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 connected 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.
FOURTEEN