Antrax

29

Walker blacked out from being hurled against a wall, but he woke again almost at once. He lay without moving amid the debris, staring dully into the smoky haze that enveloped him. He knew he was hurt, but he could not tell how badly. The feeling was gone from much of his body, and his hand was soaked in a wetness that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it obviously was. Somewhere close, in the swirl of the battle’s aftermath, he could hear Ryer Ord Star sobbing and calling out his name.

I’m here, he tried to say, but the words would not come.

Sparks spilled like liquid fire from the broken ends of wires, and wounded machines buzzed and spat in their death throes. Tremors rocked the safehold as Antrax thrashed blindly down its lines of power in search of help that could no longer be found. By turning his head slightly to the right, Walker could just glimpse the fractured cylinders that housed the power source, the metal skin leaking steam and dampness, the protective fire threads fading like rainbows with a storm’s passing.

Then the pain began, sudden and intense, rushing through him with the force of floodwaters set free from a broken dam. He gasped at the intensity of it and fought back with what little magic he could muster, shutting it away, closing it off, giving himself space and time to think clearly. He did not have much of either, he knew. What had been promised had been delivered. He had not known from the visions that Death would come for him then, at that moment, in that place. But he had known it was on its way.

A figure moved in the gloom, and Ahren Elessedil materialized. “He’s here!” he called back over his shoulder, then knelt in front of Walker, his face ashen, his slender body razored with burns and slashes and streaked with blood. “Shades!” he gasped softly.

Ryer Ord Star was beside him a second later, small and ephemeral, as if she were no more substantial than the smoke from which she appeared, no better formed. She saw him, and her hands flew to her mouth in tiny fists that only partially muffled her anguished scream. Walker saw that she was looking below his neck, where the pain was centered. He read the horror in her eyes.

She started for him at once, and he brought up his hand in a warding gesture to keep her back. For the first time, he saw the blood that coated it. For the first time, he was afraid, and fear gave power to his voice.

“Stay back,” he ordered her sharply. “Don’t touch me.”

She kept coming, but Ahren reached out for her as she tried to push past, and pulled her down next to him, holding her as she thrashed and screamed in fury and despair. He talked to her, his voice steady and soothing, even when she would not hear him, would not listen, until finally she collapsed in his arms, sobbing against his shoulder, little birdlike hands still clenched in defiance.

Walker lowered his bloodstained hand back into his lap, still not looking down at what he knew he would find there, forcing himself to close off everything but what he knew he must do next.

“Elven Prince,” he said, his voice unrecognizable to him. “Bring her close.”

Ahren Elessedil did as he was told, tightening his features in the way people do when they are brought face-to-face with sights they would just as soon never have witnessed. He held her possessively, shielding as well as restraining her, his own needs revealed in his determination to see them both through whatever would happen next. Walker was surprised at the resolve and strength of will he found in the youthful features. The Elven Prince had grown up all at once.

“Ryer.” He spoke her name softly, deliberately infusing the sound of it with a calm that was meant to reassure her. He waited. “Ryer, look at me.”

She did so, slowly and tentatively, lifting her head out of Ahren Elessedil’s shoulder, her gaze directed toward his face, refusing to look down again, to risk what that would do to her. In the pale, translucent features he found such sadness that it felt to him as if he was broken now in spirit as well as in body.

“You cannot touch me, not without irreparable damage. Healing me is not possible. Healing me will cost you your own life and will not save mine. Some things are beyond even your empathic powers. Your visions told me this was coming. When I became linked to you after Shatterstone, I saw. Do you understand?”

Her eyes were blank and fixed, devoid of anything even resembling understanding, as if she had decided to leave him rather than be made to face the truth. She was hiding—he accepted that—but she had not gone so far away that she couldn’t hear.

“Ahren will take you back to the surface of Castledown and from there to the airship. Return home with him. Tell him of the visions and dreams that visit you on the way as you once told them to me. Help him as you have helped me.”

She was shaking her head slowly, her eyes still unfocused, lost and empty looking. “No,” she whispered. “I won’t leave you.”

“Ahren.” Walker’s gaze shifted to the Elven Prince. “The treasure we came to find is lost to us. It died with Antrax. The books of magic were housed in the machine’s memory system. They could not be retrieved unless Antrax was kept whole, and allowing that to happen was too dangerous. The choice was mine to make, and I made it. Whether it was worth the cost remains to be seen. You will have to make your own judgment. Remember that. One day, you will be given the chance.”

Ryer Ord Star was crying again, speaking his name softly as she did so, repeating it over and over. He wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her in some small way, but he could not. Time was running out, and there was still one thing more he must do.

“Go now,” he said to the Elven Prince.

The seer gave a low wail and reached out for him, trying to tear free of Ahren Elessedil’s strong grip. Her fingers were like claws, stretching as if to rend and discard whatever words he would choose to speak next.

“Ryer,” he said softly, his strength ebbing. “Listen to me. This is not the last time we will see each other. We will meet again.” She went silent, staring at him. “Soon,” he said. “It will happen.”

“Walker.” She breathed his name as if it were a spell that could protect them both.

“I promise you.” He swallowed against the return of his pain, gesturing weakly at Ahren. “Go. Quickly. Not the way you came. Across the chamber, that way.” He pointed past the ruptured cylinders, his memory recalling the labyrinthine passageways he had explored in his out-of-body search. “The main passageway leads out from there. Follow it. Go now.”

Ahren pulled Ryer Ord Star up with him, turning her away forcefully, ignoring both her sobs and her struggles. His gaze remained fixed on the Druid as he did so, as if by looking at Walker he would find the strength he needed. Perhaps he still seeks answers for what has happened to them all, Walker thought. Perhaps he just wants to know whether any of what they have endured has been worth it.

A moment later, they were gone, through the shattered doorway of the chamber into the larger room beyond. He could hear them afterwards for a long time, the sounds of the seer crying and of boots scraping over the rubble. Then there was only the fading crackle of stricken machines fighting to stay functional, smoke that curled through the air and wires that sparked, and a vague sense of life leaking slowly away.

Time slowed.

Walker felt himself drift. She would be coming soon. The Ilse Witch, his nemesis, his greatest failure—she had caught up to him at last. He could measure her approach by the shifting of smoke on the air and the whisper of footsteps in his mind. He tightened his resolve as he waited for her.

When she appeared, he would be ready for her.

The Ilse Witch found her way to the power source through use of her magic, tracking first toward the origin of the alarms and then following in the footsteps of Walker, which she stumbled across farther on. The heat and movement of the images he had left by his passing overlapped with those of Ryer Ord Star and an Elf. They had all come this way, and not long ago, but she could not tell if they were traveling together. She was surprised to find the seer down there, but neither her presence nor that of the Elf made any difference. It was the Druid she must deal with; the other two were merely obstacles to be cleared away.

It was true that she had given up looking for the Druid in favor of the magic they both sought, yet she could not ignore his presence. He was somewhere right ahead of her, and perhaps he had already gained possession of the books. She needed to find that out. She had not forgotten her earlier decision to concentrate on the books, but every turn she took led back to her nemesis. It was pointless to pretend any longer that she could separate the two.

She had listened to the sounds of battle during her approach, slowing automatically, not wanting to stumble into something she was not prepared for. She did not yet know what it was that lived down there, although she was fairly certain it was something from the Old World. It was intelligent and dangerous if it had survived all those years, and she would avoid it if she could. From the sounds ahead, it appeared that it might have enough to occupy it already without bothering about her.

The passageways twisted and turned, and she soon discovered that the sounds were carrying farther than she realized. By the time she was closing in on their source, they had died away almost to nothing, small hummings and cracklings, little fragments of noise broken off in a struggle that had consumed their makers. The alarms had ceased, and the traps that had warded the passageways had locked up. She could still sense a presence somewhere deep within the walls, but it was small and failing rapidly. Smoke rolled past her in clouds, beckoning her ahead to where the passageway opened into a ruin dominated by a pair of massive cylinders that had been cracked and twisted by explosions from within. Bits and pieces of creepers lay everywhere, and machines whose purpose she could not begin to comprehend were knocked askew, their cables and wires severed and sparking. The chamber that housed them was vast and silent as she stepped inside, a safehold become a tomb.

She felt the Druid’s presence at once. Responding to it, she stepped through the debris and into the remains of a chamber to one side.

She saw him almost immediately. He sat propped against one wall, staring back at her. Stained red with blood, his black robes spread away from him like a tattered shroud. His body was burned and ravaged. Most of one leg was gone. His skin, where not blistered and peeling, was so pale it seemed drawn with chalk on the drifting haze.

She stared at his ruined body and was surprised to discover that she felt no satisfaction. If anything, she was disappointed. She had waited all her life for that moment, and once it had arrived, it was nothing at all as she had pictured it. She had wanted to be the instrument of the Druid’s destruction. Someone had cheated her of the pleasure.

She walked to within a few feet of him and stopped. Still she did not speak, her eyes locked on his, looking for something that would give her a little of the satisfaction she had been denied. She found nothing.

“Where are the others?” she asked finally. “The seer and the Elf?”

He coughed and swallowed thickly. “Gone.”

“You’re dying, Druid,” she said.

He nodded. “It is my time.”

“You’ve lost.”

“Have I?”

“Death steals away all our chances. Yours flee from you even as we speak.”

“Perhaps not.”

His refusal to acknowledge his defeat infuriated her, but she held her temper carefully in check. “Did you find the magic you sought?” She paused. “Will you tell me willingly or must I pry open your mind to gain an answer to my question?”

“Threats are unnecessary. I found the magic and took from it what I could. But while I live, it is beyond your reach.”

She stared at him. “I haven’t long to wait then, do I?”

“Longer than you think. My dying is only the beginning of your journey.”

She had no idea what he was talking about. “What journey is that, Druid? Tell me.”

Blood appeared on his lips and ran down his chin in a thin stream. His eyes were beginning to glaze. She felt a twinge of panic. He must not die yet. “I have the boy,” she said. “You did an impressive job of convincing him of the lies he now insists are the truth. He really believes himself to be Bek and me to be his sister. He believes you are his friend. If you care for him, you will help me now, while there is still time.”

Walker’s eyes never left her face. “He is your brother, Grianne. You hid him in the cellar of your home, in a chamber behind a cabinet. He was found there by a shape-shifter, who in turn brought him to me. I took him to a man and his wife in the Highlands to raise as a foster son. That is the truth. The lies are all your own.”

“Don’t use my name, Druid!” she hissed at him.

One hand lifted weakly. “The Morgawr killed your parents, Grianne. He killed them and stole you away so that he could take advantage of your talents and make you his student. He told you I did it so that you would hate his greatest enemy. He did so in the hopes that one day you would destroy me. That was his plan. He subverted your thinking early and trained you well. But he did not know about Bek. He did not know that there was someone besides me who knew the truth he had worked so hard to conceal.”

“All lies,” she whispered, her anger strong again, her magic roiling within her. She would strike him down if he said another word. She would tear him apart and put an end to things here and now.

“Would you know the truth?” he asked.

“I know it already.”

“Would you know the truth finally and forever?”

She stared at him. There was intensity to his dark eyes that she could not dismiss. He had something in mind, something he was working toward, but she was not certain what it was. Be careful, she told herself.

She folded her arms into her robes. “Yes,” she said.

“Then use the sword.”

For a moment, she had no idea what he was talking about. Then she remembered the talisman she wore strapped across her back, the one the boy had given her. She reached over her shoulder and touched it lightly. “This?”

“It is the Sword of Shannara.” He swallowed thickly, his breath rattling in his chest. “Call upon it if you would know the real truth, the one you have denied for so long. The talisman cannot lie. There can be no deception with its use. Only the truth.”

She shook her head slowly. “I don’t trust you.”

His smile was faint and sad. “Of course not. I’m not asking you to. But you trust yourself, don’t you? You trust your own magic. Use it, then. Are you afraid?”

“I’m afraid of nothing.”

“Then use the sword.”

“No.”

She thought that would be the end of it, but she was wrong. He nodded as if she had given him the answer he expected. Instead of thwarting his intentions, she seemed to have buttressed them. His good arm shifted so that his hand was lying on his shattered breast. She did not know how he could still be alive.

“Use the sword with me,” he whispered.

She shook her head instantly. “No.”

“If you do not use the sword,” he said softly, “you can never gain control over the magic I have hidden from you. Everything I have acquired, all the knowledge of the Old World gleaned from these catacombs, all of the power granted by the Druids, is locked away inside me. It can be released if you use the sword, if you are strong enough to master it, but not otherwise.”

“More lies!” she spat.

“Lies?” His voice was weakening, his words fatigued and slurred. “I am a dead man. But I am still stronger than you are. I can use the sword while you cannot. Dare not. Prove me wrong, if you think you can. Do as I say. Use the sword. Test yourself against me. All that I have, all of it, becomes yours if you are strong enough. Look at me. Look into my eyes. What do you see?”

What she saw was a certainty that brooked no doubt and concealed no subterfuge. He was challenging her to look at the truth as he believed it to be, asking her to risk what that might mean. She did not think she should do so, but she also believed that access to his mind was worth any risk. Once inside, she would know all his secrets. She would know the truth about the missing books of magic. She would know the truth about herself and the boy. It was a chance she could not afford to pass up. His nonsense about Druid knowledge and power was a ploy to distract her, but she could play such games much better than he could.

“All right.” Her words were rimmed in iron. “But you will place your hand on the sword first, under mine, so that I can hold you fast. That way, should this prove to be a trick of some kind, you will not escape me.”

She thought she had turned the tables on him neatly. She expected him to refuse, frightened of being linked to her in a way that stripped him of a chance to break free. But again he surprised her. He nodded in agreement. He would do as she asked. She stared at him. When she thought she saw a flicker of satisfaction cross his face, she was flooded with anger and clenched her fist at him.

“Do not think you can deceive me, Druid!” she snapped. “I will crush you faster than you can blink if you try!”

He did not respond, his eyes still locked on hers. For an instant she thought to abandon the whole effort, to back away from him. Let him die, and she would sort it all out later. But she could not make herself give up the opportunity he was offering her, even if it was only for a moment. He kept so many secrets. She wanted them all. She wanted the truth about the boy. She wanted the truth about the magic of that safehold. She might never have another chance to discover either, if she did not act quickly.

She took a steadying breath. Whatever else he intended, whatever surprise he planned, she was more than a match for him, wasn’t she?

She reached over her shoulder and slowly unsheathed the sword, bringing it around in front of her, setting it between them, blade down, handle up. In the smoky gloom, the ancient weapon looked dull and lifeless. Her doubts returned. Was it really the legendary Sword of Shannara or was it something else, something other than what she believed it to be? There was no other magic concealed within it; she would have detected any by now. Nor was there anything about it that would lend strength to the dying Druid. Nothing could save him from the wounds he had incurred. She wondered again at what had savaged him so and would have asked if she had thought there was enough time left to do so.

She inched closer to him, repositioning the blade so that he could reach the handle. She kept her eyes on his, watching for signs of deceit. It seemed impossible that he could manage anything. His eyes were lidded, his breathing rough and shallow, his torn body leaking blood into his robes in such copious amounts she did not know how there could be any left inside him. For just an instant, fresh doubt assailed her, warning her away from what she was about to do. She trusted her instincts, but she hated to acknowledge fear in the face of her sworn enemy, a man against whom she had measured herself for so many years.

She brushed the doubt away. “Place your hand on the sword!”

He raised his bloodied hand from his chest and wrapped his fingers around the handle. As he did so, he seemed to lose focus for a moment, and his hand extended past the talisman to brush lightly against her forehead. She was concentrating so hard on his eyes that she did not think to watch his hand. She flinched at his touch, aware of the damp smear his fingers had left against her skin. She heard him say something, words spoken so softly she could not make them out.

The feel of his blood on her forehead disturbed her, but she would not give him the satisfaction of seeing her troubled enough to wipe it away. Instead, she placed her hand over his and tightened her grip to hold him fast.

“Now we shall see, Druid.”

“Now we shall,” he agreed.

Eyes locked, they waited in the smoking ruins of the extraction chamber, so alone that there might have been no one else alive in the world. Everything had gone still. Even the severed cables and wires that had sparked and buzzed only moments before and the shattered machines that had struggled so hard to continue functioning had gone still. It was so quiet that the Ilse Witch could hear the sound of the Druid’s breathing slow to almost nothing.

She was wasting her time, she thought abruptly, angry all over again. This wasn’t the Sword of Shannara. This wasn’t anything more than an ordinary blade.

In response, her fingers dug into Walker’s hand and the worn handle beneath it. Tell me something! Show me your truth, if you have any truth to show!

An instant later, she felt a surge of warmth rise out of the blade, enter her hand, and spread through her arm. She saw the Druid flinch, then heard him gasp. An instant after that, white light flared all about them, and they disappeared into its molten core.

On the coast of the Blue Divide, dawn was breaking offshore through a fog bank that stretched across the whole of the horizon like a massive wall. From the deck of the Jerle Shannara, Redden Alt Mer watched the fog materialize in the wake of the retreating night, a rolling gray behemoth closing on the shoreline with the inevitability of a tidal wave. He had seen fog before, but never like that. The bank was thick and unbroken, connecting water to sky, north to south, light to dark. Dawn fought to break through cracks in its surface, a series of angry red streaks that had the look of heated steel, as if a giant furnace had been lit somewhere out on the water.

March Brume experienced heavy fog at times, as did all the seaports along the Westland coast. Mix heat and cold where land met water, stir in a healthy wash of condensation, and you could muster fog thick enough to spread on your toast—that was the old salt’s claim. The fog Redden Alt Mer was watching was like that, but it had something else to it, as well, a kind of energy, dark and purposeful, that suggested the approach of a storm. Except the weather didn’t feel right for it. His taste and smell of the air revealed nothing of rain, and there had been no sounds of thunder or flashes of lightning. There wasn’t a breath of wind. Even the pressure readings gave no hint of trouble.

The Rover Captain paced to the aft decking and peered harder into the haze. Had something moved out there?

“Pea soup,” Spanner Frew grumbled, coming up to stand beside him. He frowned out of his dark beard like a thunderhead. “Glad we’re not going that way anytime soon.”

Alt Mer nodded, still looking out into the haze. “Better hope it stays offshore. I’ll be skinned and cooked before I’ll let us be stuck here another week.”

One more day, and the repair on the airship would be finished. It was so close now that he could barely contain his impatience. Little Red had been gone for three days already, and he hadn’t felt right about it once. He had faith in her good judgment, and in Hunter Predd’s, as well, but he felt compromised enough as it was by what had befallen the members of the ship’s company in that treacherous land. They were scattered all over the place, most of them lost or dead, and he had no idea how they were ever going to bring everyone together, even without the added problem of wondering what might have happened to his sister.

“Have you solved the problem of that forward port crystal?” he asked, watching the shifting fog bank, still thinking he had seen something.

The burly shipwright shrugged. “Can’t solve it without a new crystal, and we don’t have one. Lost the spares overboard in the channel during the storm. We’ll have to make do.”

“Well, we’ve been down that road before.” He leaned forward, his hands on the railing, his eyes intent on the fog bank. “Take a look out there, Black Beard. Do you see something? There, maybe fifteen degrees off …”

He never finished. Before he could complete the sentence, a cluster of dark shapes materialized out of the gloom. Airborne, they flew out of the roiling gray like a flock of Shrikes or Rocs, silhouetted against the crimson-streaked wall. How many were there? Five, six? No, Alt Mer corrected himself almost at once. A dozen, maybe more. He counted quickly, his throat tightening. Two dozen at least. And they were big, too big even for Rocs. Nor did they have wings to propel them ahead, to provide them with vertical lift.

He caught his breath. They were airships. A whole fleet of them, come out of nowhere. He watched them take shape, masts and sails, rakish dark hulls, and the glint of metal stays and cleats. Warships. He brought up his spyglass and peered closely at them. No insignia emblazoned on flags or pennants, no markings on the gunwales or hulls. He watched them clear the fog and wheel fifteen degrees left, all on a line across the horizon, black as netherworld shades as they drifted into formation and began to advance.

Redden Alt Mer put down the spyglass and took a deep, steadying breath.

They were sailing right for the Jerle Shannara.