Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [14]
He stared out across the long wastes of dune and salt pan and harsh, pebbled reg, formless in the dark and without movement.
There was danger out there. Danger vast and terrible, moving stealthily toward the isolated house.
Luke woke.
His open eyes gazed at the lofty arcs of resin and pendants woven with patterns of glass vines. Latticed flowers curtained the windows and the sun-globes among the courtyard trees made shadow-lace on the wall. Though it was deep in the night, still the music of the feasting, of hundreds of weddings and joyous dances of reunion and celebration wafted on the air thick with the green scents of the jungle below, with the honey and spice and vanilla of a dozen varieties of night-blossoming plant.
Tatooine.
Why did he dream about his childhood home? Why about that night, the night he’d waked to that silence more in his heart than in the night, knowing that something was coming?
In that case it had been the Sand People, the Tusken Raiders. He’d gotten too near the fence and tripped one of the small alarms. Uncle Owen had just come out looking for him when the first, far-off groaning of the banthas was heard. If Luke hadn’t wakened when he had, the first anybody would have known would have been when the Sand People attacked the fence.
Why did he feel that huge silence, that approaching evil, tonight?
What had he sensed in that split second when his mind was open, reaching for the memories stored in Nichos’s electronic brain?
Luke got out of bed, gathered the sheet around his body as he had in the childhood he’d just experienced, and walked to the window.
All was stillness in the courtyard, save for the whisper of an unseen fountain, the night conversation of trees. A bird warbled a few notes …
The Queen had a songbird that sang in the dark.…
Han and Leia were gone. They had used Drub McKumb’s attack as an excuse, arguing concern for the safety of their children, and this the Ithorian herd leaders had understood. Of course their visit must be cut short, they must return to Coruscant in the face of possibly unpredictable attacks. Drub McKumb himself remained, under the care of Tomla El, sunk deep in his muttering dreams.
Artoo-Detoo had gone with them. His greater computing capacity would be needed more where they were going, Luke knew. And See-Threepio, fussy and particular as he was, was needed here, for the strange and difficult task that had brought Luke to Ithor in the first place: A droid communicator and translator was needed, to work with Cray Mingla and the Ithorian healers in integrating Nichos Marr back to being the man he once had been.
But it was Artoo whom Luke needed now.
Another thought came to him.
Hitching the sheet up over his shoulders, he padded to the doorway. See-Threepio, seated in the empty dining room of the Guest House, switched on the moment Luke crossed the threshold, the glow of eyes springing up like round yellow moons in the dark. Luke gestured, shook his head. “No, Threepio, it’s okay.”
“Is there something I can do for you, Master Luke?”
“Not right now. Thanks.”
The protocol droid settled back into his chair, but Luke was aware, as he descended the few steps to the outer door and crossed the terrace in the violet dark, that Threepio did not switch himself back off. For a droid, Threepio had a very human nosiness.
Like See-Threepio, Nichos Marr sat in the outer room of the suite to which Cray had been assigned, in the power-down mode that was the droid equivalent of rest. Like Threepio, at the sound of Luke’s almost noiseless tread he turned his head, aware of his presence.
“Luke?” Cray had equipped him with the most sensitive vocal modulators, and the word was calibrated to a whisper no louder than the rustle of the blueleafs massed outside the windows. He rose, and crossed to where Luke stood, the dull silver of his arms and shoulders a phantom gleam in the stray flickers of light. “What is it?”