Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [146]
Even in the full light of a healthy planet’s daytime surface, another individual would be less fortunate: Rokur Gepta was simply impossible to come to terms with visually. He was a blur, a vagueness more psychological than perceptual in character, perhaps because his color was that of terror.
On the very rare occasions he was spoken of by others, descriptions varied: he was a malignant dwarf; a being of average though preternaturally imposing stature; a frightening giant of a figure over two meters tall, perhaps three. All accounts agreed that he was perpetually swathed in cloaks and windings of the same hue as his lifeless domain, an ashy gray from the tips of his (presumed) toes to the top of his (apparent) head. He wore a turbanlike headdress whose final lengths were wound around the place his face should be, obscuring all his features save the eyes, twin pools of whirling, insatiable, merciless voracity.
Understandably, the sorcerer had enemies, although he had outlived—often by design—the small minority of them with the capacity to do him harm. He had outlived many others as well, simply by surviving centuries of time. His long life was in grave and constant danger, however, from those few who still survived and the continually fresh crop of victims who wished him ill. And that was what produced his present quandary.
Word had been conveyed, through several layers of underlings, of an emissary, a messenger whose credentials offered a potentially profitable alliance. Should he trust the individual sufficiently to hear him out, as per request, in total privacy?
The sorcerer pondered. The risk of a personal audience was great, especially as the representative came from a principal powerful enough to preclude extensive security measures, which could be interpreted as an affront. There were limits to the precautions that could be taken, but none to the cleverness of assassins. He ought to know; he had employed enough of them himself.
Reaching a decision, he gestured with a gray-gloved hand. Feeble light began to glow within the monstrous cavern, swelling until it filled the place. Small black hairy things within the walls squeaked a protest, rustled in their niches, then settled back into troubled somnolence.
He would make up this discomfort to his pets, Gepta thought, and if the audience turned out to be less than advertised, so would the emissary make restitution, most slowly.
A faint electronic chirp from a panel in the left arm of his basaltic throne alerted him of visitors. He firmed up his visual appearance; no sense alarming the messenger unduly at the outset. The time for intimidation, confusion, and betrayal would come later. It always did.
From a passageway far to the right, across a kilometer or more of cavern floor, a small procession wended its way, composed of minions in uniform, their marks of rank and organization stripped away to preserve the fiction that they were civilians. In truth, they were the same sort of gift the Wennis had been, and served their original master by serving Rokur Gepta.
The honor guard consisted of a half-dozen heavily armed and smartly groomed beings, every fiber bristling at attention as they marched. In their midst was a giant, a large, heavyset man in a battered spacesuit, carrying his helmet under one arm. The group wound carefully among the cavern floor’s many stalagmites, following a hidden pattern that, if strayed from, would precipitate their immediate and total destruction.
Gepta waited on his throne, three meters above the floor.
As the column reached its base, Gepta’s soldiers snapped to a halt. The visitor technically stood at attention, too, but he was the sort of being who, when the time came, would look as if he were lounging indolently in his own coffin. He was utterly relaxed, utterly alert. He was utterly