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And what had happened to the missing recon squad?

And did Nom Anor really want to be responsible for starting a brawl in the Well of the World Brain?

He bit his lip so hard he tasted blood. “Stand aside! There are thousands of warriors out here! You cannot hope to stop us.”

“I don’t have to stop you. All I have to do is slow you down.”

A sharp buzzing crackle made Nom Anor jump. From the shadow’s hand sprang a meter-long bar of vividly sizzling amethyst.

“You want me to move?” The shadow beckoned with the blade of light. “Come on and move me.”

The smoke thinned, and cleared, and the human within the archway didn’t look at all like the Ganner Nom Anor remembered. This Ganner wore only faded brown leggings and battered leather boots. This Ganner was tall, broad-shouldered, and the light from his weapon gleamed on the sculpted muscle of his bare chest. The blade in his hand was steady as the roots of a mountain, but it was not this that made Nom Anor hesitate, made him run his thin yellow tongue nervously between his filed-sharp teeth.

It was the light in Ganner’s eyes.

He looked happy.

“There are thousands of warriors out here,” Nom Anor repeated, waving a futile fist. “You are only one man!”

“I am only one Jedi.”

“You’re insane!”

The man’s answering laugh was deep and long and bright, full of joy and freedom. “No. I am Ganner.”

He spun his shining blade in a dazzlingly complex flourish that illuminated the arch around him, making it shine like a rainbow frame for the pure, animal grace of his body.

“This threshold,” he announced through a happy grin, “is mine. I claim it for my own. Bring on your thousands, one at a time or all in a rush. I don’t give a damn.”

His flourish ended with the blade slanted before his chest, and his teeth flashed in the gloom.

“None shall pass.”

FOURTEEN

PATH OF DESTINY

They come at him one at a time, an endless stream, each warrior in turn charging toward honorable single combat.

Then—

They come two at a time.

By the time they begin to come in groups, they have to scramble over bodies of their dead comrades to reach him. A pile of bodies.

A pile that becomes a wall, a rampart.

Ganner Rhysode builds a fortress of the dead.

From a safe vantage point—behind a twisted curve of durasteel that had once been part of the Great Door—Nom Anor watched with appalled fascination. All he could see through the smoke and the mass of warriors who pressed forward to engage the mad Jedi were flashes of brilliant purple, sometimes joined by the Jedi himself as he leapt and whirled and spun, always in motion, always attacking, stabbing and slashing, littering the Atrium with corpses and severed limbs.

“This is insane!” Nom Anor turned to the warrior commander at his side. “Can’t you simply blow him up? Gas him? Something?”

“Nay.” The commander’s facial scars flushed pale blue. “He faces us with honor. Would you have warriors of the Yuuzhan Vong show less honor than an infidel Jeedai?”

“Space your honor! Don’t you understand? There’s a Jedi in the Well of the World Brain—and that Jedi is Jacen Solo!” He used the name as though it could conjure devils … and perhaps it could.

Only a devil could have slain the voxyn queen. Only a devil could have slaughtered the dhuryams and shapers and warriors in the Nursery, yet still wormed its evil way into Nom Anor’s trust, to the point where he—he, Nom Anor himself—had ushered this terrifyingly lethal Jedi into the one place on Yuuzhan’tar where he might slay the whole planet! “Jacen Solo is alone with the World Brain—”

“The World Brain is well able to defend itself.” To Nom Anor’s other side stood Ch’Gang Hool the Shaper Lord. “Matters of honor aside, we cannot use overpotent explosives, nor poison gases. The World Brain would be in greater danger from a clumsy attempt at rescue than it could ever be from a single Jeedai.”

“This is no ordinary Jedi,” Nom Anor said feelingly. “You have no idea what he is capable of! We have to get in there!