police look, asking each other whether he, Luke, constituted a threat of
some kind to the order and well-being of their city. He saw Grupp take in
the lightsaber at his belt and would have been willing to bet that whether
or not the policeman knew what such a thing was, he remembered that Callista
had worn one, too.
It was the Ithorian who spoke.
"She left Hweg Shul within a week of her arrival, of her own will insofar as
we know'. But whether she left in quest, or in flight, or at the behest of
another, that we cannot tell."
They had reached the Newcomer area of town, the square white houses like
truncated Imperial walkers on their stilts. The antigrav balls were all
drawn down close to the ground, and the freezing wind roared like the
vanished seas in their leaves and moaned around the permacrete rendering
towers where brope and smoor were processed into edible form.
Grupp and Snaplaunce looked Luke over one more time, bade him take care
where he walked, and strode off to the shadows under a house where they'd
left their speeder-bikes.
Luke stood for a long time, looking back toward the tangled walls and
algae-covered rocks of the Oldtimer town. Within a week of her arrival.
Eight months ago.
Whether in quest, or in fright . . .
Luke shivered in disgust and abhorrence. He would have bet anything he
possessed that, eight months ago, Taselda had tried to use Callista as her
weapon, her striking arm, as Palpatine had used Vader and Vader had tried to
use him, Luke. One of the old gangs that fought for control of this city
between the crime-boss Beldorion and another. Was that what Taselda had sunk
to, however and wherever she had come to the planet in the first place, the
planet where the Force seemed to imbue the very stones like radiant lightS.
She had tried to enslave Callista with the promises of leading her to what
she most wanted, with the illusion of belonging, of having found a home.
Callista had come seeking instruction in the Force and had found instead a
terrible example of what could happen when you did not have it, when it
decayed to almost nothing, leaving only cravings and anger and madness
behind.
And Callista had fled.
Luke shivered and, leaning against the wind, turned his steps back toward
his room above the Blue Blerd. His mind refused to release the horrible
image of Taselda, once a Jedi, now a dirty old madwoman, picking drochs off
her arms and eating them, staring at him out of the dark.
"Beldorion the Splendid sends his compliments, Your Excellency." In the
doorway, the tall synthdroid bowed. "He would be honored by your presence at
tea."
Oh, would he? Leia had to bite back the words. The ad-cube for synth-droids
had mentioned nothing about their aural and visual receptors being wired as
remote pickups so that their owners could see and hear what they did, but
Leia knew in some circles it was routinely done. The sweetblossom sometimes
made her careless, and she knew that with Dzym waiting, she had to be as
careful as if she were walking the blade of a razor.
"Will Master Ashgad be present?" She exaggerated the sweet haziness of voice
as she always did around the synthdroids or, in fact, around Liegeus--one of
her schoolmates many years ago at the Select Academy had been stoned most of
the time and the singsong quality was easy for Leia to fake. The mere fact
that no one had come in to make her drink the drugged water had told her at
least--belatedly--that the room wasn't wired; due to the effects of the drug
the possibility hadn't even occurred to her until that morning.
"I do not know', Your Excellency."
"It's just that I need to know what to wear," she murmured dreamily, for the
benefit of a possible listener.
"I do not know, Your Excellency."
Not, thought Leia, with the synthdroid's departure, that she had a whole lot
of choice.
From her post on the terrace she'd counted at least five synth-droids, but
some of them might be duplicates, so there could be more.
covered their metal armatures that was apparently connected, in some way,
with both the Death Seed and Dzym.
She wondered if it were indeed possible, as she was beginning to deduce,
that Dzym could in some way control the Death Seed. It would explain the
preciseness of the timing needed to take over the Adamantine and the
Borealis and the fact that she had survived her bout with the disease. It
explained why neither Ashgad nor Liegeus had contracted the plague, and at
the same time explained Liegeus's fear.
Or would she see some other explanation, some other detail, when her mind
was clear again?
If she lived to look at the matter with a clear mind.
Leia shivered, and began to change into her red-and-bronze gown of state,
and the heavy crimson mantle that covered it.
The synthdroid appeared a half hour later, as Leia was finishing putting up
her hair. She took note as well as she could of the directions, the layout
of the house along a corridor, down a flight of steps. There were iron blast
doors standing open near the bottom, and through them she glimpsed a vast
compound like a docking bay, looking out over the open air of the plateau's
edge. A blocky, medium-size freighter stood there, synthdroids moving around
it carrying in what looked like the components of a computer core, which
meant that construction was fairly far along. Liegeus came out, saying to
one of the synthdroids beside him, '. . . all the green wires first, then
all the red wires . . ."
and across the open permacrete his eyes met hers.
He paused, startled The synthdroid beside her said, "Please come this way
now, Your Excellency," and she realized she'd been standing in the frame of
the open blast doors; she hurried after. They turned a
corner, proceeded down another flight of steps, and the smell of Hutt rose
to meet her like a wave of heat.
"It is dreadfully slow here, dreadfully slow." Beldorion shifted his
enormous, pythonlike bulk on the dais of air duvets and cushions on which he
lay. Hutts tend to obesity as they grow older, but despite almost constant
snacking, the Splendid One retained his air of physical power and enormous
speed, completely unlike Durga the Hutt's thin and pitiful disciple Korrda,
who back on Nal Hutta had been the butt of so many jokes. Unlike many of his
species, he favored gold rings on his fingers, and in the folds of his head
flesh, and a jeweled stud in his ower lip. On a baldric of gold and reptile
leather he wore his lightsaber, the plain dark metal incongruous against the
glittering harness. "It is good of you to join me, little princess. You must
find the days weigh heavy in your room."
"They do, a little," admitted Leia, wondering what all this was leading up
to. She recalled some of the more revolting aspects of her imprisonment by
Jabba, but reasoned that even if Ashgad were ignorant of the
invitation--which she was virtually certain he was--they were still be
neath
his roof. "Master Ashgad has been very assiduous about seeing to my wants."
"Oh, and to mine too, mine too," rumbled that gluey, bottom-of-the-well
voice. "Not that I'm in anywhere near the same position as yourself, but
well . . . I have my comforts, of course, and my chef, though quite frankly,
little princess, this new fellow's not the cook Zubindi Ebsuk was.
Zubindi... ah!" He sighed revoltingly, and groped around in his porcelain
washtub of brandy for the spiky balls of marinated prabkros that floated
therein. "Now, there was a chef! I was desolate when he died. Bereft. A
Kubaz, like the new fellow--a genius at insects. 'Grant me the right
hormones, the right enzymes to inject,' he used to say, 'and I will
transform a sand flea into the center course of an Imperial feast." And he
could, you know." The deep crimson eyes fixed on her. "He could."
He rumbled deep in his belly, and she felt the touch of his mind on hers.
Faint and weak, but there, subtly drawing at her will. She felt herself in
danger of becoming hypnotized by those scarlet orbs and looked away. With
that much sweetblossom in her system it was difficult not to submit her mind
to his dominance.
"Ashgad, now . . . he's made himself the champion of these Newcomers, but
what is that? When I ruled Hweg Shul, all the people came to me with their
problems, that I could render judgment. And my judgments were just to all,
you know." The red eyes caught hers again, held them. "I was the better
ruler--the stronger as well."
It was an effort to look away. "I'm sure you were."
He chuckled again, and slithered one tiny yellow hand around among the satin
cushions, almost absentmindedly plucking forth a droch nearly the size of
the tip of Leia's finger, which he popped into his mouth and cracked
absently with his tongue. "He couldn't have taken over from me if I hadn't
been tired. That's all it was. All that fighting with that Taselda woman. It
wore me out. Now taste this, little one."
He extended his hand, and across the room a beaten-silver plate stirred
where it lay on the sideboard of blackwood and crystal, then lifted and
floated across to them. It had almost reached them when it tipped in midair
and fell. Even dazed with the effects of the blossom, Leia's reflexes were
quick enough to let her dive from the pillows and catch it. It contained
roulades of some sort surrounding a bed of what smelled like petroleum
by-products, topped with a weird blue thing like an enormous berry. In a
lifetime of diplomatic banquets--admittedly brief--Leia had never seen the
like.
"Who was Taselda?" she asked, handing him the plate.
"A former colleague." He plucked the berry from the top of the dish.
"She and I came to this world together--oh, many years ago. But she grew
jealous of the reverence in which the local population held me and of my
greater skills--she couldn't even manufacture the, ah, basic tools of our
order. She did everything in her power to discredit me.
Pinpricks, mostly, but annoying just the same. Henchmen trying to break into
my palace, that sort of thing. Even after I came to live with Ashgad. Now,
my dear, tell me if this is not the most exquisite taste in the galaxy."
Leia picked up the fruit knife and fork from the small table nearby, cut a
section from the berry, and watched as Beldorion slurped down
the rest with Rabelaisian enthusiasm before she ate her own fragment.
She wished at once that she'd taken a larger hunk, because it was delicious,
both sweet and meaty, juicy and subtly chambered.
"Zubindi used to grow them three times this size," Beldorion said with a
sigh. "And of a flavor to make this seem a cast husk by comparison.
Would you believe it, childS. It's a common Rodian kelp gnat, raised on
growth enzymes and kept alive and growing for a year instead of the day of
its natural life span. Zubindi could keep them going for five years, turn
them into a whole different life form! They'd sing and whistle and move
around on little tentacles they developed toward the end of that last year
of life. Heaven knows what they would have been, had he been able to prolong
them further! And the way he could torture britteths! Britteth flesh, as you
must know, improves with the enzymes secreted when they die in pain . . .
ah! Sometimes I think I shall never get over his death."
He groped in his brandy bowl for another prabkro, and shed a sentimental
tear. Leia tactfully took a tiny bite of one of the roulades.
Kubaz chefs were famous through the galaxy for injecting insect life forms
with growth enzymes and gene-splicing them in quest of never and more
perfect designer foodstuffs, so it was anyone's bet what these actually
contained.
"What brought you here in the first place." asked Leia.
He shook his great head, narrow eyes like cabochon jewels peeking out at her
from beneath heavy lids. "I think you know," he said, and his great voice
sank to a basso murmur, like the mutter that presages typhoon winds. His
long, purplish tongue slopped around the edges of his mouth, questing for
stray droplets of juice, then vanished within.
"I think you've felt it--that light. That ocean of brightness that fills the
universe; that fills each of our Order with light.
Travelers' tales--old log books. They said it was here. But you know that."
His eyes held hers again, inescapable. "Now a young lady of
your--particular--talents might find herself needing allies in a situation
like this. Ashgad can't be trusted, you know, little one.
And he was never that good a ruler." He held out one small gold-ringed hand,
and Leia found herself unable to pull away.
From the doorway a deep, very quiet voice said, "At least he never sold one
of his slaves to Dzym."
Beldorion swung around, hissing; Leia sprang back and pulled her gaze away.
Liegeus stood in the doorway, graying hair hanging down in his eyes, broken
out of his fear, thought Leia, by anger. For a moment he only stood there,
looking at the two of them, then he stepped lightly down and crossed to the
dais.
Softly, Beldorion said, "Have a care, philosopher." The whole terrible
length of him twitched, the great seven-foot tail creeping back and forth
like a separate, angry being as his red eyes narrowed. "Upon another
occasion I told you I do not brook interference."
Liegeus hesitated for a moment, his dark eyes widening with some evil
memory. Then he came forward again and took Leia by the hand.
"What did he offer you, my dear?" His voice was steady, but she felt his
fingertips cold, and shaking a little in hers. "Partnership in ruling this
planet. Or just that he'd let you go free if you'd put him back in charge."
He raised Leia to her feet and led her back to the door. Beldorion made no
move to stop them, but as Liegeus reached to touch the opener plate Leia saw
the Hutt gesture pettishly in his direction. Liegeus gasped as if struck,
half-doubled over in agony, his free hand going to his temple. He was ashen
with shock and pain as Leia slapped the opener plate with the backs of her
&n
bsp; fingers. The door sliced open, and she led him through, stumbling blind and
clinging to the wall for support.
They were halfway down the corridor, opposite the blast doors that led into
the docking bay, before Liegeus straightened up and drew a shaky breath.
"Migraine," he managed to say through lips drained of color and blood. "He
does that--sometimes--when I beat him at ho-logames, too. Sometimes--worse
than that."
He shook his head, his hand stealing to his throat, cast a quick glance at
the open blast doors, and putting a hand behind her elbow led her rather
rapidly toward the stairs. "Did he try to influence your mind?
Don't trust him, my dear."
"And I suppose I should trust Ashgad?"
Liegeus looked away.
They mounted the stairs in silence, passed down the corridor toward the
doors of her room. He had punched in the code--carefully keeping his body
between her and the pad--before he said, "He doesn't keep his promises. Even
should he do so, he couldn't protect you from Dzym, and he could not defeat
Ashgad. Even years ago, when Ashgad first reached this planet, Beldorion was
no match for him."
Leia looked up, startled. "But the original Ashgad . . ." she began, and
their eyes met. Liegeus looked away, and she could see by the flinch of his
mouth that, still disoriented from the migraine, he'd said more than he
meant. He ushered her gently into her room and, stepping quickly out, closed
the door between them.
Leia groped blindly for the head of her bed, sat down, weak in the knees.
She felt light-headed from thirst and a little ill from the struggle with
Beldorion; glancing in the direction of the water pitcher, she got to her
feet, carried it outside to the terrace, and dumped all the remaining water
over the railing. Right now, her thirst was too great, and she might forget
later that she should not drink.
She needed her mind clear. Is it because of the sweetblossom; she wondered.
Did Liegeus mean something else, and I'm reading this into it because I'm
drugged? Is there some other real explanation?
But the only one she could think of for Liegeus's words--the only conclusion
she could draw--was that the man who had proclaimed himself the son of Seti
Ashgad, the Emperor Palpatine's old rival for Senatorial power, was in fact
the man himself.
"Okay, what have we got?" Han Solo swung himself down the ladder from the