Walker blacked out from being hurled against a wall, but he woke again almost at once. He lay without moving amid the debris, staring dully into the smoky haze that enveloped him. He knew he was hurt, but he could not tell how badly. The feeling was gone from much of his body, and his hand was soaked in a wetness that could not be mistaken for anything other than what it obviously was. Somewhere close, in the swirl of the battle's aftermath, he could hear Ryer Ord Star sobbing and calling out his name.
I'm here, he tried to say, but the words would not come. Sparks spilled like liquid fire from the broken ends of wires, and wounded machines buzzed and spat in their death throes. Tremors rocked the safehold as Antrax thrashed blindly down its lines of power in search of help that could no longer be found. By turning his head slightly to the right, Walker could just glimpse the fractured cylinders that housed the power source, the metal skin leaking steam and dampness, the protective fire threads fading like rainbows with a storm's passing.
Then the pain began, sudden and intense, rushing through him with the force of floodwaters set free from a broken dam. He gasped at the intensity of it and fought back with what little magic he could muster shutting it away, closing it off, giving himself space and time to think clearly. He did not have much of either, he knew. What had been promised had been delivered. He had not known from the visions that Death would come for him then, at that moment, in that place. But he had known it was on its way.
A figure moved in the gloom, and Ahren Elessedil materialized. He's here!" he called back over his shoulder, then knelt in front of Walker, his face ashen, his slender body razored with burns and slashes and streaked with blood. "Shades!" he gasped softly.
Ryer Ord Star was beside him a second later, small and ephemeral, as if she were no more substantial than the smoke from which she appeared no better formed. She saw him, and her hands flew to her mouth in tiny fists that only partially muffled her anguished scream. Walker saw that she was looking below his neck, where the pain was centered. He read the horror in her eyes.
She started for him at once, and he brought up his hand in a warding gesture to keep her back. For the first time, he saw the blood that coated it. For the first time, he was afraid, and fear gave power to his voice.
"Stay back," he ordered her sharply. "Don't touch me."
She kept coming, but Ahren reached out for her as she tried to push past, and pulled her down next to him, holding her as she thrashed and screamed in fury and despair. He talked to her, his voice steady and soothing, even when she would not hear him, would not listen, until finally she collapsed in his arms, sobbing against his shoulder, little birdlike hands still clenched in defiance.
Walker lowered his bloodstained hand back into his lap, still not looking down at what he knew he would find there, forcing himself to close off everything but what he knew he must do next.
"Elven Prince," he said, his voice unrecognizable to him. "Bring her close."
Ahren Elessedil did as he was told, tightening his features in the way people do when they are brought face-to-face with sights they would just as soon never have witnessed. He held her possessively, shielding as well as restraining her, his own needs revealed in his determination to see them both through whatever would happen next. Walker was surprised at the resolve and strength of will he found in the youthful features. The Elven Prince had grown up all at once.
"Ryer." He spoke her name softly, deliberately infusing the sound of it with a calm that was meant to reassure her. He waited. "Ryer, look at me."
She did so, slowly and tentatively, lifting her head out of Ahren Elessedil's shoulder, her gaze directed toward his face, refusing to look down again, to risk what that would do to her. In the pale, translucent features he found such sadness that it felt to him as if he was broken now in spirit as well as in body.
"You cannot touch me, not without irreparable damage. Healing me is not possible. Healing me will cost you your own life and will not save mine. Some things are beyond even your empathic powers. Your visions told me this was coming. When I became linked to you after Shatterstone, I saw. Do you understand?"
Her eyes were blank and fixed, devoid of anything even resembling understanding, as if she had decided to leave him rather than be made to face the truth. She was hiding-he accepted that-but she had not gone so far away that she couldn't hear.
"Ahren will take you back to the surface of Castledown and from there to the airship. Return home with him. Tell him of the visions and dreams that visit you on the way as you once told them to me. Help him as you have helped me."
She was shaking her head slowly, her eyes still unfocused, lost and empty looking. "No," she whispered. "I won't leave you."