The image faded. “It must have heard us,” the seer whispered, giving Ahren a quick, hopeful look.
He didn’t see how. They had been careful not to make any noise at all. Maybe it had sensed their presence. But why hadn’t the other sweepers sensed them, as well?
“I don’t like it,” he said.
“Ahren!” she pleaded, her voice wrenching and sad.
He gave an exasperated sigh, feeling trapped by her need and expectations. She was so desperate to get to Walker, to do something to help him, that she was abandoning any attempt to exercise caution or good sense. On the other hand, he was so desperate to get away from this place, that he was refusing to give the sweeper’s credibility any consideration at all.
“Why are you trying to help us?” he asked the little machine. “What difference does it make to you what we do?”
The sweeper must have expected the question; an image immediately appeared in the same place as the others. It showed the sweeper performing its tasks in the maze and the tunnels below-ground. A second set of images followed, these showing the sweeper being kicked and pummeled and knocked about in almost every conceivable way by something big and dark and fearsome that was always cloaked in shadow or just out of sight. Time and again, the sweeper was picked up and flung against a wall. Over and over, it was knocked on its side and had to be righted by other sweepers coming to its aid. There seemed to be no reason for the attacks. They appeared random and purposeless, the result of misdirected or pointless anger and frustration. Dented and cracked, the little sweeper would have to be repaired by its fellows before returning to its duties.
The images disappeared. The sweeper went still once more. Ahren tried to reconcile his doubts. An abused sweeper? Kicked around so thoroughly and for so long that it would do anything to put a stop to it? That meant, of course, that the sweeper was capable of feeling emotion and reacting to treatment that troubled it. As a rule, machines didn’t feel anything, not even creepers. They were machines, which by definition meant they weren’t human.
But these machines might well be as old as the city and whatever lived in it. It was not impossible to imagine that before the Great Wars destroyed the old civilization, humans had developed machines that could think and feel.
“It’s asking for our help,” Ryer Ord Star pointed out, breaking the silence. She brushed back her long silver hair in frustration. “In return, it will help us find Walker. Don’t you understand?”
Not entirely, Ahren thought. “What sort of help does it expect us to give it?”
An image flashed from the open hatchway in the sweeper’s metal head. Walker, Ahren, and Ryer Ord Star were walking from the ruins with the sweeper in tow.
“You want us to take you along when we leave?” he asked in disbelief.
The image repeated itself twice more, insistent and unmistakable. Then a new image appeared, the Jerle Shannara rising skyward, light sheaths stretched taut, radian draws rippling with power. At the bow of the airship stood the little sweeper, looking back at the land it was leaving behind.
“This is ridiculous,” Ahren muttered, almost to himself. “It’s a machine!”
“A sentient machine,” Ryer Ord Star corrected him. “Sophisticated and capable of feeling. Ahren, it wants what we all want. It wants to be free.”
The Elven youth sat down slowly on the pile of rubble and put his chin in his hands. “I still don’t feel good about this,” he said, his eyes watching the sweeper. “If we do what it wants and go underground, we’ll be cut off from everything. If this is a trap, we won’t have any chance of escaping. I don’t know. I still think we ought to find the others first.”
She knelt in front of him and put her hands over his, the tips of her fingers brushing his face. “Elven Prince, listen to me. Why would this be a trap? If whatever wards Castledown wanted us, couldn’t it have had us by this time? If this sweeper meant to betray us, wouldn’t we already be surrounded by creepers? What difference does it make to anything if it manages to get us belowground? Why would it go to so much trouble to accomplish so little?”