Jerle Shannara - Antrax Part 20

"We can't stop it alone!"

"We have to! I'll do it myself!"

She began s.n.a.t.c.hing up clots of dirt and throwing them at the wronk, shrieking at it. Then abruptly, she dashed away, searching for another ram to knock it loose again. Quentin stayed where he was, waiting. The wronk was more than halfway out. When it reached him, he would try to knock it back down again. His hands tightened on the Sword of Leah. He could feel its power coursing through him, singing in his blood, making him light-headed and oddly detached. He watched the magic racing up and down the blade, tiny flickers of brilliant light.

He glanced down into the pit. The wronk could see the magic, too. The knowledge of what it meant reflected in Ard Patrinell's desperate, haunted eyes.

Then Tamis was back, hauling another dead branch, one shorter and less stout than the first. Her face was so intense and her eyes so wild that he rushed to help her, and once again they tried to knock the wronk loose from its perch.

But the wronk was ready for them. It s.n.a.t.c.hed the ram out of their hands before they could bring it to bear and, one-handed, swept the deadwood into them, knocking them backwards with a single, powerful blow. Quentin lost his grip on the Sword of Leah, and it flew out into the darkness. He went down in a heap, his ribs and chest throbbing with pain, the breath knocked from his body.

He was back up again in an instant, searching frantically for his weapon, their only hope. He found it quickly, but by the time he had it in hand, the wronk was out of the pit and reaching for Tamis, who stood defiantly in its path.

"Tamis, run!" Quentin shouted.

Instead, she charged, launching herself into the wronk with such fury that she knocked it backwards, slamming her short sword into its fire-blackened human arm, grappling with its metal one, wrapping her arms about the long knife and s.h.i.+eld.

Quentin never hesitated. He went after them as if possessed, yelling out the Highland battle cry, "Leah! Leah!" in fear and desperation, slamming into them both, trying to knock Tamis away, trying to topple the wronk. He succeeded in neither. Rebuffed, he stepped back and swung the Sword of Leah with such fury that he took off the wronk's human arm. It fell away with Tamis' short sword still buried in it, blood spraying everything in a red mist. A look of shock and disbelief crossed Ard Patrinell's face, his mouth yawning in a soundless scream. Quentin realized in horror that the Elf could still feel pain.

His hatred of what had been done to Patrinell boiled up anew. No one should be made to suffer like that. He lost control of himself and began hacking at the metal sh.e.l.l with short, powerful blows, trying to locate a vulnerable spot. In the darkness, it was difficult to tell much of anything. Tamis was screaming and clawing at the helmeted head, using her long knife and her fingers, no longer bothering with the metal arm and its long knife, which cut at her furiously. Quentin saw the glitter of the blade and heard the Tracker grunt in pain. He redoubled his efforts, s.h.i.+fting to the wronk's other side, slamming his sword into its metal-sheathed hand until it had broken the ball-and-socket joint in two and the blade had dropped from the useless fingers.

Both arms ruined, the wronk tottered back, trying to shake free of Tamis. While the Tracker clung to it, it could not adequately defend itself. Quentin pressed his advantage, hacking at the joints of its legs, and after what seemed an endless amount of time spent staggering this way and that through the bloodied night, he shattered the right ankle. The wronk dropped to its knees. Tamis sagged downward, as well, leaving Patrinell's head exposed. Quentin began hammering relentlessly at the protective s.h.i.+eld, his body alive with his sword's magic, his ears filled with its wild humming. Lost to everything but his desperate need to have it continue, wrapped in its killing haze, he no longer felt anything but its raw power.

Tamis fell away, rolling onto the earth before rising to her hands and knees, head hanging down between her shoulders. Quentin s.h.i.+fted his attack to the wronk's legs again, striking blow after blow until the left one gave way, as well.

He stepped back then, exhausted and stunned. The wronk was stretched on the ground before him, limbs broken, torso battered, even the seemingly impenetrable face s.h.i.+eld cracked. Wires and cables lay exposed and severed, and their ends crackled and sparked wickedly. The panels of lights on its chest and limbs flashed redly in warning. Unable to rise or fight longer, the wronk shuddered uncontrollably, the stubs of its severed limbs twitching. Quentin stared down at it dully, the rush of magic that had infused him beginning to fade. He looked down at himself and was surprised to discover he was still whole.

"Finish it!" Tamis snarled at him from one side, kneeling with her arms hugging her bloodied body. "Keep your promise, Highlander!"

Quentin didn't know if he had the strength to do so. He tightened his grip on his sword and walked forward again until he stood next to the stricken wronk. And Patrinell's eyes stared up at him through a haze of blood, searching his own. He was crying, all of the pain and horror mirrored clearly in his tears. He was begging for help. Quentin couldn't bear it. He felt his revulsion and horror threaten to overwhelm him.

He brought the Sword of Leah down quickly and with ferocious purpose. He shattered the protective s.h.i.+eld in two swift blows, then smashed Ard Patrinell's face until it was an unrecognizable ruin, then severed what was left of his head from the wronk.

Dropping his sword, he staggered backwards. The wronk had quit moving, but a few lights still blinked from the panels on its chest. Then an arm stump twitched. Crying out in rage and fear, Quentin picked up his blade one final time and chopped at the body and limbs until nothing remained but sc.r.a.ps of metal and bits of flesh.

He might not have stopped then except that out of the corner of his eye he saw Tamis collapse. Closing off the magic as if it were an addiction he must quit forever, feeling how close he was to losing himself to it, he threw down his sword and went to her. He dropped to his knees, turned her over gently, and cradled her head and shoulders in his lap.

Her eyes stared up at him. "Is it done? Is he free?"

He nodded, his throat tight. The front of her tunic was a ma.s.s of blood and torn flesh.

"Wherever I'm going, I'll find him there," she whispered. A froth of blood coated her lips.

He touched her cheek with shaking fingers. "Tamis, no."

"I'm so cold," she whispered.

Her eyes fixed, and she stopped breathing. Quentin held her for a long time anyway. He talked to her when she could no longer hear. He told her she would have what she wanted, she would have Ard Patrinell, that she deserved to find him waiting and he would be. He whispered good-bye to her. He was crying freely, but he didn't care.

When he laid her down again and rose, he felt as if he had lost his place in the world and would never find it again.

TWENTY-SEVEN.

Enveloped by the slow, steady thrumming of Castledown's machinery, Ahren Elessedil walked back through the long rows of towering metal cabinets and spinning silver disks that occupied the cavernous chamber outside Walker's smoked-gla.s.s prison. He did not like leaving Ryer Ord Star alone to look after the Druid, did not feel at all certain that he was doing the right thing, but knew, as well, he could not turn back. The voice inside him generated by the magic of the phoenix stone was firm and compelling. The missing Elfstones lay ahead, somewhere else in the complex, waiting for him to retrieve them. He must do as the voice insisted if he was ever to find himself again and be made whole. He must go to where the Stones were. He must take them back.

He watched the dark gla.s.s of Walker's chamber disappear into the warren of cabinets behind him, and when it was out of sight, his loneliness was palpable and his feeling of vulnerability acute. The haze of the phoenix stone's magic was beginning to dissipate, to lose its consistency, to become more penetrable. It was a gradual change, and at first he was not certain he was seeing it accurately. But as he got clear of the brightly lit central chamber and walked back into the darker corridors beyond, it became increasingly apparent that he was not mistaken, that the stone's magic was failing. He immediately felt pressed and harried by the knowledge, as if he must move faster than he would have liked or than was reasonable. It was an irrational response, because he had no real idea of what the magic's lifetime might be. Then again, not much of what he had done since entering Castledown had anything to do with being rational.

He knew that Ryer's magic would be lessening, as well. When it was gone, she would have to rely on her connection with Walker to survive. In a way, she was better off with the Druid. At least Walker could offer her protection once he woke and freed himself. Without the magic of the phoenix stone, there was little that Ahren could do for her. Little that he could do for himself, for that matter.

Still, he would listen to the voice and go on, because the voice was all he had to rely on.

He climbed the stairs to the overlook they had come upon earlier, then moved back into the maze of corridors beyond. He took the path his instincts told him to take, keeping close watch over the shadows pressing close about him. The flameless lamps threw down their light in dim pools, but the stretches between were like quicksand. He repeatedly encountered creepers on their way to other places, and each time he stopped where he was and waited for them to attack. But the creepers still did not see or sense him, and they did not slow. He heard the skitterings of their approaches and departures, sc.r.a.pings of metal that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He wished again he was braver and stronger. He wished he had Ard Patrinell to a.s.sure him that he would be all right. He kept thinking how comforting that would be. But Patrinell had taught him everything he would ever teach him and told him everything he would ever tell him. Patrinell was gone.

Ahren's comfort, if he was to find any, would have to come from somewhere else.

As he walked deeper into the catacombs, the sound of the machinery grew louder, a steadily building whine. Without knowing anything else, he could tell that he was moving toward the power source that was the heart of Castledown. It was there that Antrax fed off the energy stored for its use by the safehold's machines. Ahren felt himself shrink as the sound increased in volume, its dull roar filling up the corridors like a river at flood. He saw himself as tiny and insignificant, impermanent flesh and blood trapped inside changeless, unyielding steel walls. He thought again about his hopes in coming on the journey-to prove himself to be more than the callow boy his brother believed him, to accomplish something that would warrant respect and even honor, to become the man his father had wanted him to be. Foolish, impossible hopes in light of his cowardice in the ruins, yet he clung to them still. Some part of what he had dreamed of accomplis.h.i.+ng could still be realized if he could keep himself steady.

He pa.s.sed out of the corridor into a vast, cavernous room in which two giant cylinders stood side by side amid a cl.u.s.ter of smaller pieces of equipment. The cylinders were fifty feet across and a hundred feet high. Metal pipes and connectors ran from their casings to the equipment and surrounding walls. The sound of the machinery was deafening, a pounding throb that buried everything else in the wake of its pa.s.sing. It was Castledown's power source, and Ahren wanted nothing so badly as to get away from it.

Then he looked to his right and saw a pair of chambers similar to the one that had been used to contain Walker, except that they were much larger. The dark gla.s.s fronting them was recessed into the chamber walls, and the bulbous doors were rimmed with sleek metal bindings. He stared at them, and he knew without having even to question it that one of them contained the missing Elf-stones. He could feel it the same way he had felt the need to go there. The phoenix stone's magic was still at work inside him, giving him his direction, telling him what to do.

Yet for a long time, he didn't move. He didn't know what to do, didn't know how to do it, and didn't really want to try. His fear returned in an enveloping wave. To go on was too much to ask of anyone; it was too overwhelming to consider. He stared at the doorways, the magic of the phoenix stone prodding at him, and fought to keep himself from bolting. He had never been so scared. His fear wasn't of what he thought might be waiting; it was of what he couldn't imagine. His fear was of the unseen, of the unknown danger that would cause him to flee once more. He did not think he could bear to have that happen again, and he did not know how to prevent it. He could sense the possibility of something lurking behind the dark gla.s.s, a predator, anxious for him to step inside and be seized. Antic.i.p.ation alone was enough to freeze him in place, to render him hopelessly immobile. He thought in his unspeakable terror that he would never move again.

It was his sense of shame that saved him, reborn in the unavoidable memories of his flight from the ruins days earlier, recalled again and again in the long hours afterwards while he huddled in the debris and thought about what it would be like to return home after what he had done. His chance to redeem himself from that misery, his only chance, lay in recovery of the Elfstones. In the hauntingly inexorable nightmare of his failure to save his friends, in the cold realization of how frail a creature he was, he had come to understand that it was worse to live with fear than to die confronting it.

He remembered that, and broke free of his terror. He started forward without stopping to consider what he was doing, knowing only that he must go then or he would never go at all.

In the next instant, alarms went off everywhere, shrill metallic sounds that cut through even the suffocating roar of the machines.

Ahead, one of the doors opened and a giant creeper scuttled out, all crooked legs and sharp pincers, a war machine looking for a fight. It did not see him, but moved to take up a position between the chamber doorway and the corridor through which Ahren had come. Another creeper followed, and then another, stationing themselves in a defensive ring. The entry sealed itself tightly behind them.

Ahren kept moving ahead, making for that closed door, striding into the midst of the creepers. He held the long knife before him protectively, knowing it was all but useless should they discover him. But, just barely visible, the failing magic of the phoenix stone still clung to him in thinning wisps. Ahren imagined the alarms sucking it away, smoke caught in a breeze. He moved between the creepers for the door, bolder than he had believed he could ever be, feeling buoyant and paralyzed at the same time. He felt himself watching his own progress from somewhere outside his body, removed from the act. His thoughts were reduced to a single sequence-get to the Elfstones, take them in hand, summon their power.

He reached the door with the shriek of the alarms ringing in his ears and was surprised when it gave to his touch. The creepers behind him didn't seem to notice. He stepped into the room, a darkened chamber paneled with banks of blinking lights, tangled wires, and flexible metal cords that cast shadows over everything in inky pools. It was so black in the room that Ahren couldn't distinguish any of the pieces of apparatus that were scattered everywhere, couldn't make out the comings and goings of the cords, couldn't even tell what the room was supposed to be. He groped forward, being careful to touch nothing, picking his way toward the center of the room as his eyes tried to adjust to the abrupt, momentary flashes of illumination.

When they did, he saw the first signs of movement, faint stirrings to one side. He froze instantly, and as he did so he caught sight of something moving to his other side. At first he thought it was nothing more than the shadows that flickered in the dim light, but then with heart-stopping certainty he recognized them. They were creepers. He couldn't hear their skittering over the blare of the alarms, but even in the absence of that he knew them for what they were. They were all around him, all through the chamber. He had stumbled into their midst before realizing what he was doing.

He held himself as still as he could manage, barely daring to breathe, while he considered his next move. He could not tell how much of the phoenix stone's magic remained to him; it was too dark to measure what traces remained of its distinct haze. Some, certainly, or the creepers would have had him already. He tried to think, to ignore the alarms and the creepers and the chaos around him, to hear anew the voice that had brought him there.

A second later, he saw the chair. It was big and padded and reclined, and it sat in the center of the room, surrounded by a cl.u.s.ter of freestanding machines. The cords were thickest there, snaking out in every direction, all leading from parts of the chair. There was an odd box set into one armrest to which many of the wires ran, and Ahren recognized it. He had seen the same sort of apparatus in Walker's prison, siphoning off the Druid magic through his good arm. The chamber Ahren was in was where Kael Elessedil had been drained of the magic of the Elfstones in the same way for almost thirty years. It was the place in which his uncle had wasted his life.

The Elfstones, he knew instinctively and with overpowering certainty, were inside that box.

He moved over to it quickly, sliding through the nests of wires and past the bulky pieces of equipment, praying he couldn't be detected. The creepers continued to s.h.i.+ft position in the open s.p.a.ces of the room, sidling a few feet this way, then a few that. He could not tell what they were doing. They didn't seem to be doing anything that mattered. Perhaps they were only sweepers, harmless attendants of the machines rather than sentries and fighters. Perhaps his presence meant nothing to them.

He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, pausing as he pa.s.sed close to one of them. It was not very big, but it sent a ripple of fear down his spine. He waited for it to turn away, then eased his slender body past, stepped into the maze of wires that surrounded the chair, and knelt next to the mysterious box.

In the flash of panel lights and the muted illumination through the dark gla.s.s windows, he peered into the box. He couldn't see anything but shadows. He wanted to reach inside, but he didn't like doing that without knowing what waited. Wouldn't there be restraints of some sort, if that was how the magic was siphoned off? Wouldn't there be needles of the sort that had been inserted into Walker to keep him connected to the machines? What if it was the trap the little sweeper had been leading him to all along?

But the Elfstones were in that box, not two feet away from his hand, and he had to get them out.

Suddenly, unexpectedly, the alarms went silent and the chamber's ceiling lights came on. Ahren froze, exposed and unprotected, crouched by the padded chair amid the cl.u.s.tered machines and creepers. The magic of the phoenix stone was gone; the last traces of its concealing haze had vanished. Aware of his presence, the first of the creepers was already turning toward him. The ends of its metal arms lifted to reveal the deadly cutters that marked it as a sentry and fighter.

Ahren glanced swiftly into box, and amid its smoky shadows spied a glimmer of blue.

He thrust his right hand inside and s.n.a.t.c.hed at the Elfstones. He seized the first two as iron bands clamped about his wrist, but the third one skittered away, just beyond his fingertips. A new alarm went off, this one inside the room, a whistle's shriek of warning. He jammed his left hand into the box, as well, caught hold of the loose Stone, and clasped both hands together as a second set of bands immobilized his left hand. Creepers moved toward him from everywhere, metal legs sc.r.a.ping wildly against the smooth floor, cutters snapping at the air.

Ahren didn't know what to do. He didn't know how to summon the power that would save him. He couldn't even make himself speak as he fought to bring the magic to life.

Please! he begged voicelessly as his hands tightened about the Elfstones. Please, help me!

A needle at the end of a flexible arm flashed past his face. He felt its sting in his left arm, and a slow numbing began to spread outward with languorous inevitability. Metal digits closed about him from every quarter, holding him fast, making him a prisoner. It was happening all over again, he thought frantically, just as it had to Kael Elessedil. Help me!

As if heeding his silent plea, the Elfstones flared to life within the darkened recesses of their confinement, their blue light so blinding that he closed his eyes against its glare. He felt, rather than saw, what happened next. The restraints on his wrists shattered, and the box was blown apart. The creepers lasted only seconds longer, then the magic caught them up and swept them away, hurtling them against the walls of the chamber and reducing them to sc.r.a.p. His eyes were opening again when the padded chair exploded. The banks of machinery were shattered, as well, one after the other, engulfed in a sweep of blue light that circled the room and turned everything to useless shards and twisted wire.

Arms outstretched, hands clasped together, fingers tight about the Elfstones, Ahren lurched to his feet. The needle was gone from his arm, but the numbing hadn't lessened, and it took all his concentration to keep that arm from going limp. He fed it with the power of the Stones, with the peculiarly pleasurable pain they engendered, a burning rush that seared his flesh and left him dizzy.

He staggered across the room, the Elfstones' power incinerating everything, burning it all to molten slag. The dark gla.s.s windows blew out, leaving the twisted interior of the room exposed. He saw the ma.s.sive cylinders that housed the power source become ringed in blinking lights and fire threads that crisscrossed everywhere. He saw the creepers that had taken up watch outside wheel back again to deal with him.

Shades!

He had time for a single desperate exhortation before the juggernauts barreled through the doorway, all sharp edges and brute power. He sent the magic of the Elfstones hammering into the nearest and threw it backwards into the others. He struck it again, then again, advancing on it now, light-headed and humming with the magic's power. He was transformed by its feel, made new and whole, as if he had never been powerless, as if he had never had to flee from anything. He pursued the creepers with single-minded intent and smashed them one by one, disdaining their cutters and their blades, unafraid of what they could do to him because it seemed now that they could do nothing.

They went down before him like trees caught in a hurricane, ripped out by their roots, toppled and left to die. With a final glance back at the destruction he had visited upon the machines that would have sapped away his life, Ahren Elessedil stalked from the room, consumed by a killing rage.

Antrax became aware of the intruder's presence only seconds before it felt the ruptures in its metal skin. No pain was involved because it could not feel pain, only a sensation of being opened where it knew it should not. The intruder was the one that had disappeared earlier while in the company of its probe, the one for whom the Stones were intended. Somehow it had found its way to the extraction chamber. Somehow it had gotten hold of the Stones while still aware of who and where it was and had used them against the chamber and its equipment.

Alarms were already triggered all through Antrax's domain, set off by a power surge generated in the extraction chamber where the earlier intruder had been imprisoned. It had taken Antrax precious minutes to determine the cause of the surge, and by the time it had done so, the earlier intruder was already free of its connectors and gone into the complex. Now there were two of them loose, and either was capable of doing great damage if not stopped.

Antrax spun down its lines of power in milliseconds, gaining the capacitor housing before the latest intruder was in possession of the Stones and free of the extraction chamber. With the alarms shut down again and reset, the immediate danger was to the storage units that housed its lifeblood. Triggering the screen of laser beams that the creators had installed to protect the capacitors against damage, Antrax summoned the strongest of its battle probes to bring this newest intruder to bay. It might not be possible to immobilize it without killing it, but Antrax was prepared to accept that alternative. There would be others that could use the Stones, that could summon their magic, others that could be lured to Castledown. It was more important to protect against damage to the power Antrax had harvested already.

It felt the presence of the intruder moving through the shattered doorway of the extraction chamber to confront the laser beams and the probes that had already responded to its summons. Extraction ports were housed throughout the complex, and Antrax began siphoning off the raw expenditure of the Elf's power, feeding on it as it left his body. Energy was not to be wasted, whatever its source.

Computer chips processed and a.n.a.lyzed with blinding speed. Antrax was informed and its course of action determined accordingly. The intruders would do battle with its probes in the mistaken belief that they could somehow prevail. They could not. They would simply feed Antrax more of the precious energy it needed, just as they had been meant to do while sedated. Still thinking they had a chance to get free, they would struggle until they were overcome.

Antrax, incapable of emotion, feeling nothing for the humans it hunted, prepared to immobilize and terminate them.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

The Druid known as Walker, who had once been Walker Boh and was now on the threshold of still another life-altering transition, moved swiftly down the corridors of Castledown toward a confrontation with Antrax. Ryer Ord Star followed closely behind, one slender hand clasped firmly in his. There was such joy on her face at having found him after so long, such exhilaration at having rescued him from the machines that were leeching away his life, that he could not bear to tell her what waited ahead. He preferred to let her have her happiness, her own life recovered and her freedom from the Ilse Witch secured. She had fought hard for him, and she was ent.i.tled to bask in the glow of her accomplishment.

It was odd that she should have the sight, could see so clearly into the future, and yet be denied so much of its meaning. He had brought her with him to give him insight into what the future held, but he had never imagined that the insight he sought would come to him in such a roundabout way. It was not her simple visions that had informed him. It was not her dreams. Instead, it was the way in which he had become linked to her when she had saved him after Shatterstone that had revealed so much. That was when he had learned the truth about her. That was when he had seen what she could be and decided to trust his instincts.

Now, deep within the catacombs in that distant land, she had revealed the future yet again. Linked to her by her empathic rescue of him in the extraction chamber, he had caught another glimpse of what might come to be. Though the future was written on water, sometimes it was possible to divine its meaning based on a choice of actions. Go one way, and the future would take that twist. Go another, and there would be a different result altogether. So it was that, while coming out of his drug-induced stupor and back into the real world, he had been shown a brief but stunningly clear vision of what he must do. Triggered by her empathic touch and her talent as a seer, the purpose of his coming to that place and time, once so clear to him, once indisputable, was revealed to be something else entirely.

He marveled at how mistaken human beings were in a.s.suming they could foresee their own fates. Even seers, who possessed the gift of Ryer Ord Star. It was easy to a.s.sume that one event must necessarily follow in the wake of another, that a thing was just what it seemed. But he knew better. A Druid knew better than anyone that life was a myriad of twists and turns that no one could unravel, a path that must be traveled to be understood. So it was there, in Castledown, for him, though he had forgotten the rules for a time. So it would be later for the survivors, when they made the journey home again.

He wondered then at the fates of the others of the company of the Jerle Shannara. Ahren Elessedil had been alive when Ryer Ord Star found Walker, but had since disappeared, and not even the seer knew what had become of him. The magic of the phoenix stone had sheltered them both for a time, but now it had faded. The Rovers had been alive when he departed the Jerle Shannara for Castledown. According to the seer, Bek and an Elven Tracker were still alive a week ago. Of the rest, he knew nothing. It was difficult to believe they were all gone, but it was a possibility he could not rule out.

Castledown's alarms continued to ring, shrill and insistent, echoing down the maze of pa.s.sageways. Creepers skittered by, moving in all directions, oblivious to Walker and Ryer Ord Star. He had taken the precaution of cloaking both the seer and himself in the Druid magic, convinced that it would work in the real world, though it had seemed to fail miserably in his dreams. The creepers were preoccupied with other matters in any event, compelled by primary directives to engage in repairs and restore order. They would not be searching for him quite yet, though soon enough. He would have to move quickly.

His exploration of Castledown through Antrax's internal systems had given him the map he needed to know where he must go. The only way to put an end to Antrax was to shut down its power source. By doing so, he could drain away its intelligence and leave it incapable of action.

It sounded simple. It would not be.

The sound of the machines grew louder and more insistent. The power source, their destination, lay ahead. Walker tightened his resolve and gathered his strength for the confrontation that waited. Antrax would attempt to trap and immobilize him again. It would do so in the same way as before because it was a machine and a machine would use its primary approach to handling a situation until that approach failed. Antrax would rely again on its creepers and drugs. Walker, forewarned, had already decided on a different course of action for himself.

When the alarms unexpectedly ceased, the ensuing silence was shocking. Given the extent of the damage he had visited on Castle-down's internal systems, Antrax had repaired itself more quickly than Walker had antic.i.p.ated. He thought momentarily about striking at it again, then decided against it. Antrax would be expecting such an attempt and would be prepared for it. Better to continue on. The power source lay just ahead, and once he was there, all the alarms in the world wouldn't matter.

Nevertheless, he had not yet reached the end of the pa.s.sageway that opened onto the central power chamber when a new alarm went off, this one directly ahead and localized. Then he heard explosions and smelled the raw burn of magic, and he realized that another had gotten to the chamber ahead of him. Pulling Ryer Ord Star after him, not quite certain what he was going to find, he began to run. It was as apt to be the Ilse Witch as one of his companions. The sounds of battle were unmistakable, however, as machines shattered and gla.s.s exploded out of walls. Bits and pieces of creepers flew across the pa.s.sageway entrance as he neared the power chamber, where smoke roiled through a surreal landscape of flameless lamps and fire threads.

He glanced back at Ryer Ord Star. The exhilaration was gone from her face, the joy from her eyes. Desperation had replaced both, born of more than her recognition of the obvious dangers that waited. It was as if she had divined both his intent and her complicity in advancing it by saving him earlier. Her face was pale and taut, and her silver hair flew out behind her in a thin curtain, lending her a ghostly look. She tried to say something, but saw the intensity of his expression and kept still.

They burst through the power source entry into a vast chamber dominated by a pair of towering cylinders situated in the center of the room and connected everywhere by pipes and conduits. Smaller machines surrounded them, metal cages and housings bristling with flexible lines. Walker had no idea how they worked, how Antrax fed, how it converted magic to a fuel it could consume. The technology for the process had been dead for more than two and a half millennia, and only Antrax itself possessed the knowledge to keep it operating. That was true of the lifeblood that fed Antrax and preserved the library of the Old World. Destroy either, and you destroyed both.

It was what Walker had come to realize he must do, a sacrifice of one to put an end to the other.

He no longer thought to debate the matter. He knew that Antrax would eventually reach out for other sources of magic, other magic-infused humans, and the cycle would begin again. Sooner or later, it would siphon off everything of worth from the world that had replaced the one Antrax had served, and all to preserve a machine that no longer mattered. Antrax must be stopped, destroyed while there was still time.

Fire threads ringed the cylinders that formed the power source, s.h.i.+fting at random this way and that, keeping at bay anything that might try to harm the capacitors they protected. Smoke clouded the chamber in a thick haze, giving everything the appearance of a nightmarish netherworld. The creepers that appeared out of its brume had the look of shades, and even the equipment seemed to s.h.i.+ft and turn in the mix of light and shadow.

Then abruptly, out of nowhere, Ahren Elessedil appeared, hands stretched forth as if to ward off invisible things, slender body taut and gathered to strike as he stepped gingerly through the debris. Blue light flashed from between his fingers, shattering creepers that crossed his path, clearing the way forward. Walker felt a surge of renewed hope. The Elven Prince had managed to recover the missing Elfstones, something he had not dared to hope could happen. With their magic to aid his own, he would have a better chance to succeed in doing what was needed.

"Ahren!" Ryer Ord Star shouted out even before Walker could speak.

The Elven Prince turned toward them, his eyes as blue and wild as the fire of the Stones. He registered the presence of Walker and the seer but only barely. He was consumed by the magic, so caught up in its throes that all that mattered to him, all that he could feel, was the rush of its power through his body.

Walker moved toward him swiftly, unafraid of the dark look in his eyes, of the blue fire gathered at his clenched fists. He reached out for the Elven Prince and touched him lightly, drawing him out from the haze into which he had been carried, bringing him back to himself. Ahren stared at him in anger, then confusion, then with undisguised relief.

"You've done well, Elven Prince," Walker said, drawing him close, eyes s.h.i.+fting this way and that for the enemies that circled all around them. "Draw the magic back into yourself. Quickly!"

Walker watched the blue light of the Elfstones fade, then cloaked Ahren with concealing magic, as well. "Come this way."

Aware that Antrax was searching, he moved Ahren and Ryer to one side, changing their position in the chamber. He had thrown out images and set off the alarms on the pressure plates that Antrax had activated earlier, confusing things further. The sirens shrilled everywhere, and warning lights on wall panels flashed like red eyes blinking through the cross-hatching of the fire threads. Momentarily confused, the creepers s.h.i.+fted this way and that. They could not find either the Druid or his companions; in the chaos, their sensors were unable to fix on anything.

Walker had drawn the Elf and the seer all the way back to the partially shattered wall of the extraction chamber, where they would have some protection. "Wait for me here," he ordered.