by Timothy Zahn
The wall was quite thin and, more importantly, not made of cortosis ore. Three quick slices of the green blade, and they had their entrance.
Luke dropped through the opening, lightsaber and Jedi senses at the ready. Beyond the wall was a dark, high-ceilinged room, incredibly dusty, that extended out beyond the range of his glow rod beam. Spaced along the walls at two different heights were elaborately tooled wall sconces that looked like they had once held torches or torchlike lights. Above the sconces, at perhaps a dozen other points around the room, other gaps showed where sections of the yellow wall had crumbled away from the ceiling. Aside from the sconces, there were no other decorations or furnishings.
"Doesn't look like Hijarna," Mara muttered from behind him, waving her own glow rod around.
"What?" Luke asked.
"There's a ruined fortress on the planet Hijarna," she explained. "Karrde sometimes uses it as a meeting place."
"Yes, he said something about that when I saw him on Cejansij," Luke said. "He said if this fortress was like that one it could probably shrug off any attack he could throw at it."
"Him, or the New Republic in general," Mara said grimly. "The Hijarna fortress was made of some incredibly hard black stone that could eat massed turbolaser fire for breakfast." She gestured with her glow rod. "My first look at the High Tower from outside the cave mouth reminded me of that one. But the wall material here isn't anything like it." Artoo whistled, his sensor unit extended and rotating back and forth as if searching for something.
"That doesn't necessarily mean anything," Luke pointed out, squatting down in front of the droid and peering at the datapad they'd rigged up to serve as translator for his more complicated comments.
"They could have been built by two different groups of the same people."
"Maybe. What's he saying?"
"He says that from the fastenings he doesn't think the wall sconces were part of the original furnishings," Luke said. "For whatever that's worth."
He straightened up and pointed toward the unseen part of the room. "He also says there's a very strong power source operating somewhere over there."
"Really," Mara said with interest, taking a step in that direction and shining her glow rod into the darkness. "Let's go take a look."
No! Keeper Of Promises said sharply from above Luke.
"Hang on," Luke said to Mara, looking up. Keeper Of Promises was perched on one of the wall sconces, his wings quivering with agitation. "What's wrong?" he asked. That way lies destruction, the Qom Jha said. Others have searched that direction. None have ever returned.
"He says there's danger that way," Luke translated for Mara. "Specifics unknown."
"Except that it eats Qom Jha, I presume," Mara said. "On the other hand, the only way out of here has to be that direction."
No, there is another way, Splitter Of Stones said from one of the other sconces. Come. He flew across to the wall to their left and settled to a perch in one of the other gaps beneath the ceiling. Here, he said. Here is the entrance to the hidden passage.
"Really," Luke said, feeling his eyes narrow. The Qom Jha hadn't said anything about a hidden passage before. "And this hidden passage leads into the High Tower?" Come, Splitter Of Stones said. You will see.
"Hidden passage, huh?" Mara commented as they crossed the room, Artoo rolling along behind them. "I don't recall that being mentioned before."
"Me, neither," Luke said. "It could have been just an oversight."
"Or an awkward but conveniently forgotten fact," Mara said darkly. Artoo twittered questioningly. "Awkward because hidden passages usually also have hidden exits," Mara said to the droid over her shoulder. "And unless the Qom Jha have found a way through those exits, they won't know any more about the layout of the High Tower than we do."
"How about it, Splitter Of Stones?" Luke asked. "Have you and your people been inside, or haven't you?"
We have traveled all through the hidden passage was the somewhat sullen reply. There are places where we can see the Threateners and hear what they are saying.
"Let me guess," Mara said. "They've never actually been in the High Tower, but they're sure they'll be able to find their way around once we get them in."
"Basically," Luke said heavily. "Apparently, for all their talk, no one's actually been inside the place."
Some of the Qom Qae have been inside, Child Of Winds spoke up. I know of some who have done so.
Luke frowned at him. "They have? Who? When?"
Friends from other nestings have entered from above, Child Of Winds explained. But they have always been quickly driven out, and have seen very little.
"Still, that's apparently more than the Qom Jha have done," Luke said, looking at Splitter Of Stones again. The Qom Jha was maintaining a stiff silence, but Luke could tell he was not at all pleased with this revelation. "Have you yourself been inside, Child Of Winds?" No, he said. Only friends from the nesting nearest here.
"What's the debate?" Mara asked.
"Child Of Winds says some of the younger Qom Qae of the region have poked around inside the upper areas of the High Tower," Luke said. "But how is it you're in contact with these others, Child Of Winds? I thought Hunter Of Winds said matters outside your nesting were of no concern to you." They are of no concern to adult Qom Qae, Child Of Winds said. But all children may fly freely wherever they wish.
"Ah." So adult Qom Qae were territorial, but their children mixed together across nesting boundaries however they wanted.
And in the process played the role of informal ambassadors and information gatherers? Possibly. Something to remember if and when the New Republic decided to make official contact with them. Beside him, Mara cleared her throat. "Is any of this no doubt fascinating conversation helping us get inside the High Tower?"
"Not really," Luke agreed, pushing the glimpse into Qom Qae social structure aside for now. Stepping to the yellow wall beneath where Splitter Of Stones was sitting, he ran an exploring hand across the surface. If there was a hidden door there, it was very well hidden. "You think we should look for a release, or open it the easy way?"
Mara's answer was the snap-hiss of her lightsaber. "Get out of the way," she said. "You, too, Qom Jha."
Splitter Of Stones fluttered hastily to one of the wall sconces. Three quick slashes, and Mara had a man-sized opening cut in the wall. Lightsaber held ready, she jumped into the gap and ducked to her right. Luke was right behind her, ducking to the left.
They were in a narrow passageway, no more than a meter and a half across, which like the room behind them extended to the right beyond the range of their glow rods. In the other direction, the passageway ended in a wall only a few meters away.
And leading up over their heads from that end was a set of stairs.
"Over here, Mara," Luke called quietly over his shoulder as he headed that direction. The stairs were narrow, and like the passageway itself extended past the range of his glow rod beam. Overhead to the left he could see just the hint of an angled and rising ceiling: another flight of steps, he decided, probably connecting with this set at some unseen landing ahead. Rising vertically along the inside edge of the stairway were a series of thick cylinders that ran from below the level of the passageway up into the darkness above.
"That's our way up, all right," Mara said from his side. "Uh-oh."
"What?" Luke asked, frowning as he stretched out with the Force. There was no danger he could detect.
"The stairs," Mara said, her glow rod shining downward on the lowest steps. "Now that looks like Hijarna building material."
Luke frowned down at it. "Any way to tell for sure?"
"A couple of blaster bolts ought to do it," she said. "But the noise would probably travel farther than we'd like. Anyway, at the moment it's irrelevant—we're not launching a full-scale assault on the place."
"Right—we're trying to sneak in," Luke agreed. "Looks like we'll have to go single file."
"I think we're all used to that by now," Mara
said, playing her glow rod up and down the steps.
"Reminds me of that secret passageway Palpatine had in the Imperial palace."
"Reminds me of the service shaft in Ilic on New Cov," Luke said, remembering that long walk he and Han had taken up those stairs to a landing area crawling with Imperials.
"You'd think just one of these secret-stair-builders would have the courtesy to install a turbolift," Mara said, shaking her head. "Or at least a droid carrier."
"It would be nice," Luke agreed. "Well, nothing for it but to start climbing. Let's go."
* * *
With the narrow but relatively open area ahead and above them, Luke decided to let Splitter Of Stones and his cadre of Qom Jha take the point, flying up and ahead of them. Luke went next, carrying the droid for a change, leaving Mara and Child Of Winds to bring up the rear. Mara had groused a little about that, arguing that she wasn't tired and could handle the droid just fine. But Luke had declared the staircase safe enough for him to take droid duty, and had ignored her complaints.
Not that she'd complained too hard or too long. The droid had been getting heavier and heavier lately, and she was just as glad to be rid of the burden for a while.
"Any idea what these are?" she asked Luke, running her fingertips across the first of the thick vertical cylinders as she passed it. From this position on the stairs she could now see to the first landing, and a quick count showed there were twenty of the cylinders rising through the gap. "They don't look like ventilation shafts."
The droid warbled. "Artoo says they're power lines," Luke told her. "Probably bringing energy to the High Tower from that big power source he picked up."
"That's one blazing lot of capacity," Mara said, eyeing the cylinders uneasily. "Are all twenty of them pulling power?"
The droid twittered again. "Only three are active at the moment," Luke said. "But the others are still functional. Running to weapons or shield generators, maybe?"
"I was just wondering that myself." Mara felt her lip twitch. "From near the mouth of the cave you can see three towers rising from the fortress: three intact and one broken."
"Yes, I remember that from the record the Starry Ice brought back," Luke said, his voice and emotions tight. "You suggested that the shot that took out that tower might have also gouged out some of the ravine you flew in through. Is Hijarna stone that tough?"
"I don't know," Mara said grimly. "But Hijarna stone plus seventeen power lines' worth of shield generators might do the trick."
Luke whistled softly, shaking his head. "You know, this place is starting to look more and more impregnable by the minute. I don't think I like that."
"I'm sure I don't like it," Mara retorted grimly. "Especially in potentially unfriendly hands. It'd be worse than Mount Tantiss."
They reached the landing and the expected switchback and continued on up. For a while Mara tried to keep track of the stair count, but somewhere in the mid-two hundreds she gave up the exercise as useless.
They had passed the fourth landing when she began to detect the alien presence. She kept at the sensation for the next few minutes until she was sure. Then, as they started to round the fifth landing, she leaned over and caught Luke's eye. "Luke?" she murmured. "Company."
"I know," he murmured back. "I've been picking them up for a while now. We must be getting close to the inhabited parts of the High Tower."
"The sensation seem at all familiar to you?"
"Very," he assured her. "They're the same species as the pilots who tried to shoot me down on my way in."
"I've never gotten that close to any of this particular group," Mara said, a sudden shiver running through her. "But I've definitely felt this sense before."
Luke seemed to brace himself. "Thrawn?"
She nodded. "Thrawn."
For a long moment they stood there in silence. "Well, you called it," Mara reminded him. "You said that might be a group of his people in there."
"It's starting to look that way," Luke said, looking up and waving toward him. "Splitter Of Stones?"
There was a rustling of wings, and the Qom Jha fluttered to a landing on one of the stairs ahead of Luke. "You said there were places where you could see or hear into the High Tower," Luke said.
"How close are we to the nearest of those?"
Splitter Of Stones began to speak. Suddenly tired of this second-class status of hers, Mara reached over and took Luke's hand.
— not too far away, she heard the Qom Jha's voice echoed through Luke's mind. Two and a portion more turns.
"A portion?" Mara asked, frowning.
"The spot must be partway up one of the stairways," Luke said, glancing at the cylinders running alongside them. "At least these power lines should help mask our life-form readings if anyone's looking. That's convenient."
"It also means Artoo won't be able to pick up much of anything, either," Mara pointed out. "Not so convenient."
But that will surely not be a problem for you, Child Of Winds spoke up. You have the Force.
"True," Luke agreed.
"Some of us more than others, of course," Mara added, suppressing a grimace. As he had on that trek across Wayland ten years ago, Luke had been giving her more or less nonstop Jedi instruction during the trip through these caverns. But despite those efforts, she was apparently no closer to hearing this weird Force-driven communication of the Qom Jha and Qom Qae than she'd been when she first arrived on the planet.
And it was starting to bug her. It was starting to really bug her. What did she have to do to break through this invisible barrier to full Jedi powers, anyway?
She didn't have an answer. Luke might, but she didn't. And there was no way in the galaxy she was going to ask him. Not anytime soon, anyway.
Disgustedly, she let go of his hand. "Well, come on," she growled. "If we're going to do this, let's do it."
"Right," Luke said. If he'd picked up on her sudden sour mood, he didn't comment on it. "Okay, Splitter Of Stones, let's go. And warn your people to be especially quiet from this point on." They resumed their climb, Mara followed along behind Luke, putting one foot in front of the other strictly on autopilot, her full attention turned outward as she stretched out to the alien presences growing steadily closer. None seemed to be very close, but from past experience she knew that with unfamiliar alien minds apparent distances could be misleading.
Two and a third flights of stairs later, as promised, they reached Splitter Of Stones's observation post.
"That's an exit, all right," Mara muttered, peering into the alcove that opened off to the side of the stairway. Roughly three meters wide and one deep, it ended in a door-shaped panel made of black stone equipped with a locking wheel and a pair of hand-grip releases. In the center of the panel was a tiny hole through which an equally tiny ray of reddish light shone through. "Looks like it swings outward."
"Yes," Luke murmured back, stepping into the alcove for a closer look. "Interesting, this locking wheel. Why lock it from this side?"
"Maybe it was for the exclusive use of certain high-ranking parties who wanted everyone else kept out," Mara said, stretching out with the Force. The alien presence was still pervasive, but still muted. "If you want to give it a try, this is probably as good a time as any."
"Right." For a moment Luke held his face against the door, peering through the peephole. Then, gripping the wheel, he turned it to the left.
Mara winced in anticipation, but the screech of rusted metal she'd expected didn't happen. In fact, the muted sound struck her as more like pieces of polished stone sliding smoothly against each other. Luke finished turning the wheel, then took hold of the two grip releases. "Here we go," he muttered, and squeezed.
Whoever had designed the self-lubrication for the locking wheel had apparently also designed the hinges. Again with only the faint rumble of stone against stone, the door swung open. Mara was through the opening before the door had finished its swing, blaster in hand, her senses stretched fully alert.
They were at the end of a fairly wide corridor, she saw, that stretched for perhaps twenty meters before opening into an open, atriumlike area with a wide central pillar running vertically through it from which pale reddish light was streaming. Spaced along each side of the corridor were five recessed doors, each flanked by two of the wall sconces that they'd seen in the underground room below. Unlike those, though, the upper sections of these sconces were glowing with a muted white light, the illumination adding to the dimmer red coming from the pillar in the atrium. The corridor's floor and ceiling were covered in an intricate pattern of tiny interlocked tiles, while the walls were a contrasting plain silvery metal.
From the entryway behind her came a soft twitter. "Artoo says the red light is the same spectrum as the sun," Luke said from her side. "Either we're near the top or they're piping the light down here."
"I'd guess the latter," Mara said. "The decor's a surprise—the Hijarna fortress is nothing but plain black stone. Feel like a little reconnoiter?"
"Sure," Luke said. "Splitter Of Stones, if you or the others know anything about the High Tower you haven't told us, this is the time to do it."
There were more of the Qom Jha chirps and almost-speech; and abruptly all eight of them flapped past Mara and headed down the corridor. Reaching the end, they split up and vanished off in different directions. "He said they don't know anything more," Luke told Mara, "but that they're eager to learn."
"As long as they don't bring the locals down on us," Mara said, flicking off her glow rod and sliding it away into a pocket. "You'd probably better leave the droid here."
"I was planning to," Luke said. "Artoo, get back in the alcove out of sight and close the door. Child Of Winds—no, you stay here with Artoo."
There was an obvious complaint from the young Qom Qae. "Not now," Luke said firmly. "Later, maybe, but not now. Come on, Mara."
They headed out along the corridor, Child Of Winds still fussing behind them. "Looks like a residential area," Luke commented, nodding toward the doors they were passing.
"Yes," Mara said, frowning at the central pillar they were approaching. As they neared it she could see that it was shaped like a giant circular stairway, except with a smooth ramp instead of a staircase spiraling around it. And the edge—"Is that ramp moving?"
