Star Wars_ The New Rebellion - Kristine Kathryn Rusch [124]
This one had molded itself to the man’s face. The cheekbones were raised, the eyes were black and empty, the lips thin and hard. The mask was white with black accents. It had tiny jewels in the corners of the eyeslits. Behind the jewels, if Luke’s memory served, lay the chips that absorbed the personality of the wearer.
“You still don’t recognize me, do you, Master Skywalker?”
The voice had a depth and resonance that was unfamiliar. But the inflections were familiar. This was an adult voice. Luke had been familiar with the young adult’s voice, one that hadn’t yet reached its full depth.
“Dolph?” he said, guessing with as much certainty as he could muster.
The death mask’s mouth closed. Luke felt the surprise in the man across from him. Dolph had counted on not being recognized.
“You’re better than I realized,” Dolph said. His resonating voice filled the street. A dry wind made his cape ripple behind him. “My name is Kueller now.”
Everything depended on how Luke played the next few moments. Dolph had been an extremely talented student who had always had a darkness in him. Such darkness wasn’t unusual. All of Luke’s students had to fight the dishonorable parts of themselves. Most won that battle. But Dolph hadn’t stayed at the academy long enough to develop the talent or dispel the darkness. He had left in the middle of the night after receiving news from home.
“You left before I had the chance to give you my condolences over the deaths of your family,” Luke said.
Dolph—Luke refused to think of him as Kueller just yet—smiled. The death mask moved with startling realness. “Thank you, Master,” he said. And then his smile faded as quickly as it had appeared. The effect was stunning. The death mask had a powerful, primitive terror built into it. The loss of the smile almost—almost—made Luke take a step backward. It would have overwhelmed a lesser man.
“But,” Dolph continued, “your sympathies are both false and too late. The Je’har brutally slaughtered my family. They did not die quickly. My parents were staked to the bridge leading to the Je’har palace, and left to rot in the heat. It took them a week to die. I didn’t hear about it until afterward, but the Je’har left the bodies for me to find. You wouldn’t know what that is like, seeing the burned and broken skeletons of the people who raised you, a stench rising from them that should never come from any living being. You don’t know what that does to a man.”
The memory of Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen as he had last seen them rose in Luke’s mind. Their bodies were burned beyond recognition, smoke still rising from them. The only comfort he took in the years that followed was that they had died side by side, as they had lived.
“No,” Luke said, “I don’t suppose I do know what that does to a man.” He knew what it had done to him. It had forced him to grow up in a moment, forced him to fight the evil that had caused his family’s deaths.
It had not turned him into a monster. He understood Dolph’s pain, but not his reaction to it.
“When I came home,” Dolph said as if Luke hadn’t spoken, “I buried my family, and I vowed vengeance on the Je’har. Vengeance I took without your help. I am stronger now, Skywalker. I will be stronger than you.”
“Is that important to you?” Luke asked. He was leaning harder on his cane than he needed to. He wanted Dolph to think he was weaker than he really was.
“Of course it is,” Dolph said. “Your government condoned the actions of the Je’har. Your sister opened trade with them, and treated them as a reputable