The Final Prophecy (30 page)

“How flattering,” the executor purred. “You would turn to the dark side just for me?”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Tahiri said.

“Wrong,” Nom Anor replied, taking a step out of the turbolift. “I have studied your ways, Jedi. I know that if you strike me down in anger you will have committed the most terrible sin your kind can commit.”

“You won’t care about that,” Tahiri said. “You’ll be dead.”

“Will I?” He took another step.

“Stop,”
Tahiri commanded.

“Very well. I will do as you ask.” He stopped, less than a meter away, staring at her. She felt her hands shaking—not with fear, but with the effort to control her passions.

“Kill him,” Harrar said.

“He’s not armed,” Tahiri said. “I won’t murder him.”

“No!” Harrar said, leaping forward.

It distracted Tahiri for an instant and she looked away, noticing even as she did that one of Anor’s pupils was growing—

Memory clicked—something Leia had said about that eye.

She leapt aside as the glob of venom spurted toward her, but she hadn’t taken the guardrail into account. She hit it with her hip and agonizing pain jolted up her side. She tried to turn and managed to just in time to see Nom Anor sidestep the priest and kick viciously at her. The kick connected, flipping her back. She dropped her lightsaber, grabbing wildly for the railing.

She missed and then she was falling.

Part of Nom Anor was amazed it had been so easy to deal with Tahiri. He turned on Harrar, and found the priest coming for him again, a snarl on his face.

Nom Anor hit him with a q’urh kick, then spun and snapped his fist against the back of the priest’s head. Harrar faded with the blow, however, dropping and sweeping. He caught one of Nom Anor’s feet, putting him off balance long enough to launch a powerful thrusting punch.

More by luck than from any design on Nom Anor’s part, the punch missed. Nom Anor brought his fist up under Harrar’s jaw with such force that the priest left the ground. Bits of shattered teeth sprinkled the floor as Harrar thudded to it, slid up to the wall, and lay still.

Nom Anor took quick stock of his situation and saw that
his day was getting even better. The Jedi had dropped her weapon. Quickly he picked it up. He had experimented with them before, and so found it easy to ignite. Then, remembering Horn, he severed the power conduits to the lifts, starting with the one in motion. He heard it drag to a stop someplace not far below.

Knowing that this might not be good enough—for all he knew Horn might cut hole in the wall and
fly
up—he left the building and struck off through the driving sheets of rain toward a high, flat spot he’d picked out some time before, shoving the now quiescent weapon under his sash.

Tahiri flailed in space, reaching desperately to grab something,
anything
, but nothing was in reach. From the corner of her vision she caught sight of the cable Corran had slid down, less than a meter away—which was still half a meter too far.

The Force, idiot
, she thought. She reached out, tugging at the cable with the Force, changing her vector so she angled toward it.

She wrapped her bare palms around it, gasping as her hands burned. Her fingers tried to open reflexively, but she couldn’t let them, or she would fall. Nom Anor would escape, Sekot would die—and she would let Corran down.

If the older Jedi was still alive.

She embraced the pain and focused beyond it, using the Force to further slow her descent. Finally, every muscle in her body shrieking in chorus with her palms, she came to a stop.

She looked up, and discovered she had fallen almost a hundred meters.

The anger was back, but now she needed it—not to fight, but to wrap her legs around the cable and pull herself up, though every centimeter gained brought a world of agony. She felt blisters rupturing on her hands.

At least it makes them stickier
, she reflected. Her hands conformed to the cable now, as if they were made of tal gum.

Nom Anor went carefully up the narrow path, choosing his steps in the freeze-frame moments that the lightning created as it limned the world white and blue, then left it again in darkness. The rain was a steady drum, and the wind gusted like the laughter of an insane god. His route was a broken spine of stone with yawning pits of darkness on either side. He came to particularly narrow footing and stopped for a moment, realizing that he was actually afraid. It was as if the planet itself was trying to do what the Jedi had been unable to.

As perhaps it was. If Nen Yim was correct, and the planet was sentient, perhaps it had witnessed his act of sabotage. Perhaps it sought revenge.

“Do your worst,” he snarled into the wind. “I am Nom Anor. Know my name, for I have killed you.”

As he said it, he finally knew with absolute conviction that he had done the right thing. Zonama Sekot was like a tonqu flower—attracting insects with its sweet scent, tempting them to alight upon it—where they found themselves cloyed, watching the long petal roll up. Part living, part machine, and somehow part
Jedi
, it was an abomination—more so than Coruscant, more so than anything in the galaxy of abominations.

Quoreal had been right. They should never have come here.

But Nom Anor had set that to rights.

He crossed the narrow area, stepped over a gap in the next lightning flash, and saw that the way widened a bit ahead.

But from the corner of his eye—

Someone crashed into him, chopping viciously at the side of his neck. The force of the blow knocked him sprawling, and his chin grated against stone. With a roar he kicked
back and rolled. A foot caught him under his savaged chin, but he managed to catch it and twist. His attacker fell heavily. Nom Anor scrambled back, trying to regain his footing, but found himself teetering on the edge of a cliff. Lighting ripped the sky, and he saw a silhouette rising against it. Another flash came, this one behind him, and he made out Harrar’s face, terrifying, as if the very gods had put their light of vengeance in him.

“Nom Anor,” the priest shouted through the rain. “Prepare to die, perfidious one.”

“This planet has driven you mad, Harrar,” Nom Anor snapped. “You side with Jedi against
me
?”

“I side with Zonama Sekot,” Harrar said. “And you—you are accursed by Shimrra, you honorless qorih. I would have killed you anyway.”

“Zonama Sekot is a lie, you fool—a tale I told my followers so that they would obey me.”

“You know nothing,” Harrar said. “You know less than nothing. Do you think you know the secrets of the priesthood? Do you think we share all we know? It is Shimrra who has lied to us. Zonama Sekot is the truth. If you would be of service to your people, you will tell me what you have done.”

Nom Anor felt the lightsaber in his hand. Harrar was advancing, and a single kick would be enough to send Nom Anor plunging to his death. He dared not use the plaeryin bol—even if it still contained poison, the rain would at best deflect it, at worst wash in onto
him
. The Jedi weapon was his only chance.

“Telling you will do no good,” he sneered at Harrar. “Nothing can reverse the damage now.”

“I believe you,” Harrar said, his face twisting as he took a quick step toward Nom Anor.

Nom Anor pressed the stud on the lightsaber and the cutting beam blazed out, hissing and trailing steam in the
downpour. It felt strange, a weapon with no weight other than its grip. He cut at the priest’s knee, but his position and the unfamiliar blade made the cut awkward. At the appearance of the blade, however, Harrar tried to stop his forward motion and jerked his leg away from the attack; he slipped on the wet rocks and stumbled, falling past Nom Anor and over the cliff.

His howl of rage and frustration was quickly cut short.

Panting, Nom Anor rose, extinguished the lightsaber, and continued on his way. The gods were with him again, it seemed. Certainly they were no longer with Harrar.

When the turbolift jarred to a halt, Corran ignited his lightsaber and cut through the roof of the car, stepping aside as the circle of metal clanged to the floor. After waiting a few seconds for the plating to cool, he leapt up and caught the edge of the hole, then drew himself up into the shaft.

In the dim emergency lighting, he could see the door some ten meters above. The lift was magnetic, so the walls were glassy smooth, and the power cables were buried in them. There were no rungs and nothing to give purchase. He could cut handholds for himself and climb, but that would take a long time.

He dropped back down into the car and examined the control panel. He didn’t know the language. The up and down icons were obvious, but the others would take a little figuring out.

Nom Anor must have cut the power from above somehow, but the car hadn’t fallen—presumably there was an emergency battery system to prevent that happening. But would the emergency system be able to finish the ascent, or was it doing its best just to keep him from falling?

He pushed a red button with two vertical lines and a triangle, with no result. He tried a few of the others, again with no result. Frustrated, he tapped the up key.

The car started moving, though much more slowly than before. He felt like pounding his head against the wall: the emergency system was separate from the normal one—he needed only to tell the car where he wanted to go.

A few minutes later, he emerged from the lift, ready to fight—but there was no one to fight. The room was empty. There were light spatters of black blood on the floor, but other than that, no clues as to exactly what had happened.

He was about to go outside when he heard a faint noise behind him, in the maintenance shaft. Peering over, he saw Tahiri pulling herself up the superconductor cable, about twenty meters below.

“Are you okay?” he shouted.

“I’m fine,” she called back up, her voice shaking. She seemed to be having trouble climbing. “Nom Anor got away,” she added. “You have to stop him—I’ll join you when I can.”

“And leave you dangling? No. I don’t think so. You just hang on there.”

He went back to the lifts. Someone had indeed cut through the power couplings—with a lightsaber, it appeared. He reached cautiously inside and grabbed a rope-sized fiberoptic conduit and began to pull it out. When he thought he had enough, he cut it with his weapon and then tied a loop in the end.

Tahiri hadn’t made much progress in the intervening time. He threw the loop end down to her.

“Put your foot in that,” he said, “and hang on with your hands. I’ll pull you up.”

She nodded wearily and did as instructed. Bracing his end of the rope over the safety rail, Corran hauled her up.

When she had pulled herself over the rail, he saw her hands.

“Let me see those,” he said.

“They’re all right,” she protested.

“Let me see them.”

They were badly friction-burned, but it looked as if her tendons were undamaged, which was good. The scar on her old amphistaff wound had torn a bit and was leaking blood, but not too much.

“Well, at least you got to slide down the cable,” he said. “Was it as fun as you imagined it would be?”

“That and loads more,” Tahiri said.

“What happened here?”

“I let my guard down,” she said. “Nom Anor has something in one of his eyes that shoots poison.”

“Did he hit you with it?”

“No. But when I dodged, I hit the rail, and then he knocked me over it.”

“And Harrar?”

“I don’t know. He attacked Nom Anor, I think. Maybe he’s gone after him. Which is what we ought to do.”

Corran peered outside at the dark and the rain. “I agree. But how to track them in this, without the Force?”

“I have my Vongsense,” Tahiri said. “If he hasn’t gone far, I might be able to sense him.”

Corran produced a small glow rod, and in its light they found muddy, water-filled footprints leading back toward the heights. They followed the prints until they came to a narrow ridge of stone.

“At least there’s only one way to go,” Corran said.

As they ascended, the lightning reached a crescendo, striking in the valley where they had been staying every few seconds or so. The roar was so steady they couldn’t hear each other speak. Then—rather abruptly—it was over. The rain slacked off, and then ended, and the wind subsided to a clean, wet breeze.

The ridge continued until it joined a larger one, ascending the whole time.

“He’s going for high ground,” Corran said. “Can you sense your lightsaber?”

“No,” she said. “There’s something interfering—more than usual.”

“I feel it, too,” Corran said. “It’s Zonama Sekot. Something’s wrong.”

“We failed,” Tahiri said. “Whatever Nom Anor was going to do, he’s already done it, I’m sure of it.”

“There may still be time to stop him,” Corran replied. “Concentrate. Use your Vongsense.”

She closed her eyes, and he felt her relax, reaching out to someplace he couldn’t go.

“I feel him,” she said at last. “Up ahead.”

By the time the east was gray with dawn, they had reached a broad, upland plateau that showed signs of recent convulsion. The stone beneath the soil had split in places, rearing up to reveal its strata. The soil was black and ashy, and the vegetation was low when there was any at all, though the charred trunks of larger boras still stood here and there, like the columns of ruined temples.

“I’ve lost him,” Tahiri said, a tinge of despair in her voice. “He could be anywhere up here.”

Corran agreed. Where there was soil, it was spongy with a dark green web of grass that resisted tracks.

“We’ll keep going in the same general direction,” Corran said, “unless—”

Far above, they heard a faint report, like very distant and brief lightning.

“Sonic boom,” he murmured, searching the skies with his gaze. The clouds had cleared away, leaving only a few thin ones very far up.

“There,” Tahiri said. She pointed to a swiftly moving spot, high above.

“Good eyes,” Corran told her. “I’ll give you one guess where that’s going.”

“Wherever Nom Anor is.”