To Bek’s right, more creepers had emerged from the gloom and were descending on Ard Patrinell’s group.
Tamis reached Ryer Ord Star in a flying leap that sent both of them sprawling out of the sweeping path of a fire thread. Dragging the seer to her feet, the tracker led her back through the maze, running crouched along walls and across open spaces as the threads burned all around them.
They aren’t going to make it, Bek thought. It’s too far! The fire is everywhere!
He looked for Walker, but the Druid had disappeared. The boy hadn’t seen what had happened to him, where he had gone, even if he had managed to reach the obelisk. The center of the maze was choked with mist and smoke-shrouded forms and sudden bursts of the red fire. To his left, Quentin was under attack, the blue fire of the Sword of Leah flashing bravely, the sound of his battle cry lifting out of the haze. To his right, the creepers were spreading out through the maze in search of Ard Patrinell, Ahren Elessedil, and the remainder of the Elven Hunters.
A trap, a trap, it was all a trap! The boy’s throat burned with anger and frustration, his mind awash with thoughts of missed chances and bad decisions.
Tamis burst through the smoke and out of the spiderweb of killing red fire, dragging Ryer Ord Star in her wake. “Go, go, go!” she screamed at the waiting Bek and his companion, and in a knot they charged back through the ruins.
Quentin! Bek cried out in the silence of his mind, glancing helplessly over his shoulder.
They had gone less than a hundred feet when a pair of creepers intercepted them. The metal beasts appeared to have been waiting for anyone who made it this far, emerging from behind one of the low buildings, metal limbs scraping and clanking as they blocked the way forward. Tamis and her companion leapt instantly to the defense of the boy and the seer. The creepers attacked at once, moving so fast that they were on top of the Elven Hunters before they could defend themselves. Tamis dodged her attacker, but the other Elven Hunter was less fortunate. The creeper bowled him over, pinned him to the ground, reached down with one pincer while the Elf thrashed helplessly, and tore off his head.
Bek watched it happen as if it were a dream, each movement of Elf and creeper clearly visible and endlessly long, as if both were weighted and chained by time. He crouched with Ryer Ord Star held protectively in his arms, his mind telling him to do something, anything, to help because help was needed and there was no one else. Frozen in place by his horror and indecision, he watched glimmerings of light flash off the edges of the pincers as they descended, the frantic movements of the Elf’s arms and legs as he struggled to break free, and the gouts of blood spurt from the severed neck.
Something inside him snapped in that instant, and forgetting everything but the now-overpowering impulse to respond to what he had witnessed, he screamed. A dam broke, and rage, despair, and frustration that he could no longer contain flooded through him, releasing his magic in a torrent, giving it life and power, lending it the strength of iron, honing it to the sharpness of knives. It tore from him in a rush and it ripped through the creepers as if they were made of paper, shredding them instantly and reducing them to scrap.
He was on his feet now, wheeling in a miasma of invincibility, everything forgotten but the euphoria he felt as the power of his magic swept through him. Another of the creepers appeared ahead, and he savaged it with the same ruthless determination—his voice seizing it, lifting it, and tearing it apart. He sent the pieces whirling into space. He scattered them to the wind like leaves and cried out in triumph.
Then something clutched at his leg, drawing him back from the brink of wildness into which he had allowed himself to wander. His voice went silent, its echoes singing in his ears, its images flashing through his mind like living things. Ryer Ord Star was grasping at him with her fingers crooked like claws, her bloodshot eyes gazing up at him in horror and disbelief.
“No, Bek, no!” she was crying out over and over, as if she had been doing so for a long time, as if she had been seeking to reach him through stone walls and he had not heard.
He stared down at her stricken face without comprehension, wondering at the pain and despair he found there. He had saved them, hadn’t he? He had found another use for his magic, one that he had not even suspected. He had tapped into power that transcended even that of the Sword of Leah—perhaps even that of Walker himself. What was so wrong with what he had done? What, that made her so distraught?
Tamis was at his side, reaching down for the seer and pulling her back to her feet, her young face grim and blood-streaked. “Run, don’t look back!” she commanded at Bek, shoving Ryer Ord Star into his arms.
But he did look. He couldn’t help himself. What he saw was nightmarish. The maze was alive with creepers and threads of red fire. Ryer Ord Star’s vision had engulfed them all. His eyes stung with tears. Nothing human could live in there. Screams rose out of the gloom, and explosions rent the air with wicked flashes of light. What had become of Ard Patrinell and Ahren and Panax? What about Quentin? He remembered their promise, brothers in arms, each to look out for the other. Shades, what had become of that?
“Run, I said!” Kreshen screamed in his ear.
He did so then, charging through the gloom with Ryer Ord Star hanging off one arm as she struggled to keep up. She was keening again, a high soft wail of despair, and it was all he could do to keep from trying to silence her. Once, he glanced over, thinking to stop her. She ran with her eyes closed, her head thrown back, and a look of such anguish on her face that he let her be.
Shards of bright magic flickered in his eyes, hauntings of the legacy he had uncovered and embraced, whispers of a power released. Too big a legacy, perhaps. Too much power. A yearning for more speared through him, an unmistakable need to experience anew the feelings it had released. He gasped at the intensity of it, breathing quickly and rapidly, his face flushed, his body singing.
More, he kept thinking as he fled, was necessary. Much more, before he would be satisfied.
Moments later, the chaos of the maze behind them, the screams and flashes of fire fading, they disappeared into the gloom and the mist.
They ran for a long time, all the way back through the ruins and into the forest beyond before Tamis brought them to a halt in a shadowed stand of hardwoods. With the damp and the mist all about, they crouched in the silence of the trees as the sound of their heartbeats hammered in their ears. Bek bent over, gasping for air, his hands on his knees. Beside him, Ryer Ord Star still keened softly, staring off into space as if seeing far beyond where they huddled.
“So cold and dark, metal bands on my body, emptiness all around,” she murmured, lost in some inner struggle, not aware of anything or anyone about her. “Something is here, watching me …”
“Ryer Ord Star,” he whispered roughly, bending close to her.
“There, where the darkness gathers deepest, just beyond …”
“Can you hear me?” he snapped.
She jerked as if she had been struck, and her hands reached out, grasping at the air. “Walker! Wait for me!”
Then she went perfectly still. A strange calm descended on her, a blanket of serenity. She sank back on her heels, kneeling in the gloom, hands folded into her robes, body straight. Her eyes stared off into space.
“What’s wrong with her?” Tamis asked, bending down beside Bek.
He shook his head. “I don’t know.”
He passed his hand in front of her eyes. She neither blinked nor evidenced any recognition of him. He whispered her name, touched her face, and then shook her roughly. She made no response.