Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [95]
Leia had shivered, as the memory vision died: Shivered to think of all that ancient learning, all the techniques and knowledge that Luke had been so painstakingly trying to jigsaw together for years, sunk in the mucky well of the Hutt’s indolent mind. All that unlimited power, put, not to evil use, as Vader and Palpatine had put it, but to the service of utter pettiness, even as he could think of enslaving her for no better purpose than to regain his rule over defenseless farmers or to beat an old rival who had no more actual power than he.
The lightsaber weighed heavy in her hand. You must learn to use your powers, Luke had said. We need champions of the Force. There aren’t so many of us that we can afford to choose.
But every time she thumbed the toggle, every time the cold, clear sky-hued blade hummed to life, Leia saw only shadows: the shadow of Vader. The shadow of Palpatine. The shadows of her own anger, her own impatience, and the righteous certainties she had come to distrust. And now, the moldy shadows of Beldorion and the pettiness of greed.
The shadows of the future she feared, when Anakin, Jacen, Jaina—those three incalculable fragments of her body and her life—came to the age when they would choose either the light or the dark.
Still, at the moment she had no other option. She activated the blade, and pushed open the discreet access hatch that led into the service stairs.
Something she couldn’t see clearly whipped out of sight down the first curve of the flight. The smell of drochs was choking. The dim glow of the lightsaber’s blade showed her only the faintest of outlines a meter around her, the steep little wedge-shaped stairs—cut into the rock of the mesa itself—the descending curve of the ceiling close over her head. Right hand clutching the weapon’s haft, left hand touching the centerpost of the stairs, she moved downward, the scald of adrenaline cold fever in her veins. She didn’t know what she’d do if she reached the garage to find one of the synthdroid servants on guard there or if there were no landspeeders to steal. From the high balcony outside her room she had looked west and north as far as she could and had seen nothing but the wastelands of crystal mountains and endless, glittering plains.
There might, of course, be a resort casino and greenputt playing fields a hundred meters south of this place. She could almost hear her friend Callista’s wry, soft comment, and her heart ached with the hope that Luke would somehow find her, here on this world. But I wouldn’t bet the rent on it. Just the memory of the kind of thing Callista would say made her smile, the ironic image giving her courage in the darkness.
She stopped.
There was something sitting on the step ahead of her, just beyond the range of the cold blade’s light.
It was about the size of a pittin, sitting upright twenty or thirty centimeters high—glistening, crablike, cocking its long eyestalks at her with malign awareness. Sitting upright. Waiting for her.
Leia took another step, and extended the blade.
The thing swayed back. In the dense shadows it was extremely difficult to make out what it looked like, but glancing up, Leia saw that there were other things, things like long-legged spiders splayed out on the ceiling and walls, things like short-legged slugs that scooted along the walls, catching and eating the huge drochs that rustled in the shadows. As she watched, the upright thing on the step bent and turned, extruding what looked like a single spiky limb from itself to pounce on a particularly gross droch, catching it in a pincer that seemed to alter in shape and transform into a gulping mouth. For a moment she heard it purr, a soft little thrum of