Star Wars_ The Han Solo Trilogy 01_ The Paradise Snare - A. C. Crispin [145]
Now, seeing Veratil, Han ducked his head and turned away, wishing he had a hood he could pull up to hide his face. If the Sacredot saw him and recognized him, Han knew that he was in for it.
The chanting surrounding him intensified. Han began to sweat, despite the chill of the Devaronian weather, because he knew what was coming.
Across the town square, he saw a tall, furred shape standing on the edge of the crowd, watching the ceremony curiously. Chewie! Can’t let him get drawn into this! The Exultation is going to come in just a couple of minutes!
Han plunged into the crowd, keeping his head ducked, fighting his way through the throng as he would have clawed his way through a heavy surf. He was breathing hard and his elbows and ribs ached by the time he reached the Wookiee. “Chewie!” he yelled, grabbing the big sentient by the arm. “Let’s get outta here! This is gonna turn into a mob scene any second now!”
The Wookiee whined inquiringly. “Never mind how I know!” Han yelled above the chanting. “I just know! Trust me!”
Chewbacca nodded and turned away, using his huge size to part the crowd before him. Han started to follow him, then something caught the corner of his eye, and he turned his head. A gleam … a gleam of reddish gold on a stray curl.
Han caught just a glimpse of her, but his whole mind and body jolted to a stop as though he’d slammed into a stone wall while running at top speed.
Bria? Bria!
He caught only that one brief glimpse of a pale, perfect profile and a stray reddish-blond curl, but it was enough. She was standing there, wearing a black cloak and hood, in this crowd.
Memories came surging back, so strong that they scared him …
Bria, a pale ghost of a slave in the spice factories of Ylesia. Bria, scared but determined as they robbed Teroenza of his treasures. Bria, sitting beside him on a golden sand beach on Togoria, her mouth soft and red and just begging to be kissed. Bria, lying in his arms late at night …
Bria, who had left him behind, saying she needed to fight her addiction to the t’landa Til’s Exultation by herself …
Han had spent the past five years convincing himself that he’d forgotten her. After four years in the Imperial Academy, plus nearly a year of commissioned service, he’d been convinced that he no longer cared. But now, in a single searing blaze of insight, Han Solo knew he’d been lying to himself.
Without hesitating, he turned and plunged back into the crowd, heading for the woman in the black cloak. He was halfway there when the Exultation hit the crowd, and the throng of sentients collapsed onto the cobblestones of the town square as though they’d been stun-blasted.
Han had forgotten how strong the Exultation was. Waves of intense pleasure rolled through his mind as well as his body. No wonder the Ylesian pilgrims thought the t’landa Til were Divinely Gifted! Even knowing, as Han did, that the Exultation was caused by an empathic transmission coupled with a subsonic vibration that caused a wave of pleasure that acted on the brains of most bipedal sentients, Han had to brace himself to resist it.
He knew without seeing it that the pouch beneath Veratil’s “chin” had swelled, and that the Sacredot was “humming” those vibrations as he concentrated on warm, positive emotions. To anyone unprepared for the force of the Exultation, the effect was as intoxicating as any pleasure drug. The ability to produce the Exultation was one that all t’landa Til males shared—it was actually a sex-linked biological ability they possessed that, in their natural habitat, was used to attract t’landa Til females.
All around Han the crowd had fallen prone, and most of the sentients were writhing in pleasure. The sight sickened Han. He’d shaken off the effects of the Exultation now, and he concentrated on not stepping