by Tim Lebbon
“That still goes on?”
“More often than you think. Come on. Nothing to see here.” They walked on, and Lanoree spared one final glance for the grieving woman.
“Sounds more like Shikaakwa,” she said.
“Oh, it’s nowhere near as organized,” Tre said.
They crossed the wide train track and entered a district closer to the central manufacturing zones. The ground shook with a constant vibration, and the workers’ accommodation buildings were much more regimented. People moved through the streets, red-clad workers on their way to or from work; and here and there were groups of armed guards, watching for trouble but apparently expecting none. Their weapons were obviously displayed, and they all looked mean.
Lanoree touched the weight of her sword and kept her face down. It was doubtful that anyone would identify her as Je’daii simply by looking at her, but she could not disconnect from who she was so easily. She feared her eyes, her expression, would betray her.
“Here,” Tre said, nodding at a gray accommodation tower. “Not the scumhead, but an associate. Equally unpleasant.”
“Can’t wait,” Lanoree said.
Inside the tower, up fourteen flights of stairs because the elevator was broken, and when Tre knocked at a door, there was no answer. Lanoree kicked it in. The person who’d been pressed, listening, to the other side fell back and tripped over a piece of furniture, spilling drug slips and bottles of a rancid-smelling drink. Lanoree Force-shoved the door closed and pressed it into its broken frame.
“Well,” Tre said. “Lanoree, meet Domm, a business contact of mine.”
“Still keeping fine company I see, Tre Sana,” Domm said from the floor.
“She’s virtually asleep right now,” Tre said, going with the flow. Lanoree was impressed. “You’d hate to see her awake and angry.”
“I know a Je’daii when I meet one.”
Lanoree was on the fallen man in an instant, sword drawn and pressed across his throat before he could draw another breath.
“You know one of these, too?” she asked.
“No,” Domm said. He was Zabrak, but terrible wounds disfigured his face, leaving a tracery of scars behind. His breath stank of chemical staleness. “But my father did. One of your sort parted his head from his shoulders twelve years ago.”
“Where?”
“Kaleth.”
“Then he shouldn’t have been there,” Lanoree said. “We were protecting our own. That’s what I’m doing now. And you know the Je’daii … protecting their own, we’re more than happy to take heads.” She pressed down on the sword, knowing exactly how much pressure to exert before drawing blood.
“I’m looking for Maxhagan,” Tre said.
“So?”
“Come on, Domm.”
“Find him yourself.”
“You tell us, it’ll save us time,” Lanoree said. “Don’t be like your father.”
A flash of fear was replaced by defiance in Domm’s eyes. He even managed to smile against the sword’s pressure. “You won’t just slaughter me,” he said.
Yes, she will. Lanoree pushed the thought. She’s mean and desperate, and she’ll take my head from my shoulders without even breathing heavily.
Domm’s smile dropped and he looked nervously back and forth between Tre and Lanoree. He smiled, defeated. His anger faded away, and Lanoree wondered if he really cared about his dead father at all. Maybe it was just a convenient reason to hate.
“Let me up,” Domm said.
“No.”
“I need to stand and—”
“No,” Lanoree said again. “You’ll get up, feign weakness, lean against that cupboard over there. Then you’ll try to distract us and take the blaster that’s stuck beneath its upper table. You might even get off one shot. But then I’ll kill you, and that’ll be an inconvenience to me. So, no, you’re not getting up. And now my pressure on this sword will continue to increase until you tell us where Maxhagan can be found.”
Domm’s eyes had grown wide as he heard the thoughts plucked from his mind.
Lanoree smiled. “And if you could read my thoughts, you’d know I tell the truth.” She leaned down on the sword and its keen edge pressed against the heavy scar tissue on his throat. Skin split. Blood flowed.
“District Six,” Domm said. “Market. He runs a stall … selling … imported water.”
Lanoree frowned, but could sense no lie in Domm’s words.
“Hiding in plain sight,” Tre said. “I think he’s telling the truth.”
“He is,” Lanoree said. She started to ease back on the sword.
“You should kill him,” Tre said. His words were light, unburdened by feeling.
“Kill him?”
“He knows you’re a Je’daii. Knows we’re here. And we’re already at a disadvantage. One call from him to anyone in Greenwood Station and we’re compromised.”
Lanoree never looked away from the man beneath her sword. There had been many whose flesh had parted around this blade, but all of them had been fighting back at the time. Shooting down the pilots had been unavoidable, though their deaths pained her. She was not in the habit of killing for killing’s sake.
“There’s another way,” she said. She sheathed her sword and sat up astride Domm’s chest. He did not move; he seemed to sense that this was far from over.
“We don’t have time!” Tre said.
“This won’t take long.”
Lanoree calmed herself and gathered the Force, and Master Dam-Powl’s face and voice came to her. There are some who are troubled by what you and I excel at, but they don’t understand the potential. Maintain control, keep yourself balanced, and it will serve you well.
Lanoree felt the power of the Force swirling and flowing within and around her, personified by Ashla and Bogan, their attraction and repulsion perfectly balanced, and Lanoree suspended weightless, faultless, between them. She lifted skin dust from the floor and chose four particles, and they became her servants. Concentrating on them, expanding them in her vision and giving them a touch of the Force, she dropped them into Domm’s upturned eyes.
He blinked and cried out, but could not move. His eyes watered, and then he squeezed them closed. But by then it was too late.
“I’ll wait outside,” Lanoree heard Tre say, and he sounded like a child afraid of the dark. But her eyes were closed, and she did not see him leave.
“Keep calm, keep quiet,” she whispered with a slight Force push, and Domm grew motionless beneath her. She delved down, vision growing dark, the sense of touch intense and shocking as the dust particles forged through his eyes and back into his brain. She felt the warm wetness of his insides. She sought, the dust sought; and when she found the places she wanted, she paused, gathering strength and molding the Force to her will. This was the dangerous part. She felt Bogan looming and darkness closing, and balance drifted. Power grew around her, and she breathed deeply, trying to ward off the ecstatic sensations flooding through her. The pleasure of control. The ecstasy of darkness.
The dust transformed into elements of her will, and Domm started to choke as her will was done.
Keep calm, Lanoree thought, and this time she was speaking to herself. Bogan grew large and heavy, and she felt the irresistible lure of shadow—freedom from constraint, reveling in power.
And she fought her way back to balance, the denial of Bogan difficult but ultimately triumphant. The sense of loss was staggering for a time, but it quickly faded.
This was her talent, Dam-Powl had told her. The alchemy of flesh, however minute that element of flesh might be. Transformation, transition, and Lanoree tried to hold down the sense of pride at her achievement. She had not touched the experiment on her ship since the start of this mission, but she had not lost anything that she had learned.
She stood from Domm and went to the door that Tre had left open behind him.
“It’s done,” she said, and Tre’s voice answered from the corridor beyond.
�
�You had the face of Dam-Powl. Her darkness.”
“And her control,” Lanoree said. Of course. Dam-Powl must have performed something similar on Tre. But Lanoree didn’t mind frightening him. Tre afraid might serve her well.
“Is he …?”
“I seared his memory. For a time he’ll remember nothing, not even his name.” Domm writhed on the floor and struggled to stand.
“For a time?” Tre asked.
“I’m not sure how long.” And she was not. It could be mere days, or perhaps much longer until Domm returned to the damaged person he had been, a dark shadow in his mind where the memory of what had happened was a charred emptiness. “Better than murder.”
“If you say so.” Tre was standing in the corridor, back against the wall.
“Now tell me you know where District Six’s market is,” she said.
Tre nodded. There was no easy smile this time.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SLAVES
There are depths.
—Osamael Or, circa 1,000 TYA
Part of a Journeyer’s pilgrimage is to learn how to survive in the wild, and now they are hunting.
Lanoree stalks through the forest of giant fungi, breathing through her mouth so that the meaty scent of the huge mushrooms does not throw her senses. Her footfalls are completely silent; she can sense the areas of dried fungus skin that might crackle when she steps, or those places where a hollow in the ground is covered with moss. Her breathing is light and slow. And her mind is connected with their quarry: a small mammal. She can feel its rapid heartbeat and breathing, and if she really concentrates, she can see through its eyes. It perception is so much different from hers. Everything it sees is shaded by the Force.
It used to trouble her that so much wildlife on Tython was so in tune with the tides of the Force. But she has grown to learn that theirs is a passive relationship. It is only Je’daii who can harness the Force and use it to perform great deeds.
Her movements urge the mammal onward, down into the shallow ravine, past the growth of pink mushrooms that blankets one wall, and then she sees a flurry of movement ahead.
A whistle in the distance, and then Lanoree runs between the milky white stems. She revels in the silent movement, the breeze riffling her loosened hair, sweat lifted from her brow. When she arrives at the edge of the ravine and looks down, Dal is holding up the creature pierced on a spear he fashioned himself. She smiles. We make a good team, she thinks. But then that familiar pang of guilt stabs in once again.
They are six days out from Stav Kesh, and every moment that passes Lanoree knows she is lying to herself.
Dal will never accept the Force, nor adjust to its ebb and flow.
Silently he skins, guts, and butchers the creature, builds a fire, and starts cooking the meat. Everything he does is methodical and skilled. He’s learning so much. Lanoree remembers overhearing their father talking to their mother once. He’s like a sponge, their father said. Every question of his I answer inspires two more. His thirst for knowledge is insatiable. He’s going to be a great Je’daii one day.
It saddens her how her parents could have been so wrong.
Dal’s skills hide a deeper void within him. A dark void, where all around expect the Force to dwell. And at last, as he starts serving the meat with a soft, sweet root vegetable they gathered earlier, she asks the question that has been burning at her.
“Are you sad?”
He gives her a plate. The food smells wonderful. Dal’s expression does not shift; he knows exactly what she means.
“Eat your dinner,” he says. “We’ve a long way to go yet.”
“Are you sad?” she asks again. “The way you were at Stav Kesh … like a child, jealous of those around him with better toys.”
Dal raises an eyebrow and then laughs out loud. “Is that what you think?” he asks.
“Well …”
“You really think I’m jealous of you? Of Mother and Father, and those others we trained with back there? Jealous that none of you are your own masters?”
“Of course we are.”
“No!” He places his plate down and stands, not angry but frustrated. “No, not at all. You’re slaves to the Force. You might think it serves you, but you serve it. You never have your own thoughts, because the Force is always on your mind. You never fight your own fights, because the Force fights for you.”
“It’s not like that, Dal, it’s—”
“Well, that’s what I see,” Dal says. “I watch you use it, and when you do, you’re not yourself. You’re not my sister.”
“I thought I knew what was best for you,” she says.
“But you don’t! Only I can say that! Our parents, you, the Masters who trained us, everyone wants to tell me what to be, to force something upon me. But I’m my own man. My own master!” His eyes go wide, as does his smile. And it’s not madness or fury that Lanoree sees there. It’s joy.
“What are you going to do?” she asks.
Dal looks to the dusky sky, where stars are already emerging and Ashla and Bogan peer from behind a haze of clouds. A hundred lights move high up, satellites and spacecraft drifting high above Tython’s atmosphere.
“I’m going to learn,” he says, “everything I can, from every temple we both visit. And then after that I’m going to the stars.”
“The stars?”
“I’m going to find my way home.” He says no more, does not elaborate, and Lanoree’s overriding feeling is one of sadness that the home they have together with their parents is not enough for Dal.
Five days later, after journeying across the eastern extreme of Kato Zakar—where fungi forests gave way to swamps, and those in turn soon became sand dunes rolling kilometers toward the sea—they approach the coast from where the first of the Moon Islands is visible on the horizon. A hundred kilometers and seven islands beyond, the continent of Talss.
Though they talk and travel together, the distance between them is widening with every day. Lanoree can feel that, and she senses that Dal does, too. The difference is that he welcomes it.
Dal breathes in deeply. He is invigorated by the energy of the ocean and the violence of the waves.
“Beautiful!” he says. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful, Lanoree?”
Rain is falling. The sea smashes against the sandy shore, the heavy dunes they stand upon fleeting in the lifetime of Tython. The waves are topped with a rolling luminescence in the dawn light, countless minute creatures casting their glow across the waters. She can feel the power through her feet. It is humbling and, yes, beautiful.
“It’s amazing,” she says.
“Puts your Force to shame, eh?” He grins, and the sea breeze blows sheets of rain that soak his hair.
Lanoree does not respond, though she could. She could tell him that the power he feels is the Force, because it flows through the sea as well as the air and rock, the plants and ground, the living things that fly and run and crawl, and the dead things that rot beneath the soil and under the waves. She could tell him, but he would not listen. Worse, he would not understand.
So she closes her eyes, and the rain and sea spray soak her as well.
Later, in the coastal port of Ban Landing, they are offered an escorted crossing to Talss.
“The gelfish swarms are farther south than ever this year,” the woman says. She has not told them her name, but she wears a Ranger star at her belt. “I’ve been across the Moon Islands and back seven times, and each time the craft I was in was attacked. I’d advise a scheduled crossing, Journeyers. Those larger ships have special defenses to deal with anything the Moon Channel can throw at them, and if you go alone you’ll only have a small sailing boat.”
“We go alone,” Dal says. “Eh, Lanoree? We’re journeying to learn and explore, after all.”
The Ranger objects, and yet Lanoree sees a flash of respect in her eyes. Perhaps on her own Great Journey she did the same, though she does not tell them.
They spend the nig
ht in Ban Landing, staying in a simple bunkhouse close to the water’s edge. In the wooden beams that hold up the roof are carved thousands of names, Journeyers from years past who stayed here before their own dangerous crossings of the Moon Islands to Talss. Lanoree spends some time looking for their parents’ names, but she does not find them.
Later, Dal sits out on the deck surrounding the bunkhouse. Great waves break on the beaches half a kilometer away, and lit by starlight only their swirling, luminous tops are visible, like giant coiling snakes in the dark. But she is looking at her brother. He lies on his back with his hands resting behind his head, staring up.
“Food?” Lanoree says. Dal takes the plate she has brought him and nods his thanks. “It’ll be dangerous.”
“Don’t worry, little sister,” Dal says, even though she is older than he. “I’ll look after you.”
Their journey across the Moon Channel takes only three days, but Lanoree will remember it forever.
The sea is calmer when they set out at dawn the following day. The Ranger meets them at the harbor and tells them how she has used the Force to confuse and combat the threat of sea creatures—the deadly gelfish most of all—on her previous crossings. Then she wishes them well.
They sail from island to island, stopping only to replenish water canteens before moving on. They sleep briefly on land, but spend all their waking time afloat.
A storm blows up halfway through their journey. A gelfish swarm hits their boat and starts climbing the hull, oozing, toxic tentacles whipping at the air and seeking flesh. Lanoree uses the Force to punch them back into the sea. Dal uses his blaster to blow groups of them apart before they even reach the boat. The swarm passes.
But they are not out of danger. A sea serpent appears as if from nowhere and almost capsizes the boat, its head as big as a person’s torso, teeth dripping venom. Lanoree disorients the beast by touching its mind, and Dal stabs it several times with a boat hook. It slips away and flees, and Lanoree senses it going deep, seeking a dark hole to hide in and repair its wounds.