3 – Chamber
"All right, Britt... what's your thoughts?"
Jordan, Rachel, Maddy, Brittany and Jane were all seated at the table outside the Tomahna kitchen. Their search of Atrus and Catherine's home had turned up nothing, and they were beginning to get very worried that something even worse would happen to Yeesha whilst they were trying to work out what to do.
"I think I may have worked out who it is that's behind this," replied Brittany. "I'm not certain. But I have a fairly good idea."
"Really?" Rachel sat forward. "Who?"
"Look at it this way," said Brittany in her trademark cryptic fashion. "Who would want to kidnap Yeesha? Cause I think we have to assume that's what happened."
This puzzled all four listeners. Brittany continued after waiting a second. "She's ten years old. She gets along well with everyone. That means that there's nobody who has a grudge directly against her. Instead, that leaves two possibilities. Either, someone wants something she has. That seems unlikely. Or -"
"Someone's trying to use her to get to Atrus," finished Jordan heavily.
"Exactly," replied Brittany.
"That doesn't really narrow it down, though," said Maddy. "There's all manner of people who might want revenge on Atrus."
"That's true," said Brittany, "but it becomes more obvious who it must be when you think about it like this. Recently, Atrus has been teaching Yeesha the Art. This would doubtless have made some people jealous. Some people that Atrus had refused to teach the Art to."
"Oh, no way." Rachel cottoned on before either Jordan or Maddy did. "Not – not her brothers?"
"Who else?"
Jordan, Rachel and Maddy paused to consider this. Brittany had a point. It was not inconceivable at all that Sirrus or Achenar would have been jealous about Atrus agreeing to teach Yeesha the Art. And whilst Atrus and Catherine had hoped that twenty years alone on their respective prison ages would have reformed their sons, it was just as likely that their term of imprisonment would have made them bitter and bent on revenge.
"All right..." said Maddy eventually. "Let's say for argument's sake that one or both of Yeesha's brothers escaped their confinement and decided to kidnap her. That means that our next port of call has to be the prison ages."
"Yes," replied Brittany. "If they're still there, we know that it can't have been them. But if either of them has broken out, then it's more than likely that it was one of them. Then all we have to do is work out where she is."
"Okay," said Jordan, "in that case, here's the plan. We have to find where Atrus keeps the books linking to Spire and Haven. Once we find them, one of us goes to each age quickly to see if either brother is still there. Then, if they both are, we regroup and think again. If one of them has escaped, then Rach, Mop and I will go to that age to see if we can work out what happened."
"I'm not sitting around doing nothing!" exclaimed Brittany and Jane in unison. They shared a grin.
"You won't be doing nothing," replied Jordan tersely, "you'll be here in case something happens. Atrus or Catherine might come home, or whoever kidnapped Yeesha might come back here to confront Atrus."
"But -"
"Britt," intervened Maddy, "you can barely walk. If we're going to search the prison ages, we need to be quick about it, because we don't know how much time we have."
"And as for you, Jane," continued Jordan, "you're far too young to -"
"I am not," countered Jane immediately. "I'm ten years old -"
"Exactly -"
"- and I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Anyway, I'd be with you three. And," Jane saw the doubt still on Jordan's face and played her final trump card, "I know Yeesha far better than any of you. I know how she thinks. So I'd be helpful to working out what she did after the bridge blew up."
"She makes a good case, Jordan," said Brittany, stepping up to bat for Jane. Brittany and Jane had had a very close bond for a long time now, probably stemming from the two weeks when Jordan, Rachel and Maddy were on J'nanin. Jane had come to regard Brittany as a sort of surrogate aunt – Rachel had no siblings and Jordan's brother and sister both lived in Ireland – and Brittany had credited Jane as the main reason she had started dating again, because Jane's constant cheerfulness and pearls of childlike wisdom gave her "hope for the world", in Brittany's own words.
"I agree," replied Rachel.
With both his wife and his friend now united against him, Jordan silently appealed to Maddy, who shrugged.
"I'm on their side," she said, somewhat apologetically.
"Oh, fine then. I'm surprised you agreed, Britt. I thought you'd want to have some company."
"Don't worry about that, Jordan," replied Brittany deviously. "I'll be fine."
Getting there, he thinks. This would be a lot faster if he had some proper tools. But he had foolishly left all his tools behind when he broke out. So he has to improvise. Never mind... he's getting there, and with a bit of luck he'll be ready to go before someone comes looking for the girl.
He walks around to the chair and begins to carefully adjust a few things on the control panel. Twenty years on, he can hardly expect everything to work smoothly. Mind you, it's not easy to concentrate with your sister struggling and shouting at you from the chair. Block her out. She'll shut up for good once he gets this chair working.
Hard to block her out. Her voice drills into his skull. He grits his teeth.
"Shut up!" She does. "Thank you. Perhaps I should explain. Maybe then you'll keep quiet."
"Fine," she says, still struggling. "Explain."
"Well, it's perfectly simple. I want to learn the Art. Father refused to teach me. He has agreed to teach you. Therefore, I am jealous of you and intend to use you to achieve my goal."
"Why would I keep quiet?"
"Because if you don't," he says with forced calm, "I will make you shut up by putting your consciousness in a small blue globe." That shuts her up. "There we go." Back to work. He compliments himself silently on his bluff – he hasn't got any empty globes at the moment. He'll need to go harvest some before he does the transfer.
Jordan, Rachel, Maddy, Brittany and Jane stood in Atrus and Catherine's bedroom and surveyed the room. They were convinced that the way to get to the books must be in here somewhere.
"Right..." muttered Rachel. "So how does it work? A bookshelf combination or something?"
"I don't know," replied Maddy. "Although – hang on. Jane?"
Jane had been idly staring off into the distance until she heard her name. She jolted back to the present. "Hmm?"
"When that necklace showed you that memory of Yeesha being chased. Where did she run to?"
"Into the fireplace," replied Jane, puzzled.
"Thank you. You may now resume not listening to us." Maddy turned back to the others. "The fireplace must be the way in."
"I think you must be right, Mad," said Brittany, examining it carefully. After all, on Myst they had a rotating fireplace, didn't they?"
"That's true," said Rachel, "and there is a painting of Myst hanging above the fireplace."
Maddy, who was the smallest of the four of them, crawled into the fireplace. She called back what she saw.
"Yeah, okay... there's a sort of door here... and a button to close it, I guess." The door closed. "Yep, that's what it does." She paused. "Okay, there's a sort of grid on the inside wall behind the door."
"Sort of like the one on Myst," called back Jordan.
"Yeah, exactly. I guess we have to put some sort of code in." The door slid open again and Maddy emerged. "But what?"
There was silence for a moment. Jane, twirling her hair around her finger, was seated at Atrus' desk. She idly picked up a small scrap of paper.
"Does this help?" she said suddenly, waving it in the air. Jordan plucked it from her hand and examined it quickly.
"Maybe. It looks like if we turn the lamps on, that acts like a sort of switch for the fireplace lock. So..." He turned on the lamp on Atrus' desk and the one on the bedside table. "Go back in, Mop..."
Maddy went back into the fireplace and closed the door again. "Okay, yeah... I can see a whole bunch of little red dots projected onto some of the grid squares. I suppose we just have to press those squares." There was a pause. "Ah, hang on. When you touch a square, the squares around it light up." She opened the door and crawled back out. "What is it with Atrus and puzzles that are too clever for me?"
"Let me try," said Rachel, and crawled into the fireplace. They heard her tapping away at the grid. After a minute, she called back. "Ah, I got it! So now -"
Her voice cut off and became a shriek of not quite terror but more shock, combined with the clattering of gears and a sudden thud. After a second, they heard the clattering again, and the fireplace door opened. Rachel crawled out, looking slightly shaken.
"Okay, so the fireplace is like an elevator," she said, "and it goes down to a sort of cave near the lake. I didn't see what was there before I came back up, but I'm guessing that the books must be down there."
The five of them managed to squeeze into the fireplace, which frustratingly was larger than the elevator, and Rachel elbowed the button over the door. As the door panel slid down into place, Rachel noticed that the code she had inputted was still on the grid.
"Oh, it remembers the code!" she warned suddenly. "So we're about to -"
Exactly five seconds later, they picked themselves up off the floor of the fireplace and the ground outside (two of them had fallen out when the lift came to a stop) and brushed themselves off.
"Why," grumbled Maddy, "is it necessary for the lift to be that fast?"
"It's Atrus," replied Rachel. "Remember what he said to us once?"
"'If it's worth doing, it's worth doing properly,'" related Brittany, struggling to get to her feet. Jordan helped her up.
Once they had picked themselves up and assured themselves that there were no new injuries, they walked slowly out into the cave, half expecting to be ambushed by Sirrus or Achenar at any moment. Rounding the corner, they came face to face with something very strange.
Nestled into the cave, with a good view of the lake beyond, was a large golden ball. It looked like it was designed to rotate – yet more security, they guessed – and inside, mounted on stands attached to the railings, were two linking books.
"Okay, we found them," said Jordan. He pulled a large lever set into the ground near them. With a thud, the ball began to rotate very slowly on its horizontal axis until it had made a half turn. They noted as it came to a stop that the books had closed and slid to the side. The now-front panel of the ball opened with a slow creak, allowing them access to the books.
"There's only room for one or two in there," commented Maddy, looking at the small area of floor that was attached to the railing such that it wouldn't rotate when the ball did.
"So what's the plan, Jordan?" asked Rachel.
"Okay, I think one of us goes to Spire and another to Haven," said Jordan, "just to see if the brothers are still there. If either of them has escaped, we conduct a search of the age, being as thorough and at the same time quick as we possibly can."
"Right. So who goes in first? You, of course, Jordan, cause it was your idea."
"Naturally," replied Jordan, smiling slightly. "Any volunteers for a second?"
"Yeah, alright," replied Maddy after nobody else did. "We're just going for a quick look to see if they've escaped, right?"
"Right." Jordan and Maddy stepped into the ball. Rachel pulled the lever again, and the ball swivelled slowly around until the books sat open in front of them. Maddy touched the panel linking to Spire and vanished with a rush of air. Jordan followed suit quickly and linked to Haven. There was silence in the cave as Rachel, Brittany and Jane stood and waited.
"So how's your foot?"
"Getting better. It doesn't hurt nearly as much now. I should be right fairly soon."
"Good. And you're getting the hang of the crutch now, I see."
"Yeah, it's a case of practice makes perfect, I suppose."
The conversation lulled again. Fortunately for both Rachel and Brittany, Maddy chose this point to link back in. Rachel rotated the ball again to let her out, and she climbed down the stairs and joined them.
"Sirrus is gone," she announced bluntly with no attempt at a prelude. "The chamber there is more or less in ruins. How he did it, I have no idea."
Jordan linked into the chamber behind them and joined them quickly.
"Well, Achenar is not on Haven. He somehow managed to ruin the chamber and get to the book. So, do we think it was him?"
"Not entirely," replied Brittany. "Maddy was just telling us that exactly the same thing happened on Spire."
Jordan paused. "Terrific. So they've both escaped." He paused, thinking hard. "Well, we're going to have to search both ages. Which one are we going to do first?"
"Hang on," intervened Brittany. "You've been saying all along how we need to be fast. You're right, obviously. So why not search both ages at once? Split into two pairs and take one each, then regroup here afterwards."
Jordan paused in his stride. "Yeah, that makes sense. Good idea, Britt.
"All right," said Maddy, taking charge, "Jordan, you and Jane search Haven. Rachel and I will take Spire."
"Hang on," interrupted Jordan. "Why not -"
"Because," Maddy counter-interrupted, "with no offence to Jane, I'd rather not be paired with her, since I have no idea how to deal with children. Plus, if you and Rachel were together, I'd spend the entire search thinking about what you were doing alone on a largish age."
Jane snickered slightly. "No offence taken, Mad."
Jordan cleared his throat, somewhat embarrassed. "Well, we wouldn't – oh, never mind. All right, Jane and I will search Haven, and you two search Spire. Britt – we'll all be back as soon as we can. If anything happens while we're gone... well, get a knife from the kitchen and sit tight, I guess."
"I was planning," replied Brittany haughtily, "in the event that something dangerous does happen, to go to Releeshahn and get someone to help me."
"That's what she was planning to do anyway," said Maddy. Jordan, Rachel and Jane all laughed as Brittany blushed.
"Go on, get out of here," she said defensively, herding Maddy and Rachel into the ball as best she could. After a quick rotation, they linked to Spire, and a minute later Jordan and Jane were sent on their way to Haven. Brittany turned away from the golden ball and made her way back to the lift, grinning widely.
