Terry Brooks - Antrax

His understanding brought no comfort. Kael Elessedil must have spent his days the same way, using the Elfstones over and over, thinking himself free, unable ever to manage to do more than to keep running. He would have lived thirty years like that, until he had grown too old or weak or sick to be of any further use. Then Antrax would have sent him home again, using him one final time, to lure a replacement.

Except that Antrax had gotten lucky. It had succeeded in luring not one, but several, luring to his deadly trap not only the Druid, but Ahren Elessedil, Quentin Leah, and perhaps even Bek Ohmsford, all of whom had command of significant magic. Antrax would have known about them, of course. It would have known from what it had recorded of their efforts to recover the keys on the islands of Flay Creech, Shatterstone, and Mephitic. A machine that built machines, a creation of the technology of the Old World, it had known to test the capabilities of those it sought to snare. That was the reason for luring humans to its lair. That was the purpose for the underground prison. To steal their magic and convert it to the power that fed Antrax. To keep Antrax alive.

Yet perhaps that was only one reason and not the one that mattered most to it. Perhaps it was still searching for those who had created it, waiting for them to come back to claim the treasure they had left it to guard. The books of the Old World. The secrets of another time.

How did he know that? Unconscious and dreaming, how could he know? He knew it in part from what he had deciphered from the map, written in a language the Druid Histories still recorded. He knew it in part from what Ryer Ord Star had communicated to him in bringing him back from his slumber, her words and thoughts revealing his situation. He knew it in part from what he could deduce from the use of the machinery that immobilized and drugged him. He knew it finally from what he was able to intuit. It was enough to keep him from slipping back into his prison, to keep him fixed on what he must do if he was to complete his task in going there—the task that had cost the lives of so many of his companions and might yet, if he was not swift and sure and focused enough, cost him his.

He gathered himself within his body, using his magic to summon his shade and set it free, the way Cogline had done years ago in entering lost Paranor. It was what Allanon had done in his time. There was danger in it. If his body should die, his shade was lost. If he strayed too far or allowed himself to be trapped outside his body, he might never get back again. Yet it was a gamble he must take. He could not free his body from the wires and tubes that linked it to Antrax without triggering alarms that would bring the creepers. There was no reason to free himself if he did not know what to do to stay free. As a shade, he could explore Castledown without Antrax being any the wiser. Ryer Ord Star would keep his body strong and alive and functioning, would keep the machines deceived as to what was happening. She would feed him enough of her empathic healing power to prevent him from slipping back into the deadening dreams. So long as she could do so, nothing would seem any different. So long as the magic of the phoenix stone cloaked the seer, even the eyes of Antrax could not detect her presence. Walker’s magic would continue to feed out in small increments, reduced by the absence of real thought, responding out of reflex only. Antrax would not be concerned at the decline in his magic’s output right away. Not even for several hours, should it take that long. Time was relative in Castledown. Antrax had lived for more than twenty-five hundred years. A few hours were nothing.

Walker did not consider further what he must do. He went out from his body as a shade, tracking the wires that fed into it back to their source. Penetrating metal, glass, and stone as if they were air, he sped through the walls of the keep, a silent and invisible presence. He stayed alert for Antrax all the while, wanting to keep it from that room where his body lay, from examining him too closely, from finding out the truth. He surged down conduits and through clusters of wires and metal pieces that conducted electricity and thought, power garnered from magic and converted to use. He seethed at the knowledge of what had been done to the men and women who had been lured there, but stayed focused on what was needed to stop it from happening again.

He found the relays for the security system quickly enough. Eyes of glass watched from ceilings all through the safehold, mechanical orbs that let Antrax view everything. But of what use were they? Antrax was a machine; it did not need eyes. The eyes, Walker realized with a start, were for the humans who had once controlled Antrax. They served no other purpose now. Antrax would use a more sophisticated system—one of touch and feel and sound and perhaps body heat. Only magic would thwart it, and perhaps not all magic at that.

Where did Antrax dwell within this vast complex?

Where did all the information feed?

He tracked it for a time, down lines and through chambers, along corridors and around corners. But one set of relays led to another. One bank of machines was tied to a second. Lines of power opened into new lines, and there was no end of them. Nothing to tell him where to find the start and finish of things.

He tried quieting himself and tracking Antrax by feel. It was not difficult to do. But once again, there seemed to be no start or finish. Antrax was vast and sprawling. It was everywhere at once, all about and seeping through, endless and immutable. Antrax was the safehold of Castledown; spread in equal parts throughout, there was no part of the keep that it did not inhabit. It warded everything at once.

Walker did not waver from his goal. He had come too far to give up. There was too much at stake and no one else who could do what was needed. Not even …

He hesitated. The words were bitter with realities he did not want to face.

Yet what choice did he have?

He finished the sentence in a rush. Not even her.

He must change his thinking, he acknowledged in what, for some, might have been considered an admission of defeat. But Druids dealt with neither victory nor defeat, but with reality and truth. What was fated could not be denigrated or altered by imposition of moral judgment. It was not his mandate. Druids served a higher cause, the preservation and advancement of Mankind and the Races. The Great Wars had reduced civilization to ruins and humans to animals. That must not happen again. The Druid Council had been formed in the time of Galaphile to see that it could not, and every Druid since had worked in furtherance of that end.

But what could he accomplish in the time that remained to him? There, in that nightmarish place, with only a few to stand beside him, with so much at stake? What, that would give life to the bargain he had struck with Allardon Elessedil all those months ago?

Time was slipping away, time he could not afford to waste. He was taking the wrong approach to the business, he decided. His search for answers was leading him in the wrong direction. It was not Antrax that had brought him to Castledown in the first place. Antrax was a secondary concern. It was the treasure Antrax warded that mattered, that could change everything.

He must look for the books of magic.

Pervasive in presence and reach, Antrax sprawled in contented solitude across the vast complex of its underground kingdom, monitoring its sensors and readouts, fulfilling functions its creators had programmed. With the blind certainty of artificial intelligence, it relied on the reassurance of constant input and an unchanging environment. For not quite three thousand years, it had maintained its world through its preassigned functions and unswerving vigilance. Any possibility of disruption brought a swift response.