• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

The frown departed Taalon’s face, taking with it the glimpse it had offered of the ugliness hidden beneath his flawless features. He and Luke were working together only because they both knew that nobody would learn anything if they had to spend their time fighting. So far, during the two days it had taken to clear the jungle from the ruin and reclaim the dead from the planet’s carnivorous plant life, the High Lord had been surprisingly cooperative—a sure sign that he intended to kill Luke the instant he decided his Jedi counterpart had lost his usefulness.

After a moment, Taalon said, “It could mean many different things to my people, depending on what it is. If it is a serpent, then it’s associated with cunning and sudden death. A vine would be associated with patience and slow death, a tentacle with destiny and inescapable death, a rope with bondage and disgraceful death, a root with rejuvenation and feeding off death, an entrail with instinct and death by torture—”

“Thanks, I’ve got the idea,” Luke interrupted. It had not occurred to him that the carving might represent an entrail, but he had to admit that some sections did seem to have a certain smooth, slightly flattened shape. “Do your people have any symbols not associated with death?”

“Death is what awaits us all when the Destructors return.” Taalon turned to Luke. “Do you know of the Destructors, Master Skywalker?”

“Why don’t you enlighten me?” Luke’s reply was designed to avoid a direct answer. He knew enough about Lost Tribe politics to know that Vestara would pay in blood for anything she had let slip—at least accidentally. “The name certainly sounds ominous.”

“With good reason, Master Skywalker—with very good reason.”

Taalon went on to explain what Luke already knew: that according to Keshiri legend, a species of mysterious Destructors came back every few eons to wipe out civilization and return the galaxy to its natural, primitive state. When the original Sith had crash-landed on their world more than five millennia in the past, the native Keshiri had greeted them as the legendary Protectors, who were destined to save the world when the Destructors came again—a prophecy now embraced by the Sith themselves.

Taalon pointed at the sinuous carvings on the column, then continued, “These symbols, as you call them, have always been associated with the Destructors.”

“You think Abeloth was a Destructor?” Luke asked, astounded. “And you still tried to make a prisoner of her?”

“There was no time to examine the artwork, if you’ll recall.” Taalon pointed toward the interior wall of the arcade, where a long row of three-meter doorways led into a series of cavernous habitation cells. Inside, Luke knew from their earlier explorations, were Wookiee-sized benches and stone bunks large enough to sleep rancors. “But just because Abeloth tried to hide in a ruin adorned with such artwork doesn’t mean she is a Destructor. She seems rather too small to belong in this place, would you not agree?”

Luke faced the far side of the courtyard, where Gavar Khai was simultaneously tending the funeral pyre and keeping a watchful eye over Abeloth’s corpse. Hidden beneath a blood-soaked robe being used as a death shroud, her body was about the size of a normal human woman—a bit on the tall side, perhaps, but too small to justify the huge furniture in the habitation cells.

Finally, Luke said, “At least in that form, she is.”

He turned back toward Taalon and found him facing the center of the courtyard, where the Font of Power was gurgling inside its pall of yellow steam. Luke could feel that it was imbued with the same dark Force energy he had sensed the first time he had come here, in the company of his Mind Walking guides from Sinkhole Station. Whatever the fountain’s connection to Abeloth might be, he knew that its dark power would be an irresistible temptation to Taalon.

“You may be right, Lord Taalon. This ruin wasn’t where Abeloth lived.” Luke glanced toward the top of the ridge, where her lair was located. “We might