-- J.J. Llewellyn
Oxford, 1981

The spoke to me often of the nature of the Crystal: the spiral climbing through its heart, the planes within it; its great size; and of how it could reside outside space, yet in many worlds at once and worshipped in them all. Yet only in our World do the Suns shine upon it to cause it to give out light, so that in all other worlds the Crystal glows and sings less powerfully than here. The urSkeks came here to use the power of the Great Crystal; they came during one Great Conjunction to use the next, nine hundred and ninety-nine trine and one trine later, to achive their work.

In the heart of the castle they had made a trap for light, a net of crystal and golden mirrors. They caught the light that had passed through the Great Crystal, the light that fell to the Lake of Fire deep in the World. They placed carved mirrors in the beam of light, they shone it into the Chamber of Life. For nine hundred and ninety-nine trine and one trine they made ready, from the moment they arrived until the moment of the next Great Conjunction. The Three Suns moved over the Great Crystal, the Eye looked down, and the shining mirrors of the urSkeks sent a path of trapped light through the chamber. Then, one by one in long procession, they walked into its brightness.

They entered the bright light each as a single being; but as they left the path of light, they had become two: to the left, the Skeksis; to the right, the urRu. The Great Division of the urSkeks had been achieved.

On that day, the Harmony of the World shattered. The Skeksis woke from a shock of division, and they woke full of violence and anger. They stormed into the Crystal Chamber, staggering with the strain of their new bodies, grasping each other in order to stand yet hating each other's touch. There was a loud argument, they struck blows, one hit the Crystal. A shard broke from the Crystal and flew up the shaft out onto the mountainside. And the light left the Crystal.

From the Dark Crystal there came to more songs.
The Suns shone as before, but dimmer;
The trees grew as before, but twisted.
Strange beasts move in the woods.

The Skeksis held the castle; the urRu fled when the Harmony was brocken. They were filled with sadness, and made their way to the Valley of the Stones. There they could shelter and meditate concealed. They chose that twisting valley, home of mists, for that it resembled the world they had left to come to us; water flowed from abundant springs, caves filled the rocky slopes. They made it fit for their use. I helped, I chose stones and guided the stones to allow themselves to be shaped. There the urRu made stone circles of power, the framework of the valley, everlasting protection.

Within that protection I learned what the great design of the urSkeks had been, through woven knots, through chants of prayer. They had hoped that by submitting themselves to the light of the Crystal they would purify their divided selves, that everything in them that was less than perfect would be burned away. They had not understood the balance of their souls; they had thought there could be light without darkness, stillness without motion. Instead of perfection they had achieved division, dark from light, force from virtue, Skeksis from urRu.

I learned in dreams the urSkeks had been outcasts in their formeer world, where no evil was tolerated even when mixed with good. Their stars showed me their full name, the Fallen urSkeks, and I think they were driven out, they were hated so deeply; but to them I always spoke of their departure as if they had left freely. But the Skeksis felt no grief, triumph rather, for in the castle they reigned in glory. The darkness of the Crystal seemed to them an eternal refreshment. And in their first days they still shone with a fire that could decieve the eye, dazzling like flame on sharp-edged swords, full of daring wit and bold experiment, but with ice at their hearts and a thirst for blood and darkness. Yet their speech was still like music, their ways enchantment. They knew best of all arts the skill of flattery.

The Skeksis saw it too; and with bold cruelty resolved to foil the prophecy. Rage brought them cunning. Their first thought was to confuse the search for the true Shard; and for many years they sought to make a crystal of their own. They had made the great Haakskeekah Stone, which outdid the darkened Crystal in impenetrable blackness; and they made fragments of artificial crystal without the higher virtues of the great original but not easily distinguished in appearance. (Had they quarreled less among themselves, they might have made a crystal of greater power; had they been less evil, they could have done more harm.) Of their artificial crystal they made five copies and scattered them on the slopes of the mountain beneath the castle, near where the Shard had fallen, so that the Gelfling would not know which to place in the wound in the Crystal. The Gelfling found all six and brought them to me, hoping one was the true Shard; but not effort of mine could make it reveal itself. And it was better to live with the Crystal dark but nearly whole than to place the creation of the evil Skeksis in a position of such power.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But the shining Crystal poured forth all of the songs of all the trine it had lain silent. Color and warmth and light returned; innumerable birds sang in the sparkling air. The rocks danced in their hearts for joy, and that joy will not fade. from the right foliage of the forests glowed the fruits of the true Crystal, making each branch a tree of stars. And the Garthim that the Skeksis had dreamed vanished as a dream, and the light and life that they had taken from the captives were restored, even to Kira. The heavens were fair, the Suns glorious, the earth fruitful, the air like a cloud of gold. I walked the forests that sang of freedom and the Crystal healed; and all shone as on the First Day.

I was born from the need of rocks and trees to have an eye to see the World; I have endured. The changes I have seen, and their pattern and their inner meaning, I have told to the blind trees and the dark rocks, for the shapes of the World are re-formed, the light rekindled. Of the race of Aughra I was alone, the first and last. This was my song.

So begins the lyrical Book of Aughra, the talk of the world of the Dark Crystal -- a world that just recently has come to the light as the result of the dedicated work of Professor J.J. Llewellyn.

For some time it has been common knowledge that a chance discovery of an eroded rock carving at an undisclosed site has been followed by a remarkable reproduction of texts, objects, and diagrams associated with the original find. J.J. Llewellyn, a professor of archaeology at Oxford University, has devoted the last several years to translation the Aughrian manuscript. (Aughra was a wizened wise woman who chronicles the history of the world of which she was both observer and participant.) The Book of Aughra appears in its entirety, in printed form for the first time, here in The World of the Dark Crystal.

Juxtaposed with Aughra's poetic recitation are reproductions of the art of artifacts of the civilization of Aughra's lost world, together with Professor Llewellyn's scholarly explication of them. What Professor Llewellyn has achieved is the re-creation of a land unplaced in time or space, inhabited by a breed of creature unfamiliar to us, yet brought to life through the painstaking work of this brilliant academician.

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