Antrax

24

Quentin Leah was listening so intently that he started in surprise when Tamis touched his arm in warning.

“He’s coming,” she whispered. Consumed by the fact that Ard Patrinell’s mind was still alive inside, she was still calling the wronk he rather than it—as if the human part mattered more. The rest of it might be mechanical—armor, wires, and machine parts, cold and emotionless metal—but not its mind, trapped as it was, whole and intact, thinking Ard Patrinell thoughts, using Ard Patrinell skills, hunting them with a determination that was relentless and implacable.

Heeding her warning, Quentin listened for its coming. Try as he might, he still could not hear it.

In the twilight he glanced over at her. Her roundish, pixie face was sweaty and her short brown hair tangled with bits of debris. Her clothing was torn and bloody and as dirty as the rest of her. She had the look of a hunted thing, a creature run to earth by something as inescapable as the coming of night.

A mirror of himself, he allowed. He did not need to see what he looked like to know it was so. They were a matched set, fugitives from a fate that neither could escape, that both were forced to confront.

They had been running from it all day, running since the coming of dawn had persuaded them they must find a way to kill it. All through the forests surrounding Castledown’s ruins they had played cat and mouse with the inevitable, marking time as they searched for a way to put an end to the creature. It was a chase marked by fits and starts, by schemes and subterfuges, by equal parts skill and blind luck. The wronk was a terrifying adversary, made more dangerous by the fact that Ard Patrinell’s thinking guided it. Sometimes it would come after them in direct pursuit, a hunter using strength and stamina to run them down. Sometimes it would circle around to lie in wait, a predator set to pounce. Sometimes it would stop altogether and wait for them to pause in turn, to wonder if they had lost it entirely, and then it would approach from an unexpected direction, swift and sudden, trying to catch them off guard. Many times it almost had them, but they were saved in each instance by their combined experience and skill and by the kind of luck that defies explanation.

Of the latter, Quentin reflected, there had been more than the former, which was why they were still alive.

The search for a wronk pit had taken longer than they expected. They had thought the Rindge would have set many such traps to protect themselves from the creatures of Antrax. Quentin and Tamis had set out that morning to find the nearest one, backtracking toward the village of Obat and his people to find the pits that had to be located along the approaches from Castledown. But the wronk caught up to them so quickly that they had to hurry their search and consequently failed to find what they were looking for. The wronk was unmistakable when it was close and moving, too big and heavy to conceal its coming. But even when they could not hear it, they were forced to listen and watch for it because it was subtle and clever, like Patrinell, and constantly looking for a way to catch them off guard.

For Quentin Leah, life had been reduced to the simplest of terms—survival of the fittest. He was engaged in the kind of life-and-death struggle that he had imagined happening to others, but never to himself. All of his thinking about a grand adventure and new experiences, everything that had spurred his decision to join the quest, had faded into a barely remembered past. The enthusiasm he had imparted to Bek, the limitless possibilities he had envisioned for what they would find, and the confidence that had buoyed him through so many harrowing confrontations along the way had turned to dust. He had all but forgotten Walker and the search for the books of magic. He had pushed aside any thought of rescuing the others, Bek included. All that was left was a fatalistic and dogged determination to stay alive for another day, to escape the thing that hunted him, and ultimately to regain enough space to allow something back into his life of who and what he had been.

He had no idea what Tamis was thinking, although he could guess readily enough. She was burdened by similar needs, but as well by her memories of and feelings for the man with whom she had been in love. She might pretend otherwise, might tell herself something else, but it was clear to him that she could not separate herself from her emotions, could not be truly objective about what they were seeking to accomplish. For Tamis, the struggle to destroy the wronk was more than trying to stay alive. It was giving Ard Patrinell the release he could find no other way, the peace that only death would bring. Her hatred of what had been done to him was so invasive that it simmered on her features at every turn. The battle was personal for her in a way it could never be for Quentin, and she was driven almost beyond reason.

But not beyond the limit of her skills, Quentin quickly saw, which were considerable. Trained as a Tracker by Patrinell himself, she was all business and judgment, able to play well a game in which no mistakes were allowed. She knew what to expect from the mind that hunted them, was familiar with its thinking, its nuanced reasoning. She could anticipate what it would try and blunt the effect. The wronk was physically stronger, and if they got within its reach, there was little question of the outcome. But Tamis was whole where the wronk was fragmented, cobbled together of parts that did not naturally fit. That gave her an advantage she could exploit, and she was quick to try to do so.

It was odd to think of what they were attempting, fleeing on the one hand and looking to make a stand on the other. It was schizophrenic and disjointed, grounded in opposing principles and mind-wrenching in its demands. Flee the danger, but find a way to face it. Quentin had no time for a balanced consideration of the contradiction. He was consumed by the knowledge that the thing pursuing them did so to destroy him, yet to leave a part of him alive, as well. It would turn him into itself, a perfect copy, able to wield the magic of the Sword of Leah yet unable to act save as Antrax chose to order. The idea of becoming the machine that Ard Patrinell had become was so terrifying, so mind-numbing, that he could not do more than glance at the prospect of it the way he would the sun, shunning the pain of any prolonged study. But even that gave him a bitter, clear understanding of why Tamis was so determined to save Ard Patrinell.

That day’s flight was through the disjointed landscape of a surreal netherworld. The sounds of the pursuing wronk were all around and constant, letting up only now and then, when the hunter chose a less obvious tack. The day was cloudy and sunny by turns, casting shadows that moved past them like shades and suggested things that weren’t there, yet might be coming. They were worn already on setting out, and their weariness quickly deepened. They passed places in which brush and trees were trampled and broken by fighting and frantic flight. They came upon dead men killed the day before. Most were Rindge, the reddish skin giving them identity when only pieces remained. One was an Elf, although there wasn’t enough of him to determine which one. Blood soaked the ground and smeared the trees in splotches dried black by the sun. Weapons and clothing lay scattered everywhere. Silence cloaked the carnage and desolation.

As they had neared the Rindge village, the number of dead increased. They were too many to be only those from the hunting party. When they reached the village itself, they found its huts and shelters smashed and burned and its people gone. Some few lay dead, those who had bought with their lives a chance for the others to escape. That a single being could wreak such havoc, alone and unaided, against so many, was horrifying. That the mind of Ard Patrinell was an integral part of that being and would know what it was doing yet be unable to stop was heartbreaking. Tamis did not cry as they passed through the village, but Quentin saw tears in her eyes.

They had paused at the far side of the village, where the carnage ended. Those who remained of Obat’s people had fled into the hills and perhaps to the mountains beyond. The wronk had lost interest in them at that point and gone elsewhere.

Quentin stood with Tamis and stared at the destruction.

“You were not mistaken about his eyes?” she asked him almost desperately. All of the bravado and irony gone out of her voice, she could barely bring herself to speak. “It was Ard Patrinell looking out at you from inside?”

He nodded. He could think of nothing to say.

“He would never do anything like this if he could help himself,” she said. “He would die first. He was a good man, Highlander, maybe the best man I have ever known. He was kind and caring. He looked after everyone. He thought of the Home Guard as his family and of himself as their father. When new members were brought in for training, he let them know he would do everything he could to keep them safe. At gatherings, he told stories and sang. You saw him as taciturn and hard, but that was only since the death of the King, for which he blamed himself, for which he could not forgive himself. Kylen Elessedil stripped him of his command for imagined failures and political convenience. Bad enough. But now this monster, this Antrax, strips him of control over his actions, as well, and leaves him a shell of powerless knowledge.”

It was the most he had ever heard her say at one time and as close as she had ever come to admitting what she felt about the man she loved.

She looked away, sullen and defeated. “Can you imagine what this is doing to him?”

He could. Worse, he could imagine it happening to himself, which was too horrifying to ponder. His hand tightened around the handle of his sword. He carried it unsheathed all the time now, determined that he would never be surprised, that if attacked, he would be ready. It was all he could think to do to tip the balance in his favor. It was strange how little comfort it gave him.

They had walked back through the village, choosing a different path out, still searching for one of the elusive pits. The sun had moved across the sky in a long, slow arc, the day wandering off with nothing to show for its passing, the night coming on with its promise of raw fear and increasing uncertainty. Time was an insistent buzzing in his ear, a reminder of what was at stake.

It had been quiet when they entered the village. When they left, they could hear in the distance the sounds of the wronk as it moved toward them.

Tamis wheeled back in something close to blind fury, her short sword glinting in the light. “Perhaps we should stand and face him right here!” she hissed. “Perhaps we should forget about hunting for pits that might not even exist!”

Quentin started to make a sharp reply, then thought better of it. He shook his head instead, and when he spoke he kept his voice gentle. “If we die making a useless gesture, we do nothing to help Patrinell.” She glared at him, but he did not look away. “We made an agreement. Let’s stick to it.”

They went on through the afternoon, out of the village and back toward Castledown, choosing a trail that was almost overgrown from lack of use. No sign of life appeared. About halfway between the village and the ruins, at the beginnings of twilight, they were passing through an open space in the woods in which tall dips and rises rippled the ground and grasses grew in clumps. The failing light was even poorer there, screened by conifers that grew well over a hundred feet tall and spread in all directions save south, where a wildflower meadow opened off the rougher ground. They were moving toward a pathway that opened off the far side when Tamis grabbed Quentin’s arm and pointed just ahead, which he thought looked like everything else around them, scrub-grown and rough. In exasperation, she pulled him right up to the place to which she was pointing, and then he recognized it for what it was. The pit was well concealed by a screen of sapling limbs layered with some sort of clay-colored cloth, sand and dirt, clumps of dried grasses, and debris. It was so well designed that it disappeared into the landscape. Unless you were right on top of it and looking down, you wouldn’t see it.

Yet Tamis had. He looked at her for an explanation.

She smirked with rueful self-depreciation. “Luck.”

She pointed to one side. It took him a while to see that a corner of the support cloth had worked itself to the surface and was sticking up. “Bury that, and the pit will be invisible again.”

“Or move it to another place, and you create a red herring. And an edge for us.” He looked at her questioningly. “What do you think?”

She nodded slowly. “Because Patrinell will see it, too, just like I did.” She put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. “This is what we’ve been searching for, Highlander. We make our stand here.”

They had cut away the bit of cloth and reburied it off to one side with the corner sticking up. They used a scattering of twigs and grasses to suggest that the pit might be located there. It was reasonable to assume that the wronk, using Ard Patrinell’s skills and experience, would be looking for traps and snares, especially if it found them prepared to stand and fight. If they could draw it in the wrong direction or mislead it in just the slightest, they could drop it into the pit before it knew what was happening.

It was a dangerous gamble. But it was all they had to work with.

So now they waited in the deepening night, listening to the adversary’s approach, to a sharp crackling of brush and limbs, steady and inexorable. They had considered lighting fires to give them a clear battlefield, but decided that darkness favored them more. The moon and stars appeared and faded behind a screen of clouds, providing snatches of light with which to operate. They had positioned themselves squarely behind the false pit, leaving the best and most logical path to reach them to their right, over the real pit. They stood together now, but would change position when the wronk appeared. They had worked their plan out carefully. All that remained was to test it.

It would work, Quentin told himself silently. It had to.

He heard the wronk clearly, heavy footfalls drawing closer. His skin crawled with the sound. Tamis stood right beside him, and he could hear the soft rasp of her breathing. They held their swords in front of them, blades glinting in the moonlight as the clouds broke overhead momentarily. Quentin’s head throbbed and his blood tingled with fiery sparks of magic that broke away from the Sword of Leah as it responded to his sense of danger. He felt the change in his body as he prepared to give himself over to its power. An equal mix of satisfaction and fear roiled within him. He would be transformed, and he knew now what that meant. When the magic entered him, he infused himself with its terrible fury and risked his soul.

Without it, of course, he risked his life. It was not much of a choice.

With an almost delicate grace, the wronk stepped into the clearing. Though its features were hazy and spectral in the faint light, its shape and size were unmistakable. Quentin watched it with a mix of raw fear and revulsion. It registered his presence instantly, freezing in place, casting about as if testing the wind. A glint of metal speared the darkness as a piece of the monster reflected momentarily in the starlight. The moon had disappeared back behind the clouds, and the night was thick and oppressive. Within the black wall of the trees, there was unbroken silence.

The Highlander felt Tamis tense, waiting for him to take the lead. They had agreed that he must do so, that he was the one the wronk was seeking and so could best draw it in the direction they wished it to go. Their plan was simple enough. Pretend to decoy it one way, knowing it would choose to go another. It was Ard Patrinell’s brain at work inside the wronk, so it would be Patrinell’s thinking that would direct it. It would sense a feint, a deception, and so act to avoid it. If they could take advantage of that thinking, if they could anticipate its reasoning, they could lure it into the pit. It was a poor plan at best, but it was the only plan they could come up with.

The wronk shifted again, drawing fresh shards of starlight to its metal skin, pinpricks of brightness that flashed and faded like fireflies. They heard its heavy body as it took a step forward and paused anew. Nothing of Ard Patrinell’s tortured face was visible to them, and so they could try to pretend the wronk was nothing more than a machine. But in his mind Quentin saw the Elf’s eyes anew, looking out from their prison—frantic, pleading, desperate for release. He would have banished the image if he had known how to do so, but it was so strong and pervasive that he could not manage it. It was a window not only into Patrinell’s terrible fate, but also into his own. Tamis would free her lover from his living death. Quentin would simply avoid sharing his fate.

Sweating freely, the heat forming a sheen of perspiration on his face and arms, he wondered absently how matters had come to that end. He had embarked on the journey with such hopes for something wonderful and fulfilling and life-transforming. He had wanted an adventure. What he’d gotten was a nightmare.

“Ready?” he whispered.

Tamis nodded, grim-faced. “Don’t let it take me alive,” she said suddenly. “Promise me.”

“Promise me, as well.” His heart was hammering within his chest.

“I loved him,” she whispered so quietly he barely heard her speak the words.

Quentin Leah took a deep breath and brought up his sword.