The Myst Reader (48 page)

Aitrus stepped back, rejoining the others who had gathered to see off the Observers.

“You did well, Aitrus,” Master Telanis said quietly, coming alongside as the Messenger turned and slowly edged into the tunnel, heading back to D’ni.

“Yet I fear it was not enough,” Aitrus answered.

Telanis nodded, a small movement in his face indicating that he, too, expected little good to come of the Observers’ report.

Unexpectedly, Master Kedri and his fellows had chosen not to wait for tunneling to recommence, deciding, instead, to return at once. All there read it as a clear sign that the four men had made up their minds about the expedition.

Efanis’s death, the quakes—these factors had clearly influenced that choice—had, perhaps, pushed them to a decision.

Even so, the waiting would be hard.

“What shall we do, Guild Master?” Aitrus asked, seeing how despondent Telanis looked.

Telanis glanced at him, then shrugged. “I suppose we shall keep on burrowing through the rock, until they tell us otherwise.”

PROGRESS WAS SLOW. MASTER GERAN TOOK
many soundings over the following five days, making a great chart of all the surrounding rock, then checking his findings by making test borings deep into the strata.

It was ten full days before Master Telanis gave the order to finish off the tunnel and excavate the new node. Knowing how close the Council’s meeting now was, everyone in the expedition feared the worst.

Any day now they might be summoned home, the tunnels filled, all their efforts brought to nothing, but still they worked on, a stubborn pride in what they did making them work harder and longer.

The advance team finished excavating and coating the sphere in a single day, while the second team laid the air brackets. That evening they dismantled the platforms and moved the base camp on.

Efanis’s death had been a shock, but none there had known quite how it would affect them. Now they knew. As Aitrus’s team sat there that evening in the refectory, there was a strange yet intimate silence. No one had to speak, yet all there knew what the others were feeling and thinking. Finally, the old cook, Jerahl, said it for them.

“It seems unfair that we should come to understand just how important this expedition is, only for it to be taken from us.”

There was a strong murmur of agreement. Since Efanis’s death, what had been for most an adventure had taken on the aspect of a crusade. They wanted now to finish this tunnel, to complete the task they had been given by the Council. Whether there was anyone up there on the surface or not did not matter now; it was the forging of the tunnel through the earth that was the important thing.

Aitrus, never normally one to speak in company, broke habit now and answered Jerahl.

“It would indeed seem ill if Efanis were to die for nothing.”

Again, there was a murmur of assent from those seated about Aitrus. But that had hardly died when Master Telanis, who now stood in the doorway, spoke up.

“Then it is fortunate that the Council see fit to agree with you, Aitrus.”

There was a moment’s shocked silence, then a great cheer went up. Telanis grinned and nodded at Aitrus. In one hand he held a letter, the seal of which was broken.

“A special courier arrived a moment ago. It appears we have been given a year’s extension!”

There was more cheering. Everyone was grinning broadly now.

“But of much greater significance,” Telanis continued as the noise subsided, “is the fact that we have been given permission to build a great shaft.”

“A shaft, Master?”

Telanis nodded, a look of immense satisfaction on his face. “It seems the Council are as impatient as we to see what is on the surface. There is to be no more burrowing sideways through the rock. We are to build a great shaft straight up to the surface. We are to begin the new soundings in the morning!”

THE MOON WAS A PALE CIRCLE IN THE STAR-SPATTERED
darkness of the desert sky. Beneath it, in a hollow between two long ridges of rock, two travelers had stopped and camped for the night, their camels tethered close by.

It was cool after the day’s excessive heat, and the two men sat side by side on a narrow ridge of rock, thick sheepskins draped over their shoulders; sheepskins that had been taken from the great leather saddles that rested on the ground just behind them.

They were traders, out of Tadjinar, heading south for the markets of Jemaranir.

It had been silent; such a perfect silence as only the desert knows. But now, into that silence, came the faintest sound, so faint at first that each of the travelers kept quiet, thinking they had imagined it. But then the sound increased, became a presence in the surrounding air.

The ground was gently vibrating.

The two men stood, looking about them in astonishment. The noise intensified, became a kind of hum. Suddenly there was a clear, pure note in the air, like the noise of a great trumpet sounding in the depths below.

Hurrying over to the edge of the rocky outcrop, they stared in wonder. Out there, not a hundred feet from where they stood, the sand was in movement, a great circle of it trembling violently as if it were being shaken in a giant sieve. Slowly a great hoop of sand and rock lifted, as if it were being drawn up into the sky. At the same time, the strange, unearthly note rose in intensity, filling the desert air, then ceased abruptly.

At once the sand dropped, forming a massive circle where it fell.

The two men stared a moment longer, then, as one, dropped onto their hands and knees, their heads touching the rock.

“Allah preserve us!” they wailed. “Allah keep us and comfort us!” From the camp behind them, the sound of the camels’ fearful braying filled the desert night.

MASTER GERAN SAT BACK AND SMILED, HIS
blind eyes laughing.

“Perfect,” he said, looking to where Master Telanis stood. “I intensified the soundings. Gave the thing a real blast this time! And it worked! We have clear rock all the way to the surface!”

Telanis, who had been waiting tensely for Geran’s analysis of the sounding, let out a great sigh of relief.

“Are you saying this is it, Master Geran?”

Geran nodded. “We shall need to cut test holes, naturally. But I would say that this was the perfect site for the shaft.”

“Excellent!” Telanis grinned. For three months they had pressed on, burrowing patiently through the rock, looking for such a site. Now they had it.

“I should warn you,” Geran said, his natural caution resurfacing. “There is a large cave off to one side of the proposed excavation. But that should not affect us. It is some way off. Besides, we shall be making our shaft next to it, not under it.”

“Good,” Telanis said. “Then I shall inform the Council at once. We can get started, excavating the footings. That should take us a month, at least.”

“Oh, at least!” Geran agreed, and the two old friends laughed.

“At last,” Telanis said, placing a hand on Geran’s shoulder and squeezing it gently. “I was beginning to think I would never see the day.”

“Nor I,” Geran agreed, his blind eyes staring up into Telanis’s face. “Nor I.”

THE PREPARATIONS WERE EXTENSIVE. FIRST
they had to excavate a massive chamber beneath where the shaft was to be. It was a job the two excavators were not really suited to, and though they began the work by making two long curving tunnels on the perimeter, heavier cutting equipment was swiftly brought up from D’ni to carry out this task.

While this was being organized, Master Geran, working with a team of senior members of the Guild of Cartographers, designed the main shaft. This was not as simple a job as it might have appeared, for the great shaft was to be the hub of a network of much smaller tunnels that would branch out from it. Most of these were service tunnels, leading back to D’ni, but some extended the original excavation to the north.

As things developed, Master Telanis found himself no longer leading the expedition but only one of six Guild Masters working under Grand Master Iradun himself, head of the Guild of Surveyors. Other guilds, too, were now steadily more involved in the work.

Aitrus, looking on, found himself excited by all this frenetic activity. It seemed as though they were suddenly at the heart of everything, the very focus of D’ni’s vast enterprise.

By the end of the third week the bulk of the great chamber had been part-cut, part-melted from the rock, a big stone burner—a machine of which all had heard but few had ever seen in action—making the rock drip from the walls like ice before a blowtorch.

The chamber needed supporting, of course. Twenty massive granite pillars supported the ceiling, but for the walls the usual method of spray-coating would not do. Huge slabs of nara, the hardest of D’ni stones—a metallic greenish-black stone thirty times the density of steel—were brought up the line. Huge machines lifted the precast sections into place while others hammered in the securing rivets.

A single one of those rivets was bigger than a man, and more than eight thousand were used in lining the mighty walls of the chamber, but eventually it was done.

That evening, walking between the pillars in that vast chamber, beneath the stark, temporary lighting, Aitrus felt once again an immense pride in his people.

Work was going on day and night now—though such terms, admittedly, had meaning only in terms of their waking or sleeping shifts—and a large number of guildsmen had been shipped in from D’ni for the task. The first of the support tunnels, allowing them to bring in extra supplies from D’ni, had been cut, and more were being excavated. The noise of excavation in the rock was constant.

To a young guildsman it was all quite fascinating. What had for so long been a simple exploratory excavation had now become a problem in logistics. A temporary camp had been set up at the western end of the chamber and it grew daily. There were not only guildsmen from the Guild of Surveyors here now but also from many other guilds—from the Guild of Miners, the Messengers, the Caterers, the Healers, the Mechanists, the Analysts, the Maintainers, and the Stone-Masons. There were even four members of the Guild of Artists, there to make preliminary sketches for a great painting of the works.