In the next instant, alarms went off everywhere, shrill metallic sounds that cut through even the suffocating roar of the machines.
Ahead, one of the doors opened and a giant creeper scuttled out, all crooked legs and sharp pincers, a war machine looking for a fight. It did not see him, but moved to take up a position between the chamber doorway and the corridor through which Ahren had come. Another creeper followed, and then another, stationing themselves in a defensive ring. The entry sealed itself tightly behind them.
Ahren kept moving ahead, making for that closed door, striding into the midst of the creepers. He held the long knife before him protectively, knowing it was all but useless should they discover him. But, just barely visible, the failing magic of the phoenix stone still clung to him in thinning wisps. Ahren imagined the alarms sucking it away, smoke caught in a breeze. He moved between the creepers for the door, bolder than he had believed he could ever be, feeling buoyant and paralyzed at the same time. He felt himself watching his own progress from somewhere outside his body, removed from the act. His thoughts were reduced to a single sequence-get to the Elfstones, take them in hand, summon their power.
He reached the door with the shriek of the alarms ringing in his ears and was surprised when it gave to his touch. The creepers behind him didn’t seem to notice. He stepped into the room, a darkened chamber paneled with banks of blinking lights, tangled wires, and flexible metal cords that cast shadows over everything in inky pools. It was so black in the room that Ahren couldn’t distinguish any of the pieces of apparatus that were scattered everywhere, couldn’t make out the comings and goings of the cords, couldn’t even tell what the room was supposed to be. He groped forward, being careful to touch nothing, picking his way toward the center of the room as his eyes tried to adjust to the abrupt, momentary flashes of illumination.
When they did, he saw the first signs of movement, faint stirrings to one side. He froze instantly, and as he did so he caught sight of something moving to his other side. At first he thought it was nothing more than the shadows that flickered in the dim light, but then with heart-stopping certainty he recognized them. They were creepers. He couldn’t hear their skittering over the blare of the alarms, but even in the absence of that he knew them for what they were. They were all around him, all through the chamber. He had stumbled into their midst before realizing what he was doing.
He held himself as still as he could manage, barely daring to breathe, while he considered his next move. He could not tell how much of the phoenix stone’s magic remained to him; it was too dark to measure what traces remained of its distinct haze. Some, certainly, or the creepers would have had him already. He tried to think, to ignore the alarms and the creepers and the chaos around him, to hear anew the voice that had brought him there.
A second later, he saw the chair. It was big and padded and reclined, and it sat in the center of the room, surrounded by a cluster of freestanding machines. The cords were thickest there, snaking out in every direction, all leading from parts of the chair. There was an odd box set into one armrest to which many of the wires ran, and Ahren recognized it. He had seen the same sort of apparatus in Walker’s prison, siphoning off the Druid magic through his good arm. The chamber Ahren was in was where Kael Elessedil had been drained of the magic of the Elfstones in the same way for almost thirty years. It was the place in which his uncle had wasted his life.
The Elfstones, he knew instinctively and with overpowering certainty, were inside that box.
He moved over to it quickly, sliding through the nests of wires and past the bulky pieces of equipment, praying he couldn’t be detected. The creepers continued to shift position in the open spaces of the room, sidling a few feet this way, then a few that. He could not tell what they were doing. They didn’t seem to be doing anything that mattered. Perhaps they were only sweepers, harmless attendants of the machines rather than sentries and fighters. Perhaps his presence meant nothing to them.