Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [155]
And, when Luke still hesitated, the older man added gently, “I think that there is nothing further that you can do here.”
So close, thought Luke desperately. So dose. If I could just tell her …
Whatever dark the world may send …
He remembered her eyes, in the sunset light of Yavin Four’s towers. Remembered the pain in her voice, in that final message.
I have my own odyssey …
Tell her what, that would not give her still greater pain?
“No,” said Luke softly. “You’re right.”
He turned, and followed his sister and Han, the droids and Chewbacca and Liegeus, to the shuttle. At least he’d have a reason to get up in the morning, he thought wryly—now, and for quite some time to come. He would be back to this world, he knew: to bring back the Guardians, when those who went offworld to form the droch-killing apparatus returned. To bring back the remains of the synthdroids and Needles, for the Guardians to try to rehabilitate and realign after their enslavement.
To learn what he could of the Force, as the tsils understood it and of this strange civilization of timeless minds.
But he would always wonder.
He stopped at the bottom of the ramp, for one last look at the cool-glaring sun, the twilight stars, the wind-scoured sea bottoms, and wastelands of colored glass, the towering crystal tsils.
She has her own road, Liegeus had said. And he was right. Where she had to go now, Luke thought, he could not follow.
The only way in or out of the gun station tower was over the walls. A Theran was rappelling easily down on a line, dark crimson coat and gray veils striking a familiar chord: the fighter who had thrown the grenades, thought Luke, during that first battle he had seen. When the gawky, graceful figure reached the ground and walked toward Umolly Darm’s freighter, he saw the lightsaber swinging at the heavy leather belt, the long tail of malt-brown hair as she pulled loose her veils, and his heart leapt against his ribs.
She turned, at the other side of the landing ground, at the base of the freighter’s ramp. She had always known if he was looking at her, even as he had known when her eyes were on him.
For a long moment they stood in stillness. She at the threshold of her long road, he thought, and he at the beginning of his.
He raised his hand to her, Farewell.
Her shoulders relaxed, and he could feel the tension leave her, the fear that he would cross that open ground to tear anew all those too-fresh wounds by taking her in his arms.
The time was past, for that.
In her stillness he read her thought: Please understand.
I understand.
She raised her hand to him, and he could feel her smile.
The antigravs on the shuttle were so smooth that there was no need to strap in for liftoff, though once the vessel got moving Luke knew he’d be better to be sitting down. He hurried his steps, to catch up with Liegeus as they made their way to the forward lounge. The philosopher was right, he knew. Trust your instinct, Obi-Wan had said, and curiously enough, once Liegeus had spoken of loving and freedom, he could no longer deny what his instinct had been telling him.
There was a time to embrace, and there was a time to release.
Time was long.
He was at Liegeus’s heels when they stepped into the forward lounge, and the woman seated near the mist and glory of the viewport rose from her chair. “Your Excellency,” said the red-haired woman to Leia, who had preceded them in.
But she said no more. She only stood transfixed, color draining from her face and with it draining the harshness of its lines, the terrible stern bitterness that seemed as much a part of her as the skull beneath the skin.
It seemed to Luke that there was another face looking out from those bitter emerald eyes. A girl’s face, almost unrecognizable.