Terry Brooks - Antrax

Still, he would listen to the voice and go on, because the voice was all he had to rely on.

He climbed the stairs to the overlook they had come upon earlier, then moved back into the maze of corridors beyond. He took the path his instincts told him to take, keeping close watch over the shadows pressing close about him. The flameless lamps threw down their light in dim pools, but the stretches between were like quicksand. He repeatedly encountered creepers on their way to other places, and each time he stopped where he was and waited for them to attack. But the creepers still did not see or sense him, and they did not slow. He heard the skitterings of their approaches and departures, scrapings of metal that raised the hair on the back of his neck. He wished again he was braver and stronger. He wished he had Ard Patrinell to assure him that he would be all right. He kept thinking how comforting that would be. But Patrinell had taught him everything he would ever teach him and told him everything he would ever tell him. Patrinell was gone. Ahren’s comfort, if he was to find any, would have to come from somewhere else.

As he walked deeper into the catacombs, the sound of the machinery grew louder, a steadily building whine. Without knowing anything else, he could tell that he was moving toward the power source that was the heart of Castledown. It was there that Antrax fed off the energy stored for its use by the safehold’s machines. Ahren felt himself shrink as the sound increased in volume, its dull roar filling up the corridors like a river at flood. He saw himself as tiny and insignificant, impermanent flesh and blood trapped inside changeless, unyielding steel walls. He thought again about his hopes in coming on the journey—to prove himself to be more than the callow boy his brother believed him, to accomplish something that would warrant respect and even honor, to become the man his father had wanted him to be. Foolish, impossible hopes in light of his cowardice in the ruins, yet he clung to them still. Some part of what he had dreamed of accomplishing could still be realized if he could keep himself steady.

He passed out of the corridor into a vast, cavernous room in which two giant cylinders stood side by side amid a cluster of smaller pieces of equipment. The cylinders were fifty feet across and a hundred feet high. Metal pipes and connectors ran from their casings to the equipment and surrounding walls. The sound of the machinery was deafening, a pounding throb that buried everything else in the wake of its passing. It was Castledown’s power source, and Ahren wanted nothing so badly as to get away from it.

Then he looked to his right and saw a pair of chambers similar to the one that had been used to contain Walker, except that they were much larger. The dark glass fronting them was recessed into the chamber walls, and the bulbous doors were rimmed with sleek metal bindings. He stared at them, and he knew without having even to question it that one of them contained the missing Elfstones. He could feel it the same way he had felt the need to go there. The phoenix stone’s magic was still at work inside him, giving him his direction, telling him what to do.

Yet for a long time, he didn’t move. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t know how to do it, and didn’t really want to try. His fear returned in an enveloping wave. To go on was too much to ask of anyone; it was too overwhelming to consider. He stared at the doorways, the magic of the phoenix stone prodding at him, and fought to keep himself from bolting. He had never been so scared. His fear wasn’t of what he thought might be waiting; it was of what he couldn’t imagine. His fear was of the unseen, of the unknown danger that would cause him to flee once more. He did not think he could bear to have that happen again, and he did not know how to prevent it. He could sense the possibility of something lurking behind the dark glass, a predator, anxious for him to step inside and be seized. Anticipation alone was enough to freeze him in place, to render him hopelessly immobile. He thought in his unspeakable terror that he would never move again.

It was his sense of shame that saved him, reborn in the unavoidable memories of his flight from the ruins days earlier, recalled again and again in the long hours afterwards while he huddled in the debris and thought about what it would be like to return home after what he had done. His chance to redeem himself from that misery, his only chance, lay in recovery of the Elfstones. In the hauntingly inexorable nightmare of his failure to save his friends, in the cold realization of how frail a creature he was, he had come to understand that it was worse to live with fear than to die confronting it.

He remembered that, and broke free of his terror. He started forward without stopping to consider what he was doing, knowing only that he must go then or he would never go at all.

In the next instant, alarms went off everywhere, shrill metallic sounds that cut through even the suffocating roar of the machines.

Ahead, one of the doors opened and a giant creeper scuttled out, all crooked legs and sharp pincers, a war machine looking for a fight. It did not see him, but moved to take up a position between the chamber doorway and the corridor through which Ahren had come. Another creeper followed, and then another, stationing themselves in a defensive ring. The entry sealed itself tightly behind them.

Ahren kept moving ahead, making for that closed door, striding into the midst of the creepers. He held the long knife before him protectively, knowing it was all but useless should they discover him. But, just barely visible, the failing magic of the phoenix stone still clung to him in thinning wisps. Ahren imagined the alarms sucking it away, smoke caught in a breeze. He moved between the creepers for the door, bolder than he had believed he could ever be, feeling buoyant and paralyzed at the same time. He felt himself watching his own progress from somewhere outside his body, removed from the act. His thoughts were reduced to a single sequence—get to the Elfstones, take them in hand, summon their power.

He reached the door with the shriek of the alarms ringing in his ears and was surprised when it gave to his touch. The creepers behind him didn’t seem to notice. He stepped into the room, a darkened chamber paneled with banks of blinking lights, tangled wires, and flexible metal cords that cast shadows over everything in inky pools. It was so black in the room that Ahren couldn’t distinguish any of the pieces of apparatus that were scattered everywhere, couldn’t make out the comings and goings of the cords, couldn’t even tell what the room was supposed to be. He groped forward, being careful to touch nothing, picking his way toward the center of the room as his eyes tried to adjust to the abrupt, momentary flashes of illumination.

When they did, he saw the first signs of movement, faint stirrings to one side. He froze instantly, and as he did so he caught sight of something moving to his other side. At first he thought it was nothing more than the shadows that flickered in the dim light, but then with heart-stopping certainty he recognized them. They were creepers. He couldn’t hear their skittering over the blare of the alarms, but even in the absence of that he knew them for what they were. They were all around him, all through the chamber. He had stumbled into their midst before realizing what he was doing.

He held himself as still as he could manage, barely daring to breathe, while he considered his next move. He could not tell how much of the phoenix stone’s magic remained to him; it was too dark to measure what traces remained of its distinct haze. Some, certainly, or the creepers would have had him already. He tried to think, to ignore the alarms and the creepers and the chaos around him, to hear anew the voice that had brought him there.