The Myst Reader (107 page)

THEY SLEPT THAT NIGHT IN D’NI. IN THE MORNING
they rose early, while the lake was still dark, and gathered in the space before the makeshift library.

A month previously, Atrus had had them carry down six of the big stone pedestals from one of the common libraries. These were now spaced out along the harbor front. A lamp had been set up above each, to illuminate the tilted lecterns on which lay the open Books, their descriptive panels glowing softly.

At a word from Atrus, the six teams of four lined up before their respective pedestals.

Atrus looked down the line of tense, nervous faces. Then, without a further word, he placed his hand against the panel and linked.

In less than a minute it was done. They stepped up, one by one, to the lecterns and disappeared, like ghosts vanishing into the air, leaving the harbor front empty, even as the lake began to glow with the faint light of morning.

MARRIM STOOD AT THE CENTER OF THE DESERTED
village and looked about her, her vision darkened. It was six hours now and they had found no sign of life. The plague, it seemed, had taken them all.

The first sign of it had been in the cave. There, in a heap upon the floor beside the Linking Book, they had found two skeletons, their bones intertwined, their cloaks, rotted by damp, tearing like spiders’ webs beneath her touch.

Veovis
, she thought, and in her mind she saw Veovis and A’Gaeris, masked, their own hands gloved to protect them from contagion, placing the palms of the dead men onto the Book.

It was horrifying, yet it had been as nothing beside the other sights she’d witnessed. She had gone inside one hut only to find a whole family—mother, father, and their two young children—wiped out, their bones stretched out on the rotting mattress, their fleshless fingers linked in death.

That small, tender sign of affection in the midst of this horror had unhinged her momentarily. Until then she had been able to harden herself against it, to remind herself that this was what Atrus had warned them might await them. But
that
…

The disappointment seared her. She had not realized just how much of herself she had gambled on this venture.

“Lerral! Allef!” she called, stirring herself.

She watched the two young men step from the big meetinghouse at the far end of the central space, and saw at once the darkness in their eyes.

“Come,” she said, walking over to them. “Let’s go. There’s nothing here for us.”

SIX WORLDS AND NOT A SINGLE SURVIVOR
.

Atrus had wanted to go back—to pack fresh provisions and have another, more thorough search of those two Ages where they had found nothing at all, not even bones—but Catherine had persuaded him against it.

“Never mind,” Atrus concluded, when all else had been said. “We’ll try again. We are certain to be more successful next time round. This time, I’ll just check one.”

“Yes. We need something to raise their spirits, Atrus. They’re feeling very despondent.”

“This one, I think.” Atrus showed her the cover. It was the Book of Aurack. “It looks as likely as any other. I’ll write our link back tonight. Tell Marrim and Carrad they can come with us. Oh, and Meer and Gavas, too. We’ll take six through this time. It’ll speed the search.”

Catherine leaned across, kissing him on his bearded cheek. “Good. The news will cheer them.”

“IS EVERYONE READY?”

Atrus looked from face to face, his eyes questioning theirs. Then, satisfied with what he’d seen, he smiled and placed his hand against the glowing panel.

Aurack was hot. Stepping out from the linking cave, Marrim raised her hand to her brow instinctively, shielding her eyes against the sun’s fierce glare. Atrus was up ahead of her, standing on the edge of the escarpment, his special D’ni lenses pulled down over his eyes, their surfaces opaqued.

“Empty,” he said as Catherine stepped up beside him.

“It only
looks
empty,” she answered him. “Why, you could hide a hundred villages in that.”

He glanced at her, conscious of the others listening. “Do you think that’s what they’ve done?”

“It’s possible. After what happened to D’ni, it would make sense to take precautions.”

“Maybe,” he conceded, “but how are we going to find them?”

Marrim, coming up onto the ledge, saw at once what Atrus meant. What lay below them, covering the landscape from horizon to horizon, was no wood as she had experienced it on Averone, but a forest, a thousand square miles or more of densely packed trees; an ocean of green in which you could hide forever and never be found.

“Why don’t we light a fire?” she said.

Atrus looked at her. “If all else fails, we shall. But if they’re here, I suspect they’ll not have gone too far from the linking cave. They would want to know if anyone came through into their Age.”

“You mean to make a physical search of that?” Catherine asked, gesturing toward the great sprawl of the forest.

“Only part of it. Once we’ve made our search for the Linking Book, we’ll split up. Each take a small section of it.”

“What if someone gets lost?”

But Atrus had thought of that. He’d packed special dye-markers in every knapsack. They were to use these to mark the trees they passed.

“To prevent confusion, I’ve given each of you a different color.” He turned, looking at the three young men. “Carrad and Meer, you’ll take part in the first sweep. Gavas, you can be our anchor man here on the escarpment. If anything goes wrong, send up a fire flare.”

Gavas nodded, hiding his disappointment well.

“Good. Then we’ll concentrate our search on this side first. There’s a river down there—you can see it winking between the trees—so that might be a good site for an encampment. We can make our way down, then split up on the riverbank.”

Atrus looked about him. “First, however, let’s spread out and search this area. The Linking Book, if there is one, ought to be somewhere nearby.”

THE RIVER WAS A BROAD BAND OF GREEN
, glimpsed between the straight dark boles of the trees off to the left. Out there, on the river’s bank, it was swelteringly hot, swarms of exotic insects feasting on anything or anyone who strayed near, but here, beneath the branches of the trees, it was much cooler, the insect life less voracious.

Marrim paused to spray the bole of a tree, then turned, looking about her. The forest was alive with sounds, with the buzz of insects, the endless cries of birds, and the rustle of unseen creatures as they hastened away from her approach.

Even though it was much cooler here, it was still humid, and Marrim stopped frequently to mop her brow, her clothes sticking to her uncomfortably. It never got this hot on Averone, even during the dry season, and that, as much as the alien life-forms, was beginning to get to her. It was an hour since they had split up at the river, and she had seen nothing at all to indicate that there was any kind of intelligent life in this Age. But each time she thought that, she reminded herself of what it had looked like from the escarpment—how huge an area it was they were searching—and she felt herself spurred on again.

She had grown used to the way the ground beneath her gave with each step, a thousand years of leaf fall forming a thick, dry carpet of mold beneath her feet. She had even grown used to the strange quality of the light beneath the leaf canopy, its pellucid greenness that had at first made her think herself at the bottom of some great ocean.

Marrim scratched at her arm. The bites were heavily swollen and formed a small mountain range of red blotches from her exposed elbow to her wrist. She smiled now, but at the time she had thought they were going to eat her alive!

They had known that Aurack was a big, primitive world, but it was strange that Atrus hadn’t mentioned the insects. Then again, his briefing hadn’t mentioned a thing about the heat, either, so maybe they had come at an exceptional time—at the height of a hot season, perhaps, or in the midst of a heat wave. But somehow she wasn’t convinced. Nothing here looked as if it didn’t belong in this heat. This was quite clearly a tropical environment.

She moved on, marking her way as she went, then stopped, whirling about 180 degrees. There had been a cry: a high, inarticulate screech.

Hurrying, she began to make her way back the way she’d come, following the trail of marked trees.

Carrad and Catherine were waiting at the meeting point beside the river as she half ran, half walked toward them. Atrus arrived a moment later.

“Who was it?” he asked, looking from one to the other for an explanation.

“I thought it was you,” Catherine said, puzzled now.

Atrus turned, looking back into the trees. “Where’s Meer?”

They heard a crashing in the trees. Relieved, Carrad laughed. “Here he comes now!”

But the crashing stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and in the silence that followed, there was no sound of anyone making their way toward them.

“Let’s go,” Catherine said, touching Atrus’s hand. “His is the blue trail. It should be fairly easy to follow.”

They went in again, more cautiously now, Atrus leading them, Carrad at the back, his shaven head moving this way and that as he surveyed the jungle close at hand.

The trail snaked inward, then followed a dip in the land down into a hollow. There, abruptly, it ended, in the middle of a small clearing.

Insects buzzed and whined in the sultry heat.

Atrus went from tree to tree, then stopped, looking about him, perplexed.

Marrim bent down and picked something up. It was a piece of torn cloth. At first she didn’t understand, then it hit her. She held it against her own cloak. The match was perfect.

“Atrus …”

She handed him the piece of cloth and watched as his eyes registered its significance.

“He may have snagged it against something,” Atrus said, meeting her eyes. But that wasn’t what he was thinking.

“Here!” Carrad said, from the far side of the clearing. “It looks like something was dragged through the bushes at this point.”