Chapter 1

The light was every bit as bright as they remembered.

When they emerged from the heart of the Crystal - their Crystal - the light filled all their senses for a moment, as it had the first time they made such a journey. Then it began to clear, and they perceived more.

The familiar sparkle of the suns on the many towers and spires of OmPhaben, the capital city of their world.

The hum of energy from the workings of the city, and from the thoughts and voices of their people.

The brush of wind on their now-corporeal forms, carrying hints of dampness and salt from the nearby ocean.

They emerged under a morning sky, eight who had once been twice-nine, and shared the unspoken thought they had dreamed of for a thousand trine: we're home.

They did not remain alone for long. The guards who always watched the Crystal, floating in spirals around the dais where it rested, took notice of their arrival immediately, as did the handful of pilgrims who had been permitted to visit today. The eight returning urSkeks found themselves quickly surrounded by more and more of their brethren, their coronas flaring with wonder, joy, curiosity … and apprehension.

"You have returned!"

"Why were you gone so long?"

"What have you seen?"

"Are you well?"

"Where are the others?"

Before the eight could give answers (not that they were eager to, not yet), they found themselves encircled by Enforcers, who wordlessly escorted them to a holding chamber in one of the smaller Towers of Administration. They would remain there, they were informed, until the Council of Nine convened.

"It's to be expected," UngIm reassured his comrades, as they rested from their journey and tried not to be afraid. "They told us we could return if we mastered our darker natures, so they must judge if we have met their terms."

"And if they do not allow us back?" SilSol countered. "What then?"

"That," replied ZokZah, "we can only decide when it comes. Let us not be afraid until we hear the Council's ruling."

But the Ritualist's words were easier said than followed. As night fell and the eight of them continued to wait, they remained close and silent, taking comfort from each other's presence but still not daring to speak of what they had left behind them, or what fate might lie ahead of them now.

Only ShodYod remained apart from the others. The holding chamber had a small, triangular window, formed by a thinning of the crystalline wall, and he stared through it at the darkened sky. Even here, in the heart of the city, he could make out the familiar, beloved stars and constellations he had not seen for two thousand trine.

… Yet something was wrong.

Despite their hopes, the eight were still surprised by the Council's ruling.

"You will be allowed to live among us again," proclaimed SharSet, the most senior of the Grand Nine. Her low, rich voice carried from her spot on the peak of the Council's huge pyramid-shaped gathering platform, echoing down into the dock where the eight waited. "And you may each resume your old titles. But, understand, your return is conditional. We will observe your hearts and actions for a time, and if you show that you have truly conquered your darkness, only then will you be allowed to stay permanently."

"You are no longer the Fallen," RomRah spoke from beside her, "but your crimes have not been forgotten. It remains to be seen how your time in exile has truly changed you."

"And there is one more condition."

UngIm and his comrades looked up at the final speaker, who hovered at one of the lowest corners of the platform. He was younger than the other Council members, young by urSkek standards in general, and his voice reflected his nature: loud, sharp, and eager to be listened to.

UngIm fought down the flare of anger that rose in his heart. When he and SoSu's other disciples had been brought before the Council over two thousand trine ago, KalPol, who had only been an Inquisitor at the time, had advocated for permanent dissolution as their punishment: a thing that had not been inflicted on any urSkek in a hundred Ages. The Council had rebuked him for his harshness, yes, but UngIm had not forgotten that they did give his words consideration first.

And he did not miss that KalPol now held SoSu's old spot on the Council.

"The name of SoSu the Heretic is to be stricken from our world," KalPol went on. "You may mourn him among yourselves, and the others you have lost, but you are never to speak their names to others. Even in death, their corruption may spread, and we cannot risk that."

The Council now spoke as one. "What do you say?"

The other seven turned to UngIm, watching. His expression never changed, but he clenched his jaw, even as he dimmed his corona in the urSkek sign of submission. "We accept the Council's ruling, and we are grateful."

Line

"I didn't think it would be that easy," AyukAmaj spoke later, in the shared residence the Council had granted them in the heart of OmPhaben. Its location might have seemed like a kindness, but UngIm knew the true reason: it would keep them close to the Towers of Administration, where they could be easily watched. "I thought surely they would demand further penance from us!"

"You don't think this is penance enough?" Even though he spoke with his mind, OkAc's voice sounded choked, as if he was holding back tears. "They want us to forget our friends! I promised LachSen I would inscribe an epitaph for her in the Halls of the Dead, and now they forbid it! How can they be so cruel?"

From his place near one of the residence's tall windows, SilSol looked out at the Towers. "It is strange. The Council has tried to suppress … unpleasantness before, but to be so open about it is unlike them." A soft mmmmm escaped the Cantor's throat. "One might wonder if there is something else. Something they wish to banish from their own minds by forgetting SoSu."

UngIm, who had been trying not to cringe at that too-familiar sound, suddenly understood what had felt so wrong at the Council meeting. It wasn't only the presence of KalPol, though that had been worrying enough. "You're right. It's not like them to give our return so little attention, or reach a decision so quickly. Something has them distracted."

Out on the balcony, ShodYod listened to their conversation, but said nothing.

His eyes were still on the stars.

As the Council had promised, the eight once-Fallen urSkeks returned to their old roles. UngIm found it easy to fall back into his duties as the Physician; even during the thousand trine he had spent with his soul divided, half of him had always been a healer. He did his best to hold back his notoriously short temper, and pretend that he did not relish the challenge of fighting particularly nasty wounds and diseases.

For the most part, he succeeded.

During the second unum of their return, SilSol left the shared residence to visit the city where he had been a neophyte, on the far side of the ocean. Several Enforcers accompanied him (quietly, never drawing attention to themselves), and UngIm and the others watched him depart.

As the Cantor beamed away on the light of the Crystal, UngIm reflected that, while the light might be as bright as he remembered, he did not remember it being so cold.

Line

It was NaNol who put what they were all feeling into words.

"Being back doesn't feel like I thought it would." The Botanist hooked a pale silver-green herb from its hydroponic pot with the remaining finger on his left hand. "I miss the things I used to grow on Thra. When we planned to return the first time, I hoped I might bring some of them with me. Now, it feels like they never existed. Never mattered."

"Perhaps that's for the best," UngIm replied. "We, all of us, did terrible things to Thra and its people. And we suffered terrible things there, too."

Some of us more than others, he thought, looking at his friend's missing eye and maimed hand. "...If you wanted, I could try to heal those."

NaNol's aura flickered gray, the urSkek equivalent of shaking his head. "It wouldn't feel right. SkekNa earned these wounds, and I shouldn't forget them."

It was the first time any of them had mentioned one of their divided names.

Line

EktUtt was the next to bring it up.

"It isn't fair!" The Designer held up a synthsilk ribbon, patterned in the red and violet of a sunrise. When he had left the residence that morning, eager to show off his latest creation, he had been wearing it tied in a bow around a branch of his thalli, the upright, twining formations urSkeks grew on their heads. "I worked for days capturing these colors! It deserves to be appreciated, but the Enforcers made me remove it!"

UngIm could see why. The bright colors stood out like fire against the cool whites and grays of OmPhaben and its residents. Despite what lesser beings might think, all urSkeks did not look the same, but making oneself look unique was ... not encouraged.

"We really shouldn't draw attention to ourselves," the Physician replied. "We're supposed to show the Council we can reintegrate -"

"Maybe I don't want to reintegrate!" EktUtt snapped. "Maybe I don't want to keep making the same old patterns over and over! I miss the Ornamentalist's workshop, and the Weaver's loom! I know, I know, I did awful things there, but I made wonderful things too -"

"I remember." To UngIm's relief, the Culinarian stepped in to help calm his friend. "I miss what I had on Thra too. I wish I could share some of my recipes, but I don't have the ingredients."

"No one else here has ever tasted them," Ungim tried to remind him. "Would they know the difference?"

AyukAmaj's aura dimmed. "I would know."

By the end of their first trine back, UngIm had admitted to himself that the others were right. And at the end of their second trine, he went in search of SilSol.

He found the Cantor on a quiet beach, tending to a bohrtog. SilSol hummed gently as he smoothed and petted the huge blue creature's beak, and UngIm shook his head at the sound as he approached.

"I still hate your whimper."

A faint smile touched SilSol's mouth. "You didn't need to come find me. I was planning to return soon anyway."

"Why?" UngIm asked, though he could guess the reason well enough.

SilSol proved him right. "It's lonely here. The Enforcers aren't watching me closely anymore, but I still can't risk talking about … everything."

"Then why did you leave in the first place?"

The Cantor's aura dimmed. "I thought it would be easier to forget, if I came back here. If I wasn't around the rest of you."

"But it wasn't?"

"No. If anything, carrying the memories alone made them worse." For a moment, a shadow darkened his corona, and then faded. "Then again, I have more memories than the rest of you that I'd like to forget."

"Are you so sure about that?" UngIm lowered his corporeal body over a sea-smoothed rock; not quite sitting, but resting himself. "The Garthim Master did things -"

"Did skekUng let his own self-pity spoil our chance to cleanse ourselves of our darkness?" SilSol interrupted. "Did skekUng first suggest using Thra's Crystal to drain the life from its people?" He met the Physician's eyes. "Did skekUng take VarMa from us?"

UngIm froze. He … his divided self, that is, had always suspected skekSil of being responsible for skekVar's death, but had never been able to prove it. And after they had been made whole again, he could never bring himself to ask.

Now, he knew.

"...GraGoh…"

The darkness flickered again in SilSol's aura. "GraGoh's halves died in honorable combat, fighting to protect Thra's people. He did not die believing you were his friend."

For that, UngIm had no answer.

"The Council wanted us to master our darker selves," SilSol went on. "That is supposed to be the urSkek way. But how can we? The darkness that was in skekSil … that wanting to control, to manipulate … I still remember it, still feel it, every day. Burning it away did not work. Forgetting it does not work. What else can I do?"

UngIm had no answer for that, either.

For the first few trine of their return, ShodYod continued to say little. The other seven did not find this strange; the Arithmetician had always been the quietest of them, even before their division, and they knew he had his own wounds and dark memories to nurse.

He kept watching the stars, but as the days went on, he began to do more. He traveled from city to city, spending time in observatories across the planet. On occasions when he did talk, he consulted with OkAc for access to the star-charts in OmPhaben's library. He buried himself in records on history, astronomy, and space exploration.

And, on the eve of their seventh trine home, he showed the others his own star-chart.

"I knew something was wrong our first night." The Arithmetician's voice was soft, but steady, his long fingers weaving gracefully through the miniature stars and nebulae in the hologram. "The constellation of the Compass … it's faint, but it was always my favorite, ever since I was a neophyte. I looked for it our first night, but I couldn't see the star that formed the smaller point."

"Yes, you told me," OkAc quipped. "And I ask again, are you sure it wasn't just the city lights?"

"I thought it might be," replied ShodYod, with a graying of his aura. "That's why I started charting its course. I'm sure of it now: the star is gone."

"Gone?" ZokZah tilted his head in puzzlement. He might not be an astronomer, but being able to predict and follow the paths of the heavens were part of his duties as Ritualist. "How can a star be gone? When stars die, they die in brightness, and their light carries on for many ages after."

"I don't know how it happened," ShodYod insisted. "But I'm sure of it. Xaphan-Prime was a thriving star, perhaps halfway through its life cycle, and now it's vanished. And so have Xaphan-Secundus and Xaphan-Tertiary."

SilSol's corona grew pale. "... Xaphan was part of a three-star system?"

A star system with a Crystal, he did not add. A star system like ours.

"Yes." ShodYod adjusted the hologram with two fingers, zooming in on the place where the Xaphan system had once been. "And it's not the only one."

By the end of the night, the Arithmetician's findings had been made clear.

For some time - he still had not calculated how long - stars had been disappearing from their galaxy. Whatever had erased them appeared to be spreading out from the galaxy's center in a rough spiral. On the rare occasions it strayed from the path ShodYod had mapped, it was always to seek out the nearest three-star system.

As if it were hunting worlds with Crystals.

"If it continues on the path I've predicted," ShodYod told the others, "it will be less than a trine before it reaches our world. And after that, when it spirals around to the other side of the galaxy …"

"Thra," SilSol whispered. "Thra will be next."

"We still have to worry about ourselves first!" UngIm faced the others. "Do you remember what SoSu asked of us, before we were banished? What he wanted us to help him do?"

OkAc was the first to answer. "... He wanted us to do something to the Crystal. He spoke of reshaping it into a new structure, one that would preserve our world. I thought he was speaking in metaphor..."

"So did I. But now I can't help thinking he knew something we did not. Something that the rest of the Council might know, and are keeping secret."

SilSol made a derisive sound. "Not likely they would tell us."

"Indeed. And we cannot consult others without breaking their law not to speak of SoSu." UngIm turned to the Arithmetician again. "Did he share anything with you?"

"No." ShodYod's tone was faintly bitter. "He may have shared more of his plan with TekTih, but not with me."

UngIm leaned in closer over the table where the hologram projector rested. Watching him, the others couldn't help being reminded of when he had once been Spy-Master, then General, and had looked over maps to plan the Skeksis' wars.

"My friends, we cannot ignore this. If ShodYod is right, our world, and many others, are in grave danger. Either our Council does not know of it, or they know and have done nothing, and either way we cannot approach them." Especially not with KalPol among them. "The only one who can give us answers is SoSu."

"But SoSu is dead." ZokZah sounded frustrated that he had to remind the Physician of this. "He died on Thra, with this soul rent asunder."

UngIm faced the Ritualist. "Then we have to go back."

To Be Continued…