Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [122]
And in his mind he could almost hear Obi-Wan’s voice whispering, Trust your feelings.
And his instinct—he hoped completely detached from a desire not to be sucked of life by the filthy swarm flowing toward him across the dirty permacrete floor—was clear.
He smote them with the Force, clearing the way like a maniac broom. Half-dragging, half-carrying Liegeus, Luke descended the stair, shaky himself and sickened with weakness, feeling the drochs still buried in his legs and arms drawing strength from him, feeding the strength into the monstrous creature, human only in form, that went by the name of Dzym.
The hangar doors were locked. Luke dumped the unconscious body he carried into the sleek black Star Destroyer-like Mobquet, ran the green laser blade of his lightsaber through the lock, and shoved and hauled the door open far enough to admit passage of the speeder. Mobquet Chariots started up with a coded ignition, but Luke hadn’t tinkered with speeders for twenty-five years to no purpose—Han joked that Luke could hot-wire an Imperial torpedo-platform with one of Leia’s hairpins.
Then they were running through the night, under the stars.
The Theran riders took refuge in a grotto deep in the hills, an enormous geode of amethyst away from the storm’s heart. Two or three Therans illuminated glowrods or torches, and the glare of them twinkled on the rough jewels around them, the shadows moving strangely through the fugitive brightness. There must, thought Leia, be something in what Callista said about the crystals generating a radiance that killed the drochs. There were none in the cave.
After a long time of silence, hearing the boulders crashing like pebbles in the surf against the canyon walls outside, Leia asked softly, “Who is Dzym? What is he? He’s keeping Ashgad alive, isn’t he?”
Callista nodded. “As he’s kept Beldorion alive—and Splendid—all these years. I think he had dealings with Taselda, too. The original split between them may have been on his account.” Torchlight splintered over the faceted pocket of jewels in which they sat, made strange brightness over her thin face, in her colorless eyes.
“He’s the key to Ashgad’s deal with Loronar, the key to your kidnapping along with poor old Liegeus’s ability to cut a perfect holofake: the one who could set the drochs to drink the life out of the ships’ crews at a certain moment and no sooner. He controls them—drinks life through them.”
“And he enjoys it,” said Leia softly, remembering Dzym’s face. “That’s what he wanted me for, wasn’t it? Because I’m a Jedi. So he could touch the Force.”
“I don’t think that was conscious in him,” she said. “He couldn’t use it, really, or not use it to any degree of skill. He just wants that life, that addition to his own life. He thinks he can control them all, no matter how far they spread. I don’t know, but I think he’s wrong. I believe it’s only a matter of time—and not very much time—before they get far enough from him to slip from his control, before they breed in such numbers that they’ll be controlling one another, not obeying him. But he doesn’t believe that. And at heart he doesn’t really care. All he wants is to get off this planet, into more fertile worlds.”
“That doesn’t tell me who he is,” said Leia. “Or how he can do this.”
“He can do this,” said Callista, “because Dzym is a hormonally altered, mutated, and vastly overgrown two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old droch.”
“Hills,” whispered Liegeus. “Up the canyon. Death Seed—takes less than half an hour …”
The cold within Luke was unmistakable, terrifying. He couldn’t even touch it with the Force, because its molecular structure was so precisely his own. He was surprised that his voice sounded so calm. “Can we outrun it? Get clear of his range?”
“Have to … cross the galaxy … to do that. No.” Dzym’s victim struggled to sit up,