The Myst Reader (29 page)

“Atrus?”

He turned, looking up at her. “Yes, Catherine?”

There was a slight flicker of annoyance in her face at the mispronumciation of her name, but she had given up trying to correct him. “What are you doing?”

At the count of sixty he relaxed his hand, letting the fingers unfold. As he did, a small bubble of water, its surface fluid and feflective like a drop of mercury, floated up out of his palm.

Atrus looked to her. She had a slightly quizzical look on her face.

“Water shouldn’t do that when it gets warm.”

“No? Then what should water do?”

Atrus shrugged. “Well, it shouldn’t
float
and it shouldn’t give me a
stomache ache.”

She laughed, then quickly grew serious again.

Atrus stared at her, surprised. It was the first time she had laughed since he had met her, and the change it made to her face was quite remarkable.

“I’ll get you some of the powder.”

“Powder?”

Catherine gave a single nod. For a moment she simply stared, as if trying to fathom something about him, then, without even the slightest movement, she seemed to shrug and look away.

Her eyes were still on him, but she was no longer there. Not looking out at him, anyway. It was as if, briefly, she had gone into a trance.

Atrus reached out and picked up the brass cooking pot he had been examining earlier, pleased by its symmetry, by the way the double pans—top and bottom linked by four strong brass spindles—like all the cooking implements in Age Five, were designed to cope with water which, when heated, rose into the air. Everything here had special “catchment lids” and spouts with tiny valves which did not open unless you tilted the thing a certain way.

He looked to Catherine again, and saw she was still distracted.

“What are you thinking?”

She turned to face him. “I’ll tell you what I’m thinking. You have those pale eyes and wear those strange eye instruments. What have you to do with Lord Gehn?”

“I am Atrus, his son.”

There was a brief look of triumph in her eyes. Then, as if she suddenly saw what it meant, she took a step backward. “So what do you want?”

He paused as he considered the question—sweeping away the cloud of Gehn and all he’d witnessed over the last few years.

What do I want?

“I want to go home,” he said softly.

“Home?”

“To the cleft.”

“The cleft?”

“It’s where I was born,” he said. “Where I grew up. It was just a crack, a hole in the earth surrounded by desert,” he added, thinking of what Gehn had said of it, “yet it was like…well, like
paradise
.”

“And your father lived there with you?”

Atrus shook his head, looking away has he answered her. “No. I didn’t know my father. Not until I was fourteen. I grew up with my grandmother, Anna. She fed me, clothed me, taught me. She gave me everything.”

Catherine stared at him intensely.

“And then your father came?”

Atrus nodded. Standing, he brushed himself down, then looked past her down the grassy slope. The village was in the crater behind him, just the other side of the slope—literally
in
the crater, the mud and daub huts fixed into the crater wall using great wooden stakes, like the rooms in the cleft had been.

He smiled, remembering. The first time he had seen it had almost been his last. Feigning sleep, he had let the elder of the two brothers, Carel, leave the hut, then had slipped out of bed, intending to go outside and look around. It had only been his natural caution that had stopped him falling into the bay fifty feet below.

It also explained why the sounds changed in the evening. He had thought that the sea came in to a beach close by the hut; he had not understood that it actually came in
beneath
the hut, let in through a tunnel inlet to the left of the cliffside village.

He turned, looking about him. To the left, no more than half a mile distant, lay the forest, its strange, golden-leaved trees dominating the view there, their massive branches flattened, as if under enormous pressure from the sky.

Directly south, on a raised promontory, was the copse in which the temple stood, while over to the right, clearly visible from wherever one stood on the island, was the tree.

Catherine stepped up beside him, her eyes on him all the while, almost as if she knew him. Her tone was different now…Steady.

“I had a dream of you.”

He turned to face her, recalling the first time she had said it to him, in the hut. “A dream?”

“Yes,” she said, slowly walking down the slope away from him, her green dress flowing about her, her bare feet seeming almost to float upon the grass. “I dreamed of a dead man floating in the pool, and now you’re here!”

 

§

 

“Well?” Gehn asked, sitting down in front of the young woman. “Has anything…
unusual
been happening?”

Katran looked up from the copybook and met her Master’s gaze, her own eyes innocent. “Nothing unusual.”

“Good,” he said, turning away, sucking deeply on his pipe. “Shall we pick up where we left off?”

The lesson went well, but then they always did. Katran was a good student—his best—and he never had to tell her anything more than once. Some of the other Guild members were good at copying, but none of them, with the exception of Katran, had begun to grasp the true meaning of the symbols they were copying. She, by contrast, had understood at once. And now, after only two years’ tuition, she was almost fluent.
Almost
, he thought, thinking of all the key words he had kept from her; certain garo-hertee words, without which it would be impossible to write. But soon he would begin to give her those keys. One by one. If she was good.

He had formulated his plan long before he had imprisoned Atrus. Furious with his son, but determined to fulfill his dream of a great D’ni resurgence, he had found himself wondering if it were not possible to go about things in a different manner. He still needed Atrus—there was no doubt of that, for such talent should not be squandered—yet it seemed impossible to work with him.

But did it have to be Atrus at his side? Wouldn’t another do just as well? Someone not quite as talented, perhaps—yet certainly more docile than his son? Someone he could control much easier than Atrus?

At once he had thought of Katran.

Gehn smiled and turned to face her, setting his pipe down on the desk. “There’s something I have to tell you, Katran. Something important.”

“Master?” She stared back at him, intent yet obedient, her eyes the eyes of the perfect acolyte, the perfect servant.

“I want you to prepare yourself. There is to be a wedding, you understand? Thirty days from now. I will give instructions to the other Build members as to the ceremony, but you must make special preparations.”

“You are to take a bride, Master?”

“Yes, Katran,” he said, looking at her fondly now. “You are to be my wife. You will sit at my right hand and rule a thousand worlds with me.”

“But Master,” she said, bowing her head, “I am not deserving of this honor.”

Gehn laughed softly, pleased by her humility. “Maybe not. But I have chosen you, Katran, and you will prepare yourself. Thirty days, you have. Thirty days…and then the ceremony will take place.”

 

§

 

Atrus had been looking for Catherine all over the main island, surprised that on one knew where she had gone. Then, suddenly, she was there again, standing among the trees at the edge of the forest.

He almost called to her, almost shouted out her name, yet something about the way she was standing there—distracted—made him stop and then double back into the wood, coming out behind her, one of the massive spongy boles hiding him from her sight.

In the mottled shade of the massive branches, he slender figure seemed unreal—a thing of earth and grass, the green of her cloak, the raven black of her hair blending with the surrounding shadows.

Even from where he was standing, Atrus could see that something had disturbed her. Her eyes, which were normally so bright and inquisitive, were now deep in thought, while her hands were clasped tightly in front of her.

What is it?
he asked silently, feeling a natural sympathy for her.

Slowly, his feet carefully finding their way over the thick leaf cover between the trees, he moved toward her, until he stood less than a dozen feet away.

“Catherine?”

She did not turn, merely looked up.

“Catherine…are you all right?”

She nodded.

“Shall I walk you back to the village?”

“All right,” she said quietly, turning and walking beside him as they moved out from beneath the great overhand of branches into the sloping meadow.

 

§

 

Atrus found his linking book where he’d left it in the cliff face and linked back.

The chamber was as he’d left it, the Age Five book open on the desk, the ink pots and pen undisturbed.

Returning to the desk, Atrus settled in the chair, then drew the book toward him and began to read it, more carefully this time, seeing how each phrase, each small description, contributed to the totality of what he’d seen.

Now that he had been there, he understood just how good it really was. The Fifth Age of Gehn was quite remarkable. Yet there were clear flaws in the way the book had been put together, particularly in the structure of the writing. Elegant passages lay side by side on the page, each uniquely beautiful, yet disturbingly unrelated to each other. It was the trademark of his father’s style. The boldness of Gehn’s eclecticism—his drawing from such disparate sources—was indeed astonishing, close to brilliant.

Had Gehn built his Ages from structural principles, they might have been different, for it was possible that in so doing he might have reconciled the gaps. As it was, his method was piecemeal and the flaws that resulted quickly compounded into a complex network of interrelated faults—faults that could not be tackled by simple solutions.

Atrus turned the final page, nodding to himself as he read the last few entries—seeing there his father’s crude attempts to make small changes to the Age Five world, to stabilize its inherent faults.

“All wrong,” he said quietly, wishing he could just score out those final entries, but, remembering what had happened on the Thirty-seventh Age, fearing to do so. No, if he was to make changes, he would do so only with great care and after long and patient deliberation. One could not meddle with an Age. At least, not with an Age as complex as Gehn’s Fifth Age.

Riven
, he thought.
She called it Riven
. And as he looked up, it was to find Catherine standing there, looking down at him, a large blue book clutched to her chest.

19

~~~~~~~~~~

 

Atrus stood there, staring at Catherine, stunned by her sudden appearance.

She quickly looked around her, then set the book down on the table. “I followed you,” she said, before he could speak. “Saw where you hid your Linking Book.”

He glanced at the big, blue-covered book where it lay on the table between them, then pointed to it.

“I got it,” she said, “from your father.”

“Got it? How? He doesn’t allow books out of his library.”

She looked directly at him. “I stole it from his study, while he was asleep.”

He stared at her openmouthed. “But why?”

Things were moving far too fast for him. He stood, putting his hands out, as if to fend her off. “Slow down. What were you doing in my father’s study?”

“He takes us there.”

“Who?”

“The Guild. He has us copy things from books. He says it saves him time.”

“The Guild?” He laughed. In his mind he saw again how mad his father was, trying to re-create the D’ni Guilds.

She stepped around the desk and, reaching out, pulled down the edge of the choker she was wearing. Beneath it, burned into the flesh, was his father’s sign.

He met her eyes. “How long ago was this?”

She made a face, as if she hated to recall it. “He placed the mark on me four years ago. I was the fourth to have it. Since then he’s increased our number to ten. We are an elite. The other islanders have to do as we say. Your father insists on it.”

“So why bring me the book?” he asked, laying his hand on the flecked blue cover.

“You can write. I want you to fix our world.”

Atrus stared back at her a moment, then went around the desk and sat, opening the book. It was blank. She had stolen a blank book. He looked up at her. “Why should I do that?”

“Because you must.”

“
Must?
Who says I must?”

“Don’t you understand? It’s falling apart. I’m asking for your help.”

Atrus sat back. “Go on.”

“It’s been happening for a while now. There have been small tremors in the earth, and cracks, and schools of dead fish have been floating into the bay. And then the tree…”

He waited, his stomach muscles tensed, remembering what had happened on the Thirty-seventh Age. There, too, it had begun with little things. Instability: there was a fatal instability in all his father’s worlds.

“The great tree is dying,” she said.

“Why didn’t you say this to me earlier?”

“Because I wasn’t sure of you at first.”

“Why?” he laughed.

“Because of your power. The power that your father has. The power to create and destroy worlds.”

“You think I have that power?”

“Haven’t you?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “I can write.”

“Then help us, Atrus.”

He let out a long, sighing breath. What if this were another trap? After all, how likely was it that she had managed to steal books from his father’s study? Then again, he remembered the voice he’d heard that time, when he’d been standing at the bottom of the steps that led up to Gehn’s study. He should have known, even then, that Gehn was bringing people back from his Ages.