Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [121]
Dzym put his foot down hard on the victim’s chest. “I thought we had an understanding about this, Liegeus,” he said in his soft voice. “I thought you knew what the boundaries of Seti Ashgad’s house were to be. Tell me that you knew.”
The man Liegeus whispered, “I knew,” while Dzym closed his eyes again, and lifted the still-wriggling superdroch to his face, where he bit and chewed at it with his mouth for a time, murmuring in his throat and sighing while brown matter ran down his chin and neck. In time he dropped the thing, and smiled, his blotted mouth like nothing human.
“They’re so good, when they get that big,” he murmured. “So sweet. Such a deep rush of life, such a concentration—though that little fellow was getting a wee bit big for his boots.” He went to his knees at Liegeus’s side, and the man tried to roll away from him, bringing his arm up over his face for protection.
Dzym reached out with his bare, dripping mouth-hand, and drew him back over. “As I suspect you are, my friend.”
Liegeus made a weak noise of protest, whispered, “Please … Ashgad … I haven’t finished installing the launch vectors …” but Dzym was clearly not paying any attention. He pulled off his other glove and began to stroke and caress the man’s face and arms, leaving trails of bites and gashes along the major arteries and along what Luke recognized as the energy tracks of certain healing systems, the paths of electromagnetic synapse from heart and liver and brain. Dzym’s eyes were shut in ecstasy, his head bowed forward, and Luke thought he could see restless, thrusting movements among the man’s clothing, as if there were other limbs twitching on his back and chest, other mouths gaping and closing. Liegeus wept a little, and then lay still; he whispered, “Leia …” and that decided Luke.
Lightsaber flaring to life in his hand, Luke reached out with the Force and pulled Dzym from Liegeus, as he had pulled the drochs from himself, and hurled him against the wall. But Dzym was nimble and swift. He scrambled around, twisted as he struck the wall and fell to the floor, gummed mouth parting in a hiss of rage, and for a moment Luke felt the Force used to strike at him in return.
Not an expert’s blow, not trained, but present, like poltergeist anger or the aimless psychokinesis of certain animals. Weakened as he was by the drochs, it was strong enough to knock him back against the wall. He caught his balance, sprang forward, and Dzym backed from him, pale eyes glaring, the front of his robe falling open to reveal the squirming mess of tubes and tentacles and secondary mouths beneath. The Force smote Luke again, weak and secondhand and stinking in his mind. Secondhand, absorbed from someone else, he thought.…
Then Dzym was gone. The door to the stair leading up slammed—Luke could hear the locking-rings clang over. He was readying his lightsaber to cut through the wood when a tiny breath behind him whispered, “Run. He’ll use the drochs who’ve bitten you.…”
Luke turned. The man Liegeus tried to reach out toward him, to move his bloodied hand.
“They’re his to command. They’ll be in the stair.”
Luke reached him in two strides, went to one knee at his side. “Lady Solo …”
“Gone. Fled. Looking for her—Beldorion and Ashgad. I thought I could … make good … get out … synthdroids down … thought I could find her.”
In the open doorway to the downward-leading stair there was a dark glitter along the floor, a skittering movement that turned to a slow, sluggish flow. The dense, fetid sense of a million rotted lifetimes rolled out, like the smell of clotted blood. Luke slipped his arm under Liegeus’s shoulders, pulled him to his feet. “Do you know where she might have gone?”
The lolling head rolled; the older man breathed, “Bleak Point gun station. Or a canyon in the hills. I don’t …”
“Never mind,” said Luke, breathing deep, gathering to him the strength of the Force. “We’ll find her.”
It was use the Force or die, he thought, and he wondered what they would say about it: Obi-Wan, and Callista, and Yoda. That he should die,