Part 12 (1/2)
”Wait?” Luke felt a tw.a.n.g of panic. The hills were dangerous.
Callista would come to harm if he didn't get there soon. They might arrive and find her gone once more, or dead. It was unendurable, to be so close. ”What's the problem?”
Taselda shook her head, with the air of one not wis.h.i.+ng to burden a friend with her troubles, and averted her face a little. A droch crawled out of sight behind her collar. ”It's nothing.”
”Can I help?”
”I couldn't ask you to,” she said. ”It's my affair alone.”
”Tell me.” The world would be a bleak and terrible place if he didn't aid her. He might not find Callista. And somehow it had become important to him that she not seek the aid of another than he.
”Please.”
Her smile was shy, and a little self-deprecating. ”It's been a long time since I had a champion. Your Callista is lucky, Owen.” She raised those flower blue eyes to his again and touched his chest with confiding fingers.
”It's an old story, a long story, my friend. When first I came to this world-oh, many years ago-I had only intended to accomplish the minor mission the Masters of the Jedi had ordered for me and to depart.
But seeing the way the people here lived, squabbling endlessly over pump rights, and tree rights, and who was ent.i.tled to grow which crops on which piece of land, I could not leave. There were Warlords, petty bullies with hired bravos, and though it is against the way of our order to take sides, I could not allow the deeds I saw to go uncorrected. I lent my skill, and such talents as I possessed, to the side of the people. With my lightsaber in hand I led them to a stronger and more peaceful way of life. My craft was destroyed one night while I was away leading the rescue of hostages from the enemy; and I knew that I must stay. After the fighting was over, these people made me their ruler. And I was happy.”
Luke nodded, seeing in his mind this beautiful woman in her warrior youth. The house, indeed, was of the sort that a grateful people would build for a just ruler who had saved them from tyranny.
”But many years later another Jedi came to this world, an evil creature: selfish, lying, but very plausible. He came here because he had heard that the Force on this world is strong. It lies close to the surface of reality here, close enough to reach out and touch, though he was not capable of doing so. His own abilities to use the Force were not strong, and he sought to twist and gather them to fulfill his own emptiness.
Beldorion he was called. Beldorion of the Ruby Eyes. Beldorion the Splendid.”
She sighed and pa.s.sed her hand across her forehead in a gesture of weariness and grief.
”As you know, Owen, there are always those who will follow such a one.
He worked not only through violence and the threat of violence but through lies and calumny, turning the truth and people's memories of the truth, until everything I had done here was given a different meaning, a sinister significance that those whose power to work evil I had curtailed were delighted to believe.
”My friends turned against me. Beldorion was too feeble an adept to manufacture his own lightsaber, so he stole mine from me. I was driven into poverty. Feared by the weak and courted by the venal, Beldorion came to rule Hweg Shul like a king, and I was forgotten.”
Her voice faltered, and she put up her hand quickly, to cover whatever expression might have pulled at her mouth. In the quiet street behind them a blerd brayed its monotonous tenor screech; an Oldtimer woman drove past in a high-wheeled cart pulled by alcopays, flipping her long whip at their feet. Luke saw in his mind's eye this beautiful woman before him, hurrying along these densely twisted walled streets with her dirty dress fluttering in the endless wind and remembered Ben again and the way children in Tosche station used to run out in front of him giggling and making what they considered to be magic signs with their fingers. Even at this great distance of time-and he'd been only a small child himself-he remembered the genuine amus.e.m.e.nt that had tugged the corners of Ben's mouth.
Taselda went on, ”Well, it was inevitable, as we true Knights know, that Beldorion should succ.u.mb to his own greeds and his own vices. He was usurped and ousted many years ago by a man named Seti Ashgad, a politician sent here by the old Emperor as punishment, even as the ancestors of these people had been sent here. Beldorion had become so sunk in debauchery that no power remained to him. His followers deserted him for Ashgad, and Ashgad took from him his very house, and all the treasure inside it. Treasure that he had stolen from me,” she said somberly. ”And most important, in that house somewhere is my lightsaber.”
Luke said softly, ”Ah.”
”Because of injuries I suffered in my struggle against Beldorion it was not possible for me to make another. When I went to Ashgad, many years ago now, and tried to retrieve it, I was cast forth as brutally as Beldorion had cast me forth. Since then I have tried many times to recover it. See.” With a movement of simple innocence, she slipped her dress from her right shoulder, and showed him, among the droch bites, a terrible bruise on her arm.
”We will be vulnerable, when we go to the cave to find your Callista,”
she said softly. ”Ashgad's servants are merciless, the more so because they are no longer human, but only human-seeming droids.
And because of that same injury, I no longer have the strength to enter Ashgad's house and get the lightsaber myself. Indeed, I'm no longer sure whether it is here or at the house he has in the wastelands, at the foot of the Mountains of Lightning. For Callista's sake, and for yours, I wish I could go with you, show you where she is, but I dare not.”
She drew in a shaky breath and shoved back the dirty mane of hair from her face again with both hands. ”I dare not.”
Rage filled Luke at the sight of the bruises on her arm, self-righteous fury that anyone would have hurt this gentle, beautiful woman mingled with anxiety that they-whoever they were-would take out their anger at Taselda on Callista, should they come upon her alone. He said, ”Where would your lightsaber be, in Ashgad's house?” Its high, glittering white walls came again to his mind, arrogant among the small cottages of the Oldtimers.
”There is a treasure room beneath the kitchens.” Taselda's indigo eyes brimmed with grateful tears. ”The entrance is through the kitchen courts, here.” She turned away, and did something at a small table.
Coming back, she handed him a sheet of coa.r.s.e local paper, on which was inked a plan of the house.
Luke saluted her with it, feeling light and buoyant within himself, as if his bloodstream were filled with sparks of fire. He grinned at her like a boy. I'll be back. We'll be out of town by nightfall.”
”She told me that I could trust you, Owen,” said Taselda softly. ”I saw the light in her eyes, when she spoke your name. I think you need have no fear of what you will find.”
Callista. Luke's whole body seemed to be singing, as he strode away down the ill-paved back streets of the Oldtimers town. Whatever dark the world may send, still lovers meet...
I've found her, i've found her. I've found her I saw the light in her eyes... His steps slowed. '.. when she spoke your name.”
But Callista would not have known that he would be calling himself O wen Lars.
He stopped and realized he had missed his way among the near-identical white houses.
And he thought, quite calmly, There was something in the wine.
Luke had never been much of a drinker, and once he'd begun to study and understand the Force he had given it up altogether. It simply took too much edge off his concentration. Although, of course, Taselda's wine wasn't like other wine, still it surprised him that he'd imbibed the quant.i.ty of it that he had. Now as he turned his concentration inward on his own metabolism, to clear some of the alcohol from his system, he realized that there was something else there as well.
A synthetic mood-enhancer, he thought, leaning against a wall with one hand and closing his eyes. Pryodene or pryodase, or maybe Algafine torwe weed-the kind of thing that made one accepting and friendly.
Leia had told him there had been a time when consumption of pryodase had been de rigueur before dinner parties among the n.o.bility of Coruscant, as a counter to the fad for dueling, and there were always accusations in labor disputes and divorce proceedings that one side or the other had slipped it into their opposite number's caffeine just before negotiations.
It was harmless and nonaddictive. it simply lowered one's guard.
Luke thought, How wise of her, to use that method to overcome my prejudices so that I could see her as she truly is.
He walked two steps, trying to reorient himself toward Seti Ash-gad's house, and then thought, What did I just think?
A throb of pain seized him. Not physical pain, but the pain of loss, of abandonment, the deep-seated pain of a child who suspects from earliest awareness that his mother had given him away like a stray puppy, for reasons he could not understand. The pain of Callista's flight. The pain of losing the dream of the father he had invented in his lonely fantasies.
Cold flooded him, cold and anxiety. He couldn't lose Taselda...
Through the child's fear of loss, a voice came to him.
Search your feelings, it said, a black voice speaking out of blackness.
You know it to be true.
His father's voice.
Vader's.
Taselda was using him.
The cold in him deepened, the panic of abandonment. If she was lying, using him only to get her lightsaber back (and what kind of injury would prevent her from making another lightsaber, if she'd had the skill to do it once?), it meant she wasn't Callista's teacher. She couldn't restore Callista to him. No, he thought, not wanting to believe it. Not wanting it to be true. No...
You know it to be true.