When the alarms unexpectedly ceased, the ensuing silence was shocking. Given the extent of the damage he had visited on Castledown's internal systems, Antrax had repaired itself more quickly than Walker had anticipated. He thought momentarily about striking at it again, then decided against it. Antrax would be expecting such an attempt and would be prepared for it. Better to continue on. The power source lay just ahead, and once he was there, all the alarms in the world wouldn't matter.
Nevertheless, he had not yet reached the end of the passageway that opened onto the central power chamber when a new alarm went off, this one directly ahead and localized. Then he heard explosions and smelled the raw burn of magic, and he realized that another had gotten to the chamber ahead of him. Pulling Ryer Ord Star after him, not quite certain what he was going to find, he began to run. It was as apt to be the Ilse Witch as one of his companions. The sounds of battle were unmistakable, however, as machines shattered and glass exploded out of walls. Bits and pieces of creepers flew across the passageway entrance as he neared the power chamber, where smoke roiled through a surreal landscape of flameless lamps and fire threads.
He glanced back at Ryer Ord Star. The exhilaration was gone from her face, the joy from her eyes. Desperation had replaced both, born of more than her recognition of the obvious dangers that waited. It was as if she had divined both his intent and her complicity in advancing it by saving him earlier. Her face was pale and taut, and her silver hair flew out behind her in a thin curtain, lending her a ghostly look. She tried to say something, but saw the intensity of his expression and kept still.
They burst through the power source entry into a vast chamber dominated by a pair of towering cylinders situated in the center of the room and connected everywhere by pipes and conduits. Smaller machines surrounded them, metal cages and housings bristling with flexible lines. Walker had no idea how they worked, how Antrax fed, how it converted magic to a fuel it could consume. The technology for the process had been dead for more than two and a half millennia, and only Antrax itself possessed the knowledge to keep it operating. That was true of the lifeblood that fed Antrax and preserved the library of the Old World. Destroy either, and you destroyed both.
It was what Walker had come to realize he must do, a sacrifice of one to put an end to the other.
He no longer thought to debate the matter. He knew that Antrax would eventually reach out for other sources of magic, other magic-infused humans, and the cycle would begin again. Sooner or later, it would siphon off everything of worth from the world that had replaced the one Antrax had served, and all to preserve a machine that no longer mattered. Antrax must be stopped, destroyed while there was still time.
Fire threads ringed the cylinders that formed the power source, shifting at random this way and that, keeping at bay anything that might try to harm the capacitors they protected. Smoke clouded the chamber in a thick haze, giving everything the appearance of a nightmarish netherworld. The creepers that appeared out of its brume had the look of shades, and even the equipment seemed to shift and turn in the mix of light and shadow.
Then abruptly, out of nowhere, Ahren Elessedil appeared, hands stretched forth as if to ward off invisible things, slender body taut and gathered to strike as he stepped gingerly through the debris. Blue light flashed from between his fingers, shattering creepers that crossed his path, clearing the way forward. Walker felt a surge of renewed hope. The Elven Prince had managed to recover the missing Elfstones, something he had not dared to hope could happen. With their magic to aid his own, he would have a better chance to succeed in doing what was needed.
"Ahren!" Ryer Ord Star shouted out even before Walker could speak.
The Elven Prince turned toward them, his eyes as blue and wild as the fire of the Stones. He registered the presence of Walker and the seer but only barely. He was consumed by the magic, so caught up in its throes that all that mattered to him, all that he could feel, was the rush of its power through his body.
Walker moved toward him swiftly, unafraid of the dark look in his eyes, of the blue fire gathered at his clenched fists. He reached out for the Elven Prince and touched him lightly, drawing him out from the haze into which he had been carried, bringing him back to himself. Ahren stared at him in anger, then confusion, then with undisguised relief.
"You've done well, Elven Prince," Walker said, drawing him close, eyes shifting this way and that for the enemies that circled all around them. "Draw the magic back into yourself. Quickly!"
Walker watched the blue light of the Elfstones fade, then cloaked Ahren with concealing magic, as well. "Come this way."