The Myst Reader (137 page)

They embraced.

As Gat stood back his blank eyes flickered in the gusting flames of the lamps as if alive with vision.

“I want you to come with me, Atrus, to the capital. To bury the last king of Terahnee.”

“I will come.”

“Then let us go at once.”

Atrus turned, embracing Catherine briefly, then followed Gat back down the ramp toward the waiting boat.

AS THE FIRST LIGHT OF MORNING TINTED THE
horizon, Atrus woke. Gat sat beside him in the boat, silent and, so it seemed, watchful.

Behind them the rowers—twelve young relyimah; volunteers, honored to serve the legendary Gat—kept their steady rhythm, drawing the long craft through the water. The sound was reassuring.

“You needed that,” Gat said, sensing that Atrus was awake. “Hersha says that you push yourself to the limit.”

“Hersha exaggerates. I like to work.”

“Yes, and we are grateful for it.” Gat turned his head and smiled. “But you must rest now. Besides, we need to talk, Atrus, and what better opportunity than this.”

Atrus sat up. “Are you uneasy, Gat?”

“A little. Oh, we are making real progress, but our greatest problems lie ahead of us, I fear. Your laws will help, yet it seems to me that simple habit is our greatest enemy.”

“Habit?”

“The habit of obedience and silence. The habit of not-being.” Gat turned his inert gaze fully on Atrus. “My people are like newborns. They do not know how to behave. But newborns are small and helpless and can be chastised by their parents. So it was among the Terahnee. But my newborns are large and muscular and—right now, at least—confused by the emotions they are feeling. Emotions they have always before held back, for fear of punishment or worse. Put simply, Atrus, they must learn how to live, and in doing so they will need all the guidance we can give them.”

“I agree. And the D’ni and their friends will help.”

Gat smiled again. “I know. Your friendship is most valued, Atrus. But think. Think just how many of us there are. Two thousand million. How do we set about teaching so many? How can we possibly keep such a host in check?”

“It worries you, Gat?”

“To be sure it worries me. Time is against us, Atrus. Right now they are obedient, with the learned obedience of their kind. But the more we give them of themselves, the more they will want, and the worse, perhaps, they’ll be.”

“Do you think so?”

“Were not the Terahnee men? Oh, they may have acted like uncaring monsters, but given other circumstances they, like Eedrah, could have been different. Kinder, certainly. And so with a host of newborns. My relyimah. When they learn to be seen, then their problems will really begin, for some will like what they see and some will not. Some, like Ymur, will be angry at the waste of their former lives, while others, thinking back on it, will sink into a despair so deep they will never emerge from it.”

Atrus sighed. “I had not thought …”

The old man reached out and held his shoulder. “You have been busy, Atrus. Nor can you think of everything.”

“Then what are we to do?”

“Reduce the numbers, maybe. You spoke to Hersha of the Books—the Ages the Terahnee wrote. Perhaps we might use some of them, for resettling our people.”

“It’s possible.”

“Then we should investigate that possibility. It has been in my mind that maybe we should send the women there.”

Atrus turned to him, surprised.

“Oh, I have been thinking long and hard about it, Atrus. Wondering if there might not be a peaceful way of dealing with the matter. Of bringing together those who have so long been apart.”

“And?”

Gat let out a long, slow breath. “I believe it would not work. Catherine, I know, is looking at this problem, and I will wait to hear what she has to say before we act, but my feeling is that there is no solution to this most singular problem. Not for this generation, anyway. To introduce them to each other now might be to tear the fabric of our new society apart before it has had a chance to grow and prosper.”

“But a society of men …”

“And families, and children.”

Atrus frowned and looked down. “I do not like it, Gat. It would be too much like keeping things as they were. It would be … well, like denying the relyimah any kind of real normality.”

“You think they
can
be normal, Atrus, after all they have suffered?”

“I believe that they should be given the chance to try, even if it ends in failure. Life isn’t life without that risk.”

Gat looked away a moment, then he nodded. “Sometimes I feel you are much wiser than you appear, Atrus.”

Atrus laughed. “And how do I appear to you, my friend?”

“Like the voice of blind certainty itself.”

AS THE SUN ROSE HIGHER AND THE LANDSCAPE
about them was revealed, they saw just how much damage the relyimah had wreaked upon it. Statues were smashed and many visual conceits destroyed entirely. This surprised Atrus, who had heard nothing of such activities. At the same time, he noted how most living things—the trees and flowers—were untouched, and this, as much as any other thing he’d seen, gave him hope.

Yet now that he knew what he was seeing, this landscape, which had seemed so wonderful when first he’d viewed it, so constantly surprising, now seemed merely desolate: a fragile artifice that had been shattered in an instant.

Like the Ages my father wrote
…

“We should remove all this,” he said, speaking to Gat for the first time in hours.

“Their playthings, you mean?”

“Yes, and their houses, too. All signs of what they were.”

Gat smiled. “It would take forever.”

“Yet we could make a start.”

“Maybe.” The old man sat forward, gesturing toward the city, which now lay directly ahead of them. It had grown constantly these past few hours, dominating the skyline, more like a mountain than anything mere men had made. “But what of that? How would you begin to take
that
down?”

Atrus smiled. Sometimes it was almost as if the old man actually saw what he was looking at.

“Little by little.”

Gat’s laughter was gentle. “I can think of better things to do, can’t you?”

“You cannot live in the ruins of the past.”

“And yet you tried, Atrus.”

“Then maybe I was wrong.” And for the first time he saw clearly that he
had
been wrong to try to build his new D’ni in the ruins of the old.

“And maybe we have no option but to try,” Gat said, a defensiveness in his voice; then, softening, “Yet your idea has merit, Atrus. We should destroy their toys, at the very least. All of their hideous distractions. But the houses … we could use them, perhaps. Partition the rooms. Use them to treat the sick, or as centers of local government.”

Atrus nodded distractedly, yet he found himself appalled by the idea, if only because of those tunnels in the walls. Each Terahnee house that stood was a monument to the Great Lie in which they had all once lived; a reminder of the relyimah’s imperative
not
to be seen.

Yet not everything could be achieved at once. Some things would have to wait, and maybe this was one of them. He looked to Gat once more and saw how troubled the old man was. It was an unexpected insight.

“Everything will be for the best,” he said reassuringly. Yet even as he spoke, he recalled what Gat had said of his “blind certainty.” And, sure enough, the old man’s face changed, a smile coming to those strong yet ancient features.

“Yes, Atrus. I am sure it will be so.”

THAT AFTERNOON IT RAINED; THE FIRST RAIN
Atrus had known since coming into Terahnee.

Gat had wanted to pull the canopy across, not for himself, but to protect Atrus from the downpour, but Atrus had refused and had stood there instead, enjoying the feel of the rain beating down on him. It felt refreshing after the heat of the last few days,
cleansing.

The storm passed and he sat again, the rhythm of the oars dipping and rising from the water lulling him, his clothes, which were stuck to him, slowly drying in the sunlight.

He woke to find Gat tapping his arm. “Come, Atrus, we must walk a while.”

Atrus looked about him, then stretched and got up, climbing from the boat. Ahead of them the canal disappeared into the side of a great hill of marble. From his previous journey Atrus recognized it as the beginning of the great system of locks that ended in Ro’Jadre’s house.

None of those locks worked now, for Gat had forbidden any of his people to place themselves in harness and lift the great weights that moved the water from one level to the next. And so they made their way on foot, climbing the long flights of steps that led up the side of the hill, and out onto a great ledge of stone overlooking Ro’Jadre.

Beyond the house another boat awaited them, fresh rowers already in place. And beyond that the city.

Standing there, Atrus found himself overwhelmed suddenly by a strange ambivalence. The house, the view itself, was truly magnificent. No understanding of the evil that lay behind it could take that from it. Yet how could such beauty, such a sure instinct for what was beautiful, coexist with such inhumanity?

He followed Gat across, surprised as ever that the old man knew his way without his eyes. And as he climbed into the boat behind Gat, he found his earlier doubts washed from him.

It would work. They would make it work.

And as Ro’Jadre receded beyond the surrounding hills, Atrus found himself looking outward again, embracing the whole of that vast world in which he found himself involved, his mind beginning to formulate new plans for the relyimah, new schemes for them to carry out.

THE CAPITAL WAS SILENT, EERILY EMPTY. AS
they made their way up the great channel, at its heart, the young rowers pulling slowly, staring about them as they went, Atrus came to understand just how completely Terahnee was undone.

Here nothing had survived. At the first appearance of the sickness, the relyimah had fled, leaving their masters to their fate. Weeds grew between the slabs of stone, encouraged by the recent rain.