They went down before him like trees caught in a hurricane, ripped out by their roots, toppled and left to die. With a final glance back at the destruction he had visited upon the machines that would have sapped away his life, Ahren Elessedil stalked from the room, consumed by a killing rage.
Antrax became aware of the intruder’s presence only seconds before it felt the ruptures in its metal skin. No pain was involved because it could not feel pain, only a sensation of being opened where it knew it should not. The intruder was the one that had disappeared earlier while in the company of its probe, the one for whom the Stones were intended. Somehow it had found its way to the extraction chamber. Somehow it had gotten hold of the Stones while still aware of who and where it was and had used them against the chamber and its equipment.
Alarms were already triggered all through Antrax’s domain, set off by a power surge generated in the extraction chamber where the earlier intruder had been imprisoned. It had taken Antrax precious minutes to determine the cause of the surge, and by the time it had done so, the earlier intruder was already free of its connectors and gone into the complex. Now there were two of them loose, and either was capable of doing great damage if not stopped.
Antrax spun down its lines of power in milliseconds, gaining the capacitor housing before the latest intruder was in possession of the Stones and free of the extraction chamber. With the alarms shut down again and reset, the immediate danger was to the storage units that housed its lifeblood. Triggering the screen of laser beams that the creators had installed to protect the capacitors against damage, Antrax summoned the strongest of its battle probes to bring this newest intruder to bay. It might not be possible to immobilize it without killing it, but Antrax was prepared to accept that alternative. There would be others that could use the Stones, that could summon their magic, others that could be lured to Castledown. It was more important to protect against damage to the power Antrax had harvested already.
It felt the presence of the intruder moving through the shattered doorway of the extraction chamber to confront the laser beams and the probes that had already responded to its summons. Extraction ports were housed throughout the complex, and Antrax began siphoning off the raw expenditure of the Elf’s power, feeding on it as it left his body. Energy was not to be wasted, whatever its source.
Computer chips processed and analyzed with blinding speed. Antrax was informed and its course of action determined accordingly. The intruders would do battle with its probes in the mistaken belief that they could somehow prevail. They could not. They would simply feed Antrax more of the precious energy it needed, just as they had been meant to do while sedated. Still thinking they had a chance to get free, they would struggle until they were overcome.
Antrax, incapable of emotion, feeling nothing for the humans it hunted, prepared to immobilize and terminate them.
28
The Druid known as Walker, who had once been Walker Boh and was now on the threshold of still another life-altering transition, moved swiftly down the corridors of Castledown toward a confrontation with Antrax. Ryer Ord Star followed closely behind, one slender hand clasped firmly in his. There was such joy on her face at having found him after so long, such exhilaration at having rescued him from the machines that were leeching away his life, that he could not bear to tell her what waited ahead. He preferred to let her have her happiness, her own life recovered and her freedom from the Ilse Witch secured. She had fought hard for him, and she was entitled to bask in the glow of her accomplishment.
It was odd that she should have the sight, could see so clearly into the future, and yet be denied so much of its meaning. He had brought her with him to give him insight into what the future held, but he had never imagined that the insight he sought would come to him in such a roundabout way. It was not her simple visions that had informed him. It was not her dreams. Instead, it was the way in which he had become linked to her when she had saved him after Shatterstone that had revealed so much. That was when he had learned the truth about her. That was when he had seen what she could be and decided to trust his instincts.
Now, deep within the catacombs in that distant land, she had revealed the future yet again. Linked to her by her empathic rescue of him in the extraction chamber, he had caught another glimpse of what might come to be. Though the future was written on water, sometimes it was possible to divine its meaning based on a choice of actions. Go one way, and the future would take that twist. Go another, and there would be a different result altogether. So it was that, while coming out of his drug-induced stupor and back into the real world, he had been shown a brief but stunningly clear vision of what he must do. Triggered by her empathic touch and her talent as a seer, the purpose of his coming to that place and time, once so clear to him, once indisputable, was revealed to be something else entirely.
He marveled at how mistaken human beings were in assuming they could foresee their own fates. Even seers, who possessed the gift of Ryer Ord Star. It was easy to assume that one event must necessarily follow in the wake of another, that a thing was just what it seemed. But he knew better. A Druid knew better than anyone that life was a myriad of twists and turns that no one could unravel, a path that must be traveled to be understood. So it was there, in Castledown, for him, though he had forgotten the rules for a time. So it would be later for the survivors, when they made the journey home again.
He wondered then at the fates of the others of the company of the Jerle Shannara. Ahren Elessedil had been alive when Ryer Ord Star found Walker, but had since disappeared, and not even the seer knew what had become of him. The magic of the phoenix stone had sheltered them both for a time, but now it had faded. The Rovers had been alive when he departed the Jerle Shannara for Castledown. According to the seer, Bek and an Elven Tracker were still alive a week ago. Of the rest, he knew nothing. It was difficult to believe they were all gone, but it was a possibility he could not rule out.
Castledown’s alarms continued to ring, shrill and insistent, echoing down the maze of passageways. Creepers skittered by, moving in all directions, oblivious to Walker and Ryer Ord Star. He had taken the precaution of cloaking both the seer and himself in the Druid magic, convinced that it would work in the real world, though it had seemed to fail miserably in his dreams. The creepers were preoccupied with other matters in any event, compelled by primary directives to engage in repairs and restore order. They would not be searching for him quite yet, though soon enough. He would have to move quickly.
His exploration of Castledown through Antrax’s internal systems had given him the map he needed to know where he must go. The only way to put an end to Antrax was to shut down its power source. By doing so, he could drain away its intelligence and leave it incapable of action.
It sounded simple. It would not be.
The sound of the machines grew louder and more insistent. The power source, their destination, lay ahead. Walker tightened his resolve and gathered his strength for the confrontation that waited. Antrax would attempt to trap and immobilize him again. It would do so in the same way as before because it was a machine and a machine would use its primary approach to handling a situation until that approach failed. Antrax would rely again on its creepers and drugs. Walker, forewarned, had already decided on a different course of action for himself.
When the alarms unexpectedly ceased, the ensuing silence was shocking. Given the extent of the damage he had visited on Castledown’s internal systems, Antrax had repaired itself more quickly than Walker had anticipated. He thought momentarily about striking at it again, then decided against it. Antrax would be expecting such an attempt and would be prepared for it. Better to continue on. The power source lay just ahead, and once he was there, all the alarms in the world wouldn’t matter.