Antrax

20

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 possess 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.

Sometimes Antrax wished the creators would return, though less so than in the beginning. At first, it had felt they must, that the creators were essential to its ultimate survival. Later, it had discovered how well it could survive on its own. Later still, the importance of the creators had diminished to such a degree that it saw them as unnecessary.

Yet it would house and protect their recordings, awaiting their return, because that was its mandate and prime directive. Survival was assured so long as there were sources of power to draw upon and ways to gain control over them. For Antrax, that was not so difficult a task. If not one way, then another. If not by securing them here, then by tracking them there.

After all, even for an artificial intelligence of its size and capacity, there were ways to leave Castledown.

Antrax took a moment longer to consider the readouts on its prisoner, and then spun slowly back through its network of living metal threads, searching.

Cloaked in the magic of the phoenix stone, wrapped in the blanket of his thoughts, Ahren Elessedil stood close to the table on which Walker and Ryer Ord Star lay entwined. He had been waiting and watching for what seemed like an impossibly long time, and he was growing restless. Something was nudging at him, a sense of dissatisfaction with his role as observer, a feeling of opportunity slipping away. He needed to be doing something.

Yet the seer had told him to wait. To keep watch. To serve as her lifeline to the Druid.

He stared down at her, amazed anew at what he saw. Her face was so calm, her features radiant. She was curled tightly against the Druid, who continued to breathe and occasionally to twitch as before, gone somewhere inside himself to accomplish whatever tasks he had determined were necessary to get free of Antrax. Perhaps the seer had gone with him. Perhaps she was only giving him the strength she said he so desperately needed. That they were joined was obvious—a joining that favored both, but Ryer Ord Star in particular.

She had found what she had come searching for.

He mulled that over for a moment, and in doing so he was reminded of the purpose of the phoenix stone. To help those who were lost to find their way back—not just from what they could not see with their eyes, but from what they could not find with their hearts. Those were the words the King of the Silver River had spoken to Bek Rowe.

To show you the way back from dark places into which you have strayed. To show you the way forward through dark places into which you must go.

Ahren Elessedil looked up suddenly, staring at nothing. Understanding flooded through him as he realized for the first time what those words meant. Who was more lost than the seer or himself? Who had strayed farther? Not just physically, but emotionally. She had betrayed them all by agreeing to act as a spy for the Ilse Witch. He had betrayed his countrymen by abandoning them when they needed him most. She was a traitor and he a coward. Those were the dark places into which they had wandered and from which they sought to return. In their hearts, they were lost.

He had not thought on his cowardice for some time, perhaps not allowing himself, perhaps simply caught up in what was happening within Castledown. But he would not become whole again until he had found a way to make amends for what he had done.

What would that take?

He knew at once. He looked down at the seer, pressed against the man she had betrayed. Having found her way back from the wilderness to give him the help he needed and to make herself whole in the process, she was at peace. The magic of the phoenix stone had given her that. It would do the same for him, if he let it. He could not bring to life those he had abandoned. But he could give them back their legacy.

Phoenix stone. The reason for the name was not that the stone could be reborn from the ashes of its destruction, but that the user could. That was the magic’s true purpose—to make Ahren whole again, to provide him with new life. That was what it had done for Ryer Ord Star in leading her to Walker. Ahren could have that, as well, but he must first do what the stone required—what it had already required of the seer. He must let the magic take him into the dark place where he would find redemption and, thereby, his way back from the cowardice that had crippled him.

He took a deep breath and exhaled. He must do for his people what he had pledged to do in coming on the voyage. He must do for his dead companions what they could not. He must recover the lost Elfstones.

He could feel the magic of the phoenix stone nudging him in that direction, a subtle hint of dissatisfaction, of need unfulfilled, of realization that his rebirth was not yet complete. He had come with Ryer Ord Star to find and aid Walker because that was what the magic had required of her. But what the magic required of him was to find the Stones. What it demanded was that he walk into the trap that Antrax had set for him, confront and overcome it, and retrieve the missing talismans.

Now.

While there was still time.

He could not explain it, but he could feel it as surely as he could feel the weight of the responsibility he was proposing to accept. Time was slipping away, and when it was gone his chance at retrieving the Elfstones and thereby his chance to be made whole again would be gone, as well. A confrontation between Walker and Antrax loomed, a resolution of the latter’s attempt at destroying the Druid and his companions. It would not wait, and it could not be avoided.

For a moment, he was paralyzed by fear. He was so shattered by the feeling that he did not think he could get past it. How could he even contemplate the undertaking? What chance did he have against Antrax and his devices? Fire threads and creepers would be waiting, machines like the ones that had overwhelmed Walker. He lacked any weapons to combat them, any of sufficient strength or capability to offer him even the slightest chance of success. He was alone and impossibly vulnerable.

What made him think he wouldn’t run again?

He broke away from his fear, wrenching free as he might from quicksand that threatened to swallow him. It didn’t matter what the odds were. He was going. He had to. He reached down for Ryer Ord Star and placed his hand over hers. Her warmth infused him, and although she did not respond to his touch, he told himself that somehow she knew whose it was. He was withdrawing the protective mantle of his magic from her shoulders, breaking the link that bound them. He did not know what that would mean for her, what it would do to her chances for helping Walker. He knew only that the magic was telling him to go, and he must do what it asked of him.

He stepped away from her, backing toward the door through which they had entered. He watched the hazy shroud of the magic stretch and then divide, a little of it clinging to them both, diminished, but still functional. It was the best he could hope for. It was all he could ask.

Good luck to you, Ryer, he thought. Good luck to us both.

Then he turned away, passed back out through the doorway, and was gone.