"I've met your kind before," Luke said. "Listen to me, Gethzerion turn away from the dark side before it is too late!"
Gethzerion nodded thoughtfully. "Pardon me if I say that I don't find you to be very impressive, young Jedi. It's a shame that you must die before you have a chance to witness how I make your friends writhe."
She pointed a finger at Luke, and before Luke even recognized her evil intent, a ripple of Force slammed into him. White lights exploded behind his eyes, and the right side of his face felt as if it had been smashed by a hammer. His left arm and right leg crumpled under their unbearable weight, and he dropped to the ground on one knee, stunned. All the noise and blaster fire and screams of pain died away, became a distant roaring. Gethzerion pointed at him again, twitched her finger, and his eyes lost focus. He felt the hammer blow to his left temple, dropped to his side and rolled over to his back, gasping. Luke stared up at the sky, watching streams of rocks hurtling above himsome propelled by the Force, others hurled by rancors.
Time seemed to slow. His head throbbed, pounding to the same rhythm as the beating of his heart. His face had gone cold, numb, and Luke realized distantly that Gethzerion's spell had ripped open blood vessels in his brain, and he was about to die, one among hundreds of fatalities on this battlefield.
So this is how it would have been, if Vader had tried to kill me. Who had Luke been kidding? Teneniel had been right, Luke was no warrior. Ben, Luke thought. I failed you. I've failed you all. And suddenly there was a wave of pain, and Luke tried to remember who he'd just been talking to, tried to think of a name, someone he could call for help, but his mind was numb, empty, like the vast deserts of Tatooine lying naked beneath setting suns.
Chapter 23
Isolder hurried to grab the new sensor array window. Chewbacca was already using the power wrench to pull off the old window, while Leia and Han labored in the cramped space of the Falcon 's hold to get the anticoncussion field generators in place. The droids were inside the Falcon , dumping coolant for the hyperdrive. Outside the fortress, a war was in full swing. The stone floors rumbled and shook under the assault of blaster fire and hurtling rocks, while a wind sang through the honeycombed corridors.
It felt to Isolder as if the whole mountain would shake down to dust at any moment. He almost wished that the room had a window, a parapet like so many of the other rooms here in the fortress, so that he could see what was happening outside. But at the same time he felt safer secluded here in this sealed room, with only one door to guard.
Isolder carried the window to Chewbacca, held it up for a moment as the Wookiee searched with his hairy paws to grab a bolt so that he could fasten the new window to the Falcon . The Wookiee's hands were shaking in fear.
Behind them, Isolder heard a voice that sounded almost distant, even though the woman shouted, "Gethzerion, I've found them!"
Isolder spun, dropped the window. A Nightsister stood in the doorway, panting. Isolder pulled his blaster, fired, and the Nightsister waved her hand, knocked the blaster bolt away.
"Well," she said. "You're a pretty one. I think I'll keep you."
Chewbacca roared and leaped at the Nightsister, and she backed up a step. Chewie dodged aside as if to pass her while retreating from the room, and the Nightsister lurched back. The Wookiee had snatched off the Nightsister's arm so fast that Isolder had never even seen it.
She gazed at the bloody stump of her shoulder, and Isolder fired again. The Nightsister went down.
Chewbacca howled, began looking frantically on the floor. Even though Isolder didn't understand Wookiee, he realized that Chewie had dropped the bolts. "Go inside and get some more!" Isolder shouted. "Hurry!"
Chewbacca scrambled to the Falcon . Isolder followed him up to the gangplank, nervously fingering his blaster.
He heard a hammering sound above his head. The stone walls burst open as if a giant fist had slammed against them. Isolder put his hands over his head to shield himself from falling rock, and a swirling hurricane of choking dirt and smoke whipped through the room.
Through the scream of the wind, he heard women's voices singing all around. He squinted his eyes and hit the close button on the Falcon 's hatch, shouting, "Go! Save yourselves!"
And in that moment, he knew that Rell's prophecy would come to pass. If he stayed here a moment longer, he would die. In the red glowing skies outside, he saw shadow shapes of women crawling along the rock, dropping through the rent in the torn wall.
Isolder ducked under the Falcon , rolled away, and made a run for the door, hoping to reach safety. A Nightsister came through the door to meet him.
She held up her hand, and an invisible force hammered into him.
Teneniel had watched Luke leap over the edge of the balcony, following the Nightsisters into the swirling mists, but she dared not follow. She heard screaming within the fortress, children shrieking in terror, and she rushed down a flight of stairs, leaving six of her sisters to fight on the balcony.
There had been three guards at the doors, and Teneniel followed hard on the heels of Ferra and Kirana Ti down the winding stairway. Ferra rushed around a corner and shouted in horror as her head suddenly, and without apparent cause, twisted around sharply, snapping her neck.
Kirana Ti stopped, pointed a blaster, waiting for someone to come up the stairwell, but a madness took Teneniel. Without voicing her spell, Teneniel sent a wind screaming through the stairwell powerful enough so that Ferra's corpse tumbled away. Below her, the Nightsisters shouted in dismay and Teneniel rushed down around the corner, saw two Nightsisters clinging to the handrails in order to avoid being swept downstairs.
A black rage filled her mind, and Teneniel pounded the hags with the Force wind, ripped the handrail from the stone walls so that the Nightsisters went shrieking into oblivion, bouncing down the winding stairway.
She let the wind fade, and Kirana Ti sat hunched on the floor, looking up at Teneniel's face in fear, weeping. Teneniel wondered why the stupid girl didn't get up, go out and fight.
"What are you looking at?" Teneniel shouted. "You miserable weakling!" Upstairs, one of their clan sisters shrieked, her voice cut short. "Get out of here. Go on and fight! Your sisters are dying!"
"Your face," Kirana Ti whimpered. "You've burst a vessel!"
Teneniel stopped, touched her cheek, felt the tender bruise beneath her eye. The mark of a Nightsister. Her mind reeled at the thought, and she realized that she'd murdered those Nightsisters in rage. She turned and ran blindly up the flight of stairs, past the warriors' chambers, and her footsteps rang on the stone.
She turned a corner at the top of the stairs, heard Nightsisters above her singing their spells. She looked around, surprised to find them so high in the fortress. There were no more open rooms this highnothing but a few sealed sleeping and storage chambers. If the Nightsisters had not come up the stairs, they could have entered only by using the Force to break through the stone walls. And the only thing of value up this high was the Millennium Falcon .
Teneniel raced upstairs, running silently in the guttering torchlight past the faded tapestries of clan sisters long dead, rounded the corner to the upper chamber where the Falcon was stored.
The Nightsisters huddled theretwelve hooded figures muttering their spells, hands outstretched. They had torn the north wall asunder, and the cracked stone opened into the maelstrom.
Into the storm the Nightsisters sent the Falcon , floating on a field of Force. It was halfway through the crack in the wall, drifting out through space. The hatch door was closed. On the far side of the room, a lone Nightsister crouched over the still form of Isolder, binding his wrists, unable to resist the impulse to steal such a handsome slave.
Teneniel halted, backed against the wall, thinking. She could not fight so many, and if she tried to stop them from stealing the Falcon now, breaking their concentration on the spell, the ship would simply tumble out the rent in the wall, fall over the cliffs. Even with her powerful gift, her ability to move objects, she
could not manage to save such a heavy ship and still fight the Nightsisters.
Her only hope was that Leia and Han were all right, hidden inside the ship. She reached out with her mind, calling for Leia. "Please," she whispered. "Fire your engines."
She inhaled a deep breath, turned and ran through the room, and channeled the Force to Isolder, using it to levitate his unconscious body. She bowled his captor aside, grabbed him and leaped against the stone wall, shielding Isolder with her body.
The Falcon 's engines flamed, filling the room with white fire. The Nightsisters shrieked in the inferno, but Teneniel channeled the Force, let the flames flow around her. The Falcon shot off through clouds of brown smoke.
Teneniel slumped to the floor. The flames had burned her, singed her clothing. She did not feel damaged so much as just in pain.
The flames had blasted the rooms. A shelf of parchments burned in one corner. Tapestries of ancient clan sisters smoldered. Among the Nightsisters, only one woman had been strong enough to survive the fire. She crawled, stunned, on her hands and knees, hair singed, face reddened as with a sunburn.
Leia piloted the Falcon through the dust and swirling debris of the Force storm. They had been working desperately to get the anticoncussion field generators on line, and had not even managed to get the first generator mounted. The gravel crashing into the Falcon 's sensor array forks was taking its toll, yet Leia didn't dare try to rise above the storm. The flashing lightning from the static electricity, the soot and accumulated garbage in the sky, was all she had to protect them from being detected by Zsinj's warships above the atmosphere.
She circled the fortress once, twice. From this altitude, she could see the sun rising through the storm, so she headed back over the valley beneath the fortress, flying low. Han rushed up from the hold and shouted, "What are you doing to my ship? You can't stay in this storm!"
He took the copilot's seat, and they headed low over the valley. Artoo was whistling and beeping in the back, and Threepio came out. "King Solo, Your Highness, good news! I've emptied all the coolant into the hyperdrive generators!"
"Great, Threepio," Han muttered. "Can you think of a way to stop this storm?"
"I'll have to work on that," Threepio said.
Leia looked down at the ground, at the tilled fields of the Singing Mountain clan. Just ahead, at the limit of vision, a dozen Imperial walkers and perhaps two dozen Nightsisters marched down a wooded road. Han spotted them.
"Boy, I hate messing up a good road," Han said as he launched his proton torpedoes. Leia only hoped the energy shielding would hold through the blast.
The proton torpedoes blossomed into a field of white, and Leia looked away. An incredible sonic boom shook the ship, echoed between the hills over and over. When the light faded enough so that she could see, gravel and soot began raining from the sky, long trails of debris that glittered in the morning sun like golden waterfalls.
Han whooped and laughed, ran his fingers through his mussed hair. For one eternal moment, Leia realized that they had struck a major blow. The Force storm was over. Han's torpedoes had taken out some of the Nightsisters' major talent.
In the fortress, Teneniel sat up, and the whole mountain suddenly shook with a huge explosion. Down below her in the valley outside, a cheer of victory arose. As quickly as the Force storm had erupted, it stopped. Soot and debris rained from the sky in dirty streams. Yet out above the residue of clouds, Teneniel watched the sunrise, a golden seam where land met sky.
Teneniel crawled to the wounded Nightsister on the floor where the Falcon had been repaired, and the hag looked up, tried feebly to whisper a spell, but collapsed. Teneniel flipped the woman onto her back, looked into her eyes. The Nightsister flinched, frightened. Her breath rasped through burned lungs, weakening. She had been standing in the wrong place, right behind the Falcon 's exhaust ports as it blasted off.
"Don't worry," Teneniel said, stroking the creature's soot-stained face. "I won't hurt you. I've killed too many of your kind already today. No matter what you do to me afterward, I want you to have this." Teneniel looked at the horrible woman, a victim of her own evil, and Teneniel channeled the last of her strength, granting her enough life force that given time and care, the Nightsister might live.
Han gazed at the streaming sunlight, and his heart leaped within him. For one moment, he thought he'd won.
Then, the darkness blossomed. On the far horizon, a circular black spot appeared, and then another beside it, and another, as if the sky had been lit with ten thousand glowglobes and someone suddenly was switching them off.
Within thirty seconds, the Millennium Falcon hovered beneath a sky void of light. Only flames from burning fields and crops illuminated the ground below. Chewbacca roared and shook his head in frustration, eyes wild.
"King Solo, help!" Threepio shouted urgently. "My photoreceptors are registering a most startling phenomenon Dathomir's sun appears to be going dead!"
"No kidding," Han said.
"Hey," Leia said, her voice betraying her nervousness. "What is this?"
"Something far beyond the power even of the Nightsisters," Han answered with certainty, looking up at a ceiling of perfect night.
Chapter 24
Han set the Falcon down, shut off the engines. The night was absolutely black, and he looked up at the sky, wondering if perhaps something was wrong with the view-screen. He thought about pounding it, just to see what would happen.
He glanced at sensor panels. "Oh man," he said. "That little ride of yours through the storm cost us dearly. The sensors are gummed up bad. I can hardly get any readings at all."
"Would you rather be dead?" Leia asked.
"No," Han conceded. "Where's Isolder?"
"I don't know," Leia answered. "He went out to put up the sensor window. I think the Nightsisters got him."
"Got him? What do you mean, got him? Killed him?"
"I, I don't know. He was lying on the floor when we blasted off. Teneniel was with him. She told me to get out of there."
Han looked at her; the ship's lights revealed the lines of dread etched in her face. What she'd done was tantamount to human sacrifice, and she knew it. He said, "We'd better get the medkit and go back. Make sure he's okay. How far do you figure we are from the fortress?"
"I did a lot of circling," Leia answered. "It couldn't be more than half a kilometer."
Han turned to Chewie. "Leia and I are going back to the fortress. You and Threepio see if you can get those generators mounted. Artoo, see if you can get some sensor readings, tell us what's going on. If you learn anything, I want to hear about it immediately."
Chewie roared an affirmative, and Han went back for the medkit, grabbed a heavy blaster and a helmet. He gave Leia a flashlight, and together they hurried down the gangplank, through the valley.
Dust and soot still filtered down on them, and here and there across the valley they could see fires burning. On the far side of the valley, green running lights showed four Imperial walkers scurrying off in retreat, ghoulish little figures running beside them.
Leia didn't turn on the flashlight. Instead, they ran along the road guided only by the feeble light from fires. What had seemed a long, bumpy ride in the Falcon turned out to be only a short run back to the fortress. When they reached it, the battle was over.
Grim-faced men milled about the fortress, torches in hand, staring at the total darkness with trepidation. Rancors roared in agony on the stairs, and Leia flashed her light over them. A dozen of them lay in a bloody heap like small hills at the top of the stairs, and Tosh struggled to drag the corpse of her son away, roaring her anguish.
Han and Leia hurried upstairs in the fortress, running past the dead. In the upper chamber, they found Teneniel sprawled over the body of a Nightsister. Leia flipped Teneniel on her back, and the girl breathed deeply. Han examined her. Outside of burn marks on her robe, he could find no injuries.
"Where's Isolder?" Leia asked, but Teneniel didn't move. Leia played her
light across the room. A splash of white revealed Isolder in a corner. Leia rushed to him.
Han brought the medkit, but when he got near, he found Isolder snoring. Leia shook him awake, and Isolder snapped to sudden awareness.
"Where am I?" he asked. "What's going on?" Then he scanned the room, noticed the bodies of the Nightsisters, seemed to recall. He gazed into Leia's eyes. "Wow! What a beautiful face to wake up to." Isolder put his arm around Leia, kissed her quickly.
"All right," Han said. "No mushy stuff. We've got work to do." Han glanced up through the breach in the stone wall, saw the fires out in the surrounding valley. It was like gazing out of some primitive observatory.
Augwynne said, "There you are!" Han turned. The clan leader held a torch, and several children stood at her elbow. She moved feebly, as if weary. Leia helped Isolder up, and Augwynne stopped to inspect Teneniel in the darkness, said to one of the children, "Go, run get the healer."
"What's going on?" Han asked.
Augwynne looked out at the night, nodded. "I was hoping you could tell me," she said. "Gethzerion has retreated to the city. I saw the headlights of her hover car speeding through the forest. Over a dozen of our clan sisters lie dead, and several others are missing, as is Luke Skywalker."
Leia started, gave an involuntary whimper, looked around the room as if Luke might suddenly appear.
"Do you have any idea where Luke is?" Han asked Augwynne.
"We saw him chase after some Nightsisters when the attack first started," Augwynne said. "He leaped down over the cliffs."
"Luke can take care of himself," Han said, trying to sound confident for Leia's sake. "Let's give him a few more minutes. I'm sure he'll make it back." But Leia was frowning, staring out over the valley into the blackness.
Star Wars - The Courtship of Princess Leia Page 28
