Part 8 (1/2)
”I believe--” She nodded toward the viewspider's image sac. ”--that you are about to find out.”
Jacen stands in the amphistaff grove, watching. The slave seed shrieks flame through every nerve in his body: sizzling commands for him to run, to scramble and sprint for the coraltree basal only thirty meters away.
He burns in this fire, but is not consumed. The fire is an alembic that has distilled everything he is, has ever been, ever will be, into one eternal instant; like the white before it, the fire has washed away time. All of Jacen's time has become one single now, and the fire inside him feeds his strength. Out of the shadows, out in the blue-white glare of the Nursery's constant noon, four slaves suddenly step away from the nearest coraltree basal, letting its fronds drop from their hands. They do this casually, efficiently, without haste but with no wasted motion, and they glance toward the amphistaff grove, toward the deep shade where Jacen stands.
They don't seem to be in pain. This, Jacen knows already, is because they're not really slaves. He wonders fleetingly if Anakin had felt this way: calm. Ready. Looking at the price he was about to pay, and deciding he'd gotten a bargain. Out in the blue-white noon, the four slaves press the sides of their noses, and the ooglith masquers they had worn peel apart, filaments unthreading from pores to leave smeared beads of blood like sweat. The masquers ripple and flow down the revealed warriors, then squirm away to vanish in the gra.s.s.
The warriors walk toward the amphistaff grove. Jacen closes his eyes, and for one second he is among his family: his father's hand ruffles his hair, his mother's arm is warm around his shoulders, Jaina and Lowie groan and Em Teedee makes a sarcastic comment as Jacen tries one more time to tell a joke to Tenel Ka... But Chewbacca is not there.
Neither is Anakin. The four warriors stop just beyond the fringe of the grove. Juvenile amphistaffs whip the air threateningly, and the polyps'
groundmouths gape wide, mutely antic.i.p.ating a rain of blood and flesh.
One warrior calls out in harsh, guttural Basic: ”Jeedai-slave, come out!”
Jacen's only response is to open his eyes.
”Jeedai-slave! Come out from there!” They wear no armor; the only vonduun crabs within reach are the wild ones that infest the bog beyond the coraltree basal, coming out at night to feed on the polyps at the edges of the grove. Unarmored warriors could not survive even seconds within the hissing swirl of juvenile amphistaffs.
Jacen adjusts his stance, organizing his thoughts and his breathing into a Jedi meditation that reaches deep within himself, beyond the searing pain from the slave seed, into memories of what he has learned through his mental link with the dhuryam: memories so vivid they are like a waking dream.
Now the fully armed warriors who guard the shreeyam'tiz are taking notice. Some begin to move deliberately toward the amphistaff grove, and the warriors who ring the hive-pond s.h.i.+ft uneasily and adjust their weapons.
”Jeedai-slave! If we must come in, it will go worse for you!”
Jacen is deep in the meditation now; he can feel the thrum of emotive hormones through the rudimentary brains of the amphistaff polyps around him. He can taste their blood hunger like a mouthful of raw meat.
The warrior turns and barks a command in the tongue of the Yuuzhan Vong.
Two more false slaves step away from a coraltree basal and allow their ooglith masquers to slither down their legs. The newly revealed warriors grab a real slave; one holds him while the other crushes the slave's throat with a knife-hand strike. They step back and let the slave fall, watching dispa.s.sionately while he writhes in the dirt, choking to death.
”Jeedai-slave! Come out, or another will die. Then another; and another, until finally only you are left. Save their lives, Jeedai. Come out!”
Now Jacen's waking meditation dream interpenetrates with the memory of another dream, a real dream, a Force dream so vivid he can still smell the coralskipper buds, can still see the scarified faces of the warrior guards and the coral-maimed bodies of the slaves: a dream he had two years ago, on Belkadan. A dream in which he freed slaves of the Yuuzhan Vong. How astonished he felt, how bereft, when that dream did not come true. When his attempt to fulfill its promise ended in disaster, in blood and death and torture, he felt as though the Force itself had betrayed him. Now he sees that he had not been betrayed. He'd merely been impatient.
”Jeedai-slave! Come out!”
Jacen sighs, and surfaces from the meditation.
”All right,” he says quietly, a little sadly. ”If you insist.”
His still shadow becomes a shade in motion, drifting noiselessly through the grove of blood-hungry polyps. He stops at the penumbra bordering the blue-white noon beyond. The amphistaffs whirl lethal halos at his back.
”Here I am.”
”Farther,” the warrior commands. ”Move beyond the reach of the grove.”
Jacen opens his empty hands.
”Make me.”
The warrior turns his head fractionally toward his companions.
”Kill another.”
”You,” Jacen says, ”are no warrior.”
The warrior's three companions jabber excitedly among themselves.
The leader's head snaps around as though yanked by a tractor beam.
”What?”
”Warriors win battles without murdering the weak.” Jacen's voice drips acid contempt. ”Like all Yuuzhan Vong, you make war only upon the helpless. You are a coward from a species of cowards.”
The warrior stalks forward. His eyes glitter a crazed, feral yellow.
”You call me coward? You? You simpering Jeedai brat? You s.h.i.+vering brenzlit, cowering in the shadow of your den? You slave?”
”This Jeedai brenzlit slave,” Jacen says distinctly, clinically, ”spits upon your grandfather's bones.”
The warrior lunges, taloned fingers reaching to tear the eyes from Jacen's face. With an exhausted sigh, Jacen collapses before the warrior's rush, falling to his back--while lightly taking the warrior's outstretched wrists and planting one foot in the pit of the warrior's stomach to make a fulcrum. Jacen rolls, kicking upward, and the warrior flails helplessly as he flips through the air into the blade-storm of the amphistaffs. Jacen lies for a moment in the sudden rain of Yuuzhan Vong blood and gobbets of warrior flesh.
He turns his head to watch the juvenile amphistaffs rake chunks of the warrior's corpse toward the salivating gape of the polyps'
groundmouths.
Then he rises. He faces the remaining three.
”Well?”
They exchange uncertain glances. At Jacen's back, the polyps slurp and gurgle, and the amphistaffs whirl hungrily. The warriors stand their ground, calling out in their own tongue. In answer to their call, two of the squads who guard the shreeyam'tiz lumber heavily forward bearing amphistaffs of their own, bandoliers of thud bugs and other less familiar weapons, and wearing full vonduun crab armor. The sh.e.l.l of a vonduun crab can stop a lightsaber; it can resist even the atomic-diameter edge of an amphistaff blade. One of the three nearby shows Jacen his teeth: long and needle-sharp, curving inward like a predator's.
”Nal'tikkin Jeedai hr'zlat sor trizmek sh'makk,” he spits. ”Tyrokk jan trizmek, Jeedai.”
Jacen doesn't need to speak their tongue to understand: no trick of wrestling will help a lone unarmed man against two squads of warriors, Jedi or not. The warrior is advising him to prepare to die.
Jacen smiles. It's a sad smile: melancholy, resigned. He nods. In a part of his mind far from the pain and the blood and the harsh blue-white glare, he can feel the dark satisfaction of the amphistaff polyps behind him as they swiftly, almost instantly digest the fallen warrior. He feels their glittering antic.i.p.ation, and the shuddering release as they use the meal of warrior's flesh to give themselves the strength to reproduce.
Amphistaff polyps breed as.e.xually; the amphistaffs themselves become a polyp's offspring, released from their nodules to squirm away in search of the proper ground to take root and begin their transformation into polyps themselves.
Through his empathic connection, Jacen shows them the ground he recommends.
Trusting their friend, the amphistaffs take his advice. He stretches forth his arms. The warriors can only stare in openmouthed awe as amphistaffs fall like leaves from the polyps at his back; as amphistaffs wriggle down the polyps' k.n.o.bby leathern trunks and slither through the gra.s.s. Amphistaffs twine about Jacen's ankles and climb his body like vines enveloping a forgotten jungle idol. They twist around his legs, his hips, his chest, coiling the length of his arms, shrouding his neck, curving up to embrace even his skull.
The approaching squads of fully armed warriors slow uncertainly, not quite sure, now, how to attack. Because the vonduun crab is not the only creature that can resist the cut of an amphistaff blade.