Antrax (14 page)

He looked at the little sweeper. “How did you find us?”

A fresh image appeared. The sweeper was cleaning down at the edges of the maze, just below their hiding place. It was viewing everything through some sort of lens. Something distracted it, and it moved out of the maze and into the ruins, climbing slowly through the rubble until it was just behind them.

The image faded. “It must have heard us,” the seer whispered, giving Ahren a quick, hopeful look.

He didn’t see how. They had been careful not to make any noise at all. Maybe it had sensed their presence. But why hadn’t the other sweepers sensed them, as well?

“I don’t like it,” he said.

“Ahren!” she pleaded, her voice wrenching and sad.

He gave an exasperated sigh, feeling trapped by her need and expectations. She was so desperate to get to Walker, to do something to help him, that she was abandoning any attempt to exercise caution or good sense. On the other hand, he was so desperate to get away from this place, that he was refusing to give the sweeper’s credibility any consideration at all.

“Why are you trying to help us?” he asked the little machine. “What difference does it make to you what we do?”

The sweeper must have expected the question; an image immediately appeared in the same place as the others. It showed the sweeper performing its tasks in the maze and the tunnels belowground. A second set of images followed, these showing the sweeper being kicked and pummeled and knocked about in almost every conceivable way by something big and dark and fearsome that
was always cloaked in shadow or just out of sight. Time and again, the sweeper was picked up and flung against a wall. Over and over, it was knocked on its side and had to be righted by other sweepers coming to its aid. There seemed to be no reason for the attacks. They appeared random and purposeless, the result of misdirected or pointless anger and frustration. Dented and cracked, the little sweeper would have to be repaired by its fellows before returning to its duties.

The images disappeared. The sweeper went still once more. Ahren tried to reconcile his doubts. An abused sweeper? Kicked around so thoroughly and for so long that it would do anything to put a stop to it? That meant, of course, that the sweeper was capable of feeling emotion and reacting to treatment that troubled it. As a rule, machines didn’t feel anything, not even creepers. They were machines, which by definition meant they weren’t human.

But these machines might well be as old as the city and whatever lived in it. It was not impossible to imagine that before the Great Wars destroyed the old civilization, humans had developed machines that could think and feel.

“It’s asking for our help,” Ryer Ord Star pointed out, breaking the silence. She brushed back her long silver hair in frustration. “In return, it will help us find Walker. Don’t you understand?”

Not entirely, Ahren thought. “What sort of help does it expect us to give it?”

An image flashed from the open hatchway in the sweeper’s metal head. Walker, Ahren, and Ryer Ord Star were walking from the ruins with the sweeper in tow.

“You want us to take you along when we leave?” he asked in disbelief.

The image repeated itself twice more, insistent and unmistakable. Then a new image appeared, the
Jerle Shannara
rising skyward, light sheaths stretched taut, radian draws rippling with power. At
the bow of the airship stood the little sweeper, looking back at the land it was leaving behind.

“This is ridiculous,” Ahren muttered, almost to himself. “It’s a machine!”

“A sentient machine,” Ryer Ord Star corrected him. “Sophisticated and capable of feeling. Ahren, it wants what we all want. It wants to be free.”

The Elven youth sat down slowly on the pile of rubble and put his chin in his hands. “I still don’t feel good about this,” he said, his eyes watching the sweeper. “If we do what it wants and go underground, we’ll be cut off from everything. If this is a trap, we won’t have any chance of escaping. I don’t know. I still think we ought to find the others first.”

She knelt in front of him and put her hands over his, the tips of her fingers brushing his face. “Elven Prince, listen to me. Why would this be a trap? If whatever wards Castledown wanted us, couldn’t it have had us by this time? If this sweeper meant to betray us, wouldn’t we already be surrounded by creepers? What difference does it make to anything if it manages to get us belowground? Why would it go to so much trouble to accomplish so little?”

He had to admit he didn’t know. She was right; it didn’t make much sense. But neither did a lot of other things that had happened on this voyage, and he wasn’t about to discount the way his instincts kept tugging at him in warning. Something was bothering him. Maybe it was just his fear of ending up like Joad Rish and the others. Maybe it was his indelible memory of the carnage and screams and dying. It was all too fresh to allow him to think objectively yet.

“There’s no time to look for anyone else,” she insisted. “There may not be anyone out there to find!”

It was his greatest fear, of course. That there was no one else alive, that they were all that was left.

She was pressing her hands over his, cupping them. He lifted
his chin from their cradle, but she would not release him. “Ahren,” she whispered. “Come with me. Please.”

She was afraid, too. He could feel it in her touch and hear it in her voice. She was no less vulnerable than he. She could see the future, and perhaps she had seen things that she shouldn’t, things that frightened her more than what was past. But she was going because she felt so strongly about Walker that she could not abandon him no matter what. He envied her such strength. It eclipsed his own and left him newly ashamed. She would go whether he went or not. And what would he do then? Go back to the bay, hide from the Mwellrets, and wait for the
Jerle Shannara
to return? Fly home again and live for the rest of his life with what he had done?

He might as well be dead if he did that.

“All right,” he said quietly, taking her hands in his, holding them like tiny birds. He bent to her reassuringly, his voice steady. “We’ll give it a try.”

Q
uentin Leah crouched in the shadowed concealment of a partially collapsed building just below the maze into which the Mwellrets had ventured all too boldly a little earlier and from which they were now fleeing in a somewhat less orderly fashion. Panax and Tamis flanked him, motionless as they peered out through cracks in the walls. The Elven Hunters Kian and Wye knelt a little to the side. The Mwellrets raced past them unheeding and uncaring. Quick glances were cast over their shoulders, to see what might be following, and nowhere else. Some of the rets were bloodied, their cloaks torn and stained, their movements halting and ragged. They had not had a good time of it back there, certainly no better than Quentin and his companions, and they were anxious to be well away.

“How many do you count?” Tamis whispered to him.

He shook his head. “Maybe fifteen.”

“That means five or six didn’t make it out.” She said it matter-of-factly, eyes straight ahead, watching the Mwellrets slide through the ruins. “It doesn’t look like they managed to catch up to the seer.”

Unless she was dead, of course. Quentin kept that thought to
himself. Tamis wasn’t saying anything about Bek, but that may have been because she still wasn’t sure which way he had gone. She’d picked up Ryer Ord Star’s trail easily enough, even with the herd of Mwellrets tromping all over everything, but there had been no sign of his cousin. Quentin felt frustrated and increasingly desperate. Time was getting away from them, and they weren’t making any progress. He’d had reasonable hopes that they would encounter Bek or Ryer Ord Star by following the rets. Now it looked as if they wouldn’t be encountering anyone.

The last of the Mwellrets trailed past, hurrying away through the bright midday light, disappearing back the way they had come. Tamis didn’t move, so neither did Quentin or the others. They stayed where they were, frozen in place, watching and listening. After what seemed a very long time, Tamis turned to face them, her small, blocky form squared away and her gray eyes calm.

“I’m going to slip out for a quick look, try to find out what’s happened. Wait here for me.”

She was starting away when Quentin said, “I’m coming with you.”

She turned back at once. “No offense, Highlander, but I’ll do better alone. Leave this to me.”

She slipped out through a gap in the wall and was gone. They looked for her in the ruins, but she had disappeared. Quentin glanced at Panax, then at the Elves, his disgruntlement plainly visible.

Kian shrugged. “Don’t take it personally, Highlander. She’s like that with everyone. No exceptions.”

Quentin was thinking she had taken over leadership of their little group, a position he had occupied until she appeared. He wasn’t the sort who was troubled by ego problems, but he couldn’t help feeling a little irritated by her abrupt manner. He was competent at tracking, after all. He wasn’t a novice who would place her at risk by going along.

Wye stretched his legs. A former member of the Home Guard, he had served in Allardon Elessedil’s household before coming on this voyage. “She wanted to serve in the Home Guard, but Ard Patrinell thought she would be wasted there. He wanted her as a Tracker. She had a gift for it, was better than almost anyone.”

“She resented his interference, though,” Kian added with a yawn, dark face haggard and tired. “It took her a while to forgive him.”

Wye nodded. “Places in the Home Guard are highly coveted; competition is intense. Women have never been fully accepted as equals; men are preferred as the King’s protectors. And the Queen’s. That was true even of Wren Elessedil. History and common practice more than prejudice and favoritism dictate what happens. Women don’t serve in the Home Guard. On the other hand, women have come to dominate the tracking units of the Elven Hunters.”

Wye nodded. “Their instincts are better than ours. No point in denying it. They seem better able to sort things out and make the choices you have to make when you’re tracking. Maybe they’ve learned to better hone their instincts to compensate for lack of physical strength.”

Quentin didn’t know and didn’t care. He admired Tamis for her straightforward approach to things, and he couldn’t find any reason for her not to be accepted as a Home Guard. But he would have preferred her to show a little more confidence in him. Her demeanor didn’t suggest she thought for a minute that she would ever have need of him or anyone else to come to her rescue. Those steady gray eyes and quiet voice were rimmed in iron. Tamis would save herself if there was any saving to be done.

Panax seated himself cross-legged in a corner of the room, a block of wood in one hand, his whittling knife in the other. He worked slowly, carefully in the silence, wood shavings curling and falling to the stone, shaggy head bent to his task.

“Sorry you came on this journey, Highlander?” he asked without looking up.

Leaving the Elven Hunters to keep watch, Quentin sat down next to him. “No.” He considered momentarily. “I wish I hadn’t been so eager to have Bek come along, though. I won’t forgive myself if anything happens to him.”

Panax grunted. “I wouldn’t worry about Bek if I were you. You heard Tamis. I’d guess he’s better off than we are. There’s something about that boy. It’s more than the magic Tamis saw him use. Walker’s marked him for something special. It’s why he sent you both to Truls Rohk—why Truls was persuaded to come with us. He saw it, too. He recognized it. He won’t have forgotten it either. You might want to bear that in mind. The shape-shifter’s out there somewhere, Highlander—mark my words. I won’t tell you I can sense it. That would be silly. But I know him, and he’s there. Maybe with Bek.”

Quentin considered the possibility. The fact that no one had seen Truls Rohk—at least, no one he knew of—didn’t mean he wasn’t there. It was possible he was shadowing Bek. That made perfect sense if Walker had brought him along to keep Bek safe. He thought again about his cousin’s mysterious past and his newfound use of magic that he’d never known he had. Maybe Bek really was better off than the rest of them.

“What about you, Panax?” he asked the Dwarf.

The whittling knife continued to move in smooth, effortless strokes. “What about me?”

“Are you sorry you came?”

The Dwarf laughed. “If I were, I’d have to be sorry about the larger part of my life!” He shook his head in amusement. “I’ve been living like this, Highlander, drifting from one mishap to the next, one expedition to another, for as long as I can remember. For all that I’m up in those mountains living alone much of the time, I’ve
been more places and risked my life more often than I care to think about.” He shrugged. “Well, there you are. If you live your life in the Wolfsktaag, you pretty much live on the edge all the time anyway.”

“So Walker knew what he was doing when he sent us to find you? He knew you’d be coming, too.”

“I’d say so.” The Dwarf’s dark eyes lifted a moment, then refocused on his work. “He wanted Truls and me both. Same as you and Bek. He likes companions, friends, and people who’ve known each other a long time and trust each other’s judgment. He knows what sorts of risks you take on a voyage like the one we’ve made. Strangers bond, but not fast and hard enough as a rule. Friends and family are a better match in the long run. Besides, if he can get two magic wielders for the price of one, why not do so?”