Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [89]
The third key to surviving the inhospitable Ruusan winters was to never venture out at night. Bone-chilling temperatures, the chance of becoming lost and unable to find shelter, and even the occasional predator made risking the darkness a dangerous and foolish proposition.
Yet here Darovit was in the dead of night, his feet crunching over the wind-crusted snow. He’d left the warmth of his hut many hours behind him as he set out to see with his own eyes if the rumors he’d heard from many of his recent patients were true.
Darovit angry?
“No,” he whispered to the small green-furred bouncer hovering above him. “Just curious.”
For reasons he still didn’t fully understand, the bouncers had developed a particular fascination with him. During the day there were always two or three of them circling his domicile. And each time he left his hut at least one of the unusual creatures accompanied him.
Perhaps they felt responsible for his well-being after rescuing him from the cavern of the thought bomb. Or maybe they were drawn to him by their shared vocations: the bouncers eased the mental anguish of those suffering or in pain, and Darovit had chosen to share his healing talents with any who came to him seeking succor. It was even possible they simply found him entertaining or amusing, though in truth Darovit didn’t know if bouncers had a sense of humor.
He had quickly grown used to their constant company. They were gentle companions, and they seemed to sense when he was in the mood for conversation and when he just wished to be left alone with his thoughts. Most of the time he found their presence calm and soothing, though some bouncers were less soothing than others. The young female accompanying him now, Yuun, seemed to be more talkative than her compatriots.
Darovit home now.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
Two of Ruusan’s Three Sisters moons were waxing full tonight, their light reflecting off the silver layer of frost and the white blanket of snow that had accumulated over the past few weeks. Darovit was crouched behind a copse of trees, leaning on his walking stick for support and reaching out with the stump of his right hand to push the branches aside so he could peer through without being spotted. Through the vapor clouds of his own breath, he studied the scene that confirmed the rumors were true: the Jedi had returned to Ruusan!
Darovit had openly scoffed the first time a patient mentioned that the Republic was going to build a monument to honor those who had fallen on Ruusan. It made no sense to undertake such a project now, Darovit had argued, a decade after the battle. Yet there was no denying what he saw through the branches.
A large plot of land on the edge of the forest had been cleared of snow, revealing the frozen, scrub-covered fields beneath. The perimeter had been marked with stakes and surveyor’s chains, and the groundbreaking had already begun. The deep furrows of soil dug up by the construction droids to lay the foundations struck Darovit as a wound upon the planet itself.
Several dozen large stones were scattered about the site, each brought to Ruusan from the birth world of one of the dead Jedi the monument was meant to honor. To Darovit’s eye the alien rocks stuck out like a Wookiee in a crowd of Jawas: unwelcome interlopers defacing the Ruusan landscape.
“They have no right to be here,” he whispered angrily.
Hurting nobody, Yuun suggested.
“This land is only just now beginning to heal itself from their kriffing war,” he answered. “It’s taken ten years for the people to put this all behind them. Now the Jedi want to open old wounds.”
Senate approved. Not Jedi.
“I don’t care what the official story says. I know the Jedi are behind this. It will lead to trouble.”
Trouble?
Yuun was too young to remember the war that had ravaged her world. She hadn’t witnessed the