The Myst Reader

by Rand; Robyn Miller; David Wingrove

  §

  Veovis stood, turning toward the door. The first scream had made him drop the incendiary; the second startled him into action.

  He ran, out of the room and along the corridor, bursting through the first room and into the study. The screaming was louder here, mixed with the bird’s high, screeching call.

  A’Gaeris was on the far side of the room, struggling to fend off the ferocious assault of the bird. Blood ran down his face and upper arms. Nearby the golden cage lay on the floor, the chain snapped, the door forced open.

  Intruders…

  “Help me!” A’Gaeris pleaded, putting an arm out toward Veovis. “In the Maker’s name, help me!”

  Veovis stared at his ally a moment, then, drawing the old, long-barreled gun from his belt, crossed the room quickly, ignoring A’Gaeris and vanishing through the far door, heading for the far room and the corridor beyond.

  §

  Anna slammed the door behind her then reached up and slipped the bolt into place. Hurrying over to the bench, she took the stoppers from bottles and jars then began to pour things into various containers.

  She could hear A’Gaeris’s screams, even where she was, through the thickness of stone and wood, and knew that Veovis would be coming after her.

  Taking her concoction, Anna poured some of the clear, thick liquid over the door, soaking the wood with it, then laid a trail of it across to the far side of the room, where the Linking Books were piled up. That done, she put the bowl aside and went back to the door, sliding the bolt back once again and pulling the door slightly ajar.

  She could hear footsteps now, hurrying up the twist of steps.

  Anna scrambled back across the room, setting the Linking Book she was to use to return to D’ni down on the desk to one side, open to the descriptive panel. Then, taking the length of wick, she lit it from the tinder, blowing on the smoldering end of it until it glowed.

  The footsteps came to the head of the steps and stopped. There was a moment’s hesitation and then the door on the far side of the room was kicked open. Veovis stepped inside, the cocked gun raised, its dark mouth pointed directly at her.

  Seeing her, Veovis gave a surprised laugh. “Ti’ana! You were the last person I expected.”

  Anna stared back at him defiantly, her left hand hovering over the glowing panel, her right holding the smoldering wick.

  Noticing the Books, he blinked, reassessing the situation. “What are you doing?”

  “I am putting a stop to this. Before things get out of hand.”

  His face grew hard. “Give me the book, Ti’ana. Give it to me and I shall spare you. You and your son both. The rest will die. They have to. But you and Gehn can live…if you give me the Book.”

  Anna smiled and dropped the wick onto the pile of Linking Books, igniting it, at the same moment placing her other hand against the linking panel.

  As the Books went up in a great rush of flame, Veovis roared and pulled the trigger. The sound of the detonation filled the room as the bullet hurtled toward her disappearing shape. At the same moment, the trail of liquid chemicals flared, the flame running along it like a rail of magma searing through the rock.

  There was a great hiss and then the door behind Veovis exploded into flame, throwing him forward, his hair and cloak on fire.

  But Anna did not see it. Anna had already gone.

  §

  The great chamber was almost dark. Only at its center, where the five great thrones were, was there a small pool of light, where a single flame flickered between the pillars. Beneath its scant illumination the five great Lords of D’ni sat, their ancient faces etched with deep concern.

  “We must search the city from end to end,” R’hira said, echoing what Master Jadaris had said to him not an hour before. “Every room, and every drawer of every desk. We must find these Linking Books and destroy them, else no one here is safe.”

  “Is it possible?” another of them asked. “Have we the time or the numbers to make such a search?”

  “No,” R’hira admitted, “yet we must make the attempt. Unless we do…”

  He stopped dead, staring in astonishment as a figure materialized in the space before the thrones.

  “What in the Maker’s name…”

  “Ti’ana!” R’hira cried, standing and stepping down from his throne.

  Anna looked up, her face pale, then slumped down onto the floor. Blood poured from a wound in her shoulder.

  “Bring help!” R’hira cried, speaking to one of the guards who stood in the shadow surrounding them. “Quick now, Guildsman! Ti’ana is badly hurt!”

  Yet even as he stooped to try to help her, another figure shimmered into being right beside her.

  The man’s face was blackened. His hair was aflame. Smoke curled up from his burning clothes. He was doubled up, almost choking for breath, but even in that state R’hira recognized him at once.

  “Veovis!”

  PART SEVEN: LAST DAYS

  It was over. The evidence had been heard, the verdict of the Council unanimously given. It remained now only for the Five Lords to announce the sentence.

  The great chamber was hushed as Lord R’hira got to his feet and, stepping from his throne, stood over the kneeling Veovis.

  Veovis was chained at hand and foot. His head had been shaved and he wore a simple prison gown of rust red, which showed his bare arms and calves. Seated just behind the kneeling prisoner, looking on attentively, were Aitrus and his wife, Ti’ana, who, because of her part in things, had been allowed to attend this final ceremony.

  It was only two weeks since that moment when, to the astonishment of the five great Lords, both Ti’ana and Veovis had linked through into this self-same chamber. Both Aitrus and his wife were now much improved from their wounds. Aitrus sat there with his head bound, Ti’ana with a bandage about her wounded shoulder.

  There was a silent tension in the chamber as R’hira looked about him at the seated ranks of guildsmen.

  “Veovis,” R’hira said quietly. “You have betrayed the trust of this Council. You have deceived us and stolen from us, destroyed our property, and…yes, murdered our fellow guildsmen. Such behavior is without parallel in all our long history, and it is felt that our sentence ought to reflect that. I therefore declare that you, Veovis, son of Rakeri, Lord of D’ni, shall be taken from here to the steps of the Library and there, at the seventeenth hour, before witnesses, be beheaded for your treachery.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath. Beheaded! It was unheard of. But Lord R’hira seemed as hard as granite as he looked about him.

  “Such is the decision of the Five Lords. Will anybody speak for the accused?”

  It was a traditional request at such moments, when a prisoner had been sentenced, and though this sentence was without recent parallel, it was clear that none among the Five expected anyone to speak.

  Anna stood.

  “Forgive me, Lord R’hira. I know I am here as a guest of the Council and as such have no right to voice my feelings; even so, I would like to speak in favor of the prisoner.”

  R’hira turned, looking to his fellows. There was a moment of eye contact among the ancients and then R’hira turned back.

  “If anyone deserves the chance to speak, it is you, Ti’ana, though why you should wish to utter a word in favor of this miscreant is quite beyond my imagining. Step forward.”

  At that moment Veovis screamed, “That barbaric animal is going to speak on my behalf?! Never! I won’t allow it!”

  “Silence,” R’hira shouted with the pounding of his hand.

  Veovis continued in his rage. “She’s a traitor, not one of us! She has breached the sanctity of the D’ni blood! Don’t you see!?”

  “Guards, remove him!” R’hira shouted. “Now!”

  They dragged the screaming man from the room. Calm returned to the chamber.

  Anna stepped out. She bowed to each of the Five in turn, then turned about, facing the ranks of guildsmen.

  “
My Lords…Guildsmen. I do not wish to play down the severity of what your once-fellow Veovis has been found guilty of. Nor have I reason to feel anything but hatred for the man who tried to kill my husband and, but for a poorly aimed shot, would undoubtedly have killed me. Yet as an outsider, a newcomer to the great empire of D’ni, let me make an observation.

  “This great cavern is an island of reason, of rational, considered behavior. You D’ni have developed codes of behavior, ways of dealing with situations, that are the result of thousands of years of experience. The most important of those codes, and the wisest of all, perhaps, is that which deals with those who transgress and step outside the codes. Until now, the D’ni have only rarely taken a life for a life. Until now, you have chosen the path of segregation, of cutting out the bad from your midst and isolating it, as a surgeon might isolate a virus. That, I would argue, is the path of sanity, whereas this…”

  Anna paused, as if she could read the objection that was in most of their minds.

  “I know what you are thinking. He escaped once. He might well escape again. And the so-called Philosopher, A’Gaeris, is still at large. Such factors must, I agree, come into your thinking. But there is one important factor that has not been considered, and that is precisely why Veovis behaved as he did.”

  Anna took something from her pocket and held it up. It was a notebook of some kind.

  “I have here a journal—A’Gaeris’s private journal—which I took from his room in the Age from which they launched their attacks on D’ni. Had I not been ill these past few weeks, I might have read it sooner—and then could have laid this before the Council as evidence in Lord Veovis’s favor, for its contents are most revelatory. As it is, I offer it to you now as a plea for clemency.”

  Lord R’hira, who had been listening in silence until this moment, now spoke up.

  “Forgive me, Ti’ana, but what might that villain A’Gaeris possibly have to say that would excuse the prisoner’s behavior?”

  Anna turned, facing him. “It is all here, my Lord, every last part of it, fully documented in A’Gaeris’s own hand. How he planned things; how he forged papers; how he worked through Guildsman Suahrnir to ensnare Lord Veovis into his perverse schemes; even how he manipulated my husband into going to Master Jadaris with what he ‘knew.’

  “Whatever he has done since, that first great wrong cannot be denied. Veovis was an innocent man. Think, then, of the bitterness he must have felt in being stripped of all title and incarcerated upon that prison rock. Oh, it is no excuse for what he subsequently did, yet I offer it as explanation.”

  Lord R’hira took the book from Anna and read a page or two, blinking from time to time. Then he looked up.

  “We must have time to study this, Ti’ana.”

  “Of course,” she said, giving him a grateful bow. “But as you study it, my Lord, consider the balance of good and ill that exists in all men, and try to imagine in what circumstances that balance could be tilted either way—toward great good, or toward the kind of behavior Veovis displayed toward the society that spurned him.”

  R’hira gave a tiny nod, his eyes smiling at Anna, then he turned, his eyes quickly gauging the response of his fellow Lords. There were nods.

  “Very well,” he said, turning back. “The sentence of this Council is set in abeyance until this matter can be fully considered. Until then the prisoner will be placed under constant guard.”

  As the meeting broke up and guildsmen began to drift out of the chamber and into the nearby rooms, R’hira came over to Anna.

  “I am grateful for your intercession, Ti’ana, yet one thing bothers me. You may be right. Veovis may once have been innocent. Yet that is in the past. If we do not end his life for what he subsequently did, then we have but a single course before us, and that is to incarcerate him for the rest of his natural life. Such a course we tried before…and failed with. What if we fail a second time?”

  “Then make sure you do not, Lord R’hira. Make a new and special Age for him, then, once he is safe within that place, burn the book so that no one can help him escape. Vigilance, not vengeance should be your byword.”

  R’hira bowed his head, impressed by her words. “Well spoken, Ti’ana.”

  She gave a little bow.

  “Oh, and Ti’ana…do not worry. Whatever we decide, Veovis will never be allowed his freedom.”

  §

  A’Gaeris sat at his desk, studying the notebook. The wooden door of the hut was closed, the blinds drawn against the sunlight. From outside came the busy sound of sawing and hammering.

  He closed the book then nodded to himself. Standing, he yawned and stretched. He was wearing a simple rust-red gown that fitted tightly at the waist. A pair of D’ni glasses rested atop his freshly shaven head. Walking over to the door, he pulled them down over his eyes, then stepped outside.

  Just below the hillock on which the hut stood, in a clearing between the trees, his slaves were hard at work. Already the basic frame of the room had been constructed. Now they were building the seats and shelves and, at the center of it all, the podium.

  He walked down, stopping at the edge of the clearing to take out the notebook once again, turning to the page he had been looking at a moment earlier. For a moment he compared Suahrnir’s sketches to the room that was being constructed in the clearing, then he slipped the book away once more. There was no doubting it, Suahrnir had had a good eye. No detail had evaded him. Everything he needed was here. Every measurement.

  He began to laugh; a deep, hearty laughter that rolled from his corpulent frame, making the natives glance up at him fearfully before returning to their work.

  “But we shall change all that,” he said, as his laughter subsided. “No rules. No guidelines. Nothing but what I want.”

  The thought of it sent a tiny shiver up his spine.

  “Nothing…but what I want.”

  §

  The preparations were meticulous.

  Four of the guild’s finest Writers were assigned the task of making the new Age; each of them allocated one specific strand of the whole. Working to Lord R’hira’s brief, in copy books that had no power to link, they patiently produced their words, passing on their finished creations to the Grand Master of their Guild, Ja’ir, who, in coordination with Grand Master Jadaris of the Maintainers, compared the texts and made his subtle corrections, ensuring that the resultant Age was consistent and thus stable.

  In all a hundred days passed in this fashion. But then it was finally done and, after consultation with Lord R’hira, a blank Book—a Kortee-nea—was taken from the Guild’s Book Room and placed on a desk in a cell at the center of the Hall of the Maintainers. There it was guarded day and night, its pages never out of sight for a single instant as, one by one, the four Writers returned to copy their work into the Book.

  By this means the privacy of the Book was maintained, for none of the four had any knowledge of what the other three had written. Only Jadaris and Ja’ir and R’hira, three of the most trustworthy men in the entire empire, knew that.

  Meanwhile, in a cell just down the passageway, they placed Veovis, shackled hand and foot, two members of the City Guard with him every moment of the day and night, linked to him by chains of nara, waking and sleeping.

  And so the days passed, until the Prison Book was done.

  §

  At the seventeenth hour on the day of judgment the great bronze bell rang out from the tower above the Hall of the Guild of Maintainers. Far below, in the lowest level of that great labyrinthine building, in the deep shadows of the Room of Punishment, the Great Lords and Grand Masters of D’ni looked on as Veovis, his head unbowed, the cords that had bound his hands and feet cut, stepped over to the podium and faced the open Book.

  As the bell rang, Veovis looked about him, no flicker of fear in those pale, intelligent eyes, only, at this final moment, a sense of great dignity. Then, as the final stroke rang out, he placed his hand upon the glowing panel and linked.

  As
he vanished, a sighing breath seemed to pass through the watching guildsmen. Heads turned, looking to Lord R’hira.

  “It is done,” he said quietly. “Master Jadaris…take the Book away and burn it.”

  Yet even as he spoke the words there was a faint disturbance of the air before the Book, the faintest blur. For the briefest instant, R’hira thought he glimpsed a figure in a rust-red prison gown, his head shaved bare.

  R’hira looked about him, surprised. Was he the only one to have seen it? And what precisely had he seen? An afterimage?

  Or was this some flaw in the Book itself? After all, it was rare for a Book to be made by four separate writers, and it was possible that some minor errors had crept into the text.

  He frowned, then set the matter from his mind. It was of no importance. All that mattered was that they burned the Book. Then D’ni would be safe.

  Master Jadaris stepped up to the podium and, closing the Book, lifted it ceremonially in both hands, then carried it from the room.

  They followed, along a passageway and through into the furnace room. Here, since time immemorial, they had burned faulty Books, destroying their failed experiments and shoddy work.

  But this was different. This was a world that functioned perfectly.

  And so we break our own rules, R’hira thought. And even if it were for a good cause, he still felt the breach as a kind of failure.

  This is not the D’ni way. We do not destroy what is healthy.

  Yet Ti’ana was right. It was either this or put Veovis to death. And there was no doubt about it now: Veovis had been an innocent man when first they found him guilty and incarcerated him.

  R’hira watched as the great oven door was opened and the Book slid in. There was a transparent panel in the door. Through it he could see the gray-blue cover of the Prison Book clearly. R’hira bent slightly, looking on as the oven fired and the flames began to lick the cover of the Book.