Antrax (26 page)

When you are most lost, it will help you find your way. With your heart as well as your eyes. Back from dark places into which you have strayed and through dark places into which you must go.

He closed his eyes. He could not be more lost than he already was. He could not find himself in any darker place. He was sick in heart and mind, and he was trapped in every way imaginable. If ever there was a time when he needed the magic of the stone, it had arrived. Would the magic work for him? He didn’t know, but there was nothing else left to try. He had not thought he would ever use the stone. He had thought he would keep it safe for Bek and return it to him when they met again. But he didn’t think that they would ever see each other again if he did not use the phoenix stone and find a way clear of the labyrinth.

He looked past Ryer Ord Star to the sweeper where it waited in the center of the corridor. If they followed it, things would continue as before. If they broke away from it, Antrax was certain to employ other measures to assure their compliance. There was no reason to wait any longer on what he must do.

He moved the young seer back from him, easing her gently away by placing his hands on her shoulders. “Ryer,” he said softly. Her tear-streaked eyes lifted to meet his. “Listen to me.” He kept his voice at a whisper that would not carry beyond the two of them. “We’re not going any farther. Not with this sweeper. We’re
finished with that. I have something that I think will help us escape, something Bek gave me when we left the ship. It is a magic given him by the King of the Silver River. If it works, perhaps we will find our way to Walker or, if not to Walker, at least back through these tunnels and outside again. Are you willing to try?”

She nodded at once, her lips compressed, her gaze steady. He waited a moment to be certain of her; then shielding his movements from the sweeper, he reached into his tunic and pulled out the phoenix stone. He glanced down at its silvery surface, a glimmer of liquid light in his hand, then slipped it free of its chain.

You can use it only once,
Bek had recalled.
Only once, for casting it to the earth to release its magic will shatter it.
Ahren looked at Ryer Ord Star, feeling for the first time in days that he was doing something right.

“Take my hand,” he said.

She did so, her eyes never leaving his. Then he took a deep breath, pulled her to her feet so that they were both standing, and cast the phoenix stone to the passage floor.

T
he instant the phoenix stone struck the floor and shattered, Ahren Elessedil and Ryer Ord Star were enveloped in a haze the color of old ashes. It swirled around them, a mix of tiny particles and smoky light, as though stirred by an unseen hand like soup in a cauldron. It clung to them in a cloud and never spread much farther than where they stood. Beyond its perimeter, the passageways of Castledown remained unchanged.

For a moment, the Elven Prince and the seer stayed where they were, uncertain, waiting to see what would happen. The little sweeper was staring right at them as if nothing had changed, insides whirring, lights blinking, motionless in the center of the corridor. Then it began to wheel right and left, its movements quickly growing more frantic. It appeared to be searching for them, as if it didn’t realize they were still right in front of it. Ahren pulled Ryer several steps to his left, testing whether or not the sweeper could see them. It did not turn toward them or register their movement in any way. It simply wheeled about aimlessly, trying to decide what to do.

Then an odd thing happened to Ahren. Within the mist of the
phoenix stone, he felt an oddly compelling need to keep moving, to continue on without stopping. It was a sort of tugging in his chest, an unexpressed certainty about what he must do. He had never felt anything like it before. He glanced at Ryer and found her looking back at him. Without speaking, he gestured ahead, indicating what he wished. She nodded quickly. When he touched his chest, she did the same. She felt it, too. It was the magic of the phoenix stone at work. To find a way back after being lost, you must know where it is that you want to go. Unexpectedly, surprisingly, Ahren Elessedil did.

He moved a bit farther down the corridor, away from the hapless sweeper and its efforts to figure out what had happened to them. He held tightly to Ryer, afraid that if he released her, she would lose the protection of the magic. The smoky haze moved with them, an enveloping shroud, wrapping them as they proceeded, never changing its size or shape or perimeter. It was like being in an invisible bubble, shut away from the rest of the world, enclosed in an atmosphere and given over to a life that was denied to everyone but them.

Ahren was just wondering if Antrax knew what was happening to his carefully laid plans when the corridor ahead abruptly filled with creepers.

He stopped where he was, pulling Ryer against him protectively, watching as the metal crawlers slipped from openings in the walls like ghosts, metal limbs clutching knives and pincers and strange-looking cylinders. In a careful sweep, they came up the passageway, fanning out to both sides. Ahren’s throat tightened. There was no way past them. They were too many to avoid.

When he glanced hurriedly in the opposite direction, he found the other end of the corridor blocked, as well.

For a moment, he panicked; there was nowhere to run, no way to get clear. The jaws of the trap were closing, and he and Ryer were caught right in the middle. He stood his ground because
there was nothing else to do, still holding to the seer with one hand while he drew free his long knife, his only weapon, with the other.
I won’t run this time,
he told himself. He would stand and fight, even if the struggle was hopeless. Maybe Ryer could break past in the ensuing struggle. Maybe at least one of them could …

He never finished the thought. As the closest of the creepers reached them, the enshrouding mist went completely opaque, and its quiet swirling turned into a whirlwind. He ducked his head against the sudden movement, feeling Ryer press close. He blinked in an effort to see what was happening, but everything beyond their concealment had disappeared. Beyond the rush of the enshrouding haze, there was only blackness.

Then the mist cleared enough to see beyond its perimeter again. They were past the creepers and in the clear once more.

Ahren didn’t question the magic of the phoenix stone any further; he simply accepted it for the gift it was. He believed it would protect them from everything so long as it lasted. Moving quickly, almost at a trot, he pulled Ryer after him down the passageway, leaving the creepers behind. Antrax would have to find another way to trap them.

During the course of their flight, it tried to do exactly that.

First it sent more creepers, squads of them, as if there were an inexhaustible supply to call upon. They flooded the corridors ahead and behind, some advancing in search, some standing watch at every turn. They began to use the odd-looking cylinders now, weapons that emitted bursts of the deadly fire threads, cast here and there at random, seeking them out. Time and again, the creepers closed on Ahren and Ryer, and it seemed there could be no escape. But each time, the smoke darkened and swirled, and when it cleared enough to see again, they were safely past their hunters.

When it became obvious that the creepers and their handheld weapons weren’t getting the job done, fire threads appeared out of
the walls, crisscrossing the corridors, oscillating like deadly spider-webbing caught in a wind. But the magic of the phoenix stone was able to bypass the threads as easily as it had the creepers, cloaking and protecting the Elven Prince and the girl.

Then metal doors began to close, sealing off passageways a few at a time. It was a random effort at best, because it hampered the hunters as well as the hunted. At first it didn’t affect Ahren and Ryer at all because the sealed passageways were ones through which they had come or down which they were not impelled to go. But eventually the closings caught up with them, and a door closed directly in their path. Immediately, Ahren knew to change direction, to go another way. He obeyed the impulse, without understanding why, backtracking up that corridor and turning down a new one.

Once, they were forced to wait in front of sealed door until it opened. Ahren had no idea how long that took. All sense of time slipped away from him within the mist, as if it no longer had meaning or relevance in his life. The magic of the phoenix stone had recreated his world, and while he was in its thrall, nothing of the temporal world would much affect him.

Eventually the creepers, fire threads, and closing doors ceased to be more than a sporadic occurrence. Finally, they disappeared completely. They were all alone in a passageway far from where they had started, and Ahren paused to look out through the swirling mist of their enclosure. He felt drained, empty. He felt worn.

“It worked,” he said softly.

Her slender hands tightened on his in acknowledgment. “You made it work,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “I took a chance. The magic wasn’t even mine to use. It belonged to Bek. It was given to him.”

“It was given to you by Bek!” Her voice was angry. “Stop belittling yourself, Ahren! Before, when I asked you to come with me
into Castledown to find Walker, you said you didn’t think you could protect me. But you have, haven’t you? It doesn’t matter how you did it—only that you did.”

She paused to study him. “It took courage to do what you did back there. To use the phoenix stone without knowing what it would do, then to lead us through the creepers and fire threads. It took courage to come with me at all. Why are you so quick to dismiss that?”

He shook his head. “I’m not brave. I’m anything but. I just did the only thing I could think to do to help us escape.” She was staring at him as if he were transparent. He felt exposed and vulnerable. He didn’t like the idea of her thinking of him as something he knew he wasn’t.

She pulled him against one of the walls and leaned into him, still holding tightly to his hands. “Tell me what’s bothering you,” she said quietly. She fixed him with her violet eyes. “It’s all right.”

Strangely enough, he felt it was. Not only right, but necessary. He wanted to tell her what he was hiding about himself, to confide in her the truth of his cowardice, to open himself and let out the terrible hurt he was carrying, to rid himself of its burden. There, deep underground, shut away with her by the magic of the phoenix stone, he felt he could.

He forced himself to meet her intense gaze as he spoke. “When we went into the ruins and were attacked, I panicked,” he said. “While the others stood and fought, I ran. I threw down my sword, and I ran.” He swallowed against the bitterness of his words. “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself. All I could think about was saving my life, finding a way to stay alive. Joad Rish was bending down to help one of the Elven Hunters, one of Ard Patrinell’s men, and I saw him cut apart by fire threads, his head—”

He choked on the words and had to stop. Ryer’s free hand touched his cheek. “Don’t you think they all felt as you did,
Ahren?” she asked him. “Don’t you think they all did whatever they could to stay alive? The Elven Hunters fought back because that’s what they knew to do, not because of a code of conduct or a special kind of courage. Joad Rish tried to heal an injured man because that was what he could do. You ran, Ahren, because staying with the others would have gotten you killed and you didn’t want that. You did what you could.”

“Except that your vision showed that Antrax let me live, that I was kept alive on purpose!” he said bitterly.

Her smile was warm and gently remonstrative. “You didn’t know that then, did you? What we do in any situation is based on what we know. I ran to Walker’s aid in the maze. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t stop to reason it out, I didn’t consider what I was doing. I reacted in the only way I knew to react. That’s all we can do.”

“At least you ran in the right direction.”

“Did I?” she asked softly.

There was such sadness in her voice, such pain, that it stopped him momentarily. He stared at her, confused. She was telling him something important, but he didn’t know what it was.

“Let go of my hands,” she told him.

“But if the magic—”

“I know.” She stopped him with the fingers of one hand pressed against his lips. “But we need to know what happens if we do. There may come a time when it is necessary, when we have to fight. Let’s test it now, while we’re alone and safe.”

He hesitated a moment, then did as she asked, releasing her other hand. Nothing changed. The magic continued to envelop them, cloaking them like forest mist in twilight, the swirling gray unchanged.

Ryer Ord Star put her hands in her lap and rocked back on her heels, facing him. “You told me your secret, Ahren. I will do the same for you. I will tell you mine. If you want to hear it.”

There was a darkness to her words that frightened him, a promise of something unpleasant. “You don’t have to tell me anything unless you want to.”