“What’s your business here, Jedi?”
She glared up at him, breathless and furious. “Let me go.”
“Right.” Taking one hand off her wrist, he grabbed her hair and jerked her upright. “Let’s see what the Masters have to say about you.” Ranlaw rose to his feet, dragging her with him, and took in a breath to call down to the others.
He was still in the process of inhaling when a clawed hand clamped down over his lips, silencing him. Ranlaw tried to squirm free, and the back of a wooden spear slammed across the top of his skull with a sharp crack, dropping him sideways.
Zo saw the Sith student tumble forward, his grip falling slack, releasing her hair as he fell. In the place where he’d been hunched over, she saw a great three-fingered hand gripping her shoulder and forcing her back down out of sight, and she realized that she was looking at Tulkh. His shoulders were arched enough that she could see the quiver of arrows strapped to his back.
Spinning the spear easily around, the Whiphid raised the business end again, swung it around, and thrust its point directly in Zo’s face, close enough that she could feel it pressing against her cheek. All of this was accomplished in absolute silence.
“What are you doing?”
Tulkh didn’t budge. His expression was stone. “There’s something I need to show you.”
“I don’t—”
“Move.”
17/Neti
THE LIBRARY WAS SILENT.
To her knowledge, Kindra was the only student in the academy who came here on any kind of a regular basis. Without exception, it was the largest and oldest structure on Odacer-Faustin, predating the tower itself, which also meant that it was in the worst condition. Centuries of hostile weather and shifting planetary tectonics had savaged its stacks, closing off entire chambers, stairways, and corridors under tons of snow and ice. From within, it resembled nothing so much as a grand monument that had suffered a head-on collision with something even bigger than itself, crumpling it badly at both ends and the middle.
She sat in the southwest wing, at one of the long stone tables under the cracked cathedral ceiling, staring at the most recent sections of Sith scrolls that she’d uncovered. The inscriptions were archaic, and she’d been working most of the afternoon on translating them. The process was slow but gratifying—yielding ancient secrets that she knew would only help her advance faster through the ranks of her fellow students. There were rumors that Darth Scabrous himself had come here, that he had found something, a relic of almost immeasurable power, hidden in one of the secluded rooms. Whether that was true—an object like a Sith Holocron wasn’t outside the realm of possibility—Kindra had already found enough to make her research here worthwhile.
She paused, her index finger marking a spot halfway through a long intaglio of etchings, and cocked her head slightly.
Something was wrong.
It wasn’t as obvious as a noise or even a vibration; more like an intuitive sensation of disquiet that settled into her stomach and emanated out through her chest, as if millions of tiny cilia had extended from within her, shivering with unease.
She stood up, the scrolls forgotten.
“Who’s there?”
Her voice rang out in the emptiness, hollow and fading into silence. There was no reply, and a moment later she realized that she hadn’t truly expected one. It wasn’t that kind of feeling; it was more abstract, like a suddenly remembered nightmare whose full contents she couldn’t quite summon up.
What is that? What’s happening?
She drew a shaky breath, not comprehending this inexplicable mutiny of her nervous system. Studying to be a Sith warrior was about engendering fear in others, not oneself—yet her palms had begun to sweat and her heart was beating twice as hard as it normally did. All at once she wanted to be out of here, in less confined quarters. She looked back at the tall staircase leading upward to the gallery and the concourse beyond it, the one that would lead her out.
She stuffed her notes into her bag, grabbed her cloak, and turned to go.
From above her, the broken ceiling let out a long creaking noise, and when she looked up she saw one of the cracks splitting wider.
“Who is it?” she said, louder. “Who’s there?”
Now the chasms had spread open enough that she could see something stretching out inside them, uncoiling in the ceiling’s depths to expose a series of long, clutching branches. They forked downward, snake-like, showering bits of grit and rock as they insinuated farther through open space. A moment later, Kindra saw the great wooden face of the librarian, a Neti, staring down at her.
“Dail’Liss.” She swallowed, managing to find her voice. “What do you want?”
“Something unsettling you, Kindra?” His voice was thick and raspy. “Some uncertainty of the mind, yes?”
“No.”
The librarian didn’t respond, just continued to slither his branches downward until the great bulk of his trunk dangled upside down in front of her, the warty, centuries-old eyes narrowing with myopic consideration. Dail’Liss had been the curator of the library for as long as anyone could remember, perhaps going back a thousand years or more. Although his elaborate root system was permanently embedded somewhere deep in the foundation, a seemingly endless network of branches and limbs allowed him to slide unimpeded through its walls and hollows. Ironically, it was this constant writhing and squirming that undermined the infrastructure of the building itself. Rumor was that it would only be a matter of time before the Neti brought the library down on top of him, sealing himself forever amid his own precious holdings—a fitting enough end, when Kindra thought about it.
“Feel it, too, I do,” he said at last. “Yes, yes.” Except that his strange accent made the words come out like jess, jess.
“I didn’t say—”
A branch grazed down past her face, fussing over the pile of scrolls, straightening and brushing off the ones that she’d left out. “Didn’t have to say anything. Written all over your face, yes?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Talking about the Sickness, out there in the wind.”
That brought her up short. “What?”
“In the wind,” the Neti repeated. “Disease. Taste it. Feel it. Don’t you?”
Kindra didn’t want to linger here—a long, cryptic conversation with a tree was the last thing she was interested in at the moment—but she realized the Neti had perfectly encapsulated her own feeling of unease.
There was a sickness in the wind, some type of disease, and she could feel it. Under such circumstances, the direct approach seemed best.
“Do you know what it is?” she asked.
“Ought not to venture out,” the Neti said, his branches clutching at the scrolls, beginning to roll them up with slow, deliberate movements. “Safer here, jess?”
“If there’s trouble, I can handle it.”
“Not this kind, no, don’t think so.”
“Look.” Kindra shook her head, increasingly irritated by the librarian’s evasiveness. “Either you have answers for me or you don’t. Either way I’m not going to stay in here and hide.”
“Best course of action, I would say.”
She pointed at the scrolls. “Leave those out for me. I’ll be back for them later. Understand?”
“I think it is you, Kindra, who does not understand.”
She shook her head. “Whatever.”
The Neti didn’t argue, didn’t say a word, only gazed upon her with his sorrowful wooden stare as she mounted the steps and headed out.
18/Just Another Day in Paradise
RA’AT OPENED HIS EYES SLOWLY, AS IF AFRAID OF WHAT HE MIGHT FIND. HE DIDN’T know how long he’d been sprawled out here unconscious at the bottom of the rock pile under the tower, but it was almost dark now, so several hours might have passed. A fine layer of snow had accumulated in the folds of his clothes.
He was so cold that he almost couldn’t feel it anymore, although th
e pain might have had something to do with that. His right arm throbbed terribly, just below the shoulder. Touching it, running his hand under the torn sleeve, he drew back with a hiss. Live wires of raw tendon seared and shivered just beneath the skin.
He probed again, more gingerly. The gash was deep, almost to the bone. He tried to lift his arm and discovered that it was virtually useless. The left one worked better, but his entire right side ached so badly when he moved that it wouldn’t do him much good in a fight. Almost as bad, he had a sick disequilibrium in his stomach, like a heavy sandbag swinging back and forth at the end of a rope: due to a concussion, maybe. He wondered how hard he’d smacked his head when he’d fallen.
In an attempt to get reoriented, he cast his mind back to what had happened. The details of the attack rose reluctantly into his memory, like debris bobbing up from an underwater explosion, and after a moment he recalled it in detail, the thing that had fallen from the tower: the thing that had once been Wim Nickter. The other corpse, Jura Ostrogoth, was nowhere to be found. Ra’at wondered now with a sickish curiosity if maybe the Nickter-thing might have eaten it.
Whatever the case, he had never fought anything like Nickter’s corpse, its eye dead and flat but gleaming with fierce hunger, mouth open so wide that it had actually started splitting at the corners. In extremis, Ra’at’s logical mind had bypassed the whole question of credibility. Disbelief wouldn’t help him here; it would only slow him down, so he’d taken it at face value. Apparently, dead bodies were coming back to life, and this one wanted to eat him.
He remembered how the Nickter-thing had shrieked when it had first lunged at him, how he had reacted automatically, springing out of the way, using the same accentuated Force skills he’d been developing in Hracken’s pain bunker. Up in the air, he’d grabbed hold of the overhanging rock slab of the structure behind him and swung himself on top of it, only then daring to look down.
Using the resourcefulness that he’d been taught as part of his training, Ra’at had grabbed the biggest chunk of loose stone that he could lift—it must have weighed as much as he did—and flung it over the edge. It was a direct hit, knocking the Nickter-thing back down to the ground, where it immediately shoved the stone away and started to climb again. If anything, it was clamoring up faster, driven forward by unmistakable appetite. Already Ra’at realized he couldn’t stay up here indefinitely—he needed a better plan. Glancing around behind him, he’d spotted an even larger pile of rocks, the remains of a second level that had collapsed long before.
He’d worked quickly but carefully, piling the slabs up, scraping his fingers and knuckles along the way, until he had a tall, precarious stack that was staying upright only because he was holding on to it. Summoning the Force, Ra’at had focused it on the pile and removed his hands. The rocks teetered but did not fall. Looking around, he saw the Nickter-thing dragging itself up onto the overhang, its eye locked hungrily on Ra’at.
“Come on, then,” Ra’at said, taking a single step away.
Nickter charged, and Ra’at let the stones fall, slamming down on the corpse’s leg, just below the knee, pinning it there. The thing jerked and spasmed and screamed at him until Ra’at picked up another rock—using his hands again—and swung it down hard on Nickter’s neck. There was a surprisingly loud and deeply satisfying crunch as its cervical spine shattered, and the thing went limp.
Taking no chances, Ra’at hoisted the rock a second time, intending to beat the thing’s skull in with it, and that was when it jerked back to life, lashing out at him, hissing and screeching, coming within centimeters of biting his wrist. Jerking backward, Ra’at had lost his footing and plummeted backward off the overhang.
After that, everything had gone black.
Now, rubbing the back of his head, he wondered if the thing might still be up on top of the overhang, crouched in the dark, waiting for him. He had no intention of finding out. What he needed now, more than anything else, was a trip to the infirmary where he could get the cut on his arm cleaned and treated, and get his concussion checked out. A fleeting thought—
What if it’s too late?
—shot through his mind, and Ra’at shoved it aside, determined now more than ever to keep his wits about him. He knew a little bit about medicine, knew that the odds of herniating one’s brain from a simple closed head injury were very long. Anyway, he certainly hadn’t spent years here training and working to die from something like this.
Clutching his arm, he began walking around the outer rim of the library’s west wall. The pain wasn’t as bad now as it had been just a few minutes earlier. Either his endorphins were kicking in, numbing the wound, or he was just getting used to it.
He walked past the library, occasionally glancing up at the tower, where the lights were on at the very top.
A scratching sound came from somewhere off to his right, and he stopped and held his breath.
“Whoever’s there, come out where I can see you.”
The figure stepped out, a dark-haired girl in an academy uniform—it was Kindra, he saw, one of the female students, maybe a year or two older than he was.
“Ra’at?” She frowned. “What happened to you?”
“I’m fine.”
She took a step toward him. “You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“That cut on your arm—”
“Stay back.”
“Whatever you say.” Kindra’s expression sharpened from bewilderment to active suspicion, but she didn’t say anything, instead glancing right and left, head tilted, as if listening to the rest of the area. Ra’at found himself listening more actively, too. Within the last few moments, the darkness had thickened around them, taking on additional depth and dimension, and the thin haze of light that escaped from inside the cracks in the library’s walls was hardly a sufficient remedy.
Ra’at’s nauseated belly gave a queasy, volcanic shift, and this time it was followed by a moment of imbalance so sudden that he almost fell over. He had no idea whether Kindra noticed it or not, but he realized now that he could use her—at least until they got to the infirmary—as a kind of insurance policy. She wouldn’t fight to defend him, but together they might stand a better chance against whatever was out there. He would just have to be careful not to reveal how weak he truly was, and that meant coming up with a cover story to explain his injury.
“I was … working out with Master Hracken,” he said. “I guess things got a little out of control. I got my bell rung, that’s all.”
Kindra raised one eyebrow but still didn’t respond. “Where is everybody?”
“Around.” He shrugged, trying to act casual. “I don’t know.”
“You sure you’re—”
“I’m fine,” he repeated, “but Hracken told me that I should go to the infirmary and get checked out. You headed that way?”
She shook her head, seeming preoccupied. “I’m going back to the dorm.” Craning her neck, she looked all the way up to the top of the tower, until Ra’at wondered if she might actually have seen the two bodies come spilling outward earlier, and was putting the pieces together about what had really happened to his arm and his head. But in the end, all she said was, “Something’s wrong.”
“Meaning what?”
“I’ve got a bad feeling.”
It was an odd remark, he thought, uncharacteristically revealing, and not the sort of thing she’d ever shared with him before. They’d never really had any reason to talk. Immediately Ra’at suspected that she was trying to gain his trust, to make him let his guard down.
“About what?”
“I don’t know—this night, everything. You feel it?”
“Nope.” He shook his head, feigning an indifference that he didn’t even remotely feel. “Just another day in paradise, as far as I’m concerned.”
She didn’t smile, didn’t even seem to hear him. When the wind blew the hair back from her face, Ra’at saw that the corners of her mout
h were pinched in a grimace.
“What’s wrong?”
“Whatever it is.” She still didn’t look at him. “It’s coming.”
19/Header
ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ACADEMY, FRESH SNOW HAD BEGUN DRIFTING UP OUTSIDE the dormitory where Scopique had recently returned from his afternoon workout. The Zabrak had just finished his shower—it was his routine to wash up at this time of the day, when he had a rare moment of privacy—and was stepping out of the foggy stall with a towel wrapped around his waist, when he noticed a trail of blood across the floor.
He stopped and looked down at it. The blood hadn’t been there a moment before, when he’d gotten into the shower. The splatters were fresh and bright, streaking across the floor in the direction of the bunks.
Scopique felt his defense mechanisms tensing, going into a state of vigilant readiness, his natural aggression already ramping up to the next level. Easing his way silently the rest of the way out of the shower, he dressed quickly in his uniform and followed the blood trail to the right. He could smell something now, the rancid odor of meat that had started to decay. It seemed to be growing worse with every second.
That was when he saw the body lying on his bunk.
It was dressed in a tattered academy uniform, its limbs and back contorted at unnatural angles so that the head lolled sideways from the obviously broken neck. Staring at it, Scopique murmured a whispered childhood curse in his native language. The possibility that this might be a trick, some kind of poorly conceived prank, never crossed his mind. Someone had beaten a Sith academy student to death and abandoned the corpse here on his bunk—as a warning or threat, he didn’t know which.
He edged closer, hoping he might be able to recognize the victim from what remained of its face. There wasn’t much left to identify. The skull was badly crushed, half the face swollen and purple, the other half grotesquely pancaked so that one corner of the mouth peeled upward in a hideous parody of a smile.
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