Three-Fold:
In the Valley of Ancients
Gendel was burning.
Tyr wasn't sure how it had started. Certainly, the Garthim carried no means of setting a blaze. Perhaps the fires had come from Gelfling hearths. Perhaps the Alchemist's potions had spilled and ignited.
Perhaps it was Skeksis magic.
He hadn't meant to flee, had rallied with the others to rush the Garthim on Landstriders. He had intended to die with them, as the world burned to ashes. The screaming… Three-Suns, it was like a nightmare. Would they take the old ones? Or did the Skekses only crave the essences of the young?
But then Katsha had turned, striding away from the advancing lines. He had hit her, had kicked her. Only when he hit the wet spot did he realise that she was bleeding, and she had almost thrown him off in her anguish. Maybe it was fear for the mount that had brought him across the world but, after that, he realised he didn't want to die at all.
He didn't care where she took him, and she didn't notice if he tried to steer her. All that mattered was that they were moving away from the Garthim, and the nightmare that smouldered behind them. He felt like a coward for running, but suicide seemed like a very poor way to remember the dead.
A Gelfling life is nothing in comparison to that of a Skeksis. Long ago, the Gelfling had built their homes in the open, where roads showed the ways between. All the roads did now was make it easy for the Garthim to travel. All the open offered now was a place for the Crystal Bats to spy on them.
Katsha tumbled.
If he'd been paying attention, he might have noticed her gait shifting from long leaps to a short, stunted shuffle. He might have heard the way she wheezed with each breath, or the grunting she made with each stride. The screams of the children were loud enough to drown out the world around him, now. They were all he heard.
Too late now.
He wasn't sure what hurt more, the pain in his side or the pain in his soul. For a moment, he couldn't tell that the latter was not a physical pain, thinking that one must surely be as mortal as the other. They were both hollow. They both throbbed. Only one refused to lessen.
The breath escaped him as he pushed away from the stone. It was round. That was good. If it wasn't, he might have been impaled. The blood glistened, mingling with the deep swirls carved into its surface, and weathered by the passing of hundreds of Trine. Another time he might have wondered where they had come from. Another time, he wouldn't have been bleeding.
Katsha groaned.
"Katsha?!" he wailed. It was getting dark. He could barely see her legs jutting out from behind the stones, the dark shadows of the crags drawing lines across the ravine. It was lucky they'd landed here; there was a lot further to fall.
He tried to get up. No, that wouldn't work. The path to her was riddled with jagged stones but if he tried, if he pulled himself along…
Blood marked the track behind him. More than once, he fell between the stones and thought he'd broken something else. His only saving grace was that he was small, even for a Gelfling. That, and his body was emaciated. Light work for tired arms.
She'd fallen between two stones that rose like mountain tops. Blood trickled through the darkness like a black river flowing downhill, forking between the stones until it disappeared into the darkness. She was breathing, but each breath came as either a sigh or a grunt. He knew what that meant. He'd heard it far too often over the years.
He reached out and touched her. She kicked, trying right herself and nearly knocking him down the ravine. It wasn't a healthy movement; it was the dying throes of a creature that had never known anything but the freedom of the stride. Now, damaged beyond help and pinned between the rocks, she was afraid. She was terrified.
He closed the final space between them, wrapping his arms around her middle and embracing her. As much as Idli the Seamstress, as much as Dei who had given his life so that the children could flee into the forest, she was his friend. She had borne him from the slaughter.
He loved her.
"Easy," he said, running his fingers through her wet bristles. "It's over now. We escaped."
She gave one, great sigh, and then she was still.
He was alone.
He did not want to leave her. He considered how strange it was that the one creature he missed most was not of his kin, but a creature. No, not only a creature; a landstrider. Greatest enemies of the Garthim. Greatest allies of the Gelfling.
The longer he lay there, the colder she became. A gust blew up out of the ravine, the chill wind turning the tears streaking from his eyes into tepid rivers. Perhaps he would have stayed, if his wounds were deeper and he felt the grip of death upon him. But although he was weak, he did not feel so damaged that he feared would die. Not enough that he would be with her again.
Only then did he look around, wondering where she had brought him in her frenzy. The path wound upwards, towards mountain peaks that rose like stony spires against the night. He realised that he lay too far across the arc of the Greater Sun. This was a place the Songtellers told the children to avoid, singing stories of wizards who stole the souls of Gelflings for their dark work.
But the Garthim were real. They swarmed away from the summit, moving as sure as the Triple-Sun in their mindless genocide. To go back down would be to embrace death. To climb, possibly also death, but with less certainty than the alternative. There were worse things than to die in the claw of a Garthim, too. One could stare empty-eyed into the light of the Dark Crystal; their thoughts, their feelings, their individuality drained away to give extended life to the Skekses.
Up, then. Up into whatever fate awaited him in the valley below the spires. There was a path, at least, though for what kind of creature remained to be seen. The Skekses also had paths, and roads for their monsters. There were dark things that moved amongst the canyons and crevasses of the Castle, and they too had their paths, after a fashion. But it had been a while now since he had seen the Crystal Bats, a while since he had heard the click and jitter of the Garthim.
So he climbed, his hands shaking and his breath rattling with every movement. Every so often he would stop and stare at the heavens, trying to gauge how much time had passed in the pathetic distances he covered.
And he bled. Perhaps if he'd stayed put, he might have lasted longer. Back there, he didn't feel the cold grip of mortality upon him. But every stone he climbed, every inch he dragged himself, brought with it a wet, hot trickle. He felt the strength in his limbs fail. Perhaps he was tired. Perhaps he was starving. Perhaps he'd meet his faithful mount sooner than he'd thought.
He clawed his way onto the path, past weeds that eked life from the gravel and rocks carved an ancient swirls. When he was up, he stared towards the summit and the valley that it hid, thinking, in his delirium, that he saw great shapes shuffling between the standing stones. It would not do to go up when his mind was tired beyond sanity, not if he was to face off against whatever ill outcome awaited him up there.
So he lay down and slept.
And a hand closed around him.
Swirls.
Why were there swirls above him? And runes? And ornaments that hung from string, chattering as the wind jingled them?
Surely there would be sky above him? That was what he remembered. Great stars, striding across the heavens on their perpetual march. Striding. Striding. Striding?
"Katsha!" he yelled, his head hitting the stone above him as he bolted upright. He could see the stars now, flashing across his vision as if he alone beheld the heavens. Memories trickled into his mind; the way the horns had blown as the Garthim skittered into the clearing, and the way the villagers had fled, only to run into the arms of another assault.
The valley.
He pulled his hand away from his head, frowning at the redness on his fingers. What about a valley? There were no valleys in the forest. There were rivers and pools, certainly, but the only valley he knew of was the one the Songtellers told the children to…
He froze.
There was something in the doorway.
Frantic, he searched for a way to escape. It looked like a cave, with furniture worn into the walls as if time itself has etched them, and ornaments that shook and swayed like chimes. There was no way out except past the creature, and the longer he looked at it, the more confused he became.
It just stared at him, leaning on its staff with such weight that he thought that, if he could snatch it, the creature might topple. It was bigger than he was, but there was nothing about it that he found fearsome. Deep set eyes, a long grey mane that flicked in the wind, and four great arms that clutched at the staff for support. It didn't seem wicked, or even dangerous. If there was any word he would have used to describe it, it was sad. Was this the wizard he'd been warned about? It certainly didn't look evil.
"H-hello?" he said.
It sighed, its whole body heaving with breath. Then, without a word, it turned and left the cave, leaving a very confused Gelfling behind.
Tyr had no idea what to make of it. It was big enough that it could overpower him, and yet it had shuffled away, dragging its great tail behind it and leaving him a clear exit. Maybe it assumed because he was wounded, that he couldn't escape.
That's when he realised: he wasn't in pain. His head was bleeding, sure, but that was nothing compared to the blow he'd taken falling down the ravine. Had he been asleep for that long? Long enough for his ribs to heal, and the wounds to close?
He lifted up his shirt; there was a deep, silver line where the stones had torn his side. A wound like that surely wouldn't heal on its own. Besides that, he was on a bed. He suspected that, for whatever reason, this creature had tended to him. Were those the actions of evil?
"Hey!" he cried, slipping off the bed and bolting from the cave. The hulking thing had barely moved more than an arm's span by the time he caught up to it.
Its head twisted around to stare at him, body pointing forwards as if it didn't intend to stop for long. He felt his throat tighten as he got close to it. He had never seen anything so big, except maybe a Garthim or a Skeksis, but they looked far more dangerous than whatever this was.
He slid to a halt before it. "Who are you?"
"Broken," it said, whispering the word as if it conveyed some terrible secret. "Shattered. Lost. Forgotten."
"Broken?" he replied. He had no idea what it meant. "And… where are we?"
It turned its body to face him, eyes weary, with heavy lids. He felt like he was forcing it to pay attention to him.
"I am here. You are there. We are lost."
"I don't understand."
It took its staff, drawing lines in the dust that formed a great swirl like the ones he'd seen in the ravine. It seemed to mean something important to the creature, but Tyr only saw lines.
"Three. Then one. Then three. Then two."
He frowned. Was it mad?
"Gelfling must remember," it went on.
"My name is Tyr."
It reached out with its great toes and wiped away the pattern. "Tyr must remember." Then, without waiting for a reply, it turned back towards the entrance.
"I am a warrior," he said. "I fought the Garthim at Tendar, then at Manth. Then again at Gendel."
He felt silly saying it. His arms were thin, and without his shirt he was certain he could have counted every one of his ribs. His stomach grumbled, angry at being ignored for so long.
It paused and looked back. "UrAmaj is a cook."
Cook? he thought. There's food?
"W-where is urAmaj?"
It resumed its shuffle. "He cooks."
Cooking – as with walking, or drawing, or speaking, or indeed anything these creatures did – took a long time.
It had been days since his last meal. By all rights, another few minutes, or even hours, should have meant very little. But sitting so close to that boiling pot was torturous, waiting with wet lips as urAmaj wound the spoon through the liquid as if the contents might leap up out of the cauldron if stirred too quickly.
He wondered, absently, if these wizards truly intended to feed him before stealing his soul. It seemed like such an odd thing to do, especially since he suspected that they had, in fact, tended to his wounds. Still, his feet were tired of waiting, and since it didn't seem that his movements were restricted he decided to busy them.
There were twelve here, that he knew of. The valley sloped down towards the jagged ravine, but this place was like a small niche in it. There were standing stones, and a hive of caves with wood paths winding up towards them. The boards were bound together with string. One long thread, twisting, braiding, and doubling back on itself until it formed an elaborate rope. Everything they made seemed to follow the same pattern, from their clothing to their ornaments.
He wandered into many of their caverns, the occupants staring at him with a kind of tired intrigue that baffled more than scared. He was certain that he could do nothing to surprise them, but their long and often nonsensical answers frequently surprised him. It seemed they each had a role to play in whatever they were doing here, but when asked about themselves they would only respond in riddles.
"What do you do?" he had asked the one drawing patterns in the sand.
"I remember, with dust," he had replied, exhaling as if exhausted by the effort of answering.
He learned their names one by one, but only ever from hearing them mentioned in conversation. They never introduced themselves, never referred to themselves except in metaphors or long speeches that ended up nowhere. There was urIm, whom he had met upon waking. He was a healer. Then there was urYod, preoccupied with arranging stones on long lines. He was a counter. UrTih's role was harder to guess, but from the way he ladled liquids between clay vessels, Tyr guessed him to be something similar to an alchemist.
But there was one whom they all spoke of, staring upwards with a kind of weary reverence. Nobody mentioned urSu's role, nor why he was the only one among them who hadn't yet wandered out to stare at the newcomer. Tyr could have gone up to his cave, but there was something about their lonely gazes that made him afraid to approach. He was sure urSu was their leader, though he could not guess at what pursuit he was leading them in.
Eventually, he got tired and sat in the kitchen. It was little more than an undercover area with a cauldron, and shelves full of ingredients Tyr didn't recognise. There were no chairs, since the bodies of these creatures were so different from his that a chair would have served no purpose. So he sat on the ground, legs crossed and stomach growling.
Every so often, urAmaj would stop stirring, take a spoon and taste his work. He never gave any indication of what he thought of it, never stopped to consider the flavours. He'd put the spoon down, take the long wooden shaft in the pot, and return to his culinary meditation. The only sign that anything had changed came when he sighed, slouched forwards and removed the stirrer altogether, leaning it against the stone wall. It wasn't good, or particularly tasty, but he was either satisfied or too tired to continue.
"To eat is to awaken," he said, lowering a wood bowl onto the ground before Tyr with his four great hands. "To awaken is to live."
Tyr failed to understand the metaphor, but he didn't particularly care. Philosophy was for people with sated appetites; the right of the starving warrior was to scarf down their food. He held the bowl up to his lips and guzzled the contents, drops of it falling on his shirt. It was nourishing, but he wasn't sure it was food. To a Gelfling, it seemed more like a thick tea, laden with herbs and congealed with something starchy.
When he was done, he sighed and then held the bowl high above his head. "More. Please."
"Food for the starving is like a rain storm in a drought," the cook said, taking the bowl and putting it on a shelf. "A little is salvation. Too much drowns."
Tyr's brow furrowed. "I haven't eaten in days, and your food is so thin that you may as well have given me water!"
He sighed, his shoulders slumping. "A little is salvation. Too much drowns."
He had a mind to tell this cook off. The cauldron was clearly full, and the others hadn't showed the slightest bit of interest in it. They were all too distracted by their nonsensical rituals, and he suspected the soup – or whatever it was – would be cold by the time they were ready. So he pointed his long, bony finger at the cook and opened his mouth to argue.
"Gelfling."
He froze. The sound had come from behind him, the voice so loud and booming that he felt as though the valley itself had resonated with the sound. But, which one of them had uttered it? Was it the weaver and his harp? The archer, who was using thread to restring his bow? Maybe it was urIm, calling him back for medicine?
"The master calls," the cook said, staring at him like he should know what that meant.
"Where is the master?"
They replied together. All of them. Nobody spoke, but they lifted their beak-like heads and stared at a point above the standing stones, as if each of them knew where the master would be by instinct.
"Pour out your river," he went on. "After, return and fill it again."
That sounded like an offer for more food, and that was all he needed to motivate him. Perhaps another time he wouldn't be quite so eager for another helping of whatever strange concoction he had brewed, but the last bowl had barely touched the sides and his stomach was already grumbling again.
With no idea of where to go, and having no idea what the master looked like, he decided to climb upwards until one of them caught his eye. Their gaze followed him as he went; never blinking, never glancing away, and somehow distracted from their duties in a way that had seemed impossible only a moment ago. The way they moved as a collective made him wonder if they could see him, even when there was something in the way. When he reached the top, their focus broke as one, returning to their arcane pursuits without so much as a word between them.
He didn't believe the old stories anymore, but there was something beyond unsettling about this place. Perhaps they wouldn't steal his soul, but he wondered if they could see into it. What kind of Gelfling did they see? Was he good or evil? Wanderer or lost? Did they even have such concepts? It was as if they were no creatures of Thra at all.
There was no way to tell the master from the others, since, although some had topknots or necklaces, they were all so similar. And yet, as he slowed to a halt before him, there was a difference. He held himself a little higher than the others, leaning heavily on a staff that was slightly more ornate. But there was a kind of pain about him, too, as if he were, at every moment, carrying the burden of some terrible decision.
He didn't speak to Tyr, and Tyr had no idea what to say to him. They stared at each other for a long moment, until the master, having apparently sated his curiosity or whatever lay beyond his searching gaze, turned and walked into his cave.
Tyr hesitated. Was he meant to go after him? Or had he only called him up to stare?
"Follow, Gelfling," he said, his voice amplified by the cave. It was, at both times, booming and somehow so frail.
I could escape, he thought to himself. Get out of the valley. The Garthim are probably moving on by now, and surely I could find something eat… His thoughts trailed off. He was weak enough that if he didn't find proper food in a day or so, he ran the very real risk of starvation. Besides that, he was unfamiliar with this valley. How was he supposed to forage? So he followed, stepping into the lair of the master.
It was not at all what he expected of an evil wizard. The Skekses were certainly evil, and they lived in that crooked castle, surrounded by slaves and their dark inventions. This was a place of thought. There were books, shapes tied in lines for counting, and patterns etched into the floor and walls as if they were part of some greater mystery. The master lowered himself to the floor, part sitting, part crouching, always leaning.
"Sit with me," he said, his voice now little more than a whisper.
Tyr was afraid, but there was something comforting about the old creature. Nothing he had seen so far made him fear for his wellbeing, and so he sat at his feet like a child waiting for a songtelling.
He sighed, breathing in deep heaves. "How came you by us?"
"It was an accident," Tyr blurted, thinking himself interrogated.
"Accidents are unexpected fates," he replied, nodding to himself as if he had just said something profound. "Wounded, you were, when urNol found you. Had you not been on the path. Had he not been waylaid."
Tyr didn't need that to be translated.
"Healed you, we did, though it took some time. The Gelfling's body is weak. Fled you far?"
"Fled?" he said. "How did you know that I'd fled?"
"One who arrives in a wind, and like leather on bones, seldom meditates on their path," the master went on. "It has been some time since the Gelflings visited the urRu. How fare you?"
Tyr looked at the floor, the horrors of Gendel blossoming in his mind. "Fare? The war is over, my people are routed… the children are lost. We break the Garthim, but the Skekses just make more. And more. And more. Now, there are so few of us…"
Tears collided with the floor, forming little pools in the dust that rippled and then stilled. How could he explain the horrors? The constant need for flight? The way that even the elders refused to stay in one place for long? Gendel had been hailed as a safe harbour for his kin, built upon the edges of everything they had ever known. Now it was gone.
They were being eradicated.
The master sighed. "Sorrow is the ghost of joy. Darkness before the light, always."
"What light?!" Tyr growled. "I am a warrior! I once had a number for the Garthim that I had destroyed, but now I have lost count. But the dead, the enslaved… they are beyond measure."
"Warriors wage war," he went on. "Remember, I, when Gelflings knew no wicked ways. Remember, I, when the fire of their kin was in the strung harp, or the bitter song."
"The Skekses forced us to change, to save ourselves."
"How can the Gelflings be saved if they are Gelflings no more?"
He hesitated. He wanted to say that they would always be Gelfling, but Tyr had heard stories of the old days. They sailed, they strode, they farmed the land and traded for stories. Now look at them. Sixteen had flung themselves at the Garthim in Gendel, only to die. Even now, in his atrophy, Tyr only wanted for one thing: the chance to kill Skekses, in vengeance of the lost. What kind of mindset was that for a Gelfling?
"A knife cannot defeat a wound," he continued. "War cannot defeat a Skeksis. The Skekses can only be healed."
"Healed?" he asked. "How do you heal a monster away?"
The old thing sighed, swaying his head so low that his mane brushed the floor. For some reason, Tyr felt sorry for arguing with him. It seemed impossible to anger these creatures, but at the same time it was as if everything he did disappointed them. They were like long-suffering elders.
He took a copper bowl from beside the sleep stand and positioned it between them. "Seek you an answer?"
Tyr frowned. Of course he wanted an answer, but he didn't believe it was here. He didn't believe it was anywhere, but what could it hurt to listen? Maybe he'd find some of the peace these things seemed to radiate.
So he nodded.
"Gelfling ways are the simple ways," he said, waving his knobby fingers over the bowl. Images leapt out of the water like glass sculptures; a dancing child, a feast by a fire, and then a bone flute. "Yet a great wound oft inflames." The flute disappeared, replaced by armoured landstriders, mounted by warriors in long coats, and then a troop of hunters on the shell of a Garthim. "Skekses vow to destroy the Gelflings, and yet the Gelflings destroy themselves as well."
"But what else is there?!" Tyr hissed. "Every day more of us die, or they carry us back to the castle to take our essence. What can we do?"
"You must remember."
There it was again. The healer had spoken that exact phrase to him when he'd awoken, but he had no idea what it meant.
"Remember what?"
He closed his eyes, breathing deeply as if he were drawing up some deep energy to fuel the copper bowl. The image melted, but a moment later a new one appeared; a mountain, with a strange, bulbous building atop it.
"Aughra."
There was a name he knew. The songstories said she had once been the guide of his people, only to retreat from their eyes in the greatest hour of their need. He didn't know if she existed, but if she did, he didn't care.
"Aughra?" he asked. "What could Aughra have for us? Did she stop the Garthim? Did she hide us from the Skekses?" He stared deep into the bowl, as if some hidden detail might guide his thoughts. "All Aughra cares for are the stars, if she still lives at all."
The master pulled away his hand, the image returning to clear water. There was a deep weariness etched into his face, as if the act of summoning the images alone had aged him ten years.
"Know you why the Skekses war with your kin?" he asked.
Tyr opened his mouth to answer. Of course he knew why. He had fought them all his life, learned to hurl a sling before he knew how to write. To not know why would have been ridiculous.
And yet, as he cast his mind back, he realised he didn't know. It was a fact of life; he questioned it no more than he questioned why the Triple-Sun rose and set. The Skekses were his enemies. That was the natural order.
But it could not have always been so.
"I… don't know," he said.
The old one nodded. "Three reasons, have every fate. Gelflings rush to meet that fate, but they are only a part of it. Two more points, there are; the gentle, and the cruel."
He shook his head. "I don't understand."
Again, that sigh. That heavy disappointment.
"I cannot teach, for it is not our time. One day I will leave this valley, but that has not yet come. Seek you Aughra, for she knows all the secrets. Remember yourself, Gelfling. Remember your journey." He got up, pushing up on his staff for support. "I am weary. I must rest."
"Wait!" Tyr said. "How am I supposed to find Aughra when I don't know where she is? Nobody's seen her for generations, if ever she existed at all."
He paused, half-way to the sleeping frame. "Follow the Greater Sun for a day to the home of Aughra."
"The Greater Sun?" he asked. "What kind of direction is that?"
He climbed onto the frame, shuffling forward and placing his great head on the edge for support. His body was so different from Tyr's that a bed would have done him no good at all.
"Stay a while," he said, his shoulders heaving with tired breath. "Food for the weak. Strength, you must have. Strength for the journey ahead."