The Myst Reader (13 page)

The Gate dwarfed them, like nothing they had so far seen. As he walked toward it Atrus felt the hairs on his neck rise. Whatever he had pictured in his head, whatever he’d imagined while listening to Anna’s tales, the reality exceeded it by far.

Stepping beneath that arch, he looked up; its massive thickness impressing him. How had the D’ni fashioned such a vast artifact? How had they cut the blocks, how fashioned them? From his own limited experience, he knew the difficulties of working stone, but the D’ni had thought nothing of throwing up such a huge mass of it.

Ahead of him the marble floor ended abruptly. Beyond it a cavern stretched away, its walls pocked with tunnel entrances. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.

It was suddenly very warm, the air much closer than it had been. Gehn glanced at his notebook again, then began to make his way across the floor of the cavern.

Selecting one of the larger tunnels, he gestured to Atrus to catch up with him, then turned and disappeared inside. The tunnel was much larger than any they had been in, with countless tunnels and small caverns—clearly artificially excavated—branching off.

Atrus followed his father, his eyes constantly surveying what lay to either side, noticing new things every second: great wheels and gantries; factories and warehouses; great mounds of loose rock and equally huge pits over which massive abandoned cranes stood like sentinels—all these and many other things, most of which he could not recognize at first sight.

Great machines stood idle everywhere he looked, as though abandoned only hours before, their oil-like, lacquered surfaces gleaming darkly in their passing light. Huge mining rigs rested on great pneumatic platforms beside the gaping holes of shafts bored into the foot of the cavern’s walls, like massive insects feeding, their squat dark shapes still and silent.

Steam rose unchanneled from great fissures on every side: steam that had once powered the industrial might of D’ni. Elsewhere simple stone houses stood empty, roofless in the D’ni style, the thin cloth screens that had once maintained their privacy shredded by the same force that had toppled the stone towers of the factories.

Seeing it all, Atrus wondered just how it could have come to an end. It was so vast, so extraordinary.

From time to time other paths crossed their own, making him realize that there was not one D’ni path but an endless labyrinth of them, threading their way through the dark earth.

Suddenly, without warning, Gehn began to climb the wall of the tunnel, ducking into a much smaller shaft. Atrus, catching up, looked across to his right and saw that the tunnel was blocked some twenty yards ahead, collapsed in upon itself. Fearful of losing Gehn, he climbed the tunnel wall, following him inside.

THEY HAD BEEN WALKING FOR HOURS AND
all the way their path had got slowly narrower, hotter, stuffier. Gehn now walked with the notebook open in one hand, consulting it almost constantly. The path had taken so many twists and turns that Atrus felt numbed by it, but still Gehn went on, confident, it seemed, that it led somewhere.

Then, suddenly, the quality of the light changed. Atrus blinked, his senses sparked to life by that sudden change. There was a faint breeze, a slight cooling of the air. As they turned the next corner there was a marked increase in the intensity of the light, a definite orange glow up ahead. The air was cool and clear, heavy suddenly with the scent of vegetation. The path climbed.

Ahead there was an opening. A circle of brilliant orange light.

As Atrus stepped out, it was to be met by the most astonishing sight he had yet encountered.

Facing him was an enormous valley, six miles across and ten broad, its steeply sloping shores descending to a glowing orange lake that filled at least half the valley’s floor. At the center of that lake was a huge island, a mile or more in width, two twisted columns of rock pushing up from that great tumulus to soar more than a mile into the air. Beyond that, to its right, the great rock walls were curiously striped, regular tiered levels of colored stone reaching up into the shadows overhead, above the level at which Atrus himself stood. Within those levels great pools of orange water glowed.

He looked up, expecting clouds, or maybe stars, but the blackness was immaculate overhead. Slipping his glasses down, he increased their magnification, studying the far side of the lake. Buildings! They were buildings! Buildings that clung to the great rock precipice, seeming to defy gravity!

Atrus craned his neck, following the course of the rock walls upward, understanding coming to him in an instant. He was inside! Inside a vast, cavernous expanse.

He stared, awed by the strange beauty of the sight. Beneath him the ground sloped steeply down to the sea’s edge where, in a tiny harbor, a boat was moored. To the right, just offshore, the sea was dotted with tiny islands, like dark blemishes in that orange mirror.

“There,” Gehn said, coming alongside. “Now, perhaps, you might understand why I could not leave you in that ridiculous crack in the ground. Is that not the grandest sight you have ever seen, Atrus?”

It was, and he did indeed understand why his father had brought him, yet the reminder cast a shadow over what he was feeling at that moment. Suddenly he wanted Anna to be there with him, wanted to share it with her—to be able to talk to her and ask her questions.

“Come,” Gehn said from just below him as he began to make his way down the steep slope. “Another hour and we’re home.”

ATRUS STOOD ON THE FOREDECK, HIS RIGHT
hand gripping the rail as Gehn maneuvered the strange craft out onto the mirror-smooth waters, digging the pole deep, his muscles straining.

Atrus looked about him excitedly, conscious of the absence of echoes in that vast space, of the sound Gehn’s pole made as it dipped into the water. The cavern was so vast, it felt almost as if they were back outside, on the surface, sailing on a moonless night, but for that orange glow that underlit everything.

As the blunt, wedge-shaped prow of the boat came around, Atrus saw the city in the distance once again. From here it seemed immaculate and beautiful, a vast bowl of towers and spires, as if it alone had not been touched by the destruction he had seen elsewhere. But they were not going to the city. Not yet, anyway. “Home,” it seemed, was on one of the cluster of islands that skirted the right-hand wall of the cavern.

Atrus let out a little sigh. Now that he had stopped walking, his muscles had finally begun to seize up. His body ached and his eyelids felt like lead weights. The gentle movement of the boat didn’t help either. It lulled him, like a voice singing in his head. He blinked, trying to keep his eyes open, trying to stay awake a while longer, but it was hard. It felt like he had walked a thousand miles.

For a moment Atrus dozed where he stood, then he jerked awake again, looking up, expecting to see stars littering the desert sky.

“Where …?”

He turned, looking back to where his father sat in the center of the boat, slowly rowing them toward the island, and shook his head to clear it, convinced he was in the grip of some strangely vivid dream.

Facing front again, he saw the island looming from the shadows up ahead, its twisted, conical outline silhouetted black against the surrounding sea. Briefly, he noticed how the water about the far end of the island was dark and wondered why.

Home
, he thought, noting the fallen walls, the toppled tower of the great mansion that sat upon the summit of the island like a huge slab of volcanic rock.
Home
…

Yet even as he saw it, sleep overcame him. Unable to prevent himself, he fell to his knees, then slumped onto the deck, unconscious, so that he did not see the boat pass beneath the island, into a brightly lit cavern. Nor did he see the waiting figure standing on the flight of winding steps that led up into the rock above.

“ATRUS? ARE YOU AWAKE?”

Atrus lay there, his eyes closed, remembering the dream.

The voice came closer. “Atrus?”

He turned onto his back and stretched. The room was warm, the mattress strangely soft beneath him.

“What is it?” he asked lazily, uncertain yet whether he was awake.

“It is evening now,” the voice, his father’s voice, said. “You have slept a whole day, Atrus. Supper is ready, if you want some.”

Atrus opened his eyes, focusing. Gehn stood there two paces from the bed, a lantern in one hand. In its flickering light the room seemed vast and shadowy.

“Where are we?” he asked, the details of the dream receding as he began to recall the long trek through the caverns.

“We are on K’veer,” Gehn said, stepping closer, his pale, handsome face looming from the shadow. “This will be your room, Atrus. There are clothes in the wardrobes over there if you want to change, but there is no real need. When you are ready, you should turn left outside the door and head toward the light.”

Atrus nodded, then, with a shock, realized that his feet no longer hurt. Nor were they bandaged. “My feet …”

Gehn looked down at him. “I treated them while you were asleep. They will be sore for several days, but you can rest now.”