concern and uneasiness. For the third time in as many minutes, he wiped a
hand
across his brow.
The scoring computer held them at ninety-four points each. The time now
passed in a flash, and Han found himself so intent on the game that he had
not
thought about Leia's desperate situation for at least fifteen seconds.
"How do I know you don't have some trick programmed into ^the cards?"
Lando said, staring at the aluminized plates but holding the displays out of
Han's line of sight.
"You suggested this game, buddy. These were my old cards, but you
degaussed them yourself. They're straight, no tricks." He let a smile creep
across his lips. "And this time there's no sudden change of rules during the
final scoring round."
Han waited a second longer, then impatiently took the initiative. "I'm
keeping three cards," he said, and put two others facedown in the center of
the randomizer field. He pressed the scan button to change the value and
suit
on his cards, then slid them back out of the field to look at what he had
drawn.
Lando held out two cards and thought better of it, biting his lower lip,
and pulled out a third. Han felt a wave of jubilation. Lando's hand was even
worse than his own.
Han's heart pounded. He had a flush of Staves, a low flush with no face
cards; but if he could beat Lando, this hand would give him enough points to
pass the target score. Lando stared at his own cards, smiling a little bit,
but Han thought it was forced.
"Go on," Han said, and slipped his cards one at a time onto the platform.
"Do I get extra points for having a completely random hand?" Lando said,
then sighed. He put his elbows on the table and frowned.
Han slapped a hand on his flush. "The Falcon's mine again!"
Lando smirked, as if losing the ship were a mixed blessing. "At least
you're getting her back in better condition."
Han clapped his friend on the back andwitha light step danced back toward
the cockpit. Slowly, with a sigh of satisfaction, he lowered himself back
into
the pilot's seat.
Now, he thought, if he could just get to Leia in time, this would be a
perfect day.
20
Kyp Durron trudged through the dense rain forest of Yavin 4, trying to
find hidden paths where the jungle would allow him to pass. He knew exactly
where to go. The dark spirit of Exar Kun had shown him.
With the stirring of the underbrush, reptilian predator birds burst
squawking into flight, disturbed from the bloody carcass of a kill they had
dragged into the canopy.
Kyp's assigned companion Dorsk 81 stumbled beside him. The thin, smooth-
skinned alien had a much more difficult time with the steamy air and the
steep
climbs.
A purple-furred woolamander clambered through the overhead network of
Massassi trees. Dorsk 81 looked up, startled--but Kyp had sensed the beast
minutes before, feeling its primal panic and indecision build until finally
it
had to flee.
Kyp wiped sweat out of his eyes and shook his head, sending droplets of
perspiration flying. He squinted again and moved forward with greater speed,
knowing they had almost reached their destination--though Dorsk 81 had no
idea
yet.
Insects and small biting creatures buzzed and scuttled around them, but
none bothered Kyp. He consciously exuded a shadow of uneasiness around him
so
that lower creatures had no incentive to come nearer. Exar Kun had taught
him
that trick too.
Dorsk 81 opened his lipless mouth, panting as he tried to keep up with
the vigorous pace. His yellow and olive-green skin was unblemished, his nose
flattened and smo oth, his ears tucked back against his head as if someone
had
designed his race in a wind tunnel. The alien looked miserable; his wide-set
eyes blinked, and his face gleamed with a sheen of moisture. "I was not bred
for this," Dorsk 81 said.
Kyp slowed, but not enough to bring relief to his companion. He softened
the tone of his instinctive retort. "You were not bred for anything but
bureaucracy and a comfortable life. I don't understand how the planet Khomm
could have survived unchanged for a thousand years. Or why your people
wanted
it to."
Dorsk 81 took no offense and followed Kyp. "Our society and our genetics
reached their perfection a millennium ago, or at least that's what we
decided
at the time. To prevent undesirable changes, we froze our culture at that
level. We took our perfect race and cloned them rather than risking genetic
anomalies.
"I am the eighty-first clone of Dorsk. Eighty generations before me have
been identical, doing the same jobs with the same level of skill,
maintaining
our level of perfection and not slipping back." Dorsk 81 frowned, andwitha
burst of surprising energy he pushed around Kyp. He flung himself into the
effort of making a path through the dense brush with all the strength he
possessed. "But I was a failure," he said. "I was different."
Kyp gestured to an identical-looking thicket of raven-thorns, spotting
the invisible maze of a relatively simple path. "You have the potential to
become a Jedi Knight," he said. "How can you consider that a failure?"
Dorsk 81 clawed his way out of the tangle he had become trapped in.
Stains from crushed berries and flower petals dotted his uniform. "It is
unsettling... to be different," he said.
Kyp spoke partly to himself and partly to his companion. "Yes, but
sometimes it's exhilarating to know you can rise above the others who are
trapped down below."
He ducked into the low tunnel of gloomy foliage and dangling mosses. Tiny
gnats flew away from his face. The deep shadows suddenly made him think of
the
black spice mines of Kessel where he had been forced to work as a slave.
"The Empire ruined my life," Kyp said. "My parents were political
resisters. They marked the anniversary of the Ghorman Massacre, and they
protested the destruction of Alderaan--but by that time the Emperor had lost
all patience with political objections.
"Stormtroopers came in the middle of the night, battered their way into
our home on the colony of Deyer. They took my parents, stunned them in front
of our eyes, leaving them paralyzed and twitching on the floor. My father
couldn't even close his eyes. Tears ran down his cheek, but his arms and his
legs kept jittering. He couldn't get up. The stormtroopers dragged him and
my
mother out.
"My brother Zeth was five years older than me. They took him. He was only
fourteen, I think. They put stun-cuffs on his hands. They kicked him, pushed
him out, and then they stunned me.
"I found out later that they took Zeth to the Imperial Military Academy
on Carida. They put my parents and me in the Correctional Facility on
Kessel,
where we had to work in the spice mines. I spent most of my days in pitch-
&
nbsp; darkness because any light straying into the mine shafts spoils spice
crystals. My parents died there after only a few years.
"I had to take care of myself even when the prisoners overthrew the
Correctional Facility and took over. The crime lord there, Moruth Doole,
tossed the captured Imperials down into the spice mines. Doole let some of
the
prisoners out--but not many and not me. Our masters had changed, but we
remained slaves."
Dorsk 81 looked at him with his glittering wide-set eyes. "How did you
escape?" he said.
"Han Solo rescued me," Kyp answered; warmth filtered into his voice. "We
stole a shuttle and fled into the black hole cluster. There we stumbled upon
a
secret Imperial research installation, and we were captured again--this time
by Admiral Daala and her fleet of Star Destroyers. Han got us out of there
after Daala had placed a death sentence on me."
Anger curled through him, making his head buzz, making him feel stronger.
He tapped into t strength. "You can understand why the Imperials make me so
furious," he said. "It seems that every step of my life the Empire has tried
to beat me into submission, tried to take away the rights and pleasures that
other life-forms enjoy."
"You can't fight the Empire alone," Dorsk 81 said.
Kyp didn't answer for a long moment. "Perhaps not yet," he said.
Before Dorsk 81 could say anything, Kyp parted a dense clump of blueleaf
branches. He felt an electric thrill down his spine as the Force told him
they
had arrived.
"This," Kyp whispered, "this is our destination."
In front of them the jungle gave way to a circular pond that shone like a
flat quicksilver mirror, completely free of ripples. In the center of the
lake
stood a small island dominated by an obsidian split-pyramid of sharp angles
showing the distinctive markings of Massassi architecture another temple,
the
same one Gantoris and Streen had located weeks before, but Luke Skywalker
had
not yet explored it. Exar Kun had told Kyp all about it.
Between the bifurcated spire of the tall pyramid stood a colossus, a
polished black statue of a dark man, with long hair swept back behind him,
the
tattoo of a black sun emblazoned on his forehead, and the padded garments of
an ancient lord, the Dark Lord of the Sith.
Kyp swallowed hard at seeing the image of Exar Kun.
"Who do you think he was?" Dorsk 81 asked, squinting to stare across the
water.
Kyp answered in a quiet, husky voice. "Someone very powerful."
The great orange sphere of Yavin lurked on the horizon with only a fuzzy
curve peeping over the tops of the jungle. The system's small sun would also
be setting soon. The twin lights in the sky cast intersecting glitter paths
across the still lake.
Kyp gestured toward the temple. "We can spend the night there if you'd
like," he said.
Dorsk 81 nodded with more eagerness than Kyp had expected. "I would like
to sleep inside shelter again," he said, "rather than up in a tree tangled
in
vines. But how are we going to get out there? How deep is the lake?"
Kyp went to the edge. The water was as transparent as diamond and so deep
that it reflected the bottom like a lens, making it impossible to determine
how far down the water went. Just below the surface he saw columns of rock
rising from the bottom like submerged stepping stones that stopped just
barely
beneath the water.
Kyp stepped out onto one. The clear water rippled around the bottom of
his shoe, but he did not sink in. He took another step to the second stone.
Dorsk 81 stared at him; Kyp knew that he must appear to be walking
directly across the surface of the water. "Are you using the Force?" Dorsk
81
said.
Kyp laughed. "No, I'm using stepping stones."
Without hesitation he splashed to the next stone and then the next, eager
to reach the temple--a source of new knowledge and secret techniques. On the
island he stepped onto mounds of pitted volcanic rock splotched with orange
and green lichen that looked like droplets of alien blood. He could already
feel the power.
Kyp turned to watch his companion pick his way across the lake. It looked
very much as if Dorsk 81 balanced on the fragile membrane of the pool's
surface. The illusion was very effective. Around him silence blanketed the
island, as if none of the jungle creatures or insects dared to come near the
empty temple.
"It's cold here," Dorsk 81 said, shaking water off his feet and looking
around. The smooth-skinned alien hunched his head closer to his shoulders.
"You were complaining before about how hot it was," Kyp said. "You should
be grateful."
Dorsk 81 clamped his lipless mouth shut and nodded once, but said nothing
else.
Kyp walked around, looking at the polished black glass angles of the
pyramid, the jutting point at the top. The architecture had been designed as
an angular funnel to concentrate the Force, assembled to enhance the powers
of
Sith rituals.
He stared up at the frozen statue of Exar Kun. The brooding dark lord
looked so real to him, so awe inspiring, that Kyp expected the sculpture to
bend down and grasp him.
Kyp knew now that the Great Temple was the focal point for the entire
Massassi civilization that Exar Kun had built up from primitive decay. The
Great Temple had been the headquarters, the prime focus of Kun's battles in
the Sith War. But this small, isolated temple had been more of a private
retreat, the place where Exar Kun had concentrated on improving his own
abilities, strengthening himself.
A cool wind breathed out of the wedge-shaped opening as if the silent
temple were some kind of sleeping monster. "Let's go inside," Kyp said.
He ducked his head and took one step into the enfolding darkness. But
when he blinked his eyes, the light gradually grew inside the chamber as if
lightning bolts trapped within the black slabs of glass continued to send
faint sparks visible only from the corner of his eye. When Kyp faced the
polished dark walls, he saw nothing in them, only faint etched markings of
hieroglyphics in a long-forgotten language. He could not read any of the
words.
Deep green tendrils of moss grew like frozen biological flames that
worked their way up the polished stones. Against one wall stood a smooth
rounded cistern filled with water.
Kyp s tepped over to the cistern and dipped his fingers in, surprised and
delighted to find the liquid cold and clean. He splashed his sweaty face,
and
then he drank, savoring the sweetness of the water as it slid down his
throat.
He sighed.
Dorsk 81 stood just within the opening, looking out at the jungle beyond
the lake. The sphere of Yavin had vanished below the treetops, and the sky
began to thicken with purple twilight as the distant sun also set. "I'm very
sleepy all of a sudden," he said.
Kyp fr
owned, but thought he knew what was happening. "You've traveled a
long way today," he said. "It's cool and dark in here. Why don't you sleep?
The floor looks smooth and comfortable. You can curl up against the wall."
As if hypnotized, Dorsk 81 shambled over to a corner and slithered down
against the wall until he lay with his back pressed against the obsidian
slab.
He fell asleep almost before he had settled into place.
"Now you and I can continue in a more appropriate setting." The deep,
loud voice echoed like distant thunder inside the chamber.
Kyp turned to see the hooded silhouette of Exar Kun like a black oil
stain shimmering in the air. Kyp stood tall, squashing a thrill of terror
every time the ancient Lord of the Sith spoke to him.
Kyp indicated Dorsk 81. "Will he wake up? Will he see you?"
Exar Kun raised his shadowy arms. "Not until we have finished," he said.
"All right." Kyp squatted on the cool floor, tucking his robe around him
as he found a comfortable position. He knew that his relaxed attitude might
appear to be haughtiness or defiance of Exar Kun, but he didn't care.
The ancient Sith Lord began to speak. "Skywalker has taught you
everything he knows. He makes excuses, but he can go no further because he
has
denied himself other options. He cannot grow as a Jedi by blocking out
possibilities, by wearing blinders to what can be and what should be."
Exar Kun loomed over Kyp, hovering closer even though he didn't appear to
have taken a step. "You have already learned more than Skywalker will ever
know, my student."
Kyp felt enthusiasm and pride burn through him, and he tensed his body,
wanting to leap to his feet. But he restrained himself.
"Look at what I can show you today," Exar Kun said, gesturing toward the
obsidian walls and the incomprehensible hieroglyphs barely visible, black
lines against black volcanic glass. But as Kyp looked at them, the words
filled with white fire, standing out against the bottomless, opaque
background
until they burned into his eyes.
And suddenly Kyp could understand. The words snapped into focus and
filled his mind, an incredible history from four thousand years ago, telling
how Exar Kun had begun to learn forbidden teachings, how he had come to the
fourth moon of Yavin to find a lost Sith power object, and how he had
enslaved
the timid and weak Massassi people, making them build enormous temples for
Dark Apprentice Page 21
