The Myst Reader (13 page)

Gehn was standing at the stern of the boat, his hand on the tethering rope, ready to cast off, as Atrus came down the twist of stone steps and out into the low-ceilinged cave that housed the jetty.

Since that evening when he had first arrived on K’veer, Atrus had never been off the island. Nor had a day passed in all that time when he had not looked to the distant D’ni city and dreamed of going there.

Climbing aboard, he looked to his father for instruction.

“Sit there,” Gehn said, pointing to a low bench that dissected the shallow craft. “And try not to lean over too far. I don’t want to have to pull you out.”

He nodded, chastened by his father’s words.

As his father cast off, then swung the boat around, poling it out through the narrow entrance, Atrus turned in his seat, staring out across that vast expanse of orange sea, past the scattering of intervening islets, toward the D’ni capital, seeing yet again how its crowded levels climbed the cavern wall into the darkness.

Ancient, it was. Ancient beyond all imagining.

As they came out into the open water, Atrus turned, looking back as Gehn’s island emerged into view. The day he’d arrived, he had been too exhausted to take in all its details, but now he stared, fascinated, seeing K’veer properly for the first time.

By now he knew every room and corridor, every stairway and terrace of the sprawling, many-leveled mansion, yet seeing it now from that slight distance he pieced it all together for the first time, making sense of it; seeing how its spiral shape had been determined by the rock on which it had been built.

From a quarter mile away its dark stone walls—fallen in places, shored up in others—gleamed almost metallically in the light from below.

It was a strange, unearthly vision, but no more so than any of the sights that met the eyes down here. Besides, the sensitivity of his eyes, which had meant he’d had to shield his eyes from the brightness of the desert sun, here was a positive advantage. He found this light soothing to his eyes…almost
natural
. Maybe the fact that he was part D’ni made his eyes weak. All he knew for certain was that he had not needed to wear his glasses down here, except for magnification.

Atrus looked to his father, conscious for the first time of just how distracted he was. In his own excitement he had missed his father’s mood. As he watched, Gehn grimaced, as if some hideous thought had crossed his mind, then pulled hard on the oars, moving them along through the water.

Atrus turned, staring across at the city once again. Tiny islands littered the surrounding waters, each straddled by its own dark and sprawling mansion, each of those ancient buildings uniquely and distinctly shaped, and every last one of them in ruins.

On one of the larger islands, a strange, angular fortress had been built high up into the face of a massive cliff, embedded, it seemed, into the rock—a thing of spikes and towers and heavily buttressed walls. Beneath it the cliff dropped five hundred feet, sheer into the motionless sea.

Atrus let out a long breath, conscious more than ever of the desolate magnificence of this place.

As they steered through the last narrow channel, out into the open sea, he looked to his right, his eyes drawn by a disturbance on the water a quarter of a mile away. There was a kind of haze over the water, like windblown sand, that cast an erratic shadow on the orange surface. As he watched, it came nearer, attracted, perhaps, by the boat’s slow passage through the plankton-rich water.

When it got to within fifty yards, he stood, openmouthed, staring at it, then looked to Gehn, but his father seemed not to have noticed.

“What’s that?” he asked, intrigued, seeing tiny glittering shapes within the cloud.

Gehn glanced across. “Ah, those…They are a kind of damselfly. They feed on tiny insects that live within the plankton.”

Atrus nodded, then turned back, watching in wonder as the cloud of insects drifted just aft of their boat’s trail, unable to keep up with their progress. He was about to look away when suddenly the water beneath the cloud rippled violently and a long, thin snout poked out, stabbing the air. A moment later and the water beneath the damselflies began to thrash and boil as a host of brilliantly colored fish went into a feeding frenzy.

In less than thirty seconds the cloud was gone, the water calm again.

“And those?” Atrus asked, his voice almost a whisper.

“Fish,” Gehn answered, with what seemed like aversion. “The water’s much deeper out here beyond the islands. Usually they live deep down, but they surface now and then to feed.”

“I see,” Atrus said quietly, suddenly wary of the placid waters that surrounded them, noting, through the clear yet glowing water, the presence of much larger, fleeting shadows in the depths.

Disturbed, he looked away, trying to focus his mind on something else.

Books…His father had said they were going to find some books. But Gehn had plenty of books. So what did he want with more of them?

“How long will it take us to get there?” he asked.

“Not long,” Gehn answered patiently, pulling on the oars regularly, inexhaustibly, it seemed.

Atrus nodded. For a while he fiddled with his knapsack, then he looked back at his father.

Gehn was watching him, his large eyes half hooded. “What is it now, Atrus?”

Atrus swallowed, then asked what he’d been thinking. “The books…What’s so special about the books? You said they can’t make them anymore. I don’t understand.”

Gehn’s face was blank, expressionless. “All in good time. Right now, all you have to do is find them for me.”

 

§

 

Atrus dozed for a while, then woke with a start, surprised to find himself still on the boat, still traveling. Yawning, he stretched his neck, then looked up at his father.

Gehn smiled tightly. “So you’re awake at last. Look. Just behind you. You almost missed it.”

Atrus stood and turned…to find the city looming over him, seeming to fill the whole of the skyline, its ancient buildings rising level after level into the great ceiling of the cavern.

And, directly in front of him, an arch—bigger than any of those he had seen on his journey down. By comparison to the other D’ni architecture Atrus had seen, it seemed crude, made as it was of undecorated blocks, yet each block was the size of a great mansion, the whole thing ten blocks tall, its entrance so big that you could quite easily have passed even the largest of the islands through that gap.

“Kerath’s arch,” Gehn said proudly, staring ahead at it.

“Kerath…” Atrus whispered, the merest mention of his hero’s name enough to send a thrill through him.

“All of the D’ni kings sailed through this arch,” Gehn said. “They would be sent to the southlands to be tutored in the arts of kingship, then, after a year, they would come here to be crowned, on the harbor front, before the Steward’s House. A million citizens would watch the ceremony, and after there would be a whole month of feasting.”

And yet it was named after Kerath
, Atrus thought.
Because he was the greatest of them
.

As they slowly sailed beneath it, Atrus could see how the stone was blotched and pitted,
aged
, not as the rocks of the desert were aged, by sand and wind, but like a skin that has grown tight and dry.

For countless thousands of years this arch has stood
, he told himself, remembering, even as he did, the story of Kerath returning to D’ni on the back of the great lizard. Now, of course, he was forced to change the picture in his head—to imagine Kerath returning not across a desert, but across this vast open sea, the lizard, perhaps, resting peacefully beneath him on the boat.

The thought made him frown and wonder how much else he had imagined wrongly. Tre’Merktee, for instance, the Place of Poisoned Waters, did that still exist? He turned, looking to his father, but before he could ask the question, Gehn spoke to him again.

“You must stay close to me this first time, Atrus, and not wander off. Today we must confine our explorations to a single sector of the city.”

Gehn pointed past Atrus and to the right, indicating a part of the city not far from the main harbor.

“That is where we shall make our search, in the J’Taeri district. With luck we shall find what we are looking for in the Common Library there.”

Atrus nodded, then stepped up onto the prow, watching the city slowly appear from beneath the arch. Directly ahead of them massive walls of cracked white marble were arranged in three tiers, like giant steps, about the harbor.

At intervals along the front, a number of massive statues—each one several times the size of a man—had once stood, facing the arch, but only two were standing now, and even they were cracked and damaged. The rest had been toppled from their pedestals and now lay, either in pieces on the marbled flagstones or on the floor of the harbor itself, broken limbs the size of pillars protruding from the glowing surface.

Beyond the statues, on the far side of an impressively huge square, was what looked like a huge, porticoed temple, fifteen white stone pillars holding up what remained of a massive dome. Beyond that, the city climbed, tier after tier of streets and buildings, covered walkways and delicate arches, no single level the same as another.

From afar the city had seemed an amorphous mass of stone. From close up, however, it revealed an intricacy and variety that was astonishing. Even the color of the stone changed as the eye traveled up that vast bowl of jumbled architecture, the lowest levels slate gray or a dull red-brown, the higher levels the same black streaked with red that was used for the island mansions and the Inner Gate.

What could also be seen from close up was the sheer extent of the devastation the D’ni capital had suffered. Wherever Atrus looked, he saw evidence of ruin and collapse. Indeed, there was barely a structure that was not damaged in some way or another.

He lowered his eyes, staring down through the pellucid water. Far down, so deep they seemed more shadows than actualities, he could see the remains of the great fleet of merchants’ barges that had once anchored here.

“Was it the quake that killed the people?” Atrus asked, looking back at his father.

Gehn ignored him, concentrating on the task of bringing the boat alongside one of the great stone pillars that supported the jetty. He brought the small craft to a halt alongside the pillar. A rope ladder dangled from the jetty above, trailing against the side of the cracked stone.

He glanced at Atrus, then signaled that he should climb the ladder, holding it taut from below while Atrus climbed the rungs. Then, as Atrus neared the top, he tied the mooring rope to the bottom of the ladder and began his own ascent.

Atrus stepped up onto the jetty, more awed by his surroundings now that he actually stood among them than he’d been while sailing into that massive harbor. He looked back at the brutal shape of Kerath’s arch, which dominated the natural bowl of the harbor, then slowly turned full circle.

Gehn climbed up beside him. “Come, Atrus, let us make up time.” He pointed across the square toward the shattered dome. “Our destination is over there.”

The great square might once have been immaculately kept, but now it was littered with huge chunks of stone that had fallen from the city above. In places huge cracks ran in zigzags through the marble paving, while in others the ground simply vanished into tiny craters.

The Steward’s House itself was a study in desolation. The great dome was two-thirds gone, only three of the fifteen great curving spans of roof still intact, and the great doors had fallen from their hinges. Inside, there was evidence that the rooms and corridors had been put to the torch, possibly long before the final tragedy had struck. Overhead, charred beams stood out against the stony skyline.

Atrus stared at his father’s back, wondering what they were doing there inside that ruined place, but Gehn barely glanced at his surroundings, making his way directly down the main corridor before turning right into a small room at the back of the building.

It looked like a kind of pantry kitchen.

Atrus watched as Gehn walked over to one of the shelves and, reaching to the back of it, seem to pull something toward him. There was a low clunking sound, as if something were sliding back beneath their feet.

Gehn turned, a brief smile flickered across his features, then crossed the room and, edging behind a long stone workbench, placed his hands flat against the wall, moving them back and forth as if searching for something.

With a little grunt of satisfaction, he flexed his shoulders and pushed. At once a whole section of the wall swung back and tilted to the side, sliding into a niche in the rock behind.

An unlit passage was revealed, leading up into the rock.

It was all done so effortlessly, so quietly, that Atrus stood there a moment, staring in disbelief.

Gehn turned, beckoning to him. “Come on then, boy! What are you waiting for?”

Atrus went across and ducked inside, then stopped, unable to see more than a few feet in front of him.

“Here,” Gehn said, pressing a lantern into one hand and a fire-marble into the other.

Atrus crouched, balancing the lantern on his knee, while he fitted the fire-marble, then, as it began to glow, he straightened up. Turning, he saw his father light his own lantern, then look to him.

In that fierce blue glow Gehn’s eyes seemed huge and unnatural. Looking into them, Atrus realized how much a stranger his father remained, even after all these weeks. He still knew so little about him.

“I shall go ahead,” Gehn said, unaware, it seemed, of his son’s close scrutiny. “But keep up with me, Atrus. These tunnels are like a maze. If you fall behind and lose sight of me, you are likely never to find your way out.”