Atrus woke in a cool, brightly-lit cavern, the air of which was fresh and sweet after the air in the lava cavern. There was a blanket over him and from close by he could hear the echoing drip drip drip of water. Shivering, he sat up, wondering where he was, and immediately saw his father, less than thirty feet away, standing beside a pool, the surface of which seemed to glow as if illuminated from below.
His feet and legs ached and his head still felt strangely heavy, but otherwise he felt all right. Piecing things together, he began to understand. He had almost fallen from the bridge. His father must have rescued him.
Thinking of it, he looked down, smiling. It was the kind of thing Anna would have done. The same thing he himself would have done had their positions been reversed.
Atrus looked across again, trying to get the measure of this man—this stranger—who had come into his life so suddenly and changed it. He was strange, there was no doubting it, and his manner was abrupt almost to the point of rudeness, but maybe there was a reason for that. Maybe he was simply not used to dealing with people: as unused to the idea if a “son” as he, Atrus, was unused to the idea of a “father.” If so, he should make allowances. Until they knew each other better. Until that tie of blood was also one of friendship.
This line of reasoning cheered him. Throwing off the blanket he got up and hobbled over to where his father stood, standing beside him silently, looking out across the strangely lit pool.
“What does that?” he asked, pointing to the water’s surface.
Gehn turned. He had clearly been preoccupied with some matter. “Ah, Atrus…you’re up.”
“I…I guess I have to thank you.”
Gehn shrugged, then looked back across the pond. “It’s good to talk again,” he said, pushing out his chin in a strange gesture. “It’s been very isolated down here on my own. I’ve longed for a companion for a long time now. An intellectual companion, that is. When I knew you were alive…well,” he turned. “To be honest with you, Atrus, I was surprised. I did not expect you to survive. But I was pleased. I thought we might get on. Eventually.”
Atrus smiled shyly. “I hope so. I want to learn.”
“Good. That is a healthy attitude to have.” Then, “Are you up to traveling on? I have been pushing you, I realize, but there is good reason.”
“I’ll be ok,” Atrus said, feeling a sudden warmth toward his father. “It’s just so…strange.”
Gehn stared at him thoughtfully. “Yes. I suppose it must be, after the cleft. But the best of it lies ahead, Atrus. And I mean the best. D’ni. Tonight we shall reach D’ni.”
Atrus’s face lit. “Tonight?” Then an expression of confusion crossed his features. “But what time is it now? Morning, afternoon? I can’t follow it any longer. Down here time seems to have no meaning.”
Gehn took out his D’ni timer and handed it to Atrus.
“See there” he said, indicating the five differently shaded sectors—three light, two dark—that were marked on the circular face. A thin trail of silver spiraled from the center of the circle, stopping just inside the second of the lightly shaded sectors. “Right now it is the D’ni midday. We D’ni measure time differently from those who dwell on the surface. They set their clocks to the passage of the sun. We’ however, set our clocks to the biological rhythms of our environment. Each of those sectors represents just over six hours in surface time.”
“So the D’ni day is longer?”
“Very good, Atrus. You learn quickly.”
Gehn took the timer back and, shaking it, held it to his ear, almost as if to check it was still working. Then, satisfied, he slipped it back into his pocket and looked to Atrus.
“If you’re ready?”
§
Despite Atrus’s expectations, the way grew harder. Fallen rock blocked the way in several places and they had to climb over piles of jagged stone or squeeze through narrow gaps. The tunnels, too, seemed to grow smaller and darker, and though he could not be sure of it, Atrus sensed that they had long strayed from the straight path that led direct to D’ni. Certainly there was no sign of that wonderful stone-and-metal path beneath their feet. Despite everything, however, his spirits were high, his whole being filled with an excited anticipation that coursed like a drug in his veins.
D’ni! He would soon be in D’ni! Why, even the dull pain in his feet seemed insignificant beside that fact.
They had traveled only an hour or so when Gehn called back to him and told him to get over to the right. Just ahead, part of the tunnel floor had fallen away to form a kind of pit. As he edged around it he could see, far below, a valley, with what looked like a broad, dark river flowing through it. He strained his ears, thinking he could faintly hear the sound of it—a roaring, rushing noise—but could not be sure.
Farther on, that noise, which he had begun to think was merely in his head, began to grow, until, coming out of the tunnel into a massive opening, the far walls of which could not be glimpsed in the darkness, that same sound filled the air, seeming to shake the walls on every side. The air was damp and cold, tiny particles of glittering mist dancing in the light from their lanterns.
Atrus backed against the wall. Then, as Gehn switched on the big lamp, he saw what it was.
Water fell in a solid sheet from a ledge two hundred feet above them, plunging a thousand feet into a massive pool below. In the torch’s beam the water was like solid crystal.
Atrus turned, in time to glimpse Gehn returning the notebook to his inner pocket. He gestured past Atrus, indicating the way with his torch, the beam illuminating a broad ledge that circled the massive cavern.
Coming into the smaller cavern at the back of the falls, Gehn stopped and called him over, holding his lantern out over a shelf of rock that was filled with crystal-clear water.
Atrus leaned close to look, then gave a little gasp of surprise. In the water were a number of long, colorless fish that looked like worms. They had frilled transparent gills and fins. As he looked, they scurried across and, slipping through a tiny rent in the lip of the rock, seemed to jump into the pool below with a plip-plop-plip that echoed throughout that tiny space.
“What are they?” Atrus asked, looking up into his father’s eyes.
“Salamanders,” Gehn answered. “They live down here, along with crickets, spiders, millipedes, and fish. They’re troglodytic, Atrus. They never leave these caves. And they’re blind, too. Did you notice that?”
Gehn turned away and walked on, his boots crunching across the littered floor of the cavern.
For a long time they had been descending; now they began to climb, the way getting easier, until the tunnel they were following suddenly swung round to the right and met a second, larger tunnel.
Stepping out into it, Atrus gave a little gasp of surprise. It was the D’ni path! Both ahead and behind it stretched away, straight and perfectly cylindrical, into the darkness of the rock.
Staring back at the way they’d come, he understood what they must have done. For some reason—a cave-in, possibly—the straight path had been blocked, and they had taken an alternate route.
For a moment he recollected his father studying the diagram in his notebook and the faint anxiety that had been in his eyes, and wondered how he had come upon those paths; whether it had been a question of stumbling aimlessly in the darkness, constantly tracing and retracing his path until he’d found a way through.
“Atrus?”
He turned. Gehn was already fifty feet up the tunnel.
“I’m coming?” he called, hobbling to catch up. But in his mind he was imagining his father, all those years ago, when he had first returned to D’ni, struggling in the darkness here beneath the earth—alone, completely and utterly alone—and felt a deep admiration of the courage that had driven him.
§
“Are we close?”
“Not far,” Gehn answered. “The Gate is just ahead.”
The news thrilled Atrus. Not far! There had been times when he’d thought they would walk forever and never arrive; but now they were almost there. The land he’d dreamed about all his life lay just ahead. A land of wonder and mystery.
Atrus hurried on, catching up with his father, keeping abreast with him as they neared the tunnel’s end. He could see it now, directly ahead, and beyond it, on the far side of a massive marble plaza…
“Is that the Gate?” he asked, awed, his voice a whisper.
“That’s it,” Gehn said, grinning proudly. “It marks the southern boundary of the D’ni kingdom. Beyond it, everything for a hundred miles belongs to the D’ni.”
Atrus looked to his father, surprised that he talked of the D’ni as if they still existed, then he looked back, taking in the sheer size of the great stone gate that was revealed beyond the tunnel’s exit.
As they came out, he looked up and up and up, his mouth open in wonder. Though the surface was cracked in places and fragments had fallen away, littering the great expanse of marbled floor that lay before him, it was still magnificent. Filling the whole of one end of what was clearly a vast cavern, the huge stone barrier plugged that space from wall to wall, its surface filled with what seemed like an infinity of intertwining shapes—of men, machines, and beasts; of flowers and shields and faces; and D’ni words, some of which he recognized—all of it cut from a jet black granite that seemed to sparkle in the light from Gehn’s lantern.
The Gate dwarfed them, like nothing they had so far seen. As he walked toward it Atrus felt the hairs on his neck rise. Whatever he had pictured in his head, whatever he’d imagined while listening to Anna’s tales, the reality exceeded it by far.
Stepping beneath that arch, he looked up; its massive thickness impressing him. How had the D’ni fashioned such a vast artifact? How had they cut the blocks, how fashioned them? From his own limited experience, he knew the difficulties of working stone, but the D’ni had thought nothing of throwing up such a huge mass of it.
Ahead of him the marble floor ended abruptly. Beyond it a cavern stretched away, its walls pocked with tunnel entrances. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.
It was suddenly very warm, the air much closer than it had been. Gehn glanced at his notebook again, then began to make his way across the floor of the cavern.
Selecting one of the larger tunnels, he gestured to Atrus to catch up with him, then turned and disappeared inside. The tunnel was much larger than any they had been in, with countless tunnels and small caverns—clearly artificially excavated—branching off.
Atrus followed his father, his eyes constantly surveying what lay to either side, noticing new things every second: great wheels and gantries; factories and warehouses; great mounds of loose rock and equally huge pits over which massive abandoned cranes stood like sentinels—all these and many other things, most of which he could not recognize at first sight.
Great machines stood idle everywhere he looked, as though abandoned only hours before, their oil-like, lacquered surface gleaming darkly in their passing light. Huge mining rigs rested on great pneumatic platforms beside the gaping holes of shafts bored into the foot of the cavern’s walls, like massive insects feeding, their squat dark shapes still and silent.
Steam rose unchanneled from great fissures on every side: steam that had once powered the industrial might of D’ni. Elsewhere simple stone houses stood empty, roofless in the D’ni style, the thin cloth screens that had once maintained their privacy shredded by the same force that had toppled the stone towers of the factories.
Seeing it all, Atrus wondered just how it could have come to an end. It was so vast, so extraordinary.
From time to time other paths crossed their own, making him realize that there was not one D’ni path but an endless labyrinth of them, threading their way through the dark earth.
Suddenly, without warning, Gehn began to climb the wall of the tunnel, ducking into a much smaller shaft. Atrus, catching up, looked across to his right and saw that the tunnel was blocked some twenty yards ahead, collapsed in upon itself. Fearful of losing Gehn, he climbed the tunnel wall, following him inside.
§
They had been walking for hours and all the way their path had got slowly narrower, hotter, stuffier. Gehn now walked with the notebook open in one hand, consulting it almost constantly. The path had taken so many twists and turns that Atrus felt numbed by it, but still Gehn went on, confident, it seemed, that it led somewhere.
Then, suddenly, the quality of the light changed. Atrus blinked, his senses sparked to life by that sudden change. There was a faint breeze, a slight cooling of the air. As they turned the next corner there was a marked increase in the intensity of the light, a definite orange glow up ahead. The air was cool and clear, heavy suddenly with the scent of vegetation. The path climbed.
Ahead there was an opening. A circle of brilliant orange light.
As Atrus stepped out, it was to be met by the most astonishing sight he had yet encountered.
Facing him was an enormous valley, six miles across and ten broad, its steeply sloping shores descending to a glowing orange lake that filled at least half the valley’s floor. At the center of that lake was a huge island, a mile or more in width, two twisted columns of rock pushing up from that great tumulus to soar more than a mile into the air. Beyond that, to its right, the great rock walls were curiously striped, regular tiered levels of colored stone reaching up into the shadows overhead, above the level at which Atrus himself stood. Within those levels great pools of orange water glowed.
He loked up, expecting clouds, or maybe stars, but the blackness was immaculate overhead. Slipping his glasses down, he increased their magnification, studying the far side of the lake. Buildings! They were buildings! Buildings that clung to the great rock precipice, seeming to defy gravity!
Atrus craned his neck, following the course of the rock walls upward, understanding coming to him in an instant. He was inside! Inside a vast, cavernous expanse.
He stared, awed by the strange beauty of the sight. Beneath him the ground sloped steeply down to the sea’s edge where, in a tiny harbor, a boat was moored. To the right, just offshore, the sea was dotted with tiny islands, like dark blemishes in that orange mirror.
“There,” Gehn said, coming alongside. “Now, perhaps, you might understand why I could not leave you in that ridiculous crack in the ground. Is that not the grandest sight you have ever seen, Atrus?”
It was, and he did indeed understand why his father had brought him, yet the reminder cast a shadow over what he was feeling at that moment. Suddenly he wanted Anna to be there with him, wanted to share it with her—to be able to talk to her and ask her questions.
“Come,” Gehn said from just below him as he began to make his way down the steep slope. “Another hour and we’re home.”
§
Atrus stood on the foredeck, his right hand gripping the rail as Gehn maneuvered the strange craft out onto the mirror-smooth waters, digging the pole deep, his muscles straining.
Atrus looked about him excitedly, conscious of the absence of echoes in that vast space, of the sound Gehn’s pole made as it dipped into the water. The cavern was so vast, it felt almost as if they were back outside, on the surface, sailing on a moonless night, but for that orange glow that underlit everything.
As the blunt, wedge-shaped prow of the boat came around, Atrus saw the city in the distance once again. From here it seemed immaculate and beautiful, a vast bowl of towers and spires, as if it alone had not been touched by the destruction he had seen elsewhere. But they were not going to the city. Not yet, anyway. “Home,” it seemed, was on one of the cluster of islands that skirted the right-hand wall of the cavern.
Atrus let out a little sigh. Now that he had stopped walking, his muscles had finally begun to seize up. His body ached and his eyelids felt like lead weights. The gentle movement of the boat didn’t help either. It lulled him, like a voice singing in his head. He blinked, trying to keep his eyes open, trying to stay awake a while longer, but it was hard. It felt like he had walked a thousand miles.
For a moment Atrus dozed where he stood, then he jerked awake again, looking up, expecting to see stars littering the desert sky.
“Where…?”
He turned, looking back to where his father sat in the center of the boat, slowly rowing them toward the island, and shook his head to clear it, convinced he was in the grip of some strangely vivid dream.
Facing front again, he saw the island looming from the shadows up ahead, its twisted, conical outline silhouetted black against the surrounding sea. Briefly, he noticed how the water about the far end of the island was dark and wondered why.
Home , he thought, noting the fallen walls, the toppled tower of the great mansion that sat upon the summit of the island like a huge slab of volcanic rock. Home…
Yet even as he saw it, sleep overcame him. Unable to prevent himself, he fell to his knees, then slumped onto the deck, unconscious, so that he did not see the boat pass beneath he island, into a brightly lit cavern. Nor did he see the waiting figure standing on the flight of winding steps that led up into the rock above.
§
“Atrus? Are you awake?”
Atrus lay there, his eyes closed, remembering the dream.
The voice came closer. “Atrus?”
He turned onto his back and stretched. The room was warm, the mattress strangely soft beneath him.
“What is it?” he asked lazily, uncertain yet whether he was awake.
“It is evening now,” the voice, his father’s voice, said. “You have slept a whole day, Atrus. Supper is ready, if you want some.”
Atrus opened his eyes, focusing. Gehn stood there two paces from the bed, a lantern in one hand. In its flickering light the room seemed vast and shadowy.
“Where are we?” he asked, the details of the dream receding as he began to recall the long trek through the caverns.
“We are on K’veer,” Gehn said, stepping closer, his pale, handsome face looming from the shadow. “This will be your room, Atrus. There are clothes in the wardrobes over there if you want to change, but there is no real need. When you are ready, you should turn left outside the door and head toward the light.”
Atrus nodded, then, with a shock, realized that his feet no longer hurt. Nor were they bandaged. “My feet…”
Gehn looked down at him. “I treated them while you were asleep. They will be sore for several days, but you can rest now.”
“And your experiments? Were we in time?”
Gehn turned away, as if he hadn’t heard, then walked across the room, drawing back the heavy curtains to reveal, through a massive, latticed window, the orange glow of the cavern beyond. There was a broad stone balcony and a view of the distant city.
“I shall leave you now,” Gehn said, setting the lantern down on the table beside the bed. “But try not to be too long, Atrus. There are things we need to talk about.”
Atrus waited for his father to leave the room, then sat up, sliding his legs around and examining his feet in the lamp’s light. Where the sores were worst, on his heels and ankles and on the balls of his feet, Gehn had smeared them with an ointment that left a dark stain on the skin. Atrus touched one of the patches gingerly, then sniffed his fingers. It was the same as the ointment his grandmother had always used whenever he’d grazed knees or shins or elbows on the rock.
Atrus?
Yes, Grandmother?”
What do you see, Atrus?
I see the D’ni city, Grandmother. I see…
Atrus stepped out onto the balcony, looking at it, trying to fix it in his memory so that he could tell her when he saw her again.
Far out there was a moving shadow on the water. He narrowed his eyes, watching it a while, then shrugged and looked beyond it at the city once again. Yes , he thought. I see the most incredible sight I’ve ever seen.
§
“Ah, Atrus…come and sit with me.”
Atrus hesitated in the doorway, then stepped inside, into the clear blue light of the kitchen. His father sat at a table to his left, a plate of food set before him.
It was a big V-shaped room with two large windows overlooking a stone-paved terrace garden that jutted out over the orange sea. The light outside seemed much darker now, and to compensate, Gehn had placed several lanterns in niches about the room.
Looking about him, Atrus noticed that the kitchen was solid stone. The cupboards, the table, the benches, even the sink and oven, were made of a strange, smooth banded gneiss that, like the path they had followed into D’ni, seemed to have been softened and then molded like clay. Tiny strips of metal, intricately fashioned, were threaded into the black-and-white-striped stone in a manner Atrus found hard to fathom. Though it was stone, it had a light warm feel that was unexpected. How they had managed it was a mystery to him, yet it was clear that the D’ni had developed processes well advanced of the ways of men.
“How do you feel now?” Gehn asked, gesturing for him to take a seat across from him.
“How did he feel? Homesick, but also, now that his waking mood had passed, immensely curious. What did his father want of him? Gehn had said something to Anna about teaching him. But teaching him what?
“Hungry,” he answered finally, finding it safest.
“Good,” Gehn said. Turning, he picked up a small handbell from the table beside him and rang it.
At once a figure filled the far doorway, looming briefly in the shadows before it entered the room.
“Atrus, this is Rijus, my serving man.”
The man who stood there, holding a large, shallow basket piled high with fruit, was tall, taller even than Gehn, and had a great domed head that seemed to be made of polished ivory. He wore a baggy dark blue one-piece, tied at the waist with a length of similarly colored cord, but the most remarkable thing about him were his eyes; lidless eyes that were like blemished eggs in his otherwise undistinguished face.
Atrus looked to his father, uncertain how to behave, hen, when Gehn gave him no clue, he turned back and, bowing his head slightly, said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Rijus.”
“It is no use trying to engage Rijus in conversation, Atrus. Rijus is a mute. He was born that way and he will die that way. But he understands commands well enough. If you need something, you should simply ask Rijus.”
Atrus hesitated, then gave a little nod.
“Well, boy? What are you waiting for? Are you hungry or not?”
Atrus stood and, conscious of the servant’s unnaturally staring eyes upon him, went over to him. A dozen different kinds of fruit were spread out in the basket—only a few of which he recognized, and then only from the traders’ packs. Tiny beads of moisture speckled their brightly colored surfaces, enhancing their strange but perfect forms.
He looked back at Gehn. “Did you grow these, father?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Atrus turned back, wondering what to choose, almost afraid to touch them, they seemed so perfect. Then, reaching out, he picked one of the long, yellow, oval-shaped fruit, attracted by its strange, five-ribbed form.
It was rotten. It fell apart as he lifted it, revealing its dark brown innards. He looked to his father, surprised.
Gehn gestured to Rijus impatiently. “Take them away.” Then, turning to Atrus, he fixed him with his stare.
“Come, Atrus. I think it is time we began our task. Time you found out why I brought you here to D’ni.”
§
A twist of steps led up to a broad, high-ceilinged corridor, the end of which opened out onto a balcony directly above the terrace. On the far side of the balcony, set into the rock face, was a massive metal door, the jet black face of which was decorated with the same elaborate patterns Atrus had glimpsed on the Inner Gate. Pausing before it, Gehn reached inside his cloak and took out a large key, fitting it into the lock and turning it twice before removing it.
He stepped back. There was a faint shudder and then the door began to rise, sliding into the rock smoothly and silently, to reveal a dark, wedge-shaped opening. Six steps led down into a spacious room, lit from above by a massive star-shaped lamp. At the very center of the room was a raised dais, surrounded by three steplike ledges. On top of that dais were five large granite pedestals. Atrus turned, looking about him, impressed by what he saw. The walls were covered with massive shelves made of thick slabs of stone, and on those shelves were hundreds, possibly thousands of leather-bound books, similar to those his grandmother had kept back on her shelf in the cleft.
Gehn turned, looking to his son. “This, as you see, is the library. This is where you will come for your lessons every day.” He gestured toward a low stone table in one corner. “That will be your desk. Bu before we commence, I want to show you why I brought you here, and why it is so important that you learn the ways of D’ni.”
Raising his right hand, he beckoned Atrus to him, then, as the young man came alongside him, took his elbow and lead him up the steps and onto the dais.
At the center of the dais, recessed into its bone-white marble floor, was a circular pool surrounded by five marble pedestals.
Gehn stood before him. “Choose a book. Any book on the shelves.”
“What?”
“Choose a book.”
Atrus went across to the shelves, letting his eyes travel across their richly bound spines. There was no writing on any of them. A few had symbols, but none made any sense.
He turned, looking to his father.
“ Choose a book.”
Atrus took one down, the smell of its light green cover strangely intoxicating, exciting.
Gehn reached out, taking it from him. Opening it, he scanned it quickly, then nodded. Turning the book about, Gehn placed it reverently on the pedestal, watching Atrus all the while.
Atrus stepped closer, looking down at the open pages. The left-hand page was blank, but on the right…
He gasped, amazed by the clarity of the picture in that small, rectangular box. Why, it was like staring through a window!
A strange, rust red conical mound filled the foreground, reminding Atrus of a giant termite’s nest. Behind it was a lush backdrop of vivid, almost emerald green, with a glimpse of a cloudless sky above.
As Atrus watched, the image on the page slowly changed, seeming to tilt to the right, like an eye attempting to follow something just out of vision. The mound slowly disappeared, to be replaced in the foreground by a fast-flowing stream that tumbled between the rocks, then fell spectacularly into a crystal pool. But no sooner had it focused on that, than it lifted again, swinging out and over the surrounding gully, to reveal, beyond it, a valley filled with low, almost bushlike trees, on which could be seen a host of vividly colored fruit. There was a glimpse of a long, clear pool surrounded by grassy slopes and of distant, snowcapped mountains, and then the image returned to the rust red mound.
Gehn stepped across. “Give me your hand. You’ll live as the D’ni now. This is what you were born for.”
§
Atrus felt the skin on his palm tingle as though a faint electrical current had passed through it. His hand seemed drawn to the image on the page, attracted to it. For a moment that was all. Then, with a sudden, sickening lurch, he felt himself sucked into the page. Or rather, it was as if the page grew suddenly huge, enveloping him in the weave of its fibers. At that same instant he felt a curious shifting sensation. It felt as though he were melting, the fragile shell of him imploding, collapsing back in upon himself, and then the blackness seeped through.
And as he finally surrendered to that blackness, so he found himself back in his body, standing on the grass just in front of the mound, a fresh breeze blowing into his face, the stream below him, the waterfall and the valley just beyond.
Gone were the marble pedestals, the book-lined walls, the solid rock ceiling overhead! Atrus reached out, as if to touch them, but there was nothing.
Atrus looked up, startled by the transition. Huge white clouds drifted in a sky so blue it looked like a child’s painting. The air hummed with tiny insects, while all around him the heady scents of fruits and flowers swamped his senses.
He fell to his knees, astonished. This was magic, surely! Behind him Gehn shimmered into being.
“Get up onto your feet, boy,” Gehn said, quietly but firmly.
Atrus struggled to his feet, then turned to face his father. He was unable to believe what had just happened to him
“Where…where are we?”
Gehn stepped past him, standing beside the stream, his booted feet on the edge of a steep incline, looking down at the waterfall.
As Atrus came alongside, Gehn looked to his son, his chest swelling with pride. “Once the D’ni ruled a million worlds, using what was grown in them to clothe and feed and provision themselves. So it was in the time of their greatness.” He shook his head. “But all that is passed. Now there’s only you and I, Atrus. We two, and the worlds we shall make.”
“ Make , father?”
Gehn looked out across the land that lay beneath them and nodded, a fierce pride in his face as he spoke. “Yes, Atrus. I made this world. I made the rock on which we stand, and the very air we are breathing. I made the grass and the trees, the insects and the birds. I fashioned the flowers and the earth in which they grow. I made the mountains and the streams. All that you see, I made.”
Turning to face Atrus, Gehn placed his hands on his son’s shoulders, his eyes burning with excitement now.
“I plan to make you my apprentice, Atrus, and teach you about the books. Would you like that?”
Looking up at his father, Atrus remembered suddenly how Gehn had stepped from that great veil of whiteness at the volcano’s edge, awed by the power in the figure that stood facing him.
“Yes, father,” he answered clearly, “I’d like that very much.”
7