The Myst Reader (76 page)

There was a sharp intake of breath. Beheaded! It was unheard of. But Lord R’hira seemed as hard as granite as he looked about him.

“Such is the decision of the Five Lords. Will anybody speak for the accused?”

It was a traditional request at such moments, when a prisoner had been sentenced, and though this sentence was without recent parallel, it was clear that none among the Five expected anyone to speak.

Anna stood.

“Forgive me, Lord R’hira. I know I am here as a guest of the Council and as such have no right to voice my feelings; even so, I
would
like to speak in favor of the prisoner.”

R’hira turned, looking to his fellows. There was a moment of eye contact among the ancients and then R’hira turned back.

“If anyone deserves the chance to speak, it is you, Ti’ana, though why you should wish to utter a word in favor of this miscreant is quite beyond my imagining. Step forward.”

At that moment Veovis screamed, “That barbaric animal is going to speak on my behalf?! Never! I won’t allow it!”

“Silence,” R’hira shouted with the pounding of his hand.

Veovis continued in his rage. “She’s a traitor, not one of us! She has breached the sanctity of the D’ni blood! Don’t you see!?”

“Guards, remove him!” R’hira shouted. “Now!”

They dragged the screaming man from the room. Calm returned to the chamber.

Anna stepped out. She bowed to each of the Five in turn, then turned about, facing the ranks of guildsmen.

“My Lords…Guildsmen. I do not wish to play down the severity of what your once-fellow Veovis has been found guilty of. Nor have I reason to feel anything but hatred for the man who tried to kill my husband and, but for a poorly aimed shot, would undoubtedly have killed me. Yet as an outsider, a newcomer to the great empire of D’ni, let me make an observation.

“This great cavern is an island of reason, of rational, considered behavior. You D’ni have developed codes of behavior, ways of dealing with situations, that are the result of thousands of years of experience. The most important of those codes, and the wisest of all, perhaps, is that which deals with those who transgress and step outside the codes. Until now, the D’ni have only rarely taken a life for a life. Until now, you have chosen the path of segregation, of cutting out the bad from your midst and isolating it, as a surgeon might isolate a virus. That, I would argue, is the path of sanity, whereas this…”

Anna paused, as if she could read the objection that was in most of their minds.

“I know what you are thinking. He escaped once. He might well escape again. And the so-called Philosopher, A’Gaeris, is still at large. Such factors must, I agree, come into your thinking. But there is one important factor that has not been considered, and that is precisely why Veovis behaved as he did.”

Anna took something from her pocket and held it up. It was a notebook of some kind.

“I have here a journal—A’Gaeris’s private journal—which I took from his room in the Age from which they launched their attacks on D’ni. Had I not been ill these past few weeks, I might have read it sooner—and then could have laid this before the Council as evidence in Lord Veovis’s favor, for its contents are most revelatory. As it is, I offer it to you now as a plea for clemency.”

Lord R’hira, who had been listening in silence until this moment, now spoke up.

“Forgive me, Ti’ana, but what might that villain A’Gaeris possibly have to say that would excuse the prisoner’s behavior?”

Anna turned, facing him. “It is all here, my Lord, every last part of it, fully documented in A’Gaeris’s own hand. How he planned things; how he forged papers; how he worked through Guildsman Suahrnir to ensnare Lord Veovis into his perverse schemes; even how he manipulated my husband into going to Master Jadaris with what he ‘knew.’

“Whatever he has done since, that first great wrong cannot be denied. Veovis was an innocent man. Think, then, of the bitterness he must have felt in being stripped of all title and incarcerated upon that prison rock. Oh, it is no excuse for what he subsequently did, yet I offer it as explanation.”

Lord R’hira took the book from Anna and read a page or two, blinking from time to time. Then he looked up.

“We must have time to study this, Ti’ana.”

“Of course,” she said, giving him a grateful bow. “But as you study it, my Lord, consider the balance of good and ill that exists in all men, and try to imagine in what circumstances that balance could be tilted either way—toward great good, or toward the kind of behavior Veovis displayed toward the society that spurned him.”

R’hira gave a tiny nod, his eyes smiling at Anna, then he turned, his eyes quickly gauging the response of his fellow Lords. There were nods.

“Very well,” he said, turning back. “The sentence of this Council is set in abeyance until this matter can be fully considered. Until then the prisoner will be placed under constant guard.”

As the meeting broke up and guildsmen began to drift out of the chamber and into the nearby rooms, R’hira came over to Anna.

“I am grateful for your intercession, Ti’ana, yet one thing bothers me. You may be right. Veovis may once have been innocent. Yet that is in the past. If we do not end his life for what he subsequently did, then we have but a single course before us, and that is to incarcerate him for the rest of his natural life. Such a course we tried before…and failed with. What if we fail a second time?”

“Then make sure you do not, Lord R’hira. Make a new and special Age for him, then, once he is safe within that place, burn the book so that no one can help him escape. Vigilance, not vengeance should be your byword.”

R’hira bowed his head, impressed by her words. “Well spoken, Ti’ana.”

She gave a little bow.

“Oh, and Ti’ana…do not worry. Whatever we decide, Veovis will
never
be allowed his freedom.”

 

 

§

 

 

A’Gaeris sat at his desk, studying the notebook. The wooden door of the hut was closed, the blinds drawn against the sunlight. From outside came the busy sound of sawing and hammering.

He closed the book then nodded to himself. Standing, he yawned and stretched. He was wearing a simple rust-red gown that fitted tightly at the waist. A pair of D’ni glasses rested atop his freshly shaven head. Walking over to the door, he pulled them down over his eyes, then stepped outside.

Just below the hillock on which the hut stood, in a clearing between the trees, his slaves were hard at work. Already the basic frame of the room had been constructed. Now they were building the seats and shelves and, at the center of it all, the podium.

He walked down, stopping at the edge of the clearing to take out the notebook once again, turning to the page he had been looking at a moment earlier. For a moment he compared Suahrnir’s sketches to the room that was being constructed in the clearing, then he slipped the book away once more. There was no doubting it, Suahrnir had had a good eye. No detail had evaded him. Everything he needed was here. Every measurement.

He began to laugh; a deep, hearty laughter that rolled from his corpulent frame, making the natives glance up at him fearfully before returning to their work.

“But we shall change all that,” he said, as his laughter subsided. “No rules. No guidelines. Nothing but what I want.”

The thought of it sent a tiny shiver up his spine.

“Nothing…but what
I
want.”

 

 

§

 

 

The preparations were meticulous.

Four of the guild’s finest Writers were assigned the task of making the new Age; each of them allocated one specific strand of the whole. Working to Lord R’hira’s brief, in copy books that had no power to link, they patiently produced their words, passing on their finished creations to the Grand Master of their Guild, Ja’ir, who, in coordination with Grand Master Jadaris of the Maintainers, compared the texts and made his subtle corrections, ensuring that the resultant Age was consistent and thus stable.

In all a hundred days passed in this fashion. But then it was finally done and, after consultation with Lord R’hira, a blank Book—a Kortee-nea—was taken from the Guild’s Book Room and placed on a desk in a cell at the center of the Hall of the Maintainers. There it was guarded day and night, its pages never out of sight for a single instant as, one by one, the four Writers returned to copy their work into the Book.

By this means the privacy of the Book was maintained, for none of the four had any knowledge of what the other three had written. Only Jadaris and Ja’ir and R’hira, three of the most trustworthy men in the entire empire, knew that.

Meanwhile, in a cell just down the passageway, they placed Veovis, shackled hand and foot, two members of the City Guard with him every moment of the day and night, linked to him by chains of nara, waking and sleeping.

And so the days passed, until the Prison Book was done.

 

 

§

 

 

At the seventeenth hour on the day of judgment the great bronze bell rang out from the tower above the Hall of the Guild of Maintainers. Far below, in the lowest level of that great labyrinthine building, in the deep shadows of the Room of Punishment, the Great Lords and Grand Masters of D’ni looked on as Veovis, his head unbowed, the cords that had bound his hands and feet cut, stepped over to the podium and faced the open Book.

As the bell rang, Veovis looked about him, no flicker of fear in those pale, intelligent eyes, only, at this final moment, a sense of great dignity. Then, as the final stroke rang out, he placed his hand upon the glowing panel and linked.

As he vanished, a sighing breath seemed to pass through the watching guildsmen. Heads turned, looking to Lord R’hira.

“It is done,” he said quietly. “Master Jadaris…take the Book away and burn it.”

Yet even as he spoke the words there was a faint disturbance of the air before the Book, the faintest blur. For the briefest instant, R’hira thought he glimpsed a figure in a rust-red prison gown, his head shaved bare.

R’hira looked about him, surprised. Was he the only one to have seen it? And what precisely had he seen? An afterimage?

Or was this some flaw in the Book itself? After all, it was rare for a Book to be made by four separate writers, and it was possible that some minor errors had crept into the text.

He frowned, then set the matter from his mind. It was of no importance. All that mattered was that they burned the Book. Then D’ni would be safe.

Master Jadaris stepped up to the podium and, closing the Book, lifted it ceremonially in both hands, then carried it from the room.

They followed, along a passageway and through into the furnace room. Here, since time immemorial, they had burned faulty Books, destroying their failed experiments and shoddy work.

But this was different. This was a world that functioned perfectly.

And so we break our own rules
, R’hira thought. And even if it were for a good cause, he still felt the breach as a kind of failure.

This is not the D’ni way. We do not destroy what is healthy
.

Yet Ti’ana was right. It was either this or put Veovis to death. And there was no doubt about it now: Veovis had been an innocent man when first they found him guilty and incarcerated him.

R’hira watched as the great oven door was opened and the Book slid in. There was a transparent panel in the door. Through it he could see the gray-blue cover of the Prison Book clearly. R’hira bent slightly, looking on as the oven fired and the flames began to lick the cover of the Book.

 

 

§

 

 

The months passed swiftly. Things quickly returned to normal. For young Gehn these were strangely happy times—strange, because he had never dared hope to thrive away from his mother’s side.

In his eighth year, on the last day of his first term at the GuildCollege, his father and mother visited him. It was an Open Day, and most of the students’ parents were to be there, but for Gehn it was a very special occasion, for he had been chosen to represent the College and read out a passage from the great history of his guild that spoke of the long tradition of the Guild of Books.

The days of illness, of bullying in the night, and tearful homesickness were long behind Gehn. He had become a strong child, surprisingly tall for his age, and confident in all he did, if never outspoken. Yet he was strangely distant with his mother, as if some part of him had never forgiven her for sending him away. It was thus that he greeted her on this special day, with a respectful distance that might have been expected from any other student meeting the great Ti’ana, but not, perhaps, from her only son.

He bowed formally. “Mother. I am glad you came.”

Anna smiled and briefly held him, but she, too, sensed how things were between them. As she stepped back, Aitrus embraced Gehn.

“Well done, Gehn!” he said, grinning down at his son. “I hear nothing but good from your Guild Masters! I am very proud of you boy. We both are!”

Gehn glanced at his mother. He could see that she was indeed proud of him, yet strangely that mattered very little beside the praise of his father. After all, his father was D’ni—of the blood—and a Council member, too. To have
his
praise was something. Yet he did not say this openly.

“I try to do my best,” he said, lowering his head with the modesty that was drilled into all students.

“Guild Master Rijahna says you have a promising future, Gehn,” Anna said, her smiled more guarded than his father’s. “Indeed, he has talked to your father of private tuition.”

This was the first Gehn had heard of this. He looked to his father wide-eyed.