Terry Brooks - Antrax

A rescue that perhaps only she could manage.

She watched Hunter Predd approach, saw the questioning look in his dark eyes, and shook her head.

She wished she had a better answer to give him. She knew she had better find one soon.

Quentin Leah was listening so intently that he started in surprise when Tamis touched his arm in warning.

“He’s coming,” she whispered. Consumed by the fact that Ard Patrinell’s mind was still alive inside, she was still calling the wronk he rather than it —as if the human part mattered more. The rest of it might be mechanical—armor, wires, and machine parts, cold and emotionless metal—but not its mind, trapped as it was, whole and intact, thinking Ard Patrinell thoughts, using Ard Patrinell skills, hunting them with a determination that was relentless and implacable.

Heeding her warning, Quentin listened for its coming. Try as he might, he still could not hear it.

In the twilight he glanced over at her. Her roundish, pixie face was sweaty and her short brown hair tangled with bits of debris. Her clothing was torn and bloody and as dirty as the rest of her. She had the look of a hunted thing, a creature run to earth by something as inescapable as the coming of night.

A mirror of himself, he allowed. He did not need to see what he looked like to know it was so. They were a matched set, fugitives from a fate that neither could escape, that both were forced to confront.

They had been running from it all day, running since the coming of dawn had persuaded them they must find a way to kill it. All through the forests surrounding Castledown’s ruins they had played cat and mouse with the inevitable, marking time as they searched for a way to put an end to the creature. It was a chase marked by fits and starts, by schemes and subterfuges, by equal parts skill and blind luck. The wronk was a terrifying adversary, made more dangerous by the fact that Ard Patrinell’s thinking guided it. Sometimes it would come after them in direct pursuit, a hunter using strength and stamina to run them down. Sometimes it would circle around to lie in wait, a predator set to pounce. Sometimes it would stop altogether and wait for them to pause in turn, to wonder if they had lost it entirely, and then it would approach from an unexpected direction, swift and sudden, trying to catch them off guard. Many times it almost had them, but they were saved in each instance by their combined experience and skill and by the kind of luck that defies explanation.

Of the latter, Quentin reflected, there had been more than the former, which was why they were still alive.

The search for a wronk pit had taken longer than they expected. They had thought the Rindge would have set many such traps to protect themselves from the creatures of Antrax. Quentin and Tamis had set out that morning to find the nearest one, backtracking toward the village of Obat and his people to find the pits that had to be located along the approaches from Castledown. But the wronk caught up to them so quickly that they had to hurry their search and consequently failed to find what they were looking for. The wronk was unmistakable when it was close and moving, too big and heavy to conceal its coming. But even when they could not hear it, they were forced to listen and watch for it because it was subtle and clever, like Patrinell, and constantly looking for a way to catch them off guard.

For Quentin Leah, life had been reduced to the simplest of terms—survival of the fittest. He was engaged in the kind of life-and-death struggle that he had imagined happening to others, but never to himself. All of his thinking about a grand adventure and new experiences, everything that had spurred his decision to join the quest, had faded into a barely remembered past. The enthusiasm he had imparted to Bek, the limitless possibilities he had envisioned for what they would find, and the confidence that had buoyed him through so many harrowing confrontations along the way had turned to dust. He had all but forgotten Walker and the search for the books of magic. He had pushed aside any thought of rescuing the others, Bek included. All that was left was a fatalistic and dogged determination to stay alive for another day, to escape the thing that hunted him, and ultimately to regain enough space to allow something back into his life of who and what he had been.

He had no idea what Tamis was thinking, although he could guess readily enough. She was burdened by similar needs, but as well by her memories of and feelings for the man with whom she had been in love. She might pretend otherwise, might tell herself something else, but it was clear to him that she could not separate herself from her emotions, could not be truly objective about what they were seeking to accomplish. For Tamis, the struggle to destroy the wronk was more than trying to stay alive. It was giving Ard Patrinell the release he could find no other way, the peace that only death would bring. Her hatred of what had been done to him was so invasive that it simmered on her features at every turn. The battle was personal for her in a way it could never be for Quentin, and she was driven almost beyond reason.

But not beyond the limit of her skills, Quentin quickly saw, which were considerable. Trained as a Tracker by Patrinell himself, she was all business and judgment, able to play well a game in which no mistakes were allowed. She knew what to expect from the mind that hunted them, was familiar with its thinking, its nuanced reasoning. She could anticipate what it would try and blunt the effect. The wronk was physically stronger, and if they got within its reach, there was little question of the outcome. But Tamis was whole where the wronk was fragmented, cobbled together of parts that did not naturally fit. That gave her an advantage she could exploit, and she was quick to try to do so.

It was odd to think of what they were attempting, fleeing on the one hand and looking to make a stand on the other. It was schizophrenic and disjointed, grounded in opposing principles and mind-wrenching in its demands. Flee the danger, but find a way to face it. Quentin had no time for a balanced consideration of the contradiction. He was consumed by the knowledge that the thing pursuing them did so to destroy him, yet to leave a part of him alive, as well. It would turn him into itself, a perfect copy, able to wield the magic of the Sword of Leah yet unable to act save as Antrax chose to order. The idea of becoming the machine that Ard Patrinell had become was so terrifying, so mind-numbing, that he could not do more than glance at the prospect of it the way he would the sun, shunning the pain of any prolonged study. But even that gave him a bitter, clear understanding of why Tamis was so determined to save Ard Patrinell.

That day’s flight was through the disjointed landscape of a surreal netherworld. The sounds of the pursuing wronk were all around and constant, letting up only now and then, when the hunter chose a less obvious tack. The day was cloudy and sunny by turns, casting shadows that moved past them like shades and suggested things that weren’t there, yet might be coming. They were worn already on setting out, and their weariness quickly deepened. They passed places in which brush and trees were trampled and broken by fighting and frantic flight. They came upon dead men killed the day before. Most were Rindge, the reddish skin giving them identity when only pieces remained. One was an Elf, although there wasn’t enough of him to determine which one. Blood soaked the ground and smeared the trees in splotches dried black by the sun. Weapons and clothing lay scattered everywhere. Silence cloaked the carnage and desolation.

As they had neared the Rindge village, the number of dead increased. They were too many to be only those from the hunting party. When they reached the village itself, they found its huts and shelters smashed and burned and its people gone. Some few lay dead, those who had bought with their lives a chance for the others to escape. That a single being could wreak such havoc, alone and unaided, against so many, was horrifying. That the mind of Ard Patrinell was an integral part of that being and would know what it was doing yet be unable to stop was heartbreaking. Tamis did not cry as they passed through the village, but Quentin saw tears in her eyes.