Star Wars_ Splinter of the Mind's Eye - Alan Dean Foster [89]
Yet Vader was no threat to them. That was enough for him now. He was sobbing as he dragged his exhausted body across the floor. “Leia, Leia!” Reaching her, he extended a questing palm, touched her forehead. She opened her eye and looked back at him. His tears fell uncontrollably as he probed gingerly at the terrible scars Vader’s saber had left on her body, her face.
“Luke?” she breathed, barely audible. She smiled at him, painfully. Taking her hand in his own, he slumped to the ground at her side.
At the top of the rubble blocking the temple entrance, Halla stopped to peer behind her. She saw the two figures lying hand in hand in the middle of the temple floor. Of the Dark Lord of the Sith there was no sign. She’d seen him fall down the sacrificial well of Pomojema’s worshipers. She was free to go.
Her gaze turned downward, to stare into the glowing abyssal crimson of the Kaiburr crystal, then moved out to peer into the fog and mist of Mimban.
The personnel carrier they’d arrived in waited out there. Hidden in it lay Kee, felled forever by a blow from Darth Vader. Luke’s two ’droids sat motionless and deactivated nearby.
“Damn,” she murmured to herself. “Aw, damn!”
Then she was scrambling down the pile of broken stone … back into the temple.
“Luke!” She propped the limp form up, stared into the somnolent face. “Luke boy? Come on, you’re frightening old Halla.”
Eyes opened, turned to squint at her. “Halla?”
She licked her lips, looked skyward, then placed the crystal in his lap, shoving it at him as if it were burning here. “Here. I can’t do much with it. I’m a faker, a charlatan of the Force, not a master. So I could do bigger and better parlor tricks … I’d waste it, and the Empire would find me soon anyway.”
Luke moved his gaze from her down to the pulsing silicate in his lap. “The crystal magnifies the Force.” He chuckled, choked. “What good is that now?”
“I don’t know!” she shouted angrily. “You wanted it, well there it is, dammit. What more do you want of me? What more can I do?” She shook both hands at him, furious at her own helplessness.
“Nothing, Halla.” He smiled gently at her. “There’s nothing more to be done, I guess.” He reached down, fondled the crystal. “It feels warm … good.”
“You’re crazy,” she snorted. “It’s a cold hunk of rock.”
“No … it’s warm,” he insisted. “Funny kind of warmth.”
Unconscious, he fell back, both hands still clamped tightly around the crystal.
Halla stood, turned away. “Stupid old woman,” she cursed herself. “Stupid, selfish old woman. I should have helped them when it might have done some good. I should have—” She hesitated, frowned uneasily. Was it growing lighter in the shadowed temple? She turned, and her eyes bulged.
Luke’s motionless form was enveloped in a rich, red bath of light. In his hands the crystal shone with a brilliance unnatural. Nor was the light still. It shifted, fluttered, ran over him like a live thing. It sought out every extremity, each finger and follicle, like the St. Elmo’s fire of old on the rigging of a sailing ship.
After several long, rapturous moments the radiant envelope shrank, sucked up by the crystal which resumed its normal coloring.
Luke sat up so abruptly that Halla was unable to repress a short screech. He blinked once, looked at her. Hesitantly, as though she were about to greet a ghost, she edged toward him.
“Luke boy?” she husked querulously.
“Halla. What happened? I …” His head turned, his eyes coming to rest on the silent pit which had swallowed Darth Vader. “I remember that. I also remember … Halla, I died.”
“You must have found it boring,” she replied without smiling. “It was the crystal … something in the crystal. The Force …”
“Don’t remember,” he insisted, shaking his head dully. Then he reached down and touched the Princess’ shoulder. “Leia?”
“You were holding the crystal,” Halla