Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [58]
Not here, thought Luke.
It was something he had not considered: That in eight months, Callista would have ceased to be the woman he had known.
She had lasted thirty years inside the gunnery computer on the dreadnought Eye of Palpatine. Could she have deteriorated so quickly in less than one?
But whoever it was, whose strength in the Force he had felt, was here.
The door opened before he knocked on it. The woman standing on the low slab of crystal before its threshold wasn’t Callista.
She smiled, and held out her hands to him, the smile transforming her to beauty. “Another one,” she said softly. “Thank all goodness.”
It was impossible to tell her age. Luke knew immediately she wasn’t young, in spite of the porcelain perfection of her face. It was like a very good reproduction of youth that succeeded only in not looking old. She lacked the wrinkles and lines of human sorrow and delight around her mouth, the crow’s-feet at the corners of the eyes that made Leia’s so wise, lacked the print of even the smallest thought on her forehead. Her hair was raven black and hadn’t been washed in weeks. Neither had her trim, high-breasted, long-legged body or the dingy green dress that wrapped it.
“Welcome.” She drew him into the dense shadows within the first of the house’s many rooms. Her hand was like that of a goddess who bit her nails. “Welcome. I am Taselda. Of the Knights.” Her eyes met his, jewel blue under the flawless brows. “But then, you knew that.”
Luke looked around the shabby darkness. Most of the transparisteel had been boarded shut and the room was illuminated only by a string of old-fashioned glow-bulbs tacked to the ceiling. His heart went out to her in compassion. Obi-Wan Kenobi had hidden himself for years in the obscure deserts of Tatooine, mocked at as a crazy old hermit, willingly surrendering the use of his Jedi powers that he might guard the last, chosen hope of the Knights. But he, thought Luke, had had the disciplines of the Force to help him bear it. This woman had been here for who knew how long, unable to use her powers for fear of harming the innocent in another Force storm. From the Newcomers she must have heard that Palpatine was dead, unable to harm her …
“I’m called Owen,” he said, realizing that Skywalker was probably a name anathema to most of the old Jedi still alive after Vader’s persecutions. “And I’m looking for someone.”
“Ah.” The blue eyes smiled again, wise and twinkling. She crossed to a cupboard and took out a pair of goblets, old Corellian glasswork, tulip shaped, and very valuable. She flicked a droch off the base of one. Past her shoulder, Luke had seen that the cupboard skittered with them. She had a bottle of wine hanging out one of the few unboarded windows into a shady courtyard’s chill, which she retrieved and poured. When she pushed aside the shutters and let a bit of pallid light into the room Luke saw that her white arms were boltered with droch bites. The smell of the insects was fusty-pungent above that of dirt and uncleanness. “Callista.”
“You’ve seen her?” His whole body, his whole being, was a shout of triumph; he couldn’t keep it out of his voice.
“How not?” smiled Taselda. “I am her teacher now in the ways of the Force.”
The wine was from Durren and not very good. It had been cut with fermented algae sugar a number of times and had all variety of odd backtastes, but Luke sipped it, his eyes on the woman before him.
“Is she here? How is she?” he asked softly. “How does she look?”
Taselda brushed back a lock of hair from her forehead, and behind the