The door swung back silently on its hinges at his touch. Inside was the tiniest of rooms—almost a cupboard it was so small—with broad shelves on all three sides, reaching up into the ceiling space well above his head.
Most of those were empty, but on one of the higher shelves there were seven, no eight, of the big, leather-bound books.
Atrus reached up and pulled one down, a red-covered book, surprised by how heavy it was, as if it were made of something more than paper. Then, kneeling, he placed it on the floor in front of him and opened it.
Nothing! The pages were blank. Disappointed, he closed the book and slipped it back into its place, then took another, this time with a pale green leather cover. That, too, proved blank. One by one he took the books down, certain that he would find at least one that had something written in it, but they were all, as far as he could see, the same.
Defeated, he placed one of the books beneath his arm and went outside, walking back down the passageway despondently.
Gehn had cleared a space on one of the workbenches and was bent over what looked like a wooden tray filled with a dozen or so large amber-colored inkpots. After a moment, he straightened, holding up one of the big, five-sided crystals to examine it, its rich amber color reflected in Gehn’s pallid face. Then, noticing Atrus standing there, he looked across.
“Well? Did you find any?”
“It’s no good,” Atrus said, steeling himself against his father’s anger. “There’s nothing in them.”
Putting the inkpot back in the case, Gehn came and took the book from Atrus. “Here, let me see that.”
He opened it and flicked through a number of pages, then looked up again. “This is fine. This is just what I was looking for. Are there others?”
Atrus went to shake his head, then nodded, utterly confused now. “But I thought…I thought you wanted ones with Ages in them. These…these are just books.”
Gehn laughed. “No, Atrus. These are not just books, these are Kortee-nea. Blank books, waiting to be written.”
Written…Atrus stared at his father.
Gehn unslung his knapsack and slid the book inside it, then looked to Atrus again. “How many books are there in the store?”
“Eight.”
“Good. Then bring them back in here. There is ink here,” he said, gesturing toward the case of amber-colored pots, “and pens, too, so we have everything we need. Come then. Quick now, boy. We can be home by supper!”
10
~~~~~~~~~~
“Atrus?”
Atrus looked up from his desk to where Gehn stood on the far side of the library.
“Yes, father?” he said, setting his pen aside, careful not to drip any ink across the copy paper.
“Come with me.”
Atrus stood uncertainly, then, skirting the dais at the center of the room, joined his father at the foot of the steps.
Two weeks had passed since the expedition into the city, and Atrus had begun to think that his father had forgotten his promise, but Gehn was smiling now.
“Are you ready, Atrus?”
“Ready, father?”
“To begin your work. It is time you learned how to Write.”
He followed Gehn up into a large, yet strangely claustrophobic room. At first he didn’t understand why, then he realized that it had been cut directly from the surrounding rock, which was why, perhaps, the ceiling was so low—a cave within a cave.
Books crowded the undecorated stone walls and were heaped up on the floor on all sides, while in the center of the room was a large desk, lit by a curiously shaped lamp—the only source of illumination in that dim and musty place. Facing that massive desk was another smaller one that had been cleared.
Gehn led him across, standing Atrus to one side while he sat in his chair and, reaching into one of the drawers, drew out a shallow metal tray on which was a large quill pen and a number of the amber-colored ink pots they had found on their first book hunt.
Setting the tray to one side, Gehn leaned across and pulled one of the big, leather-bound books toward him—its brown cover flecked with white—opening it to the first page.
It was blank.
He looked up at Atrus, his pale eyes fixing his son. “You have spent six weeks now, learning how to copy a number of basic D’ni words and have discovered just how complex and beautiful a script it is. But those characters also mean something, Atrus. Something much more than you’ve previously understood. And not just in this world. They were developed over tens of thousands of years for a specific task—that of describing Ages…of creating other worlds. They are not like the words you and I speak casually, nor can they be used so in the books. Writing—D’ni Writing—is not merely an Art, it is a science. The science of precise description.”
He turned, looking to the blank page. “When we begin, there is nothing. It is…uncreated. But as soon as the first word is written—just as soon as that first character is completed, the last stroke set down upon the page—then a link is set up to that newly created world, a bridge established.”
Atrus frowned. “But where does it lead, this bridge?”
“Anywhere,” Gehn answered, glancing at him as he removed the lid of the amber-colored crystal ink pot. “The D’ni called it Terokh Jeruth, the great tree of possibility.”
Atrus laughed. “It sounds like magic!”
“And so it is. But you and I are D’ni, and so I shall share a secret with you. We are not ordinary men, Atrus, we are gods!”
“Gods?” Atrus stared back at his father, bewildered.
“Yes,” Gehn went on fervently, his eyes lit with a passion Atrus had never seen in him before. “Common men but dream and wake. We, however, can live our dreams. Within limit—limits that the finest D’ni minds took great care to define over the millennia—we can create whatever we can visualize. We use words to conjure worlds.”
Atrus’s mouth had fallen open.
“Why, I could show you worlds so rich, so vivid in their detail, that they would make you want to burst with admiration for their makers. Worlds of such splendor and magnificence that they make this marvelous world of ours seem ordinary!”
Gehn laughed, then held the ink pot up for Atrus to see. Within the thick, yellow, glasslike walls of the container, was a fine black liquid.
“What do you see, Atrus?”
Atrus looked up, meeting his father’s eyes, momentarily startled by that echo of Anna’s customary words.
“Ink?”
“Yes…but not just any ink. It has special powers that ordinary ink does not possess. So, too, with the pages of the book. They are made of a special paper, the formula for which was kept secret by the Guild.”
“And the pen?” Atrus asked, pointing to it. “Is that special, too?”
Gehn smiled. “No. The pen is but a pen. However, if anyone else tried to do what we are about to do—anyone, that is, without D’ni blood—then they would fail. It would be impossible.”
Turning to face the page, Gehn set the ink pot down, then, dipping the metallic tip of the quill into it, lifted the pen above the page and began to write.
Slowly a D’ni character—the word “island,” Atrus noted—began to form, its intense blackness burned almost into the pure white surface by the pen.
Gehn wrote another dozen characters onto the page, then lifted the pen and looked to Atrus.
“Is it done?” Atrus asked, surprised that there had not been more. He had expected fireworks or the heavens to open. “Have you made a new Age?”
Gehn laughed. “It exists, yes…but as yet it is very crude. It takes a great deal of work to create an Age. There are special formulas you have to follow, precise laws to obey. As I said, it is not simply an Art, it is a science—the science of precise description.”
He gestured toward the open book. “As yet, I have merely sketched out the most basic elements of my new world. Ahead lies an immense amount of hard work. Every aspect of the Age must be described, each new element
fitted in. But that is not all.”
Reaching across, Gehn took another, much smaller book from a pile at the side and held it out to Atrus. “Once the Age is complete, one must always—always—make a Linking Book.”
Atrus took the small book and opened it, noting at once how few pages were in it. All of them were blank.
“Yes,” Gehn continued. “Whenever you travel to a newly written Age you must always carry a Linking Book with you. If you did not, you would be trapped there, without any way of traveling back.”
Atrus looked back at his father, wide-eyed. “But what’s actually in one of these Linking Books?”
Gehn took the book back. “Each Linking Book refers to one of the larger descriptive books—to one specific book. You might say that it contains the essence of the larger book—certain phrases and words that fuses it to that book and no other. But that is not all. For a Linking Book to work, it must also include an accurate description of the place one wishes to link to on that particular Age, which is recorded by writing a special D’ni symbol, a Garo-hertee. Yes, and a Linking Book must be written in the Age and location it is meant to link to. And so a Linking Book is, in a sense, a working substitute for a descriptive book.”
Atrus thought a moment, then. “And can there be only one Linking Book for each descriptive book?”
“Not at all,” Gehn answered, delighted by his son’s understanding. Then, setting the slender book back on the pile, he added, “You can make as many Linking Books as you want. But you must always make at least one. That is the first rule. One you must not forget.”
Atrus nodded, then, “But what if you change the Age? What if you decide to write more in the descriptive book? Would the Linking Book cease to work?”
“No. If the descriptive book is changed, then all Linking Books associated with it will link to the changed world.”
Atrus’s eyes lit, imagining it, only now realizing just how complex and powerful this Writing was. “It sounds…astonishing!”
“Yes,” Gehn said, his eyes looking back at Atrus, godlike and wise beyond all human years. “Oh, it is, Atrus. It is.”
§
That night, Atrus decided he would speak to his father, to remind him that it was almost time for them to go back and visit Anna.
Encouraged by Gehn’s high spirits over supper, Atrus waited until he had lit his pipe and settled back in his chair in the corner of the kitchen before he broached the subject.
“Father?”
Gehn stretched his legs and stared at his boots, the gently-glowing pipe cradled in his lap. “Yes?”
“When are we going back?”
Gehn looked to him languidly. “Back? Back where?”
“To the cleft.”
Surprisingly, Gehn laughed. “There? You want to go back there?”
“Yes,” Atrus said quietly. “You said…”
“I said I would try. I said…”
Gehn sat up and, setting the pipe aside, leaned toward Atrus. “I said that to keep your grandmother quiet. I never meant…” He shrugged, then started again. “Look, Atrus, it would take us the best part of four or five days to get there and another three or four to return here. And for what?”
“Well, couldn’t you write a book to the cleft and bring her here?”
And how would you set about writing such a book? This world has already been created.”
“Then can’t you write a Linking Book?”
Atrus stopped, realizing that, of course, he couldn’t. He would have to be at the cleft in order to write that Linking Book.
Gehn watched him, seeing that he understood, then spoke softly. “I should, perhaps, have said you cannot link to another location in the Age you are in. It is impossible.”
Atrus was silent a moment, then. “But you told me you would take me back.”
“Oh, Atrus, grow up! There’s nothing there.”
Atrus looked down. “But you promised. You said…”
Gehn stood. “I simply do not have the time, and even if I did, I would scarcely waste it going there. The place is a pit, Atrus. Literally so. Besides, that woman is poisonous. Don’t you understand that yet? I had to take you away from there.”
“You’re wrong,” Atrus said quietly.
But Gehn simply shook his head and pointed at the chair. “Sit down. I shall tell you a story. Then you can tell me if I am wrong or not.”
Atrus sat, angry still and resentful, refusing to meet his father’s eyes.
“Close to thirty years ago, when I was but a child of four, there was a war. A young man named Veovis started it. He was the son of a nobleman, and the sole heir to a powerful estate. In time he would have become one of the ruling Council, a lawmaker. But he was not content with what he had, nor with the promise of what would be. Veovis broke D’ni law. He abused his privileged position.”
“In what way?”
“His crimes were heinous, unmentionable. He was a cancer that needed to be cut from the D’ni culture. Eventually he was caught and, despite his father’s intercession, he was tried before the Five Lords. For more than twenty days witnesses gave evidence. Finally, the Five gave their decision. Veovis was to be imprisoned. To be kept in a place from which he would never escape. But before the decision of the Five could be implemented, several of Veovis’s young friends helped him to flee D’ni.
“For six months, nothing was heard of Veovis, and it was assumed that the problem had taken care of itself. But then rumors began to circulate. Rumors that Veovis had taken a new name and was to be found in the drinking houses of the lower city, stirring up discontent against the ruling faction.
“At first, nothing was done. Rumors were only rumors, it was argued. But then a number of incidents occurred. A stabbing of a senior official in one of the guilds. A bomb in one of the main ink works. The desecration of a book.”
Atrus frowned, not understanding, but his father was staring off into the distance, caught up in his recollections.
“After this last incident, a Council meeting was called. At last, they decided to take action. But already it was too late. Veovis had indeed been staying in the lower city. Furthermore, he had been fermenting trouble among the lower classes. What none of the ruling Council could have known, however, was just how deep that discontent ran, nor how raw a nerve Veovis had touched. Only two days after the Council met, serious rioting broke out in one of the lower city districts. Before curfew that evening, the whole of the lower city was in chaos as the mob roamed the streets, maiming or killing whoever dared to stand against them.”
Gehn stopped, turning to face Atrus.
“As I said, I was but a child at the time. I was staying in one of the great Guild houses in the upper precincts. My home was several miles away, on a great bluff of rock that I could see from one of the windows in the refectory. I remember standing there all that afternoon, as the roar of the mob and the awful cries of the dying came up to us from below, and wondering if it was the end. It was a terrible time, made worse by my fears for my own family. We were safe in the Guild houses, of course. At the first sign of trouble, the Council had barred the gates to the upper city and trebled the guard. But many on the outlying estates died that day, victims of their own servants—men and women they had trusted all their lives.
“It was fully six weeks before the last of the rebels was subdued and Veovis himself captured, trying to make his escape through the lower tunnels.”
“This time, when the Five met, their decision was unanimous. Veovis was to die. He was to be executed, there on the steps of the Great Library.”
Gehn looked away, clearly pained by what came next, then spoke again. “It was a wise decision. Yet before it could be sealed and passed as law, one final witness stepped forward, begging their leave to speak out on the young man’s behalf.”
Ti’ana, Atrus thought, recalling what Anna had told him.
Gehn slowed once more, staring out past Atrus. “That witness was a woman, Ti’ana.”
&nb
sp; Atrus opened his mouth, aching to finish the tale—to show his father what he knew—but Gehn seemed not to be aware of him. He spoke on, in the grip of the tale; a sudden bitterness in his voice.
“Ti’ana was much respected by the Five and so they let her speak. In her view, the danger had passed. Veovis had done his worst and D’ni had survived. Furthermore, she argued, if it had not been Veovis, some other rabble-rouser would have stirred the mob to action, for the discontent had not been that of a single man, but of the whole class. In the circumstances, she said, her eloquence swaying those venerable lords, should not the Council’s original decision be carried out?”
Coming to the bottom of the steps, Gehn stepped out onto the second ledge and, looking to his son, sighed deeply. “And so it was done, Atrus. Veovis was placed inside his prison. The prison from which he could not escape.”
Gehn paused, his eyes on Atrus. “It was three days later when it happened. They had checked on him, of course, morning and evening, but on the evening of that third day, the guard who was sent did not return. Two more were sent, and when they returned, it was with the news that the prison was empty. There was no sign of either Veovis or the guard.
“They should have known that something was seriously wrong, but they had not learned their lessons. And when Veovis did not reappear, they assumed that all was well, that he had fled—who knew where?—and would not be seen again. But Veovis was a vengeful young man who had seen his hopes dashed twice in the space of a year. Only a fool would think he’d simply go away and lick his wounds. Only a fool…”
Atrus blinked, surprised by the sudden anger in his father’s voice.
“And so it was that Veovis did return. And this time it was not in the company of an unwashed and uncontrollable rabble, but at the head of a small but well-trained force of fanatics who had but one thing in their minds: to destroy D’ni. Ti’ana was wrong, you see. The danger had not passed, nor had Veovis done his worst.”
“But she was not to know, surely?”
The Myst Reader Page 12