Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [119]
“In its way,” said Callista. “In its way.”
The stab of pain, of terror, struck Leia again, the voices clamoring in her brain, and a hundred meters off the black mouth of a canyon suddenly spewed forth a whirl of dust, like sparkling smoke in the starlight. Not a breath of wind stirred, but she saw boulders, slabs of crystal and granite and basalt, leap like fish in the maelstrom, and heard the hammer and crash of them striking the canyon’s walls. Panic closed her throat. Callista sprang to the top of the parapet, barely touching the maze of beams and wire for balance, staring out across the salt-white wasteland at the sudden whirl and rise of dust from that direction that collected slabs and boulders as it came. Beneath them in the gun station, other things were falling, or hammering frenziedly against the walls.
Then the horror sank again, the voices in her mind stilled. Leia wondered why she thought they had been saying her name.
Callista stepped down, her gray-black veils stilled, though they had whipped around her as if wind-blown while she listened. “That’s too big for it to be simply Beldorion looking for you.” Her eyes were grave. “Something else is going on. This is only my opinion, you understand, but I think that the drochs become part of the brain of those who eat them. And the bigger ones, if they’re eaten, exert influence even after they’re consumed. I know the bigger drochs—the truly big ones, the size of a pittin—can control the little ones. Dzym.…”
“Callista!” Bé cried out a warning. At the same moment sudden wind erupted from below the parapet, pouring out of the canyons all around the gun station. Grit ripped Leia’s face, chunks of gravel and flying arrowheads of broken crystal gouged her cheeks and forehead. Above them and on all sides the beams and timbers of the defensive works began to shake, wire and rivets groaning and writhing like live things. Scarred face cut by shrapnel, arms covered with drochs digging into his flesh, the Listener emerged from the doorway of the tower and ran to where Callista stood, even as the grenade launchers, the stacks of pellet guns and spears, were sent sprawling by the kick of some giant, invisible foot. One of the flamethrowers began to spout fire. Be caught it up, hurled it over the parapet—Leia saw it flare like a torch on its way down before it exploded, halfway down the face of the tower. While other Therans grabbed metal cable that fell from the beams, snaking and snatching at them, Callista knocked ammunition loads and power-cores out of every weapon she could lay hands on, hurled them after the flamethrower into space. One exploded seconds after it left her hands, and by the reflected glare Leia saw the other woman’s face, calm and weirdly peaceful in the whirlwind of her long dark hair.
Leia stooped, caught up a blaster rifle whose whole chamber glowed violent red, flung it over the parapet. Visibility was down to almost nothing with the dust, and the violence of the storm was fast tearing the swaying beams free. A coil of razor wire sprang loose and lashed across Leia’s back like a whip, blood soaking into her clothing as Callista dragged her to the cable the Therans had used to climb the tower.
Climbing down a cable after having scrambled up only hours ago was the last thing Leia wanted to do. But she felt the force of the horror building, not diminishing. Through the voices crying in her mind she thought she heard Luke’s voice, sensed Luke’s terror and desperation. She knew to the marrow of her bones that to remain in this place, with the forces being unleashed, might well mean death.
She swung over the parapet, wrapped her hands around the cable, icy wind ripping at her long hair and raking her back with sand through the rent in her shirt. It seemed to her she descended forever, alone in howling darkness, with flying boulders shattering against the tower walls and beams and wire raining down past her. How B© and Callista guided the