Already Antrax was gathering and converting that power, drawing it from the intruder without his realizing, leeching it away bit by bit. It seemed to replenish itself, so the leeching was not yet detrimental to the intruder’s health. But that could change. Antrax would have to monitor it closely. Reaching out with its sensors to take the necessary readings, it took a moment to do so, finding the intruder still working hard in his futile effort to escape.
I he Druid known as Walker, who, in a time before he lost his arm and found his destiny, had been called both Walker Boh and Dark Uncle, was seeking his way yet again. He stood in one of the myriad passageways of Castledown and tried to understand what he was doing wrong. His stomach roiled and his head ached. Something was amiss. Even without knowing what it was, he could feel it as surely as he could feel the discomfort in his body. All of his efforts to outdistance his pursuers had failed. All of his attempts to escape had led to nothing.
Behind him in the near darkness of the corridors and chambers, invisible for the moment, but there nevertheless, the creepers hunted him. He had fled them from the moment he had dropped through the floor of the black tower and spiraled down a chute into these lower depths. They had found him at once, and he had fought them off and escaped. But everywhere he turned, everywhere he went, they were waiting. Castledown was full of them, prowling the depths in such numbers that Walker could not see how an army could stand against them, let alone a single man. Yet he would do so, for as long as he was able, for as long as his strength allowed it.
What baffled him, in his desperate flight, was how unendingly similar everything was. Corridors and rooms without number, all empty of anything other than machinery built into the walls and lines of power that fed those machines, all of them the same. Nothing was different about any of them; nothing suggested the presence of the treasure he sought. There were no hidden doorways or secret passages, no concealing panels behind which or under which or above which a treasure might lie. He could detect nothing of what he was certain was there. He knew what he was looking for. Unlike the others who had come searching for it, save perhaps the Ilse Witch, he knew exactly what it was that he must find.
Unless it was all a clever lie, created by the mapmaker to lure and trap him.
Yet he had discarded that possibility long ago. The knowledge contained in those symbols and markings was more revealing than the mapmaker had intended. Unwittingly, perhaps, the mapmaker had given away a truth it did not fully understand.
That Castledown was a trap had been obvious almost from the beginning, and the reason for that trap became clear after their experiences on the islands of Flay Creech, Shatterstone, and Mephitic. What lived within Castledown wanted their magic. What it wanted the magic for, what purpose it intended for its use, remained a mystery. Walker was not even clear as yet as to whether his adversary was looking for a specific form of magic. It might be seeking only another wielder for the missing Elfstones, someone to take Kael Elessedil’s place. It might be looking for something more. Whatever the case, it had used the castaway and the map as bait, the keys as lures, the islands as testing grounds, the spirits and creatures on those islands as measuring sticks, and its victims’ curiosity and persistence as goads. The keys they had struggled so hard to obtain were worthless in any real sense, of course. He still carried them within his robes, but had long since discarded the possibility that they would prove useful. They were lures and nothing more. But the map, notwithstanding its maker’s belief that it, too, was only bait, was invaluable.
None of which helped Walker in his plight. He began moving along the passageways once more, probing as he did so, seeking either to escape or to find the hidden treasure. Either would give him what he needed, a way out, a weapon to use against his mysterious adversary. He wondered at the fate of those still above-ground. They would never find him. They might not even try. The destruction they had encountered might have demoralized them utterly. If he was lost, they would reason, what chance had they? He had to hope that one or two would hold the rest together, that those he counted on most to stand firm would find a way do so.