“To destroy Antrax,” Quentin finished. “So they’re taking us right to it and turning us loose, hoping for the best. They won’t stand and fight with us, if it comes to that. They’ll run.”
She shrugged. “I don’t know what they’ll do. I just think we’d better watch our backs. They have to wonder about us—where did we come from and what do we intend to do when this is over? Perhaps they’re thinking that the best thing that could happen would be for Antrax and us to destroy each other and leave the Rindge in peace. They have to have considered that. They don’t want to swap one form of tyranny for another. They know that’s a possibility, and nothing we say is going to convince them otherwise.”
“Obat doesn’t seem like that,” Quentin ventured after a moment.
Tamis sneered softly. “You haven’t been out in the world as long as I have, Quentin Leah. You haven’t seen as much. What do you think, Panax?”
The Dwarf glanced at Quentin, his gruff features set. “She’s right. We’d better be ready for anything.”
“Kian and Wye already know my thinking,” she said, starting ahead again. She glanced back at Quentin. “I hope I’m wrong, Highlander. I really do.”
They marched on in silence for the remainder of their journey, Quentin mired in gloom at the prospect of being betrayed yet again. He knew Tamis was right about the Rindge, but he could barely bring himself to consider what that might mean. He wished Bek were there to give his opinion. Bek would see things more clearly. He would be quicker to ferret out the truth. The Rindge didn’t seem antagonistic, but they had been at war with Antrax for the whole of their existence, so they knew something about staying alive. They hadn’t tried to harm their visitors, but Tamis might have been right about them watching the company fight its way clear of the maze. It was possible they were simply waiting to see what would happen when Antrax and the outlanders came face-to-face.
The more Quentin thought about it, the more uneasy he grew. The only real weapon they had was his sword. It might be enough to see them through, but he could not be certain. If Walker had been overcome by Antrax, what chance did he have? He wondered if Bek had come up against Antrax, as well, and having discovered his own form of magic, brought it to bear. If so, what success had he enjoyed? If his magic was powerful enough to shred creepers, as Tamis had reported, could it bring Antrax down? He did not like thinking of Bek facing Antrax alone. He did not like even considering the possibility. It shouldn’t happen that way, Bek alone. Or himself, for that matter. It should be the two of them, standing together the way they had planned it, watching out for each other.
He wondered if there was any chance that it could still happen like that and if it could happen in time to make a difference.
It was still early afternoon when they reached the edges of Castledown and paused long enough for the Rindge to scout ahead for creepers. While they waited, Quentin sat with Panax and stared out into the midday heat as it rose in visible waves off the metal of the devastated city. In the flat, raw wasteland, nothing moved. There was no sign of the maze, farther in from where they sat, and nothing to show that anyone had ever passed that way. Panax drank from a water skin and offered it to Quentin.
“Worried about Bek?” he asked, wiping his mouth.
Quentin nodded. “I can’t stop worrying about him. I don’t like the thought of him out there alone.”
The Dwarf nodded and looked off into the distance. “Might be better if he is, though.”
The Rindge scouts returned. There were no creepers in evidence along the city’s perimeter. Obat motioned everyone ahead, and they moved through the trees, staying just inside the forestline as they followed the edge of the ruins east and south. No one talked as they scanned the city, moving with slow, careful steps. The buildings stared back at them, the gaping holes of windows and doors like vacant eyes and mouths. Castledown was a tomb for dead men and machines, a graveyard for the unwary. Quentin carried the Sword of Leah unsheathed, bearing it before him, feeling just the slightest tingle of imprisoned magic awaiting its summoning. His pulse throbbed in his temples, and he heard the sound of his breathing in his throat.
Obat brought them to a grated entry cut into the side of a building that sprawled several hundred yards in both directions. Stationing Rindge at either end and carefully back from where he stood, he worked with a handful of others to free the grate from its clasps and swing it back on its rusted hinges. The effort produced a series of squeals barely muted by old grease and the weight of the metal.
Obat pointed into the black opening and spoke to Panax in hushed tones.
“Obat says that this leads to where Antrax lives,” the Dwarf translated. “He says this is how it breathes underground.”
“A ventilation shaft,” Quentin said.
“Ask him how he knows Antrax is down there,” Tamis demanded.
Panax did so, listened to Obat’s reply, and shook his head. “He says he knows because this is where he’s seen the creepers come out to hunt.”
Tamis looked at Quentin. “What do you think, Highlander? You’re the one with the sword.”
Quentin stared into the blackness of the shaft and thought that it was the last place he would like to go. He could just make out lights farther in, dim glimmers in the blackness, so they would not be blind. But he didn’t care for being trapped underground beneath all that stone and metal with no map to guide them and no way of knowing where to look.
“This might be a waste of time,” Panax offered quietly.
Quentin nodded. “On the other hand, what else do we have to do? Where else do we look for the others if not here?” His grip tightened on the sword. “We’ve come this far. We should at least take a peek.”
Tamis stepped forward to peer more closely into the darkness. “A peek should be more than enough. Are the Rindge coming with us?”
Panax shook his head. “They’ve already told me they won’t go into the ruins, above or belowground. They’re terrified of Antrax. They’ll wait for us here.”
“It doesn’t matter. We don’t need them anyway.” She looked over her shoulder at Quentin. “Ready, Highlander?”
Quentin nodded. “Ready.”
They went in bunched close together, Tamis leading, picking her way carefully. Their eyes adjusted quickly to the blackness. The walls, floor, and ceiling of the air shaft were smooth and unobstructed. They walked for several hundred yards without changing direction, locked in silence and the faintly metallic smell of the corridor, the opening through which they had entered shrinking behind them to a pinprick of light. The shaft began to descend then, dropping away at a slant, then splitting in two. The little company paused, then turned into the larger of the passageways, descending farther, moving past countless smaller ducts that burrowed through the walls and ceiling like snake holes. Ahead, still so distant at first that it was barely discernible, they could hear the sound of machinery, a soft purring, a gentle hum, a reminder of life ancient and enduring.
Lights burned at regular intervals, flameless lamps set into the walls, yellowish light steady and unwavering. Strange fish-eyes peered down at Quentin from the ceiling, set farther apart than the lights, tiny red dots blinking steadily at their centers. They seemed to be looking at him. It was ridiculous to think this, yet he could not shake the feeling that it was so. He glanced at Panax and Tamis to see if they were looking, too, but their eyes were directed ahead into the corridor they followed.
Quentin found himself staring around in amazement. He had never seen anything like this. So many metal sheets layered together, yards and yards of them, bolted and sealed against weather and animals and plants, a man-made warren carved into the earth. How had it been done? He tried to picture the culture and machines and skill that must have been required but he failed. The Old World had been a very different place, he knew, but that had never been more dramatically apparent to him than it was in the ventilation shaft.
Held in place by stanchions, metal pipes began to appear in co
nnected lines along the walls of the passageway. Quentin could not discern their purpose. Everything felt strange and foreign to him, all the metal surfaces, all that space and emptiness. If Antrax lived down there, he had room to move about—that much was clear. But what sort of creature would choose to live in such a place? Only another machine, another creeper made of metal, Quentin thought. Perhaps Antrax was a machine, similar, yet more powerful than the creepers it commanded.
Suddenly, Tamis froze. Her hand came up in warning. The four men stopped instantly. Everyone listened. Ahead, the corridor ended in a hub from which a series of similar corridors fanned out like spokes in a wheel. Within one of those corridors, footsteps were audible. The footsteps were heavy and slow and deliberate, as if what made them bore a great weight.
Quentin had never heard footsteps like those. What made them walked on two legs, but it did not sound like something he had encountered before. He glanced at the others. Tamis was crouched like a cat. Panax stood upright, his expression unreadable. There was a sheen of sweat on the faces of the Elven Hunters, Kian and Wye. Quentin felt as if he couldn’t breathe. No one seemed able to move.
Then Tamis started forward, creeping up the corridor toward the shadowy hub ahead. She glanced back at Quentin once, her tough, no-nonsense face intense and her gray eyes bright. Don’t let me down, she was saying. Without even looking at the others, he went after her, matching her pace. Behind him, the Dwarf and the Elven Hunters followed. The sound of the footfalls grew louder. Whoever or whatever it was, it was making no effort to disguise its approach. It was big and it was confident. It was no one, Quentin thought in dismay, that he and his companions had come looking for.
Twenty feet from the hub, with the entrances of all of the intersecting tunnels visible, they slowed as light cast a shadow from the one just to the left of where they crouched in hiding. Then a tall, lumbering figure stalked out of the gloom and into the light of a dozen lamps set all around the hub.
Quentin caught his breath sharply as the figure was revealed. He heard gasps from the others. Even Tamis, who seemed unafraid of anything, took a step back in shock.
Like a shade or a demon or perhaps something of both, but most like a monster come from a nightmare’s imagining into the real world, the thing—for there was no other word for it—turned to face them.
It was Ard Patrinell.
Or what was left of him.
In worrying about what sort of disaster might have befallen his missing friends, Quentin Leah had considered some frightening and horrific possibilities, but nothing on the order of what confronted him there. The creature that stood before him, the thing that had once been Ard Patrinell, was beyond imagining. It had been cobbled together from flesh and bone on the one hand and metal on the other. There was machinery inside it; the Highlander could hear it humming softly and steadily from somewhere within the metal torso to which its other parts were attached. The legs and left arm were metal, as well, all three composed of struts hinged at knees and elbows and feet and hands, and attached by ball joints set into sockets surrounded by cables that ran up and down the creature like arteries and veins in a human body.
What remained of the old Ard Patrinell formed the right arm and face. Both were intact and the distinctive features of the Captain of the Home Guard were instantly recognizable. His metal-capped head was set into a tall collar. It was impossible to tell if his head was still connected to some portion of his body, although even at a distance and in the dim light of the ventilation shaft, Quentin could see color in the strong features and movement in the dark eyes. But there was no question about the connection of the right arm, the flesh and bone of which were capped and cabled in metal at the shoulder and attached in the same manner as the other limbs by a metal ball and socket.
Red and green lights blinked like tiny glass eyes all over the creature’s gleaming torso, and numbers set in windows clicked and whirred, counting out functions that Quentin could only guess at. Pads cushioned the skeletal metal pieces of the feet so that when the creature walked it made thumping sounds and did not clank as it otherwise surely would. The human right hand held a broadsword in its powerful grip, ready to strike. The metal left hand held a long knife and was bound and warded by an oval shield that ran from wrist to elbow.
When it saw them—and it did see them, they could tell from the movement of the eyes and shift of the body—it started for them at once, weapons raised to strike.
For just an instant the members of the little company stood their ground, more out of an inability to respond than out of courage. Then Tamis shouted, “No! Get out of here!”
They began to back away, slowly at first, then more quickly as the advancing monster picked up speed. It was heavy, but its movements were smooth and effortless, as if a part of Ard Patrinell’s agility had been captured in his new form. Finally, the Elves, the Dwarf, and the Highlander broke into a run, propelled by fear and horror, but by something else, as well. They did not want to face a thing that was made out of pieces of someone they had known and admired. Ard Patrinell had been their friend, and they did not want to do battle with his shade.
But what they might have wanted did not count for much. They retreated down the corridor the way they had come, yelling encouragement to one another, Tamis shouting to them to get back outside where they had more room to maneuver. And to where the Rindge might give them aid, Quentin thought without saying so. Kian and Wye, toughened and well conditioned, quickly outdistanced the other three. Tamis deliberately hung back, intent on warding the obviously struggling Panax. Quentin might have kept up with the speedy Elves, but the Dwarf was stocky and slow and not built for speed. He was laboring in minutes, and the tireless metal monster that gave chase was closing the gap between them.
At the first split in the passageway, Quentin rounded on their pursuer, shouting at the others to go on. Braced in the center of the corridor, the Sword of Leah raised before him, he confronted the thing that had been Ard Patrinell. It came at him without slowing, all size and weight, metal parts gleaming in the flameless lamplight. For an instant Quentin thought he was a dead man, that he had misjudged what he could manage altogether and was wholly inadequate to the task. But then the magic flared to life, running up and down the blade of his talisman, and he was crying out, “Leah! Leah!”
He closed with his attacker in a shocking clash of metal blades, and the impact of the collision nearly threw him off his feet. Forced backwards by superior weight and size, he kept his blade between them, struggling to find purchase on the smooth metal floor. He seized the other’s metal arm to keep the long knife at bay, but quickly discovered he lacked the strength to do more than slow its advance. Wrenching free, he spun away, the current of the sword’s magic flooding through him like a swollen river, rough and unyielding in its passage. All thoughts of anything but defending himself fled, and he came around with a blow aimed at taking off Ard Patrinell’s head. To his astonishment, the blow failed. Partially deflected by the other’s sword, it was stopped completely by some invisible shield that warded the metal-capped head.
Quentin thrust himself clear a second time; then Tamis was beside him, yelling at Panax to run. Together, they fought to hold the metal juggernaut at bay, hammering at it from two sides, striking at anything that seemed vulnerable, that might break or shatter to slow it down. That was all that was needed, Quentin kept thinking—just enough of a breakdown to cripple it and let them escape.
Then it sidestepped a blow from his blade and stepped between the Elf girl and himself, reaching for him with bladed hands to pin him to the tunnel wall. He grappled with it a moment, hammering with his sword blade at the clear faceplate, unexpectedly meeting the familiar eyes long enough to see something that made him cry out in shock before breaking free once more.
“Run!” he shouted to Tamis, and together they sped back down the passageway in pursuit of Panax and the Elven Hunters.
His mind locked on a single image. What he had found in those ey
es, the eyes of a dead man, had frozen his soul. It was all he could do to accept that he had not been mistaken, that what he had seen was real. He understood why the Rindge said that when their people were taken and dismembered by Antrax, they didn’t die but were still alive, their souls captured.
He felt afraid in a way he had never thought possible, certainly in a way he had never been before. Suddenly, all he wanted to do was to escape that place and leave its horrors behind him forever.
“Did you see?” he gasped at Tamis as they ran. “His eyes! Did you see his eyes?”
“What?” she shouted back. Her breathing was rough and labored. “His eyes?”
He couldn’t make himself say any more, couldn’t finish what he had begun. He shook his head at her and ran harder, faster, the burn of his breathing sharp and raw in his throat as he fled back up the dimly lit passageway.
It took only minutes, but it seemed much longer, to regain the entrance to the ventilation shaft and burst clear once more. The others were already there—Kian, Wye, Panax, and even the Rindge, who had not fled as Tamis had feared. Obat had formed up his warriors in ranks two dozen yards back from the grate entry, heavy spears lowered, blowguns lifted. Quentin’s little band took up positions on one end of the formation, breathing heavily, staring back at the dark opening they had fled.
The monster burst into view in a lumbering rush that took it right into them. It did not slow, did not hesitate, but barreled into the center of the Rindge line, thrusting past the spears, brushing off the darts from the blowguns, sending those who tried to stop it flying in all directions. There was barely time for some to cry “Wronk” in voices steeped in terror before three lay dead or dying and all but a handful of the rest had scattered. Obat and two more stood their ground, joined by the Elves, Panax, and Quentin Leah, who hammered at the monster from all sides, trying to break through its defenses, to find a weak spot, to do anything to stop it. Grunts and cries mingled with the clash of iron weapons, rising up through the heat. Blades flashed in the sunlight, and bodies slick with sweat and smudged with dirt and grit struggled to stay upright and clear of the metal behemoth.