“I want you to do something,” he said quietly to the seer. She glanced over at once. He paused and leaned closer. “I want you to try your empathic skills on the sweeper and see what they tell you.”
She furrowed her brow. “You want me to see if touching it will induce a vision?”
“Of the past, of the future, of the present, of anything that will help us.”
“But it’s a machine, Ahren.”
“Try anyway. You said it was sentient. If that’s so, you might be able to trigger something from its thoughts. Maybe you can discover how much farther we have to go or where to look for Walker.” He shook his head helplessly. “I just want something that says we’re down here for a reason and should keep going.”
She stared at him for a long time, undecided. Then she gave him a slow nod. “All right, I’ll try.”
She finished a last bite of bread, put down the water skin, and rose. The sweeper started to move away, thinking they were ready, but then turned back when Ahren made no move to follow. Ryer approached it without speaking, knelt beside it, and put her hands on its rounded metal body, fingertips pressing as her eyes closed. Her pale, ethereal features tightened in concentration, and her face lifted out of the shadow of her silvery hair.
In the next instant, she rocked back sharply on her heels and her slender body went rigid with shock. Ahren started. The sweeper never moved; Ryer Ord Star clung to it, fingertips crooked and head thrown back, eyes closed and arms extended, finding in whatever vision her contact with the sweeper had induced such images that the emotions elicited could be read upon her face, raw and naked and terrible.
She gave a low moan, then sagged, her hands falling away. Right away, without prompting, without even opening her eyes, she began to speak.
“A young man, an Elf, was brought here in chains, battered and broken from a struggle that left his companions dead. His eyes were then gouged out and his tongue removed. He carried Elfstones, gripped so tightly in his hand he could not release them. They were magic and so powerful that they could have freed him had he the will to use them to do so. But his mind was shackled like his body, and he no longer had control over it. Creepers bore him into this place, deep underground, into a chamber filled with machines and blinking lights. He was placed in a chair. Iron cuffs secured him and wires were inserted into his body, carefully inserted beneath his skin by creepers.”
Her eyes snapped open and she looked at him, her face wan and haunted. Stricken by what she had witnessed in a world she hadn’t imagined could exist, she looked like a child woken from a nightmare.
“A presence watched it happen, a sentient being that lacked substance and form. It was called Antrax. It hid in the walls and floor and ceiling, all about, everywhere at once. It could see, but had no eyes. It could feel, but had no touch. It was controlling the fate of the ruined Elf. It was controlling his mind. When the Elf was securely attached to the chair, a box with many wires was latched about the hand that held the Elfstones. Images were fed into the Elf’s mind through the wires, causing him to see things that were not there, forcing him to use the magic of the stones. That magic was captured by the box and stolen away, carried down into the wires, siphoned off to other places.”
She stared at Ahren as if unable to look away, lost in the images of her vision. “This is what I saw. All of it. Everything.”
“You saw Kael Elessedil,” he said quietly.
She took a deep breath. “Kael Elessedil,” she repeated. She shuddered. “For thirty years, Ahren, that was his life!”
He tried to picture that and failed. How could anyone be used in that way? What sort of creature could commit such a travesty? A deep cold settled into the pit of his stomach as he realized that whatever it was, it wasn’t human. Antrax was something else altogether.
He rose to go to her, to help her to her feet, but she made a quick warding gesture. “Don’t touch me, Ahren. There’s something more—something darker still. I couldn’t bear to look on it all at once, but now I must. I have to. I have opened myself to visions triggered by the sweeper’s memories. If you put your hands on me, it will disrupt everything. Stay clear.”
Without waiting for his response, she leaned forward again and placed her hands on the sweeper once more. Her face went rigid instantly, and a gasp escaped her lips. Her head drooped, and she was clinging to the sweeper as if she might otherwise fall. “Oh! Oh!” she cried softly, almost desperately.
Her hands dropped away and she sagged back on her heels once more. She remained like that for a long time, her breathing ragged and shallow, her face bloodless, her body limp. Ahren, though wanting to go to her, stayed where he was, obeying her instructions. The tunnel was still as a tomb, its silence a voiceless echo racing up and down the corridors through the dim pools of yellow light. Filled with dread, the Elven Prince waited. He felt young and stupid and vulnerable all over again, as if exposed by the seer’s visions, as if laid open without ever having been touched.
Then, crablike, Ryer Ord Star backed slowly away from the sweeper, her head bent and her body slumped. “Ahren?” she whispered brokenly.
He reached for her, taking her in his arms. She melted against him, and he held her close and gave her what strength he had to lend. Within her robes, she was shaking and cold. He touched her face, and he could feel the dampness leaking from her eyes. “It’s all right,” he reassured her, not knowing what else to say.
She shook her head instantly in denial. “Ahren,” she said so quietly that he could barely hear her words. Her face lifted so that her lips were pressed against his ear. “You were right,” she whispered. “We’ve been tricked. It’s a trap.”
He went still, terror-stricken. He started to say something in response, but kept himself in check. He had enough presence of mind to remember that the sweeper could hear and translate what they said.
“Antrax plans for you to replace your uncle,” she murmured, her hands clutching him. “You’ve been kept alive and brought here to serve as he did.” Her words were tiny bits of glass, cutting at his heart. “The sweeper is a tool. It was sent to lure you to the same room in which Kael Elessedil was imprisoned for all those years. It used me to persuade you. And I …”
She couldn’t finish, and he pressed her closer still, hanging on to her as much as giving her something to cling to in turn. Are you sure? he wanted to ask. But that was a foolish question. Her power at reading the fates was already proved several times over, and there was no reason to doubt her here. Especially since he had been uneasy about what they were doing from the start. His eyes shifted up and down the corridor. Still empty, still deserted. Whatever fate awaited them, they hadn’t crossed its path yet, although they were clearly on their way to doing so if they didn’t act quickly.
But what were they to do? They were deep underground, hopelessly lost, their companion and would-be guide a creature in the enemy’s service. Antrax would have tracked them the whole way, watching their progress, orchestrating their passage. It would be watching them now. Whatever they did, wherever they went, it would see. Antrax would not let them walk away from what it intended for them. It would not allow its plan to replace Kael Elessedil to be thwarted. Ahren’s heart was pounding.
The seer’s words came back to him in a rush, and he closed his eyes against the pain they induced in him. Antrax had kept him alive, she had said. His escape, while all the others with him were fighting and dying, had been arranged. It was not by chance or good fortune that he had not been harmed. Perhaps Antrax saw him as weak and malleable, a coward through and through. Perhaps it knew how easily Ahren could be manipulated without any use of force. That way he would stay undamaged and whole, better able to serve as Antrax wished, perhaps for fifty years instead of the thirty Kael Elessedil had endured.