The Myst Reader (130 page)

BACK IN THEIR ROOM IN THE GREAT HOUSE
, Catherine and Atrus sat across from Eedrah as he talked.

“It was my fifteenth season when I first saw one of the Slave Ages. As a child, of course, you have to be taught not to see the slaves. Trained not to speak to them or even notice them. Not that you would see them all that often, for the stewards keep them out of sight as much as possible. But by fifteen your eyes have learned not to see, your brain not to make the connection. It isn’t difficult. But I guess my illness made me different.”

“Your illness?” Atrus asked.

“A simple fever. But I almost died. A harvesting slave found me in the orchards outside and carried me into the house.”

“And was rewarded, I hope,” Catherine said.

Eedrah swallowed and looked down. “He was killed. Executed by the stewards for the impertinence of touching a master.”

Atrus and Catherine both stared at him, shocked.

“So it is here. Remember the entertainer? The gymnast who fell?”

“Ah, yes,” Catherine said. “I wondered how he was.”

“He was severely punished for his mistake.”

Catherine shook her head. “No …”

“It
is
our way. Mistakes are not tolerated. You saw how he did not even make a noise though he was in pain. Had he done so, the stewards would have killed him without hesitation.”

Atrus sighed. “I did not know.”

“Nor I,” Eedrah said. “Not until that first visit. Then I saw how the young boys were recruited. Not orphans, as I’d speculated, but ordinary children like myself, only boys of four and five, taken from their parents and relocated in Training Ages where, in circumstances of the most extreme cruelty, they were prepared for service in Terahnee. Those Training Ages are the bleakest places I have ever seen, and the children are taught in the crudest manner to obey or die.”

“Does Ro’Eh Ro’Dan know of this?”

For a moment Eedrah stared at Atrus in disbelief. “Do you not see it yet, Atrus? Ro’Eh Ro’Dan
authorizes
it. He is in charge of this terrible system. He and his ministers set the quotas. They say how many boys are to be taken from their families and trained.”

Atrus stared and stared.

“I know,” Eedrah said quietly. “It is hard to believe.”

“But he was so kind to us. You were all so kind, so hospitable.”

“It is a kindness that is confined to our own kind. While my people believed you to be exactly as themselves, they accorded you the same rights and benefits. But now …”

Catherine had been looking down into her lap, now she looked up again. “Why did you say nothing of this before now?”

“Because I did not know whether I could trust you.”

“And when did you know?”

“Last evening. When you were puzzled by the riddle. And I saw your faces when those slaves were led away.”

“Were they beaten?” Atrus asked, a hollowness in his voice.

“No, Atrus. They were killed. You see, it could not be allowed for them to repeat what you said in that room.”

“Then we must do something.”

Eedrah grimaced. “There is nothing you
can
do, can’t you see that? You heard Hersha. There is not one in ten thousand of my people think as I think. And you saw how my father treated you the moment he heard that you were not pure D’ni. And so will the king treat you when he hears. You would be best to flee while you can!”

Atrus shook his head. “No. I will
not
run away. Besides, the king
will
keep his word. Terahnee he might be, but he is also a man.”

Eedrah stood, exasperated now. “Don’t you understand, Atrus? They will kill you. As surely as they killed those slaves. Indeed, you would all be dead right now but for the fact that you are still under the king’s protection.”

Seeing that Atrus would not be budged, Eedrah said, “All right. I’ll do what I can to help you, but I must return now and help Hersha with the sickness, before the P’aarli come back on duty.”

“Are you not afraid for yourself, Eedrah?” Catherine asked.

Eedrah turned back. “For myself, no. But there are times when I fear for my own people. There is something missing in them. A depth. I don’t know what you’d call it. A void, perhaps. And they fill it with cleverness and all manner of distractions. Like the rooms.”

“I did not know,” Atrus said once more, anguish in his face.

“You are not to blame,” Eedrah said.

“Yes, but …” He looked to Eedrah suddenly, frowning. “You thought we knew. You thought we condoned it.”

Eedrah nodded. “Yes. But now I
see
you.”

THE CREAK OF CART WHEELS
        IN THE SILENT DARK.
DEAD MEN FALL BETWEEN THE WORLDS.
               A TIME OF GREAT SORROWING
.

—
FROM THE
URAKH’NIDAR
, VV. 87–89.

A
TRUS WOKE, STRANGELY REFRESHED, THE
sunlit peacefulness of the room making the events of the previous evening seem strangely dreamlike. Beside him, Catherine slept on.

Slowly it all came back, and as it did the sunlight seemed to fade until there was a darkness underneath all things.

Even the birdsong seemed transformed.

Careful not to wake her, Atrus rose and pulled on his robe. He did not know what time it was, but from the way the shadows fell in the room, the sun was high, the day well advanced. That, too, was strange.

He began to cross the room, then stopped. There, on the desk where Catherine had been writing, was her equipment box. It had not been there when they had gone to sleep, but now it was. And beside it was a note.

Atrus went across. The note was addressed to him. He slit it open and unfolded the single sheet:

So Eedrah had gone himself to the plateau. Folding the note, Atrus slipped it into his pocket, then stepped outside, conscious now of the secret the massively thick walls held.

The corridor was empty, silent. No steward waited to do his bidding or anticipate his need.

Strange.

He walked from room to room, but it was as if the great house had been abandoned. There was no sound or sign of anyone. And then there came a shout, from the gardens outside. Going to a window, he threw it open and looked out. Marrim was down there. She seemed distressed. Seeing him, she waved furiously, then beckoned him to come.

“Wait there!” he called.

Marrim met him at the gate.

“What is it?” he asked, trying to calm her.

“It’s one of them. One of the slaves we saw. He’s just lying there. He won’t move. And his eyes …”

“Where, Marrim?”

She led him across an ornamental bridge and into a formal garden. There, on the other side of a small wall, not ten paces from what looked like a well, lay the slave.

Atrus crouched down beside him, feeling at the neck for a pulse. “He’s alive,” he said, looking up at Marrim. “Go ahead and warn Catherine. I’ll bring him up to our room.”

Marrim nodded then hurried off.

Atrus turned back. This one was but a boy—seven or eight years old at most—yet like the others he was scarred and bruised, and his anonymity was emphasized by the tight-fitting black clothes he wore and his closely shaven head.

Swallowing back the sudden anger he felt, Atrus put his arms beneath the child and lifted him up. It was not difficult, for the boy barely weighed a thing.

Cradling the child against his chest, Atrus walked back to the house, determined not to be stopped by any steward. But no one stopped him. The corridors and stairs of the house were empty, and when he reached his rooms, only Catherine and Marrim were there to greet him.

“But he’s only a boy,” Catherine said, astonished by how young this one was.

“You heard what Eedrah said,” Atrus answered, laying him carefully down on top of the covers. “They take them at four and five.”

Catherine sighed. Sitting on the bed beside the child, she opened her case and prepared some supplies. “Marrim,” she said, “I understand Irras and Carrad are back. Go fetch them. They can accompany me back to D’ni.”

Selecting a tool from within the case, she looked up at Atrus. “We need to know what this is. Perhaps we can find a cure.” Writing out a label, she fixed it to the side of a glass tube, then, taking a needle, took a sample of the boy’s blood from his arm.

“Do you think he’s dying?”

She did not answer, but that look said quite enough.

“We must do something,” he said. “We must bring back all of those who have medical skill. Oma will know who they are. Or ask for volunteers.”

Catherine nodded. Atrus stared at her a moment; only then did he realize that something was wrong.

“Are you all right, Catherine?”

She placed the sample tube into the slot in the case then closed the lid. Looking up at Atrus, she shrugged. “It’s nothing physical. It’s just …”

“I know,” he said, not wanting her to say it. “But let us do what we can. Let us take each moment as it comes.”

NOTHING PHYSICA…

Catherine gazed at the sleeping child, then turned, looking about her at the room.

Strange that I didn’t see it before
…

Atrus had gone back to see Eedrah and the relyimah, leaving her to conduct her tests, but the tests were the last thing on her mind. For a moment earlier she had felt an abyss open beneath her—a vertiginous crack in reality that had threatened briefly to engulf her.

Words
, she told herself;
they were only words.
But for that brief, ridiculous moment they had seemed the most meaningful, the most
real
, thing in the room, and yet they were only echoes in her head: the memory of two lines she had read in Gehn’s notebook, months ago, lines that were strangely duplicated in the
Korokh Jimah
, the Great Book of Prophecies used by the relyimah.

For a moment she had felt the way she used to feel when she was writing—in a fugue unrelated to her rational self. Atrus had taught her to focus that part of her through her conscious mind, but for a moment back there, shocked by all that had happened, she had felt herself let go … and the connection had been made.

She had felt herself link to something deeper than the physical world. Something that lay
beneath
appearances.

Catherine turned back, looking at the child. But now she seemed to see beyond the flesh and bone, beyond the sickness that ravaged him.

There is a purpose to all this
, she thought, and knew, even as the thought was framed, that it was true.

“AH, ATRUS, I WONDERED WHEN YOU’D COME.”

Eedrah looked drained. Beside him, on the bare swept floor of the slave infirmary, the number of pallet beds had risen to more than a hundred, and on at least six of those the sheet had been pulled up over the occupant’s head.

“Yes,” Eedrah said, answering the unspoken query. “Whatever it is, it’s killing them one by one.”

“Then we, too, are in danger.”

Eedrah smiled bleakly. “I have heard it has spread to other estates. And the stewards … they, too, have been struck down by it.”

“I wondered where they had got to.”

“Some of them fled, I’m told. Afraid. And Catherine?”