Then everything changed in an instant. The jungle was gone. The green of the trees, the blue of the sky, the smell of rotted wood and leaves, the softness of the earth—his entire sense of place and time—disappeared. He was no longer standing upright, but was laid out upon a hard metal surface in a room filled with blinking lights and softly humming machines. Tubes ran from the machines to his body, pumping fluids. Wires attached to his skin snaked everywhere. He did not see this with his eyes. His eyes were blindfolded. He saw it instead with his mind, his Druid senses suddenly come awake from a deep, immobilizing sleep. He saw it the way a dream is seen, except that the dream was of the jungle, of the ruins and the creepers and the fire threads, of everything he had believed to be true.
He remembered then. He knew what had happened, what had been done to him. He understood it all, brought back into reality from drug-induced sleep and nightmarish dreams by the presence of the young woman who lay beside him, by her voice and her touch. She alone had reached him when no one else could. When he lay dying of the bramble poison after Shatterstone and she saved him with her empathic healing, a link had been forged between them. It bound them in an unintended way, through trading life for death and healing for suffering. So it was that she had sensed his need when even he was not aware of it, heard his subconscious call for help, come to him.
She stirred slightly, her fingers trailing down his face like velvet, her warmth infusing him with strength. She called his name softly, repeatedly, still reaching out to him, determined to bring him back from his prison.
When he felt her hand slide over his, cupping it, he lifted his fingers and pressed them against her palm in response.
Ahren missed the movement, his eyes on the Druid’s face. But he saw Ryer Ord Star suddenly go very still, her body motionless. Even her fingers stopped tracing lines on Walker’s face. He waited for her to speak, to begin moving again, to give him some indication of what was happening. But the seer had turned to stone.
“Ryer?” he whispered.
She made no response. She lay pressed against the Druid as if to become a part of him, her eyes closed and her breathing slowed so completely that he could barely detect it. He thought to touch her, but he was afraid to do so. Something had happened, and whatever it was, she was responding to it in the best way she could. He knew he must not disturb her. He must wait for her. He must be patient.
The minutes ticked by, endless and silent. He bent over her once, trying unsuccessfully to see what was happening. Then he stepped back a pace, as if a measure of distance might give him a better view. Nothing helped. He looked around at the banks of lights and switches, thinking the answer might lie there. If it did, he could not detect it. He looked out through the darkened glass to the cavernous room beyond, to the banks of spinning disks. Metal attendants moved down the brightly lit aisles, steady and purposeful in their labors. None looked in his direction or seemed in any way aware of what was happening in the room. He listened for a change in the sounds of the machinery, but there was none. Everything seemed the same.
Yet he knew it wasn’t.
He did not think that he or Ryer Ord Star had been detected. The concealing haze of the phoenix stone still wrapped them both. If the magic had failed, there would have been some indication of it. If Ryer’s presence at the Druid’s side had been detected, an alarm would have sounded or flashed. Ahren hugged himself against the chill seeping through his body, against raw impatience and fear. What could he do? What should he do? He had to trust in the magic; it was all he had. That, and his sense of purpose in going there, in agreeing to do something that terrified him, persuaded by the seer that doing anything was better than giving up.
Yet it wasn’t even his sense of purpose, he realized. It was hers. She was the one who had wanted to find Walker, who had insisted they find him, who had believed that they must do so if he was to have any chance of escaping Castledown. It seemed that she had been right, that if they hadn’t come, Walker would have remained where he was, undiscovered, neither quite dead nor quite alive, neither one thing nor the other, but something in between, something terrible and repulsive and inhuman.
But having found the Druid, how were they supposed to save him? What were they supposed to do? Whatever it was, he did not know if they were equal to the task.
“Ryer?” he said again.
There was no response. What was she doing? He glanced around nervously, aware of how long they had lingered in the room, of how much they were risking. Sooner or later, the magic of the phoenix stone would fail and they would be discovered. Nothing could save them then. Bravery and sense of purpose would count for nothing.
“Ryer!” he hissed.
To his astonishment, she looked up at him, eyes snapping open as if she had come awake suddenly, unexpectedly. There was such unrestrained joy, such boundless hope in her gaze that he was momentarily speechless.
“He’s come back!” she breathed softly, tears flooding her eyes. “He’s free, Ahren!”
Free of what? Ahren wondered. He didn’t look free. But the Elven Prince nodded and smiled as if what she said were so. He reached out to take her arm and help her stand again, but she motioned him away.
“No. Wait. We have to wait. It’s not time yet.” She closed her eyes and pressed herself tighter against the Druid. “He’s going back in. To find Antrax. To find the books of magic. I have to stay with him while he does. I have to be here for him.”
She went still again, eyes closing, breathing slowing, hands moving to the Druid’s forehead, fingers pressing against his temples. “The machines don’t know. We mustn’t let them find out. I have to keep them from knowing. Stay close to me, Ahren.”
He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, what it was she was doing to help Walker, but the urgency in her plea was unmistakable. He stood beside her, beside the Druid, feeling alone and vulnerable and lost, looking down in helpless silence, and waited to find out.
Surfacing from the stream of drug-induced illusions that Antrax had used to control him, Walker drew on Ryer Ord Star’s empathic strength to keep from going under again. He was swimming upstream against a raging tide, but at least he understood what had been done to him. His tumble down the tower chute after escaping the fire threads and the creepers had ended in his loss of consciousness and ultimate imprisonment. He had been drugged and immobilized immediately, then brought to the room to be strapped down and drained of his power. The method was clever and effective: let the victim think himself still free, make him fight to stay that way, and siphon off the power of the magic he used to do so. The tubes that ran to his body fed him liquids and drugs, keeping him alive but dreaming of a life that never was. If not for the seer, he would have remained that way until he died.
His understanding brought no comfort. Kael Elessedil must have spent his days the same way, using the Elfstones over and over, thinking himself free, unable ever to manage to do more than to keep running. He would have lived thirty years like that, until he had grown too old or weak or sick to be of any further use. Then Antrax would have sent him home again, using him one final time, to lure a replacement.
Except that Antrax had gotten lucky. It had succeeded in luring not one, but several, luring to his deadly trap not only the Druid, but Ahren Elessedil, Quentin Leah, and perhaps even Bek Ohmsford, all of whom had command of significant magic. Antrax would have known about them, of course. It would have known from what it had recorded of their efforts to recover the keys on the islands of Flay Creech, Shatterstone, and Mephitic. A machine that built machines, a creation of the technology of the Old World, it had known to test the capabilities of those it sought to snare. That was the reason for luring humans to its lair. That was the purpose for the underground prison. To steal their magic and convert it to the power that fed Antrax. To keep Antrax alive.
Yet perhaps that was only one reason and not the one that mattered most to it. Perhaps it was still searching for those who had created it, waiting for them to come
back to claim the treasure they had left it to guard. The books of the Old World. The secrets of another time.
How did he know that? Unconscious and dreaming, how could he know? He knew it in part from what he had deciphered from the map, written in a language the Druid Histories still recorded. He knew it in part from what Ryer Ord Star had communicated to him in bringing him back from his slumber, her words and thoughts revealing his situation. He knew it in part from what he could deduce from the use of the machinery that immobilized and drugged him. He knew it finally from what he was able to intuit. It was enough to keep him from slipping back into his prison, to keep him fixed on what he must do if he was to complete his task in going there—the task that had cost the lives of so many of his companions and might yet, if he was not swift and sure and focused enough, cost him his.
He gathered himself within his body, using his magic to summon his shade and set it free, the way Cogline had done years ago in entering lost Paranor. It was what Allanon had done in his time. There was danger in it. If his body should die, his shade was lost. If he strayed too far or allowed himself to be trapped outside his body, he might never get back again. Yet it was a gamble he must take. He could not free his body from the wires and tubes that linked it to Antrax without triggering alarms that would bring the creepers. There was no reason to free himself if he did not know what to do to stay free. As a shade, he could explore Castledown without Antrax being any the wiser. Ryer Ord Star would keep his body strong and alive and functioning, would keep the machines deceived as to what was happening. She would feed him enough of her empathic healing power to prevent him from slipping back into the deadening dreams. So long as she could do so, nothing would seem any different. So long as the magic of the phoenix stone cloaked the seer, even the eyes of Antrax could not detect her presence. Walker’s magic would continue to feed out in small increments, reduced by the absence of real thought, responding out of reflex only. Antrax would not be concerned at the decline in his magic’s output right away. Not even for several hours, should it take that long. Time was relative in Castledown. Antrax had lived for more than twenty-five hundred years. A few hours were nothing.
Walker did not consider further what he must do. He went out from his body as a shade, tracking the wires that fed into it back to their source. Penetrating metal, glass, and stone as if they were air, he sped through the walls of the keep, a silent and invisible presence. He stayed alert for Antrax all the while, wanting to keep it from that room where his body lay, from examining him too closely, from finding out the truth. He surged down conduits and through clusters of wires and metal pieces that conducted electricity and thought, power garnered from magic and converted to use. He seethed at the knowledge of what had been done to the men and women who had been lured there, but stayed focused on what was needed to stop it from happening again.
He found the relays for the security system quickly enough. Eyes of glass watched from ceilings all through the safehold, mechanical orbs that let Antrax view everything. But of what use were they? Antrax was a machine; it did not need eyes. The eyes, Walker realized with a start, were for the humans who had once controlled Antrax. They served no other purpose now. Antrax would use a more sophisticated system—one of touch and feel and sound and perhaps body heat. Only magic would thwart it, and perhaps not all magic at that.
Where did Antrax dwell within this vast complex?
Where did all the information feed?
He tracked it for a time, down lines and through chambers, along corridors and around corners. But one set of relays led to another. One bank of machines was tied to a second. Lines of power opened into new lines, and there was no end of them. Nothing to tell him where to find the start and finish of things.
He tried quieting himself and tracking Antrax by feel. It was not difficult to do. But once again, there seemed to be no start or finish. Antrax was vast and sprawling. It was everywhere at once, all about and seeping through, endless and immutable. Antrax was the safehold of Castledown; spread in equal parts throughout, there was no part of the keep that it did not inhabit. It warded everything at once.
Walker did not waver from his goal. He had come too far to give up. There was too much at stake and no one else who could do what was needed. Not even …
He hesitated. The words were bitter with realities he did not want to face.
Yet what choice did he have?
He finished the sentence in a rush. Not even her.
He must change his thinking, he acknowledged in what, for some, might have been considered an admission of defeat. But Druids dealt with neither victory nor defeat, but with reality and truth. What was fated could not be denigrated or altered by imposition of moral judgment. It was not his mandate. Druids served a higher cause, the preservation and advancement of Mankind and the Races. The Great Wars had reduced civilization to ruins and humans to animals. That must not happen again. The Druid Council had been formed in the time of Galaphile to see that it could not, and every Druid since had worked in furtherance of that end.
But what could he accomplish in the time that remained to him? There, in that nightmarish place, with only a few to stand beside him, with so much at stake? What, that would give life to the bargain he had struck with Allardon Elessedil all those months ago?
Time was slipping away, time he could not afford to waste. He was taking the wrong approach to the business, he decided. His search for answers was leading him in the wrong direction. It was not Antrax that had brought him to Castledown in the first place. Antrax was a secondary concern. It was the treasure Antrax warded that mattered, that could change everything.
He must look for the books of magic.
Pervasive in presence and reach, Antrax sprawled in contented solitude across the vast complex of its underground kingdom, monitoring its sensors and readouts, fulfilling functions its creators had programmed. With the blind certainty of artificial intelligence, it relied on the reassurance of constant input and an unchanging environment. For not quite three thousand years, it had maintained its world through its preassigned functions and unswerving vigilance. Any possibility of disruption brought a swift response.
Such a possibility had just drawn Antrax’s attention. It was still tiny and signified nothing as yet, but it was there nevertheless. It wasn’t a wave so much as a ripple in the lines of power, undetectable by the warning systems that warded Castledown, virtually immeasurable as an electronic current denoting life, more like a shadow that changed light to dark and dropped the temperature a fraction of a degree. Antrax was alerted to the unexplained presence mostly because it was still searching for two of the intruders whose magic it coveted. While it held one imprisoned in dreams and fantasies, draining it of the power it possessed, assimilating it into Castledown’s power cells, the others continued to elude it. Its wronk still hunted the second, tracking it relentlessly through the forest that bordered Castledown. The readouts were steady and unchanged, so there could be no question that the wronk was still functioning properly. It would have its quarry before long.
The third, on the other hand, was proving to be an enigma that Antrax was not able to solve. That one had followed the metal probe into Castledown’s warren without resistance, but then something had happened to startle it, and it had bolted. Since then, it had managed to hide itself despite everything Antrax had done to find it. Heat and movement sensors, pressure pads, trip ports, and sound detectors had failed to uncover it. Lasers and metal probes had scoured the corridors and chambers of the complex without result. It was possible that it had escaped Castledown entirely, but there was nothing to confirm that. Antrax wanted this one in particular because it was needed to replace the intruder that had failed and been sent back as a lure. No other was suited for the drawing down of power from the blue stones. Only the one who was missing.
Nothing had ever evaded Antrax for so long. Could it be that the odd ripple it felt in the lines of power was the third intruder, changed in form? Did it pos
sess such power, such adaptability, when the other had not? Evolution was a fact of life, of the human condition, so perhaps it was so.
Antrax extended itself through its sensors and detectors, through all its communicators, searching. It went everywhere at once, monitoring readouts. Its examination took a long time, but time was something of which it had plenty. It explored the skin of its walls and floors and ceilings as would a living creature, making certain it was whole and free of clinging debris and secreting, burrowing minutiae.
Nothing revealed itself.
All of its metal probes responded to its inquiries regarding their operability. None were broken or disrupted, where such would signal a foreign presence. Nor did the lasers register any problem. Even the vast complex that housed the recordings of the creators hummed steadily along in its transference of information from one storage unit to another, keeping fresh, keeping whole. No system failed to respond when checked. All was as it should be.
Yet something was out of place.
Antrax took readings on the intruder housed in Extraction Chamber Three. The expulsion of power into the cells was noticeably down, but the intruder was still strapped in place and the wires that monitored its bodily functions had not been tampered with. Heat sensors indicated normal temperature readings for the room and no other presence. His prisoner seemed to be resting, asleep perhaps, though that rarely happened with the extraction techniques used by Antrax. Antrax paused to consider the readings more closely. The expected bursts of power in response to perceived threats had diminished noticeably. But that could be a result of exhaustion or even the extraction machine’s determination of the subject’s need for a respite. Draining off power was a delicate process, requiring a careful monitoring of the mental and emotional condition of the victim. Antrax had learned that humans were creatures of infinite possibility if kept whole. But flesh and blood were not as durable as metal. The creators had demonstrated that.