Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Force Heretic III - Reunion - Book 19

by Sean Williams

  The idea intrigued Jag. How did two completely different minds join? And would Tahiri be anything like she had been be fore? What if her Yuuzhan Vong half led her astray? A thousand questions rushed his thoughts, none of them, he was sure, easily answered.

  "For the first time in years, I feel ... whole," the girl said. "And that has to be right, surely?" She looked at Jaina. "I remember you being there, trying to help me. You didn't do anything; you were just there. Even when part of me wanted to attack you, you didn't fight back. That convinced me that fighting was wrong. Your example helped heal my wounded mind. We would have destroyed each other had it not been for you."

  The girl's hands moved weakly, made a strange gesture in front of her face. Then she reached out to take Jaina's hand.

  "That's known as us-hrok," she said. "It indicates my indebtedness and loyalty to you for your help. I offer it to you not as a Yuuzhan Vong, nor as a human who knows a few foreign traditions. This is from me." The girl's certainty seemed to falter for a second, then her determination firmed. "I will be grateful to you forever, Jaina Solo, sister of the one I loved. I will always consider you family, and will protect you with my life. I vow this on my honor, with all my strength."

  Jaina glanced briefly at Jag, flustered. "Thank you."

  Jag, too, was thrown by the girl's newfound confidence. Where before there had been uncertainty and doubt, now he saw strength and surety.

  "This is going to take some getting used to," he said.

  Tahiri nodded weakly. "For all of us," she said.

  "Well, you're going to be okay." Vigos stepped between them. "Your respiration is even and your pulse strong. You haven't been out long enough for serious muscle deterioration to begin. You should be on your feet in no time."

  Tahiri tried to reply, but choked on her dry throat.

  "Mom will be pleased to hear that," Jaina said, filling the silence. "Where is she, by the way?"

  Vigos glanced at Jag, who said simply, "On the Falcon."

  There was no keeping anything from her. "What's happened,Jag?"

  "A lot, to be honest. I wouldn't really know where to start."

  "Just tell me what's going on," she said, sitting up in the bed, concerned.

  "We're in orbit around Esfandia. The Yuuzhan Vong are here, and so is Pellaeon." He debated whether to tell her about the little surprise the Grand Admiral had ordered, but decided to save that for later. "The relay base itself has gone into hiding, and your parents went to look for it. They're trapped somewhere on the surface right now. We can't get in to them, and they don't seem able to get out, either."

  She raised her eyebrows and shook her head, dumbfounded. "I must have been out for some time."

  "Don't worry," rasped a dry throat from the other bed. Tahiri's eyes were fixed on Jaina. "The one thing a warrior never does is abandon her family. We'll find them and bring them back, I promise."

  "Rest first, then fight," Jaina said, smiling at the young girl. "And I'm sure we can fit a 'fresher in there somewhere, too. I barely feel human at the moment. I dread to think how you feel."

  "Like a vua'sa's armpit." Tahiri laughed and Jag felt some of the residual tension ease from his posture. He didn't need to understand the reference to get the joke.

  Jaina looked up at him then, and her eyes were shining. That convinced him that it was all going to be okay. Jaina had expressed no reservations about Tahiri's "new" character, or held any concerns for the girl's recovery. She was absolutely confident that what had happened was to the young Jedi Knight's benefit. That spoke volumes in her favor. On the strength of that, and as long as Tahiri stayed fighting on the right side, he would gladly call her a friend.

  Nom Anor's eyes snapped open in the darkness. Instantly awake, but disoriented, he tried to work out what it was that had awoken him. Had he been dreaming? Had he forgotten to do something? It took him a good ten seconds to realize that the answer lay all around him. When he had reclined on the cot to rest his eyes, he had left a single yellow lichen torch glowing over his desk. Now the room was dark.

  He lay silently in the darkness, listening. A soft movement came from the middle of the room, and he tensed, wondering what he should do. He could yell for the guards outside the door, but the chances were that if intruders had made it into his quarters, they'd already taken care of the guards anyway. He could reach for his coufee where it lay beside his cot, but he would have to expose his throat to do so. He could launch himself at where he thought his attacker was standing, judging by the sounds he'd heard, but it would be too easy to miscalculate and miss, or accidentally throw himself into the path of a ready weapon. Numerous possibilities tumbled through his mind, but each was quickly dismissed.

  His plaeryin bol tensed automatically, reacting to the stress hormones that had begun to surge through his blood. If he could get in just one good shot at his attacker

  "Now!"

  The word spat out of the darkness, and in an instant Nom Anor was rushed from two sides at once. He felt hands clutching at him, trying to pin him down. He fought them off as best he could, but it was difficult, surprised as he was by both the attack and the number of people involved.

  He faced the assailant to his left in the hope of getting a better look. It was impossible. All he saw were shadows within shadows. He could make out an outline of the figure, however, and that was enough for now. Relaxing as though in defeat, he focused on the individual and fired his plaeryin bol directly into the attacker's face. He fell back with a cry. With his arm now free, Nom Anor swung his clenched fist at the one restraining his other arm and struck him firmly on the side of the face.

  There was a grunt of pain, but this attacker continued to hang on.

  "Hold him!" someone cried, and suddenly more figures emerged from the shadows.

  Hands clutched at his skull and something pressed tight against the eye socket containing the plaeryin bol. It spasmed but was unable to fire.

  How many are there? he thought desperately, kicking out at the new attackers trying to restrain both his legs and arms. It was hopeless. Soon two of them had managed to pin down his shoulders, while his legs were being crushed beneath the large torso of a third. In the end he let the fight genuinely leave him and his body sag back onto his cot. There were simply too many of them. Better to conserve his strength than waste it on a pointless struggle.

  He took deep and steady breaths in order to relax and focus. Battles were rarely won with blind rage, he reminded himself. He needed to know his enemy before he could beat them, and here in the shadows he knew nothing about them whatsoever.

  A lambent flared from the doorway, casting a dim light across the faces of those holding him down. He didn't recognize the two pinning his shoulders, although that hardly surprised him. They might have been members of his own group, but he rarely paid attention to any but those important to his plans. Whoever they were, they were just the lackeys of whoever was the mastermind behind the attack. A traitor, presumably.

  The figure holding the lambent was another story altogether. Shoon-mi stepped forward with a coufee in his other hand. The light gleaming off it matched the light in his eyes cold, hard, and deadly.

  Nom Anor frowned, feeling both confused and, strangely, delighted at the impudence of his religious adviser. This was not what he had expected at all.

  "Shoon-mi?" he said, feigning debilitating surprise.

  The Shamed One stared down disdainfully at Nom Anor, the blue sacks beneath his eyes pulsing with repressed delight. He shook his head slowly, as if in disapproval of his master.

  "You see?" he said to his lackeys. "He is no god!"

  "Nor have I ever professed to be, you fool!" Nom Anor responded. "Haven't you listened to anything I've taught you"

  "But you could have been."

  A sense of the absurd rolled over Nom Anor as he lay there, pressed flat to the bed. He was unable to resist a bark of laughter. "You are either far more intelligent than I gave you credit for, Shoon-mi, or more stup
id than I could have ever imagined."

  The Shamed One uttered a vitriolic hiss and struck Nom Anor across the face with the back of the hand holding the coufee. Then, flipping his hand over, he pressed the blade firmly against the ex-executor's throat. "You dare call me stupid when I am the one holding your life in my hands?"

  "Holding the power of life or death over another doesn't automatically give you intelligence, Shoon-mi," Nom Anor retorted. "You have me at a disadvantage at the moment, that's all."

  "At the moment?" Shoon-mi laughed. "You believe you can escape your end here, Master?"

  There was only a hair's breadth of skin between Nom Anor's artery and the coufee. A simple push was all that separated him from death. Nevertheless, he didn't allow alarm to show on his face.

  "The question is not whether I will escape my death," he said slowly, carefully, "but rather how you will escape yours."

  Shoon-mi glared down at Nom Anor. "You threaten me even when you stand on oblivion's precipice?"

  There was a manic look in Shoon-mi's eyea desperate need to prove himself against the one who'd had him at such a disadvantage for so long.

  "I'm in no position to threaten you, Shoon-mi," he said. "I'm merely wondering how you ever expect to get away with this. The faithful will rise against you when they find out. You know that, don't you? Without me, there will be nothing to hold them together."

  "That would only be a problem if they knew you were dead."

  "Ah." Nom Anor would have nodded, but with the coufee against his throat, it wasn't advisable. "The Prophet will not be dead, although I might be. You're planning on becoming me, is that it? Using the masquer, you intend to use my public face to hide your own and take control of the heresy."

  Shoon-mi allowed himself a slight smile, then. "Yes, I do."

  "And you'll explain your own disappearance by mutilating my body and saying it's yours. Then you'll announce that you narrowly averted assassination by killing the one who was supposed to be your most loyal supporter."

  "It seems a practical plan," Shoon-mi said. "I shall hide the truth behind the trutha practice I have learned from you, Master."

  Now Anor allowed himself a faint smile; even now, Shoon-mi still didn't know the entire truth of Nom Anor's identity.

  "And what of these you have turned against me? What have you promised them, Shoon-mi?"

  The Shamed One hesitated, glancing at those holding Nom Anor down. That brief hesitation was all Nom Anor needed to know what lay in store for them they would be killed at the first opportunity because they knew too much about Shoon-mi and his ambitions.

  "They will stand beside me as we attain our freedom," he Shamed One said. "They will be the personal bodyguards of the Prophet."

  "Indeed. And they expect you to show them the same sort of loyalty as you've shown me this night, Shoon-mi?"

  "I would have remained loyal to you until the end," he Shamed One said earnestly. "For a while I even believed in you. But now ..." He shook his head. "This movement needs clarity of vision; this movement needs a rue leader."

  "But you're forgetting one thing," Nom Anor said.

  "I'm forgetting nothing" Shoon-mi hissed.

  "No, you are," Nom Anor insisted. He knew he had to keep Shoon-mi talking, keep playing for time. Every second he stayed alive was a second longer that a chance to reverse his situation might present itself. And the best way to do this was to play upon the Shamed One's inse-urities and uncertainties. "In fact, I can't believe you're so naive as to have missed it."

  "If you think for a second that that I won't kill you" Shoon-mi started, and the coufee pressed harder into Nom Anor's throat.

  "I have no doubts that you would kill me, Shoon-mi," Nom Anor gasped placatinglyalthough there was a look in Shoon-mi's face that made Nom Anor wonder if he Shamed One really could kill him. He was certainly taking a long time about it. "My life is most definitely in your hands; I don't deny this. But why are you really betraying me? Because I ordered you around? Because I kept you in the dark about certain things?"

  Shoon-mi pulled back slightly. Nom Anor took the opportunity to catch his breath.

  "Tell me, please, so that I may at least understand why I am to die at your hand."

  "Because you offer your followers no better than what they had under Shimrra!" There was such vitriol in the Shamed One's tone that it startled even those holding Nom Anor down. "People came to us, and you used them as though they were nothing to you. You sacrificed them without even the decency of learning their names, while yours was on their tongues constantly. They believed in you; they believed in the Jeedai" Shoon-mi shook his head. "The Jeedai would never have done what you did, Amorrn. All of this has been for nothing but your own glory. You have not spread the word of the Jeedai for the sake of the Shamed Ones; you have used it for your own benefit!"

  "As you do now for yours, Shoon-mi?"

  The blade was once more against his throat, this time hard enough to break the skin. Nom Anor felt blood seep around the edges of the coufee and trickle down his neck.

  " I should"

  "Yes, you should," Nom Anor interrupted. "Kill me! Come on, Shoon-mi! I'm sure you have more pressing things to do than stand around here talking to me. You need to start planning your freedom, remember?"

  "You mock me even with death's breath upon you?"

  Nom Anor allowed himself a wide smile. His display of fearlessness had clearly rattled Shoon-mi.

  "You know, perhaps I was wrong about you, Shoon-mi. Perhaps I was wrong when I said you'd forgotten something. Perhaps you never really knew it at all."

  "Knew what?" It was clear that, despite the obvious advantage, Shoon-mi wasn't as self-assured as he was prepared to admit.

  Nom Anor smiled. "That it's not going to work."

  "Nonsense. You're as good as dead"

  "Not me, you idiot Shimrra. You're never going to convince him to give your freedom and honor back. Why would he listen to you? Why would he care the slightest atom about what you want? You can't see what's going on under your misshapen nose, let alone in the court of a ruler a million times more powerful than the Prophet will ever beirrespective of who wears the mask. Whatever power you gain tonight will vanish upon your death, and the death of everyone tainted by your foul stench. Your life was forfeit from the moment you entered this room. My only sadness is that I won't be there to see it happen."

  Instead of showing doubt, the Shamed One smiled back. "Don't think you can trick me, Amorrn. I know you're only trying to"

  Something jolted Shoon-mi from behind, causing him to fall forward and lose his grip on the coufee. Nom Anor twisted to avoid the razor-sharp edge as Shoon-mi fell across him, dropping the lambent and turning the world to darkness.

  Sudden commotion in the blackened room renewed Nom Anor's desperation to survive. He struggled wildly, ineffectually, under the heavy weight of Shoon-mi's body. Voices in the dark, the sound of painful grunts, the slashing of blades, the soft, wet sound of tearing fabric and flesh, the clash of weaponsall filled the air in a grisly cacophony. The hands that had been holding his shoulders down and his plaeryin bol closed had gone, but he was still pinned beneath Shoon-mi, who was breathing heavily, painfully. An agonized cry came from someone nearby, followed by the sound of a body crumpling to the floor.

  Nom Anor finally rolled from under Shoon-mi's limp body, removing the coufee from the Shamed One's hand as he did. Shoon-mi hit the ground with a grunt and whimper, but didn't make any attempt to move or defend himself. Then Nom Anor collected the lambent and cast the light in the direction of the fighting. The sudden light upon the two combating warriors was enough to startle one into turning marginally. It was all Kunra needed to gain the advantage and dispose of his opponent. Crouching low, he swung his long blade and buried it deep in the other warrior's side. The eyes of the Shamed One died as they stared at Nom Anor, then the body sagged to the ground with the others, cut virtually into two halves.

  Kunra straightened, wiping the flat
of his blade clean on his robes.

  "You all right? "he asked.

  Nom Anor nodded, glancing around at the bodies lying about his chamber. "I will be now."

  "Sorry it took me so long," the ex-warrior said. "Three of them jumped me in my room. I figured when they didn't kill me right away that it wasn't me they were after. They just wanted to keep me out of the way until Shoon-mi had finished with you. I guess they thought I might decide to join up with them once he'd taken over role of leader."

  Nom Anor put a hand on Kunra's shoulder. "Either way, that was astoundingly good timing."

  "Not really. I stood outside for a while, listening." Kunra's flat, gray eyes looked away.

  Nom Anor studied the ex-warrior. "Of course you did. You thought about letting Shoon-mi kill me. Then you could have killed him at a later date and taken over as Prophet yourself, right?"

  "Perhaps." Kunra placed his weapon beneath his robes. There was no sign of an apology, but Nom Anor didn't want one. He didn't mind treacherous thoughts, as long as the end result was loyalty.

  "You would have made a better Prophet than Shoon-mi could have ever hoped to." Nom Anor looked down at the Shamed One on the floor, moaning piteously with the handle of a coufee protruding from his back. The blade had severed his spinal column, rendering his limbs useless.

  "What you said to him just then," Kunra started, then stopped, unsure of either himself or the question he was about to ask.

  Nom Anor faced him. "What about?"

  "You told him the plan to reclaim our honor couldn't work," he said. "That the Supreme Overlord would never listen to us."

  "I was merely bluffing."

  Kunra shook his head. "No, I could tell from your voice that you meant it."

  Nom Anor nodded, understanding Kunra's doubt. Was their quest a hopeless one? There were very real uncertainties in his mindparticularly after seeing Shimrra in all his splendor in the palace again.

  "Who knows, Kunra? Shimrra is powerful; there's no questioning that. But maybe we can convince him. If I had a thousand more warriors as loyal as you by my side, I would have no doubts whatsoever."