Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [96]
Movement flickered in the corner of her eye and she swung around as something dropped from the ceiling, landing on her shoulder with a wet plop. Pain stabbed through her, like a droch bite but far worse. The soft-bodied thing that had fallen on her morphed out grabbing legs, hooks that sank into her flesh as she cried out and tried to pull it loose.
Weakness. Pain in her chest. Cold and dreamy sleep.
Something else fastened on her leg. The crab thing on the steps purred louder, a sound of dreamy pleasure. She felt as if she were dropping down in a lift bound for the center of the world.
She whipped the lightsaber around in her hand, shrinking in terror from the glowing blade that she knew could take her own arm off as she touched it to the parasite on her shoulder. It frizzled horribly and the pain it felt went through her like a knife, and in her dreamy, sickened weakness she felt it die. It was like a part of her own flesh dying. She turned the blade, fried the thing on her leg, taking the pain, taking the sense of black slipping death, and moved another step down.
The crab thing scuttered ahead of her, vanishing into the dark, save for the orange sparks of its eyes. Around the curve of the stair she could see the walls moving with them, all shapes, shifting one into the other, feeding on one another but all turning as one toward her with the awareness of the light. Leia backed up, catching her heel on the stair in her weakness and almost falling. Another one, whatever they were, dropped from the ceiling onto her neck, smaller, so that both the sinking weakness of dying, and the pain of its death, were less; but they were coming after her.
Two more bites. She felt like she would faint from lack of air. The crab thing’s soft throb of delight made her long to find it, cut it to shreds, wherever it was. Her hand fumbled with the lightsaber’s hilt, pain of a different sort lancing through her arm as the tiniest edge of the blade brushed her flesh in killing another parasite. If she fell, she thought, if she lost consciousness, she would die.
Clinging to the walls, sobbing, trying to breathe, fighting not to sink into that cool welcoming sleep, she stumbled upward, fifteen steps, twenty. The crab thing was following in the darkness behind, as if relishing, reveling in her exhaustion and pain. They’ll find me, she thought. I won’t be able to make it back to my room and they’ll find me.
Seti Ashgad was away, Seti Ashgad who had warned, Skywalker will know if she dies. She had tried, again and again, to call out to Luke, to send him signals with her mind, but wasn’t sure that he had heard. The humming, singing power of the Force in this world might have drowned out everything else. Only Dzym was there, silent in this silent house. If he finds me I shall die.
She fell through the door, lay panting, cold, unable to breathe or think, while the wan particolored glow of the light-sculpture flickered over her, and the lightsaber, its blade vanished with the relaxation of her grip, glinted an inch or so from her fingers. I have to pick it up. I have to stand up. To get out of here. To get back to my room.
Dying would be easier, she thought. She wondered if Luke really would know.
At least if I died, they could appoint a successor.
As an idea it had its merits. But in the slow-sinking dimness of cold that surrounded her, she heard movement, the heavy, thick, sluglike panting of Beldorion. Somewhere near, she thought. Heading this way.
Don’t let him find me, she prayed, trying to stand. She couldn’t, but on her hands and knees she crawled, across the darkened chamber, up the endless stairs. He would take her prisoner for his own purposes, Liegeus had warned—but in time he would trade her to Dzym, as he had some other poor slave.
She thought there were parasites still on her, the pain