Pre-text author's note: Perhaps the character introduced in this chapter will seem a bit odd. Her motives, though, are based in reality (and what I've gleaned from some little glances of Myst V- don't have the Mac demo because I don't have a Mac and I'm trying—not very successfully—to stay away from spoilers). This will most probably not be compatible with the new story line established in End of Ages, but it's extremely fun to write her, so there you go.

Also, sorry a millionfold about taking so long to write this. I really wasn't in a writing inspiration mood and making myself write doesn't seem… well, right. But here it is, the inspired version. Enjoy!

--Morendo--

considered to be chapter two

He convinced Father that it was I who had destroyed the Ages. He convinced Father that it was I who was greedy for wealth and plunder. And as Sirrus dealt the final blow, he tricked Father into believing that I was the murderer…

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The island of K'veer stood as a silent sentinel guarding the cavern from outsiders. Almost from the beginnings of D'ni, when settlers lived on the islands instead of in what would become the city proper, the peak of rock had been inhabited. Over the years, the island witnessed the fall of kings, the corruption of empire, the loss of faith. The mansion on it, nominally owned by the Rakeri line, reflected the changing attitudes of D'ni until the downfall of the people. The house grew more decadent, housing great balls and ceremonies. As the ages passed the house grew around the rock until the spire was blanketed under them, as if the rooms were icing on the great cake of rock. By the fall, then, most of the rooms were uninhabited, holding dusty books in prisons of rock, never touched and never thought of. At the Fall only the servants inhabited the great mansion for the Rakeri patriarch was dead and the son had betrayed.

It had been silent on the island for more than 200 years, a silence broken only now by the almost unnoticeable sound of the prow of a boat cutting through the water. The boat was guided into the circular docking area by a pair of trembling, age-spotted hands. A swish of robes and Gehn disembarked from the craft and stepped onto the marble pathway worn smooth with age. He headed off to the right, noting with a sharp eye that more of the great Book Room's decorations had fallen off and had crushed some of the rooms below. He frowned at the thought of even more devastation, for when he had lived on the island the mansion was already in an advanced state of disrepair.

His thoughts were cut short when he reached the great wooden doors strengthened with iron that marked the entrance into Rakeri's Palace. Gehn stretched out a wavering finger and simply touched the door; it opened silently inwards on its hinges as if it had been oiled just yesterday. He stepped over the great stone served as a doorstep and stepped into the musty dankness of faded opulence. He had been here before and could remember there being a small, almost invisible button on the right… he reached out hand and blindly pushed on the cold stone wall until he felt something move. A quiet rattling sound filled the air as the firemarbles in the lamps and chandeliers were prodded into action. A subdued light suffused the air as they gained in brightness and Gehn could see that nothing had been touched.

Good, he thought to himself. Now, I turn left into the hallway and make a right at the statue of the frowning Maintainer. His memory had served him well and by some miracle of the body it had not faded during his imprisonment. About to begin the arduous trek to get to the main part of the mansion, Gehn paused when he heard, or thought he heard, an eerie screech coming from the bowels of the house. Almost as if it had come from the chamber…

But of course it hadn't, and perhaps his ears were playing tricks on him. He was old, and things were bound to go wrong sometimes. Gehn limped on down the hallway, wishing he had his lelam cane to help him along. As he was drawing close to the doors that led to the main house he stopped when he saw a dimly lit alcove to his right that contained five firemarbles lined up in a row. Gehn, realizing it to be an old shrine to Yahvo that were common in older houses, promptly flicked his finger against the firemarbles from the left to the right. According to legend the ritual lighting of the firemarbles was supposed to secure good fortune for the next five gahrtahvotee. It was only a tradition, but Gehn dutifully said the chant and then withdrew from the alcove, the slight breeze from his robes dousing the firemarbles.

He proceeded down the hallway, his slippered feet flapping on the stone. It was the only noise in the palace, the only feet that had ever disturbed the thick layer of dust and dirt on the floor since the building had been deserted. Thoughts flew through Gehn's mind as he plodded along down the hallway, leaning on the wall now and then to catch his breath. Small snapshots of life from a time lost forever. A tableau, with a young D'ni man in a crimson Guild cloak milling around giant wooden tables in a crowd, his features at once common and aristocratic. Another picture, with jumping redness lighting up the surrounding buildings, scared young boys standing on a rooftop looking out at the fire. And then a room deep within a house. A sealed room, holding a leather-bound linking book. A crest, secured with five pentagonal tacks.

Gehn shuddered and walked on. It was not good to dwell on the past, he tried to tell himself. Too many painful memories. Too many things done wrong. Too many of the things done wrong never righted.

A book flew into a fire, tossed by an angry hand. A boy looked in disbelief. "You are a god, aren't you…?"

He slammed his foot hard on the stone floor, pain shooting up his leg. It would not do to remember things. Not now. Perhaps later, in the suite or the Book Room. Not now.

So he continued walking. Eventually he came to another grand door, or at least what used to be one. There were burn marks on it, great burn marks that made it look as if giant claws had been drawn down the soft wood. He swallowed and stepped back out into the dim light of the cavern.

Down another walkway, this one circling the bottom level of the mansion, to a rough-hewn arch that was at least five stories tall. Gehn passed underneath and entered a large room. The tiles that were on the floor looked cleaner than when Gehn had passed through here last time; the dark red and the tan shone through as, he presumed, in the glorious days of Kerath. He took a few steps towards the middle of the room and surveyed it.

Lights in stone pedestals on the floor shone up into overhanging arches. Gehn had always assumed them to be ornamental but had never turned them on. The firemarbles beneath yellowish glass were now, however, shining brightly, and great pillars of light went up towards the high ceiling, making an intricate pattern. Swirling shapes and hints of D'ni lettering in pure light wove throughout the dark rock as if they had been inlayed.

His gaze turned to the left and to the right towards the two great windows. Decorative and slim stone pillars slightly obscured the view, but otherwise the windows were directly open onto the cavern. It was what was in front of the windows, however, that fascinated Gehn.

When he had lived in the mansion beforehand for many years he had often wondered about the inset stone circle in the floor surrounded by tusks. Drawing on ancient descriptions of the room found in the Great Library he had concluded that they were not original or even of D'ni origin: the book, which described the whole of the Rakeri mansion in great detail, mentioned not even once the strange circles on the entry floor. Now, however, there was a bubble above it, abstract colors and shapes moving randomly on its surface as if it could pop any second. Through it he could see… what? An picture of something, a sandy island with great cliffs and waving green grass? An Age?

Gehn stumped forwards to look closer, entranced. There was a strange stone pedestal in the middle of the picture, which he presumed was somehow imager-cast. It looked so real and yet, at the same time, patently fake, for it was transparent and the imposing stone wall could be seen behind it. He walked towards the right, making the beginnings of a circle around the bubble. It appeared to be an actual location that could be walked onto and at the same time just a stone circle set into the tiled floor.

Wary of such things, as he had good reason to be, Gehn walked around more and noted that there was no imperfection in the perfect picture. It was real and yet unreal… and so Gehn hurriedly completed his walk around it and headed towards the stairs that led up to the living areas of the mansion. It was not good to be too curious just as it was detrimental to remember the past. Both, he reflected in a sudden moment of exact lucidity, could get oneself into a terrible amount of trouble.

It never wound through Gehn's mind that both could also have the opposite effect.

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A woman worked at a table. It was a small and delicate table, and at a glance it seemed to be perfectly fitted to the woman seated at it. Both were thin and somewhat gaudily dressed: the woman in ceremonial D'ni robe, the desk decorated with gold inlays that snaked up the legs and twisted into a complex pattern beneath the piece of parchment the woman was writing on.

She dipped her pen into the inkwell and put it to paper, slowly but surely making the picture. It was not, she reflected, that she was a good drawer. She would not have drawn if she had the choice; no, she would be writing an Age to escape to. For wasn't D'ni ended? There was no chance now, or if there was she felt that it was infinitesimal. Too small a strand could not support a great hanging firemarble lamp, and it was the same with the D'ni city.

But she drew on, illustrating her life. She had to make them see that she was redeemable, or conversely that they were redeemable. The woman wasn't sure which she agreed with: that she had made a mistake or that they had blundered. For there was always that possibility with things unknown. There was no way of telling what they were thinking, what they needed or wanted. Their needs and wants were only manifested through their actions, a horribly inconvenient way for them to live. She had once, in her youth when she thought she could master the world, attempted to learn their language and failed.

The woman sighed and blew on the picture, the edges of the parchment moving slightly from her breath as the ink dried.

She had made many mistakes in her youth. Attempted to see how much she could do. When she broke the rules of linking, oh, had she been ecstatic. Refuted her father's teachings: when he had said that something could not be done she had always gone and tried it.

You know I'm only ten, Dad. I'm not old enough to make a whole world…

Many mistakes. Flushed with power from her linking abilities she had gone back to D'ni, the real D'ni, not the empty shell that sat in the cavern and futilely waited for rebirth. No, the D'ni of the tales and legends. Great banquets, festivals. She had seen everything in her youth. Ri'neref coming to the Age and deciding that it was suitable for his soon-to-be refugees. The moment when Kerath stepped up in the Library Plaza and announced that he was resigning as king. Two trials and an attempted execution. And then two figures wheeling a cart down an abandoned street, mist curling around the dead stone like suffocating fingers. The men laughed. One grimly, one in a sick humor, but it was a laugh nonetheless as the hauled dead bodies and placed their pasty hands on linking windows leading to innocent worlds.

See the really bright one? A long time ago when your great-grandmother Anna first mapped this desert with her father, she looked into the night sky and used that star to find her way home…

She drew some more, sketching out an animal-like figure. Another dip into the inkwell and she filled it in, the heavily-applied ink soaking through to the desk, staining the intricate goldwork.

So the woman, in her youth, had grown tired of seeing the past, her dreams of the D'ni destroyed by a poignant reality. She had turned to the future then, to see what would be. For, she had thought, why shouldn't she use her power? It was hers.

The woman dipped the pen again and drew lines over the animal, bars that locked it in. Perhaps it was waiting for food, or imprisoned because it had presumed to be like its masters. But, the woman thought, it didn't matter. As long as they accepted the picture, it would be just one more small step to reconciliation. Reconciliation a long time in coming.

When she had linked to the future D'ni, she had been surprised. It was inhabited again, fully inhabited. The Guild Hall rebuilt, the Library Plaza taken up from the sea and made new again. The algae, emitting light in their twenty-five hour cycle. People milling around the Ferry Terminal in grand D'ni cloaks, waiting for the boats to come and take them out to the island mansions. The kingly seat filled again. It was as the ancient D'ni had been, even as she had imagined it would have been before her dreams were twisted and shattered. Except for the language and the eyes. The people, for all that they were D'ni, spoke the surface language. And their eyes were not D'ni, not pale and not adapted to live in a giant cavern under the sand, not narrow and needing glasses. No, the eyes were wide and different, some drawn like the D'ni but not, some open, some as slits and some as plates.

These are the powers of gods and I now have this power…

She had left then and returned to the book that she had written, thinking there might have been a mistake. For even those with the powers of gods could make mistakes. She sat at this desk, the very desk she was drawing on now, and paged through the thick book, checking the phrases, finally deciding that it was correct and had been. So she had linked again, this time to an empty cavern, even more worn down and broken than the one in her time. Not cleaned, not inhabited. The algae were dead, the mansions empty and crumbling or in pieces on the lake bottom. The woman had left then, not wishing to see more.

Time conquered, light to darkness, linking without Books…

The present, she had decided. For nothing could be done in the past without changing the present, and the course of the future seemed to be decided by the present, each possibility on a different leaf of the Great Tree. So the woman had turned to the only remaining inhabitants in D'ni.

She paused, pen in the air, thinking of how to draw the figure. She then decided on a shape vaguely humanoid, standing in front of the cage, arms outstretched. He would be feeding the… animal…, then.

They had been yearning for D'ni contact for more than three hundred years. The Least, as they had been known. Invisible. For what D'ni in their right mind would wish to see them, ugly as they were? But the woman had sensed that they had power, great power, and she wished to learn. Not to further themselves, necessarily, although that could be an added benefit. But she became a willing pupil for the third time in her life. The first had been with her father: a good man, if somewhat confused about life. The second time had been with the… well, Teacher, for she had never called him anything else. He had helped her discover D'ni, what she really was, and his teachings had brought out the power in her. He had died, though, and then the girl was on her own until she became a young woman, who was taught by her third teachers.

Another decisive line and the D'ni holding food was finished. The woman was proud of her work: this time, she had managed to make his face both prideful and humiliated, satisfying both herself and those who she would be giving this to.

The strange forms, beast-people, had taught her nothing of consequence, or at least that was how it seemed to her now, except their deepest power, which she had coaxed out of them after years of planning. How they had been controlled by their masters. The greatest power, for even the most powerful by themselves are not as powerful as they can be. The maximum power requires the most powerful to dominate those which have power of their own, and then take that power.

She had learned that from her second teacher, the most willing of teachers to impart knowledge to her. Her father had been cautious; perhaps it was her misguided sons that had caused him to pour so much affection but also so much protection upon her. She had not even written her first Age until she had been twenty: so young for a D'ni and yet so old, it seemed, to a human. Her third teachers, however, gradually became her equals. Controlling them bit by bit; the challenge was the most compelling she had even taken. But they had bent and bowed to her, as to all who had the powers of the gods. Her grandfather had taken people with little power and had them bow to him; his strength was in the number of people with lesser power combined to make a body with great power. The woman, however, had taken as numerous as her grandfather, and those numerous held far greater power.

She had reveled then in her power; for the short time she had it she had felt invincible.

It is I who command light…

She inked a small tablet on the parchment. An animal always had to be holding it so that she could show her regret. Always the same, appeasing them little by little until that one day in the future…

And then it had fallen apart. They had fallen out of her control; a careless mistake that had cost her many years groveling at their feet for their assistance. When they would not respond to the tablet anymore she had returned calmly to her desk and started drawing. Picture after picture, attempting to make up for one mistake. The top of the power pyramid had fallen, and the lower ranks were again in disorder, needing control, or so she had thought.

But now her plan was going to begin. A foolproof plan, almost, at least; she had attempted it years before with a D'ni refugee who had rejected her offer of shared power. For he had feared the animals too much to work with them to eventually overcome them. The woman, however, had grown up in an environment free of them and prejudice towards them, and had long ago developed her own stance towards them: they were naturally lower and she naturally higher. Not by birth were they lower, nor by virtue of what they were. It was a hierarchy of power, and she was on top.

The Grower is the one who leads, so you will follow me…

This time, though, her plan would work. A relative of her father's old friend, knowledgeable about the D'ni, would be taught by the stupid animals much as they had taught her. He would then deliver the Tablet to her and she would then control them as she once had, for she only needed to strengthen the tenuous bond that still existed between them and her. Then she would either reward her helper with a meaningless gift or send them off to some Age where they would not be a problem and impede her plans. She knew that he would be headstrong and have his own volition, and she liked that in a person, or anything, for that matter.

It only made it more fun to take control of.

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To discover the truth, our father embarked on one final journey. However, he never returned. I can only assume that he perished along the way, leaving me, an innocent victim, entrapped forever… You must find one more page and I will be forever free!

Please Review, despite the fact that I was negligent in my updating!