"Myst - 01 - The Book Of Atrus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Miller Rand)

Myst Book #01
The Book of Atrus

by Rand Miller & David Wingrove



Prologue

Gehn's bootprints lay heavy around the tiny pool, the lush, well-tended green
churned to mud. At one end of the garden, beneath a narrow outcrop, he had dug a
shallow grave. Now, as the dawn's light slowly crept over the sands to touch the
cleftwall twenty feet above, he covered over the young girl's body, his pale
cream desert clothes smeared with her blood and with the dark earth of the
cleft.

From the steps above Anna watched, exhausted after the long night. She had done
what she could, but the girl had dearly been ill for some months and the
exertions of childbirth had eaten up what little strength remained to her. She
had died with a sigh of relief.

Even now, in the silence of the dawn, she could hear Gehn's howls of anguish,
his hurt and angry ranting; could hear the words of blame which, at the time,
had washed over her. It was her fault. Everything was her fault.

So it was. So it had always been.

He turned, finished, and looked up at her, no love in that cold, penetrating
gaze. Nineteen he was. Just nineteen.

"Will you stay?" she asked wearily.

His answer was a terse shake of the head. Almost belligerently, he stomped
across the surface of the garden, churning up yet more of her precious growing
space, oblivious, it seemed, to the significance of what he did. She watched him
crouch beside the pool, unable in her heart to be angry with him-for all he'd
done and said. No, for she knew what he must be feeling. She knew herself how
that felt-to lose the focus of one's life, the meaning ...

She looked down at her unwashed hands and slowly shook her head. Why come when
there was nothing she could do to help?

But she knew the answer. He had come only because there was no one else to turn
to. He had not wanted to come, but desperation had shaped his course. Knowing
his wife was ill, he had remembered his mother's healing powers. But he had come
too late.

Too late for her, anyway.

Anna raised her head, hearing the baby's cries. Stretching, she stood, then went