Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [54]
They stood like that for a timeless stretch. Luke slid his arm around her and she didn’t resist. She didn’t look yearningly up at him, either, but this was enough for him, for now at least. He was happy.
An eternity later a querulous voice bounced down the walls to them, so gently he wasn’t certain he’d heard anything at all.
“Luke, boy … are you down there?”
They exchanged glances. Luke leaned uncertainly out of the little alcove they’d sought refuge in and stared upward. Four faces were staring back down at him from high above. Two were bewhiskered and furred. One was golden and metallic.
“Halla?” An excited chittering came back to him. Hin, unmistakably. When the hysterical hooting finally died down, Halla called to him again.
“Are you two all right, Master Luke?” Threepio called down to them.
“I think so,” he shouted back. “It came down after us.”
“I thought you were behind me all the time,” came Halla’s reply. “I’m glad you’re still alive.”
“So are we,” exclaimed the Princess, her normal self-reliance flooding back rapidly. “We’ll join you in a minute.” She started out of the rock recess.
“No we won’t,” countered Luke somberly, putting out an arm to stop her. “Take a look.”
Her gaze followed his pointing arm. Where the wandrella had fallen, the walls of the pit were scraped clean and chipped away as if scoured by some huge abrasive pad. The vine spiral ladder they’d climbed down was completely gone. So was more than half the ledge.
“We’ve no way back up,” he called out to the anxious watchers above. “The vine ladder we came down was torn away. Can you make another one?”
Silence from above. For a few moments the faces moved out of sight. Luke found their absence worrying, but they finally returned.
“I wouldn’t trust any of the vines growing near here,” Halla called down to them. “The ladder you used must have been made from vines brought from some distance away. But there might be another way out.” Luke studied the smooth-sided interior of the pit.
“Another way? What are you talking about, Halla?”
“Where were you standing when the worm fell past you?”
“There’s a small recess in the wall here, at the end of a ledge,” he informed her.
“A ledge, too,” she repeated, sounding satisfied. “How big is the recessed place?”
“Big enough for both of us to stand in.”
“I thought so. You’re in a Coway shaft, Luke boy.”
“A what?” the Princess called out, frowning.
“Coway, child,” Halla repeated. “I told you there are, and were, all kinds of races coexisting on Mimban. The Coway are related to the greenies of the towns, but they’re not the least bit subservient. They live underground, which is why nobody knows a helluva lot about them. But they use the old Thrella wells for occasional access to the surface, in addition to natural sinkholes and other surface openings.”
“First Coways, now Thrella wells,” mumbled Luke, studying the emptiness below them. “What’s a Thrella well?”
“A well bored by the Thrella,” Halla replied, not unexpectedly. “They’re just called wells. Nobody knows what they were really used for, just like no one knows much about the Thrella. Maybe they built a lot of the temples, too.
“In any case, they’re long gone and the Coway are here. If you go to the back of your recess, you’ll probably find that it opens onto a passageway.”
“If it does, we’ll find it,” Luke assured her.
“The Coway don’t try to conceal their surface exits,” Halla went on. “If you can find your way out, we’ll meet you there. I’m sure I can find the nearest Coway egress.”
“Sounds good,” a hopeful Luke admitted, “except for one thing. What do we do for light? I’ve got an emergency luma on my belt, and I can always use the saber, but I don’t want to use up the charges.”
“Just find the passageway,” Halla told them confidently. “You’ll have plenty