The Myst Reader (88 page)

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.”

They went across, the four of them standing there, staring silently at the broken branches.

Something
had
been dragged through the bushes.

Turning back, Marrim began to see things she had missed first time round. The way the ground seemed churned up on one side of the clearing. She walked over, then stooped, poking here and there with her fingers.

A wet stickiness greeted her. She raised her hand and gasped. Blood! Her fingers were covered in blood that had seeped down through the leaves.

Catherine, standing next to her, knelt down and took her hand, turning it and studying it.

“Meer?” Atrus called, cupping his hands and yelling into the thick undergrowth beyond the clearing.
“Meer?
Where are you?”

But there was no answer. Nothing but the flap of wings and the high, plaintive call of a hidden bird.

 

 

§

 

 

Armed, Atrus and Carrad had linked back to Aurack and returned to the clearing, working their way through the undergrowth, following the trail of broken branches until they had come out beside a waterfall. There, in the mud at the edge of the stream that ran away from the fall, were tracks.

The tracks of something large.

Wary, they followed the trail down the narrow valley until they came upon what they had feared they would find: fragments of Meer’s torn and bloody clothes. Of Meer there was no sign, but the tracks led on, and there were clear indications that the beast had settled here to make his meal before moving on, dragging its prize with it.

Carrad, seeing the sight, had crouched and groaned, utterly distraught. But Atrus had merely stood and looked, his pale eyes carrying the full weight of his grief.

“Come,” he said at last. “Let’s go back.”

Back in D’ni, Atrus got out the Book of Aurack once again and read it through. Finally, he closed it and, looking up, shook his head.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “It has the Guild of Maintainers stamp. There ought to be no creatures like that in Aurack.”

“Then someone must have captured it elsewhere,” Catherine said.

“But why go to all that trouble? Why not simply go straight to the world the creature comes from?”

“Perhaps because that was too dangerous,” Catherine answered. “I’ve been thinking about it, Atrus. These were D’ni, right? Scholars and Guildsmen, builders and stonemasons, inkmakers and archivists, not hunters. In which case, Aurack would be the beast they had released for their sport. Or beasts, if my guess is correct, for this creature cannot have survived seventy years without others of its kind to breed with. I guess they would release them and kill them within days. Then, when the Maintainers came to inspect the Age, there would be no sign of them.”

“Maybe,” Atrus conceded. “But whatever the truth is, one thing is certain: We must take greater precautions in the future. No one must venture alone in the Ages. And we must make the teams bigger. Only two teams, perhaps, of ten or twelve. Yes, and we must arm them.”

 

 

§

 

 

Atrus took charge of the next expedition. Twelve of them were to make the link, the first two armed. If there was any exploring to be done, they were to keep in teams of three, and each team leader carried a fire flare, to be used at the first sign of any trouble.

A long week had passed since Meer’s untimely death—a week in which Atrus and Catherine had returned to Averone to break the news to Meer’s parents—and now, as they stood before the podium, there was a very different mood—of sobriety rather than excitement—about the job at hand.

“All right,” Atrus said quietly. “It’s time.”

Carrad and Gavas went through first. A moment later Atrus followed them.

The linking cave was long and low, but sunlight from a crevice high up to one side made it seem less oppressive than it would otherwise have seemed. The air was fresh and there was a faint moistness to the air.

“Islands,” Marrim said, stepping through after Atrus. “I can smell islands.”

Atrus nodded. There were indeed islands, if the Book was accurate, but that wasn’t what Marrim had meant. She could smell the sea. And other things. It was like Averone. That same mixture of scents.

They climbed up onto a shelf of rock. Below them the land fell away. A long slope of waist-high grass ending in the silver-blue line of a sunlit shore. And there—immediately visible from where they stood—a village, nestled about a small, natural harbor.

Seeing it, Atrus felt the heavy burden he had been carrying these past months lift from him. For the first time in weeks he smiled.

“Come,” he said, looking about him at their eager faces. “Let us go down and greet our cousins.”

 

 

§

 

 

Their laughter was short-lived. The village was deserted. Even so, there were signs that it had recently been occupied. Everything was well tended, the fences in good repair, the pathways swept.

Inside the cabins the beds were made and clothes lay pressed and folded in the wooden cupboards. The shelves were well stocked, the utensils clean and polished. Three fishing boats lay anchored in the harbor, their pots and nets neatly stowed. Everywhere one looked one could see the products of a small but industrious society. Yet of the people there was no sign.

“They must have seen us emerge from the cave,” Gavas offered. “Seen us and run away.”

“No,” Marrim said. “There wouldn’t have been time. Besides, where could they have got to?”

It was true. The village was at the end of a narrow promontory. The only way they could have left and not been seen by Atrus and his party was by sea.

Atrus walked over to the harbor’s edge and, shielding the top of his D’ni lenses with one hand, stared out to sea.

“We’ll wait,” he said, a strange confidence in his voice. “We’ll set up camp and wait.”

 

 

§

 

 

The boat approached slowly, long poles hauling the inelegant craft through the water until it was positioned just outside the harbor’s mouth. The craft lay low in the water; a broad-keeled, capacious vessel with more than a dozen separate structures on its long, flat deck, so that it seemed more like a floating village than a normal boat. Those on board were clearly wary of the newcomers and there were heated discussions on board before one of them—an old man, solemn in appearance, D’ni lenses covering his pale eyes—stepped up to the prow and hailed them.

“Ho, there! Who are you and what do you want?”

Atrus raised an arm and hailed the graybeard. “My name is Atrus, son of Gehn, grandson of Aitrus and Ti’ana, late of D’ni, and these are my companions.”

There were audible murmurs of astonishment from the craft. The elder, however, seemed unimpressed. “You say you are late of D’ni. Yet D’ni is fallen. As for your father, I have never heard of him. Yet the names of your grandsires are well known to me, if such is true.”

“It is true. And we mean you no harm. We wish only to talk.”

“So you say,” the old man replied, then turned away.

For a long while there was no further word from the old man as he engaged in a long, murmured discussion with his fellows—a dozen or more of them crouched in a huddle at the center of the boat—then, finally, he came back across and hailed Atrus once again.

“It is decided. I will talk with you, Atrus, son of Gehn.”

And with that he stood back, allowing two of the younger men to lower a small rowboat over the side of the vessel. He climbed into this and, with a gesture to those aboard, took up the oars and began to row for the shore. As he did so, the men aboard the larger vessel leaned heavily on their poles, beginning to move the craft out into the bay.

As the rowboat nudged against the harbor wall, Carrad hurried down to help the old man tie up, but he was waved away with a suspicious glare.

Carrad moved back, letting the elder pass him on the steps.

Atrus hesitated a second, then stepped forward, bowing respectfully to the stranger, who had stopped less than five paces from him. From close by he seemed not as old as he’d first appeared and Atrus realized with a shock that he was wearing the cloak of a D’ni Guildsman. An old, much-mended cloak.

“So,” the old man said, “you are Atrus, eh? My name is Tamon and I am Steward here. In D’ni I was a Guildsman. A stonemason. But that was long ago. Now tell me, Atrus, why are you here?”

“I am here to ask you to come back,” Atrus answered, meeting Tamon’s eyes unflinchingly, seeing how the other sought to find something there.

“Back?” Tamon asked.

“To D’ni.”

Tamon’s laugh was dark and full of sorrow. “To D’ni, eh? But D’ni is a ruin.”

“Is,” Atrus agreed. “Yet it need not be. If enough can be found, we might yet rebuild it.”

“And that is your task, Atrus? To find enough to rebuild D’ni?”

Atrus nodded.

“Then speak, for it seems we have much to talk of.” Tamon half-turned, looking back at his vessel, which had now edged far out into the bay, then turned back, meeting Atrus’s eyes, his own filled with a cautious fear behind their D’ni lenses.

 

 

§

 

 

They talked for most of that afternoon. Tamon questioning Atrus closely. Afterward, Atrus stood on the jetty, watching old Tamon row away, his tiny boat disappearing into the late evening gloom. He expected to have his answer later that night, but two whole days were to pass before the Guildsman returned. During those two long nights, while Atrus and his party cooled their heels, distant lights—campfires—could be seen twinkling on a smudge of island far out in the center of the lake.

It was late morning on the third day when Tamon climbed the harbor steps wearily.

“So?” Atrus asked, concealing any impatience he felt.

“We have decided we will talk with you,” Tamon answered. “Others will come at high sun. They will listen to what you have to say.”

“You are still in doubt?”

“Not I,” Tamon said, “but you must understand, Atrus. We have been much alone here, and some of the younger men have never seen a stranger. But come…let us eat and talk and then, perhaps, decide what shall be done.”

 

 

§

 

 

Tamon had not known Atrus’s grandfather, yet he had much to tell Atrus about the circumstances leading up to the fall of D’ni, things not even Anna had told him.

“There were many who blamed her for everything. In those final hours they cursed her name, as if Veovis and that foul philosopher had had no part in it,” Tamon concluded, even as he offered his pipe across the table to Atrus.

Atrus accepted the stubby, ornately carved pipe, then, out of politeness, took a tiny indrawn breath of the acrid smoke. Tamon, watching him, smiled, showing a set of pearl white, perfectly formed teeth.

“Strong,” Atrus said, trying not to cough. His eyes watered.

Catherine, seated beside Atrus, accepted the pipe from him. Tamon watched her through half-lidded eyes. It was clear that he was not used to women who were quite so forward in their ways. As she handed the pipe back to him he frowned, not knowing he did so, then looked away quickly, lest what he was thinking conveyed itself to Catherine.

Yet Catherine, looking on, saw everything. These people had lived so openly these last seventy years that they had lost whatever social masks they’d once possessed. What they were was written clearly on each face: their hopes, their fears, yes, and especially their suspicions, all could be read, as in a book.