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An ancient proverb of the Guild of Writers says “Yahvo has no clock.” That is to say, there is no one measurement of time constant across every Age. To be sure, the windows in the Books provide a way to synchronize two particular locations in a pair of Ages, but we know that even within one Age time is not constant. How much worse do matters become, then, when we pluck Ages at random out of the vast expanse of space and time that we call the Great Tree!
Yet there have been certain mystics who claimed otherwise. They say that certain events may be linked in a way imperceptible to all but the inward eye, so that we may speak of them occurring at the same time, even when the watches in our hands are silent. They say that this is the time measured by angels.
―The Meditations of Lord Haemis
Even in places where there was no sun, the dawn came. And though Atrus could not see it with his eyes, he knew that in the lake outside the algæ had awoken and begun to shine with their peculiar orange light. Not that day or night meant anything to him anymore. There were only the long periods of ceaseless work: measuring the static of the panel, weighing word against word and phrase against phrase, and then with the greatest care making the smallest possible change to the text. He tried to catch as much sleep as he could—he knew that an exhausted mistake could doom a world—and yet he feared that without his constant attention Riven would shift, and collapse would be inevitable, and Catherine would be lost.
He ignored the voice that told him she would be lost regardless, that Riven was doomed, that he was only delaying the final chapter. What could he possibly do to save anyone? He was a prisoner of K’veer and the handful of tiny Ages whose books he had kept there. He could not take a book to Riven without freeing his father. He could not leave K’veer for long without condemning Riven to collapse. It was a problem that had no solution. And as time passed, and the Age’s decay became worse, the problems posed by the Riven Book drew closer and closer to impossibility themselves.
So here he sat at his desk, more of a prisoner in this room now than he had been as a boy thirty years ago. He wrote, and he saw no hope of an ending.
~
It was early in the morning and the sun was just beginning to rise from its battle with Grandfather Wahrk when Ealah went down to the lagoon to crouch by the water, scooping it up and straining it through the sieve so that the krill would remain, a fine pale dust across the surface of the mesh. In the old days, whenever there was a dearth of fish there would be a plenitude of krill to bake into sea‐bread: poor food, but better than starving. But now there was less of both. She listened to the murmurs of the earth and watched the flight of the birds and both had the same message for her.
Riven was dying.
The people were dying.
The Lord Gehn promised that he would bring them out of this doomed world into a glorious paradise, but the Lord Gehn promised many things, and Ealah was old enough to remember how few of them came to pass. Not that she would ever say such things aloud, not where spies (human or animal) could hear her. If there was one thing that was certain with the Lord Gehn, it was his wrath.
Yet she did not know which was worse: the terrifying presence of Gehn or his absence, when his words of promise could no longer be heard and the ghosts that he had banished returned. The ghosts were bolder than ever. They stole food, and some said they stole newborn babies. It was almost enough to make one pray that Grandfather Wahrk would swallow the islands and put an end to everything. Almost.
Between Gehn and the black ghosts, where was she to turn? Not Ealah herself, perhaps: she was not far from the grave, but her stubborn brother and the rest? She did not put much faith in the rumors that little Katran had returned. Such things were cave stories and perished in the daylight.
She watched the sun come up, triumphant over the sea, and she wondered if there was any hope for the island and the people, or if such victories were kept for the sun and the moon alone.
~
Gehn did not watch the sun rise for long. His work elsewhere was too important. But for just a moment he was back in the desert, his arms around Keta in the early morning—
He had believed at first, and he still dared to hope, that Age 233 was stable, lacking those perplexing tectonic instabilities that had so often troubled his previous work. Despite all his intense effort, he had never been able to track down the precise master phrases that the D’ni of old must have used to stabilize the worlds they created, and yet for a little while it had seemed that Age 233 in its utter simplicity might have been spared. But certain measurements of the waterline and the composition of the rock suggested otherwise.
Still, he had no doubt that Age 234 would be a fine refuge for him when it was complete. Unlike 233, 234 would be created complete with the trees and the beetles he needed to carry on his sacred task. D’ni would live again. Wonderful new worlds would be brought into being and the gods who wrought those worlds would be raised to the honors they deserved.
From this little island in the middle of a deadly sea he had made these things happen. Not that his success surprised him, no. The only question was how many of their own people Katran and the rebels would hold back from the glorious future that awaited them under Gehn’s hand. And that was ultimately a matter of very little consequence.
~
It took a long time for the sun to appear over the cliffs that surrounded the hive, but when it did the Rivenese greeted it with shouts. The darkening of the old sun had been the symbol of Gehn’s first defeat by Atrus, when the child had stolen the light of the father. Now the new sun was the symbol of the light that the ascended daughter of Riven brought back to her people.
And Catherine was happy along with them. But their adoring looks pained her, even if she could not tell them so. She wanted to join with her people in their celebration, not stand over them receiving their worship. What would happen, she wondered, once they were free at last? She was bound to disappoint them sooner or later. She could not, she would not be their god, no matter how much they wanted it.
Yet she would not let them see her face when she thought of Atrus and Myst. It was a pain almost too great to bear, to be ripped away from her home and her family a second time in her life. Catherine was not the girl she had been when she was cut off from Riven. In some ways that girl was a stranger to her, and stared back at her through the mask the dancers wore when they re‐enacted the sacred story. Who would she become if Tay was cut off too?
The rifts that she and Anna had written into the world had been necessary, but only for a short time. Today she would attempt to mend the rift that she had not anticipated. She would return to Riven and she would try to bring the people of the village back together with the Black Moiety. She did not have much hope—the fear of Gehn was so strong—but she had to try, or her own spirit would be torn in two as well.
~
And a stranger waited for the sun to rise out of the mists, then turned back to the mechanisms and books that filled this deserted, forgotten isle.