Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 08_ Edge of Victory 01_ Conquest - J. Gregory Keyes [96]
“Jeedai …,” he croaked, but his words drowned in a fit of hacking.
Anakin’s pain lessened, but he found he could move little more than his eyes. He could see Mezhan Kwaad held something in her other hand that resembled some sort of nut.
“This is huun,” Mezhan Kwaad shouted to the crowd. “It releases a nerve toxin sufficient to kill each and every one of you. I am immune to its effects. Your deaths will be useless; they will not serve the Yuuzhan Vong. Commander Vootuh and these others are the real traitors. I am Mezhan Kwaad, and I answer only to Supreme Overlord Shimrra. When he hears of these incidents, he will set things right. In the meantime, I will take this ship, to better defend myself. I do not wish to harm my fellow Yuuzhan Vong. I will do so only if I must.”
The crowd, led by Hul Rapuung, had started up the ramp. Now they stopped.
Mezhan Kwaad turned to her assistant. “Nen Yim. Drag those two on board.” She motioned toward Anakin and the fading Vua Rapuung.
The younger shaper hesitated, then started toward Anakin. She stopped when she saw Anakin’s lightsaber floating up from behind him.
Mezhan Kwaad saw it, too. She sent a jolt of pain coursing through Anakin’s body that scrambled his thoughts into random impulses.
But the lightsaber continued on. Mezhan Kwaad redoubled her torture of Anakin.
Tahiri plucked the blade from the air and ignited it with a snap-hiss. Mezhan Kwaad’s expression froze halfway between puzzlement and the sudden, fatal understanding that it hadn’t been Anakin levitating the weapon at all.
Then Tahiri decapitated her.
Tahiri stood for a moment, looking at what she had done, and smiled. Like heat lightning, Anakin’s vision struck back into him, the older Tahiri, the dark Force around her, her pitiless, glacial laughter.
“Tahiri!” he managed.
She looked at him, then, and took a hesitant step toward him, then another. She let the point of the blade drop so it was almost stroking his cheek.
“My friend,” she said, her voice low and weird. “My best friend. You left me.” Her eyes were wrong. They were the same color they had always been, but they had once been warm, full of laughter. Now they were chlorine ice.
“I’ve been trying to find you,” Anakin said. “This whole time …”
“You aren’t real,” Tahiri said. “None of this is. You are a lie.”
He held her gaze and saw the bleakness there, the confusion. He could sense her turmoil. “It’s not a lie, Tahiri. You are my best friend. I love you.”
The blade stroked off a lock of his hair, but he didn’t flinch.
“I love you,” he repeated, the seeds of his vision beginning to take root.
Tahiri closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, they became the green eyes he knew—or almost. “Anakin? Are you really—?” She looked around, as if noticing the crowd for the first time. “Well, this doesn’t look good,” she observed.
Anakin saw what she meant. With Mezhan Kwaad down, the warriors in the crowd had come to the forefront. Armed to the teeth, they stood watching the strange spectacle only meters away.
They wouldn’t just watch for long.
“We have to get out of here,” Anakin said.
“And this is your plan?” Tahiri asked, in something like her old voice.
“Hey, I’m doing my best. I’ll hold ’em off and you run into the ship.”
“No. I don’t care about dying, Anakin. Not after what they did to me. Let’s just take as many of them with us as we can.” She lifted the lightsaber. Her eyes were cooling again.
“Can I have that back?” Anakin asked softly.
She looked as if she would say no, but then shrugged and handed it to him. “Sure. It’s your blade. I lost mine.”
Anakin took the weapon, stood shakily, and faced the gathered warriors.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Hul Rapuung raised his amphistaff to guard. “Jeedai, you have proven yourself a great warrior. It will be my honor to kill you.”
“No,” a voice from behind Anakin grated.
Impossibly, Vua