Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [124]
He sighed, and for a time there was no sound but the faint hissing of the speeder’s electrical system, and the occasional pops of the free-flowing circuits jumping.
“Don’t be too hard on Ashgad,” he whispered. “He’s more a slave to Dzym than I am.
“Ironic, isn’t it? That Dzym, who started out his life as an appetizer, should …”
“As a what?” asked Luke, startled.
“An appetizer.” Liegeus blinked up at him. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Forgotten …” He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the lassitude did not leave his eyes. “It was Beldorion’s greed—or I suppose one could say his gourmandism—that was his downfall. That Kubazi chef of his, Zubindi, was always experimenting with enzymatically enhancing and gene-splicing new types of insects so they’d be tastier, juicier, more fun for Beldorion to eat. Hutts like to eat sentient things, you know. They like the game of chasing them around the plate for a bit. Vile things.”
He shook his head again, and this time Luke glimpsed the echoes of ugly scenes long ago witnessed in his eyes.
“Well, Zubindi finally got the idea of enzymatically enhancing, feeding, raising a droch, mutating it in the dark, far longer than its normal lifespan. Before anyone realized what was going on, the droch had grown, and achieved intelligence, to the point where it enslaved Zubindi. It drained energy from him, but at the same time gave him back strength and energy—which goodness knows he needed, in dealing with Beldorion—in a sort of double vampirism. And in the end, of course, the droch Dzym enslaved Beldorion as well.”
He managed a faint laugh, gazing up at the stars. “It’s certainly a lesson to us all, though I’m not sure about what. And, of course, once Dzym began draining his strength, Beldorion was finished as a power in Hweg Shul. It was easy for Ashgad to take over, when he arrived on this planet. He stepped into Beldorion’s power, into his household and all his servants.… And, of course, into Dzym, too.”
Luke wondered if that was the reason the old Senator had built the house in the desert: to protect his growing son from the influence of the creature that he himself could not be rid of. And of course it hadn’t done any good.
“In fact, I’m not sure how much of Seti Ashgad is left, in that body and that brain.” Liegeus’s voice had sunk to a murmur—for a moment Luke could not tell whether he was speaking of the elder Ashgad or the younger. “Certainly not enough to go against Dzym’s will. And as the resident expert on local conditions here, it was his job to assure Getelles and the CEOs of Loronar that the drochs were in no way connected with the ancient Death Seed plague. It’s not that difficult. They truly don’t want to know. As I didn’t want to know, and managed not to know, up until seven or eight months ago.”
His breath went out in another sigh. By a flicker of the moving current, Luke saw his hand grope feebly at the glittering pebbles beneath his fingers, stir at them aimlessly. “Eventually of course the matter was pushed under my nose in unmistakable terms. I told myself I had to do ‘something’ about it, get word out ‘somehow.’ But the problem with ‘somehow’ is that it really means ‘later.’ And there was always Dzym, waiting there for me. Hungering for true life, true energy, not that pitiful low-level field that synthflesh generates, though he absorbs that if he can get nothing else. It wasn’t until Leia—Lady Solo—came, and fought so hard, worked so hard, risked everything, that I understood how completely contemptible I had become. I did not …” He hesitated. “I did not wish to appear so in her eyes. Does that seem contemptible to you?”
Luke remembered