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"When the Skeksis began to take Gelfling as well as Pod People as slaves, the Gelfling were dismayed. For once they took thought for the future. They sought to know if the Crystal might be healed, if the Skeksis rule must continue. They lit the fires of prophecy, they took counsel from the flames. Seven circles of seven Gelfling lay on the hilltops all night, their faces to the stars. Their dreams were made stone; the Wall of Destiny still stands. There the Gelfling were shown the Quest for the lost Shard, and they were shown the healing of the Crystal by the hand of a Gelfling, replacing the Shard by the light of a Great Conjunction. And there too they were shown the ruin of the Gelfling, the fall of their houses. And the Wall stood for all to see." "The Skeksis saw it too; and with bold cruelty resolved to foil the prophecy. Rage brought them cunning. Their first thought was to confuse the search for the true Shard; and for many years they sought to make a crystal of their own. They had made the great Haakskeekah Stone, which outdid the Crystal in impenetratable 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 amoung themselves, they might have made a crystal of grater power; had they been less evil, they could have done more harm.) Of their artificial crystal they made five copies and scattered them on the slopes of the mountain beneath the castle, near where the Shard had fallen, so the Gelfling would not know which to place in the wound in the Crystal. The Gelfling found all six and brought them to me, hoping one was the true Shard; but no effort of mine could make it reveal itself. And it was better to live with the Crystal dark but nearly whole than to place the creation of the evil Skeksis in a position of such power."
Text from The World of the Dark Crystal by Brian Froud,
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