Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [285]
Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.
“Padmé? Are you here? Are you all right?”
I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.
This burns hotter than the lava had.
“No … no, it is not possible!”
You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.
Never.
But you remember …
You remember all of it.
You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth—
And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.
That it was all you. Is you.
Only you.
You did it.
You killed her.
You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself.…
It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith—
Because now your self is all you will ever have.
And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.
In the end, you do not even want to.
In the end, the shadow is all you have left.
Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—
And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.
This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.
Forever …
The long night has begun.
Huge solemn crowds line Palace Plaza in Theed, the capital of Naboo, as six beautiful white gualaars draw a flower-draped open casket bearing the remains of a beloved Senator through the Triumphal Arch, her fingers finally and forever clasping a snippet of japor, one that had been carved long ago by the hand of a nine-year-old boy from an obscure desert planet in the far Outer Rim …
On the jungle planet of Dagobah, a Jedi Master inspects the unfamiliar swamp of his exile …
From the bridge of a Star Destroyer, two Sith Lords stand with a sector governor named Tarkin, and survey the growing skeleton of a spherical battle station the size of a moon …
But even in the deepest night, there are some who dream of dawn.
On Alderaan, the Prince Consort delivers a baby girl into the loving arms of his Queen.
And on Tatooine, a Jedi Master brings an infant boy to the homestead of Owen and Beru Lars—
Then he rides his eopie off into the Jundland Wastes, toward the setting suns.
The dark is generous, and it is patient, and it always wins—but in the heart of its strength lies weakness: one lone candle is enough to hold it back.
Love is more than a candle.
Love can ignite the stars.
For Abel Lucero Lima, ace guide at Tikal
(aka Yavin 4), with whom I’ve left bootprints
throughout the Mundo Maya
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Sincere thanks to Shelly Shapiro, Sue Rostoni, Howard Roffman, Amy Gary, Leland Chee, Pablo Hidalgo, Matt Stover, Troy Denning, and Karen Traviss. Special thanks to Ryan Kaufman, formerly of LucasArts, who described what it felt like to wear the Suit.
PART I
THE OUTER RIM SIEGES
MURKHANA. FINAL HOURS OF THE CLONE WARS
Dropping into swirling clouds conjured by Murkhana’s weather stations, Roan Shryne was reminded of meditation sessions his former Master had guided him through. No matter how fixed Shryne had been on touching the Force, his mind’s eye