She did not take a subtle approach to gaining entry; the longer she took, the more risk she assumed. A safehold built in the Old World would employ technology she did not understand. One safeguard or another would detect her eventually. It was best not to give it a chance to do so.
She placed herself against a wall next to one of the larger hidden doors and used her magic to shatter a smaller port across the way. Almost instantly, the door she stood beside slid open and creepers wheeled into view. She kept herself concealed, letting them move quickly past, then froze the last, holding it in place, breaking down its systems as she swiftly recorded its look and feel, both within and without. It took her only seconds, then she was through the door and inside the keep.
There were lights inside, flameless lamps attached to the walls of a handful of corridors that fanned out from an atrium in which dozens of creepers stood frozen in racks. She held herself motionless for a few seconds, testing her new disguise, waiting to see if there would be a reaction to her presence. There wasn’t. She gave it a few seconds more, then started ahead.
She passed down the corridors of Castledown without incident, long robes rustling softly, her presence wrapped in the look and feel of a creeper. In a place where only machines had functioned for more than twenty-five hundred years, anything of flesh and blood would trigger an alarm instantly. There would be devices that would indicate a human presence either through readings of weight or body heat or even a tracing of form. She had already spied the glass eyes that peered out of their ceiling niches and felt the presence of the pressure plates. The machines would use other methods, as well, but whatever they were, she could thwart them by disguising her look, changing her weight, and hiding her body temperature. Every warning system would register her as a creeper. Even the Druid couldn’t manage that.
Yet she did not allow herself to grow overconfident or drop her guard. There was still the possibility that whatever warded Castledown possessed the ability to track her use of magic, to detect its presence, and to penetrate her subterfuge. If that were to happen, she would have to take evasive action, and quickly. She hoped that her enemy was otherwise occupied, perhaps with Walker. She hoped that the magic she used was too small to detect. She hoped, mainly, that she could accomplish her goals quickly enough that she would be gone before there was a chance to discover that she had ever come in.
She passed dozens of other creepers, all of whom ignored her. Each seemed to have a purpose in mind, but she could not tell what it was. She moved through a maze of chambers and hallways of all shapes and sizes, some empty, some crammed with machinery and materials. She didn’t know what was housed there, and she didn’t care. She was looking for the books of magic and she was not finding them. Nothing else mattered to her. She could not afford the time necessary to undertake a scavenger hunt.
Ahead, the sound of machinery rose out of the silence, a low and steady thrumming. It penetrated even the steel of the walls; it caused the floor beneath her feet to vibrate. She paused, considering. What she was hearing was huge, a piece of machinery or perhaps several pieces that dwarfed anything she had encountered and performed a function central to the operation of the safehold. It was probably a power plant, but it might have something to do with the protection of the books of magic. She should have a look.
She had not taken another ten steps when all the alarms went off at once.
Ryer Ord Star.
Walker felt her stir against him, waking slowly from the trance into which she had gone to provide him with her empathic strength. Her fingers, resting against his temples, slid down his cheeks like tears.
Come awake, young seer.
He was speaking to her with his mind, a silent summoning that only they could hear. He was back within his body, come out of the drugs and dreams, returned from his shadow form, aware once more of his flesh and blood and the condition in which he had been placed. It was time to free himself of the machines and Antrax. But he must do so carefully, and he could not manage it alone.