Part 3 (1/2)
”What . . . what kind of mother are are you?” you?”
”The mother of a people,” she said, looking toward the guard in the shadows. ”Now, my son.”
The guard stepped forward-and Ravilan saw the animal form of Jariad Korsin coming at him, blade drawn, the wild-eyed face of his father under jet-black hair. The teenager leapt at the prisoner, wielding a jagged vibroblade without remorse. At the last, he drew his lightsaber and cut Ravilan down in a violent flash of crimson.
”You've changed the world today,” Seelah said, stepping close to her son and confederate. He'd been key to coordinating the previous night's gambit, getting her accomplices where they needed to go. It was right that he should have part of this moment.
The boy panted, looking down at his victim. ”He's not who I want to kill.”
”Be patient,” Seelah said, stroking his hair. ”I havebeen.” ”I havebeen.”
Tilden Kaah walked quietly along the darkened pathways of Tahv, only recently paved with stones. The Sith had dismissed the other Kes.h.i.+ri attendants earlier in the morning, when the excitement began; he had been one of the last to leave. The streets, usually peopled with merrymakers even at this hour, were alarmingly still.
He only saw one middle-aged member of the Neshtovar standing station at a crossing; stripped of his uvak years before, the figure looked bored.
Tilden nodded to the watchman and pa.s.sed into a plaza near one of the many village aqueducts. Sheets of fresh mountain water tumbled in long crescents from flumes, a cooling presence in what had become a hot night. Arriving before a wall of water, Tilden donned the robe he was carrying, raised the hood, and stepped into the downpour.
Or, rather, through it.
Tilden walked, dripping, down the dark pa.s.sage leading deep into the stone structure. He followed hushed voices to the end of a pa.s.sage. There was no light-but there was life. Tilden heard agonized chatter as he approached: the horrible news from the south had begun to arrive. The superst.i.tious Kes.h.i.+ri would probably be expected to absorb the horror quietly, a voice said from the shadows. The Destructors would probably be blamed.
”It is done,” Tilden spoke to the darkness. ”Seelah has rid the Skyborn of the Fifty-seven. Of the people not like them, only the b.u.mpy man, Gloyd, remains.”
”Seelah doesn't suspect you?” returned a husky fe-male voice from the blackness. ”She doesn't read yourmind read yourmind?”
”She doesn't think I'm worth it. And I speak of nothing but the old legends. She thinks me a fool.”
”She can't tell our great scholars from our fools,”
said a male voice.
”None of them can,” said another. ”Good. Let's keep it that way. Seelah has done us a favor, reducing their numbers. She may do more.” A blinding flash appeared as an old Kes.h.i.+ri man lit a lantern. There were several Kes.h.i.+ri there, huddled in the cramped s.p.a.ce-their attentions not on Tilden, but on the figure stepping from the shadows behind him. Tilden turned to recognize the woman who had first addressed him.
”Stay strong, Tilden Kaah. With your help-and with the help of all of us here-the Kes.h.i.+ri will finish the job.” Anger glistened in Adari Vaal's eyes. ”I brought this plague upon us. And I will end it. And I will end it. ” ”
Read on for an excerpt from
Star Wars: Fate of the Jedi: Backlash
by Aaron Allston Published by Del Rey Books
The rainforest air was so dense, so moist that even roaring through it at speeder- bike velocity didn't bring Luke Skywalker any physical relief. His speed just caused the air to move across him faster, like a greasy scrub- rag wielded by an overzealous nanny- droid, drenching all the exposed surfaces of his body.
Not that he cared. He couldn't see her, but he could sense his quarry, not far ahead: the individual whose home he'd crossed so many light- years to find.
He could sense much more than that. The forest teemed with life, life that poured its energy into the Force, too much to catalogue as he roared past. He could feel ancient trees and new vines, creeping predators and alert prey. He could feel his son Ben as the teenager drew up abreast of him on his own speeder-bike, eyes shadowed under his helmet but a compet.i.tive grin on his lips, and then Ben was a few meters ahead of him, dodging leftward to avoid hitting a split- forked tree, the recklessness of youth giving him a momentary speed advantage over Luke's superior piloting ability.
Then there was more life, big big life, close ahead, with malicious intent- life, close ahead, with malicious intent- From a thick nest of magenta- flowered underbrush twice the height of a man, just to the right of Luke's path ahead, emerged an arm, striking with great speed and accuracy. It was humanlike, gnarly, gigantic, long enough to reach from the flowers to swat the forward tip of Luke's speeder bike as he pa.s.sed.
Disaster takes only a fraction of a second. One instant Luke was racing along, intent on his distant prey and enjoying moments of compet.i.tion; the next, he was headed straight for a tree whose trunk, four meters across, would bring a sudden stop to his travels and his life.
He came free of the speeder- bike as it rotated beneath him from the giant creature's blow. He was still headed for the tree trunk. He gave himself an adrenaline-boosted shove in the Force and drifted another couple of meters to the left, allowing him to flash past the trunk instead of into it; he could feel its bark rip at the right shoulder of his tunic. A centimeter closer, and the contact would have given him a serious friction burn.
He rolled into a ball and let senses other than sight guide him. A Force shove to the right kept him from smacking into a much thinner tree, one barely st.u.r.dy enough to break his spine and any bones that hit it. He needed no Force effort to shoot between the forks of a third tree. Contact with a veil of vines slowed him; they tore beneath the impact of his body but dropped his rate of speed painlessly. He went cras.h.i.+ng through a ma.s.s of tendrils ending in big- petaled yellow flowers, some of which reflexively snapped at him as he plowed through them.
Then he was bouncing across the ground, a dense layer of decaying leaves and other materials he really didn't want to speculate about.
Finally he rolled to a halt. He stretched out, momen-tarily stunned but unbroken, and stared up through the trees. He could see a single shaft of sunlight penetrating the forest canopy not far behind him; it illuminated a swirl of pollen from the stand of yellow flowers he'd just crashed through. In the distance, he could hear the roar of Ben's speeder bike, hear its engine whine as the boy put it in a hard maneuver, trying to get back to Luke.
Closer, there were footsteps. Heavy, ponderous footsteps.
A moment later, their origin, the owner of that huge arm, loomed over Luke. It was a rancor, humanoid and bent.
The rancors of this world had evolved to be smarter than those elsewhere. This one had clearly been trained as a guard and taught to tolerate protective gear. It wore a helmet, a rust- streaked cup of metal large enough to serve as a backwoods bathtub, with leather straps meeting under its chin. Strapped to its left fore-arm was a thick durasteel round s.h.i.+eld that looked ridiculously tiny compared to the creature's enormous proportions but was probably thick enough to stop one or two salvos from a military laser battery.
The creature stared down at Luke. Its mouth opened and it offered a challenging growl.
Luke glared at it. ”Do you really want to make me angry right now? I don't recommend it.”
It reached for him.
SEVERAL DAYS EARLIER.
Empty s.p.a.ce Near Kessel It was darkness surrounded by stars-one of them, the unlovely sun of Kessel, closer than the rest, but barely close enough to be a ball of illumination rather than a dot-and then it was occupied, suddenly inhabited by a s.p.a.ce yacht of flowing, graceful lines and peeling paint. That was how it would have looked, a vessel dropping out of hypers.p.a.ce, to those in the arrival zone, had there been any witnesses: nothing there, then something, an instantaneous transition.
In the bridge sat the ancient yacht's sole occupant, a teenage girl wearing a battered combat vac suit. She looked from sensor to sensor, uncertain and slow because of her unfamiliarity with this model of s.p.a.ce-craft. Too, there was something like shock in her eyes.
Finally satisfied that no other s.h.i.+p had dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce nearby, or was likely to creep up on her in this remote location, she sat back in her pilot's seat and tried to get her thoughts in order.