Ahren glanced swiftly into the box, and amid its smoky shadows spied a glimmer of blue.
He thrust his right hand inside and snatched 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 scraping 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 scrap. 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 glass windows blew out, leaving the twisted interior of the room exposed. He saw the massive 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 analyzed 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.
The Druid known as Walker, who had once been Walker Boh and was now on the threshold of still another lifealtering 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 entitled 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 assuming they could foresee their own fates. Even seers, who possessed the gift of Ryer Ord Star. It was easy to assume 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 passageways. 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 Castledown’s internal systems, Antrax had repaired itself more quickly than Walker had anticipated. 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 passageway 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 glass exploded out of walls. Bits and pieces of creepers flew across the passageway 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, shifting 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 shift 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 shifting 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 shifted 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.
Gathering his robes about him, he slipped away from them, maneuvering past the creepers towar
d the cylinders that warded the power source. There was no time left for subtlety. He would have to strike quickly. He found a seam in the plating, a weakness that might be exploited, and attacked. Druid fire rent the metal with a withering blast, peeling it away. Before Antrax could react, Walker moved again. A dozen yards farther on, he struck once more. Then the fire threads were seeking him, striking at random because they were unable to fix on him within his covering of magic. He dodged them as he attacked, avoiding the creepers, as well, circling the cylinders and surrounding machinery, continually seeking vulnerable points.
Yet despite his best efforts, the protective metal of the power source held firm. He was depleting his strength, but gaining no advantage. Another way must be found. Still throwing out distractions and false targets, he moved back across the floor, barely escaping a random fire thread that singed his cloak. Sooner or later, his luck would run out. Antrax would already be mounting a counterattack.
He barely finished the thought before the attack began. A beam of oddly hazy light radiated from a port high in the ceiling, flooding the room and outlining Walker where he crouched. If he had not already been moving, leaving images in his wake, he would have been incinerated by the fire threads that shifted instantly to find him. As it was, he was pinned between two of the smaller machines, unable to move anywhere as the creepers, able to pinpoint him at last, closed in for the kill.
Seeing the danger, Ahren Elessedil stepped away from Ryer Ord Star and turned the magic of the Elfstones on the port that had released the revealing light, shattering it, then fusing it shut. The light faded, and Walker was up and moving once more. Ahren struck out at the closest of the creepers, clearing a path for the Druid, giving him a chance to escape. Walker raced to join him, grabbed his arm, and pulled him back against the wall again. Throwing out a new set of distractions, he dragged both Elven Prince and seer into the doorway of the extraction chamber.