Part 21 (1/2)

Gathering his robes about him, he slipped away from them, maneuvering past the creepers toward 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 s.h.i.+fted 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.

”Stand here!” he shouted into Ahren's ear over the din. ”Hold them back for as long as you can-then run!”

He turned into the room, searching out the power feeds that were built into the wall. He had been going about the battle in the wrong way. He could not attack the power source from without; whoever had constructed Antrax would have made certain that sabotage of that sort was very difficult. Any permanent damage would have to come from within. Antrax had been installed inside Castledown to protect the library of the Old World against attacks from without. There would be internal defenses, as well, but they would not be as substantial. The intake lines that fed raw power into the capacitors for conversion and storage would have near-infinite capacity, since such power would necessarily come in different forms and increments.

But would the lines of power that Antrax used to feed itself from the capacitors be of similar durability? Walker didn't think so. Antrax would measure its own intake. It would not require a separate monitoring system, would have no reason to expect an intake greater than what it commanded. Overload the feeding lines, and they would melt or disintegrate. Antrax would have warning systems and shutoffs to prevent that, but if Walker struck quickly enough, the damage would be done before they could react.

He moved through the debris of the room, over pieces of shattered equipment and creepers, to the extraction ports that ran to the storage units. He would use them to reach the lines that fed directly into Antrax. There were relays from one to the other; he had discovered that much when he had explored the complex earlier in his out-of-body form. The trick would be in acting quickly enough to jam them, and then to sustain the attack long enough to disable Antrax before it could strike back.

Outside the extraction chamber, Ahren Elessedil fought to keep the creepers at bay. Fire threads were seeking him out, as well, though most were still engaged in warding the power source, vertical crimson stripes that climbed the smoky heights of the cavernous hall to lock in place like prison bars. The Elven Prince twisted and turned to meet each new attack, Elven magic flas.h.i.+ng brightly. But he did not have more than a few minutes left before he would be overwhelmed.

Ryer Ord Star crouched next to him in the doorway, her gaze directed back toward Walker, helpless and beseeching. Walker gave her a calm, untroubled look, one meant to comfort and allay her fears. His attempt failed. Perhaps she saw the truth. Perhaps she was beyond seeing anything but what she feared most. She screamed, and the sound could be heard even over the howl of the alarms.

In response, Walker flattened the palm of his hand against one of the extraction ports and sent the Druid fire hurtling inward.

Antrax was caught by surprise. Walker's magic pumped into the intake lines like floodwaters down a dry riverbed. The shock was enormous, so much so that a backlash ripped through Walker, as well. He stiffened against the pressure and pain and thrust the magic forward again, deep into the lines, feeling it build anew. Antrax was throwing up defenses in a wild effort to contain him, but it was too little, too late. He was all the way inside the feeding system, breaking from the main lines into all the little channels, all the little tributaries, everything that kept Antrax running. He could feel conductors fusing, melting, and falling away.

Fire threads ripped into the room from behind, burning into him like heated metal. He contained his screams, and blocked what he could of the counterattack without lessening his own a.s.sault. Ryer screamed anew, but he could not look to see what she was doing. Every part of him was directed toward continuing the a.s.sault. Antrax was racing down its central lines, patching what it could, closing off what it could not. Its internal systems were imploding, one after the other. Walker chased it through its central nervous system, through its bloodstream, into its heart and mind. Everything he touched he savaged with the Druid fire, carrying himself with it, feeling himself burning up, as well. He couldn't help it. He couldn't stop it. He couldn't separate himself from what was happening sufficiently to stay whole. Bits and pieces of his own body were collapsing, as well.

Then abruptly, he felt Antrax convulse. The fire threads that raked him lurched wildly, spraying out of control. Creepers, disoriented and mindless, twisted like bits of paper caught in a wind. He felt Ryer clutch at him, still screaming, pulling at him, trying to wrench him free of the ports to which his hand was fused. Ahren Elessedil was beside him, his face a mask of horror. Walker had only a moment to register their presence, and then a backlash of magic burst through the extraction port through his hand and arm and into his body and blew him across the room.

The attack on its internal systems was so sudden and powerful that Antrax was burned halfway through before it could manage to respond. It blocked the intruder's advance, turned his own power back on him, and counterattacked with its lasers. It began closing down damaged areas and calling for repairs. But in spite of its efforts, the intruder's fire raged all through it, and for every section of itself it managed to salvage, it lost two more. All of its central lines were invaded and contaminated, riddled with power so destructive that it was eating through the circuits and conductors. Antrax felt pieces of itself cease to function as feeding lines deteriorated and collapsed. It could not maintain its various functions, its complex operations. It lost control over its mobile defenses first, its probes and lasers. Its maintenance systems stalled. It kept intact the defenses surrounding the power source, but the protection devices at Castledown's surface ceased to operate. It threw everything it had left into fulfilling its prime directive-to protect the knowledge it warded in its memory banks.

Nothing worked. Everything was failing. Bit by bit, it felt itself slowing down, losing control, and slipping away. It retreated to its stronger positions to gather strength, to reconnect. But the fire tracked it as if it were a living thing and burned away its faltering defenses. Antrax was forced all the way back through its collapsing lines to the chambers that housed its power source.

There it found itself cornered, unable to move outside the twin capacitors that had fed it all these centuries. The capacitors were all it had left, and their power was leaking away through a thousand ruptures. Its charge from the creators was no longer possible to fulfill. Already it could feel the central memory banks dying.

Then Antrax could no longer move.

It began to have trouble thinking.

Time slowed, then became barely noticeable to it in its new-found state of immobility and dysfunction.

Its last conscious thought was that it was unable to remember what it was.

TWENTY-NINE.

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 pa.s.sing.

Then the pain began, sudden and intense, rus.h.i.+ng 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 s.p.a.ce 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 m.u.f.fled 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, s.h.i.+elding 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 rea.s.sure 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 airs.h.i.+p. 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 pa.s.sageways he had explored in his out-of-body search. ”The main pa.s.sageway 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 be 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 sc.r.a.ping 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.