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.