Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [128]
The general—his name eluded me though I knew I recognized something about him—spoke very precisely. “You are meddling with things you cannot control; things that nearly destroyed the Jedi millennia ago. We have come to ask you to abandon your evil and return to the light.”
The leader laughed slowly, his voice low and laden with contempt. “The weak always fear the strong growing up to replace them.”
“And the foolish always see themselves as strong.” The words came from my throat and I could feel my lips forming them. It almost even sounded like something I’d say, though more formal—more archaic and precise—than I would have liked.
Ylenic’s voice came gentle yet strong. “Fear marks the wrong path. We offer you freedom from your fear.”
Their leader thumbed his lightsaber to life. “And we offer you freedom as well.”
The Anzati, taller than me, darker, entirely humanoid save for the proboscises uncurling in his excitement, ignited his blue blade and closed with me. Nikkos Tyris—his name came easily to me—held his lightsaber in a guard I’d not seen before. He had his left hand on the hilt fairly close to the shimmering blade, but the blade itself extended out and down from the lower edge of his hand toward the ground. His right hand rode the lightsaber’s pommel. Holding the blade out away from his body, with his right hand at the level of his chin, he could waggle the blade back and forth in a triangle of coverage that would ward him well. This triangle style—the thought suddenly came to me like a long lost memory—favored a man who was quick, and would combine sweeping strikes at my legs with a flick of the wrist cut that would open me from groin to chin.
I knew fear, but the person I was in the dream shunted it away. I held my silvery blade in a simple guard, though I tilted the blade forward, pointing it at his throat. We circled, then he struck. His blade flicked out for my right leg. I swept my blade down to block low right, sparks flying as our blades crashed into each other. He bounced his blade up and over mine, and brought it across in a slash meant to decapitate me.
I caught the acrid stink as some of my hair melted beneath the lightsaber’s lethal caress, but I ducked the blow by a safe margin. Rotating my wrists, I swept my blade back low, through where his legs should have been, but he leaped up and away from my strike. He flipped backward through the air, displaying great ability with levitation, and landed easily four meters away from me.
His dark eyes blazed for a moment, then an invisible fist smashed into my chest, knocking me backward. He freed his right hand from his azure blade, and flicked fingers at me with the most casual of gestures. A fist-sized stone shot at me from the ground, clipping me on the left shoulder. Pain shot through my arm, leaving it numb. He laughed and hurled another stone toward me. I deflected it with my lightsaber and smiled, then another rock slammed into the left side of my head.
I went down hard, raising a small cloud of dust when I hit the ground. My lightsaber bounced out of my grasp and I didn’t see where it landed. I shook my head to try to clear it, but pain and a faint ringing made that difficult.
I could feel blood coating the left side of my face and swiped at it with the left sleeve of my tunic. I heard the crunch of gravel beneath his boots as Tyris approached. Drawing myself up into a crouch, I glanced to my right and finally saw my lightsaber lying there, two meters away. I wanted to call it to my hand, but I knew it would never come. I could dive for it, but his lightsaber would pin me to the ground before I ever got there.
“So, it is true, what they have said about the Halcyon line. You are wingclipped mynocks.” An evil smile spread across Tyris’s face as he brought his lightsaber around to display for me the tool of my destruction. “You are a line of weakness.