The Myst Reader

by Robyn Miller

  Seeing her, Ro’Jadre stood and came to the rail, looking across to where she stood. “Well done, young Marrim,” he called. “That was quick indeed. Why, I have known guests lost in there for days on end.”

  Marrim blinked, wondering if she was being ribbed, then asked, “And what would happen to them?”

  “Oh, we would send someone in to bring them out. Eventually. But do not fear, Marrim, we would not have let you languish in there too long. Nor any of your party.” He smiled, gesturing for her to come across the bridge. “But tell me, how did you manage to work it out?”

  ATRUS, WHO HAD BEEN LAST TO ENTER THE maze, was the second to emerge, less than five minutes after Marrim.

  Stepping into the first room, he had had no real expectations of the experience. A maze was, after all, only a maze. Yet as the rooms had begun to turn and he had got deeper in, he had begun to enjoy it, until, at the last, he had found a real delight in working out the puzzle.

  It had been like tunneling through the rock, and after a moment all manner of memories had come flooding back and he had seen his father’s face clearly for the first time in many years.

  A maze of moving rooms. Ingenious …

  He had said the word aloud, unaware that he had done so.

  “I am glad you think so,” Ro’Jadre said, coming across the bridge toward him. “I was telling Marrim. It is never the same twice. For each traveler, the maze is entirely different.”

  Atrus frowned. “How, then, is it done?”

  “Oh, the rules of manipulation were set centuries ago. We but perfect an ancient art. But, sad to say, the days of the great maze-makers are long past. There has not been an original new maze for many years. At least, none I have heard of.”

  “And those rules … they determine which rooms move and which do not?”

  “That is so. Though not all the rooms can move. Like any building, the maze must have structural integrity. But within that rigid framework there is a great deal of flexibility. More than you can possibly imagine. If it were not so, then the maze would soon lose its power to fascinate.”

  “Do you ever play the maze yourself, Ro’Jadre?”

  Ro’Jadre smiled. “Very seldom these days. I am not as sprightly as I was. But the young people are very fond of it, particularly when the choosing time is shortened.”

  “Shortened?”

  “To ten, sometimes even five seconds.”

  Atrus nodded, imagining it. To have to negotiate the maze under such circumstances—to have to run and clamber and slide like a hunted animal, afraid of being trapped—that would be a game of considerable skill, especially when one also had to attempt to keep the ever-changing map of the maze in one’s mind at all times.

  It was ten minutes before Catherine emerged. Another fifteen and Esel stumbled from the door, looking flustered, his dark eyebrows formed into a heavy frown. Last to appear, almost two hours after Marrim had first emerged, was Oma, who had a dazed and slightly startled look about him.

  “Everything was fine until the rooms started moving,” he said as he took the last vacant chair. “After that …” He shook his head.

  “And yet none of you were trapped, and none took more than two and a half hours,” Ro’Jadre said. “That is impressive, particularly when none of you had ever played the game before.”

  Marrim leaned across, whispering something to Atrus. Atrus considered a moment, then nodded.

  “Ro’Jadre,” he said. “My young companion would like to run the maze again.”

  “Again?”

  “Yes, but this time with a ten-second choosing time.”

  Ro’Jadre laughed. “Why, certainly. But why not add some spice to the entertainment? Why not make the game a race this time? Young Marrim against one of our young people.”

  The governor turned, looking about him, his eyes falling on the lounging figure of Eedrah.

  “Eedrah Ro’Jethhe … will you not take up the challenge?”

  Eedrah, who had until that moment been picking at a bowl of fruit in a desultory fashion, now looked up, startled by Ro’Jadre’s words. He looked about him, as if trying to figure out some way of escaping the invitation, then, somewhat reluctantly, he nodded.

  “Good,” Ro’Jadre said, a satisfied smile lighting his lips. “If the two young people would prepare themselves.”

  As Eedrah and Marrim stood, Eedrah glanced across at her—a strangely awkward look. “Governor Ro’Jadre,” he said, “can we not make it fifteen seconds? I fear our guest might find it … overstrenuous.”

  Ro’Jadre looked to Marrim and raised an eyebrow, but Marrim said nothing.

  “Twelve seconds,” Ro’Jadre said decisively. He clapped his hands and at once two stewards appeared at his side. “Tuure,” he said, addressing one of them, “escort the young people to the maze.”

  Then, turning back, he looked to Atrus and smiled. “And afterward I shall talk to you of the king, and of what you might expect when you reach the capital.”

  TWICE SHE STEPPED INTO A ROOM TO FIND Eedrah there already. Twice he stared back at her, startled, then moved on.

  Relentlessly, Marrim moved from room to room, as floors turned and the great maze fitted itself into new configurations. And all the while, in her head, she counted. Counted the seconds. Counted how many forward or back, up or down she was. For the secret, she understood now, was mathematical—was pluses and minuses. It was no good thinking in terms of direction. One had to strip that away and think pure numbers, otherwise you were lost.

  What she hadn’t expected, however, were the pure physical demands of that twelve-second limit. It gave you barely enough time to look about a room and choose, let alone climb up—if climbing up was what you wished to do. But suddenly, almost before she expected it, she was outside again, standing there in the great dome, the water gardens all about her.

  “Well done …”

  She turned, to find Eedrah there behind her. “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s because I wasn’t there. Until now.”

  “Then I won?”

  Eedrah nodded, but there was a strange sorrow in his face that she did not understand.

  “Well done!” Ro’Jadre boomed out from where he stood at the rail, Atrus beside him. “You have a real talent for it, Marrim!”

  Marrim inclined her head, accepting the governor’s praise, but she was more concerned with Eedrah.

  “Eedrah?” she asked quietly. But Eedrah simply walked away, hurrying across the bridge.

  “THERE, ATRUS,” RO’JADRE SAID, HANDING Atrus the head-and-shoulders portrait. “That is Ro’Eh Ro’Dan, king of Terahnee.”

  Atrus studied the painting, conscious of Catherine standing at his shoulder, then nodded.

  Ro’Eh Ro’Dan was a young, immensely handsome man with refined facial features and pleasant, intelligent eyes. Looking at that face, staring into those clear, trustworthy eyes, Atrus found himself convinced that he should link his own people’s fate with the fate of these people.

  He looked up, his eyes taking in the luxuriousness of his surroundings. Beside this, D’ni was as nothing. All of his schemes to rebuild D’ni seemed futile now that he had seen Terahnee.

  Yet as he handed back the portrait, Atrus kept his thoughts much to himself. “He looks a fine man,” he said.

  “And young,” Ro’Jadre said, taking his turn to stare at the painting. “He is not yet one hundred, but strong, and a good writer, so it is said.”

  “A writer?” Yet that fact did not surprise Atrus. He looked to Catherine and saw at once that she was watching him, an understanding in her eyes. “Then we shall have much to talk about.”

  Ro’Jadre smiled, then set the portrait down. “Oh, of that I have no doubt. No doubt at all.”

  PART FIVE

  DISCORDANT TIME. THE SMALLEST OF

  ENEMIES UN-MANS THEM ALL.

  HIDDEN WITHIN THE HIDDEN.

  A BREATH AND THEN DARKNESS.

  —FROM THE KOROKH
JIMAH, VV. 4302–3

  FROM WHERE HE SAT IN THE STERN OF THE Governor’s boat, Atrus looked out across a land of unending luxury; of glades and winding streams, of magical conceits and beautiful falls of floral color. And greenness. Everywhere one looked, the lush green perfection of growing things.

  The silken awning above him rustled gently in the breeze, and for a moment he found himself almost dozing in the warm, late afternoon air. A bird called across the meadows, a piping call, while the boat glided on as in a dream.

  It was the end of their third day in Terahnee, and the city now dominated the skyline ahead of them, the sun slowly setting behind its towering walls. In an hour or less they would stop for the night, at the house of another landowner—this one a friend of Ro’Jethhe’s named Tanaren Ro’Tanaren.

  For this once there would be no feast, no entertainment, and Atrus for one was pleased at that. They had stopped earlier, in a glade, to eat and drink—a pleasant wine that even Atrus had sampled. Which was why now he felt so relaxed.

  And happy.

  The thought made him stir and wake. He looked about him at the little group in the boat and realized that each of them, like he, was smiling, each one in his or her own little reverie, relaxed after being tense for so long.

  And with that thought came another. That they had worked so hard, so long that they deserved this tiny break from their labors; deserved this drifting, effortless journey with its unceasing delights. Things had been hard back in D’ni, there was no mistaking that. But this …

  He had not even dared to dream that anything like this existed.

  Catherine, sensing his sudden wakefulness, turned her head to him and quietly spoke. “Atrus?”

  But there was nothing that he wished to say. Not now. Last night he had slept the sleep of children—that deep, untroubled sleep that rarely comes when one is older. And this morning he had awakened refreshed in spirit and confirmed in what he had decided the night before—to petition the king of Terahnee and bring his people through, to settle here in this wonderful place.

  This place of eternal summers.

  Catherine reached out and took his hand, holding it lightly as she looked out across the beauty of the surrounding land.

  No, he did not even have to ask her. He could see it in her face. In all their faces. Why have D’ni when they could have this? And surely there must be space for them here in this endless, rolling landscape?

  He sighed, content to let the thought drift from him, like a leaf on a stream.

  Simply to be here was enough. And, yawning, Atrus stretched, his body totally relaxed for the first time in so long he could not recall when he had last felt like this.

  TANAREN RO’TANAREN TURNED OUT TO BE A genial, pleasant man. As they stepped down from the boat he greeted them warmly, embracing each of them in turn before leading them inside.

  Imposing as it was, Ro’Tanaren’s house had a totally different feel to it than those they had previously visited. It was somehow brighter, airier, such that even as the evening descended, the soft lighting in the house made it seem that day lingered slightly longer there.

  As ever, Ro’Tanaren was the very model of a host, and after a brief exchange about their journey, they were ushered to their rooms to rest.

  “We can talk later,” Ro’Tanaren said, smiling. “Now rest. You have traveled far today.”

  Alone in their rooms, Atrus wondered if he should broach the subject of bringing the survivors over from D’ni with Catherine, but it was she who spoke first. She was standing by the open window, looking out across the stepped lawns.

  “Have you noticed,” she said, “how in all our time here we have never seen a kitchen? Never seen a single plate brought or cleared away. It’s as if the stewards supervise the air.”

  Atrus laughed quietly. “To be perfectly honest, Catherine, I hadn’t really thought about it. But no. I guess it is their way.”

  “Etiquette, you mean?”

  He nodded, then went across to her. “I wanted to ask you something.”

  She turned, meeting his eyes, then smiled. “You want to bring the D’ni here, right?”

  “And those from Averone.”

  That surprised her. She thought for a moment, then gave a little nod. “I see. You want to close the link.”

  “Exactly.”

  Catherine took a long, slow breath. “I agree.”

  “We cannot let what happened to D’ni happen here,” he went on. “You’ve seen this place. To think of it suffering the same fate. No. We must throw in our lot with these people. I will petition Ro’Eh Ro’Dan when I see him.”

  “And if the Averonese do not wish to come?”

  “Then they can stay. But the Book must be destroyed, the Temple sealed.”

  THEY JOURNEYED ON INTO THE HEART OF TERAHNEE, and everyday the city grew, the sheer scale of that gargantuan edifice finally imposing itself upon Atrus’s imagination, making him understand that what he had glimpsed from the plateau was not, after all, the capital, but merely one of its outlying districts, for beyond that great wall of buildings another larger wall seemed to climb to the heavens, such that the whole of D’ni could have been placed in a tiny hole in its side. It was like a mountain, only this mountain had been built, stone upon stone, so Eedrah said. And the histories, which gave clue to little else, at least confirmed that much. A thousand years of building had produced that magnificent pile.

  The nearer they came to it, the grander everything seemed to be. The locks that raised them up or lowered them down were bigger, the canal itself much broader. Fields gave way to parks. Great houses lay on every side of them now, some so impressive that they seemed the palaces of kings. Yet these were ordinary citizens. Boats were moored alongside the canal now, and sometimes partying groups of people would hail them and call out greetings.

  Finally, in the midst of that great sprawl of wondrous buildings, they came to a junction of several waterways and entered a massive curving channel—the King’s Cut, they were told it was called—which carved its deep blue furrow through broad avenues of beautiful mansions lined with the most extraordinary trees they had yet seen in all of Terahnee, the night-black scented leaves drifting down on them as they passed, while ahead of them the city climbed to the sky.

  Atrus stared wide-eyed, his neck craned back, and still it seemed he could not see the top. He turned, looking to Eedrah and asked, “How do we get up there? Or is that the way we are going?”

  “That is indeed our way,” Eedrah said, “and the boat will take us there.” He grinned. “Have patience, Atrus, and you will see.”

  The walls of the channel grew slowly higher and higher on both sides, with here and there a massive wooden gate set deep into the smooth-carved stone.

  Coming around the next turn, Atrus noticed a faint rippling up ahead, a sharp line of turbulence drawn straight across the placid watercourse, like a weir. As they passed over it, Atrus turned to look, even as a wall pushed up out of the water behind them, closing off the channel.

  At once they were lifted up on a great tide of water, the boat’s pace accelerating with the rush of the incoming water, then slowing as the walls began to grow once more to either side.

  Time and again this happened. Time and again they were lifted and the boat rushed forward. And then, suddenly, the walls dropped away and they were out in the open, high up on a massive aqueduct, the avenues of the capital spread out below them like a map, while directly ahead, across an artificial chasm at least a mile wide, was the king’s palace, its towering ramparts piercing the blue sky.

  Seeing it, Atrus felt in awe of the power that had built this place; in awe of the men who had planned and carried out such a mighty scheme. Nor was it the sheer bulk of the edifice that took the breath, it was the delicate working of the stone, the careful balance between size and elegance. It had a natural, flowing look, yet nothing in nature could have made so beautiful a structure.

  Atrus glanced across and saw that Eedrah, too, was a
wed—saw by his parted lips, his astonished eyes, that this son of Terahnee had never, until that moment, guessed at the splendor at the center of it all.

  Slowly they drifted toward that massive work of stone, then passed into its shadow, the towering entrance arch swallowing up their tiny craft.

  They passed inside, into a cavernous hall, the floor a single sapphire pool, the ceiling echoing high above them, not a single pillar supporting that huge mass of stone. But Atrus barely had time to consider that a wonder when, coming to the center of that hall, the boat was lifted on a column of water toward the ceiling.

  There was a moment’s shock and fear as they sped toward it, and then the stone parted with a silent rush and they were through, into a great vertical shaft, the walls studded with lamps, the great column of water falling away into the dark beneath.

  Up and up they went, and then, even as the wonder of it began to fade, they burst through into a chamber even larger than that from which they had come, tier after tier of benches reaching up on every side, those benches filled with thousands of lavishly dressed men and women. And there, facing them, on a massive throne of cut emerald, a flight of fifty golden steps leading up to him, sat the young king, Ro’Eh Ro’Dan.

  He stood up and stepped out onto the top step, smiling broadly, his deep, rich voice filling that chamber.

  “Welcome, Atrus of D’ni. I hope your journey was a pleasant one.”

  CATHERINE WATCHED FROM THE FOOT OF THE steps as Atrus climbed to meet the king, greeting Ro’Eh Ro’Dan, who had come precisely halfway down that golden flight, the two men grasping each other’s hands warmly.

  The portrait had not lied. Ro’Eh Ro’Dan was a handsome man with sparkling blue eyes and an air of immeasurable authority. Even so, he seemed genuinely pleased to meet with Atrus and greeted him as one might greet a long-lost brother or the son of a favorite uncle. There was no coldness in that greeting, no distance, and that more than anything reassured her.