The Myst Reader (33 page)

“You think I didn’t know what you had planned?”

He laughed. “Am I that predictable?”

She laid her fingers gently on his cheek. “No. But I know you feel you have to do what is right, even if it means sacrificing yourself.”

He laid his hand on hers. “I
will
be back.”

“Yet there’s a risk?”

He nodded.

“And you want me to stay here, no matter what?”

Again he nodded.

“And the Linking Book, back to D’ni?”

“Destroy it, the moment I’m gone.”

“Then if Gehn links here he will be trapped with me, and with a supply of blank books.”

Atrus looked down. It was the one flaw in his plan. To be certain of trapping Gehn he ought to destroy his own Linking Book from Riven to D’ni the instant he returned to Age Five, but that would also trap him there, and he wanted to get back. No, not wanted,
needed
. To be with her.

“I’ll be careful,” he said. “I know where he links to. I’ll take his Linking Book from its hiding place then watch for him to arrive. The moment he’s on Riven, I’ll burn his Linking Book. Then I only have to destroy my own.”

Her eyes were smiling now. Leaning forward she kissed the tip of his nose. “Okay. No more about your plans. What about you?”

“I know almost nothing about you. Your grandmother, Anna, for instance. Do you remember what she was like?”

She was like you
, he wanted to say, but the reminder of Anna made him look down.

Taking the almost empty knapsack from his back he removed his journal and handed it to her.

She held the small, gray book delicately, almost as if it were a living thing.

“It’s my journal. I…I want you to read it. While I’m gone. It might…well, it might help you to understand me.”

“In case you don’t come back?”

He hesitated, then nodded.

And suddenly, he understood what it was he had wanted from Catherine. Companionship. Someone to understand him. Someone with whom to share all his adventures and experiments. Someone to be there by his side, as Anna had once been, only not as teacher or substitute mother, but as a full partner.

He reached out, laying his fingers gently on her cheek.

For one tiny moment that was all: the two of them, sitting there in the sunlight beside the water, Catherine with her eyes closed, Atrus’s journal in her lap, her face tilted slightly to meet the gentle touch of his fingers while Atrus stared at her in wonder, as if at an Age he would never visit, only glimpse through the descriptive image on the page.

And then she turned, looking to him again, her green eyes searching his. “You’d better go now, Atrus.”

The idea of leaving was suddenly like contemplating death itself. All he wanted in life was right here on Myst island.

“Catherine…”

“I’ll be all right. Now go.”

 

§

 

As he sat in his chair back on D’ni, Atrus stared sightlessly at the cover of the Age Five book, his heart heavy, resigned now to his fate.

There was only one way—one way alone—that he could be certain of seeing Catherine again, and that was to kill his father. To link to Gehn’s study and destroy the man. But that was not possible, for it was not in his nature to harm another, even for the best of reasons.

No good can come of such ill
, he thought, knowing that Anna, had she been there, would have agreed with him.
If I killed my father, the shadow of my guilt would blight my days with Catherine.

He knew it for a certainty. And so his fate was set. He had to take the risk of losing her forever.

If I cannot have her, I shall at least have something that keeps her memory alive…

He sighed, wishing now that he had asked Anna about his mother. It was only now that he realized that he didn’t even know what she looked like.

She looked like you, Atrus,
a voice answered in his head, so clear that he looked up, surprised.

“Yes,” he said, smiling suddenly.

Atrus drew the Age Five book toward him and opened it to the final page. Then, reaching across, he took the pen from the stand and began to copy the phrases into the Age five book.

 

§

 

Atrus linked. In an instant he was gone, the air where he’d been sitting strangely translucent, like the surface of a clear slow-moving stream. Then, abruptly, another figure appeared from the nothingness.

It was Catherine.

Setting the Linking Book down on the desk beside her, she closed the Myst book and slipped it into her knapsack. As she did so, a second figure shimmered out of the air, taking on a solid form. Stepping forward, it stood behind her, watching as Catherine pulled the Age Five book toward her and flipped through until she was on the final page. Then, as Catherine took Atrus’s pen from its stand, the figure pointed and encouraged Catherine as she dipped the pen into the ink pot and began to write.

 

§

 

The cave behind the temple was dark, the smell of incense strong, wafting down from the great censors hanging from the temple ceiling. Atrus paused a moment, squinting into the deep shadow, listening, then hurried across.

Crouching, he took his grandfather’s tinderbox from his pocket and lit it, moving it slowly along the bottom edge of the cave wall until he found the mark stone. Tracing up from there he found the hole where Gehn stored his Linking Book.

Standing on tiptoe, he reached into the narrow orifice, his fingers searching the cold rock. For a moment he thought he had it wrong, but then his fingers brushed the edge of the slender box. He pulled it out and, in the light from the tinderbox, opened it. The Linking Book was there.

Removing it, he returned the box into the hole and slipped the book into his backpack, then, clicking off the tinderbox, he turned and headed back through the temple.

He ducked under the low lintel and out, climbing the steps quickly. Yet as he went to step around the screen, he heard voices from the front of the chamber and stopped, crouching low, keeping himself hidden behind the shadowed shape of the great chair that was thrown onto the golden screen.

“He will be here soon,” one of them said, his voice that of an old man. “You will bring the villagers out onto the slope below the temple. They can make their offerings there, after the ceremony.”

“It will be done,” another, a little younger, answered. Then, in a slightly lower, more conspiratorial tone, “Did you see how she smiled at the Lord Gehn at the rehearsal? There’s no faking that, is there? Now there’s a match that will be consummated in heaven!”

Atrus felt himself go cold. Rehearsal? Catherine had said nothing of rehearsals. The words troubled him.

No
, he told himself. But then why would they say it if it wasn’t true? After all, they did not know he was there behind the screen.

He swallowed, suddenly uncertain, then slowly crept around the screen, peeping over the arm of the chair.

The two men were standing with their backs to him, their cloaks, copies of D’ni Guild cloaks, covered in the Guild’s secret symbols. They were graybeards, and as he watched, they bowed to each other and made their way out again.

He hurried across, seeing what they had been here to deliver. On a marble stand in the very center of the chamber was placed a shallow bowl made of special D’ni stone, and on that bowl were two beautiful golden bracelets, one markedly thicker than the other.

The mere sight of them made his stomach turn.

Did you see how she smiled at the Lord Gehn? Did you see how she smiled?

He felt like picking up the bowl and throwing it across the room, but knew he must deny the urge. Gehn must suspect nothing. He must think his bride was coming. He must believe…

Atrus shook his head, pushing aside the doubts, the endless flood of questions, that threatened to drown him.

Catherine is on Myst island. I took her there myself. She’s safe. Or will be once I’ve trapped Gehn here on Riven.

He turned and hurried to the front of the chamber, peering around one of the pillars. The two Guild members were nowhere to be seen. Slowly, cautiously, he made his way down the steps and out across the open space in front of the temple, slipping in among the trees, then making his way along the path toward the beach.

Before he came to the cliff he stopped, searching quickly among the trees, gathering up any loose twigs and branches he could find. Satisfied he had enough for his purpose, he hurried on, making his way down the steep cliffside path.

As he came out beneath the overhang of rock, he paused, staring out across the rocky beach. Two of the strange, toothlike rocks had been broken—sheared off, it seemed. For a moment he watched the tide come in, seeing how the incoming waves seemed to undulate like a windblown sheet, tiny globules of water, heated by the late afternoon sun, tumbling across the beach, hundreds of tiny bubbles drifting above the slow, incoming tide before they merged with it again.

He would be sad to leave this world. Sad not to have come to know it better than he did.

Turning back, he went over to the cliff face. Putting down the stack of wood, he busied himself collecting a number of large rocks, placing them in a tight circle, then, gathering up the wood again, he laid out twigs and branches inside the circle of rocks to form a rudimentary fire pit.

Kneeling, Atrus cupped the tinder between his hands and struck it, then lit the kindling wood beneath the main stack, watching it catch, then blowing on it to encourage the flames, seeing them begin to lick at the Linking Book.

Atrus leaned back. There! Now for
his
Linking Book! All he would have to do would be to hold his Linking Book over the fire as he linked—letting the book fall into the flames and be destroyed, trapping Gehn here forever.

Going across, he hauled himself up the pocked face of the cliff until he was facing the recess where his book was hidden. It was some way back, so he had to haul himself up over the lip and squeeze inside, wriggling in until he could reach it.

23

~~~~~~~~~~

 

When Atrus came to he was standing in the open air near the temple, his arms pulled up tightly behind his back, his wrists bound, his body secured at neck and waist and ankles to a thick pole that had been embedded in the earth. The blood pounded in his head, and when he tried to open his eyes he pain was intense.

Slowly he let his eyes grow accustomed to the failing light, then, moving his head as much as the binding allowed, he looked about him.

Close by, on a small table—so close that, had his hands been unbound, he could have reached them—were the two Linking Books.

He groaned, remembering, then felt a touch on his shoulder, felt his father’s breath upon his cheek.

“So you are back with us, Atrus,” Gehn said quietly, speaking to him alone. “I thought for a while that I had lost you. It seems I do not know my own strength sometimes.”

Atrus hung his head, grimacing at the thought of Catherine. She was there, on Myst, waiting. And now he had failed her.

“Catherine, ah clever Catherine,” Gehn spoke as if he heard Atrus’s thoughts. “You really didn’t think she’d miss her own wedding?”

With that, Gehn turned to face a figure who stood just beyond him in the shadows of the surrounding trees. Atrus went limp as the figure stepped forward into the sunlight.

It was her!

Atrus closed his eyes and groaned, remembering the old men’s words, recalling the sight of the two golden bracelets laying there in the shallow red-black bowl.

She is marrying my father…

The thought was unbearable. He could almost hear their laughter. Yet when he opened his eyes again, it was to see Gehn, alone, standing before the Age five islanders, his hands raised, his appearance that of a great king come among his subjects.

“People of the Fifth Age,” Gehn began, his voice powerful, commanding. “It had come to my notice that some of you…” Gehn pointed to a little group Atrus had not noticed, or who had possibly not been there until that moment; who knelt there abjectly, just below Gehn, their hands bound: the two brothers, Carel and Erlar among them. “Some of you, as I say, have taken it upon yourselves to help my enemies. To nurse this imposter”—he turned, this time indicating Atrus—“who dares to call himself my son!”

Gehn turned back, raising his hands again. “Such behavior cannot be tolerated. Such defiance must be
punished
.”

There was a great murmur of fear from the watching islanders.

“Yes,” Gehn went on. “You were warned, but you did not listen. And so, in punishment, there will be great tides…”

“No…” Atrus said, finding his voice.

“And the sun will turn black…”

“No…”

“And the ground…the very earth will shake and the great tree fall!”

“No!” Atrus cried out a third time, this time loud enough for some among the crowd to hear him. “No! He’s wrong! I’ve fixed it. All of those things…all of the weaknesses in the book. I’ve put them right, I’ve…”

Atrus stopped, seeing the hideous grin of triumph on his father’s face as he stepped up to him.

“Well done
, Atrus…I
knew
I could count on you.” Gehn’s smile was suddenly hard and sneering. “I shall be most interested to read the changes you have so graciously crafted for me.” Then, stepping away, he clicked his fingers, calling to the nearest of the Guild Members. “Untie him!”

Turning to face the crowd again, Gehn raised his hands. “People of the Fifth Age. You are most fortunate. I have asked my servant here to do my bidding and he has done so. Your world is safe now. Yet if you transgress again, if I find that any among you have sought to help my enemies, then the full weight of my wrath shall fall on you. I shall destroy your world, just as I created it!” He sniffed deeply. “But let us not dwell upon that now. Now is a time to look forward, and to celebrate, for tonight, at sunset, I shall take a daughter of this Age to be my bride and rule the thousand worlds with me!”