The Myst Reader (20 page)

FOR THREE WHOLE DAYS, GEHN DID NOT RETURN
. When he finally did, he announced himself by rapping loudly on the door to Atrus’s room.

“Atrus?”

Atrus was in his sleeping niche in the big wardrobe, a spot that felt more like his bed at home, reading a D’ni book, a half-eaten apple in one hand. The sudden knocking made him jump. Hiding the apple and the book, he quickly closed the wardrobe door and hurried across to the bed, slipping beneath the silken sheets.

“Atrus?” Gehn’s voice came again. Significantly, he spoke D’ni now. “Are you awake? I need to talk with you.”

He ought to have told him to go away, but the anger he’d first felt had now evaporated. Besides, he wanted to know just what his father had to say for himself.

“All right …” he called back, feigning indifference.

He heard the key turn in the lock. A moment later Gehn stepped into the room. He looked immensely weary, his pale eyes ringed from lack of sleep, his clothes unwashed—the same clothes he had been wearing the evening he had argued with Atrus.

Atrus sat up, his back against the massive, carved headboard, looking across at Gehn, who was outlined in the half-light by the door.

“I’ve been thinking,” Atrus began.

Gehn raised a hand. “We speak only D’ni henceforth.”

Atrus started again, this time in D’ni. “I’ve been thinking. Trying to see it from your point of view. And I think I understand.”

Gehn came closer, intrigued. “And what conclusion did you come to?”

Atrus hesitated, then. “I think I understand why you feel what you feel about Anna. Why you hate her so much.”

Gehn laughed, surprised, yet his face was strangely pained. “No, Atrus. I do not
hate
her. It would be easy if it were that simple. But I do
blame
her. I blame her for what she did to D’ni. And for leaving my father here, knowing he would die.”

“I don’t see the difference.”

“No?” Gehn came closer, standing over him. “It is hard to explain just what I feel sometimes. She is my mother and so she
has
to love me. It is her duty. Why, I even saw it in her eyes that last time. But she does not like me. To be honest, she never has.” He shook his head, then continued. “It was the same with Veovis. She never liked
him
. She thought him odious; ill-mannered and foul-tempered. Yet when it came down to it, she felt that her duty was to love him—to save him from himself.

Gehn sighed heavily. “She was a hypocrite. She did not act on what she knew to be the truth. It was a weakness that destroyed a race of gods!”

“And yet you two survived,” Atrus said quietly. “She saved you. Brought you out of D’ni.”

“Yes,” Gehn said, staring away into the shadows on the far side of the room. “Some days I wonder why. Some days I ask myself whether that, too, was not weakness of a kind. Whether it would not have been better for us both to have died back there and end it all cleanly. As it is …”

Atrus stared at his father in the long silence that followed, seeing him clearly for the first time. There was something quite admirable about the spirit within him; about the determination to try to restore and recreate the D’ni culture single-handedly. Admirable but futile.

“So can I go and see Anna?”

Gehn did not even look at him. “No, Atrus. My mind is made up. It would be too disruptive, and I cannot afford disruption.”

“But she’ll worry if I don’t go back …”

“Be quiet, boy! I said no, and I mean no! Now let that be the last word on the matter! I shall send Rijus with a note, informing your grandmother that you are well and explaining why she cannot see you again. But beyond that, I can permit no further contact between you.”

Atrus looked down. It was as if his father had physically struck him. Not see her again? The thought appalled him.

“As for the matter of your deception,” Gehn went on, unaware, it seemed, of the great shadow that had fallen on the young man’s spirit, “I have to tell you that I was gravely disappointed in you, Atrus. That said, I shall overlook it this once. Indeed, it may prove a great benefit in the long term. It will certainly save me a great deal of time and hard work, and it will also mean that I can press on more rapidly than I had anticipated. It is possible you might even start a book of your own.”

Atrus looked up. “A
book?
”

“Yes. But you must promise me something.”

Gehn loomed over him, his manner fierce, uncompromising. “You must promise me never—and I mean
never
—to question my word again or to scheme behind my back. You must be absolutely clear on this, Atrus. I am Master here and my word is law.”

Atrus stared at his father, knowing him at that moment better than he had ever known him; then, realizing he had no other choice, he bowed his head.

“I promise.”

“Good. Then come and get something to eat. You must be starving.”

“W
HERE ARE WE?” ATRUS ASKED, LOOKING
about him at the cave into which they had “linked,” his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the darkness.

Gehn edged past him. Standing on tiptoe, he reached into a narrow recess high up at the back of the cave. “This is one of my more recent worlds,” he answered, removing a slender box. Within was the Linking Book that would get them back to D’ni. Quickly checking that it had not been tampered with, he slid it back into the hole in the rock, then turned, looking to Atrus. “This is my Thirty-seventh Age.”

“Ah …” Atrus said, if only because he could think of nothing else. Personally, he would have spent a little time and effort thinking of a name for the Age—something mystical and romantic, perhaps—but Gehn was pragmatic when it came to his creations.

For three years now he had been accompanying his father to these Ages, and never once had Gehn thought to give an Age a name. Numbers. It was always numbers with his father.

At the front of the cave, a narrow tunnel curved away to the left, sloping steadily upward. Fastening his cloak at the neck, Atrus followed Gehn out, wondering what kind of world this was.

Up above it was night. They emerged into a rough circle of open grass surrounded on three sides by the bare rock of the hillside. Below them, under a dark, blue-black sky in which sat two small moons—one white, one red—lay an island. At the center of the island was an oval lake.

Atrus stood there, taking in the sight, impressed by the circle of low hills that formed a natural bowl about the lake. The lake itself was dark and still, reflecting the twin moons, the surrounding sea shimmeringly bright.

Looking at it, Atrus began to question it, as he always did, wondering what words, what phrases his father had used to get that soft, sculpted shape to the hills? Or was that a product of the underlying rock? Was it limestone? Or clay, perhaps? And those trees, over to the right—were they a natural variant, or had Gehn written them in specifically?

The air was sweet and cool, rich with the varied scents of living things.

“It’s very beautiful,” he said finally, looking to his father, but Gehn merely grunted, surveying his work with what seemed a haughty disregard.

“I have done much better work than this,” he answered, climbing up onto one of the rocks, then stepping down the other side. “In some ways this is my least successful experiment. I tried to keep it simple. Too simple, possibly.”

Atrus climbed up onto the rock, hurrying to catch up. He had seen quite a few of his father’s Ages these past three years—he hasn’t begun to try making ages yet—but it had never ceased to astonish him that mere words could create such vivid and tangible realities.

There was a path leading down between the scattered rocks. After a dozen paces it opened out onto a bare slope covered in thigh-high grass. Below them, maybe a mile or so distant, huddled around the left-hand side of the lake, was a scatter of low, rectangular buildings, oddly shaped, as if half made of stone; maybe forty in all, lit by the lamps which hung over doorways and on poles along the harbor’s edge. Suspended walkways linked the huts. Beneath the eaves of the nearest huts a number of dark, upright figures could be glimpsed.

Atrus turned to stare at Gehn, surprised. “It’s
inhabited?
”

“Yes, but don’t expect too much, Atrus. The people of this Age are an immensely simple folk. Crude, one might almost say. They manage to eke out a meager existence by way of fishing and basic agriculture, but as for culture, well …”

Gehn’s laugh was dismissive. Even so, Atrus felt a strange excitement at the thought of meeting them. Though Gehn had occasionally brought in working parties from one or other of his Ages, he had never taken Atrus to an inhabited Age. Not before today.

They walked on, descending the thickly grassed slope. At first Atrus thought they would come upon the islanders unobserved, but then, a hundred yards or so from the edge of the village, a shout went up. Someone had spotted them. At once there was a buzz of voices down below and signs of sudden, frantic activity.

Gehn touched his arm, motioning that he should stop.

Atrus glanced at his father, alarmed. “Are we in danger?”

Gehn shook his head. “Be patient, Atrus. You are here to observe, so observe.”

Atrus fell silent, watching as a dozen or so of the tall, manlike figures came up the slope toward them, carrying flaming torches.

Ten paces from them, the party stopped, dropping to their knees and bowing their heads, abasing themselves before Gehn. One of their number—the tallest of them—stood, then, coming forward, his head bowed, held out a garland of yellow flowers, offering at the same time a few words of broken D’ni.

“You are welcome, Great Master. Your dwelling is prepared.”

In the flickering light of the torches, Atrus saw what he was wearing. It was a crude, handwoven copy of a Guild cloak!

“Good,” Gehn said, lowering his head so that the man could place the garland over it. Then, straightening up, he gestured to the man, “Gather the villagers. I shall speak to them at once.”

“Master!” the acolyte answered, glancing at Atrus, his dark eyes curious.

“Now lead on!” Gehn said, his voice stern, commanding.

They went down, through a narrow lane flanked by low but spacious huts with steeply sloping roofs of thatch, their wooden walls rising out of a bed of large, shaped boulders. Suspended, slatted wooden walkways swayed gently overhead as they walked through, and as they came out beside the lake, Atrus saw how the earth there had been covered with boards; how steps had been cut into the face of the rock, leading down. Below was a kind of harbor, one wall of which had been created by sinking hundreds of long poles into the bottom of the lake to form a sunken barrier. In the harbor were a dozen or so small but sturdy-looking fishing boats, their masts laid flat, their cloth sails furled.

People were gathering from all over now—men, women, and children. They were pale-skinned, stocky, clearly human in their dark-brown smocks. Their hair was uniformly light in color and spiky, reminding Atrus of straw.

Farther along, a channel had been cut through the rock, linking the lake to the open sea. It was not very broad—barely wide enough for a single boat to navigate—but a strong wooden bridge had been thrown across it.

On the other side, the land began to climb again, and on the top of a narrow ridge, behind which was the more massive slope of the hill, was what looked like a meeting hut of some kind, much larger than the huts that faced the harbor. As they crossed the bridge and began to climb the slope, Atrus saw lights being hastily lit up ahead, garlands hung between the wooden posts at the front of the building.

Behind them, the people of the village gathered, following silently, their torches burning brightly in the moonlit darkness.

Coming to the front of the building, Gehn turned, facing the crowd, whose number had grown to several hundred.

“People of the Thirty-seventh Age,” he began, speaking loudly, the circle of hills making his words echo back to him across the lake. “This is my son, Atrus. I have decided that we shall stay with you for a time. While he is here you will treat him with the same respect you accord me.”