Behind him, the city ruins disappeared from view, and he could no longer hear the creepers. He smiled faintly, relief surging through him. It would be all right. Whatever lay ahead couldn’t be any worse than what he had escaped.
Then the ground heaved beneath his feet and sent him stumbling away. It settled and heaved again, as if an animal breathing. He tried to get clear of the motion, but it followed, tossing him from one side to the other, almost upending him. The trees began to shiver and the grasses to wave. Vines reached down, trying to grasp the Druid, to snare him, and he twisted away from them desperately. More waited, and more after that. He was forced to call up the Druid fire once more, burning them away to clear passage. The assault was relentless and purposeful, as if the jungle was determined to devour him. He could not understand it. There was no reason for the attack and no way to explain why or how it was happening.
He fought his way ahead, unable to do anything else, adrift in an undulating sea of green.
In a room of smoky glass, its walls papered with myriad panels of blinking lights and flashing red numbers, Ahren Elessedil and Ryer Ord Star stared in horror at the limp, motionless form of the missing Druid. He lay on a metal table, bound in place by padded straps fastened about his forehead, throat, waist, ankles, and the wrist of his good arm so that he could not move. Tubes ran to his arm and torso, attached to needles inserted into his veins. Liquids pulsed through the tubes, fed from bottles slung about metal hangers. One tube, the largest, was inserted into his mouth and attached to a bellows that worked slowly and steadily by his side. Machines hemmed him in, all of them blinking with lights and humming with activity. Wires ran to his temples, eyes and throat, heart and loins, even to the fingers of his hand, black snakes ending in suckers fastened to his skin. The wires that trailed from his fingers were attached to their tips by what looked like the ends of gloves, cut away and fitted in place to the second knuckle of each digit. The wires pulsed within clear coverings as they ran from the Druid to a bank of clear glass containers. Flashes of blue light surged into a reddish liquid, which then flowed on through tubes into ports in the metal walls and recycled back.
Ahren could not make himself move. What was being done to Walker? He leaned closer to look at the Druid’s face. Were his eyes gouged out? Had his tongue been removed? He peered down fearfully, but he could not tell. The Druid’s eyes were blinkered and his mouth clogged with the tube; everything was obscured. Ahren wanted to rip the tubes out of Walker, to cut loose the straps that secured him. But he sensed that he should not, that by doing so he might injure the Druid. He couldn’t be certain, couldn’t know by just looking, but he thought that the tubes might be keeping Walker alive.
He looked over at Ryer Ord Star, who was crying soundlessly beside him, her hands closed into fists and pressed against her mouth. She was hunched over and shaking, and he pulled her against him, trying to share with her a reassurance he didn’t feel. On the other side of the room, the multilimbed metal attendant moved diligently from panel to panel, studying dials and numbers, touching switches and buttons. It seemed to be monitoring things, perhaps studying the Druid’s condition, perhaps recording what was happening.
Which was what?
Still hidden away from Antrax and creepers alike within the protective seal of the phoenix stone’s magic, Ahren tried to make sense of it. There could be only one explanation. Antrax was siphoning off Walker’s magic. It had lured the men and women of the Jerle Shannara to Castledown for precisely that purpose, just as it had lured Kael Elessedil and his Elven command all those years ago. Once Walker was a prisoner, trapped underground and rendered helpless, the milking had begun. Ahren would suffer the same fate, once Antrax found him; he would be drugged and bound and drained of life. He didn’t know how the process worked, but he was certain of what it was.