He reached the door with the shriek of the alarms ringing in his ears and was surprised when it gave to his touch. The creepers behind him didn’t seem to notice. He stepped into the room, a darkened chamber paneled with banks of blinking lights, tangled wires, and flexible metal cords that cast shadows over everything in inky pools. It was so black in the room that Ahren couldn’t distinguish any of the pieces of apparatus that were scattered everywhere, couldn’t make out the comings and goings of the cords, couldn’t even tell what the room was supposed to be. He groped forward, being careful to touch nothing, picking his way toward the center of the room as his eyes tried to adjust to the abrupt, momentary flashes of illumination.
When they did, he saw the first signs of movement, faint stirrings to one side. He froze instantly, and as he did so he caught sight of something moving to his other side. At first he thought it was nothing more than the shadows that flickered in the dim light, but then with heart-stopping certainty he recognized them. They were creepers. He couldn’t hear their skittering over the blare of the alarms, but even in the absence of that he knew them for what they were. They were all around him, all through the chamber. He had stumbled into their midst before realizing what he was doing.
He held himself as still as he could manage, barely daring to breathe, while he considered his next move. He could not tell how much of the phoenix stone’s magic remained to him; it was too dark to measure what traces remained of its distinct haze. Some, certainly, or the creepers would have had him already. He tried to think, to ignore the alarms and the creepers and the chaos around him, to hear anew the voice that had brought him there.
A second later, he saw the chair. It was big and padded and reclined, and it sat in the center of the room, surrounded by a cluster of freestanding machines. The cords were thickest there, snaking out in every direction, all leading from parts of the chair. There was an odd box set into one armrest to which many of the wires ran, and Ahren recognized it. He had seen the same sort of apparatus in Walker’s prison, siphoning off the Druid magic through his good arm. The chamber Ahren was in was where Kael Elessedil had been drained of the magic of the Elfstones in the same way for almost thirty years. It was the place in which his uncle had wasted his life.
The Elfstones, he knew instinctively and with overpowering certainty, were inside that box.
He moved over to it quickly, sliding through the nests of wires and past the bulky pieces of equipment, praying he couldn’t be detected. The creepers continued to shift position in the open spaces of the room, sidling a few feet this way, then a few that. He could not tell what they were doing. They didn’t seem to be doing anything that mattered. Perhaps they were only sweepers, harmless attendants of the machines rather than sentries and fighters. Perhaps his presence meant nothing to them.
He swallowed against the dryness in his throat, pausing as he passed close to one of them. It was not very big, but it sent a ripple of fear down his spine. He waited for it to turn away, then eased his slender body past, stepped into the maze of wires that surrounded the chair, and knelt next to the mysterious box.
In the flash of panel lights and the muted illumination through the dark glass windows, he peered into the box. He couldn’t see anything but shadows. He wanted to reach inside, but he didn’t like doing that without knowing what waited. Wouldn’t there be restraints of some sort, if that was how the magic was siphoned off? Wouldn’t there be needles of the sort that had been inserted into Walker to keep him connected to the machines? What if it was the trap the little sweeper had been leading him to all along?
But the Elfstones were in that box, not two feet away from his hand, and he had to get them out.
Suddenly, unexpectedly, the alarms went silent and the chamber’s ceiling lights came on. Ahren froze, exposed and unprotected, crouched by the padded chair amid the clustered machines and creepers. The magic of the phoenix stone was gone; the last traces of its concealing haze had vanished. Aware of his presence, the first of the creepers was already turning toward him. The ends of its metal arms lifted to reveal the deadly cutters that marked it as a sentry and fighter.
Ahren glanced swiftly into box, and amid its smoky shadows spied a glimmer of blue.
He thrust his right hand inside and snatched at the Elfstones. He seized the first two as iron bands clamped about his wrist, but the third one skittered away, just beyond his fingertips. A new alarm went off, this one inside the room, a whistle’s shriek of warning. He jammed his left hand into the box, as well, caught hold of the loose Stone, and clasped both hands together as a second set of bands immobilized his left hand. Creepers moved toward him from everywhere, metal legs scraping wildly against the smooth floor, cutters snapping at the air.
Ahren didn’t know what to do. He didn’t know how to summon the power that would save him. He couldn’t even make himself speak as he fought to bring the magic to life.
Please! he begged voicelessly as his hands tightened about the Elfstones. Please, help me!
A needle at the end of a flexible arm flashed past his face. He felt its sting in his left arm, and a slow numbing began to spread outward with languorous inevitability. Metal digits closed about him from every quarter, holding him fast, making him a prisoner. It was happening all over again, he thought frantically, just as it had to Kael Elessedil.
Help me!
As if heeding his silent plea, the Elfstones flared to life within the darkened recesses of their confinement, their blue light so blinding that he closed his eyes against its glare. He felt, rather than saw, what happened next. The restraints on his wrists shattered, and the box was blown apart. The creepers lasted only seconds longer, then the magic caught them up and swept them away, hurtling them against the walls of the chamber and reducing them to scrap. His eyes were opening again when the padded chair exploded. The banks of machinery were shattered, as well, one after the other, engulfed in a sweep of blue light that circled the room and turned everything to useless shards and twisted wire.
Arms outstretched, hands clasped together, fingers tight about the Elfstones, Ahren lurched to his feet. The needle was gone from his arm, but the numbing hadn’t lessened, and it took all his concentration to keep that arm from going limp. He fed it with the power of the Stones, with the peculiarly pleasurable pain they engendered, a burning rush that seared his flesh and left him dizzy. He staggered across the room, the Elfstones’ power incinerating everything, burning it all to molten slag. The dark glass windows blew out, leaving the twisted interior of the room exposed. He saw the massive cylinders that housed the power source become ringed in blinking lights and fire threads that crisscrossed everywhere. He saw the creepers that had taken up watch outside wheel back again to deal with him.
Shades!
He had time for a single desperate exhortation before the juggernauts barreled through the doorway, all sharp edges and brute power. He sent the magic of the Elfstones hammering into the nearest and threw it backwards into the others. He struck it again, then again, advancing on it now, light-headed and humming with the magic’s power. He was transformed by its feel, made new and whole, as if he had never been powerless, as if he had never had to flee from anything. He pursued the creepers with single-minded intent and smashed them one by one, disdaining their cutters and their blades, unafraid of what they could do to him because it seemed now that they could do nothing.