The Myst Reader by Robyn Miller Read Free Book Online

serve its purpose perfectly. To test it, Atrus had spent several afternoons lowering rocks into that maw, then raising them again—rocks many times the weight of the load it would have to carry now.
    On the other side of the crater’s lip, just next to where the rock arm was weighed down by a pile of heavy stones, sheltered by a makeshift tent, was his pride and joy—the beginning and the end of all this patient endeavor: his battery. Reaching up, he grasped one of the wires, pulling it toward him, drawing out enough of its length so that it stretched to the metal cap. Attaching it to one of the studs, he then repeated the process.
    Adjusting his glasses, he clambered back up the wall and over the lip, out into the burning sunlight.
    For a moment he stood there, getting his breath. Each time he emerged from the shadow, it was like stepping into a furnace. Nor did it matter how often he did it; every time, that change from the cool of the shade to the sudden, stifling heat of the open was like a physical blow.

     
    Ducking under the thick cloth screen of the tent, Atrus smiled. This time he had tried hard to look at all the angles, to make sure he took all aspects of the Whole into account in his calculations.
    The battery rested in the corner of the tent, against a ledge of rock. Looking at the massive thing, Atrus felt a justifiable pride. He had cut the block of stone himself and, using Anna’s finest cutting tools, had hollowed it, following the design in the ancient D’ni book. Making the plates for the battery was comparably easy. Chemicals lay in abundance in the dry soil surrounding the volcano, and he had been fortunate to find a large deposit of galena—the ore containing a mixture of sulfur and lead—not far from the cleft. As for the sulfuric acid he had needed, the one substance that was in abundance on the volcano was sulfur. Indeed, when he finally came to make it, the only thing that had limited the size of the battery was its weight.
    Adjusting his lenses once again, Atrus knelt and studied it proudly. He had spent many nights buffing and polishing the stone, then, on a whim, had carved three ancient D’ni words into its side, the complex characters tiny, elaborate works of art in themselves:
    Light. Power. Force.
    It looked like a tiny stone house, the metallic glint of its terminals giving it a strange, exotic look.
    Beside it, altogether different, lay a second, much smaller box—the explosive device. This one was made of an unglazed red clay, cast in his grandmother’s kiln. Undecorated, the single, rounded aperture on its top face was plugged with a hard seal of wax, from the center of which jutted a length of thick twine which he had treated with a solution of various highly reactive chemicals. On its front face was a thick, clay handle.
    Carefully, he picked it up and, wrapping it in his cloak, carried it outside. Easing his way over the lip once more, he steadied himself, one hand against the rough, crumbling wall, as he edged down onto the ledge.
    Setting the box down, he turned and, standing on tiptoe, reached up and caught hold of the thick, metal hook on the end of the rope, gently tugging at it, hearing the brake mechanism click then click again on the far side of the rim.
    That, too, was his own invention.
    On some of the earliest trials of the winch, he had found that the rock dragged the rope down much too quickly, and when he’d tried to slow it, the rope had burned his palms. After much experimentation, he had devised a way of stopping the supply wheel after each rotation, so that the winch could only be operated by a series of gentle tugs.
    Bending down, he picked the box up again and slipped the curved tip of the hook through its handle, then turned back and, holding the rope out away from him, slowly lowered it over the drop. As the rope went taut, he moved back.
    There was only one more thing to do now. Reaching into the inner pocket of his cloak, he removed the ancient D’ni