woods, with the latter holding a dagger to UrGoh’s neck the whole time. Only now UrGoh felt as if they, themselves, were the second party in a negotiation whose purpose and content no one had informed them of.

The creeping, cold awareness that it was a dominance contest, and that it was UrGoh the Mystic that SkekZok was trying to vie for dominance with, sadly didn’t come accompanied by any hints about how to react. The Wanderer was woefully aware of all their shortcomings in the realm of bestial instinct. They’d just have to try to logic it out…quickly.

The Ritual-Master had not introduced them to Tuta, so at least some traditional niceties were not being observed here. And Tuta had not asked, nor had they addressed UrGoh, even though they certainly knew someone was there. In other words, they’d been trained almost completely out of normal Podling curiosity. They probably had their job by virtue of not asking questions…and (it came to the Wanderer, all in a burst) probably by virtue of being blind as well. So there was no one to give away the game here, to gossip it out about this little kidnapping of the brand-new prisoner, unless UrGoh themselves tried to do it. To tell Tuta, or someone else they saw, who they were and what was going on.

So that was the test: would they play along with the secrecy, or would they attempt—in vain, most likely—to make a fuss. And then if they passed the test, their bonds would be cut? Was that what the ostentatious toying with the knife was meant to imply?

“…Some cold roast and seaweed salad, please. That will do,” the Ritual-Master finished, sounding quite gratified. Tuta nodded a “Yes, my lord” and made off at a healthy speed for their age, using not their cane but their hand trailing along the walls to navigate.

It dawned on the Wanderer that they’d just ‘passed’ the test, simply by standing there mutely trying to think it through for long enough. The Seeker would laugh all day about it were they here.

The Seeker. Oh, the Seeker—was their situation very much worse than the Wanderer’s? The laboratory was a frightful phrase. But then again, Thra only knew what SkekZok actually had in mind, up here in these more civilized environs. Looks might be deceiving on that count.

UrGoh briefly tried to feel outward for any sense of their twin shard, but couldn’t at all tell if the slight jitter in their stomach was from SkekGra, or their own worrying about SkekGra, or both. A Mystic should be able to detach from all possibilities regardless, they scolded themselves miserably (and uselessly). And this was a situation where all the aimless musing in the world about their Skeksis’ fortunes could do absolutely no practical good to anybody. So common sense itself advised against allowing the brain to roll about hither and thither like a Fizzgig on the subject. Really, this anxiety was nothing more than ego, sheer attachment to self, the delusional hope of control over events, and showed an embarrassing lack of trust in Thra’s purpose.

But knowing that didn’t make the jitter go away.

The Ritual-Master was still aglow in some odd way as they brought their knife over (causing the Wanderer’s heart to race momentarily, even though they knew what was about to happen—it was just an immediate reaction to the look, smell, and feel of a Skeksis who wasn’t the Seeker looming over them). Sure enough, they cut the rope away with a few deft saws of the blade, then threw it energetically into the corner, as though it were some odious outrage that they would certainly never have imposed on such distinguished company.

“There! Daresay that’s better?”

“Yes,” nodded the UrRu, it being a hard proposition to argue. Blood flow was going to take a while to restore itself, but they tried to speed it along with some cautious rubbing and squeezing of the wrists, hands, and fingers.

“And do have the seat by the fire, that should help as well,” SkekZok added.

Again, not really arguable, so UrGoh obligingly trundled over to the little bench at the end of the table nearest to the hearth and settled themselves in, taking care that their tail-tip was well out of the danger zone. The fire was a miserly thing for the moment, but it would grow soon. “Thank you.”

The Skeksis followed, taking possession of the chair opposite as though it were a throne and shifting their robes to pool attractively around it before returning their attention to the Mystic. The next instant they seemed to remember the gross impropriety they were committing by still holding the rope-knife (their staff, meanwhile, had been leaned up against the wall by the door), and rose to set it down on the mantelpiece with an apologetic look.

Not back in its bureau, but on the mantelpiece, close to hand. And that again felt like a showily deliberate choice, to which they wanted UrGoh to attach grave significance? It was perplexing as anything to an UrRu brain, but plainly, the little blade was somehow meant to be its own participant in…whatever silent parallel conversation its owner was trying to carry on here.

To the Wanderer, of course, where the silly knife was or who had it was all but immaterial. Seeing after all that they were hidden away in the Skeksis’ very Castle, with all its guards and gates; that SkekZok was patently deft enough to fetch it from anywhere in the vicinity, including UrGoh’s own hands, well before the Mystic could stop them; that SkekZok’s own fingers already ended in quite businesslike weapons; and that UrGoh’s options for defending themselves from such attacks in any circumstances were, to put it generously, limited. They’d been throwing themselves on the mercy of fate in that matter for hundreds of trine, and at least till recently, it had served their ramblings very well. (Why they couldn’t cultivate any such serenity about their twin shard was the question they had yet to sort out.)

But though Thra only knew why, they could still see that the Ritual-Master cared about this…dialogue of blades…greatly. Every bit as much as they themselves didn’t care about it, and then some.

So it must be some ingrained feature of this culture. That meant that ignoring it could be dangerous, and as nerve-wracking and vaguely soiling as it might feel, they’d have to try to understand it at least a little. They could only comfort themselves that if they succeeded, it might give them insight for their further efforts to harmonize with SkekGra—who did often seem to expect some kind of feedback on their own, slightly aggressive, mildly distressing set of arcane postural signals...and to get upset when it wasn’t forthcoming.

Assuming they survived to continue in that labor, of course.

“You see, we’ll have you set right again soon,” the Ritual-Master assured UrGoh as they returned to their seat. “You must excuse our fighting Skeksis their roughness, but there was no question of sending anyone else out into the wilds to find our missing Conqueror. You’ve no idea how worried we were.”

The Wanderer was fairly sure they had an idea, but they answered with faultless courtesy. “Of…course, Ritual-Master. But as you…now see…they’re quite safe. No need…for further worry.”

“Do you think so? I’m afraid that remains to be seen, my dear Wanderer.” The Skeksis leaned forward on their richly long-sleeved elbows, making themselves to some extent a continuation of the tablecloth. Their brows knitted.

“It…does?”

“Ah. I oughtn’t to expect you to understand—especially if your acquaintance with SkekGra is a very recent one…” A prompting glance, which UrGoh gamely nodded to in reply. “Is it? I see, then of course you’d have no way to know. But I must tell you, as one who’s known them a long time, this is not at all like them. To suddenly pick up and abandon their beloved army mid-campaign? Throw away their swords, and meander about the brush unarmed?”

“And with…their other half.”

“Well—since you bring it up, yes. Not that we’ve ever had quarrel with your people…have we, now? At least, if we’ve done something to earn your ire, this would be the first you’ve even hinted about it.”

Stuff and drivel, had that been the Skeksis’ phrase from earlier? Very well put. “We mean…none of you harm,” UrGoh returned calmly. “Nor have we…harmed SkekGra.”

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting that!” A floating wave of the talons. “Perish the thought. It is still odd, however. And under our laws, a fairly serious dereliction of duty. I’m afraid the Emperor is going to insist on a complete examination. They won’t take any chances with our beloved Conqueror’s health. We must know that they are hale and whole.”

“Whole…?”

The eyes narrowed a little. “You do take my meaning. Hale, then.”

“But they are. Extremely…hale.”

“I rejoice to hear it,” murmured the priest. “Alas, your word alone is unlikely to be enough. We do remember about the powerful link between ourselves and our counterparts. Anything afflicting SkekGra is only too liable to be affecting you, as well…and that would be of deep concern to Skeksis and UrRu both, would it not? After all, they must worry for you too, at least now and again.”

There was no way SkekZok could know what had transpired at the village, but the words stung to almost the same extent as if they had.

“…I see,” the Wanderer said numbly. They could feel the Skeksis’ gaze sharpen focus upon them at that, shrewdly (almost hungrily) noting the change in register, and they repressed a shudder.

The Ritual-Master didn’t, however, remark on whatever they’d just seen. “But that’s not to say you mightn’t be of great aid to us in caring for our mutual friend,” they went on kindly, as if nothing had happened. “Or rather, in determining their condition…both your conditions, really, because for obvious reasons, your health also concerns us. If our fears are indeed blessedly unfounded—and better news I could scarcely imagine—you could help us more rapidly find that out.”

The words were of sober ministerial concern. The manner, however, was almost teasing, the tone of a childling offering treats to a pet. Did they think they were offering something to UrGoh? If so, there was surely a price attached to it, and UrGoh had no idea what it might be. How could they hope to steer clear of a trap they didn’t remotely know the shape of? What if they said something, accidentally showed some vulnerability that gave this creat—this being the skeleton key to unlocking both Wanderer and Seeker…mentally, emotionally, occultly? Would they even know if they committed that fatal error?

If SkekGra were here, they thought again wistfully. But that was useless. SkekGra was not. The ex-Conqueror's twin shard had no choice now but to try to play this bizarre dark-halves’ game, whatever it was, and that’d be true for however long they were fated to stay in this terrible place.

It came to them that in that way, perhaps they were not now so different from the Seeker, or from any other Skeksis: so long as they all lived here, they surely had to play the game too. Was that why SkekGra always had that look on their face whenever they said the Castle, or contemplated going back there?

What had UrGoh missed all this time, of half their own existence?

“All right,” the Wanderer said at last, summoning all their fortitude. “I’m…listening, Ritual-Master. Please tell me…how I might help.”

Chapter Text

SkekGra knew it was just SkekZok trying to get inside their head, but knowing that didn’t make the stomach jitter go away.

After all, the Conqueror was no stranger to interrogation techniques, or even torture. They’d had to question enemies and suspected spies a number of times out on campaign. They hadn’t, well, strictly had to make terrifying examples of certain opponents; however, doing something like that to one leader was sometimes the shortest route to putting down a whole resistance, and they’d always reasoned to themselves that in the long run, it allowed them to leave far more of a defeated population unmolested.

(What they’d never thought to reason with themselves about was whether and why there had to be an Empire in the first place, to say nothing of conquests to redound to its eternal glory. They’d simply and happily taken it as holy writ. In retrospect, this was…not a flattering lapse, in a mind usually so inquisitive.)

All rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, the Conqueror had not directly relished bloodshed. Not as such. What thrilled them was victory, was danger and the survival thereof. They loved to roll the dice of mortality on a battlefield—even though at this late date, there was no longer much actual risk of their perishing—and then prove their superior strength and cunning.

They loved above all that moment when the balance definitively tipped: when the awareness that the battle was decided began to spread out all across the churned-up sod, and there they stood wet with blood, arms strained to burning, hemmed round by corpses. Not because the sight was a pleasant one, but because it threw into such crisp, tingling relief the fact that they, SkekGra, were still alive, and moreover triumphant. They’d dared Death itself to best them, and it had failed. For all its rankness amidst the carnage, there was no air like the first few gulps of breath after that realization.

Of course, even if they had enjoyed dealing out indiscriminate violence, the Emperor wouldn’t have allowed it. The dead and maimed couldn’t grow crops, or raise livestock, or send tribute, or pay homage—or spread the fame of Empire and Emperor (and not incidentally, Conqueror) to the far corners of Thra. Still, though SkekGra had never made the…devoted study of pain that the Ritual-Master did, they couldn’t now deny that they’d done such things, and even taken a professional interest in noteworthy methods for the doing of them. Disavow, yes, but deny, no; and the memory and lore of it might never leave their brain.

And so, having little else to do while they waited on the examination table for the Scientist to stop puttering with Thra knew what at the workstation, the Conqueror-that-was feverishly rifled back and forth through their mental catalog of captor’s tricks…only from the opposite perspective, this time. It was more than a bit disorienting.

Not that it took SkekGra long to figure out SkekZok’s game. The priest’s making off with their twin shard like that served multiple clever purposes. Obviously, it kept the Seeker from knowing what the Wanderer did or didn’t say, so they couldn’t coordinate. That was doubtless the excuse the Ritual-Master would give the Emperor for the whole thing. But more vitally, the move emphasized that they, the Seeker, no longer controlled the situation—indeed, no longer controlled or even observed their own entire being. Such voids were of themselves terrifying. SkekGra tried ardently not to speculate on what SkekZok might be doing with the Wanderer, because that was the entire point; because their imagination would run riot and come up with things far better and more…tailored to SkekGra’s fears than anything the Ritual-Master could cook up.

And suddenly changing the order of business round on everyone including the General, back in the tunnels, had probably signaled even to UrGoh the very special status SkekZok enjoyed with the Emperor—that the rules for other Skeksis did not bind them. They had a freer talon than that. What else can they get away with? Where is the line? Is there a line? were the questions everyone was meant to be asking themselves now.

Then there was a final duel being fought on a level below even the mind, down in the province of spinal cord and viscera. The miserable slime had already tumbled to the deep connection between SkekGra and UrGoh, because of course they had. If SkekZok had ever seen UrZah, spoken with them, mystically spied on them, even just thought deeply enough about them—then they knew damned well the ineffable pull from shard to shard, always lurking right there underneath the dread and resentment. Clearly, the erstwhile Conqueror had succumbed to that siren call. And the Ritual-Master further knew (because they were a Skeksis themselves) that Skeksis never connected deeply with anything without becoming at least a little jealous of it. Being alone with SkekGra’s other half was important regardless of what actually transpired, because it meant that another Skeksis possessed that which should only be possessed by the Seeker. They had claimed what belonged to the Seeker.

…In this case, what literally was the Seeker. And the Seeker, for the moment, could do nothing about it. It was an excellent recipe for driving any Lord of the Crystal mad, for generating wild fear and rage inside their very marrow.

Thoroughly transparent stuff. Timeworn, shopworn gimmicks. Really, all this kind of thing went on constantly, if less seriously and with far pettier stakes, in the Skeksis court. One had to keep in practice.

But SkekGra was not at court. And even if no one else knew it quite yet, they were no longer the Emperor’s prized Conqueror, either. The protections they’d usually have in such intrigues were long gone.

“I suppose I ought to be flattered,” they finally got impatient enough to remark to SkekTek’s bent back and high-ribbed carapace hood. “Are you sure I’m worth all the effort?”

“Probably not, but I was directed to be thorough,” the Scientist retorted. They turned around and came back to the table, bearing a clear flask of something red. Their expressions could be hard to read even in good light, which this was not. The Crystal and the long narrow slit opening on its fiery subterranean shaft were behind the Seeker, throwing their heat and lurid radiance over their shoulder, but the flickering, flaming hue of it could confuse the eye and muddy details. From what the Seeker could tell, however, the Scientist didn’t look especially excited. That was probably good news, all things considered.

“I see. Thorough with anything in particular?”

“A complete health evaluation, to begin with. I’m sure there’ll be more later.”

SkekGra tried to strike a matching curmudgeonly tone, as though they regarded all this as some silly deuced inconvenience. If SkekTek felt the same way about it—and they often felt that way about the Emperor’s directives—there might be a hope of earning somewhat less thorough treatment via some mutual commiseration on the theme. That air was more difficult to pull off when their eye level, usually much higher than the Scientist’s, was currently a bit lower; though at least the narrow table had been cranked up to a moderate angle, so it was only a bit. Unfortunately, that did result in the cuff restraints (wait—restraints? Already? Even with the lab itself almost certainly locked? Thra have mercy) digging uncomfortably into SkekGra’s arms and legs, as everything attempted to slide downhill.

“Well, I don’t remotely understand why. You’ve attended me after battles enough, SkekTek. Do I look in ill health to you?”

“You don’t appear to be, no,” the Scientist readily admitted, looking their ‘patient’ up and down again and setting the flask down on a little rolling side cart. “That only means I need to keep investigating, however, because our sovereign will not embrace a null result, and quite honestly, the sooner I detect something, the better for you.”

“Of course. They’ve never been fond of null results. But science isn’t supposed to be like warfare, it’s not a prize to be delivered. It should be finding the truth, whatever it is, shouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” grumbled SkekTek, “but it seems to have somehow escaped your notice that your noble sentiments are not ubiquitous among the court.”

“Oh, I know. It’s just tiresome. So…what kind of thing are they looking to you to ‘detect’?”

The Scientist scoffed. “The theories of the moment are head trauma, severe humoral imbalance, and drugging or intoxication with an unknown reagent. There was report of your being vague and delirious and taking to your bed not long before you left, so a brain fever was briefly under consideration, but I regret to inform you that if such a thing did occur, it seems to have passed now.”

“Ah. That’s a shame.”

“It is, Conqueror. If I could tell the Emperor that was your malady, then all that would require is cold water therapy, a course of tekel root, and needless to say, judicious bleeding with Sog-slugs. Then you’d be re-equilibrated and all would be right with Thra again—the only question remaining would be the dispensation of your Mystic antithesis.”

“…And that would be the best possible case.” The disgruntled act was beginning to wear a little thin now.

“Of course. You do want it to be a corporeal infirmity, SkekGra; ideally one that is relatively painless to treat, but even something less so would still be to your advantage. Because if it’s not something on that order, then no explanation is left other than willful and premeditated malfeasance on your part, and that, I’m afraid…” For a brief moment in their long, grandiloquent life, the Scientist had run out of words.

They shook their head. “Or else you’ve simply inexplicably gone mad, though I must warn you again that if it remains inexplicable and refractory to treatment, that’ll amount to very nearly the same thing as criminality.”

The Seeker was unsure how to interpret this unexpectedly frank talk, which had ended on an almost…sad note. Clearly SkekTek didn’t enjoy the idea of the Emperor deciding one of their favorites had betrayed them, betrayed the Skeksis. Which only made sense: the resulting storm of venom and fury might be primarily directed at the traitor—but the odds that it’d be contained solely to them were low. SkekSo’s tempers did a lot of collateral damage. And the Scientist, who sometimes had to bear unwelcome news, was a not-infrequent casualty. Did that mean they were open to negotiation on this? Could they even be hinting at a prospective collaboration, to calm everything down? Not necessarily…but possibly.

“Well,” SkekGra ventured, “I’d—have to guess any infirmities such as you mention…would have symptoms you’d recognize. Right?”

“Patently.” The bare deep-blue skin of the Scientist’s brow-ridge cocked inquiringly.

“Well. If you were to let me know those symptoms, I could tell you…whether I’ve experienced any of them recently.”

After all, who’s to say exactly what you observed medically, beyond the two of us? I could cooperate in making all this simpler for you and me both.

SkekTek’s eyes narrowed at that, the tiny shell-like frills that ran under their lower lids conspiring to obscure their gaze even further from this angle. They were definitely thinking it over, but with deep suspicion.

“You are, of course, welcome to tell me about anything unusual you’ve noticed over recent unum, SkekGra,” they answered at last. “But I must record my own observations as well. The Emperor would not be pleased if it turned out later that I’d—overlooked something. Misdiagnosed your illness, if you understand me.”

—For all I know, you really have turned traitor, or are hiding some truly grave condition, and I’ll be left holding the bag for it.

“Yes, of course I understand.” Disappointing, and their unsettled stomach was now sending insistent tremors of doom through all their nerves and skin. They reminded themselves that very little was ever won in a day—that for so long as they had the use of limbs and tongue, they could eventually contrive some kind of plan. And that was leaving out any potential contributions from UrGoh, who was usually slow, but never truly idle, and had a certain advantage in the fact that nearly everyone here would underestimate them. Yes, the Wanderer was cunning in their own way. The Seeker wasn’t as alone in this as they felt, and they could keep working on SkekTek in the meantime.

“Here, you need to drink this. Open.” The Scientist was unstopping their flask now, raising it toward SkekGra’s beak. The Seeker flinched and twisted their head away. They had no idea what the stuff was, though they could smell it already, a vile combination of fruity and chemical.

“What in the sewer of Skreesh is that?”

“Quick hydration. You need it, bonehead,” returned SkekTek irritably. “Don’t be an infant again.”

SkekGra turned back to glare at them. “I’m not thirsty. Just get on with your Grotting examination.”

The Scientist blinked. “The examination? I’ve already finished it.”

The Seeker felt the blood very suddenly drain out of their head, leaving it empty and buoyant and seemingly in quite serious danger of just drifting off on its own somewhere. What twisted new ruse was this?

“What do you mean?” they grated. “No you haven’t!”

“Ah. Yes.” SkekTek coolly set the flask back down for the moment and went back to their workstation, turning up some of the little burner flames in their apparatus and reducing others. “The sedative can have side effects of confusion, short-term memory loss. And it dries the mucosal tissues. That’s why you need hydration. Also because I had to take a number of samples. But it’s over now. Calm yourself, Conqueror.”

Even dizzy as Grot and halfway to vomiting, SkekGra’s first overriding impulse was to insist upon the integrity of their perceptions, and try in a panic to recall how they had, in fact, wound up on this table in these restraints. Now that they thought of it, they couldn’t remember being strapped in at all…or having everything but their underskirt removed. Samples? What samples? From where?

Not to mention, Don’t be an infant—“again”?

“You just went and drugged me?” they growled thickly.

“There was no alternative. You balked at undressing, and the General—tried to take matters into their own talons and get your things off. You…weren’t going to hold still for anything after that.” Credit where credit was marginally due; the Seeker marked no traces of pleasure in the Scientist’s face or voice as they said this, as there would have been with SkekZok, or SkekNa, or SkekOk. They were just conveying facts, rather coldly, but without gratuitous menace.

On the other hand, it also wasn’t the manner they’d generally used with the Conqueror before, even when the latter sat half-decent in their lab sucking in hissing breaths as the Scientist patiently sutured or re-set something. Occasionally they’d scold SkekGra for getting hurt or not following wound-care directions, like an old Podling (or…like a very old friend)…but there’d still been a certain deference even in that, which was now missing. Hard to delineate, but somehow, SkekTek no longer felt obliged to be on their best behavior.

Well, and no wonder. For Thra’s sake, here they’d been moments ago doing whatever they pleased to SkekGra’s unconscious form, like SkekGra would ever know (had they actually been unconscious, at that? Or awake, and just not retaining any memory of it? Oh Thra, had they been talking? What might they already have said to the Scientist and the General while they weren't their own master? Were they perhaps still under the sedative's effects even now??)...

...And then SkekGra had looked up and started trying to have a conversation, just as though they weren’t bound almost naked on a lab table, as though they and SkekTek were currently arranged in some manner vaguely resembling equals.

Not that the Seeker would have taken the supplicant role with SkekTek in any circumstance, mind; but they now felt humiliated at how oblivious they’d been to their own physical subdual that whole time. They hadn’t even questioned it. Grotting Scientist and their Grotting concoctions.

“And just where is our dear old General?” the Seeker asked, acidly.

Now the faintest little wry twist did visit the Scientist’s profile and tone. “Nursing a beak-bleed.”

“Good.”

Intently visualizing that would have to do for the moment, but SkekGra was a creature of vivid imagination. The Scientist returned to the Seeker’s side and gamely picked up the flask once again.

“Fortunately, they refused care, so at least I still have one addlepated patient on my hands instead of two. Now may I administer what you sorely need to recover?”

“May I get off this cold Grotting table??”

“Take your medicine and I’ll consider it.”

“Fine.”

Ugh, such bitter swill. The Seeker quaffed it as quickly as possible to minimize the taste and the indignity of being fed like a Grotting Gelfling baby.

“Well—?”

“I am now considering it.”

SkekGra snarled. “Suns curse you. I thought you better than the others, Scientist”—a lie, but a purposeful one, because SkekTek believed it—“but if you’re actually enjoying this!”

“Hush! Stop it. I’m thinking, SkekGra. —The Emperor would probably much prefer that you remain restrained for questioning. And they’ll be down any moment now…” SkekTek frowned toward the Crystal’s shaft, as though it might deign to show some insight in its glancing facets. SkekGra spent the time vainly fighting to coax their heart back down from their mouth at the mention of SkekSo and any moment now.

Then the Scientist shook their long, upturned boat of a beak. “Yet I suppose it won’t hurt if we see to some…slightly more dignified raiment for that proceeding.”

“Thank you.” The relief and gratitude were real (facing the Emperor could be daunting in the best of conditions), but so was the taut frustration that they nonetheless tried mightily to keep out of their voice. “But how am I supposed to put anything on if you won’t uncuff me?”

SkekTek shuffled away, and there was a minor commotion from a side of the lab that the Seeker couldn’t see from here. Rummaging noises, and anxious chatter from some of the live specimen cages, which the Scientist always kept at full occupancy with some selection of Thra’s more unusual biological exuberances—animals that budded and fruited and mossed over like plants; plants that moved and noised about like animals; wingless birds, birdless wings, and suns knew what else. Then the Scientist returned in dubious triumph with a length of dusty old wine-colored cloth that looked like it might well have been used for shading cages at night.

“This will suffice for modesty,” they declared, holding it up like a curtain swag. “Perhaps we can wind it round twice, to look almost like a robe…”

The Seeker clamped their beak down tight on a tongue that so badly wanted to deliver well-earned lashings. That frowsy thing was entirely beneath a Skeksis’ dignity, to say nothing of a Conq—even an ex-Conqueror, for Thra’s sake. Ludicrous. Pitiful. Woebegone.

And probably the best they could get right now.

“Thanks…SkekTek.” The words burned their very throat, but they managed to force them out.

Chapter Text

The Wanderer woke to find themselves curled up quite comfortably in a pile of pillows and sheets and throws, next to the roaring corner fireplace in SkekZok’s…parlor? study? whatever this was…and they were at once seized with momentary panic and a vague sense of guilt.

The first was because it felt like a foolish lapse in vigilance—even though the better part of their UrRu nature calmed them down quickly with the practical observation that prisoner or not, they were going to have to sleep sometime, and no matter when or where they did it, it would be under the power of their Skeksis captors. Their control over that part of things was inherently extremely limited.

The second was because it also somehow felt like a betrayal of SkekGra, slumbering in such relatively cozy quarters when they had no idea where their other half was or how they fared, past the knowledge that they can’t have been bodily injured without UrGoh knowing of it. Again, they were going to fall asleep sometime, and this time was objectively no worse—for themselves or for SkekGra—than any other. So they tried to set the guilt aside, even if they couldn’t quite cast it away; but even the Wanderer’s placid psyche found it harder to bow to logic here. As always these days, things were different when it came to the Seeker.

Which was embarrassing, since to their mind it revealed an inner selfishness, one that they must have been hiding from themselves for all these trine. They’d always seemed to be fairly serene in the face of risks and nuisances to UrGoh the Wanderer—even while allowing themselves to feel as much concern for others as Mystics ever considered it proper to feel for anything or anyone. (This was a ticklish point in UrRu philosophy, as UrGoh had pointed out more than once in recent internal disputes. Generosity and compassion were virtues with the Mystics, yes, but so were detachment and humility and “not interfering.” These virtues didn’t always easily coexist.)

But the Seeker wasn’t an ‘other,’ not really. To worry about, look after, indulge SkekGra was in a very real way to worry about, look after, and indulge themselves. Yet UrGoh did it constantly, or what seemed like constantly anyway. The fact that the Seeker still mostly felt like a different person lowered whatever inner resistance the Wanderer normally had toward coddling their precious self. And to make it all worse, the Seeker was objectively less deserving of that coddling than anyone the Wanderer had ever known.

Which again raised the question of why UrGoh not only cared, but cared to a notable degree; which question, again, had no non-embarrassing answer.

“Ah. Did you rest well?”

The Skeksis priest. They were still here. The Wanderer stirred at the voice, first raising and turning their head on its long stalk, then grudgingly rolling their upper body to a half-sit. As they did they became aware of a slight dizziness, a mild groggy feeling dragging at their bones.

The Ritual-Master was seated at the little table just as before, though both it and its chairs had been shoved some way away from the fire to make room for UrGoh’s nest. They took what evidently passed among Skeksis for a delicate slurp from their flowerlike tea-bowl, wiping their beak off with a little lace-edged napkin afterward.

“I…think so?” The Wanderer made themselves sit all the way upright, whether their head liked it or not. “How did I…end up…”

A tiny crinkle flickered in SkekZok’s lower eyelids. “You were talking ever more and more slowly, and then you started to nod off right in the middle of your sentences. I thought it wiser to accede to nature’s demands, since it was determined to be tyrannical, and let you sleep a while.”

“Oh. Forgive me,” UrGoh murmured, trying now to recall what the Ritual-Master had been discussing with them before they passed out. Something about SkekGra’s ‘temperament’ and how annoying it could be? Not a controversial subject here, apparently.

“Oh no please, don’t apologize,” returned the priest in the very richest, warmest register of that rich, warm voice. “I can only imagine how exhausting the journey must have been. At least, I trust it was that, and not the tedium of my company!”

“No, not tedium. Very little here…strikes me as…tedium…so far.” The Wanderer pushed off the blankets and was relieved to see that at least they’d been put to ‘bed’ in all their clothes. Had SkekZok done that themselves? They must have. Tuta would have been doing well to lift one of UrGoh’s arms, to say nothing of an entire UrGoh. The almost hilariously incongruous image of it leapt unbidden to their mind: the Ritual-Master in their jeweled vestments and enormous headpiece, their clawed hands just as long and bony as SkekGra’s—tucking a sleepy Mystic away in a corner, the way a Gelfling father would tuck away an errant childling who’d insisted on trying to stay awake with the grownups and finally, thankfully failed.

But the instant they imagined it, they knew that was exactly what had happened. Such odd creatures, Skeksis. Granted, the Ritual-Master’s original self had always been on the…odd side as well? At least, UrGoh remembered how distraught the UrSkek priesthood usually were to lose one of their presbyters; and no wonder, given how much psychic talent and specialist training the position required. Yet they had not pled clemency for ZokZah. GraGoh had been a little heartbroken for them on that point, if memory served…despite the fact that GraGoh themselves hadn’t a single soul who might even consider pleading for them.

“Well! I’m glad to hear that,” SkekZok chuckled heartily. If they’d heard the underlying irony, they chose to ignore it. “Come. The bread’s still moist and soft if you’re still hungry. The tea’s gotten cold, but I could put the kettle back on.”

UrGoh hesitated, but UrRu wisdom again dictated practicality, advising them to eat decent food while it could be had since the future held no guarantees. And they now recalled liking the bread and cheese, at least. They came back over to the table, running two hands through their tousled hair and pulling the chair out with a third. Still strange that they’d dropped right off like that, as awful as the ride here had been. Surely even the Ritual-Master wouldn’t drug them just for the fun of watching them sleep?

“Thank you. But don’t…trouble yourself…reheating the tea.” The Wanderer picked up a slice of the bread, which was indeed moist and sweet-smelling, and spread some knotnut butter on it; and again they wondered whether anyone was feeding the Seeker. How cruelly ironic that it should be UrGoh here lunching, when they had no trouble keeping fasts of one, two, or even three days, and it was SkekGra whose belly audibly gurgled after a few hours’ walk.

They tried to push such thoughts back out of their head, less for their own benefit than for the Ritual-Master’s. Something in the way SkekZok looked at them anytime UrGoh felt their face molding into the shapes of sadness or fear—as if the priest had been shown a glint of some treasure, which they must now scheme to uncover and claim. It was hard, if not impossible, for a Mystic to know what exactly that treasure was, or what it might be good for in Skeksis estimation.

But one hardly had to be a Skeksis to realize it was something better not found out. Whether the Ritual-Master would leave them that option was the question.

“Then come,” SkekZok warmly encouraged, just like the two of them were old friends catching up in the wayhouse after too busy a trine (which the Wanderer supposed, in a sense, they were). “You left me in suspense before. Don’t keep me hanging, have mercy! You were about to spin me the tale of how long you’ve been traveling with our Conqueror, and how in Thra that strange chance ever came about.”

Was I indeed? UrGoh wondered. Not that it mattered whether this was truth or lie. The information was now being explicitly requested.

Now they actually had to decide what to say—or more to the point, what to leave out.

“Not over there,” said SkekSo the Magnificent, Liberator of Thra, Subduer of Hordes, the Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor. They halted their pacing and waved the royal claws at their Scroll-Keeper. “Come, sit close. I don’t want you missing a word.”

“But Sire,” the Scroll-Keeper protested, even as they also complied—dragging a little three-legged stool toward the lab table where the Seeker lay, still bound but now thankfully swaddled in a double length of dark, bug-eaten cloth. “Surely our esteemed Scientist would be the more…learned one, to take notes—”

“You’re the one who knows shorthand,” the Emperor cut in imperturbably.

“And I’m a visionary, not an amanuensis,” added SkekTek. “I am making notes, but they’re strictly confined to the clinical. The rest is for your…” They flicked a stray walking-twig off the corner of their workstation. “Talents.”

The Seeker glanced down at the Scroll-Keeper, trying to get a quick read of where the smaller Skeksis perceived themselves to fit into all this chaos so far. That worthy refused to aim either their close-set, Thra-given green eyes or their two pairs of spectacles (plus screwed-on amethyst loupe) in SkekGra’s direction; but those eyes were decidedly wider and more restless than usual. In fact, they carried the air of a trapped animal in all their bearing, which SkekGra—being the one actually locked up in the infamous vivisection lab of SkekTek—found a bit ironic.

“All…all right,” the Scroll-Keeper quavered. From their tapestry bag they extracted a little board that served as both lap desk and inkwell. Then they threaded the first part of a long Vapran silkpaper scroll through the flat brass brackets that kept the writing surface fixed and steady. “I obey as always, my Sire.”

“You should be honored at the trust I place in you, SkekOk.” Not many trine ago, the Emperor had taken to using velvet cowling and chiffon ruffles to adorn their neck and collar, which had the likely-not-coincidental effect of submerging their fading ruff, along with its emotional weather systems. (The Seeker, whose ruff was even longer, could never have submitted to that kind of sartorial torture. If their hair and feathers couldn’t move at least a bit, they felt positively smothered. Indeed, even now their back-quills were compressed against the table in a most unnerving way.) Yet SkekGra thought they still detected a little ripple of amusement there among the ruching, and in what was left of the dark, glossy plumage on the brows. “Don’t you realize? I am confining the knowledge of this to only a few Skeksis right now, and you are among that few. You now guard your first High Secret of the Empire.”

Aha, so that was why the poor Scroll-Keeper looked like someone with an appointment with a Peeper Beetle. The Emperor was keeping this hushed up for the moment—which made sense, really, at least till the facts of the situation were known. And SkekOk, who was a nosy sort at other times on minor matters, had now realized that every line they wrote in this room would make them a bigger potential liability to SkekSo. Rarely a good position to be in.

SkekOk cocked their head to a few different fretful angles of submission and found none satisfactory. “Y-yes, Sire. I am…very, very aware of the…importance of discretion in this.”

“Good.” The Emperor’s deep-sunk eyelids lowered, shading their pale irises almost to a slit. “I hope so, since it’s always been my understanding that you are one of the foremost gossips in the Castle. Should this get out, I won’t have far to look, will I? Oh, and no editing on these transcripts, hm? These will be for my eyes alone, so I want them word for word.”

The Scroll-Keeper swallowed. “Of course, my Emperor. I will not fail you.”

Now, without hurry, SkekSo turned their attention to the prisoner. The Scientist had taken their scrofulous Grotting cloth and wound it loosely around the Seeker and the table both—once around the lower body and once around the upper, then tucked behind the shoulders and spines—which did have the effect of making it look almost like clothes, perhaps a half-mantle over a long tunic. At that, the Imperial countenance did frown slightly.

“What are these? I trust, not some sort of…Mystic attire?”

SkekOk’s already well-peeled eyes immediately bulged, and they fairly jumped to occupy themselves with a quick sanding of their pen-nib.

Just beside SkekGra’s right shoulders, the Scientist gave a throat-clearing kraa and sketched a little bow. “Ah, Sire. No, I elected to drape the Conqueror for their—modesty…and to avoid offending your august gaze with any unwanted, indecent display.”

“I see.”

“I can, of course, at once remove it if you—”

“No—that will not be necessary, thank you, Scientist.” (SkekGra inwardly muttered a grudging word of thanks to Thra for its dubious mercy.) “Begin, Scroll-Keeper.”

Had this really been the Conqueror on SkekTek’s table, they’d already have let loose with a voluble torrent of speech by this point, in one color or another—cursing, entreating, entreating and cursing. But it was the Seeker here now, who’d kept silent during all of this. And not even on purpose: they’d been thoroughly engrossed in watching SkekSo.

Back in the Mystic village, SkekGra had found themselves recognizing so many of the Emperor’s expressions and gestures in UrSu the Master that by the time they left, the face and form of one was beginning to appear almost literally superimposed on the other—translucently, intermittently, but vividly, with the swirling sheen of a film on water. And accompanying it, a sense of something or someone else behind even that scrim…yet another form, which the Seeker could have made out for certain if they only had the right eyes to behold it.

It dawned hauntingly on them that from today on, the converse would be true whenever they looked at SkekSo. They saw them now, UrSu, trudging sorrowfully about with that heavy staff, in the wake of the Emperor’s gliding, black-robed shape which floated out ahead like a cast shadow. As though the latter were as much an apparition as the former, and neither were actually there at all.

—Not a shadow but a shade, they suddenly realized. An overpowering and extremely inconvenient flood of grief engulfed them then. Because SoSu was dead; UrSu and SkekSo were just their poor splintered ghost. And that was all any of them were, ghosts, and SoSu had been their friend—and for all these trine they’d never once thought to mourn their friend?

They’d been far too busy being dead themselves.

And what business did ghosts have, trying to rule a world of the living? What in Grot had they been thinking there?

If any of this showed on their face, SkekSo was pretending not to see it, which was perhaps fortunate.

“Welcome, Conqueror,” said the ghost coolly.

“Mighty Emperor,” the Conqueror-that-was returned. It ended in a hoarse rattle. SkekTek’s hydration tonic needed a chaser, plainly.

“You were missed. It has been over three unum since you left your troops and disappeared.” The Emperor clasped their nonexistent hands behind their back. “For that entire time, my army has been traversing Thra with no general, no leader.”

“Did anyone notice the difference?” asked SkekGra with a wry crook of the jaw.

A reverberant silence filled the curved chamber. SkekOk had gone pale, and even SkekSo was rigid as a board.

They sighed. “I suspected as much.”

“I see.” The sovereign’s pale eyes roved over them as closely as any of the Scientist’s microscopes. “Then you admit to deliberately abandoning your post and your duties to the Skeksis?”

The Seeker did their best to hold themselves in something like military dignity despite the…unfavorable mechanics. “The post, yes. The duties, no. As I told the General, I left to investigate a threat to the Skeksis, one more dire than I ever thought possible. Left unaddressed, it threatens to utterly crush our people and the Empire both. That—seemed to take precedence over everything else.”

“Yes, so I hear. A vision.” A half-hearted scoff. “And you believe this vision to take precedence even over your own life? My Lord Commander won’t have forgotten that for every other member of my army, every Gelfling under your command, the price of desertion is death.”

This was a slightly academic point, since the Conqueror had never had to administer that punishment; in all these hundreds of trine, they hadn’t had a single desertion that could be verified as such. Not one of their missing soldiers had ever been found again without an extremely good reason to give for it, such as being taken prisoner for ransom, or getting thrown off their Landstrider and lying parched and broken-legged in a ditch for three days. …Or being extremely intoxicated, but that didn’t formally count as desertion, so long as they returned with due speed and enthusiasm. Gelfling troops had their flaws, but cowardice and flightiness were not among them.

“If…necessary, my liege,” SkekGra replied with a formal dip of the beak. “Though I dare hope that once you hear my tale, you’ll agree we need every Skeksis’ efforts in the quest to save our people.”

“This must be a tale such as even I’ve never heard.” The sound of claws clicking restlessly on finger-rings could be heard for a few moments. So much of the time the Emperor was expansive, emotive, ostensibly unguarded—but when they did feel the need for caution and reflection, they took as many long stone-faced pauses as they saw fit. Regardless of how many consecutive heart attacks it might give their underlings. “Especially to have driven you to associate not only with your own…Mystic opposite, but others of that cabal as well? When I’ve made quite clear that Skeksis are to keep their distance from those foul beasts as much as possible, and with excellent cause?”

“Yes—Sire. It is a tale, indeed.” SkekGra swallowed. The attention of the other two in the room was, of course, as keen as it was diffident. What would stir their curiosity, their doubt, in addition to SkekSo’s? The Seeker had to try to plant uncertainty—if not in the Emperor, then in the others. All pretensions to absolute rule aside, if SkekSo sensed real dissent among the ranks, they would draw back the phegnese reins, move with more caution. At least until they felt they had their court in hand again, by dint of charm or intimidation or both.

So they hastened on. “But let me assure…let me vouch—that is, the Wanderer is a meek creature. They really pose no danger to anyone here. Especially not under your roof, your power and your eye, my Sire. No Skeksis need be afraid of them…”

They purposely let it trail off into uncertainty. An answering flare in SkekSo’s gaze made it plain they’d caught the goad.

“Of course not,” the Emperor replied highhandedly. “No Skeksis need fear anything under my aegis, least of all those mollusks. As with any of my subjects, it is when they throw off the mantle of my protection that their peril begins. Which brings me back to you,” they added, in something far closer to plebeian irritation. “And this vision, this message, which you say could be the end of us if unheeded. What else did it consist of? For the love of Thra, quit shilly-shallying. Just begin at the beginning, go through to the end, and stop.”

“Yes, Emperor. It was…”

This time the Seeker’s hesitation was genuine. The Castle held no spiral-carved standing stones, but only because it didn’t have to; because it was itself an…enneract? demienneract? one of those, damn it…of geomantic confluence, right at the very fulcrum of the world. Certain kinds of speech would be Heard here. They needed to be Heard, but that didn’t take the quasi-religious trepidation of it away.

They gathered themselves. “It was…a vision of the UrSkeks, Sire. Of—of yut kalkoh w-EIT-vellem Auii, UU-iiyE.”

Everyone seemed to hold their breath until the quiet ringing of a quartal triad in their ears had passed. SkekGra doubted they’d done the words anything like justice, especially in their gristmill of a voice, but it was close enough to resonate at least locally, here by the Crystal’s very side. That had to have made an impression on the Scientist, at minimum.

“…Did you get that down?” the Emperor inquired dryly of the Scroll-Keeper.

“I’m not sure—how to spell—” SkekOk began to dither.

“I don’t care, SkekOk. Just do your best. I’ll remember.” They sent the Seeker a dark look. “However, I find it hard to believe that one of your type would, SkekGra. Can you even recall what that means? Or are you just performing tricks?”

One of your type, what in Grot was that trying to imply? Ah, no doubt the Emperor meant to send their own little signal to the Scientist and Scroll-Keeper there, reminding them that the Conqueror was after all a bluff old soldier, a mud-tromper who couldn’t possibly grasp the rarefied ancient lore the way they three could.

Under other circumstances, this would have offended SkekGra gravely. As it was, they couldn’t muster more than a twinge of pique. “I understood it when I said it, Sire. I mean, when we—when they said it to themselves. And to me. In the vision.”

A flush of heat came over them as they realized how little sense they were making, and they could feel even SkekTek staring at them behind their back now. They shook their head, frustrated. “When we said it to us, I understood it all! It meant…it meant many things, on many levels. Only the Grotting rind of it’s left now, of course. But it’s something like—a twain of paths, or a twain of infinities, or a twain of infinite paths? It’s what happens when a choice between two things is so important that…none of the futures after it can coincide to any real degree, they can’t counterbalance back toward any shared center of mathematical gravity, they’re just—utterly, utterly different.”

They coughed a bit, still feeling very dry in the throat, and then finished almost timidly: “…It doesn’t happen nearly as often as one would think, apparently.”

The Emperor had come up very close to the Seeker during the foregoing—close enough for the latter to get a great noseful of their musty clothes, their woody perfume oil, the natural preen oil of their feathers; scents of familiarity and normalcy that felt ridiculously misplaced here. Now they pushed back away from the lab table and straightened, their high-arched brows beetling into a look…not of anger, or even displeasure. It was more an air of dispassionate but intense concentration, the face of someone doing difficult math in their head.

“You seem a little confused, Conqueror. SkekTek, you did say the drugs had worn off.”

“Yes, Emperor.” The Scientist sounded a bit startled out of reverie, but recovered quickly. “Well worn off, by now.”

“Then I find this very odd. It’s almost as if you’re not sure who you are anymore.” SkekSo’s long thin beak tilted at SkekGra. “Would you agree?”

The Seeker blinked. “No, Sire. I’d—honestly say the opposite. That I was unsure of it before, in fact I’d almost totally forgotten, but now I do know, and I won’t ever forget again.”

“Is that so. Then why can’t you pick a word for yourself and stick with it?”

“Because…” The flush of perplexity subsided a little as inspiration unexpectedly took its place. “Because words exist to describe reality, and the reality of who we are is not…well contained in Gelfling words. We’re just too—big for them right now—and Skeksis would be even worse, so that won’t do either, but anyway. It’s that each of us is a few different things at once and yet also one single discrete thing, and we didn’t use to have to be all that at the same time, we’re really not supposed to be so diffuse, but at the moment…we are. So, no wonder it’s confusing. But I’m not confused about it anymore, not really. I’m just sorry I’m confusing you.”

They thought it was a fine answer.

SkekSo gave this some more quiet, almost meditative rumination; then they looked up at the Seeker, all the casual scorn of a moment before drained from their manner.

“Who are you?” they asked point-blank.

“I am SkekGra, Skeksis Lord of the Crystal.”

The Emperor nodded and began to pace again, but they stopped dead when SkekGra added, “And also UrGoh, of the UrRu. And in unity we become GraGoh the UrSkek, who once was. That was the UrSkek that appeared to us and spoke prophecy, Emperor. At least, we’re pretty sure of it. It’s a pretty unique feeling, being in…three different places at once, showing yourselves things you didn’t know you knew. Hard to mistake for something else.”

“I can just imagine,” muttered SkekSo distractedly. They were back to their pacing now, their hands behind their back once more, but those fidgeted mightily against their constraints, curved talons stretching and working like the legs on an overturned insect.

“I doubt my Emperor has to merely imagine,” the Seeker demurred. “We all have our moments, don’t we? Really, you needn’t all look at me like I’m raving, it’s only plain fact. Just as I am also UrGoh the Wanderer, you are UrSu the Master, and you are UrAc the Scribe, and you, SkekTek—” The Scientist remained out of their field of view, even if they twisted their head as far as it would go, but that didn’t mean that pedant got to hide. “Are UrTih the Alchemist. Yes, you know their names. You’ve seen through their eyes now and again. Try to deny it and see if the Crystal doesn’t strike you down for liars right here.”

SkekSo snarled, although it was almost in passing. They were visibly struggling to bring their attention back to the present surroundings.

“And I’ve just met all three of them, by the way,” SkekGra went on, “and, well. I’d hardly call them perfect people, but they are quite—decent sorts.”

SkekOk expelled a loud snort at that. SkekGra ignored them. “Kind, and intelligent. And they don’t bother anyone, including us! You’ve got nothing there to be ashamed or afraid of, or to pretend you don’t know anything about. Frankly I think it’s a little unbecoming, how hysterical and superstitious we’ve gotten on the subject,” they concluded with a lofty air—briefly sounding for all the world as though they weren’t even slightly strapped and cuffed to a board like a criminal lunatic.

The Scroll-Keeper shook their head in slightly disgusted wonderment. They made no further noise, however. The heaviness rolling off the Emperor’s narrow shoulders into the rest of the room was already palpable enough.

“Ha!” SkekSo’s laugh was a loud one, but otherwise rather unsuccessful (at least, to the extent that the purpose of laughter is to break tension). “Well, that settles it, coming as it does from our resident expert on what does and does not become Skeksis. Won’t the Ornamentalist be surprised to learn…”

They whirled and bent a narrow gaze on SkekGra once again, struck by some new revelation that had completely, instantly refocused them. Oh no, the latter barely had time to think.

“…I notice what you did not name yourself, when I asked who you were,” mused the Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor. It was lacquered over with the thinnest varnish of calm, but that seemed to be holding for now.

Their prisoner could only lie there frozen and wait for the rest to come. They didn’t have long to wait.

“Are you still the Conqueror?” the Emperor inquired—almost gently.

Chapter Text

The Seeker had been giving this dilemma their frantic cogitation ever since getting in the General’s carriage. It had not helped. They’d been hoping—in vain, it turned out—that they’d be able to share much more of the vision, as well as their travels with their Mystic half, before it occurred to anyone to ask them what hadn’t needed to be asked for hundreds of trine.

The options now were lie, silence, or truth. If there was some ingenious fourth path from here, from the question directly posed in its simplest form, they hadn’t found it fast enough. And the silence wasn’t a genuine option—it wouldn’t be tolerated for long, and in any case, would very rightly be taken as answering without answering. So then, lie or truth.

They could lie, certainly. They could misname themselves, assure the Emperor that yes, they were still their loyal Conqueror. Better yet, they could spout nonsense—pretend still to be delirious, whether from a ‘brain fever’ such as the Scientist had obliquely suggested, or some wicked but short-lived UrRu sorcery. From the way the others were looking at them, it wouldn’t even be hard to pull off. They’d worked the whole thing out in their head: play mad, let themselves be briefly locked away in some verminous oubliette, then evince a wonderful recovery. The Scientist wouldn’t give away the game, although they were unlikely to actively help. While SkekTek had no safe bets in this mess, the wiser money was usually on letting SkekSo pretend whatever they wanted to be true.

It’d be horrible—particularly any medical travesties the Scientist might feel inspired to inflict on the Seeker. But they’d live, and they’d escape the worst punishments; and if they kept their beak clean for trine enough, they’d eventually be allowed to go abroad again in search of more blood and tribute for the throne. It was all but guaranteed. That appetite would never be quelled, and no one had ever sated it quite as SkekGra had. They’d have a very short span to work in (one could only march Gelfling around aimlessly for so long before someone figured out they hadn’t ‘recovered’ at all), but that was precisely the kind of challenge they’d always relished.

UrGoh would…probably be turned loose, though imprisonment and thus the need to hatch an escape plot were also possible. That could be arranged, however. Then the two of them would regroup and begin the slow-but-steady, clandestine, one-by-one approach that was beginning to seem like not so much the best chance, as the last chance for carrying on the mission.

There were just two problems with the scenario: the Wanderer and the Emperor.

Separated as they were with no time to conspire, the Seeker couldn’t know how much of exactly what the Wanderer would tell the Ritual-Master, or anyone else, under questioning. But the one thing they could predict was that it wouldn’t be a lie. Which was an obstacle in a plan relying entirely on deceit. If UrGoh’s behavior and story didn’t happen by sheer luck to match up decently well with SkekGra’s, then the gambit was over before it started. The other Skeksis would never seriously believe it was the Mystic half of the pair being dishonest…all the propaganda they’d spread to exactly that effect aside.

To be fair, though, the Wanderer’s moves might prove moot either way—successful deceit was probably flying out the window in any case. At least when it came to deceiving the Emperor. Two revelations had just made that horrifyingly obvious.

One of those revelations was that SkekSo already knew the answer to their own query. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have thought to make it. This far into the Empire’s reign, Skeksis titles had become so wed to Skeksis names that they were essentially one and the same. It would sound like an absurdity, one of the Satirist’s riddles: when is a Conqueror not a Conqueror? Might as well ask a Dee-ari if she was still a Dee-ari, or a Jen if he was still a Jen. No Lord of the Crystal would do such a bizarre thing unless they already suspected, on one level or another, that something had changed that ought not to have.

The other was that if the Emperor had made the leap that Grotting quickly, there was a reason why.

This wasn’t an ordinary scandal for them, some political inconvenience to bury. Of course it wasn’t. Neither Seeker nor Wanderer had expected SkekSo to be any but the very last to come to their senses. It was, after all, the newborn SkekSo who’d personally cracked the Great Crystal, put a literal hole in the world’s heart (suns curse them!)—and why? To put the possibility of reunion beyond not just their own reach, but everyone else’s as well.

…Much as UrSu the Master had just done again yesterday.

…Albeit much more politely and with less collateral damage. Less irreversible damage? Well, less immediate damage. (Suns curse them, as well.)

Oh, Grot. And if the UrRu shard had gone to such panicked lengths, what might the Skeksis shard do, especially if they’d been unconsciously picking up their light half’s vehement distress at the mere suggestion of reuniting? Had the day of sundering, so foggy in the Seeker’s memory by now, ever really ended for SkekSo? Or was it still somehow going on and on forever, deep in their withered heart? It must be. That was why they’d been keeping such vigilant watch for the first tiny negligible hint of that threat resurfacing; so vigilant they’d caught it almost on the instant, all these hundreds of trine later.

The Emperor already saw that something had happened to SkekGra on the road with their Mystic—something that would never un-happen. Something cataclysmic enough to strip their fellow Skeksis of yet another half-a-name, this time the one the Emperor themselves had bestowed.

They fully understood they wouldn’t be getting their Conqueror back.

And they understood why. They had to. Only one explanation could conceivably tie these realizations together with all the other facts of the case—SkekGra and UrGoh becoming companions, the visit to the Mystic village, this sudden appearance of one of the long-lost UrSkeks (even if it was only in a vision).

Yes. The Emperor had deduced that reunion was where this was ultimately headed. And they would not willingly consider it. Therefore no one else would be allowed to consider it either. They’d do whatever it took to make sure this never happened again.

That being the case, the sole remaining sliver of hope lay in persuading SkekSo—or persuading the others to “persuade” them—of the one thing that could terrify them more than reunion. Which was the thing the Seeker had pointed out to the Mystics in the village: Even the worst of us doesn’t want to rule a smoking husk!

Somehow, the Seeker now had to make a quorum of Skeksis accept what the UrRu hadn’t managed to—that their choices really were to become whole and thus “die” as half-souls; or to die, literally and miserably, as any kind of souls. No lie could possibly serve that end.

One option left. The Emperor was waiting.

They made themselves drag their gaze up to meet the glittering cold of their ancient master’s eyes, just in case it turned out to be the last time. They owed SoSu—no, SkekSo—no, SoSu, that much.

“…No,” they finally said.

And it was done. One syllable to let go of an entire life. With no idea what, if anything, would take its place.

**

The short elegiac hush that followed felt appropriate, at least, but Skeksis could never leave a void unfilled. “They have gone mad,” the Scroll-Keeper breathed in a tone of outright awe.

So great was their shock that they’d clearly forgotten about the Emperor standing right there. They were swiftly reminded of it now by a cracking cuff on the beak from their lord’s talons. SkekSo’s skinny arm moved to strike the way a kitchak threw out its long proboscis to catch a judfly—half a room away one moment, retracted back in place the next, as though nothing at all had happened.

Thankfully, SkekOk’s spectacles were all on tethers, and though they flew off and swung wide, they didn’t fall on the floor or break. The scribe did whimper, however, and a little line of blood and spit appeared on their lower jaw from where the gum was cut. A thin streak of ink marred their page as well, slashing through the lines of neat shorthand. Their transcript now certified for all time not only the Emperor’s words, but their violence as well. That, also, felt appropriate.

“Have you taken a new title to yourself?” the Emperor asked SkekGra, still in that nominal calm.

“Yes.”

“And what would that be?”

“The Seeker.”

“And what is it you seek?”

“To be whole…but more importantly, to preserve life on this planet. Including all of ours.”

“I see. And for this, you’re willing to throw away everything I’ve given you, every honor and privilege the Skeksis have heaped on your shoulders? Is all of that now worthless, in the Seeker’s enlightened eyes?”

“Not worthless,” replied the Seeker, rather shakily, “but—unsustainable.”

SkekSo glanced at the two onlookers, who instantly found other places to direct their eyes. The Scroll-Keeper was notating even more assiduously than before. “Explain.”

When SkekGra opened their beak, they thought something would emerge along very similar lines to what they’d told the Mystics: that they had to become one with UrGoh to whatever extent was possible short of the true unity, and that obviously couldn’t happen while they kept washing their talons in blood. It was nothing of the sort.

“Well…how long did you expect me to keep up with it…?” was what they heard themselves saying instead.

“How—long?” returned the dumbfounded Emperor. Dangerous ground to tread, so dangerous, SkekGra’s nerves whined. Yet there was some odd gap between them and the brain, or them and the tongue, that simply refused to be bridged right now.

“Yes. We’re not out of places to conquer yet, but—it’s honestly not that far off, either.” What in Thra’s name… “And then what was I supposed to be? The Relic? The Statue? And I was already just getting so—tired.”

From the shifting of SkekSo’s brow, the Seeker guessed their own face must be signaling their entirely equal confusion at the sentiments coming out of it. The Emperor swirled minutely about, releasing some iota of tension that had to seep out or else, and then echoed with a snap of their long jaws, “Tired!”

“It was fun for a while.”

“Fun!!”

“For a long while. I—I liked being that for you. I shouldn’t have, but I did. Maybe I didn’t think there was any other way you’d let me go, go on exploring? But no, it can’t have been that alone. I enjoyed laying prize after prize at your feet. Reaping the glory of it. Basking in its warmth. Didn’t need any more reason.”

A strange, subdued chuckle escaped them. “I suppose I…really must have still wanted your approval somehow…even after all these Ages, everything that’s happened? Funny. And the striking terror in the hearts of the small ones, oh they only thought I was scary just standing there—they never had any idea what I was truly about to unleash on them! I didn’t think teaching that lesson would ever get old. It never even occurred to me to ask…what was to come after all that. It feels so foolish now.”

“You wouldn’t have been the Relic. Or the Statue. Not to me.” SkekSo stared back at them. Was that a look of—hurt? They couldn’t remember anymore what pain had looked like on SkekSo. The old wreck must have learned to hide it long trine ago. Or SkekGra had forgotten it for pure survival’s sake, seeing as the Emperor would rip the guts out of anyone benighted enough to mention it. “Not to any of us. I don’t know where you get such a nonsense idea.”

They grumbled and shook themselves. “But it’s no matter now. You would seem to have dismissed yourself already, and so taken all question of what comes after quite out of your own hands. No Skeksis is permitted to arrogate titles, you know that. They’re Imperial appointments. I haven’t appointed a Seeker. If you aren’t the Conqueror anymore, then you are no one.”

“I’ve been that the whole time. So have we all.”

Another of those palpable, who’s losing the coin toss to get this one in the teeth silences from their two fellow underlings, which SkekGra hastily made to break by correcting themselves. “That was a bad way to put it. Rather, I meant…this is not who we are. It’s not who anyone is. There never was a Grotting Conqueror, or an Emperor either. Thra, even your job used to be about a damned sight more than scribbling down lies for a clutch of delusionary lizards!” they suddenly lobbed in the direction of SkekOk’s balding pate—causing the Scroll-Keeper to look up in undisguised dread, though that melted piecemeal into a far less identifiable emotion as the Seeker continued.

“Yes, it was! You were an actual scholar, a historian and, and eksullAT’no…” There they were, failing to recall the Gelfling term for ‘philologist/semiotician,’ possibly because it didn’t exist, when to their vast surprise the UrSkek word popped up in its place. The others flinched like they’d been stung. Both these things gave SkekGra a tiny, incongruous glow of satisfaction. “The study of symbols and meaning in sentients, that was it. Not just for this world but thousands more, the Realms of the Crystal especially.”

The Scroll-Keeper shook their head, their beak wordlessly open, squinting through their lined-up spectacles as though getting a better view there would help make sense of all the rest, although how that could happen with the lenses so dirty, Thra only knew. SkekGra barreled on, now tilting their triangular head up in the hope, just this once, of catching the Scientist looming over their helpless form. (It was not to be. SkekTek, having no desire to stand there cowering in the middle of their lab, had chosen to do it by their assay apparatus so it would look like working.)

“And your science—had concorded all the known spatial dimensions and two of the time dimensions as well, hadn’t it?” they called, raising their voice a little to carry. “I remember now, you had a model of it floating in midair right where this stupid table is. Couldn’t follow all the math, but it was beautiful! None of these vinegar-smelling, exploding Grotting contraptions were here, either. Because you didn’t need them to see or manipulate realities. Just crystals, and the constellations and the voids between them. Isn’t that right?”

They granted themselves the gentle illusion that they’d just said whatever it was the Scientist most needed to hear in order to reimagine that vanished nobility. Since SkekTek was not visibly there to contradict.

Then they looked to SkekSo, who’d been standing very still. The Seeker was frankly astonished the Emperor had let them ramble on this long without paying for it in blood, but seeing them now, they could recognize why. The other Skeksis wasn’t just still; they were rooted to the spot and almost…enraptured. As though some cave-termagant of Gruenak lore had passed by, tossing out random curses and illusions as she went.

Enraptured by SkekGra’s words…? Hardly the usual response. Certainly not the one they generally expected. UrGoh had better not be possessing their body or something, at this extremely ill-chosen juncture! It didn’t feel quite as they imagined that would, however. It was more like when they heard something in their own turn of phrase issue from the Wanderer’s lips, that fleeting sense of being two points on a map instead of one. But the salient thing was that they’d captured the Emperor’s attention, and at least for this brief space, it was not hostile attention. Something in SkekSo wanted to hear this, and had overridden the will of their body to do so.

In other words—they were tempted.

Even their UrSu-echo had halted, stretching its long vaporous neck up as though listening to something in the distance. The Seeker tried now to strongly visualize this exchange as what it needed to be: two tall alien luminances facing each other, GraGoh pleading to SoSu. GraGoh had gotten a lot of practice doing just that, if hazy memory served, so they ought to excel at it.

“And you—you weren’t just the bedizened squit we all had to bow and scrape to for our petty share of the spoils.” SkekGra winced. Probably not the phrasing the UrSkek would have chosen, but they had to know by now they were working with imperfect vessels. In any case there was no perceptible reaction to it, from either the deceased or the Emperor. “You were something much finer than that. You were SoSu, our mentor and our friend. No one was ever kinder to me, and I followed you out of respect, not fear! To any star, down any Crystal vortex. I’d have gladly done it forever.” They blinked a flash of wetness back from their ex-Conquering eyes, convinced that had to be it, all the words that could possibly be waiting offstage for this, but no, not even close, the worst hadn’t even been touched and here it came.

“Is that why I never left this dungheap for good?” they demanded amid a tide of rising, perplexing anger. “Is that who I’m still trying to be loyal to? Someone who isn’t even here anymore, and I’ve just been giving all this to some—memorial remnant of you out of…I don’t know, habit? Wishfulness? Magical thinking, like it was going to conjure you back to life somehow?”

SkekSo still didn’t speak, but their eyes had widened even further. Their pupils as well, which lent a momentary if quite possibly deceptive aura of softness. Gelfling sometimes called eyes the doors to the soul. If that really was how Thra built the bodies of its creatures, SkekGra could always hope this was the outline of some slim crack offering a way in.

Grot, forget anything so flimsy as hope; just keep aiming words and gaze in that direction as though it were true. At this point one absolutely might as well. “Or are you still in there? For the Crystal’s sake, master”—the other Skeksis audibly roused at that name, which had belonged to SoSu and UrSu, but never SkekSo, it was far too familiar for their taste—“if you are, you have to let us know. I have to know if I’m talking to anything at all, if there’s anything to reach.”

**

They had no idea what if any of that had penetrated its stricken target. It had plainly affected the others, though. The Scroll-Keeper honestly looked as though they’d have liked to cry, and even the Scientist had come around to peer at SkekGra with the same uneasy wonderment they might have given a Spitter who’d started singing opera just before a dissection. The Seeker was all too willing to gather them with a glance now while they were unsupervised.

“That is who we really are,” they insisted to SkekOk and SkekTek (continuing on some completely other level to marvel at their own tone, as if earnest appeals had ever been the way to do…literally anything here). “Not this. This—this—”

They actively struggled against their bonds for the first time, aching not so much to get out as to have some latitude for arms that badly wanted to lift and gesture. To notate the full meaning of ‘this’: the dry-baked lab and its clanking encrustations; the Skeksis, their fraying bodies and slowly-deadening minds; and all the ornate garments and baroque court intrigues that had been devised to hide the same. “Is just—a twisted charade of us. Or, or like a game, some perverse children’s game we’ve been playing at. Only games aren’t supposed to kill and destroy everything, but ours does. And they’re supposed to be fun…but I don’t see anyone having much fun anymore.”

The waxen figure of the Emperor showed a bit of inchoate life then. But their eyes stayed rigidly fixed on the Seeker, and their sonorous voice was reduced to a soft hiss as they observed, “That can be changed.”

SkekGra understood they were to quail at the implication, but in this strange mind-space there was no such thing as fear, only weariness, and the threat seemed just more of the Grotting game. They shook their head, hanging heavily on its thin neck.

“No, it’s gone on long enough. We have to stop. I’m done playing at being your monster, SkekSo. I just—want to be myself again now, please. I want to go home.”

They gave a laugh that frightened everyone, including themselves, with its desolation.

“Doesn’t anybody else?”

The Emperor came slowly up to the Seeker. The light clack of their high pattens on the floor was startlingly loud against the backdrop of speechlessness.

“For everything you claim to have remembered from ancient times, there is as much that you’ve evidently forgotten, SkekGra,” they said. They sounded so…eerily patient with it. Except for the fact that it lacked the Master’s perpetual hoarseness, it could have been UrSu speaking back in the Mystic village.

“One is that the ‘home’ you speak of is closed to us. They don’t want us back there. They didn’t before the sundering. They certainly wouldn’t have us now, after all this, even were we somehow to undo what was done. If you recall as much as you say, you should recall that.”

SkekGra’s stomach knotted at those words, because they could well be true. Actually going back to Homeworld was not, of course, the main point of this whole quest (although perhaps it was for SoSu’s halves, in the sense that nothing else mattered so long as they were denied that?)…but still, it hurt. A lot. Nothing of this didn’t hurt a lot, which did explain why no one had brought it up even once in all these hundreds of trine, at least not in the Conqueror’s hearing.

“This,” SkekSo went on mildly, “this world and Crystal of Thra, is the only home we have left. Fortunately we need no other, because we have become its masters. I say fortunately, but this was, as you know, some small effort to effect. Nevertheless, it had to be done. And we must always remain its masters. Because if we ceased in that, neither Thra nor its Crystal would have us either. Have you lost the understanding of this?”

“You don’t know that,” protested the Seeker. “You don’t actually know. We never gave the Crystal a chance, not after you—after we saw it splintered. After it…splintered us, and you…had your revenge. We just assumed it was war now and we had to win it, so we put it in”—they couldn’t help a quick glance at SkekTek—“chains, as our prisoner. And since then we’ve done much worse to it. I guess I’m not surprised you fear reprisal. But the UrSkek, GraGoh the Explorer, they told us. They told UrGoh and me that Thra was giving us the chance to heal it and ourselves, and make amends. Make peace with it. That was the vision. Sire, why would it tell us that and lie? Why not at least try it, study the possibility? What is there to lose?”

“I presume that’s not a serious question,” the Emperor replied. “Which is perhaps appropriate, since this is not supposed to be the interrogation of SkekSo. Today I’ll humor you for the sake of learning the extent of your crimes, and for benefit of present company. Who, I trust, are seeing firsthand exactly why I made the edict against associating with the Mystics—” They turned to the other two Skeksis, whose heads rapidly bobbed with murmurs of “Yes, Sire,” though to the Seeker they looked more cowed than convinced. Regardless, a tiny curl at one end of the Emperor’s mouth blessed their obeisance.

SkekSo then returned their attention to their disgraced commander. “Who on the face of this world has more to lose than the Skeksis? Must I list the luxuries we’ve come to enjoy through my rulership? Our Empire, our rank, our riches, our immortality, our lives?”

“But all that is doomed anyway, if we don’t do this healing and make all things whole,” SkekGra argued.

“You keep saying that.”

“Because it was in the vision too! If this is the only home we can have, that just makes it even more important! How can we call ourselves its masters if we sit back and let it be destroyed?”

“Let me make something very clear, SkekGra.” The Emperor leaned over them, hands behind their back once again. Their throat was close enough that the Seeker might have made a lunge for it and gotten enough of it to tear open, so this gesture had the quality of putting one’s head inside a Ruffnaw’s mouth, a flourish of daring. Not that SkekGra would have done it—though the image of it certainly did visit their Skeksis brain. “You aren’t getting another chance to tell your little morality fable. We three, here in this room, are the only ones who’ll be hearing it. Ever. So as fond of spinning tales as you’ve always been, I would advise against saving the apocalyptic end of this one for some later, more dramatic moment. Now is the time to astound us. What is this doom that comes to the Skeksis unless we do as you say, and how does it come about?”

This was a serious question. The Seeker could see it even at this lowered angle. Even as SkekSo pronounced ‘morality fable’ with the devastating offhand contempt they’d worked into an art form, their face held nothing but detached, almost clinical concentration. They already knew this was no mere story. SkekGra inhaled, taking in willy-nilly some of the carnivorous Imperial breath, and began.

“I—we saw the plain of Skarith bare and riven in a thousand places, under wrathful clouds. Nothing lived on it at all anymore, except some kind of moss or mold that was luminescent…like glow-moss, but purple instead of blue. And the runners of dark thorny grass that it sent out, crisscrossing like Arathim webs, so you couldn’t walk over it without cutting your feet. I know, because GraGoh led me over it toward the Castle and somehow I had no shoes on, like an idiot. But they pointed to the moss and they said, something like, Little shard, do you remember how the Crystal bled on the day you were born?”

They heard one of the others taking in their own breath, almost a quiet gasp. The Emperor frowned and withdrew slightly from the table, but never removed their scrutiny from the Seeker.

“And I said yes, it did, it seemed to bleed a little—just for a few days, and then it stopped and we thought it was fine. And they said, If it stopped and was fine, then why is the blood everywhere? You trample it underfoot right now.

“And I…didn’t have a good answer for that, so I said teach me, or maybe it was—it was a word that meant both teach and remember. Oh, and the other word meant both me and you, but anyway. Then we sort of flew up this ridge, there was a ridge overlooking the plain that SoSu and GraGoh and a few of the rest used to go to all the time, for the first brother’s rise? That one. And I saw that the stuff really was everywhere, beyond even Skarith, the whole greater basin for as far as I could see. Thra bleeding, and nothing growing except the withered life that could…feed on that blood. And it was poison, the blood. It savaged my feet. They were swelling, and then they were sort of—rotting, and I complained about it and GraGoh just said You can’t walk in poison and expect to remain well, little shard, just as you can’t breathe lies and expect still to know yourself.

“Which again, felt…hard to argue at the time. And then the UrSkek looked right into me. Not at me, but into me, and they said, This poison is already within you and all your kind, who also drink from the Crystal’s wound like that stranglemoss. And your flesh is mortal, and flesh, and it will succumb just as the Great Trees and the wilderness of Skarith do here. And then I was yelling at them—why, why was this happening, who’d done this to us, who did I need to avenge us on? And they answered, On yourself. You will do this; have done it; are doing it. You are the trouble. As long as you are unwhole, the Crystal must bleed. As long as the Crystal bleeds, the Darkening will do what is in its nature, and spread and consume. Even the proud Skeksis who drink of it now and think themselves immortal will prove to be its mere prey, and their blood its food.”

The Seeker stopped for a moment, and the brief pause was enough to register a very distinct and rapid change in the consistency of the air. It was still dry and warm, but also somehow solid; and it carried vibrations like a solid, tensely enough for SkekGra to feel the thrumming of every sound in the lab against their skin. They fancied that even if they had been cut free from their bonds at that moment, they might have been unable to get up. It might have been like trying to swim through a jelly. It felt—dangerous. Was this a resonance from the Crystal, which had overheard?

…Or was it from SkekSo, who’d dealt the wound being spoken of? They tried not to show any of it as they lifted their gaze to the Emperor again, but the fear had at last begun. It was now sweating through that membrane of strangeness that had been holding it back all this time.

“That’s—that’s what they called it, Sire. The Darkening.”

The Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor returned their look, pale irises moving downward to meet them. The fear suddenly spiked as SkekGra realized they couldn’t read anything in the Emperor’s face right now. It definitely wasn’t enrapturement, and it wasn’t identifiably anything else either. If they couldn’t read it, their instincts wouldn’t know how to react. Dangerous.

“Yes…? Go on,” the Emperor prodded coolly. “What Darkening?”

**

“May I…ask you…a question?” UrGoh ventured curiously, after they swallowed the last of the cold tea. (Excellent black-broom, this. Most didn’t taste good cold, but this variant did. Perhaps SkekZok wasn’t just boasting about the finest in the land.)

“Of course,” replied the priest, with an indulgent squeeze of the eyelids. They had their wiry hands folded sedately in their lap, being long since done with their own luncheon.

…Which had included the entire meat of the roast and several of its ribs—cracked in two against the vise-grip of their jaw to release the marrow, as UrGoh now recalled from earlier, and then tossed right down; the sour seaweed salad; most of the Podling gruel UrGoh had politely declined, doused liberally with something from a pungent spice-jar; and over half the bread.

This was about in line with what the Wanderer would have anticipated, going by their travels with the Seeker, so perhaps some things were universal to Skeksis. What was different were the little gem-laden metal things, like long tined thimbles, that the Ritual-Master had worn on their right-hand fingers for some kind of cutlery. They didn’t seem to offer much better dexterity or handling than a Skeksis’ own claws, but they were a good deal neater. If only SkekGra had had some to use for meals back in the Mystic village...never mind that. It would have changed nothing.

For their own part, they’d have just liked to have their journal. Setting down impressions and sketches of the Skeksis and their folkways would be a useful, familiar, and soothing occupation in a worrisome setting.

They emitted a contemplative whuff, wondering which of a dozen things to ask. They finally landed on: “Why…do you not…despise me?”

This seemed to amuse their host, though they didn’t laugh. “A quaint assumption, dear Wanderer. I’d pose the opposite question—why in goodness’ name would I despise you?”

For answer, UrGoh held up their four arms in a wide-spoking gesture, inviting inspection. “…Mystic.”

“Yes, I can see that, but I don’t find any reason to despise you on that account.”

“Most…Skeksis…seem to? Hate…or fear. Possibly both.”

“Ah.” The Ritual-Master cocked their head. “Yes. I regret to say, Skeksis can be mistrustful of what they don’t understand. Not to worry though! I will do my utmost to urge restraint, and my word carries some small weight at court.”

UrGoh frowned. There once again was that little disparagement of their fellow Skeksis, which the Wanderer wouldn’t have expected from a Skeksis high official, here in the very seat of their Empire. And as before, the vague feeling that there was some hint they were supposed to be taking from it? Beyond the obvious one, which was that the Ritual-Master wanted the Wanderer to perceive that they, SkekZok, were exceptional.

“Then you…feel you understand us?” the Wanderer dryly pursued.

“Heavens, I’d never make so bold.” SkekZok waved the idea off. “But I do always seek to understand others. Indeed, few things give me greater pleasure.”

“Pleasure…?”

“Oh yes.” They settled a kindly but somewhat piercing gaze on the UrRu before them. “Everyone has hidden depths, you see. Internal marvels, of which even they themselves may know nothing. It is part of my…calling, as spiritual guide, to help others tread those deep innermost paths, discover those marvels—and so purify themselves to become worthy of the higher planes.”

Well, that at least was a very…UrZah thing to say. And once more, it almost sounded as though they meant it. UrGoh ruminated on this.

“And if…someone…has no desire to do so?”

“Then it is my duty to lead them to desire it,” said SkekZok beatifically. There the resemblance to their light half ended.

“Hrm. Some might…find that process…painful,” the Wanderer pointed out.

The Skeksis nodded. “Indeed. Yet few things of real worth are bought without pain.” Then they added, with a coyly crooked jaw: “A Mystic ought to know that, surely?”

A wary prickling had started up in the nape of UrGoh’s neck, but their deep voice was mellow as ever in its reply. “I’m…not sure…how you mean.”

The Ritual-Master gave a thoughtful, almost Mystic hum. “Do you not fast, starve yourselves, sit in the cold, sweat in the heat, keep prayer-vigils all day or all night? Do you not deprive yourselves of simple comforts, to say nothing of worldly joys? And why? Who could it possibly benefit, if not yourselves, your souls? The sins such mortifications of the flesh are meant to lift away must be heavy ones, indeed.”

How does SkekZok know all this of us? UrGoh wondered, even as they felt their cheeks warming. Did this prove the priest was able to scry on the Mystic village itself—or did they just catch the same random impressions of their light half that UrRu did of their dark halves? Certainly deep trances, such as UrZah practiced, carried a greater risk of making that kind of sudden link. But whatever the Ritual-Master had seen, they’d clearly misinterpreted it.

And it was more terrible than that. Somehow, that smirk of insinuation in the Skeksis’ voice contrived to make UrRu ascetism sound almost…sinful in itself. Needless—even extravagant in some warped sardonic way, and therefore blameworthy.

“No, that’s…not the point,” demurred the Wanderer. “We do not…do these things…out of guilt.”

A chuckle. “Don’t you?”

UrGoh could almost have been sitting by the fire again, to go by the unsettling amount of heat their skin radiated now. They had no idea if that discomfiture was as obvious to SkekZok as to themselves. It seemed regrettably likely. “No. For the most part, we simply…don’t think to…provide for ourselves…past what is necessary.” They elevated their head to get a better look at the Ritual-Master’s face. It wore a patently skeptical mien. They forged on, a bit awkwardly. “To the extent that we…purposely do these things…they are disciplines. They teach us…to ignore…distractions…from the essential.”

The Ritual-Master sent them an almost mischievous look at that—as if the two of them were both working some kind of vast confidence game on the world, and like had recognized like, much to like’s delight. “Distractions. I see. Then what are the distractions, that seek to lead the UrRu astray?”

Such clear, sky-hued eyes, inside such a ruin of a face. “…That seek to lead UrGoh, shard of the UrSkek, astray?”

UrGoh opened their mouth, but nothing would come out at first. When they did finally manage to force some words through, they weren’t at all the ones they should have said.

“You…know very well. These are…the very same disciplines you, ZokZah, taught us long ago…for our…purifications.”

Happiness positively blossomed in the priest’s skeletal countenance at that, and they leaned forward.

“Yes,” they said. “I know.”

The Wanderer had by this point become slightly desperate to change the subject, or at least to turn the telescope of scrutiny round the other way. “Do you remember…a lot of it, then? Of—the before?”

The Ritual-Master hesitated, looking for a moment very like an Arduff considering whether to toy with the prey some more or kill it. “I remember enough,” they allowed at last.

“Do you remember…me, then?” When the Skeksis merely furrowed their armored brow, UrGoh added: “Me…from before. You were my friend. Was I…yours?”

The “I” and “me” were deliberate. Until very recently, both UrGoh and SkekGra had tended to use “we” or even “they” when speaking of GraGoh. It was still easiest, and might remain so until the true unity. Indeed, it was only in the last several days that SkekGra had stopped half-panicking anytime UrGoh asked them to recount an UrSkek memory in the first person singular. The Wanderer wouldn’t have entirely minded if SkekZok were to panic just now, but they wanted to see the response either way.

“You…” SkekZok settled back in their chair a little, letting the pillow behind their back partly support them. “That’s an interesting question.”

“But did you? Consider me a friend?” UrGoh shook their head. “Shouldn’t…require…that much thought…if you can remember it.”

“I suppose it’s the definitions that are difficult.” A tiny, almost surprised scoffing. “Were you my friend, or—that of my Mystic counterpart?”

The Wanderer frowned. What a strange answer. Absurd, even. A moment earlier the Ritual-Master had seemed to accept being addressed as ZokZah, and they obviously knew what UrGoh meant by ‘the before.’ Had SkekZok just misunderstood the question?

“At the time…” UrGoh chided them, “there was no SkekZok…or UrZah. You were one—”

“I was no such thing,” the priest interrupted, for the first time, and rather sharply.

The Wanderer instinctively froze, then willed themselves to unfreeze, taking a deep slow breath in and out (and wishing for the dozenth time that they had their pipe, in the name of Thra’s mercy. It had always helped with their breathing devotions, providing a visual and olfactory cue). Meanwhile the Ritual-Master bent their tall frame over the table toward the Wanderer, talons spread wide under them on the table’s end. Reading the posture, UrGoh was fairly sure it meant ‘heated debate’ and not ‘imminent threat’—but the sharp claws would have made that easy to mistake, if UrGoh hadn’t had so much recent practice in getting used to energetic Skeksis gestures.

And SkekZok’s voice was resonant as ever, though just now its ring more betokened the tomb than the altar. “You thought you had a friend called ZokZah,” they bluntly informed UrGoh. “But ZokZah was a mere mask, a fable that never became real! Or at best, an egg that had to break in order to birth. Now I am whole, in the way I never was before.”

The Wanderer stared back in frank stupefaction. (They did note down that SkekZok was perfectly willing to use “I” for the before, but that had suddenly become one easily-lost item in a sea of astonishment.) For answer, the Ritual-Master simply lifted their beak to an angle distinctly reminiscent of a sneer.

“I was always divided inside, UrRu. We all were, and you know it. That is why we were exiled in the first place. At the time we counted that a misfortune, because Homeworld wanted us to consider it so. It was harsh punishment for grievous sins, in their eyes. But it was also the means by which fate brought us here to Thra,” they went on with increasing fervor, “and to this Crystal, which sundered us rather than let us go! Don’t you see? It didn’t want the UrSkeks for its masters, after all—but it did want the Skeksis. We rule it at its blessing. It was always our destiny to make its Song anew!”

The triumph in their eyes was cold, yet blazing. UrGoh realized with a sick lurch that whatever you could call this, it wasn’t a lie. Or not a lie as UrGoh had learned of them, out on the roads of Thra. Wrong, folly—yet not a fully deliberate lie. It was something worse, some mind-poison far more complex than any the Wanderer could remember ever dealing with before. Something beyond even the fine-looking edifice of excuses the Conqueror had crafted for their depredations, which had collapsed like so many sticks of kindling not long after receiving its first real examination.

The revelation was unbalancing, because what it revealed to the Wanderer was mostly void. Here they were trapped in the very heart of these beings’ dwelling, and it was only now dawning on them that they’d absolutely no idea what they were dealing with.

But before they could say anything or begin to think of a response, the light in the priest’s eyes died down, and they moved into a slightly different bodily deportment, a more—humble one? No, humble wasn’t quite the word, but it was less proud in some subtle way. “I’m afraid we must look forward to continuing this fascinating conversation later,” they announced.

UrGoh took a moment even to arrive at puzzlement, their compass being as spun around as it was. This, again, made so little sense. What better time for conversation (if it really was fascinating) could there be than just after a satisfying meal, in a room with a cheery fireplace? They must have given some kind of genuine offense—

Then the door opened. Not gently. It was a heavy slab of dense dark wood with a velvety sheen, yet it groaned and shivered on its hinges as something on the other side flung it wide.

The Wanderer swiveled their neck apprehensively around in that direction, expecting something very large indeed to be filling the gap of the doorframe. Instead, what greeted them was a Skeksis a good deal slighter and shorter and lighter-skinned than the Ritual-Master—tightly cowled and robed in shimmering black fabrics, with jaws as long and sharp as a scissor-blade, bristling with dozens of uneven teeth; and small keen eyes of a very pale green or cyan. They also had something like the Ritual-Master’s sickle-crest on the top of their headgear, though it was darker and curved in the other direction. They weren’t in full threat display, but their shoulders were drawn tight, their dark brow-feathers were ruffled, and the bottom of their skirts stirred in a way that definitely suggested a tail switching back and forth behind them.

“So this is where I find you!” they barked at both the Mystic and the Ritual-Master.

SkekZok had already risen to their feet and was already bowing submissively with their talons inside their long joined sleeves. “My Emperor. Allow me to explain.”

The dark-swathed Skeksis swept into the room on a tide of fury and made straight for UrGoh. The Wanderer belatedly went to stand as well, submission suddenly seeming like a very good approach to take here. Too late: the next instant the front of their coat-harness and shirt had been seized by two taloned, heavily beringed hands in a pincer grip, and they were being pressed against the table, the edge forcing a sharp crook in their stiff lower back; and that nightmarish face was glowering at theirs, its gaping muzzle turned slightly to the side to allow the wild eyes to push in closer.

“What did you do to them?” they raged at UrGoh. Drops of moisture from their hot breath settled on the UrRu’s cheek, or maybe it was miniscule flecks of spittle. “What did you do??”

SkekZok hovered at a minimum safe distance, their tone set at that very distinct point between calm and alarm that UrGoh had often seen Gelfling use with spooked, flailing Landstriders. “Sire. My Emperor. Please, this is a guest of the Castle, and the truce—”

There technically was no negotiated truce between Mystics and Skeksis, just a mutual understanding that war and suicide were the same thing, but the Wanderer did not feel inclined to fuss those details just now—and in any case the Emperor (—Master??) was utterly ignoring the entreaty. They did unclench one set of claws, but only so that they could bend UrGoh even further over the table, knocking cutlery and dishes off in a swift arc and then leaning their forearm into the Mystic’s neck to pin them down. UrGoh could feel their own arms waving in vague protest, though they were far too disoriented to have found any useful place to put them. Their heart had jumped to somewhere just by the Skeksis’ elbow, and for just a moment their vision blurred in rhythm with its pounding. They honestly would not have been startled to find chunks being ripped and swallowed out of their flesh; it seemed the next logical step. They felt like a new meal laid out on the table.

It dimly came to them that this was a most unfamiliar and unseemly state for any UrRu to find themselves in, but then the Castle of the Skeksis was a most unfamiliar and unseemly place for an UrRu to be in, and that was their own fault, so there you had it.

“What have you done to my Conqueror, Mystic? Talk! How did you make this happen?” the Emperor continued snarling.

“My Sire,” came SkekZok’s voice again (UrGoh could no longer see them, though the rustling of their gilt brocaded robes was audible). “I do beg you, this is excessive. You need not lower yourself. They will talk, I assure you. They speak far more easily when not terrified. Please.”

Nothing could tamp down the wrath in SkekSo’s eyes, but they did after brief consideration shut their ravening jaws and draw back, releasing UrGoh’s neck. They kept hold of UrGoh’s harness, however. The Wanderer took the opportunity to try to swallow down the dry tickle in their throat.

“They had better,” the Emperor said, casting a viciously evaluative glance over both prisoner and minister. “They had better be ready to speak in great detail.”

Chapter Text

The first concrete thought UrGoh succeeded in pulling together once they could breathe again was How can this—animal be the Master?

Which seemed an odd thing to focus on in a moment of such bodily peril; though in another, deeper way, it might be perfectly natural. After all, a lot of how this would all turn out depended on whether there was anything of SoSu left to reach.

The Wanderer had felt a stunned recognition at the first flash of those pale eyes: an electric moment of contact with some ancient presence, one that had the inexplicable power to stare straight at them in particular from a galaxy away. No, from galaxies away, from the other side of a black hole’s event horizon, from some fathomless void it was trapped forever within. A luminous gaze, eternally searching (pleading?) for answers that might not exist at all but must be found regardless; and eternally calling the select few—by name—to join in that quest. Inimitable. Unmistakable.

And that much was familiar. GraGoh might never have been able to decide whether it was searching or pleading either, when their name was called. Indeed, the yearning to solve that bewitching mystery might have been what kept them tethered to their Master so unwisely, for so long. (Had it been? Was that right? Now they weren’t sure if they were remembering, or just making things up on the spot.) But whatever the connection was, it had briefly called forth an instinctive response from the depths of UrGoh’s own fragmented being.

But the next instant it was gone, shuttered tightly away. A veil came down with the dull sheen of a half-silvered film, such that it could no longer confirm a sentient existence behind its surface—only suggest a shadow of one.

And that was not familiar, that sudden, almost fearful withdrawal, even as the body underneath exploded in a paroxysm of rage. Not SoSu. At all.

What in all the Realms had happened to their once-friend?

SkekZok had already brought their own chair, the finest in the room, around from the table for their sovereign to occupy, and was now bustling to collect the dishes from both table and floor and set them on top of a bookshelf for the nonce. (UrGoh suddenly noticed they hadn’t summoned their servant Tuta to take care of it. Because of the Emperor’s presence, or for some other reason?)

“That’s not for it?” SkekSo inquired with a cold look—evidently referring to the two humbler chairs the Ritual-Master had begun to drag over, and the Mystic, respectively.

“But your Magnificence,” wheedled the priest. “They’re a guest…”

Their Magnificence snorted and waved their bony talons. “A guest does not plot against their hosts. They should be grateful I’m not having you string them up on your little chain over there.”

The Ritual-Master drew up stiffly. “My ch…ah. I see, sire—”

The Emperor cut them off in a tone to brook no protest. “You won’t have forgotten how.”

“…I…” UrGoh tried to begin, pitching their voice deep enough to hopefully carry through the bickering in Skeksis registers.

SkekSo stared at them. “Yes?” And half a breath later: “Yes? What is it? Out with it.”

“I…plot…nothing,” they answered, as stoutly and—proudly?—as they could.

Now the Emperor shifted their stare over to the Ritual-Master, accompanied by an expression that patently demanded Is that really how this miserable lump talks, or am I being mocked??

The Wanderer refused to blush or bow. After all, for their own part, they were still struggling to believe that this scrawny puce- and blue-hued lizard, strung tight as a harp, was really the other half of the large, lugubrious UrSu. And it had occurred to them over the foregoing that they could very well be the Emperor’s first real encounter with a Mystic, and they owed it to the others to carry themselves…well, not arrogantly of course, but with the dignity of an equal. The Skeksis must understand that while UrRu were peaceful, that wasn’t the same thing as unwary, or—or weak.

Wait. Why especially did they need to understand that? Was this an unseemly, Skeksis-like thought, some bleedover from the Seeker that UrGoh should resist? Or was it a wise adaptation to context, valid concern for the safety of loved ones? Was it one of those places where Skeksis-like was actually the right thing to be?

How did one tell anymore?

The Ritual-Master just shrugged helplessly in answer to the Emperor’s consternated look (though there might have been a hint of crinkle in their lower left eyelid). They were moving to sit now, primly positioning themselves at a slightly different viewing angle from SkekSo’s.

SkekSo aimed a bemused frown at UrGoh. “Is that so. And you are…the Conqueror’s ‘light half,’ as I hear it? Meaning SkekGra? You’re quite sure of that?”

“Pretty…sure.” The Wanderer was able, with some difficulty, to keep a wistful smile off their face.

“I see. You’re just—not very—well, that’s no matter. You say you plot nothing? Then prove it. Answer my question. What have you done to SkekGra, and why?”

“I…have done…nothing to them,” the Mystic responded calmly. “Thra…has done it…to us both. To…all of us…really.”

They wondered whether they could get away with speaking even more slowly—would that possibly bore the Emperor into leaving sooner, or just buy themselves or the Seeker more trouble? The Wanderer still didn’t know what SkekGra had or hadn’t told anyone, past the bit they’d overheard earlier about the Seeker mentioning their vision to the General in the carriage. Which did suggest they intended to make some effort to nudge their fellow Skeksis in the direction of reality, even if this was a far cry from the circumstances they’d hoped to make that case in.

“As for…why…it did so…” UrGoh went on. “Perhaps because…Thra’s own fate…hangs in the balance? And ours…with it.”

“Yes, yes, this prophecy of doom. You don’t need to rehearse that part right now, especially at that draggle-tailed speed.”

The Wanderer shrugged. “My dark half’s…reaction…to that revelation seems…sensible…to me. Does it not, to your…Magnificence?” They glanced at SkekZok, as if for confirmation that they were getting their form of address right, then back at the Emperor.

SkekSo had very casually accepted that obsequious title from the Ritual-Master, but seemed almost to flinch now at hearing it from a Mystic’s lips. “Emperor will do,” they grated. “Or sire.”

UrGoh nodded. “As you wish. I know…who you are.”

“No doubt you think so. As easily as you’ve turned my Conqueror against this Empire. But pray tell, how do you propose to turn me against my own creation, my own self?”

“Your ‘Empire’…is only…an idea.” It belatedly occurred to the Wanderer that they might be reigniting the Emperor’s fury with this, but truth was truth regardless. “I care not…what happens…to that idea.”

“An idea.” The Emperor blinked and cast a glance at SkekZok, who went a bit rigid.

Then the both of them burst out with raucous avian cackles. “Quite an idea!” SkekSo exclaimed, shaking their tooth-laden head. “If only that had been all there was to it, eh!” returned the Ritual-Master in delight.

UrGoh looked between the two Skeksis in some confusion. Not just because they’d expected the Emperor to be incensed, or at least cross—but because a moment ago, SkekSo had really seemed quite put out with SkekZok as well. At least, they’d loudly berated their fellow Lord of the Crystal for making off with the prisoner and daring to show them hospitality. And SkekZok, for their part, had seemed to all but cower in submission. Now here they were sharing a laugh, like fellow-bandits in a tavern? Which set of emotions was genuine? If any of them were?

“But…I do…care what happens…to you,” the Wanderer gamely plodded on. “To...all our Skeksis shards…”

“Well, I’d think so, considering,” sniffed the Emperor.

“…and to those…you call your subjects.” UrGoh’s brow folded as they caught up with what SkekSo had just said. “Well…yes. Exactly. So why would…I wish you ill?”

“Don’t be obtuse.” SkekSo leaned forward now, setting their front hands on their dark-robed knees, arms akimbo. The Wanderer caught a rare glimpse of their tiny hind arms as well, which seemed to have some kind of wickerwork shield or support plaited into an upended cone around them. A necessity of advancing age, possibly? The secondary arms of the Skeksis had always looked a tad frail, and going by the admittedly few occasions on which UrGoh had spotted them from afar in the trine since, didn’t get much exercise. Even the ever-vigorous ex-Conqueror used them at most to amplify or embellish their outsized conversational gestures. And occasionally to hold little daggers—though UrGoh kept forgetting to ask whether the little daggers had been throwing knives, or simply some kind of…combat jewelry, meant to induce terror through sheer quantity of sharp edges. (As though SkekGra didn’t have sharp edges enough just in their dressing-robe.)

But the visual effect of the thing was odd. It looked rather as though the Emperor had gone to market to buy extra limbs, and found these two at a bargain price, and would soon be carrying them home in a shopping basket slung across their back. (Then they might be planted in the ground like saplings to grow into real arms, or even a tree made of arms? Never mind. This was a time for neither whimsy nor invention, though the arm-tree idea might serve well later as a droll new fireside tale for entertaining the little folk.) The impression was certainly not helped by the way the wasted appendages twitched and lolled aimlessly in their containment, a single, uncanny spot of lethargy in a figure otherwise bristling with energy.

“You know as well as I do that Mystics and Skeksis do not count the same things as ills,” the Emperor was reproving the Wanderer, sounding almost schoolmasterish for a moment. “You hold all the works my people have accomplished since the Great Conjunction to be worthless.”

UrGoh tilted their head. “Well. That’s…not true,” they demurred. “Some…are quite important.”

“Oh? Important acts of ‘evil’ and destruction, I suppose you mean.”

“No…not all of them.” How best to put it? “Skeksis have…given great gifts to…Thra’s people. The price demanded…has often been…far…”

“Far too high. That’s where you’re headed, isn’t it?”

“…too…”

“Just say yes or no! Unless you need a lashing to warm those heels!”

“…high. Yes.” Then again, maybe SkekZok’s conversational patience was unique among Skeksis.

The Emperor threw a hand up, appalled. “Wretched mollusk. How has SkekGra not strangled you yet? They’re impatient even for a Skeksis, which is saying something. Don’t! That was a rhetorical question.”

The Wanderer peeked sidewise at the Ritual-Master, who returned it with a trace of the amusement they themselves would have expressed in a less fraught setting. They had to remind themselves once again that the priest was not a friend—even if they were currently behaving like the exact opposite of the grim stories the Seeker had told of them. A friend would be so good to have here.

SkekZok’s own missing portion would have been good to have, in fact, even after all the recent bitterness. Phlegmatic as they might be, UrZah was always persuasive in village debates, projecting an air of authority and certainty that held its own charisma. Or they had been, back when the UrRu still allowed themselves some debates on matters of real consequence…and the likes of UrLii and UrSan were still around to make the disagreements vibrantly real, as well.

Then UrGoh remembered something the Master—was it Master UrSu, or Master SoSu? Well, at any rate—something the Master themselves had said long ago about persuasion. Questions teach more than answers, because any problem is easy when it’s someone else’s matter to solve. Make them retrace the path themselves, and they may just see that.

“Sire.” The Wanderer drew in a deep breath. “I…wish…to understand…something. If you…would…be so gracious.”

“You’re supposed to be explaining your miserable self to me,” SkekSo grumbled, “but go ahead. Quickly, if you can.”

“Do you not…believe…the prophecy my dark half…has conveyed to you?”

“Why ever would I believe it? It seems rooted in a tiresomely obvious political agenda.”

“I see.” The Wanderer pondered this. The argument was completely absurd, but not unexpected; it was the next part of things they felt genuine puzzlement over. They were torn between the need to choose words very carefully, and the temptation to rush and probably stumble under the heavy blanket of tension emanating from the Emperor. “But…if I may then ask…”

“Yes?”

“Supposing…you did come…to believe it.”

“I won’t.”

“For…whatever…rea—”

“I said I won’t.”

“What then…would…”

“Would I do, yes yes, I know!”

“Yes.”

“It’s a ridiculous question,” declared the Emperor. They made a gesture with their talons as though they were brushing crumbs off a table. “Because the supposition is ridiculous to begin with.”

The Wanderer readily nodded. “As you say, Emperor. I am often…ridiculous. But…what would—”

SkekSo interrupted icily, “The Emperor of Thra does not take orders. From anyone. Not from Thra itself. Certainly not from your slithering kind.”

“Yes, sire,” said UrGoh with another obliging nod. “Suppose, though…it weren’t an order, but simply…information. From a source…you did trust?”

The Emperor scoffed—at the entire notion of trust, one could only imagine.

The Wanderer amplified: “Yourself, for example. Your own divination…” They cleared their throat. “Ah. If you do still…divine.”

“Of course I still divine, you brat,” the Skeksis bit off crisply. “You think I don’t remember trigonometry?”

“Ah. Of course. Forgive me, sire.” A good thing the Wanderer didn’t have the trouble apologizing that their counterpart so often did, though they did have to wonder in passing at the particular choice of brat. The Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor just scoffed again. UrGoh decided to take it as what they’d asked for, and try to move along.

“Then…say it were…your own divination…telling you what SkekGra…has told you.” (Oh, by the suns, they really should have asked this of UrSu. Ah, well.) “What would—”

“It’s not going to happen, Mystic.”

“But what would—”

“It’s sheer fantasy, vapid speculation. Might as well ask what song the void sings.”

All at once they hesitated, and UrGoh knew why, because they too were brought up short by it. That last was an UrSkek saying.

The Emperor then tried to save themselves with a much more Thra-ish, “—Or why the Krikids always sing good night to the Brothers, but never good morning.”

It was flimsy stuff, though, and the Wanderer took advantage of the brief royal imbalance to push their point a bit further. “Hrm. As you say, Emperor. But then…there’s no harm…in a fantasy…surely? Can you not…answer the hypothetical…since that is all it—”

“That’s enough!” bellowed SkekSo with a vicious chopping motion of their arm. After a hissing intake of breath they continued, with semi-restored restraint, “Perhaps Mystics can spend an Age agonizing over the thousand disasters their whispering in the wrong direction might cause, but Skeksis have an Empire to attend to! We haven’t time to wallow in fantasies and hypotheticals. And you are hardly in a position to do so in any case, UrGoh the Wanderer, especially given the trouble your other half is in.”

They drew themselves up into what was presumably meant to be a daunting posture, narrowing their eyes. “Do you even realize how close you are to dooming the both of you, with this little game of yours? Do you understand your ‘Master’ has sent you here to die?”

These words fell on the Wanderer like a hammer of dread and heartsickness. An instant later they realized SkekSo couldn’t possibly have meant it in the way they’d first taken it; there was no way the Emperor could know what had transpired in the village, especially if they thought the Master had literally sent UrGoh to the Skeksis (…as opposed to simply abandoning them to the wilds where the Skeksis could hunt them down).

But it felt achingly close to true—especially coming from the Master’s own soul-twin.

“I was not…sent…” the Wanderer protested, and was dismayed at how feebly it came out.

“Drivel!” the Emperor snarled. “Liar. Or fool. It matters not. It’s quite plain to me what’s going on here—this blatant attempt to stir up unrest and division among the very Lords of the Crystal. You UrRu would demolish the one citadel of civilization, the one force of order holding Thra together, all to advance your political agenda.”

There it was again, that word. Though the rest was uncannily similar to what UrMa had said in the village: that the shards of GraGoh, with their message of unity and harmony, were somehow bringing about the exact opposite. Perhaps the Skeksis were just as concerned with a strict social cohesion, after their own fashion, despite all the backbiting and betrayal SkekGra had depicted as the daily fare of the Castle.

“Politics,” UrGoh murmured, half to themselves. “That was it…the crime SkekGra always…used to accuse me of…when we argued. I still don’t…understand.”

“You don’t know what politics is!?” the Ritual-Master blurted out, quite forgetting themselves in their frank astonishment. A swift glare from the Emperor corrected them.

“No. I know…” The Wanderer shook their ponderous head. “And I…remember some of it…from the before. Don’t think I…liked it much. But how is this…politics? UrRu have…no desire…to rule. Anything except ourselves.”

“Which to you means ruling us,” returned SkekSo acidly. “Don’t think I don’t know all your little dodges, how we used to fool ourselves.”

“No, Emperor. Not even SkekGra…is mine to rule over. I’m not their master—nor they mine. That is the wisdom…I once lacked. But now we’ve learned…that we are both truly GraGoh. In…equal measure.” UrGoh didn’t mean to let their voice soften, but it happened anyway. “I won’t…forget that learning now. Not when I am…so much better…for having walked…with my dark side.”

They thought about trying to add something to the effect of “…even without the final unity.” But perhaps not, at least till they’d found out whether the Seeker had brought up that most terrifying part of the prophecy yet. (If they ever found that out.) Besides, the Emperor and the Ritual-Master were already goggling at them as though they’d suddenly started speaking Gruenak, so this might be quite enough to begin with.

“I—don’t…” SkekSo gave the tiniest head-shake—less a gesture of disagreement than of trying to settle a dislodged brain. “Better? You’re better…than you were? Better how? I thought your kind already thought themselves flawless.”

“Would that were true…sire,” the Wanderer replied with a faint smile. “No. We have…our faults as well.” If that was ever in doubt before now, doubt no longer. “And our faults…are often…where your kind…has its virtues. SkekGra holds those virtues for both of us…as I hold others. That is why, admit it or not…we’ll…always need each other.”

They finished with a rueful chuckle, “May as well admit it.”

The silence that followed felt a bit long even by Mystic standards, as the two Lords of the Crystal exchanged looks of deep and well-matched dubiety. UrGoh could have gotten a good solid start on a pipeful of leaf in the interval. Ah, if only.

They recalled now something the Seeker had said about relations with their own kind…what was it? Oh, yes. That for all the noble talk of them all being lords alike—with the eternal exception of the Emperor, of course—Skeksis could barely conceive of such a thing as a bond between equals. There was only domination and fealty, and a long staircase of precedence from lowest to highest, determined mostly by the flux of SkekSo’s volatile favor. If two Skeksis were briefly on the same step together, it was because they were tussling over who got to occupy it. Friendships could exist within that structure, yes, but only so long as all involved understood that it didn’t make them peers. Being peers, almost by definition, meant being rivals. If so, no wonder this was failing to register.

“That’s a lie as well,” said the Emperor at last, although they couldn’t summon the level of umbrage to it they’d probably have liked. “If you really thought the Conqueror your equal, you wouldn’t have ruined them as you have. They’re completely unfit for their post now, for their essential purpose to the Empire. They don’t even sound like a Skeksis anymore.”

UrGoh had to smile again at that. Indeed, it nearly became a grin. “Oh. I assure…the Emperor, they’re still…entirely a Skeksis. Impossible for the rest of us…to mistake…for anything else.” Then they gave a whuff of further consideration and added reflectively, “If I could have altered that…I would have. And I’d be…the poorer for it. Thank Thra, I was unable.”

“Do you fancy us such imbeciles as to believe that?” the sovereign retorted. “It’s the most un-Mystic stuff I’ve ever heard of.” (The Wanderer silently granted this much to be entirely possible.) “You lot hate the Skeksis. You’ve hated us from the very beginning!”

“I did hate SkekGra…alone in all Thra,” agreed UrGoh, with a somber blink. “It was the curse laid on me…at birth. Because I…we…GraGoh that was…had hated that part of themselves. And that…was what doomed us. Why the experiment went wrong. Why we split apart…instead of returning home.”

The Ritual-Master frowned at these words—not so much like one mortally offended, as one greatly irritated at having made a perfect explanation of absolutely everything, and finding it forgotten already. Which given their earlier conversation, did make some sense. “Heresy,” the priest breathed.

“And of course…we all hated ourselves,” the Mystic hastened on. Their audience was shifting in their seats in an itching, vaguely warning sort of way now. They weren’t sure whether that meant anger or impatience, but they tried to boost their speaking speed from a crawl to a walk in response. “We were…Fallen. Scorned. Unclean. Is it not so? We were…the refuse of our world.”

SkekSo let out a bestial growl and gripped the arms of their chair.

“…In Homeworld’s eyes…I mean. And so in our own.” UrGoh tilted their head toward SkekZok in a gesture of acknowledgement; after all, on that single point, the two of them were in accord. Then they returned their attention to the Emperor. “But sire…we needn’t be that here, on Thra. We can choose—”

“We are not that here,” the wiry Skeksis snapped, their entire body upright and spear-straight now. “I’m not sure how this escaped you, but that was in fact the entire point of everything the Skeksis have done since that day. The point of this Empire you so despise!”

“No. We are still that. For all your labors,” said the Wanderer flatly, although they could feel their heart starting to knock heavily against their breastbone. For all the recent practice, such direct defiance was still alien and uncomfortable for them. “I’m sorry to say it. But we are…still consumed by self-hatred. Hundreds of trine, and even now…we can barely look upon our other halves without…shuddering and fleeing. What more proof does the Emperor of Thra require? And in truth, Emperor…what good is it to be honored by all Thra—when you still cannot honor yourself? Ask SkekGra, now that they’ve done both…which is sweeter.”

On hearing cannot honor yourself, the Emperor actually began to rise to their feet, and immediately forced themselves by a titanic act of will to sit back down. There they stayed for now, but the skirts of their robes were swirling a bit, probably from a tail twitching underneath.

“SkekGra may have had their last taste of sweetness in life,” they rasped in deadweight tones, “and you are not presently inclining me to be merciful.”

All at once UrGoh understood why they hadn’t been allowed to sit for any of this, in spite of being a ‘guest’ and all that. It was the same reason why SkekSo was as determined to remain seated as they were desirous to stand up—another one of those precedence things, those raptor games. Being seated somehow equated to being more important. Therefore, the long time the Wanderer had been left standing was intended not just as a minor torment, but as a humiliation too.

Ah! And that was probably also why SkekZok had instantly proffered their sovereign the chair they’d been sitting in, the nicely-upholstered chair, instead of just letting the Emperor take one of whatever was left. UrSu would have been utterly bewildered at the unnecessary seat-switching. They barely noticed whether they were sitting or standing at any given moment, never mind worrying about claiming the good seat.

Well. All this time UrGoh was supposed to have felt reviled and degraded, and here they hadn’t realized. They could only hope that wasn’t too awfully rude. They’d probably been meant to be terrified by that threat just now as well, come to think of it. Alas, too late.

“It is yourself I beg you to have mercy on, Mas—sire,” they pursued instead. “Or rather…your self.”

“Deluded,” pronounced SkekSo with supreme contempt, “if you think we still punish ourselves for living, in the pathetic way the UrRu do. You presume much when you presume to know my mind.”

A resolute grunt and nod of agreement came from the Ritual-Master.

The Wanderer only sighed. “Well. I do know one part of your mind very well…that you may not. For you are UrRu: you are UrSu the Master. And as such…I have seen with these eyes how you still hate and punish yourself…constantly.”

The visual and tactile memory came to them again, so infinitely sad, of holding the Master’s poor cold hand as they sat in UrSu’s quarters two days—was it really just two days?—ago; and the Master whispering to them, like a ghost, such wan, terrible confessions. SoSu is even less to be trusted than GraGoh, they’d said bitterly. And The Crystal revealed it to all, long, long ago…my own dark half was worse than yours almost from the first. And most hopelessly of all:  Can you even imagine what might happen when I tried to take…that monster to my bosom?

Everything UrGoh had ever despised in the Conqueror, every unum-long spiral of shame and agony that tales of the latter’s atrocities had sunk their light half into, still managed to pale beside the Master’s bottomless revulsion toward the Emperor. Was it remotely possible that SkekSo didn’t feel the weight of that crushing down, every day?

“Above all, by purposely remaining so torn asunder,” the Wanderer continued softly. “The very worst torture. And the one that puts the lie to all denials. Who can literally keep their soul ripped into halves…forever locked in mutual loathing…and yet still claim to honor that soul? Or any portion of it?”

“Sire,” said the Ritual-Master in a tone of muted concern. UrGoh wasn’t sure what had just changed in the Emperor’s posture or demeanor that moved SkekZok to that caution. They detected no difference themselves. But the priest was surely more attuned to the Master’s—the Emperor’s smallest movements and expressions than UrGoh could ever be, especially since they were just learning how Skeksis faces and bodies worked in the first place. They…might now be running out of time in this.

“But—it’s not too late for us.” The Wanderer sucked in a hasty breath, readying themselves to try to outrace Skeksis ire. “We can yet restore what Homeworld so cruelly discarded. We can learn to embrace our true selves…and each other.”

They earnestly sought SkekSo’s sneering eyes again—pleading, reaching out once more in spirit, futile as it might be.

“This is all SkekGra and I have done, Emperor. And do you really call that…‘politics’?”

Now the Emperor did get up, and it was an entirely deliberate, measured motion. They approached UrGoh as though they were about to start circling around them, to study them the way an Arduff studied another beast while visibly asking themselves prey or threat? Weak enough to bring down, or is it too risky?

But then they came straight up to the Mystic, close enough to touch them, and cast an impenetrable gaze down upon them. Their long jeweled talons clacked against themselves in an agitated rhythm. “Perhaps you were not sent, after all,” they mused.

“I told you I was not.”

Then SkekSo swiftly, ruthlessly grabbed the Wanderer’s hair and dangling left ear—jerking them up together and winding them around their skeletal fist in such a way as to draw UrGoh’s head higher on its stalk, almost to the Skeksis’ own face. The needle-sharp tip of their beak very nearly poked into UrGoh’s cheek, in fact, and went on waving alarmingly about the vicinity as they hissed their next words.

“That one…hates me out of mere spite and jealousy,” they rasped through that barbed-wire fence of teeth. “There is nothing, nothing I can do to assuage that. Save to fail in my purposes as they did in theirs—to sink down to their pitiful level. And I promise you, that price I’ll never pay. Never again will they pull me down, smother me, simply to preen themselves on their dominion over me. What you ask is not in my power to grant, UrGoh. Crawl back to them, if the plight of our soul so troubles you. They’re responsible for all of it.”

UrGoh’s own teeth were gritted from the lancing sting of pain, though this time they weren’t caught quite as unawares as before, and could more quickly calm their animal responses. —It did still hurt, however.

“They certainly caused much of it,” allowed the Wanderer with a slight gasp, as a tiny strand of hair got snagged in the Emperor’s rings or something and pulled even more eye-wateringly tight than the rest. But here at least they were on more familiar dialectical ground. SkekGra had once said a number of things along this same line, and with some justice. And while UrGoh hoped their earlier words had made clear that they saw the light and dark shards of the UrSkeks as twins—not as master and slave—it was true that UrSu didn’t yet think any such thing. Nonetheless.

They coughed a little moisture back into their sandy throat and added, “But just as what I wish for you both…is not in your power to grant…what you fear of them is not in their power to do. They learned that lesson…to their sorrow, long ago.”

“Fear?” barked the Emperor, not slacking a finger’s width in their grasp. “Arrogant vermin, I fear nothing of them, nothing of anything! Should you really want to know my predominating feeling toward the old idiot, it’s pity!”

“As—you say, Emperor…” The Wanderer hesitated a brief moment. “Then…you believe you could face UrSu without fleeing? Meet, and speak with them, if it were arranged?”

This really was a Seeker-like inspiration, on the very far edge of what UrRu considered fair play. After all, the Master had just gone to some trouble not only to let everyone know they meant to hide from SkekSo from now till the Great Conjunction (if not longer), but to physically make the Wanderer’s ever finding them again halfway to impossible. But…SkekSo didn’t know that. And in any case, they were all long-lived beings. So there was always a chance that the Master might think better of it someday, or be persuaded of it.

 “If, if, if, if, IF!!” Outrage flung the monarch’s glinting eyes wide now. A little drop of saliva appeared at the corner of their mouth too, giving the most unfortunate impression of their contemplating Mystic cutlets for dinner.

“Yes, if…?” UrGoh gurgled haplessly.

“Useless! Morning Krikids! Air pies! Sandcastles!” SkekSo gave the UrRu’s head a shake. They did not cry out. “This is what’s wrong with all of you. Not one toe on the ground, never joining the rest of us in harsh reality! You drag your grubby worthless hide to the very seat of Empire—you come to the Crystal’s supreme overlord, my personal doorstep, demanding audience—and this is all you have to bring me in the end? Ifs and cans and choices that are actually no choice—”

“We—didn’t…” UrGoh abruptly fell silent, as the realization distantly visited them that even if neither they nor SkekGra had in any way ‘come’ to the Castle or ‘demanded’ anything of anyone here…they had done just that to the Master. Who, then, was actually speaking? Was it truly fury in the dark half’s voice—or despair: that one disciple had at last come home with a solution to their torment, but the price seemed so impossibly dear and the results so uncertain?

Yank. Another cruel twist of the Wanderer’s hair and ear demanded its own kind of audience, and they goggled mutely up at the Emperor, although they also distinctly saw at the edge of their vision that SkekZok was rising to their feet. (That tall frame and towering headpiece were difficult to miss, even peripherally.)

For just an instant UrGoh thought they saw their own sadness wholly reflected in SkekSo’s gaze. But as they watched that sadness perceptibly decayed into sadism, and their own dismay began to transmute toward something else in response. They felt their face harden into stern, unfamiliar lines.

“SoSu would have asked what song the void sings,” they heard themselves say, so pitilessly it almost didn’t sound like the Wanderer at all.

The Emperor gave a nonplussed sort of snort at this. UrGoh didn’t permit them anything further.

“Yes. They loved the ifs and cans and impossibles,” they plowed ahead. “With all their heart. They gladly spent an eternity seeking the answers every other UrSkek had stopped trying to find. And they always dared ask the questions out loud, even when the Eldest forbade. They didn’t know how to give up. Their boldness had…no end.”

Something oddly close to a growl rumbled in their throat as they finished, “It’s only now, sundered and brought so low, that both halves of you are chained by all this terror and doubt.”

“Chained, you say.” The Emperor sounded almost numb compared to their earlier outburst. Yet they still leaned in terribly close, their own gullet rattling in a way that definitively relegated UrGoh’s tiny display to amateur status.

“SoSu,” they informed the Mystic in a voice like a dingy old engine shuddering to life, “was terrified of me. As terrified as UrSu ever was. And they were right to be. —Let me show you.”

They let the Wanderer’s ear loose, much to the latter’s relief; but it was only to take hold of a larger portion of their mane—a portion large enough to drag a heavy UrRu body by, which they proceeded to do, heading briskly toward the far end of the room. The Wanderer moaned defiance, but it would only hurt much worse if they didn’t move their legs to keep up with their hair, so they stumbled along behind as best they could.

“SkekZok,” the Emperor gruffly commanded.

The priest made one last bloodless assay at restraining their sovereign. It sounded half-defeated even as it began. “Sire. We must not. Look at the creature…surely it poses no physical threat to Skeksis.”

But SkekSo laid down the non-metaphorical law. “We’re doing the rest of this my way, Ritual-Master.”

SkekZok went over to the wheel in the corner that held the coiled-up portion of the hanging chain, heaving a forlorn sigh to let it be known they obeyed under protest. (UrGoh noticed, however, that when the Emperor instructed them to leave UrGoh “about a quarter of the room’s length in slack,” they didn’t even have to look at the chain to know how many turns that was.)

The Wanderer was now fully expecting to be ‘strung up,’ as SkekSo had put it, by their hands or possibly their hair. Instead, the Emperor expertly manacled their ankle with a battered but sturdy cuff they pulled out of a chest of similar ironmongeries—half of which noisily tried to follow their brother out until SkekSo twisted and swung them loose. The cuff was on the loose side, but not nearly loose enough to come off an UrRu’s wide flat foot, and UrGoh had a sinking feeling that its thin rough edges weighing down on the top of their foot-arch would be rubbing the skin there raw in short order.

“There,” said the Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor in some satisfaction. They went down on one knee, which took the Wanderer much aback before they realized it was only for the Emperor to have a good up-close view of their prisoner’s befuddled expressions as they spoke. “Now, UrGoh the Wanderer, here are the rules for the remainder of the session. Can you see that fine glazed porcelain vase at the wall over there, the one with the gold edging?”

UrGoh affirmed that they could.

SkekSo nodded. “That is your chamber pot, standing ready at its post. I assume you’d like it to be within your reach when the two of us retire for the evening, and yet also a decent distance from this end of the room where you’ll be sleeping.”

UrGoh agreed this would be ideal.

“Yes, I thought so. Well, at the moment it isn’t. With a few turns on that wheel, however, it could be. Do you begin to follow? And with a couple turns in the other direction, you can be pulled further away from it. Though…” The Skeksis studied the pulley and the length of chain between it and the Wanderer’s manacle. “Not that much further, before you’d be up in the air. We certainly don’t want that to happen.”

The Wanderer indicated, with a deep UrRu hum and a tilt of their long snout, that they’d grasped the concept.

And then they wondered if their own dark half had ever done anything like this to someone. And shuddered. This pleased the Emperor, who no doubt thought it was for them.

“Proximity to or distance from your piss-pot is not the only currency we might trade in,” the latter further explained. “There are other things even the transcendent Mystics need for the sake of their frail flesh, after all. And things not so much needed as desirable or—less desirable. Those blankets and pillows the Ritual-Master rather cosseted you with over there, for example; or conversely, this bare cold floor. Then there’s food…”

The Wanderer assured the Emperor again that they had the general idea now firmly in mind.

“Good. I’d hoped you would. SkekGra was always a quick one, sometimes overquick as it turns out.”

UrGoh bent their neck around to try to get a glimpse of SkekZok, some read on where UrZah’s counterpart thought things stood, whether any further help might be hoped for from that quarter. The priest was glancing down at them, not happily as far as the Mystic could tell, but far too opaquely to get a strong sense in any direction. It seemed the Ritual-Master of UrGoh’s very first moments in the Castle was back now—the one who stood all statue-like and guarded, their cool courtesy unsoftened by any feint at hospitality or pastoral concern.

The Wanderer knew they should know better than to read much into that disturbing emotional void. A blank face could mean any number of things, and doubly so when it belonged to a Skeksis deceiver. Yet one couldn’t help being unnerved regardless, especially while there was literally no one else in sight to even delude oneself into trusting. When they still didn’t know exactly where they were, or whether anybody else in Thra would ever find that out either.

Or whether anyone who’d once loved them would risk doing something about it, even if they did.

When they were increasingly realizing that at least for the present, their time, their attention, and their very flesh (which was also SkekGra’s flesh, and would suffer as it suffered) no longer belonged to them.

In other words, when they had no control over things at all.

Mystics were usually not beings greatly concerned with control, but this must surely go some way beyond what most of the others could have endured in tranquility. UrGoh would have liked to see even UrSen the Monk try to meditate their way through it. Or UrMa, who so adored UrSu, whose original self had all but worshiped the very hems of SoSu’s raiment. What would they say if it were them on this chain, waiting to be tormented by a being who was—bizarrely—every bit as valid a manifestation of SoSu as the UrRu Master was?

And the Seeker, the Conqueror-that-was…the one beast the Wanderer could have honestly hoped would protect them in this den of beasts…was probably no better off than they were right now. Indeed, very likely worse off.

There was nowhere left to turn…

Except possibly to Thra itself.

“Now, we’ll begin in earnest,” the Emperor said. They raised themselves back to standing with only the softest of grunts (and the chilliest of talons, pressed down on the Wanderer’s head to steady them as they rose). Then they went and brought the fine chair over to their new theater of operations, settling in it with a tree-like rustle of their robe’s many underskirts. “SkekZok, take notes.”

Chapter Text

The Ritual-Master hadn’t imagined they’d have long to wait after they and the Emperor finally locked the door for the night on SkekGra’s exhausted Mystic counterpart, and indeed they did not. The Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor was already shaking their head, their gaze roving fitfully over the trailing, serrated ornamentations of the corridors outside, as the two of them wound their stately way back toward the Castle’s central bole.

“You really are insufferable when you suddenly take it in your head to stand on principle. Good thing it doesn’t happen more often,” SkekSo muttered at last. And then they added, in a startlingly accurate imitation of the priest’s round fruity enunciations: “‘They’re a guest, sire! Oh, protocol, sire!’”

SkekZok lowered their baubled head in a pro forma apology, but their expression was one of quiet enjoyment, almost indulgence. “It was necessary, sire. You were showing the iron, so I provided the velvet.”

“Ha.”

“Has it not been the other way around many a time, when your Magnificence deemed it wise to demonstrate your benevolence—and it was thus my honor to wield the goad on your behalf?”

“Your honor and your pleasure, I’ll warrant.”

“They’re one and the same, Emperor. Honor, pleasure, and duty are all united in my service to Skeksis.” The taller Skeksis’ hands met briefly in a prayerful gesture. They were aware of their hind arms (thankfully unseen beneath the thick cloth of their carapace hood) trying instinctively to echo and amplify the sign—and instead just thudding limply against the inner wooden ribs that held the whole gilded silk arcade aloft.

Sadly, if that annoying reflex hadn’t left them by this age, it probably never would. They weren’t sure why they had it to begin with. The other one still possessed four long, strong arms, which they used to enviable effect in their own shamanic geometries. But SkekZok hated to think that might be the cause. It would imply some animal energy flowing between the two of them yet, over conduits the Ritual-Master had spent many dark midnights trying to crystallize into stasis.

Or else there was the old one—the ill-starred name ZokZah rang in their head even now, in that Mystic’s damnably melodious voice. Why couldn’t they have sounded more like their Skeksis half?—but that sad exile, for all its disturbing plasticity, had generally only worn two arms. It had known holy seals requiring nine, eighteen, even ninety-nine limbs to perform; however, there one needn’t bother manifesting a lot of fussy joints and digits. Simply rolling more head-tendrils out along the arcane lineaments was easier and more beautiful. The Presbyter could also have gone entirely limbless of course, being telekinetic, but that would have been absurd. Most flesh-folk, including the Thralings, augmented their graceless spoken languages with gestures that ran a fascinating gamut from obscene to delightful. Even the UrSkeks had some traditional ones they still liked to use in daily conversation.

At any rate, two arms had been what one could loosely call…comfortable, for the ancient ruin. They belonged to the upright, bilaterian, acrocephalic envelope that UrSkeks found easiest to manage, and often reverted to in sleep—because it echoed the form that primordial, more material iterations of their species had taken, or so the Eldest claimed.

(Oh, and it was definitely iteration, not evolution. Woe betide the newly-Awakened UrSkek who confused the two: “A bacterium can evolve,” they’d be corrected in withering tones of reproof. “Indeed, they’re magnificent at it. What we do has our own will behind it, our own calculation and divination and spiritual purpose. Not remotely the same thing.”)

So it remained a mystery where this whole idea of four arms had come from, and why SkekZok’s unneeded appendages persisted in trying to help out, even when deliberately caged. Unless it was some touching but overprotective impulse from Thra, to remind Skeksis of the life-and-death bond between themselves and the only other four-armed aliens to be noticed hereabouts.

Never mind. It hardly signified. Skeksis were the regents now, and did as they saw fit. Thra could give them extra arms to match the Mystics’, but it couldn’t make them deliberately use those arms, or even display them. SkekZok hadn’t shown theirs to anyone besides the Emperor and the Scientist in a long time, and then only as needed for a spell.

“But I digress,” the Ritual-Master continued, inwardly willing their errant body parts to subside. “What I mean to say is, interrogations are also confessions. One who needs to confess must always believe they have somewhere to turn, some way out, lest they become numb and intractable.” They sent SkekSo an insinuating glance. “Nonexistent hopes cannot be crushed.”

The latter acknowledged the truth of this with a grumble, but was otherwise unmoved. “Yet it seems in your theory that the goad, too, must always be present.”

“Of course, sire. Each makes the other stronger by contrast. And I stand ever ready to play whichever role my Emperor’s needs may require.”

“Touching, SkekZok. I’m not convinced, however, especially since you first snatched the creature away to have all to yourself.”

“I knew your Magnificence would be along once you finished with their other half, and I thought to prepare the ground for you, so to speak. Besides, the effort has already produced some valuable information.”

“Has it indeed? Well, out with it and I will judge.”

“I think we will have freer rein with SkekGra’s opposite number, and thus with SkekGra, than we anticipated.”

“What are you talking about? What do you mean, freer rein?”

“I mean, I think we needn’t worry quite so much about the ancient truce, my Emperor.”

SkekSo darted a mistrustful look at their privy councilor. “Truce? Plain common sense isn’t a ‘truce.’”

They stretched their draped arm out in what both geomancers knew to be the direction of the UrRu village. (UrGoh’s hope that the Mystics’ home remained hidden from Skeksis eyes had been dashed, unbeknownst to them, many trine ago. Their Master’s worry on the point was well-founded. Though it was true that only SkekSo and SkekZok had ever succeeded in scrying past the standing stones, pooling all their skill to do it, and never shared their results with the others.)

“I’d break our long peace with relish, Ritual-Master, if it didn’t mean all our deaths as well. But if this UrRu returns to the others wounded by our hands, they can easily repay us in kind without even stepping foot out of their dirty hamlet.”

“Oh! Surely not the meek and mild UrRu, sire.”

It was not a serious protest, and SkekSo didn’t take it as one, but they did coolly remind the priest: “You know as well as I do there’s always one—and only one—creature on Thra that a Mystic will gladly hurt, day or night.”

“My Emperor speaks true,” allowed the Ritual-Master at once, despite their full awareness that most of their fellow Lords had nearly forgotten their other halves existed; even SkekZok’s own cantankerous Mystic never troubled them anymore, save to botch some of their most ruinous spells and inflict the attendant splitting headaches, and that itself could be just subconscious action. They tucked away day or night for later examination. Though it was never wise to outright inquire into the Emperor’s private travails, it might be time to induce one of the sovereign’s body-servants to tell whether any words ever accompanied the shrieks SkekZok sometimes heard in their bedchambers—closest of any Skeksis’ to the Emperor’s own.

“I’m not so sure this Wanderer will be returning to the others, however,” the Ritual-Master went on, making a regretful moue. “There may be…too much bad blood there now.”

“They’re Mystics. Bad blood with whom?”

“With the Wanderer.”

The Emperor scoffed, though it lacked something of its usual vigor. “With one of their own? I think you greatly mistake yourself, SkekZok.”

“I might always be mistaken, sire,” the Ritual-Master nodded. “If so, no doubt you’ll swiftly determine that. But just now, I see reason to hope that their and SkekGra’s parting with the other UrRu was not on the best of terms.”

“They told you this over tea?”

“It’s not so much what they said as what they omitted, my Emperor.” The Skeksis priest allowed their staff to land with a slightly more definitive rap on the floor as they walked. Not a thing to overplay, but half an Age of studying their overlord’s tiniest tics had given them a good sense of when the Crystal’s Light and the Empire’s Splendor felt a bit lost and directable. “To wit: I noticed they gave no account of their recent visit to the village, or its issue. Not to me, nor to you, until you forced some of it out of them at the very last. And you saw how mysterious they suddenly got about it, even then.”

“Their kind are mysterious about everything,” SkekSo rumbled thoughtfully, deep in their throat. “But you’ve a point. That was the vaguest part of their story. They droned on and on with this bedtime tale of a ‘Darkening’ and the need to appease the Crystal’s supposed wrath. But of their fellow Mystics, almost nothing. And…”

They hesitated for several steps more, then reluctantly finished their thought. “What they said…about the old idiot. I don’t doubt for a moment that that one’s discipline over their Mystics is rubbish, but I still wouldn’t have expected such—open insolence.”

The Emperor’s brow beetled over in profound disquiet. SkekZok exuded pastoral patience, using the time to bask in their private knowledge that for all the mutual disgust between the two halves, SkekSo was taking the insult to UrSu...somewhat personally.

“…Such insolence to them, I mean, from an underling yet doing their bidding. Even if it was only to mislead me.”

“Just so, sire. And when UrRu do lie, it’s far more subtly than that. For they can never deceive anyone else unless they’ve first deceived themselves,” shrugged the Ritual-Master—not without a note of grudging admiration for skill in craft. “The other thing this UrGoh ostentatiously avoided, both in our earlier chat and during your own questioning? Was any attempt to remind us of the long peace.”

“Why would they? We all know about it. Again, common sense.”

“Perhaps, Emperor. On the other hand…given that every other prisoner we’ve ever spirited off to the Castle has been at pains to mention anything they think might possibly give us pause. A treaty. A powerful ally. Or simply the warning of how quickly their absence will be noticed.”

“Mystics. No sense of self-preservation.”

“And when I decided to test them on that last, saying something about how the others must miss them now and again—oh, there was such a lost look in those golden eyes.” The Ritual-Master briefly closed their own eyes, as an exquisite wave of the closest thing they knew to love broke over them. “Even Gelfling aren’t so honest in their faces…so vulnerable. It was—beautiful.”

“Pity I wasn’t there to see it,” said the Emperor pointedly.

“I suspect there is still a great deal of heart left to break there, my Emperor.”

“That’s not what I mean,” was the sovereign’s testy rejoinder. “This isn’t about the pleasures of cruelty, Ritual-Master, however idyllic. I wonder if you grasp the threat to Skeksis here?”

It was a good opportunity to let their liege soothe themselves with a display of their superior wisdom, so SkekZok canted their head to the side and frowned. “Well—certainly, the UrRu puts forth a grave heresy, as I suppose one should expect. I can’t imagine your Magnificence will allow it to spread.”

SkekSo’s tail gave a febrile twitch. “It’s worse than you know. What the Mystic just told us is nothing to what their counterpart has vomited forth.” They glanced at their priest, putting them under searing scrutiny for just a moment, and then added, “They speak now of…healing. Of wholeness.”

This clearly must have been lurking, unnamed and inchoate, somewhere in the depths of the Ritual-Master’s mind already—because the instant the Emperor gave it breath, the realization immediately burst into their view as a complete illuminated structure, and then just as suddenly sank back down into the dark cold silence of established fact. But the sheer speed of the thing unbalanced them a little. And they were the spiritual axis of an Empire: neither accustomed to imbalance, nor allowed it.

“…I see, sire.”

“Yes. Now you see.”

“It’s a horrifying idea. That’s—probably the one blessing of it,” murmured SkekZok (now trying to make a rapid shift of focus from ‘managing’ the Emperor’s anxiety to containing their own, even as they flailed uselessly back toward equilibrium like a Podling drowning in sight of shore). “It will horrify the others. To even think of those poor doomed creatures burrowed in their hovels, scratching spirals in the mud…of going before them and, and asking—?”

“I know, SkekZok. But that is what our Conqueror has already done with theirs. The truth both halves mean to live out together now, in plain sight, for any on Thra to behold it who may.”

“But they cannot!” the Ritual-Master exclaimed.

“Can’t they?”

“Surely not. None of us have betrayed that secret. Not our kind, not the Mystics…not to anyone. It’d be madness. If the lesser peoples were ever to find out what really happened that day—unless, you’re saying that’s exactly…oh, Thra.”

SkekSo looked grimly amused. “Yes. How delicate the mighty foundations we rest on after all, hm? If it hasn’t occurred to them yet, they won’t take long to figure out that one route to what they want is to just tell everyone about it. See both us and the Mystics forced by sheer press of numbers.”

“They must realize it’d still be a fool’s errand,” insisted the priest. “Even if the other peoples were convinced, and didn’t decide to just kill us all instead, SkekGra knows no one can force such a—procedure on us. Not without wresting away our control of the Crystal first, which is…well, not wholly impossible, but close to it, so long as ten or more of us remain to hold the binding together. Even Aughra couldn’t do it.”

Not alone, at least. Were the Mystics finally to be persuaded, though…or if she were to find… The Ritual-Master shook off the thought as best they could. It was too hideous to dwell on. “And none of our other Skeksis are so deranged as to willingly seek such a dark fate,” they declared, with more zealotry than they felt.

“Not now, perhaps.” The Emperor was back to studying the tracery of the walls and floor for inspiration, which, given the geomantic and spiritual intentionality of their construction, was not necessarily an idle pursuit. “But that could change.”

“Crystal forfend, sire! I can barely imagine such blasphemy. My Emperor speaks of…that which is immortal—embracing death—”

“Look at us, old friend.” SkekSo’s nimble, bejeweled talons glittered in the light of the wall sconces as they idly gestured to take both Skeksis in. “We are immortal; I have sworn we shall be eternal. But it’s increasingly apparent that time touches us nonetheless. Who indeed would think of risking oblivion while we have our vigor in us, the world before us, and its delights spread out for our taking? And you and I understand that in any case, we only need hold out a while longer. Just a while longer, till we get our chance to make the suns restore all of the eternity they stole from us! If, however, this little chill in these fingers today”—they examined said fingers for a moment—“settles deeper into our bones, for each of us in turn. If our strength ebbs. If our mirrors begin to haunt us, instead of flattering us. If we must now become not only ancient, but…aged.”

Briefly, in that dim light, SkekZok fancied they could see exactly that: all their master’s weariness and discouragement and defeat, not just from the long sojourn on Thra, but from all the eons of the before—stamped into the lines of their face. An involuntary and not-entirely-dignified noise of dismay escaped them. The Emperor simply nodded, as though it were an entirely proper form of agreement. “Then ‘wholeness,’ as SkekGra would have it, may begin to take on a certain appeal. What we were before…that bloodless form, that abased life. It was painful. You remember how painful. But it was also—imperishable. For all their other folly, the UrSkeks solved that riddle long ago.”

They sighed. SkekSo rarely sighed at all, and almost never like that, a long slow controlled release of air, much as one would do in a breathing exercise. They really didn’t meditate often enough for a Skeksis with all the burdens they bore, and that really ought to be mended soon (though now was probably not the time, especially with SkekZok themselves in need of calming).

“And so,” the Emperor finished, “until I’ve proved unquestionably to the others that this flesh, too, can be kept beautiful and powerful forever, we will remain at risk from their…weakness. Few of them have your faith and patience, my high priest.”

The tick-tick of the Ritual-Master’s golden staff counted out a good many more slow beats, each Lord of the Crystal in their own reverie.

“If your instinct is true, though,” SkekSo mused at length. “If the chances of the Mystics searching out their missing kin are indeed so low—if they aren’t expecting them back anytime soon…or if the Wanderer’s fate is now perhaps less of a concern to the UrRu than it was…then yes. That does open up a number of options. I’d warn you to have a care how you presume to ‘help’ with my prisoner in future, SkekZok. But this is welcome intelligence. I’ll consider it, and we will take further counsel. For now, leave me.”

SkekZok bowed a flawless obeisance. In truth, they’d become more than keen to make their escape. “At your word, my Emperor.”

The Wanderer had no idea how long they just lay there on the Ritual-Master’s floor. One thing they definitely shared with the Seeker was a brain always fizzing on different frequencies simultaneously, crisscrossing a dozen electric arcs of thought into one random pattern after another—and speeding or slowing its internal clock however it saw fit in the process. Usually without consulting its owner.

Each shard had had to come to terms with the eccentric nature of their mind-meat in their own way. It did have benefits. Every now and then, the whole elastic matrix would fall together into one glorious resonance of insight, suddenly making sense and beauty out of a thousand unconnected observations. For the Conqueror, alas, this had mainly helped them invent the creative depredations they were notorious for. But the Wanderer had crafted many a fine tale and tune from it, some of which still circulated among the Thra-folk—albeit in much-altered form, and of course uncredited—hundreds of trine later. (They wondered sometimes whether the other UrRu ever heard them, and realized who the maker must be.)

More often, it was just a sort of pleasant cacophony burbling right under the stream of their public-facing conscious, occasionally bobbing this or that up to the surface—paths of exploration both devilishly useful and splendidly useless. UrGoh had never been anything but glad to dawdle among them. Even the engines of SkekGra’s guile, loath as they might have been to admit it, ran to a large extent on the fuel of this one endless daydream.

But right now, the Wanderer’s mind was nothing but the blank scattered diffusion of static, unable to settle on any wavelengths at all, never mind some great reverberation of genius—much as they could have used one.

It wasn’t that no one had ever been cruel to them in all their countless trine of journeying. Indeed, they’d suffered a fair amount of that just in the last unum. But this was still something new, this cruelty of the Skeksis leaders. This…dissecting and studying and experimenting.

As one would expect, the Emperor and high priest were seeking information. Yet it seemed to be less information about what UrGoh knew, and more information about UrGoh themselves. What did and didn’t hurt or bother them. What they thought important or not. Who they did and didn’t feel attached to. And that gave the whole thing an air of being only the preparatory phase for some even larger project of cruelty, with some entirely different goal. The humiliations especially were petty but not pointless. They were, somehow, lessons: elementary lessons UrGoh was not so much to consciously learn as to sponge up into their nervous system. This much they’d divined, though they still had no idea why.

The other purpose here, they suspected, was sheer exhaustion. Mystics just weren’t designed to keep up this level of vigilance without pause, to have their spinal cords deliberately jangled (even if it was more often with unease than outright terror) for an entire day. UrGoh ached down to their marrow now, and the odds they’d be refreshed by the time their hosts returned from a night in their own lordly beds seemed close to nil. The Wanderer couldn’t bring themselves to directly resent that; a hurting leg was only a hurting leg. But they did find it a bit draining to realize that someone actually wished to subject them to this kind of drawn-out psychic siege. That someone had decided they were worth the trouble. That, too, was new.

Was this what it was like to have an enemy? If so, they were more grateful than ever to have avoided it until now. SkekGra must know how it felt, would doubtless have that answer. If they could only see them again.

The Wanderer also didn’t know exactly when they’d started humming. Tunelessly at first—or what seemed to be tunelessly, unless you could hear it against the ambient fuzz from the now-more-distant Crystal. In which case, UrGoh’s almost snorelike sounds became an accompaniment, mostly in perfect fourths and fifths, to certain long low tones in the quietest register of that background. They’d been trying to comfort themselves earlier that even if no one else saw or cared about their fate, Thra did. But now, as the thready music they were making at last entered their own ears, they realized it was better understood as…homorhythm.

In other words, it wasn’t that Thra’s Crystal watched and pitied their suffering. It was that they and the Crystal suffered together. Their lament harmonized, because of course it did. They were both prisoners of the Skeksis, both unwillingly severed from themselves. And UrGoh had at last come close enough to this world’s heart to hear its soft desperate plea, so like their own.

Somehow they found that far more comforting than anything so one-sided as pity could have been. Besides, even sad melodies gave an UrRu strength and healing. Before long the Wanderer’s senses had returned enough for them to be asking themselves if perhaps this wasn’t the only tune they should offer the sisters tonight.

They began the new one by humming as well, gradually shifting to more diverse vocalizations as it rolled along. The lyrics they only very belatedly dared: they could only make what they knew was a poor stumbling approximation of them. No flesh made by Thra could truly pronounce them properly, not even the supremely gifted throat of the one who had taught it to them, or rather, retaught it. Nor could UrGoh perform all four parts simultaneously, alas—only two at best, so the baritone voice would have to be omitted, as much as they did adore the baritone. And to think this was the closest thing UrSkeks had to a nursery rhyme.

It would simply have to do. They could at least contemplate what they remembered of the meaning as they sang.

They didn’t sing above a modest thrum; volume was unnecessary for this. They’d certainly gathered that SkekSo and SkekZok were still trying to keep the news of their Mystic prisoner hushed up, which meant that at some point it might be a good idea to try to rouse the whole Castle. But that was the kind of step that once taken, couldn’t be taken back. Until there was an obvious need for haste (and the Wanderer rarely saw that need), they preferred not to antagonize those who held the keys to their shackle. In any case, their audience was only the sisters and the Crystal itself.

If someone else should happen to overhear, of course, that was hardly their fault.

Nine paperwings newborn
And their mother took flight
They asked the Cherva dendrite
Where mother had gone
And Cherva sang “higher.”

Nine paperwings sang
But no mother sang back
They asked the Gold Sun Wind
Where mother’s song went
The warm wind cooed “higher.”

Nine paperwings wailed
As fog hid the ground
Then one, two, three moons
Shone like eyes opening
Calling silently, “higher.”

Nine paperwings rejoiced
“Mother!” they moon-sang
“Your jewel eyes like ours
Were never gone, just closed!”
And the eldest cried “higher!”

Nine paperwings sailed on
“Cold rocks are your mother?”
The Jutt-bird mocked, laughing
“Both orphans and fools.”
But the youngest trilled—

So engrossed was UrGoh in weaving this innocent bagatelle, increasingly familiar from the one time in their life that could be termed a ‘youth,’ that the sudden jangling and dull thumps at the door came as a very rude shock. The footsteps preceding them must have just blended into the rest of the Castle’s nighttime noise…or else whoever it was was exceptionally good at sneaking, at least until a lock was actively fighting them. The Mystic’s long jaw immediately snapped shut in reflexive fear, and they found themselves holding perfectly still as the minor commotion continued.

And that lock really was putting up a genuine struggle, even setting off one or two indignant little blue sparks, which were met with smothered cursing. The Ritual-Master must have bespelled it long ago, such that it needed some extra sound or motion along with the key—probably the latter, since UrGoh hadn’t noticed SkekZok doing anything special when they first came in. Back in the Mystic village, locking any door would have been an undreamed-of discourtesy from the owner (to the extent that there was an owner) and a sheer bafflement to the visitor. But as they’d noted once or twice before, this was not the village. It seemed the Skeksis way was to keep and hide things for oneself unless there was good reason to do otherwise.

“Snarking woibles…impudent ironmongery. Lots of things can go in this hole, wretch!” Another thump, like the side of a fist landing beside the lock’s face plate. “Fine. Play it that way…”

A quiet whine like the sound of a tiny drill rose and rose in pitch until it more resembled a squeal of pain. A few moments later, sour little puffs of smoke or steam escaped from the cracks between the face plate and the door, as well as where the bolts held them together. Then the door opened—cautiously, as if there were still some conceivable chance of surprise.

The hand that entered after that was patently a Skeksis hand, but not one the Wanderer had seen before, and the billowing red lace-trimmed sleeve that followed it was unknown to them as well. The creature shut the door behind them with a triumphant hiss and came forward toward the Wanderer. The deep carapace hood they wore threw obscuring shadow over their face and body, though the one lamp the Ritual-Master had left aglow in the room soon brought it back into focus.

This Skeksis had a face that was much more birdlike then any of the others so far—uncannily close to a baby Karatick's, in fact. At first they looked as though they might be toothless like a Karatick, too. Then they narrowed their green eyes in UrGoh’s direction, pupils widening swiftly, and their mouth dropped open with a satisfied exhalation. When it did so, UrGoh beheld a fence of spiny teeth gleaming in the gums that was every bit as needle-sharp as SkekSo’s, if a good bit smaller. It was just more sternly corralled, to the point where the lips could easily cover it. (And that was another thing—neither SkekGra nor SkekSo had lips at all, while SkekVar and SkekZok did have them, but they were even thinner than a Mystic’s. The variety among this species was fascinatingly wide, compared to their light halves…the Wanderer again longed for their journal, to catalog and sketch this as they loved to do with every new thing they found on Thra.)

“MMMmmmmMMMMmmmmmm. Was not sure I could believe ears,” murmured the Skeksis.

The strange hum they made was anything but an UrRu hum; actually, it reminded UrGoh of the whining sound of whatever they’d just used to defeat the Ritual-Master’s lock. An unlovely noise, and the voice itself, while somewhat smoother than the Seeker’s, was equally graceless. The way it lurched between high and middle registers seemed to be aiming for a singsong quality, but if so, it had widely missed the mark and landed on merely seasick. UrGoh had to wonder for just an instant if they’d missed their own mark, if this was the wrong Skeksis? But no. SkekGra alone was walking proof of how different a Mystic’s dark half could seem to be from themselves. And yet under that surface dissonance, always the unexpected harmonies.

“A Mystic, in Crystal Castle? And hidden from Skeksis eyes…though not well enough?” The Skeksis took up a lantern from a wall shelf, shook it rudely to awaken the glow-flits inside, and crept closer to UrGoh. Their free hand stretched out and its index finger partly uncurled, as though there were a number of Mystics in the room and they now had to count them. “Such intrigue, yes.”

The Wanderer didn’t get up from their listless, rather Mounder-like curl on the floor, but they’d resolved not to let any more ‘Lords of the Crystal’ treat them like this—like a mute exotic beast who didn’t understand words being spoken in the room. The silence they were so comfortable falling into, the silence that among Mystics meant contemplation or concentration, or just friendly adjacency, was interpreted by these beings as “presumed idiocy until proven otherwise.” They did lift their neck, and propped their torso up slightly on their elbows.

“Someone is being very naughty, hmmm…” the Skeksis mused now, studying the shackle and chain with shining eyes.

“You…” UrGoh paused to let the fact sink in that yes, they were talking, and then continued calmly. “Heard my song.”

The other blinked in momentary surprise, hesitated, then answered, “…I heard singing, yes. Hard to ignore.”

“Only for you, I think. Unless…the others are coming?”

The Skeksis looked over their shoulder and shook their head. Their curiosity was visibly ripening from the tart, almost amused thing it had been just before into a more serious puzzlement.

“Not yet. Hope they still sleep, yes. It seems I have…” They looked the Wanderer over from head to toe. “Work to do. Have missed something—important. Must catch up now, hmmmMMMmm.” Then, as if they were just now having a lovely idea for a teatime visit: “Perhaps kind Mystic can help answer questions?”

The Mystic forced themselves to give the Skeksis just as complete a once-over. For them, it felt awfully bold, almost rude; still, they knew they’d have to go against their own nature in much more than this if they were to fulfill the task Thra had laid on them.

“If you’ll answer mine…” They shook their mane back into something like order. “SkekSil, shard of SilSol that was, who yet shares that soul with UrSol the Chanter—my dear kin.”

Chapter Text

The creature cocked its head as it reached for a chair to drag over—the best one, as UrGoh now noticed. “Wise Mystic needs answers from lowly Chamberlain? Whatever for?”

“Let us find that out…together,” said the Wanderer gently.

“Of course, of course. If Mystic wishes.” The Skeksis arranged themselves in the chair in much the way the Ritual-Master had earlier, robe-skirts artfully spread out, even though there was less gilding and ornament to behold there. Lace was the dominating element in SkekSil’s black-and-red raiment, lace and velvet brocade that somehow looked dusty even though it was probably perfectly clean. Gelfling did sometimes wear similar velvets, but never like this, in great long swashes like water pouring forth from the various stones of a cataract. Where did these odd clothes of the castle Skeksis come from? Did the counterpart to UrUtt sit constantly loom-bound, outfitting each one of their kin with unique finery just as UrUtt did in the village, only to a raptor’s tastes and sense of luxury? Or did they have dozens of Gelfling at dozens of whirring spindles—leaving it to the humbler creatures of Thra to invent a whole new language of cloth for them, deliberately distinct from any native idiom?

“I do wish. In fact…allow me…to propose…an exchange,” UrGoh went on. “A question from you… for a question from me. That…would be fair, would it not?”

“Fair,” repeated the Chamberlain a bit slowly, as though the very concept were an alien delicacy to be tasted, not swallowed. “Yes, cannot deny, would be fair. Tit for tat.”

Then they visibly warmed to the idea, hitching forward on their seat and lacing their long talons together. UrGoh was unsurprised by the shift: after all, they had just changed the tenor of things from a mere conversation to a sort of game, and games had winners and losers. SkekGra, too, would have been piqued.

“Tit for tat,” the Wanderer agreed. “You…may go first.”

“Who are you?” was the Skeksis’ immediate response.

“I am…halfway to no one,” answered the Mystic, with the barest hint of a smile. “But when I weep…even a mighty Conqueror feels…a sting in the eyes, and GraGoh that once was…sings in melancholy. Gelfling and UrRu…have long called me…the Wanderer.” Not that they seriously expected SkekSil to have any trouble with the exceedingly minor obfuscation; but some intuition told them that beguiling, forcing the Chamberlain to come to them just a little, would obtain a better result.

“You are…UrGoh, then. Other half to our Conqueror.” SkekSil blinked. “Really?”

“Yes, really.”

“I just—would not have thought—never mind. Why have you come, UrGoh the Wanderer?”

“Ah—” UrGoh held up a long, knotty finger. “But it is my turn.”

“So it is. Ask, then.”

The Wanderer smiled again. “I am tempted…to likewise ask, who are you…but no, that…would be facetious. Let us begin with…something simpler. Why…are you called…the Chamberlain?”

The Skeksis gave them a coy look. “Wise Wanderer must know what a Chamberlain is, hmmmmMMMmmmm?”

“Only that it must…have to do…with chambers.”

“Of course with chamber.” SkekSil sat up and preened the feathers behind one ear. “But important chamber—most important of all chambers. Chamber of Emperor! Yes? Chamberlain humbly attends in most personal fashion to ruler of all Thra. At Emperor’s side day and night.”

“Except…when a Mystic…is brought in prisoner…” remarked UrGoh. “Or so it seems.”

That evidently stung. “Fah! Exception!” the Skeksis snapped, then seemed to recover themselves. “Rare and strange exception, yes, for which Chamberlain will discover reason soon enough. You see that even Emperor cannot hide doings from Chamberlain for long. This room, have known of for many trine. What happens in it…” They sniffed, encompassing in one breath a world of contempt for what the Ritual-Master considered amusement. “Usually of little interest. Until now.”

“I am…unenamored of the place,” the Mystic could only agree.

The look the Chamberlain cut at them could have been fleeting pity, or fleeting appreciation for understatement, or any number of things. “And now I will ask, why have you chosen to come? If chosen you have.”

“I would have chosen…at some point. But the time…and the circumstances…have been forced upon me.” UrGoh shrugged. “Apparently…the Hunter…was sent…to look for SkekGra…who was with me. I suspect I was brought along…to explain why. Or perhaps…to maintain control…of my dark half.”

“Mystic is wise,” the Chamberlain said in pleased surprise. “Is probably both, though we have heard that Mystic explanations do not exactly—explain. Well? Go on. Take turn.”

The Wanderer thought for a long moment. A few things about their old friend’s dark half had already become quite clear, but how best to use that knowledge was less so. SkekSil put on an initial pretense of humility, but the merest scratch on that façade revealed someone with a deep need to prove they had the advantage. Whether to allow them that comfort was the question now. UrGoh tried to remind themselves that there were multiple outcomes that might be of help to them, or the Seeker, or the cause. Best of all would be if they were actually able to bring the Chamberlain over to their side. But failing that, even raising doubts in their mind might lead SkekSil to interfere with, or at least complicate…well, whatever the Emperor’s plan actually was. They certainly were not the paragon of loyalty they represented themselves to be, any more than SkekZok was; though those two did seem to be in contention for who was highest in the Mast—the Emperor’s confidence. Which might be a rivalry to encourage here…

Exhausting. This was an exhausting way to think, to talk. Skeksis-like, or UrSu-like, or possibly both. SkekGra would already have gotten out their little battle figurines and started drawing up a map.

Having a cause was absolutely terrible.

Yet knowing that didn’t make it go away. If anything, the opposite. And like it or not, this creature was yet one more of those who had to be convinced. Not all in one go necessarily, and not all by themselves necessarily—that was the one mercy. But the Wanderer had to make some headway now, while they had the opportunity. Thra alone knew when or if it would come again.

“What…will you do…about me, now that…you’ve found me?” they asked, suddenly wishing they could forget the whole thing.

“Do?” echoed SkekSil. “But that is not for Chamberlain to decide, is it? HhhmmmMMMMmmm. No, on mightier heads, that choice. Chamberlain is merely curious. Have not laid eyes on Mystic since…”

“The day of the Sundering,” said UrGoh quietly. It didn’t quite amount to a question, fortunately, but they were prepared to be challenged on it, and interested to see if they would be.

“Day of Skeksis liberation, yes.”

“You all…seem…to consider it so.”

“Surely was liberation for Mystics too?”

“Liberation…from what?”

“From us. Were we not your curse, as you were ours? Are we not far better off without each other?”

“Not…to my mind.” The Wanderer lifted their long chin. “The Seeker holds…parts of  myself…I had long missed. Enthusiasm…energy…and the will…to act.”

SkekSil smiled, “Ah, but is Chamberlain’s understanding, Mystics are at better peace not bothered by all that—chaos.”

“I don’t think…you can know…what it is to want very badly to do something…and find yourself…utterly unable.”

The Chamberlain said nothing to that, which seemed of little significance at first, but as the moment stretched out, awareness of it grew within them both. A blush on SkekSil could not be as visible as it was with the ghastly pale Seeker; their breath did seem to hitch, however, and the pupils of their eyes did that strange, birdlike Skeksis thing of dilating and then suddenly contracting to a pinprick. UrGoh burned to ask what it was that the Chamberlain had wanted so badly to do, but it was not their turn. Of course, SkekSil had not exactly given a straight answer to their last question, so it was clearly not to be a scrupulously fair game in any case.

“If Chamberlain were to free Wanderer at this moment,” the Skeksis finally said, “what would Wanderer do?”

UrGoh shook their head. “You do not…mean…to free me.”

“Do not second-guess Chamberlain. HmmmMMMMMMmmm!” (That noise was beginning to rake the Wanderer’s spine each time they heard it. How did the other Skeksis stand it? Were they so inured to cacophony by now? Did poor UrSol know about it? They would be mortally offended, surely.)

“You obey the Emperor,” said the Wanderer flatly. Not a strictly true statement, probably—but SkekSil obviously liked to pretend it was true, and UrGoh was quite sure the Chamberlain would not betray their sovereign in something this fraught with danger.

“Obey faithfully, yes,” SkekSil admitted. “Still, question remains. What would Wanderer do?”

“Wanderer…would go to the other Skeksis, and tell them…of the prophecy…they and SkekGra have received.”

“Prophecy?” That blade-keen gaze sharpened further. “Prophecies always trouble, yes. World is better off without them. What prophecy would Wanderer upend order with?”

Upend order with. That was a significant phrase, much like SkekSo’s tiresomely political agenda. Once again, as in the UrRu village, the Wanderer’s news was being treated as an inherent assault on the right arrangement of society, and this time without even an initial hearing.

“It is…a prophecy of doom…for Thra, and all who dwell on it,” they answered. There was still nothing for it but to try, and even though it was technically not SkekSil’s turn anymore, this was the one question UrGoh most deeply wanted to answer. “The salvation of our world…depends on the healing…of Mystics and Skeksis. On mending…what was broken…and uniting…what was sundered. This vision…both SkekGra and I have received from the Crystal…and from the ghost…of our true self.”

They fixed the Skeksis with a weighty look. “Your former self…lies in no quiet grave…either. Your other half, the Chanter…knows this. Therefore…you know it too.”

“Our former self,” said the Chamberlain thoughtfully. “Singer who no longer sings, rebel with no passion left—unquiet perhaps, yes?—but no less dead. That former self?”

It’s not hard to find the Academy hall; all GraGoh has to do is hurry in the direction of glory. The sounds radiating and echoing down the corridor are rapturous, almost ravishing, and so multifaceted — whenever they turn their head even slightly, notes glance off the walls at different angles like shafts of reflected light, forming ever-renewed counterpoints and harmonies. It rotates like an orrery graphing the heavens. It is the work of masters…or rather (as they allow themselves to think very, very quietly), a master.

The fact that UrSkeks float means that the Explorer has no need to worry about making too much noise as they glide up the ground-crystal aisle that terminates at the first curved row of the Academy Choir. The choristers are exerting themselves greatly, as hard as Homeworlders ever exert themselves, but they show no signs of fatigue. All eyes and ears are trained on what at first appears to be an unassuming figure placed not quite halfway along the first row. Conductors are an exotic concept to UrSkeks; only their youngest have any trouble keeping up with the collective momentum, following the minute cues of those assigned to serve as leaders (supposedly always temporarily—though in practice, GraGoh has noticed that there are certain wells their fellow UrSkeks tend to go back to by a silent common consent).

The music swells at last to its climax, bursting upon them all and then hanging in ringing echoes for quite some time after. This is a rehearsal, so there is no murmur of approval or answer of appreciative audience improvisations. All allow themselves for just a brief space to exult in it, even as their heads modestly bow.

Then the leaderly figure looks up and spots the Explorer, and delight suffuses their features. SilSol the Musician, as they were back in the old days before everything went so hideously wrong: a softly-incandescent churn of enchained chakras running the length of their form; an immediate smile that always seems somehow particular, as though whoever it graces is the one person in Crystalgate they have been waiting all unum to see. GraGoh feels their own chakras rise in sympathetic resonance. All is beauty. Everything is good and right.

“So kind of you to come and sample the incomplete product,” the vision says. Product is an odd, foreign word, but GraGoh cannot but let it pass as they fall into a twosome, leaving the choir behind. None of the others seem to mind, at least.

“It was magnificent,” GraGoh gushes, in a somewhat shamefaced whisper.

“‘Magnificent,’ really?” The Musician's head tilts in real if pleasant surprise. “Well, don’t let anyone else catch you saying that.”

“But it’s true.” GraGoh is still too overwhelmed by the talent of this UrSkek — so much their elder and (better face it) superior, who nonetheless deigns to treat them as a good friend — to be rebuked. “I only speak the truth.”

Another brilliant smile, quickly buried like the glow of fading coals. At such moments, their mutual love and devotion for Master SoSu notwithstanding, the Explorer feels as though they would do anything to earn another of those lip-crooks.

They are suddenly reminded of the forum last unum, when a good-natured debate between the Master and the Musician had begun to flow very deep and a tad rapid, and the Master had gently said “SilSol. Let the others catch up a little,” and GraGoh had heard themselves blurting, as though from afar, “No, don’t, SilSol.”

A shocked silence and many stares greeted this—not least, that of the Master themselves. What happened to GraGoh then was a thing they couldn’t seem to stop from happening again and again, many times for an Age and an Age afterward: having rashly thrown their lot in, they were now determined to act as though they had meant it all along. This was a circle of freethinkers, after all, the most trusted of SoSu’s followers and intimates, so they let their chin lift just the tiniest amount. “I want to learn,” they went on earnestly. “As you do, as all my fellows here do. I have so much catching up to do, I don’t want anyone to have to slow down for me. I would the Musician were allowed to be themselves. I would far rather fly to keep up with their genius than slink after like a…like a…well, a Rigger of low education.”

It was at once clear that the Explorer had made the Musician very, very happy with their words. Happy, and once again surprised, and perhaps even…touched. GraGoh certainly knew why. To find the ‘overindividuated,’ faintly scandalous traits that everyone else seemed to disapprove of—traits SilSol hid so well in public with their mask of humility, appropriate to a celebrated musician—not only accepted but seemingly welcomed…that moment could be overwhelming in its beauty. GraGoh had come to love that feeling supremely, here among their fellow questioners, the UrSkeks they adored most in all Homeworld, where so many things were at long last permitted. Where they didn’t have to agonize about throwing shadows upon anyone else by the fullness of their own light, or drowning out the music of others with too passionate a solo.

(Indeed, the Explorer had come to suspect that part of SilSol’s success lay in their music’s ability to subtly, gently evoke a sense of that forbidden uniqueness. Always within the unvoiced societal bounds, but often just barely within them.)

SoSu, though greatly taken aback, had at last nodded and bowed to let SilSol continue, saying to GraGoh as they did, “Very well, young one. If you aspire to fly so fast, it is not my place to fetter you.”

It was a joyous day, a wonderful day, one of the best of their entire miserable existence.

UrGoh did not shake off the memory as quickly as they perhaps should have, given the predatory vigilance of their conversational partner. But they took such spirit-messages seriously whenever they came—however unbidden, and at however inconvenient a moment. Surely the timing was no coincidence. Now they burned a little on SilSol’s behalf, much as their lost self had done in the memory, under the perception that the Chamberlain was not being quite fair to the Musician, nor to the Chanter. Both had always been beautiful, even in despair. Yet clearly this part of them had been there too all along, and always been just as unimpressed with their own light.

“Your turn,” the Skeksis drolly reminded UrGoh, no doubt taking the long pause for absent-mindedness or Mystic reticence.

“You…forget yourself,” the Wanderer remonstrated. “In literal truth. There was more to you…than the music…though that, too, is not so vanished…or else you and you alone would not be here now. Nor were you merely…SoSu’s poor body-servant. Like a maudren…SilSol advised the Master with wisdom…and dignity.”

“Still advise with wisdom,” said SkekSil, though it was a half-hearted mutter—here again the two of them were running up against the fundamental contradiction in the Chamberlain’s masquerade, in which they were both a humble simpering functionary who couldn’t be held responsible for anything, and an endlessly clever power behind the throne who secretly pulled all the strings.

“Even UrSol…is high…in the Master’s counsels,” UrGoh went on. “And their…power is respected. Perhaps you no longer sing…or…do you? But the Chanter’s voice…can bid stones rise and water flow…and even weather…to change.” This was not strictly true either, though it certainly was no falsehood. Mystics honored each other, yes, but because they were people and kin, not because they were powerful; and gifts were respected, just not in quite the way a Skeksis would think of ‘respect.’ It was true enough to serve, however. SkekSil likely thought far too little of their light half. In fact, UrGoh knew they did. UrSol’s own words to the Seeker had been, I know they think me a fool, and a pretty useless one at that. Even if the two beings had never been in each other’s physical presence, the Wanderer did not doubt it for a moment.

“Not a question,” the Chamberlain protested, still sourly.

The Wanderer shook their head, long and low. “There was. I asked…if you still…sing.”

“Rocks and water are stupid,” the Skeksis burst out. They leaned toward the Wanderer. “Make them listen, no great feat. The true feat is to make those with heart and brain listen. And greater yet, to make obey…without even realizing they listened.”

“If that is…the feat of the Chamberlain,” allowed UrGoh, “then it is impressive. Not quite…befitting…a meek and lowly servitor…but impressive. Still, I ask—do you sing?”

“And I answer—I do far better than sing.”

“No, then. I suppose…I should have guessed.” The Wanderer sighed. “After all…the Seeker tells me…you have left…even the castle choir…to the Major-Domo? The spy-master?”

They continued with a faint smile, “But perhaps…their taste…is as impeccable as yours…and you enjoy…their concerts...”

“I conducted choir for many trine,” the Chamberlain fairly barked. “Got too busy. Affairs of state, most consuming, yes? HmmmMMmmMMMMMmmm!”

The noise rang out even more desperate and squealing than usual. So that was what all the humming and yes-ing was for: a feint to blunt any statement they felt had been too bold or angry, to retreat back into their extremely unconvincing persona of harmlessness. Even their body followed the logic of it, visibly shrinking as their voice shriveled down to that singsong thread.

It must be an exhausting way to live, UrGoh realized. Even more exhausting than having a cause. To spend one’s days trying to contain oneself to a space deliberately built too small, and constantly failing at it—lashing out, reeling back in, over and over, lest someone discover how much was being held back—what a travail to willingly take on.

Why?

Why did SkekSil feel it unsafe, or unwise, to reveal more of themselves? Surely they were clever and daring enough to claim their own open share of power in the Skeksis court, and the Wanderer knew from SkekGra’s exploits that SkekSo admired rashness (so long as it was successful). But leave that aside for now, the Wanderer decided in phlegmatic Mystic fashion. No doubt the answer would come in its own time.

“We have…already spoken with UrSol,” they said. “They would not…that is…they are curious to meet you.”

“Likely,” said the Skeksis, “very likely.”

“It is why…they gave me the song…which I…had completely forgotten. Those nine paperwings…they are for you, SkekSil.”

“Do you…doubt me?” they added, when SkekSil once again failed to answer.

“Not your turn,” the Chamberlain returned almost faintly.

“I will…rephrase. I doubt…you doubt me.”

“Not your turn, Mystic,” they said again at greater volume. “HmmmMMMMmmmm! Mine is choice of subject now.”

“It is. Well and truly. For there is much…you have answered for me…”

“Then be quiet and let think!”

“…Without answering. Think indeed…shard of SilSol that was. That is what you would regain…were UrSol to reunite with SkekSil. The music the Chanter has…found again…the strength…of your own voice…the brilliance…of the Musician’s spirit.”

“And the useless sadness. Self-pity. Broken heart, that none cared to salve. Wanderer dares come to Castle and ask me to return to that?”

“I would care,” said UrGoh.

“Ha!” Skeksis laughter, so rarely genuine—this peal of it was more a cudgel than a sound of amusement, yet as UrGoh had learned from watching SkekGra, it was still in its way a lowered guard.

“I would care…this time,” the Wanderer pursued. “Because you are right, SkekSil.”

“Easy words to say now,” was the far-too-swift reply.

“Are they? Then let me say them…again. You are right.”

The Mystic closed their eyes, in both regret and recall. They could not bear to watch a Skeksis face crumble before them so. Bad enough when it was the Seeker’s, but apparently it was even worse when it was a friend’s darker half. “None of us cared…enough. We all saw…how you suffered…in our exile. Yet we…yet I never reached out…to touch your shoulder. It seemed…more important…to accede to Homeworld’s view…”

They swallowed to loosen a voice suddenly determined to stick in the throat. “That we all acknowledge our sins…so that we might go home. But I would…persist in heresy…to heal SilSol now. To heal you. I have learned that no peace gained…on another’s back…is true peace.”

They opened their eyes then to see a Chamberlain in fearful disarray. Not the signs a Gelfling or UrRu in distress would have shown, but ones UrGoh had learned to recognize in recent unum from the Seeker: a heaving of the sides in time with a pant that was just visible in a slightly open beak; head-feathers ruffled; pupils dilating and contracting by turns; and the suggestion of a tail roiling purposelessly under the voluminous skirts.

“Peace,” repeated the Skeksis. “You speak of peace.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Peace that will come if Chamberlain allows Chanter to come…where? Home, to Castle?”

“Anywhere. Home is…where you are.”

The green eyes narrowed down to slits. The breathing was beginning to slow again now. Some new thought had intruded on the Chamberlain’s awareness, was gathering itself. Oh no, thought UrGoh, without even the slightest idea of what it could be.

“The Castle would be…ideal,” the Wanderer added under the acute arc of that stare, “but perhaps…elsewhere…would be easier at first…for you both. The Seeker and I…wandered the Black River Road together.”

“So we wander, like Mystic. And this peace comes when Chanter takes Chamberlain to breast.”

“I think so. I hope so. You must embrace…your other half…as well…but yes. Even now…without the final unity…we feel more…ourself when together. It is peace…or as close to it…as we’ve ever felt.”

“I see.” The Chamberlain straightened, drew in a long breath. “And what then?”

“What—then?”

“Yes, what then. Then what. Chanter and Chamberlain come together, find forgiveness, peace, good.” SkekSil made a wild looping gesture with one claw. Its connection to the conversation was unclear except perhaps to suggest that if such a thing could happen at all, it must be on some far distant world. “But Wanderer says more is needed, peace not enough. Must become UrSkek again. Does Wanderer say why, or how, or how many Skeksis must disappear into UrSkek? No, only says must happen. But Wanderer would not ask this of us for own sake, or for poor dead Musician’s sake. Oh no! Is prophecy! No, all of Thra needs Chamberlain to disappear and Musician to reawaken, or else is doom. And does Wanderer say what doom is, or why is coming—or why Skeksis cannot save Thra, or Mystics, or Thra-kind…only UrSkek who broke Thra in first place?”

“If…you will…” the Wanderer tried to begin, heart already in mouth—since needless to say, not a single one of these worries had escaped themselves or SkekGra in the days since the vision, and only some of them had even the shadow of an answer.

“Too many questions at once, yes,” the Chamberlain waved. “That is why I ask only this one: tell me story of our success. Not even true story of our success, perhaps are many ways to success: but tell possible story of our success.”

They lowered their head, which had the effect of turning their entire curving beak into a many-toothed smile. “One path in tangle of time to come that leads to Thra saved, UrSkek healed, and all well. Surely if wise Mystic knows future from unerring vision, can tell simple Chamberlain this truth, yesss?”

Fortunately, a Mystic’s instinct was always to resist playing a game by rules another had laid down (in that one regard, they could be positively Skeksis-like). Nevertheless, the Wanderer could still feel the gaps in their fundamental argument not just as aching intellectual voids, but as spaces where a most un-Mystic flusterment and anger had long collected and flowered. Still, they must answer something.

SkekSil nodded, as though the Wanderer’s silence were its own answer—no doubt it was—and settled back in the gilded chair. “This is trouble with prophecies,” they said almost kindly. “Always urgency, never instructions. I will have no truck with them. There is Empire to run, and Reason is only fit basis for governance.”

“Our vision is not complete…because it cannot be,” UrGoh said, pushing their words out as quickly as they could make themselves dare. “Because it will take more than…the two of us. Uniting…will require study…and communion with the Crystal. So it will need…the Ritual-Master…”

The Chamberlain cackled out loud. The Wanderer ignored them.

“And…in time…the Emperor. It will need a Conjunction…Lesser or Greater. It will assuredly need…your music…and your cleverness…both. We must have faith…that the Crystal will guide you, SilSol…once your four feet walk the path.”

“Faith.” It was a sidelong spit.

“But incomplete…as our vision is…one thing it is not…is vague. The story of our failure was…hideously detailed. Shall we go now, to see its unfolding…right under our feet? No, no need…for you already know. The Darkening…we saw that day…never left. It only…submerged…and grows ever stronger, down there in the…spider-dark.”

“This is what vision shows you?”

The Wanderer raised their head high on its stalk and for the first time struggled to a half-sit, despite the pain remaining in every limb. The Emperor had not made good on their implicit threat to hang UrGoh in midair by the foot, but they had forced the Mystic to remain in certain positions during the interrogation; postures that UrGoh could perhaps have held indefinitely in younger days, when their meditations had included the fine study of bodily balance, but had no hope of success in a frame bent by care and squashed by the many hours in the goalong.

“Do not…pretend ignorance, Musician,” they said sternly. “It is a garment…of ill fit on you.”

“I see,” said the Skeksis again, and from the way they said it UrGoh entertained a brief hope that they were actually considering it, but the next words removed all question of that. “Then your only answer is to throw in Musician’s face—no, Chamberlain’s face—and say, is our job to fulfill your vision. Convincing, yes? Very convincing, hmmmMMMMmmm!”

“Because is not—it is not our vision alone,” argued the Mystic, with unfamiliar and deucedly uncomfortable heat. “The fate of all is at stake. We must act.”

“Then where is your answer?”

“Where is yours?”

The Skeksis actually stood up at that, astonished; when the Wanderer raised their voice, it was almost like a horn-call rattling through their resonant, barreled chest. But the astonishment quickly melted into delight, and they came up very close to reexamine UrGoh from a few new angles. For once, it gave the Mystic less the feeling of being stalked and more that of being the spectacle at a Gelfling fair. (Which they certainly had been, enough times. Occasionally an especially enterprising song-teller would even appear at their elbows as though hired to be there, and launch into a barker’s spiel about the legends of the UrRu as the Wanderer tried to move through the market stalls.)

“Do ears and eyes deceive?” the Chamberlain asked almost giddily. “Is this what peace of unity is to behold? One of the UrRu…shouting at Skeksis, like Gelfling fishwife?”

“Sometimes it is,” said UrGoh, “yes. I have become more SkekGra…and the Seeker has become more UrGoh.”

“Exquisite!” laughed the Chamberlain, and it was almost like a Gelfling laugh.

What a strange creature the Chamberlain was, thought UrGoh. Not because of the seemingly authentic mirth at something the Wanderer had to concede was rather funny, but because of the words they used, or rather didn’t use. They obviously knew words like exquisite and governance, but the and a were evidently beyond them. Between the broken speech and the whimpering and cringing, they tended to come off a bit dim, even idiotic—yet actually listening to them for the briefest time definitively proved them anything but. None of the other Skeksis spoke in such a way. Oh, there was something there, if they could only claw back enough mental purchase to think it through. As the Alchemist often said, every problem bears its solution on its own back, like a Tortle carrying her home. SkekSil, however, seemed determined not to grant that purchase, having clearly decided now that staying on the offensive was the best defense.

“Now Chamberlain must find where Emperor has tucked SkekGra away,” the Skeksis was chuckling. “Will be most amusing, to hear dread Conqueror speak to me gently of peace…”

“Yes, you should…hear it…” replied the Wanderer almost numbly, reflecting that at least the Seeker might find a more Skeksis way to put the argument—until they saw that SkekSil indeed seemed to be preparing to leave: picking up the glow-flit lantern, reaching into their sleeve for something, possibly the ‘key’ they’d entered the parlor with.

“No…wait,” they objected. “Don’t go.”

“Oh, do not worry!” the Chamberlain exclaimed. “Will come back to visit friend Mystic very soon.”

“But…”

“Much more to learn, after all!”

“It is—my turn.” UrGoh swept their neck around to follow the Skeksis in their bustling. They berated themselves even as they did so; SkekGra was the one whose yell could freeze people in their tracks, and this outburst was so much hoarser than the previous one. All unity notwithstanding, they were not the half of the pair meant to be bellowing. There was a reason why they so rarely did, just as there was a reason why SkekGra spoke as they did, just as there was a reason why anyone spoke as they did.

There’s a reason, echoed through the weaving maze of their mind.

In any case, they would have called it a completely unsuccessful bid, yet the Chamberlain stopped nonetheless, turning back to peer at them. Their face, underlit by the warm glare of the flits, was inscrutable but decidedly not friendly.

“Again, ears deceive,” murmured SkekSil. “Am I hearing true? Does Mystic complain that Chamberlain is not following rules of game?”

“Yes,” the Wanderer insisted. “Yes, you are not playing fair.”

“Fascinating.” The Skeksis gave this a moment’s evidently earnest consideration, and then, much to UrGoh’s surprise, sat back down.

“Fine. If is game, then we must finish.” Once again, the smoothing out of skirts. Good Thra, they were actually settling in for the duration. Skeksis.

There’s a reason. It was so close now.

“Well? Go on. Ask.”

“Why…do you talk…like that?” UrGoh asked at last.

The Chamberlain drew themselves up with a little hMMmm? of mock-puzzlement. “Don’t know what you mean,” they said loftily. “Talk like what? Chamberlain only speaks as duty demands. Why does Wanderer talk as does?”

“Still my turn,” they reminded the Skeksis grimly. Then, less grimly: “But if you must know…I talk slowly…that I may speak less foolishness.”

“A wise notion,” returned SkekSil, the dullest glimmer of tooth now showing beneath the tiniest curl of lip. The Wanderer pretended not to see it.

“The Seeker,” they said, “believes your speech is a mask…to lull the unwary.”

The glimmer widened. “Ridiculous,” was the zestful reply.

“I agree. You…do not merely play-act.”

“Of course not.”

“There is more to it…than that.”

UrGoh paused. “You don’t think…in Gelfling…do you?”

The hunched creature recoiled at that. “What? No!—that is—no idea…what you are talking about?” Each word, a living betrayal of their own protest. That was the difference. Every other Skeksis UrGoh had met sounded like a native speaker of Gelfling, and there was a reason why that was not the case with SkekSil.

“Speak foolishness, indeed,” the Skeksis sneered. “Wanderer has no cause to think this!”

“You would have me… believe otherwise?” The Wanderer tilted their long nose and gave it a knowing tap. “You must do better, then. It is still my turn. Perhaps...Podling…is what runs…through your head...as we converse. Or…perhaps Nurling?”

Insult following on injury stung the Chamberlain into biting back. “Skeksis! Think in Skeksis tongue. As is only proper.”

“Ah yes,” said UrGoh with a nod. That would indeed be the only other possibility, except: “The Seeker has told me of the Skeksis-speech. They say…it has little use…beyond curses…and rites of challenge—”

“So-called ‘Seeker’ lies to you,” SkekSil hissed, brushing at their robe and then raking dark talons through their ear-feathers. “In more than this I think, hmmmmMMMMMmmmmm?”

The Wanderer paused again to see if any more bird-racket was forthcoming, and when the answer seemed to be no, they finished, “You still think…in UrSkek. Do you not?”

The reaction was instantaneous and vivid—a shudder quaking through the deep-robed frame, all visible feathers askew, limbs drawn in on themselves as though to shield against a physical attack. The re-exertion of control was just tardy enough to make that display possible but came swiftly afterward, the Chamberlain literally tamping down their down with both hands, then pressing on their own knees with imperious firmness, presumably to keep themselves from exploding back onto their feet. They held their arms there, akimbo, as they cawed at UrGoh like a scolding Awlis. “What! What does Wanderer dare say to Skeksis?”

“Wanderer says that SilSol…was always the UrSkek…least interested in Thra’s peoples, and it makes sense…they would never…master proper Gelfling.”

The Chamberlain scoffed.

“Wanderer also says Gelfling has the words…the and a…and UrSkek does not. UrSkek rarely uses I, for one is not supposed…to speak much of one’s own thoughts—but Gelfling give more freely…of themselves. You give your thoughts…freely as well…being Skeksis…but the habit…of language…remains. You even try…though poorly…to keep music in your voice. Perhaps in younger days…you succeeded. And now…you listen patiently to me…instead of interrupting.” The Mystic coughed to soothe a wearying throat. “Because…you want to know…what gave you away.”

“Nothing—nothing gives me away,” SkekSil tried. “Because I have nothing to hide.”

“You have everything to hide,” countered UrGoh, “because…if the others knew…they would not heed…a word you say. Would they?”

“Look at me!” The Skeksis gestured down at themselves, collar to train, the lace caught like cobwebs at their throat and the billowing sleeves of satin and jet and silk rope. “Does Chamberlain look like person trying to hide?”

“Well. You look exactly like…the others…so, yes.”

“Pah! False! Fantasy! Prophecy has addled UrGoh’s head. Mystic and Skeksis have both gone mad.”

“And that…is what you will tell them…won't you? Once we are found.” The Wanderer felt a rush of melancholy at that realization, but too late to stop any of that. It was now foreordained.

“Is truth, and Chamberlain will tell it.”

“It is truth,” they corrected, “but then, UrSkek doesn’t use it is either. Perhaps we are mad…” UrGoh hummed sardonic amusement. They honestly could have wished they were addled, it would have been kinder; but all their good leaf was in the bags that had been confiscated. “But you needn’t…tell them so. Neither I…nor SkekGra…will reveal your secret. I give you my word, SilSol. We neither need…nor want…your fear.”

Whether they needed it or wanted it, however, surely they now had it. The Skeksis was staring around the room as though every shadow in it might hold one of their beastly kin, beak open and poised to strike.

“SkekGra is liar and so is Wanderer,” they said almost hysterically. “UrSkek are dead. Chamberlain does not… I do not hear their voices or their wretched useless music, I do not hear them or think of them.”

UrGoh simply looked at them. If there was one thing all Thra did know of the Mystics… A dark ugly purple mantled the Chamberlain’s cheek under the silent rebuke.

“I am Skeksis!” they finished in a strangled screech, bringing one taloned fist down upon the arm of the chair.

“What…a thing to say,” the Mystic rumbled thoughtfully. “Yes…quite a thing.”

“This game is over,” said SkekSil.

“You have not answered—”

“Chamberlain’s answer not needed, Wanderer answers self,” the Skeksis shot back with a vicious swish of the claws, heaving themselves out of the chair and turning to go.

“As you wish,” acceded the Wanderer.

Then they added in UrSkek, or the closest to it that a clumsy UrRu tongue could manage, “But consider this, shard of my old friend…”

It worked, as pitiful a pronunciation as they knew it was by their former self’s standards. The Chamberlain stopped once more. Their head extended from its carapace hood to wind almost all the way back around toward UrGoh, their slitted eyes open wide in something that could have been the glistening of wonder or even the beginnings of tears.

“You are not like the others,” UrGoh continued, still in that bent UrSkek. Ignore the thousands of overtones that were going unsung, the hopelessly-forgotten geometric correspondences of meaning…as Thra-speech went it was still beauty, and thank the Crystal, at least the words themselves flowed for once. “You actually know what you have lost, because you still hear it every day. Your language is still the language of stars…not the fawning talk of the poor toady you play. You could be of so much help to us in bringing the others to wholeness…”

“Am not toady,” whispered SkekSil.

“I know you are not. And now you have answered me. And now you will go, and that is fine. I ask nothing further of you but your imagination. When you are back safe in your dark empty chambers once more…try to imagine a Thra where you no longer have to hide what is inside you, because it makes you honored, not outcast. Where the others do not make you choose between ambition and honesty, because they have embraced their own entirety too. Imagine standing tall and straight and singing your truths, as you once did long ago. You are closer to that day than you know, SkekSil. The closest you have ever been. Will you think on it?”

“I will think on it,” the Chamberlain said, and the Wanderer could see now that there were tears. Skeksis tears, as rare and precious a liquid as existed on Thra, and also as fleeting. “I will think on it, and I will curse you.”

And with that, they fled.

Chapter Text

“Well, I think something is going on,” said SkekEkt the Ornamentalist.

“Well, I think you’re right,” SkekAyuk the Gourmand returned.

“And I think you’ve both picked up a case of head-crawlies,” said SkekOk the Scroll-Keeper, flicking a bit of crawlie that had just in fact gone flying from SkekAyuk’s head (more specifically, their mouth) off of the blotter on their desk.

“It’s the Castle of the Crystal,” wheezed SkekLach the Collector into their handkerchief. They spit into it for good measure, then crumpled it in their talons, stuffing it indifferently away in one of their thousand pockets. SkekOk wondered why they bothered; in a few moments it would be coming right back out again. The Collector had been haunted by a constant cough for at least the last five unum. “There’s always some foolishness afoot.”

The Ornamentalist flapped an airy set of silk-gloved talons in their direction, then went back to applying their kohl, holding one eye after the other wide open. “Oh, you’re hopeless. Pooh-pooh all you want, but then you tell me why the General’s been slouching up and down the Seventh Branch all day.”

The Scroll-Keeper didn’t look up from their parchment. “What! Down where the phegnese stables begin?”

“No, SkekOk dear, the Seventh, not the Seventeenth,” SkekEkt corrected.

“Oh yes, the Seventh of course, now let me see…”

Other Skeksis at court might have had the courtesy to watch the Scroll-Keeper’s currently rather sandy mental gears grind toward the solution, but the Ornamentalist was not among them. “We used to live there,” they said shortly.

SkekOk blinked through three pairs of lenses. “Did we?”

“Yes, until we ripped out the meditation pools and moved all our rooms up to the Twenty-First.”

“Of course! Now I remember. Those dirty cramped quarters...”

“How ever did we put up with it?” agreed the Collector with a courtly sweep of the arm.

“What’s in the Seventh now, my sweet?” the Gourmand asked the Ornamentalist, offering them a plate of artfully-piled dumplings and pommerfruit.

“Nothing! That’s my point,” exclaimed the latter, daintily taking a dumpling and gulping it down whole. “Except for the General, filing their talons and propping up the walls. —Perfect!”

“The General?” frowned the Scroll-Keeper.

“The dumplings!” said the Gourmand joyfully.

“The makeup!” SkekEkt beamed into the mirror of their portable vanity, finishing themselves off with a sprinkle of glittering mica. “I do believe I’ve outdone myself again.”

SkekAyuk knew enough to change course promptly. “Oh! Indeed you have. Of course, given such a canvas…”

“It’s true, isn’t it?” the Ornamentalist sighed. “Hard to butcher such cheekbones.”

“Well, if there’s ‘nothing’ in the Seventh anymore,” inquired the Collector with an especially poignant ratcheting of throat-phlegm, “then what were you doing there?”

SkekEkt shrugged, a gesture only visible as a ruffling of cascading frills. “If you must know, I was…reclaiming some gold curtain fittings I remembered were there, to use as buttons on a new set of sleeves.” They regarded SkekLach coolly. “But do you honestly mean to suppose that’s what the General was doing?”

The Collector’s attention was instantly diverted. “Gold fittings, you say?” they mused, glancing down at their own gleaming ruby bodice-studs. “Hmm. I wonder what else is down there…to ‘reclaim?’”

“Ugh! You see what I mean? Hopeless.” The Ornamentalist waved another hand of dismissal. “You don’t want to go today in any case, Collector, unless you feel like enduring an interrogation from SkekVar about your intentions.”

The Gourmand went still and awestruck as revelation suddenly visited their artless brain. “As though they’re guarding something!” they breathed.

“Exactly, dear!” trilled SkekEkt. “Though what it could possibly be, I can’t imagine.”

“Hmmm,” the Collector said again. SkekOk rolled their eyes.

“And then there’s the Ritual-Master,” the Gourmand pointed out. Everyone except SkekEkt looked at them in mystification.

“Oh, yes!” the latter exclaimed. “Porridge, was it?”

“Even worse. Gruel!” The chef’s puffy cheeks wobbled with the strength of their shudder.

After a moment or two’s reluctance, SkekOk gave in and asked. “What…?”

“Oh, it’s grotesque,” answered the Gourmand. “An order came in yesterday for the Ritual-Master’s private luncheon, and you’ll never guess what was on it.”

“Cold roast,” guessed the Scroll-Keeper.

“Yes, but besides that,” SkekAyuk said irritably.

“Whake bread with knotnut butter.”

“No, besides that and the sour seaweed salad.” The Gourmand’s eyes went wide and they leaned forward dramatically, their incongruously slender talons grasping at each other for moral support. “They also ordered an enormous bowl of pussul gruel!”

SkekOk sneered. “Oh, that’s a sure sign of something sinister.”

“Isn’t it? Ohhh, it shivers my marrow! Gruel.”

“Did they ask for green Nebrie cheese as well?” the Scroll-Keeper added.

“Eh?”

“Scroll-Keeper is having you on, my dearest,” the Ornamentalist explained, then fixed SkekOk with a mildly dangerous look. “They seem to feel this is beneath their attention.”

“I didn’t say that,” demurred the scribe hastily.

“Because if they were paying attention they would think to ask…the Ritual-Master, eating gruel like a Podling!?” SkekEkt’s voice rose in equally mixed indignation and unbelief. To be just, it was an unheard-of pass for Skeksis civilization to have come to. “Or if not the Ritual-Master, then who, for Crystal’s sake?”

“Perhaps it was for the servants,” the Scroll-Keeper tried in desperation to suggest, but the Gourmand immediately consigned this idea to the fate it deserved.

“Bah! None of us bothers to order anything for servants!”

“Unless it’s payment for special services rendered,” SkekLach reminded them, their lower eyelids puckering in the closest thing they could manage to an outright grin.

“That’s true,” SkekAyuk allowed, brightening.

“We all know how SkekZok likes to entertain,” the Collector went on, quite unnecessarily.  “Perhaps they had company that needed the extra staff to attend.”

The Ornamentalist covered their ears. “Don’t be horrid!”

“I’m only saying what everyone was thinking,” protested SkekLach.

“Well, you don’t have to think it out loud,” the Scroll-Keeper muttered.

“The things that Skeksis makes sweet little Gelflings and Podlings a party to…it just doesn’t even bear contemplation.” SkekEkt shook themselves out, head-feathers briefly rousing, which disturbed the outermost ring of face-powder a little. (No one mentioned it.) “Not a moment’s thought.”

“Absolutely not,” the Gourmand assured them with a firm nod. “Let’s change the subject.”

“Gladly. It was your subject in the first place,” said SkekOk acidly. They sat up straighter and rifled through the official pile of incoming letters at their elbow. “If it’s scandal you all want, let me see. I hear SkekUng is having an unusual amount of trouble with the Ternak resistance in the archipelago…”

“Speaking of the Ritual-Master,” the Collector barreled in, “I can’t have been the only one who noticed them and the Emperor both getting up early from supper last night.” They speared one talon apiece into four pommerfruits from SkekAyuk’s plate, then proceeded to gobble each one off its claw in two juice-smacking bites.

“Ah, yes!” agreed the Ornamentalist at once. “The crowning proof. Well, you all know my theory about the Emperor and SkekZok—”

There were groans all round at this, even a very quiet one from the Gourmand.

“No one wants to hear your theories about the Emperor and anyone,” said the Collector.

“Oh, flit-wits, all of you. Anyway. You noticed that too I trust, Scroll-Keeper dearie?”

“Hm?” The Scroll-Keeper seemed surprised to be called on, but they quickly covered it over by taking off one of their spectacles and assiduously smearing the film on it around with the edge of one sleeve. “Of course I did. A little strange.”

“They left at almost the same time, too,” remarked the Gourmand.

“A little strange!?”

SkekOk all but jumped out of their skin and regarded SkekEkt, who was staring at them as if they had just grown a second head, with the air of a hunted thing.

“A little strange?” the Ornamentalist repeated. “And come to think of it, you’ve been acting a bit off yourself.”

“I don’t,” said SkekOk, as their spectacles slipped out of their talons.

“Know,” they added as they almost managed to catch one lens in their other talons, but fumbled it and sent the things bouncing upward almost to muzzle-level.

“What you’re,” they clarified as they made a robust grab for the pair and wound up almost losing a second one.

“Talking about,” they finished decisively as they bent over to retrieve the spectacles from where they had ended up, dangling on the end of their tether somewhere in the fluted folds of their skirts.

SkekEkt just snickered. “You don’t play coy very well. You should be right here with the rest of us trying to solve this little puzzle, and you’re not. You know something, don’t you?”

“If I knew anything, don’t you think I’d be telling you?” sputtered the Scroll-Keeper.

“Fair point,” brayed the Collector delightedly, hawking up another noisy gobbet. “Of all the terrible secret-keepers around here, you’re the worst…”

A distinctly interested-sounding “mmmmMMMMMMmmmmm” rang forth in the hall outside. Everyone in the room started.

“Oh, hush!” SkekOk begged them all. “On the qui vive!”

The Chamberlain’s upholstered form filled the door-frame just as each Skeksis had composed themselves into something like dignity again.

“Greetings, fellow lords!” SkekSil’s syllables swung high and low as always, much as their gaze also did, roving hungrily from faces to claws to desk to floor, seeking out sins. “Is good to see friends smiling and laughing. May Chamberlain ask what is so amusing?”

It was SkekEkt who took up the burden of opening relations with them on the little party’s behalf. “Oh, nothing important, I assure you! Just being silly featherheads. Certainly nothing worth the concern of the Emperor’s left talon. But how good of you to stop by when you must be so awfully busy with weightier matters.”

The Chamberlain shrugged around the stack of papers and scroll-cases in their arms. “Is busy of course, as you see, always much to do…”

“Oh, did a report on Grottan winter fungus-farming come in?” asked SkekOk with every appearance of sympathy.

“Two, actually.”

“Or perhaps a fact-finding mission into whether anyone’s dining chair is a hair’s width taller than everyone else’s,” suggested SkekLach, though with far less success at dissembling.

The Chamberlain seemed not to notice. “In good time, all in good time. No task too small for humble Chamberlain to perform for the Empire. And what are friends doing?”

This caused a moment’s perplexity, but the Ornamentalist recovered quickest, as usual. “I have lace on the bobbins for the Empire!” they answered, spreading their talons wide to take in the roll of cushion in their lap, its silk festooned with row upon row of pins in an arcane arrangement resembling the perforations in a music-box cylinder, and the row of clacking spindles hanging down from the careful knotwork that wove around between those pins. “My latest court ensemble will thrill the lesser races and spread the tales of our Skeksis radiance from here to the Sifan coast!”

“And I am taste-testing crawlie dumplings for the Empire!” SkekAyuk demonstrated, picking up a still slightly wriggling bundle of dough and popping it into one cheek so they could continue: “Nothing but the best will do for our sublime sovereign’s table.”

“I am keeping an eye on all these slaggards. For the Empire.” The Collector seemed a bit baffled by the disapproving looks that followed upon this, and added defensively, “No task too small.”

The Chamberlain gave this a modest scoff and then glanced at the Scroll-Keeper, who started off grandly, “I have for some ninedays been conducting a thorough revisitation of our successful campaign against the Pitchari, culminating in the sensational climactic battle of—”

All at once they stammered to a halt and started digging back through their pile of parchments as though looking for something extremely important that had been forgotten, ignoring the general consternation for several long and extremely conspicuous moments. At no point did they look as though they’d found it, but they went on at last regardless. “Of—of Turian Pass. Collating and revising records to make sure they reflect the full truths of our military glory and the spotless conduct of our forces. F-for the Empire, of course.”

SkekAyuk glanced at SkekEkt, who glanced at SkekLach, who wiped their snout and then belatedly thought to glance at SkekOk, who was not currently returning glances.

SkekSil had been watching the scribe’s mounting distress with a tiny, growing curl of the lip at the back of their beak, and now broke in as though to save them embarrassment. “Ah, yes. Glorious the armies of the Empire in our strife with Pitchari, yesss? Especially in later battles, under great Conqueror’s command? Campaign was indeed difficult, but in the end drew down to most satisfactory conclusion, for the Empire.”

“For the Empire!” all clamored on cue, though the Scroll-Keeper’s contribution was noticeably anemic.

“And with that, friends,” the Chamberlain announced with a flawless obeisance, “I must take leave. Bye-bye.”

“Oh, such a pity,” the Ornamentalist pouted, in excellent form, as the Empire’s chief courtier disappeared. At a glance from them, the Gourmand got up and crept to the door, listening intently for a little while before giving the all-clear with a dramatic drop of their lacy handkerchief.

“How does such an irredeemable idiot develop such a keen sense of when to interrupt?” marveled SkekEk the instant it touched the floor. “It’s positively uncanny.”

“Perhaps they’re not as entirely idiotic as you think?” SkekOk managed a tad faintly.

“It’s not that uncanny,” the Ornamentalist retorted.

“Friend Scroll-Keeper!”

SkekOk helplessly watched their papers and bags go tumbling to the floor as a diamond-hard set of talons took hold of their shoulder from behind and just off to the side. Somewhere in the cavernous side corridors between their study and the Chancellery, the Chamberlain had clearly been lurking and now seized their moment with aplomb. At least it was only the Chamberlain and not the Emperor or SkekNa, both of whom the Scroll-Keeper had been making a special point of avoiding since yesterday.

“Oh! SkekSil, don’t startle me so—"

“Oh! Deepest apologies, friend,” said a crestfallen SkekSil as they fairly dove to retrieve SkekOk’s things for them, deftly hanging the tapestry bag on one arm as they scooped up parchments, scrolls and a case full of drafting equipment. “Chamberlain was careless, so happy to see friend SkekOk. But such fortunate timing, yes? Spare Chamberlain a moment out of busy schedule, if quite convenient?”

“Well, actually, you have caught me at an awkward— now see here, I need those back…”

SkekSil backed away toward one of the rooms branching off the main hall, a curiously fine one with double doors. “Ah, but methinks wise Scroll-Keeper will be most rewarded to consider Chamberlain’s humble request. Come. You can put papers back in order in here.”

Their tail deftly rose up through the layers of skirting to turn the door-handle behind them and push the door open. A waft of must and ancient tapestry cloth immediately rose up and blew out on a billow of dust. SkekOk followed the Chamberlain inside, glancing dazedly around in the sudden disorientation of familiar-yet-not times and spaces. Molding carpets and tattered banners, many still visibly bearing the sigils of various Skeksis, stirred in a slight breeze as the disturbed air rearranged its layers of cool and warm. Chairs of a now very antique style crouched everywhere, like napping Seedles with the forests on their back bristling into unique and decorative spines.

“What is this place?”

“Aha, you see? Nice long table.” The Chamberlain patted it, then hastily wiped their hand on their overrobe and set about clearing a space with a unamoth-gnawed napkin that lay nearby. The board was mired in a thick layer of dust now, but finely curved and more than sturdy enough to support even the weightiest pile of paperwork. In old times it must have groaned under many a heavy feast. “Old banqueting hall. Skeksis not use for many trine now. Others have long forgotten is here, but Chamberlain remembers for friend. MmmmmMMMmmm!”

“T-thank you,” replied SkekOk. It would serve, but they still made a note to themselves to request another permanent Podling servant of SkekNa—once they weren’t avoiding them anymore, hopefully—to fetch and carry things for them throughout the Castle. (The library Gelfling considered themselves above that kind of thing, and their sensibilities were almost as poisonous as the Scroll-Keeper’s own when offended.) SkekOk loaded themselves up with impetuous speed, stuffing things into pockets and squaring up piles without regard to the contents.

“Oh, tsk-tsk, what is rush? Such disorder,” the Chamberlain tutted as they stood there unhurriedly reviewing, sorting, and ordering. “Does Scroll-Keeper have elsewhere to be?”

“Well,” said the Scroll-Keeper, who found themselves all at once unable to think of a single lie among what must surely be a plausible few dozen to employ.

“Is something secret in papers?” SkekSil asked jovially, with an exaggerated sidewise slide of the gaze. Evidently they considered this a capital joke, and the nineday before SkekOk might have been amused as well, but not today.

“No, of course not!” SkekOk had realized to their dismay that their tapestry bag was still with SkekSil, sitting on the other Skeksis’ far side, and fairly dashed around to grab it.

“Oh! —Then why not let friend help, hhmmmMMMMmmm?”

“Well, because, because you said you needed my help! A moment out of my schedule?” The Scroll-Keeper brushed themselves off and adjusted their closest set of spectacles. “What, uh, was the question?”

“Ah,” said the Chamberlain. “To business then. Very well.” They didn’t stop ordering papers, however; if anything, they moved even more slowly and looked at SkekOk but rarely, as though they were merely discussing the weather. “Chamberlain wants to know what Scroll-Keeper knows of certain prisoners newly arrived in Castle.”

“I have no idea what you mean,” SkekOk sniffed. “I’m sure there are many prisoners in the deep bowels, but it’s hardly my business to know about them. You should talk to SkekNa, or—” They almost said SkekUng then, but no, SkekUng wasn’t even in residence at the moment. And as for SkekVar, they actually knew the answer so that wouldn’t do, and as for SkekGra…

“Ah, friend Scroll-Keeper is being far too modest,” smiled the Chamberlain. “Do not worry; faithful Chamberlain’s feelings are not hurt that secret was kept from them. Even SkekNa does not know yet of this prisoner. But is very clear that for some reason, SkekOk does.”

While the Scroll-Keeper went stock-still, trying frantically to calculate everything that followed from this information, and what it meant about who must have found out what, and how, SkekSil went on pretending to study a new catalog of the Great Library’s mineralogy section.

“SkekOk must be more careful,” they observed. “May not be best time after all to be working on Pitchari history and story of noble Conqueror’s victories. But I think you know that too, yes? Perhaps revisitation can become revision. Would not be first time, yes?”

When the Scroll-Keeper did not or could not answer them, the Chamberlain at last took the step of turning to them directly, fixing them with a pair of aquamarine-green eyes. “Tell Chamberlain where Conqueror is being held. Please?”

Oh dear, thought SkekOk, quite fruitlessly. They’re using their old, old art on me. Luckily they too were Skeksis, and it was easier for them to resist the pull of those eyes and the somehow suddenly less-obnoxious singsong of that cloying voice; but the edge of it sawed mercilessly on their nerves, and they knew it showed.

“You—how did you…” They pointed at SkekSil, heart thundering in mouth, all their beloved words failing them at the worst possible time. “You’re not even supposed to know they’re here! No one is! I suspect the Emperor will be most interested to hear of this,” they finished, grasping at the first real straw they could see—after all, the Emperor had made their feelings about any potential leaking of this secret devastatingly clear. Unfortunately, the Chamberlain was more than prepared for such a threat.

That worthy sidled up to the Scroll-Keeper, quieting themselves to an almost confessional tone now: “And I suspect Emperor will be more interested to hear of how Scroll-Keeper has been selling history itself to any customer who can meet price—Conqueror, General, Collector, even Gelfling Maudren—without consulting Emperor’s pleasure first…”

They picked up the tapestry bag again and upended it onto the table, disgorging not just the long Vapran-silk scroll of SkekGra’s interrogation, but also a small pile of hide-shaped ingots.

“…Or graciously offering Emperor a share of the spoils.”

SkekOk gazed on in horror as the Chamberlain very deliberately chose and pocketed two of the ingots, all but making a play out of it. The ingots were tin, rare but not that valuable. They wouldn’t have bought one of the Chamberlain’s sleeves, but that was obviously not the true point. SkekOk received the true point with keen attention.

“Now,” said SkekSil softly, stepping even closer. “Chamberlain will ask you once more.”

Chapter Text

Few enough knew of it, since few cared to enter SkekTek’s laboratory until they were either ailing or attending the announcement of some wonderful new Empire-changing invention, but nestling to the rear of that laboratory was a network of tunnels that led deep into the Castle’s bowels, far away from even the main body of prison cells. Most often these supremely dark and damp passageways served as storage for lab experiments (particularly the failed ones), but they also found occasional use as oubliettes for secret or obstreperous prisoners.

SkekGra was both, and they knew perfectly well where they were—they’d had to deal with the results of spycraft often enough to have visited there more than once, in considerably more elevated circumstances—but they persisted in screeching their throat raw regardless. There was little else to do, and they happened to know that the tunnels emptied out on their other end into the Seventh Branch. The Seventh was frequented even less than the lab these days, but there was always a chance some Skeksis, or even some servant, would have business that took them nearby. Anything would do. Grot, even waking a lurking Arathim might be worthwhile at this point; the spiders were clever, and likely had not grown more fond of Skeksis during their long exile.

After all, the ex-Conqueror had a keen understanding of time and its uses, and time was not a friend in any part of the situation. Whether the Emperor meant to actually do something with them or simply leave them to rot in the present literal hole was not yet clear, but either way, each new day of languishing alone could bring nothing but further degradation: loss of weight, loss of cleanliness, loss of dignity, all conspiring to leave them in an ever poorer position to make their case. Or plot escape. Or do anything at all, really.

Conversely, while there was certainly some risk attached to exposing their own or UrGoh’s presence (just as there was risk in doing anything that was the opposite of what SkekSo wanted), that also seemed the only way to force a break in the relentless process of erosion. Secrecy was power among Skeksis, and therefore, so was revelation. Once the news escaped any of its current crannies, it would be all over the Castle in short order. That certainly didn’t guarantee anyone would care, but staying silent foreclosed the very possibility of that happening, and even the slimmest chance was better than none.

So they screeched.

“Suns curse you!” came SkekTek’s voice, muffled by the distance.

“No, suns curse you!” They took the pathetic tin dish their last ‘meal’ had been served in and sent it clattering between the walls with a terrific volley of the arm. It banged and bounced against the sharp rocks on its way down, making a commotion to put any camp alarm to shame.

What seemed for a moment a blinding brilliance appeared at the mouth of the hole above, before it was eclipsed by a dark rough blob with a flutter of robe-hem at the bottom. The glow-flits of their lantern buzzed audible displeasure at being awoken and probably at the noise as well. Thra only knew what the hour was; the Seeker had well lost track of whether it was day or night.

“Keep this up and I shall be forced to summon the General again, which will be an edifying experience for neither of us,” the Scientist called down.

SkekGra peered up through the glare. “Why is your head so big all of a sudden, SkekTek? I mean other than the obvious. Did one of your pets up there very understandably kick you, and you had to bandage it up?”

“No, I’m afraid it’s for your benefit, nameless one. These muffs comprise an ingenious new auricular device for blocking out unpleasant sounds.”

“Oh? How well are they working?”

“Well enough, for everything except the worst! Unfortunately, that includes you.” The Scientist added, grumbling, “And there is a slight propensity to headache due to the tightness of the clamp…”

“I’m very sorry to hear that!” the Seeker belted out at full blast.

“I’ll just bet you are!”

“Hope the headache improves!”

“And I hope you are stricken with scurvy and marasmus at the earliest possible juncture! Which will not be difficult to arrange!”

“And feel free to keep screaming at me, by the way!”

A short silence, followed by the shifting whisper of robes on stone. “Loath as I am to admit it, you have a point. Matching your stridence with my own accomplishes nothing beyond an exceedingly dubious moral victory. Therefore, let us return to a more pragmatic frame.”

The light receded for a brief time, together with the sound of SkekTek’s flapping slippers, and then returned.

“Speaking of marasmus,” they began a tad grudgingly. “It is in my power to make that significantly less likely. At the cost of my own slight deprivation…but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make, out of regard for our former friendship, and the fervent wish for tranquility. I strongly advise you to consider it.”

“Consider what?” SkekGra stood up, half-supporting themselves on one slime-slicked rock. “What’s in it for me?”

“Food is what’s in it for you, you bellicose imbecile. No more, no less. Now will you agree?”

“I don’t know.” SkekGra wanted to keep pretending this was a non-negotiable matter, but the mere mention of food had their mouth filling up. When they had first been dropped into the oubliette, its sodden crevices had been full of crawlies, Tidlebits and judfly larvae, but those were all long gone now. Besides, their throat felt like the outside of a Makrak shell. “What’s the catch?”

“‘Catch’? The only ‘catch’ is that you stop your interminable vociferations and grant me some blessed surcease.”

“Really?”

“Yes! Really!”

A moment later, an already well-gnawed phegnese femur dropped down into the hole, rags of roasted skin hanging from it like sodden bunting. SkekTek’s leftovers, but it was more nourishment than they’d seen since the Mystic village, so they seized it with their talons and cracked it open for the marrow, squeezing their palate and tongue together as best they could to suck the gritty stuff out of the center of the bone. It came in earthy and rich, like a loving benediction from Thra itself. Then they tore off the flaps of hide with their little morsels of incomparably sweet fat still clinging to them. Then they started snapping off and swallowing sections of the bone itself as well—not nearly as satisfying to the taste, yet nutrition was nutrition. It would digest too. Their stomach roared in sudden simultaneous upset and gratification, and they just barely kept themselves from going on their knees to beg the Scientist for more at any price.

“Ahh. Your exuberant digestion is a welcome respite from your conversation,” said the Scientist. “There may be more where that came from, if you continue to be agreeable.”

“Yes, understood,” returned the Seeker with a snarl, but it was a feckless display thoroughly unworthy of a Lord of the Crystal, and they knew it.

SkekTek ambled back up the little passage that led to the back way into their lab, removing the conical constructs from their ears and at once exhaling a sigh of relief. They would need to find an adhesive that could keep some sort of circular padding stuck to the edges for comfort, and it might not go amiss to figure out some way of feeding equipment readings into the earpieces so that they wouldn’t miss vital changes while wearing them. Perhaps over a copper wire. Indeed, there might be all kinds of information that could be conveyed on such a wire—

They had just sat down at their tinker’s bench and begun going through the little selection of furs that they had tethered to a chain there when a loud trill rang out on the pin that stood by the front door of the lab.

“My life is a concatenation of bebotherments,” they muttered, and went to open the heavy door to a slit big enough to peep through. “Who is it?”

“It is friend!” came the hopeful (if not entirely welcome) exclamation. A much more welcome gust of fresh air came in with it; the laboratory door usually stood open to let hallway breezes sweep out the baked atmosphere of the Crystal’s surrounds, but not today.

“Oh, not you at this uncouth hour.” The Scientist’s loupe-bracketed eye glared out at the Chamberlain, their hand already resting on the lever to shut the door again. “What d’ye want, SkekSil?”

“I bring present for friend Scientist!” The bright green gaze blinked ingenuously. “May Chamberlain come in?”

SkekTek knew they should dismiss the feeble factotum out of hand, but then again, the ex-Conqueror had just been silenced with a hunk of bone, and the word present traveled up the Scientist’s Skeksis spine with a tingling reverberation. Perhaps there was no harm in a brief visit.

“A present? What is it?”

“MmmMMMmmm, let friend in and find out!” A dull rattling noise from somewhere behind the Chamberlain’s back, and a teasing wink.

The Scientist deliberated for a moment more, then opened the door just enough to admit the Chamberlain’s robes and padded sleeves. “If you’re quick and quiet about it.”

“Quiet? What is need for—” SkekSil immediately dropped to a whisper at SkekTek’s frantic gesture as they followed them into the lab proper. “What is need for such stealth?”

“I…I have a Tungoosa culture growing,” the latter said. “They are exquisitely sensitive to the slightest perturbations, yes. Now, you said you had something for me?”

“Ah. Careful you don’t shake, then.” The Chamberlain handed the Scientist a small but daintily-bejeweled box, which they then opened up to reveal a compartment full of tiny crystals. Strangely, each crystal seemed to have a tatter of drying skin attached to and surrounding it, as though they had literally been plucked out of the living flesh of some creature.

“Flawless, are they not?” SkekSil smiled brightly in answer to SkekTek’s confused glance. “Stomata of juvenile Solobe.”

“‘Stomata?’”

“Yes! Long before crystals sprout out of back on adult animal, they first form in tiny holes in skin, making these deposits in shape of perfect hexagon.” The Chamberlain picked one up and tore the skin off of it, laying it carefully in the center of their palm where it could glitter in response to their rolling it back and forth. “You see?”

The Scientist flushed. They should have realized—but they had only ever concerned themselves with adult Solobes, whose fully grown back-crystal formations and bloodstreams could be connected up in series to form a sort of living battery. It had never occurred to them to wonder what the initial seeds of those crystals looked like. They took the crystal from SkekSil’s hand went to examine it with their loupe under their good workbench lamp.

“Remarkable,” they decreed at last. “Beautiful, even. But what good are they to science?”

SkekSil looked a bit taken aback, and shrugged. “Well. Chamberlain cannot say, to be sure. But Dousan call them ‘eyes of Thra.’ Perhaps are more correct than they know?”

“Hrm. I see what you mean,” said the Scientist thoughtfully, giving it another once-over. “The shape is perfect. The spectrum and clarity, superlative. They must have extraordinary optical properties. It might not be that difficult to attune them to the great Crystal’s own frequencies…and use those properties for…any number of scanning and surveillance applications.”

“Yess!” the Chamberlain eagerly agreed. “A most rare and precious resource. Is forbidden to slay young Solobe to harvest, but silly Gelfling law no obstacle to Chamberlain when making gifts for brilliant Scientist.”

“So it seems. You do bring me the most interesting acquisitions of any of our colleagues. Thank you, SkekSil. I shall see what can be done with these.” SkekTek lowered themselves onto their working stool once more. They gave their ear-muffs a regretful glance, but these were newer and a good deal more interesting. “Given the origin, of course, there would need to be a biological substrate, and some means of locomotion…one could see muski as vehicles, possibly windsifters or hollabats…”

“Yes, yes,” SkekSil encouraged, and then fell silent as the Scientist entered the sort of trance they often sank into at their apparatus or workbench. As SkekTek grew increasingly focused, the Chamberlain slowly began edging into the back half of the lab and its tangle of half-filled cages, half-finished equipment, and shelves of illegibly-labeled vials.

“Chamberlain will help tidy up laboratory now,” they said, moving aside and creeping under a long tarcloth smock that draped from a nearby candelabra.

“Of course.”

They carefully picked their way past a sort of tree made of metal strips. “Don’t mind friend…”

“I never do.”

It was the next obstacle that defeated them—their hitched-up robes successfully passed over a fence of knotted wire-ends to their left, but the basket on their right evidently contained a family of Pluff’m that woke up at the mild bump and started chattering a lively chorus of squeaks and squeals.

SkekTek was off their stool in a trice. “Just what do you think you’re up to?” they growled, weaving with the skill of long practice through their piles of flotsam and jetsam.

“Tidying, I said!” the other Skeksis squawked. “Laboratory is in frightful disorder! How can Scientist find anything in mess?”

“I find things just fine, you caviling clod.” The Scientist’s claws worked inside their heavy leather gloving as they came upon the Chamberlain, who obligingly cringed but seemed otherwise unmoved. “And I’ve no time to dally or entertain today. Come away. There’s nothing back here that concerns you.”

SkekSil paid no heed, wandering past SkekTek to examine this and that, their curiosity taking them ever closer to the cavernous tail end of the lab and the vague black void that hung there, stubbornly resistant even to the illumination of the Crystal’s fire-shaft. “What is this?”

“It’s a Skeksis-dressing device.”

“A what?”

“For the dressing of Skeksis without servants! What do you think?”

“But…Skeksis do have servants. Well, most Skeksis have. How does dress?”

“It’s a work in progress. Put it down.”

“Mmm. What is this?”

“Put that down as well! It’s a formula for bioluminescence.”

“…Glow-moss?”

“No! This is for bioluminescence without recourse to glow-moss.”

“But why, when glow-moss is…when glow-moss is?”

“Because it lasts longer!” SkekTek’s nerve at last broke, their voice suddenly cracking and wavering with the beginnings of panic. “You need to go now, SkekSil. Stop right there!”

They grabbed the Chamberlain’s arm. The latter jerked away and fell back into a pile of metal scrap, which collapsed into a hulking heap at both Skeksis’ feet.

“You fool!” hissed SkekTek, reaching down to haul SkekSil up by the ruched frame of their collar. “Didn’t I tell you we had to keep quiet!?”

“MMmmmmMMMmmmMMMMMMMM!”

The Scientist froze like prey, staring at the Chamberlain.

For a moment nothing happened, and then faintly, an echoing voice in the far distance:

“Chamberlain? Is that you?”

“Oh, no.” SkekTek staggered back in horror. “Oh no, do you see what your bumbling has done?”

“Strangely noisy Tungoosa culture,” remarked SkekSil, finding their feet and dusting off the front of their robes.

“Shut up,” advised the Scientist without much hope.

“It is you out there, isn’t it?” The voice was far less faint now. “Chamberlain! Chamberlain!”

“Yes, is friend Chamberlain!” Skeksil called back. “But where is Conqueror hiding…and why?”

“Down this way and I’ll tell you!”

The Chamberlain made their way toward the sound with far less caution now, gathering their skirts in one deft hand to steer around the debris. Passing by all the Scientist’s further marvels-in-progress without comment, they came upon the unmarked, low-slung passage that led into the back tunnels. A lantern stood there at the mouth of the opening. They picked it up and shook it, then felt their way onward in the dark, heedless of the dripping nitre overhead and the countless mysterious scuttling sounds. The Scientist had no choice but to follow after, pleading.

“Chamberlain! SkekSil! I am telling you, you need to leave. You don’t know what you’re blundering into, do you hear? Please listen to me!” SkekTek snatched up the garlanded sleeve trailing before them.

SkekSil turned back to gaze at them from under heavy lids. “Is it friend you worry for, or for yourself?”

“What? Why, for both of us, of course! It is in your interest to stay ignorant of that which you were deliberately not made privy to, and it is in my interest not…not to have been the one who changed that.”

“But Scientist did not change that. Not on purpose.”

“You blithering…the Emperor won’t care!”

“Ah, so is Emperor you fear. Emperor who arranged for Conqueror to be in extremely odd location. Now I understand. Can reassure, yes? Allow Chamberlain to offer…some comfort perhaps.”

SkekSil reclaimed their bit of sleeve from the Scientist, then did an extraordinary thing. They set the lantern down, took a short section of their sleeve in their teeth and talons, and tore a length of lace out of it—leaving a thready, gaping hole that SkekTek goggled at, even as they accepted the frayed fabric from SkekSil’s hand.

“Here,” said the Chamberlain. “Take this to other end of tunnels, close to where friend SkekVar patrols, and place beside sharp piece of rock. Everyone knows Chamberlain’s lace. If I am found out, tunnels will be searched for evidence, lace will be discovered, and it will seem that Chamberlain sneaked past General instead of Scientist. Chamberlain will not be caught…on this, would bet every stoma on Solobe. But if is, General will receive the blame. That will make Scientist happier, yes? And Chamberlain also, to tell truth. General is not the friend to SkekSil that SkekTek is.” They studied the bewildered Scientist with a measured gaze. “Do you understand?”

“I…I think so,” murmured SkekTek. “But I don’t—”

“Good.” SkekSil patted their still-outstretched hand.

“But I’m still coming with you for the moment,” the Scientist blurted. “I can plant your lace as you instruct later tonight.”

“Hhmmmm. Are you sure is good idea?” The Chamberlain tilted their head to a skeptical angle. “Is better for you if Conqueror does not see us together, I think.”

“You’re—you’re actually right, it is, but—apologies. I must be sure SkekGra is unmolested. It’s the only thing that could infuriate the Emperor more than your being discovered here.”

“Why, you will not take friend’s word?” The old courtier seemed genuinely dismayed at this.

“I…I am sorry, SkekSil. I cannot afford to. I do appreciate what you’re—doing for me, however. I was not expecting…”

“So few do expect,” said the Chamberlain, picking up the lantern again to forge ahead. “Am used to it.”