The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  §

  The old man looked across at Anna, staring at her through half-lidded eyes, then, pulling his cloak about him, he answered her.

  “I do not know,” he said, shaking his head sadly. “I really do not know. Even if we find something…”

  “They will listen. They have to listen.”

  Kedri, Master of the Guild of Legislators, lifted his shoulders in a shrug. Then, with a sad smile, “All right. I shall try my best, young Ah-na. For you, and for my dear friend Aitrus.”

  He sat there for a long time after she had gone, staring straight ahead, as if in a trance. It was thus that his assistant, Haran, found him.

  “Master? Are you all right?”

  Kedri slowly lifted his head, his eyes focusing on the young man. “What? Oh, forgive me, Haran. I was far away. Remembering.”

  Haran smiled and bowed his head. “I just came to say that the new intake of cadets is here. A dozen keen young students, fresh from the academy. What shall I do with them?”

  Normally, Kedri would have found them some anodyne assignment—an exercise in dust-dry law, overseen by some bored assistant or other—but the arrival of this new intake coincided perfectly with his need.

  If he was to search back through the records, he would need help—and what better help than a dozen keen young men, anxious to impress him? At the same time, he needed to be discreet. If word of his activities got back to the Council, who knew what fuss might ensue, particularly if young Lord Veovis got wind of it? By assigning these cadets to the Guild Age of Gadar—to search among the legal records stored in the Great Library there—he could split two rocks with a single blow, as the old saying went.

  “Take them to the Book Room,” he said. “I’ll address them there. I have a task for them.”

  Haran stared back at him a moment, surprised, then, recollecting himself, he bowed low and quickly hurried away.

  It was strange that the girl, Ah-na, had come to him this morning, for only the evening before he had dreamt of the time he had spent with the Surveyors thirty years ago. It was then that he had first come to know young Aitrus. Aitrus had been assigned to him—to show him how things worked and answer his every query. They had got on well from the start and had been friends ever since.

  As far as Ah-na was concerned, he had met her only once before, when Aitrus brought her to his house, but he had liked her instantly, and saw at once why Aitrus was fascinated by her. She had a sharp intelligence and an inquisitive mind that were the match of any guildsman. It had crossed his mind at once that, had she been D’ni, she would have made young Aitrus the perfect bride.

  Even so, it surprised him still that she had come and not Aitrus, for he had half-expected Aitrus to pay him a call.

  Kedri sat back, stretching his neck muscles and then turning his head from side to side, trying to relieve the tension he was feeling.

  What he had agreed to do would not make him a popular man in certain circles, yet it had been a simple choice: to help his young friend Aitrus or abandon him.

  Kedri sighed heavily. The Great Library of legislation on Gadar contained a mass of information stretching back over six thousand years—the handwritten minutes of countless Council meetings and hearings, of guild committees and tribunals, not to speak of the endless shelves of private communications between Guild Masters. It would be like digging for one specific tiny crystal in the middle of a mountain.

  And he had two weeks and a dozen keen young men to do it.

  §

  Lord Eneah sat at his desk. Aitrus’s cloak of office lay folded on the desk before him. It had come that morning, along with that of Aitrus’s father, Kahlis. Eneah had dealt with Kahlis, sending the cloak back to the Grand Master of the Surveyors. Whatever the rights or wrongs of the issue, Kahlis was clearly not to blame. But Aitrus’s conduct was a different matter entirely.

  It was fairly simple, really. Either he accepted Aitrus’s resignation now and ended the rumors and speculation, or her left matters to the Guild of Surveyors, who, so he understood, had already instigated investigations into the conduct of their representative.

  Whatever happened now, the damage was already done. The vote in Council had betrayed the mood of the guilds. In teaching the outsider D’ni, and in showing her an Age, Aitrus had not merely exceeded his brief, but had shown poor judgment. Some even claimed that he had been bewitched by the young girl and had lost his senses, but Eneah doubted that. Those who said that did not know Aitrus.

  Yet Aitrus had been injudicious.

  Eneah straightened slightly. He had not slept at all last night and every joint ached as if it had been dipped in hot oil, but that was not unusual. These days he lived in constant pain.

  With a small, regretful sigh, he drew a sheet of paper to him and, taking a quill pen from the inkstand, quickly wrote an acceptance letter then signed his name. Once the remaining Lords had set their names to it, the letter would be sealed and incorporated into the public record. In the meantime, a notice would be posted throughout D’ni, advising the citizens of this news.

  And so ended a promising career.

  Eneah reached across and rang his summons bell. At once a secretary appeared at the door.

  “Take this to Lord R’hira at once.

  §

  Anna stood before the three of them.

  “So you wish to leave?” Kahlis asked.

  “No,” she answered. “You have all been kind to me. Yet I feel I ought to. I have brought so much trouble to this household.”

  “The choice was mine,” Aitrus said. “If anyone should leave, it should be me.”

  “That would be wrong,” Anna said. “Besides, I shall be comfortable enough at Lord Eneah’s mansion.”

  “Nonsense!” Tasera said, speaking for the first time since Anna had summoned them to this meeting. “I will not hear of it! Lord Eneah is an old man! No. You will stay here!”

  Anna stared at Tasera, astonished. She had thought Tasera most of all would have wanted her gone. Since the Council’s meeting she had been practically ostracized. Yet Tasera seemed by far the most indignant of the three.

  “Then it is settled,” Kahlis said, smiling proudly at his wife, “Ah-na stays here, as family.”

  §

  It was an ancient book, great whorls of faded color dotting the pale gray of its musty leather cover like dusty jewels. Looking down at it, Guild Master Kedri found himself smiling. Until yesterday it had remained unread upon its shelf for close on nineteen hundred years.

  Kedri looked up at Anna, who sat to one side of the desk, then addressed the young man. “Forgive me, Guildsman, but how exactly did you find this? It is not as if this lay directly on the path of our main search.”

  The young man bowed his head nervously, then spoke. “It was something you said, Master Kedri. Last night, at supper. You know, about trying to identify possible factors in the search.”

  “Go on.”

  “It got me thinking, Master, asking myself just what kind of person might be granted access to an Age. That is, what kind of non-D’ni person, naturally.”

  “And?”

  “Well…my first thought was that such a person would have to have the ear of someone important—someone very important, indeed, perhaps even one of the Five. And so I went to the list of clerks…”

  “Clerks?”

  “To the Five.”

  “Ah…and what did that give you?”

  The young man smiled. “Six names.”

  Already Kedri was ahead of him. “Names that were not D’ni, I presume.”

  “Yes, Master. There was a time when some of the more talented natives—from Guild Ages and the like—were permitted to come here, into D’ni itself.”

  Kedri raised an eyebrow. “Now that I did not know.”

  “No, Master, for it was a very long time ago, very shortly after the Council was first set up in its present form, not long after the Age of Kings.”

  “I see. And these clerks…were they
restricted to D’ni, or were they granted access to other Ages?”

  The guildsman nodded at the book before Kedri. “I have marked the relevant passages, Master. I am sure there are further entries in the other books.”

  There was a small pile of books on the floor behind the young guildsman.

  Anna felt a tingle of excitement pass through her. She stood and, crouching, lifted one of the books and opened it, sniffing in the scent of great age as it wafted up to her off the page.

  It was an old script, different in several ways from its modern counterpart, yet easily decipherable. In several places the ink had faded almost to nothing, yet the meaning of the text was quite clear.

  Anna looked across at Kedri and nodded, a feeling of deep satisfaction flooding her at that moment.

  “It is not too old then, Master?” the young guildsman asked. “I thought, perhaps, that its age might possibly invalidate it.”

  “A precedent is a precedent,” Kedri said, looking to Anna, then reading the passage once again. “We shall find further sources to verify this, no doubt—and further instances, I warrant.”

  He closed the book, then nodded. “You have done well, guildsman.”

  “Thank you, Master,” the young man answered, bowing low, a great beam of a smile on his face.

  “Thank you, Guildsman…”

  “Neferus, Master. Guildsman Neferus.”

  §

  What had taken the full vote of the Council to decide, took but a single signature to revoke.

  As Lord Eneah pushed the document away, he felt a great weight slip from him. He was glad Master Kedri had found what he had found, for he had never felt quite at ease with the decision, yet looking up, he saw in his mind the closed face of Lord Rakeri, and knew that all the Five were not as pleased as he.

  The Books would be returned to Master Kahlis, and Ah-na would be free to travel in them. Yet all was not quite as it had been. Aitrus still refused to take up his vacated role as representative of the Guild of Surveyors. He said he had had enough of votes and meetings, and maybe he was right. And as for Veovis…

  Eneah dropped the pen back into the inkstand and leaned back, weary now that it was all over.

  Young Veovis had called on him earlier that day, determined to have his say. He had not been rude, nor had he challenged in any way the validity of Master Kedri’s discoveries, yet it was clear that he resented the Legislator’s intrusion in Council matters, and was dead set against allowing Ah-na entry into any D’ni Age. He had ended by begging Lord Eneah to set the ancient precedent aside and endorse the Council’s decision, but Eneah had told him he could not do that.

  He law was the law, after all. Precedent was precedent. It was the D’ni way and had been for a thousand generations.

  And so Veovis had left, under a cloud, angry and resentful, and who knew what trouble would come of that?

  But so it is, Eneah thought, looking about him at the empty study. No single man, however great or powerful, is more important than D’ni.

  He smiled, knowing that soon he would be little more than a name, another statue in the Great Hall of the Lords.

  “So it is,” he said quietly. “And so it must be. Until the end of time.”

  And with that he stood, walked across the room and out, moving slowly, silently, like a shadow on the rock.

  PART FOUR: GEMEDET

  Anna waited, crouched just in front of Aitrus in the narrow tunnel, looking out into the bottom of the well. Just below her, the surface of the tiny, circular pool was black. Slowly, very slowly, sunlight crept down the smooth, black wall facing her, a pure light, almost unreal it seemed so bright, each separate shaft a solid, shining bar in that penumbral darkness.

  It was cool and silent, yet overhead, far above the surface, the sun approached its zenith.

  “Wait…” Aitrus said softly. “Just a moment longer.”

  The sunlight touched the still, curved edge of the water. A moment later the water’s depths were breached, the straight beam bent, refracted by the clear liquid.

  Anna gasped. It was beautiful. The well had a solid wooden lid, but Aitrus had cut an intricate design into the wood. As the sun climbed directly above the well, so each part of that design was slowly etched upon the dark circle of the pool, until the whole of it could be seen, burning like shafts of brilliant fire in the cool, translucent depths of the water.

  The D’ni word Shorah. “Peace.”

  Anna smiled and turned to look at Aitrus, seeing how the word was reflected in the black centers of his pupils.

  “So that’s what you were doing,” she said quietly. “I wondered.”

  She turned back, knowing, without needing to be told, that its beauty was transient, would be gone just as soon as the sun moved from its zenith and the sunlight climbed the wall again.

  “I made it for you,” he said.

  I know, she thought. Aloud, she said, “Thank you. It’s beautiful.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  They watched, together in the silence, until, with a final, glittering wink, the brightness in the pool was gone.

  Anna stared into the blackness and sighed.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked, after a moment.

  “I was thinking of my father.”

  “Ah…” He was silent a long while, then, “Come. Let’s go back up.”

  Anna turned and followed, half-crouched as she walked along the tiny tunnel, then straightening to climb the twisting flight of steps that had been cut from the rock. Aitrus had worked weeks on this. And all for that one small instant of magic.

  A tiny shiver passed through her. She watched him climb the steps ahead of her, noticing how neatly his hair was clipped at his neck, how strong his back and arms were, how broad his shoulders, and realized just how familiar he had become these last few years.

  As familiar almost as this Age they had slowly built together.

  Stepping out into the sunlight beside Aitrus, Anna smiled. It was so green. All she could see was green. Forest and grasslands, wood and plain. Why, even the slow, meandering rivers were green with trailing weed.

  Only the sky was blue. A deep, water-heavy blue. In the distance a great raft of huge white clouds drifted slowly from right to left, their movement almost imperceptible, casting deep shadows on the hills and valleys below.

  It had all seemed strange at first, after the desert landscape she had known all her life. So strange, that she had spent hours simply staring at the clouds, fascinated by them.

  She looked to Aitrus. He was wearing his D’ni glasses now, to protect his eyes against the glare of the sun. They all wore them when not in D’ni. Only she did not have to.

  “We should go north next,” she said. “To the mountains. I could map that area beyond the lake.”

  Aitrus smiled. “Perhaps. Or maybe that long valley to the northeast of here.”

  She looked down, smiling, knowing exactly why he was interested in that area. They had passed through it several weeks ago on their way back from the peninsula and had noticed signs of long-dormant volcanic activity. She had seen the tiny gleam of interest in his eyes.

  “If you want.”

  They walked on, talking as they went, continuing the discussion they had begun earlier that day. Wherever they went, they talked, making observations on the physical signs of this world, and debating which small changes to the words and phrasing might have caused this effect or that.

  Sometimes Aitrus would stop, crouch down with the notepad balanced on his knee, and would write down something he or she had said, wanting to capture it, ready to enter it in the book of commentary they had begun six months back. Already they had filled half the great ledger with their observations, and each day they added to it, with words and maps and drawings.

  A long slope of the falls was ever-present, a counterpoint to the exotic, echoing cries of birds from the wood that climbed the steep slope behind them. To the north were mountains, to the south the great ocean.

>   It was a beautiful place.

  Aitrus’s tent was to the left of the camp, its long frame of green canvas blending with the background. A smaller, circular tent, its canvas a vivid yellow, stood just beside and was used for stores. Until a week ago there had been a third tent, the twin of Aitrus’s, but now that the cabin was habitable, Anna had moved in. It was not finished yet—Aitrus had yet to cut and fit the wooden floor—but the roof was on and it was dry. Beside Anna’s section, which was screened off, Aitrus had set up a temporary lab, which they planned to use until they had built a proper, permanent laboratory a little way farther up the slope.

  They walked across. A trestle table stood just outside Aitrus’s tent, in the shadow of the canvas awning. On top of it, its corners held down by tiny copper weights, was the map Anna had been working on earlier, a clear thin cover of D’ni polymer laid over it in case of rain.

  The map was remarkably detailed, a color key on the right-hand side of the sheet making sense of the intricate pattern of colors on the map itself. Areas of the sheet were blank, where they had not yet surveyed the land, but where they had, Anna had provided a vivid guide to it—one that not only made sense of its essential topography but also gave a clue to the types of soil and thus vegetation that overlay the deeper rock formations. It was all, she said, using one of her father’s favorite terms, “a question of edaphology.”

  Maybe it was because she was from the surface, but her grasp of how the kind of rock affected the visible features of the land was far more refined than his almost instinctive. Often she did not have to analyze a rock sample but knew it by its feel, its color and its texture. His instinct was for the pressures and stresses within the rock that provided what one saw with its underlying structure.

  At first it had astonished Aitrus that she had known so much of rocks and minerals and the complex art of mapping the rock, and even when he learned more of her father and how she had helped him, he was still amazed that she had grasped quite so much in so brief a time. Yet as the weeks went on, his surprise had turned to delight, knowing that here at last was someone with whom he might share his lifelong fascination with the rock.