Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 03_ Champions of the Force - Kevin J. Anderson [25]
She threw on a white robe, cinched it around her waist, and dashed into the hall. Several other Jedi trainees emerged from their quarters, also sensing an indefinable dread.
The twins jumped out of their beds, and Leia called back to them, “You two stay here.” She doubted they would. “Artoo, watch over them!” she shouted to the droid, who was buzzing in confusion down the corridors, lights flashing.
“Come to the grand audience chamber,” Leia cried to the Jedi trainees. “Hurry!”
Artoo spun around in the hall and returned to the children’s quarters; the droid’s confused bleeps and warbles followed Leia down the hall. She rode the turbolift to the top. When it stopped and opened its doors, storm winds howled around the vast, open chamber. Leia stumbled out into a cyclone.
Cold rivers of air gushed through the horizontal skylights high in the walls. Ice crystals sparkled as the temperature plummeted. Wind drawn in from every direction struck the center of the room and spun around, corkscrewing, picking up speed in an irresistible force.
Streen!
The old Bespin hermit stood on the outskirts of the storm with his brown Jedi robe flapping around him. His wild gray hair writhed around his head as if charged with static. His lips mumbled something incomprehensible, and his eyes remained closed as if he were having a nightmare.
Leia knew that even powerful Jedi could not manipulate large-scale phenomena like the weather; but they could move objects, and she realized that was what Streen did now. Not changing the weather, but simply moving the air, drawing it in from all directions, creating a self-contained but destructive tornado that struck toward Luke’s body.
“No!” she shouted into the starving wind. “Streen!”
The cyclone struck Luke, buffeted his body, and lifted it into the air. Leia ran toward her paralyzed brother, feet barely touching the ground as the powerful winds knocked her sideways. The storm wrenched her off balance, and she found herself thrown through the air, flying like an insect toward the stone walls. She spun around and reached out, calming herself enough to use her own abilities with the Force, to nudge her body away. Instead of being crushed against the stone blocks, she slid softly to the floor.
Luke’s body continued rising, tugged upward by the hurricane. His Jedi robe wound around him as the winds spun him like a corpse launched out of a star-freighter air lock into the grave of space.
Streen didn’t seem aware of what he was doing.
Leia staggered to her feet again and jumped. This time she rode the circling air currents, flying around the fringe of the cyclone toward her helpless brother. She reached out to grab the tail of his robe, felt her fingers clutch rough fabric, and then burn as the robe was snatched away from her. She fell back to the floor.
Luke had been drawn up into the tornado’s mouth, rising toward the skylights.
“Luke!” she cried. “Please help me.” She had no idea if he could hear her, or if he could do anything. Gathering strength in her leg muscles, she leaped into the air again. It might be possible to use her Jedi skills of levitation for a brief moment; Luke had done it several times, although she herself had never mastered the skill. Now, though, it mattered more than it ever had before.
As Leia sprang upward, the wind caught her. She rose high enough to grab Luke’s body. She wrapped her arms around his waist, twisted her legs around his ankles, holding him, hoping her weight would drag him down.
But as they started to drop, the winds picked up in intensity, howling and roaring. Leia’s skin went numb from the blinding wintry cold. They shot toward the roof of the grand audience chamber, toward the widest skylight, where jagged icicles hung like javelins.
Leia suddenly knew what Streen intended to do