The Myst Reader (33 page)

He closed his eyes again and counted, taking slow, calming breaths. At twenty he thrust upward, dragging himself up the last few feet of the ladder with his hands. And then, suddenly, he was fully immersed!

Opening his eyes, he let go of the ladder and kicked, reaching up instinctively, trying to claw his way to the surface.

Slowly, very slowly it came toward him, the walls sliding past. His lungs were aching now, but he was very nearly there.

And then, suddenly, there was a shadow on the sunlit surface just above him, the outline of a human figure. He tried to hold back, putting out his arms, trying to slow his upward drift, fighting to stay where he was, but it was impossible, and in the struggle something gave.

The sudden choking pain was awful. It was like swallowing hot tar. His lungs were suddenly on fire, his mind flaring like a bonfire with the pain. He spasmed and threw his arms out, trying to grasp the edges of that strange, unnatural well, yet even as he did, the blackness leaked in again, robbing him of consciousness.

Slowly, arms out, he floated to the surface of the circular pool he had seen when he first arrived.

THE HUT WAS DARK AFTER THE BRIGHT SUNLIGHT
of the bay, and as Katran sat herself in the corner, out of the way of her two cousins who were tending to the stranger, it took a while for her eyes to adjust to the shadows.

At first they had thought he was dead. It was the strangest thing they had ever seen. They were reluctant to take him from the water. His flesh was pale and corpselike and there had been no pulse at his neck. The old man, Hrea, had advocated throwing him back into the water, but her eldest cousin, Carel, had persevered, pushing the water from out of the stranger’s chest and breathing his own air into the youth’s blue mouth until, with a choking sound and the expulsion of a plentiful amount of water, the corpse had begun to breath again.

They had wrapped the stranger in a blanket then carried him back to the hut.

That had been this morning. In the hours between the stranger had slept, at first lightly, feverishly, but then peacefully. For the last few hours Carel and his younger brother, Erlar, waited for the stranger to wake.

“How long?” she asked impatiently, the D’ni she spoke clearer, less accented than theirs.

Carel, who was standing beside the bed, looked to her across the full length of the room and shrugged, but Erlar, who was at the stove, preparing a pot of soup, smiled and said gently, “Not long now, Katran. Let him sleep a little longer. If he doesn’t come around soon, we’ll wake him.”

“Is there any …
damage?
”

At that Erlar looked to Carel.

“It’s hard to say,” Carel answered.

“Who is he?” she asked, posing the question that all of them had asked in their minds. “Do you think he belongs to Gehn?”

“One of his servants, you mean?” Carel sighed, then shrugged. “I don’t know. He has a pair of eye instruments like Gehn’s.”

“Eye instruments?”
She sat forward slightly. “I didn’t see them.”

“No … they were in the pocket of his cloak.” Carel reached across and took them from a table beside the bed. “Here.”

She took them and studied them, remembering what she’d been told by Erlar about the stranger’s first appearance among them—unearthly white, his arms spread as if to embrace them as they knelt there looking down.

Katran studied the lenses a moment longer, then handed them back. “Is he marked?”

Carel shook his head. “There’s nothing on his neck.”

Unconscious of the gesture, she put her hand to her own neck, her fingers tracing the boxlike symbol imprinted in the flesh.

“Then maybe …”

Both cousins looked to her, waiting for her to go on, but she merely shook her head.

Erlar smiled, then looked back at the pot he was stirring. “He was talking in his sleep earlier …”

“Talking?” Katran stared at her cousin, her deeply green eyes intent.

“He was murmuring something about flowers.”

Her narrow mouth opened, the lips barely parting, then she turned her head, anxiously looking across to where the stranger lay on his back on the wooden bed.

There was a faint groan, a movement of the body. Katran half stood, then sat again. Carel, beside the body, reached down and, dipping the flannel in the bucket by his side, wrung it out, then began to wipe the stranger’s brow, as he’d done now many times. Yet even as he did, the youth’s hand came up and firmly held his wrist.

Carel swallowed nervously as the young man opened his eyes.

There was surprise in those pale yet clearly human eyes; fear and curiosity.

“Where am I?”

Carel made no attempt to free his hand. “You are on Riven. In the village.”

“Riven?”

“Yes, Riven,” Carel repeated, that one word sounding strange among the heavily accented D’ni words. “We found you in the pool. You were in a bad way. The water had got inside you.”

The young man’s eyes opened wide, suddenly remembering. “The pool …”

“Are you hungry?”

“Hungry?” The stranger nodded. “Famished!”

“Good …” Carel looked to his younger brother and gave a nod. At the signal, Erlar poured soup into a large wooden vessel and, after sprinkling a measure of dark powder into it, carried it across.

“Here,” Erlar said, holding it out, as Carel helped the young man sit up, placing two pillows behind his back, between him and the wooden headboard.

“Thank you,” the stranger said, taking the bowl. After sniffing it, he began to spoon it into his mouth, slowly at first, then with an appetite that made the brothers look to each other and smile.

“Would you like some more?” Erlar asked, taking the empty bowl back from him.

“Please.”

They watched, astonished, as he ate a second bowl and then a third. Then, drowsy once more, the effort, it seemed, too much for him, he slept again.

And all the while Katran sat there in the corner, her green eyes watching.

ATRUS WOKE WITH A START, AS IF HE’D
fallen in his sleep, conscious of the unfamiliar yet not unpleasant smell of the shadowed place in which he found himself.

Turning onto his side, he stretched, then lay still, hearing voices from outside. He remembered now: the two young men who’d sat there while he ate, smiling kindly at him. He smiled himself at the thought. What had they called this place? Riven, that was it. Gehn’s Fifth Age.

He yawned, then lay still again, staring at the far wall. It was a simple mud and daub hut, not so dissimilar from those on the Thirty-seventh Age, but bigger, and with a finish to the walls that spoke of a high level of technical skill. And they had stoves, too—cast metal stoves on which they cooked. That spoke of complexities to this Age that Age Thirty-seven did not have. They would have to have a supply of metal, yes, and the skills to use it.

His eyes went to the stove, noting its simple, unadorned shape, so unlike all of the D’ni artifacts he was used to. Such simplicity appealed to him.

Idly, his eyes traveled upward, searching the shadows of the ceiling, curious to see what kind of structure this was, what materials they used here. So much of this, as ever, had not been in the descriptive book. Only the building blocks were there in Gehn’s Age Five book: the basic elements from which the complexities of such cultures developed. That thought fascinated him. It made him think of subtle ways he himself might have influenced the mix, what factors he personally would have built into the equation of this Age.

His eyes traveled down from the shadows, noting the simple square-cut window, the undecorated plainness of the whitewashed wall, then stopped, surprised to find the eyes of a young woman staring back at him.

Green eyes. Startlingly green eyes.

For a moment he simply stared, his lips slightly parted, taking in the strange, almost delicate beauty of her face; then, realizing what he was doing, he averted his eyes, suddenly, acutely embarrassed.

How long has she been there?
he wondered.
How long has she been watching me?

He heard her soft footsteps on the bare earth floor.

“You almost died,” she said. “What were you doing in the pool?”

Atrus turned to find her kneeling beside the bed, her face almost on a level with his own. He found that strangely disconcerting, as if she were some kind of threat to him. Unlike the young men who had nursed him, her face was tense, almost ill-humored.

“I don’t know,” he answered.

She blinked, then looked away, allowing Atrus the chance to study her. The others had been tanned, and so was she, but he noticed that the skin of her lower arms was strangely “banded”—pale and tanned—as if she had at some point placed strips of cloth about them to create that pattern. She was wearing a simple dark green dress. There were tiny white feathers braided into her hair and about her neck was a wide, embroidered choker, but his gaze kept returning to her eyes, which were deep and mysterious, so deep and dark …

“Where did you come from?” she asked, her face still turned from his.

“Another place,” he said, thinking that it could do no harm, but he could see that his answer didn’t satisfy her. There was a flash of irritation in her eyes.

Atrus sensed as much, as she stood and turned away from him. He risked a tiny glance. There was something tense about the way she stood there, her head slightly tilted forward, her hands up to her mouth.

She turned back, focusing those dark eyes on him once again. “What’s your name?”

“Atrus. What’s yours?”

“Katran.”

He nodded. “Catherine. That’s …”

“Ka-
tran
,” she said again, placing the emphasis on the final syllable. “I dreamed of you.”

“You
dreamed
…?”

Then, without another word, she turned and quickly left the hut, leaving the door wide open, the sunlight spilling in in a wide bar of gold that climbed the far wall.

Atrus lifted his head, staring at the doorway, wondering what all that had been about, then, swallowing, his throat strangely dry, he let his head fall back.

A
TRUS SAT CROSS-LEGGED BESIDE THE
shallow bowl, his eyes closed, his fist clenched tightly, counting.

“Atrus?”

He turned, looking up at her. “Yes, Catherine?”

There was a slight flicker of annoyance in her face at the mispronunciation of her name, but she had given up trying to correct him. “What are you doing?”

At the count of sixty he relaxed his hand, letting the fingers unfold. As he did, a small bubble of water, its surface fluid and reflective like a drop of mercury, floated up out of his palm.

Atrus looked to her. She had a slightly quizzical look on her face.

“Water shouldn’t do that when it gets warm.”

“No? Then what should water do?”

Atrus shrugged. “Well, it shouldn’t
float
and it shouldn’t give me a
stomache ache
.”

She laughed, then quickly grew serious again.

Atrus stared at her, surprised. It was the first time she had laughed since he had met her, and the change it made to her face was quite remarkable.

“I’ll get you some of the powder.”

“Powder?”

Catherine gave a single nod. For a moment she simply stared, as if trying to fathom something about him, then, without even the slightest movement, she seemed to shrug and look away.

Her eyes were still on him, but she was no longer there. Not looking out at him, anyway. It was as if, briefly, she had gone into a trance.

Atrus reached out and picked up the brass cooking pot he had been examining earlier, pleased by its symmetry, by the way the double pans—top and bottom linked by four strong brass spindles—like all the cooking implements in Age Five, were designed to cope with water which, when heated, rose into the air. Everything here had special “catchment lids” and spouts with tiny valves which did not open unless you tilted the thing a certain way.

He looked to Catherine again, and saw she was still distracted.