road ended there, at the famously scenic vista.
From his hidden observation post, Solis dialed up his T/Z telescopic
sniperscope with the implanted reticle to identify the troops spilling out of
the landspeeders and heading into the rugged terrain. Ten, twelve, fifteen
humans in all, plus ten elite assassin droids like the ones Ventress had brought
to Phindar Spaceport, and two platoons of grunt droids to help beat the bushes.
There would be more specialized trackers in soon, no doubt; this would be the
reception committee Dooku had sent to be Yoda's "guard of honor."
There was a cave entrance within three minutes' hard scramble of where the
B-7 had touched down. Yoda's crew should make it in plenty of time, Solis
thought. Once inside the caves they should lengthen their lead, at least until
the hunters brought in some pretty fancy sensors.
All in all, nothing unexpected—reasonable opening moves by both sides, each
intent on a meeting, both preferring to control the time and manner of that
encounter.
Solis nodded to himself. Time to head for the caves.
"You're late," Count Dooku said mildly as Whirry waddled into his study,
flushed and gasping.
"Which I'm certain I'm sorry, for that I was looking for Miss Vix—but there
she is, the pet!" Whirry cried, for the Count was holding the brindled fox. He
had one large hand beneath the animal's chest, holding it, while with the other
he stroked its red-brown pelt. The fox struggled and whined in his hands. It was
gasping, and its eyes were round and terrified.
Dooku's fingers passed behind its ears, and his big hand ran over its thin
shoulder blades, fragile as twigs. "I told you we had guests coming; one I
invited, and a couple I did not." Dooku stroked the terrified fox. "I've been
looking through some house records. When your husband went mad, you gave a child
up to the Jedi."
"The Baby," Whirry whispered. "Which they stole him, the brutes. Took me when
my mind was all ahoo. Blood all over my dress." She glanced absently down at her
ball gown, looking at the splotches on the hem and cuffs, the dull stains darker
than plain grime. "They stole him from me."
"There was a droid here at that time," Dooku said. "A Tac-Spec Footman who
served the House Malreaux for twelve generations, but then mysteriously
disappeared. No mention of it these last ten years. Curiously, Asajj met such a
droid eight days ago, traveling with a Jedi Padawan on his way here."
Stroke, stroke: the little fox trembling and whining.
"Were you thinking of having a little homecoming without telling me, Whirry?
That would be . . . disappointing."
"Which it was supposed to be a surprise, like," the old woman whispered.
"I don't like surprises."
"Oh. All right, then." She swallowed.
"You can communicate with this droid, I assume?"
"Yes."
The Count looked at her.
"Yes, Master," she said quickly.
Dooku ran his hand softly down Miss Vix's back. The fox twitched and yelped.
Dooku lifted his hand. His fingertips were full of fur. "Hm," he said. He
flicked the fur off his hand and returned to his stroking. Another yelp. More
fur. He paused, as if at a sudden thought, and turned the fox, to show its
mutilated pelt. "Here, Whirry—would you like to read your future?"
The housekeeper looked from her master to her fox and back, mouth trembling.
"What do you want me to do?"
"What's wrong with your gentlegadget?" Scout asked Whie. They had been
scrambling through the caves for some time, following the glow of Yoda's
lightsaber, when the droid came to a sudden halt, as if his programming had
hung.
"Fidelis?" Whie's voice, sharp and commanding. Echoes rattled away into the
chambers on either side.
A whirring, clanking sound. Fidelis seemed to wake up. He shook his head.
"Yes, Master Whie?"
"Is there a problem?"
"Not at all, sir. Just, ah, just running through my internal maps, sir."
"Come," Yoda said. "A large chamber there is. Rest there we will."
"I don't need rest," Whie said. His step, always graceful, was electric, and
his voice hummed with suppressed excitement. "I need to get home."
It was all Scout could do to pick her way through these sinister caverns,
eyes aching with the effort of peering into the gloom. She had already scraped
her shins badly, twice, in the first dash into the cave system. Whie, on the
other hand, was moving as if it were broad daylight. His eyes were bright,
almost manic. "The Force is strong here," he said, and he laughed with the
pleasure of it.
He was right about the Force. Even Scout could feel it: a nervous prickle
running deep inside her, as if the world were full of magnets and she could feel
them tugging on the iron in her blood. Whie found it exhilarating. Scout thought
it was creepy. There was something edgy about the Force here: a sharp,
unbalanced feeling, as different from the gentle glow of the Jedi Temple as the
damp, acid wind of Vjun was from the air back home.
Whie bounded on ahead, with Fidelis pattering behind. Scout came up more
slowly. Master Yoda took her lightly by the arm. "Soft now," he breathed.
"Listen a moment, Padawan. Leave you here, I must."
"Leave us!" she hissed.
"Whether Fidelis may be trusted, I know not. Keep your fellow Padawan safe, I
know he will: but Jedi business is a different thing."
True enough, Scout thought, remembering Solis's betrayal.
Yoda snuffed. "A way to the surface nearby there is; I can smell the air.
Take it I will. You and the others stay in the caves. If all goes well, come to
you, I will. If met in twelve hours we have not, head back to the ship, and send
a message to the Jedi Temple , saying Yoda will not return."
"But—!"
The hand squeezed her arm. "Your fellow Padawan, watch you must! Vjun calls
to the dark side in him."
"Check it out!" Whie called from somewhere up ahead. "Skeletons!"
"What am I supposed to do with him?" Scout whispered—but Yoda was gone.
Cursing under her breath, Scout scrambled up a series of limestone ledges.
The only light came from the faint glow of Whie's lightsaber, far ahead. The
floor was covered in a gray dust, fine as ash. Nothing grew here, although every
now and then Scout saw small bones—animals that had fallen down a hole into the
caves, or been carried here by floodwaters. Somewhere in the distance, water was
dripping into an underground pool, drip, drop, drip: each drop with an echo that
faded and died.
The idea got into Scout's head that each drop was like a life: swelling into
being on the cavern's unseen roof; then life itself, a brief plunge ending with
a smack into cold water; then echoes, like the memory left on those behind:
faint, fading, gone.
"What do you suppose happened to Scout?" she heard Whie say in a strange,
comical voice. "I better go check!" Whie answered himself, in a high, squeaky
voice. There was a clatter, like old sticks clacking together. Just as Scout
scrabbled up to the lip of the next cavern, a grinning white skull peered down
&n
bsp; at her. A bony arm reached out with a skeletal hand at the end of it. Whie was
using the Force to make the frail bones hover in the air. "You look like you
could use a hand," he said, in that high, squeaky voice, and the floating finger
bones clutched around her wrist.
Scout screamed and smacked her arm down on the limestone. The bones snapped
and splintered. The floating skeleton—no bigger than a child—held its hand, now
missing its fingers, up in front of its empty eye sockets. "Whoa. Now I'm
stumped," he squeaked in his little-boy voice.
A second skeleton, this one the size of a grown man, came bobbing through the
air to join the first. "Careful there, junior," Whie said in an ugly parody of a
mother's voice. "This one's feisty."
Scout's heart hammered in her chest. "Whie. Stop it."
"Just having a little fun," Whie said, appearing.
"Scout, it's incredible. There's something about this place—can't you feel
it? I've never felt the Force so strongly. Normally I would have to concentrate
just to hold all these bones in the air, but here . . ." He hummed, waving his
lightsaber like a conductor's baton. The two skeletons joined hands and began to
dance.
"Put the bones down," Scout said, doing her best to keep her voice steady.
"Why? The original owners aren't using them."
"It's not respectful," Scout said.
"I don't see—"
"Whie. I'm begging you. Please," Scout said. Silence.
"All right." Whie turned away. The bones dropped to the floor with a clatter.
"I guess it's not nice to scare little girls."
Scout waited for her heart to stop racing. "Whie?"
"Yeah?"
"You know you don't sound right, don't you?" Silence.
"I know."
"It frightens me," Scout said. "The Force is very strong here. If even I can
feel that, I can only imagine what it must be like for you. I don't think it's a
good idea for us to use it unless we absolutely have to. It's like .. . air with
too much oxygen. The dark side is just waiting to catch fire."
"I've got news for you, Scout. The dark side is here," Whie said, tapping his
chest. "We carry it with us wherever we go."
He flicked off his lightsaber.
Instantly the darkness was absolute. Somewhere a drop of water gathered,
fattened, dropped into a light-less pool. Drip-drop-op-op-p.
Silence.
Stars had come out in the darkness, little gleams of light spangling the
cavern ceiling. "I've seen those lights before," Whie said.
"Glow-worms," Fidelis answered. "We used to come down here when you were an
infant, Master. You and I and your brother and your father, before his, ah,
illness."
"What happened to him?"
Scout drew her own lightsaber and flicked it on at the lowest power setting,
just to make a light.
"The better families on Vjun have traditionally had very high midi-chlorian
counts," Fidelis said. "It was a mark of status. Vjun only established
significant trade with the Republic in the last couple of generations; before
then, the Jedi had not yet had a chance to—forgive me for speaking plainly—keep
the inhabitants subjugated by their usual practice of kidnapping all children of
unusually high ability. In times past, Vjun has had some contact with the Sith,
but the recent advances of the Republic marked the first prolonged exposure to
the Jedi cult. Interest in midi-chlorian phenomena had always been high, of
course, but the arrival of the Jedi baby hunters naturally spurred the best
families into thinking of how they could augment their own abilities and
safeguard themselves from the threat posed by—" He coughed delicately.
"—outsiders.
"The Count your father was part of a consortium involved in genetically
enhancing the natural midi-chlorian levels of Vjun's populace. The experiment
was, in fact, wildly successful."
"You mean they created a whole planet of Forcesensitives with no mental
training for handling it?" Scout said, appalled.
"Oh, that's the smell in the air," Whie said. "Madness. They all went mad,
didn't they? You can hear the rocks screaming."
Scout's mouth went dry. "Whie?"
"Can't you hear it? I can't make it stop," he said. "You're scaring me
again."
"Don't worry. This is my place. My home. They know me here." He pushed his
foot through the pile of bones. "A mother and child, I think. They came in here
to hide from my father, didn't they?"
"Well, sir," Fidelis stammered. "I'm sure I couldn't say."
Scout held up her hand at the sound of distant footsteps, the clink and
rustle of metal. Then, by some trick of the caves, a set of orders came through
a crack in the rock as if the trooper giving them was only a few meters away.
"Spread out through the caves. Captives can be taken dead or alive."
Scout stirred. "Dooku's droids are coming after us."
"Time to get moving," Whie agreed. "Hey—where's Master Yoda?"
"He left. He said we should rendezvous back at the ship in twelve hours."
"I didn't hear that," Whie said suspiciously. "Why would he tell you and not
me?"
"I don't know," Scout snapped back. "Because you're acting really weird right
now?"
answer. It isn't easy for me, being here. My thoughts keep spinning out: I have
to cut them off. I've been using the Silent Meditation Master Yoda taught us
back when we were all five. Do you remember that one?"
"Yeah." Eyes half closed, tongue curled up to just touch the roof of the
mouth: the Force running in a wheel from the top of one's head, spilling down
through one's spine, then the marrow of one's thighbones, then draining from the
pressure point in the soles of the feet to discharge. A child full of the Force
like a cloud carrying lightning is, he used to say. Let the charge run through
you to the ground, to the ground. She could still hear his kindly old
voice—relax you must!—and the sound of kids giggling around her in the sleepy
sunlit classroom.
Whie's voice broke into her memory. "This is what happened to Asajj
Ventress's Master, you know. He was marooned on a strange, violent planet, and
the Jedi abandoned him. Master Yoda abandoned him."
"Do you really think that's the whole story?"
Whie shrugged. "Funny coincidence. That's all I'm saying. Fidelis, get us
farther away from these droids, would you?"
"Certainly, sir. I know every crack and cranny in these caves. If you will
follow me?"
The Padawans hiked after him, Scout second with her lightsaber shedding its
pale blue gleam; Whie bringing up the rear, moving easily. The weight of rock
overhead didn't seem to bother him, but Scout hated it: the crushing weight,
millions of metric tons of stone, rotten with holes and apertures. A couple of
mortar rounds or a concussion grenade could bring the whole string of caverns
down, burying them alive.
Stop it, she told herself. A Jedi—even a young, frantic Jedi—doesn't let
herself panic. You worked all your life to take these risks, Tallisibeth. You
earned this fear. Wha
t would Jai Maruk think?
At the thought of him, grief and warmth stole into her. She remembered crying
over him as he lay dying in the Phindar Spaceport. Don't leave me, Master, she
had said. His answer—Never, my Padawan.
Behind her, Whie laughed. "Remember that thing Master Yoda used to say? When
you look at the dark side, careful you must be . . ."
. . . for the dark side looks back," Scout said.
Drip, tap, drop, tick.
Count Dooku sat at the desk in his study, pretending to read the day's
dispatches from the Clone Wars, but actually listening to the ceaseless Vjun
rain tick-spattering against the windows behind him. Listening, too, with a
sense other than hearing.
Yoda was close by.
He was moving carefully, quietly, hiding his presence in the Force; riding on
its back like a leaf whirled gently down a stream. But on Vjun, the Force was
bent mightily to the dark side, and every now and then the Master opposed its
current. It was these moments Dooku was listening for. Once, several minutes
ago, the old Jedi had misstepped, putting a foot against the current, and the
shock of it had rumbled through the very bedrock beneath Château Malreaux,
announcing the Master's coming like a distant groundquake.
Or maybe it hadn't been a mistake. Maybe Yoda wanted Dooku to know he was on
his way.
Since then the world had been silent. The old Jedi was moving like a
water-skeeter over the surface of the Force, with nothing to herald his coming
but a faint sensation of heat on Dooku's skin, as if he were a blind man at
sunrise, the dawn invisible to him but for a pale, spreading warmth.
He hadn't really expected the Master to allow himself to be brought into
Château Malreaux under guard. Combat timing is, the Master used to say; and the
job of the warrior, to destroy his opponent's timing. Even now Dooku could see
the Master in his mind's eye, stumpy little form in brown robes on the first day
of lightsaber practice, clucking and passing out the wooden practice swords,
kids giggling, the smell of clean linen and matting, the Master shuffling out in
front of them all, the long, snoozing sigh: and then the rush, the little figure
calling the Force to fill him up, the pull of it so strong that Dooku and the
other gifted children could feel it, like a current streaming from the corners