Listen to me.
She was awake now, her eyes open, her hands bracing her body as she lifted away from him. “Walker?”
Don’t speak. Just listen. Do what I say. Do it quickly. Take the blindfold from my eyes and the breathing tube from my mouth.
She did as she was told, her hands fluttering about his face like small moths. He could feel the expansion and contraction of her lungs as she pressed back against him.
Mow release the straps that bind my wrist and ankles, then my neck and forehead and waist. Do it in that order. Do not disturb the wires attached to me. Do not knock them loose.
It took her longer to comply; the straps were fastened with catches of a kind she had never seen and did not understand. They were not formed of metal, but of hard plastic, and she fumbled with them before deciphering their workings. His release went quickly after that as, one by one, the straps fell away.
She was back beside him, leaning close. He opened his eyes for the first time and looked at her. Her wan childlike face, framed by its curtain of silvery hair, broke into a broad smile, and tears filled her eyes. Traces of a cloaking magic still clung to her slender form, but they were fading. How had she gotten to him? Where had she found the magic to do so?
Walker, she mouthed silently.
He scanned himself in an effort to determine what must happen next, trying to decide the right order for the removal of his remaining constraints, knowing that when he released them, alarms would certainly sound.
Block open the door to the room so that when the alarms to the monitoring machines are triggered, Antrax cannot lock us in.
She slipped agilely through the nest of wires still attached to his body, found a low, single-door cabinet on wheels, and rolled it into the opening between the door and the jamb and wedged it securely in place.
Then she was back beside him.
Take the needles from my arm and body. Let them hang loose from their fastenings.
She pulled away the tape that secured the needles, then slipped them from his veins. She touched the punctures with her cool fingers, healing the wounds, providing him with new strength. Her ability to give of her empathic self seemed boundless. She shuddered once at the contact, held her fingers steady for a moment, and then lifted her hands away.
Alarms would be going off; Antrax would know the equipment that drugged and milked him had malfunctioned in some way. He would have to act fast. He sat up on the metal table, finding his strength diminished and his head spinning. The drugs had left him weak and lethargic, but he could still function. He must. He began ripping free the suckers that fastened the monitoring wires to his body. They came away easily, and in seconds none remained but the five that ran to the gloved tips of his fingers. He left those in place. He had a use for them.
Lights were flashing everywhere on the panels of instruments that ringed his bed. He felt a shift in the atmosphere of the chamber as Antrax descended swiftly to correct what had happened. Walker rose unsteadily, the girl supporting him as he gathered his robes and moved away from the table. He walked to where the wires that ran from his fingertips were bunched into a metal plug that, in turn, was fastened into the containers of reddish liquid. He pulled the plug from its sheath and steered it into an identical opening in one of the wall panels marked with brilliant red symbols.
Walker knew what the symbols read. It was the same language in which the map had been lettered, the language from the Old World he had deciphered in the Druid Histories.
He knew, as well, where the lines of the second sheath ran. He had explored them well in his out-of-body travels, tracing them to their source.
Castledown’s main warning system.
Before Antrax could act to prevent it, he sent a burst of Druid fire through the central lines and into all the auxiliaries and set off all the alarms at once.