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.”
“Ahren.” Walker’s gaze shifted to the Elven Prince. “The treasure we came to find is lost to us. It died with Antrax. The books of magic were housed in the machine’s memory system. They could not be retrieved unless Antrax was kept whole, and allowing that to happen was too dangerous. The choice was mine to make, and I made it. Whether it was worth the cost remains to be seen. You will have to make your own judgment. Remember that. One day, you will be given the chance.”
Ryer Ord Star was crying again, speaking his name softly as she did so, repeating it over and over. He wanted to reach out to her, to comfort her in some small way, but he could not. Time was running out, and there was still one thing more he must do.
“Go now,” he said to the Elven Prince.
The seer gave a low wail and reached out for him, trying to tear free of Ahren Elessedil’s strong grip. Her fingers were like claws, stretching as if to rend and discard whatever words he would choose to speak next.
“Ryer,” he said softly, his strength ebbing. “Listen to me. This is not the last time we will see each other. We will meet again.” She went silent, staring at him. “Soon,” he said. “It will happen.”