Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [82]
“It doesn’t look as if anything here’s been disturbed for a million years,” the Princess murmured in awe. All her worries and uncertainties had been dissolved by the actual sight of the legendary temple.
Luke was moving rapidly from port to port. Now he turned to look back at her and when he did so, his eyes were shining. “You realize, Leia, that Vader isn’t here? He isn’t here! We’ve beaten him!”
“Take it easy, Luke boy,” Halla advised him cautioningly. “We can’t be certain of that.”
“I can. I’m certain.” He urged Hin out of the way, mounted the turret ladder and exited from the crawler. It slowed to a stop. When Leia emerged from the turret top he was already walking confidently toward the temple entrance.
“He’s not here!” he shouted back to her. “There’s no sign of a crawler or anything else.”
“We still have to find the crystal,” Halla called out to him as she followed Leia to the ground. But Luke’s enthusiasm was contagious. She found herself forgetting the Dark Lord, forgetting her own fears and last-minute trepidations.
Here was the temple of Pomojema, the temple she’d been trying to reach for years. Hin and Kee flanked her as they moved toward the entranceway. Threepio and Artoo remained to guard the crawler.
Despite Luke’s assurance that they were alone here, everyone kept a worried eye on the drifting fog. Anything imaginable and many things unimaginable could spring out of that cloaking haze at any minute.
Luke was waiting impatiently, standing on the topmost block of the rubble in the entrance. “It’s light inside,” he told them, after peering inside. His gaze went higher and he squinted. “Part of the roof’s caved in, too, but it looks solid enough.”
“Go ahead, boy,” Halla urged him, “but quietly quiet.”
“That’s all right,” he said. Now that they had actually gained the temple, he wasn’t about to steal the old woman’s dream. This was her right as much as his. So he waited until the others had joined him. In a few moments all were standing silently inside the ancient structure.
There were two places above where the soaring, domed roof had fallen in. They admitted sufficient light to illuminate the temple’s interior. Piles of broken stone lay splattered beneath each ragged hole.
Jungle growth had penetrated inside. Lianas and other parasitic plants lay everywhere, extending their tenacious embrace into all corners of the building. They spiraled skyward on the cylindrical bodies of towering obsidian pillars. These unyielding supports boasted intricate carved patterns and designs, whose meaning none now alive could properly appreciate.
Each swimming in his or her own thoughts, the five walked across the spacious floor toward the far side of the temple. A colossal statue was seated there against the dark wall. It represented a vaguely humanoid being seated on a carved throne. Leathery wings which might have been vestigial swept out in two awesome arcs to either side of the figure. Enormous claws thrust from feet and arms, the latter clinging to the ends of armrests on the throne. It had no face below slanted, accusing eyes—only a mass of Medusian, carved tentacles.
“Pomojema, god of the Kaiburr,” Halla whispered, without knowing why she was bothering to whisper. “It almost seems familiar, somehow.” She chuckled nervously. “That’s crazy, of course.”
Then she was pointing excitedly, voice and hand trembling alike with the wonder of it. “It’s there … I knew it, I knew it!”
In the center of the gray stone chest of the statue lay a dimly pulsing light the hue of vanadinite.
“The crystal,” breathed the Princess softly.
Halla did not hear her. Mind and gaze remained focused on an obsession become attainable.
Luke stopped, his eyes on the movement to the left of the leering stone figure. It was dark back there, and there was no telling how far the darkness stretched.
Then they all began backing away slowly. Halla’s pistol was the first to be aimed.
The creature moving out from behind the statue had a wide, wide mouth fringed with short sharp teeth now open in a batrachian