by Timothy Zahn
"Mara?" he called, shifting the weapon to his left hand and pulling out his glow rod. He played it down the tunnel as, behind him, Mara shut down her lightsaber.
And in the sudden silence, he heard a noise. A rustling sound, like thousands of distant, throaty voices whispering wordlessly to each other. A mindless rumbling that was echoed in his mind as he stretched out toward it with the Force.
And it was getting closer.
"I don't like the sound of that," Mara murmured, stepping to his side.
"Me, neither," Luke said, keying his glow rod to its brightest setting and sweeping it around again. Nothing was visible, but the way the tunnel twisted and bent in both directions that didn't mean much. He ran through his Jedi sense-enhancement techniques...
Fire creepers! Builder With Vines said excitedly from the ceiling behind him. They are coming!
"What?" Mara demanded.
"He said fire creepers are coming," Luke relayed.
"Uh-oh," Mara said. "Their Bargainer's name'Eater Of Fire Creepers.' "
"Yes," Luke said, looking up at the Qom Jha. His wings were fluttering with some kind of anticipation. "I've been assuming a fire creeper was some sort of plant. Builder With Vines, what are these things?"
They are small but dangerous creatures, the Qom Jha said. They will eat and destroy all things in their path, and can kill anything they find.
"He says small but dangerous," Luke told Mara, sweeping the glow rod down the tunnel again.
"In which case, that much noise implies there must be one blazing lot of them on the way," Mara concluded grimly, looking around. "I get the very bad feeling we're about to meet a new species of roverines."
Luke shivered. He'd seen holovids of those infamous insect predators on their annual march across the Davirien jungles. Roverines traveled in swarms of hundreds of thousands, sometimes even millions, literally stripping the landscape of every bit of plant life as they passed over it.
Plant life, and any animals that were too slow or too sick to get out of their way, eating such stragglers down to polished bone. "Builder With Vines, how fast do they travel?" he called.
"Too fast," Mara snapped before the Qom Jha could answer. "Lookhere they come."
Luke caught his breath. Ahead, just at the farthest spot the glow rod beam could reach, the front edge of a pulsating sheet of black had appeared, filling the entire floor and spilling perhaps a meter up the walls as well. Even as he watched, the edge flowed like some viscous liquid into a slight dip in the floor, reappearing as it flowed up again over the lip.
And Mara was right. They were coming far too fast.
"I'd say we've got maybe a minute before they get here," Mara said. "If you've got any clever tricks up your sleeve, this is the time to trot them out."
Luke bit at his lip, his mind racing. There was a way, he knew, to use the Force to create a low-level personal shield. But to maintain the shield long enough, especially against so many individual adversaries, would be practically impossible. Besides, it was doubtful he could also shield Mara that way, and she almost certainly didn't know the technique herself. Using the Force to move each individual fire creeper out of the way as they passed would be an equally impossible task, even with Mara working alongside of him.
And if these insects were anything like Davirien roverines, it would only take one of them getting through and sinking a poisoned stinger to shake their control and alert the rest of the swarm to the presence of food. No, their only hope was to stay out of the fire creepers' way entirely. Either somewhere farther down the tunnel, or else
"The archway," Mara said suddenly. "We'll need footrests about two meters up"
"Right," Luke said, igniting his lightsaber and stepping into the opening as he measured the distance with his eyes. Yes, it would just work.
Assuming they had enough time to make the necessary preparations. "Artoo, close down all your openings," he called as he swung the tip of the brilliant green blade horizontally into the inner edge of the archway's side pillar half a meter above his head. If the cortosis ore extended this far out from the passageway wall...
Fortunately, it didn't. His lightsaber blade sliced cleanly inward a few centimeters into the rock, without a hint of trouble. "Child Of Winds, get to that opening up there," he called as he got a Force grip on the lightsaber and lifted it up to the rock over the cut he'd just made. "Find a place to hang on and stay there."
What about you, Jedi Sky Walker? the young Qom Qae asked anxiously, the fluttering of his wings nearly drowned out by the hum of the two lightsabers. How will you protect yourselves?
"You'll see," Luke assured him. He brought the lightsaber blade down at a not-quite-vertical angle, slicing out a rough wedge of stone and leaving behind a shallow horizontal ledge in the inner edge of the archway. The rustling of the approaching fire creepers was growing steadily louder. "Mara?"
"I'm finished," Mara called over the noise, the blue-white glow reflected from behind him vanishing as she shut down her lightsaber. "We've got maybe twenty seconds."
Luke looked down the tunnel as he pulled his lightsaber back to his hand. The leading edge of the swarm was barely five meters away, the entire passageway behind them absolutely black with the insects. "I'm ready," he told her, shutting down the weapon and returning it to his belt. "On three?"
"On three," Mara said.
Luke took half a step backward, and for a moment his back pressed against Mara's as they each gauged the distances and stretched out in their own ways to the Force. "On three," Luke repeated, trying to ignore the sound that seemed to fill the entire passageway. Across by one wall, Artoo moaned with fear. "One, two, three."
He jumped upward toward his footrest, turning his body halfway around as he did so and hoping belatedly that the arc of his leap wouldn't be high enough to crack his head against the curved rock above him. As he came around to face the center of the archway he caught sight of Mara, also in midair with her back to the rock, starting to come down toward her own newly carved footrest. Her arms were stretched toward him, palms outward, as if she were reaching out to push him away. Luke got his own arms up, palms similarly outward, as their heels came thunking solidly down onto their footrests. Their palms met, their fingers intertwined
Mara took a deep breath, exhaling it in a rush just audible above the noise of the fire creepers now swarming through the passageway beneath their feet. "I'll be Kesseled," she said. "It worked."
Luke nodded, taking a deep breath of his own. With their feet resting on the cutouts they'd made, their arms stretched rigidly out and their hands clasped to brace and support one another, they had in effect become a living archway within the stone one. And as long as they stayed that way, they would remain safe above the flow of insects.
But if either of them fell...
"Cozy, isn't it?" Mara commented, looking around. "Very symbolic, too. The great and powerful Jedi Master forced to rely on someone else for his survival."
"I wish you'd drop that," Luke growled. "I've already admitted I can't do everything."
"Which isn't quite the same as relying on other people," Mara said. "But okay; consider it dropped. Looks like we're just high enough."
Luke looked down. The river of fire creepers, as he'd already seen, sloshed a fair distance up the walls of the passageway as too many insects tried to travel through too small a space. Here at the archway, where the tunnel was still narrower, they roved even higher, with some of the insects passing barely centimeters beneath their footrests. "You think they can eat through our boots?" he asked.
"If enough of them climb aboard and start chewing, they can probably eat through anything," Mara said. "And all it'll take will be one of them noticing us to wave whatever chemical flags they use to whistle up the rest of the swarm."
Luke nodded grimly. "So in other words, if any of them look like they're getting close, grab them with the Force and get rid of them fast."
"Better still, throw them across the cave into a w
all," Mara said. "What I'd like to know is what they're doing down here. There can't possibly be enough food in this entire cavern complex for a swarm this size."
"Maybe it's a shortcut from one part of the surface to another," Luke suggested. "There's that underground river we passed a ways backmaybe they come here for the water."
"Could be," Mara said, peering to the side. "I wish we'd had time to move our packs up offwhat in space?"
Luke followed her gaze, just in time to see Builder With Vines swoop down in a shallow dive over the scurrying fire creepers and curve up again with what appeared to be some of the insects in his mouth. "He's eating them," he said, not quite believing it.
"Of course he is," Mara said. " 'Eater Of Fire Creepers,' remember?"
"But then?" Luke floundered, thoroughly confused now. "Are they really not that dangerous?"
"Of course they're dangerous," Mara snorted. "You ever hear of the topshot in any clan who picked a name that made him sound calm and reasonable? This has to be the Qom Jha version of kick-the-rancor."
"Kick-the-rancor?"
"A slang term in Palpatine's court," Mara said. "Any stupid stunt where the risks were way out of proportion to the gain."
Luke worked moisture into a suddenly dry mouth as he watched Builder With Vines finish his snack and swoop down for another pass. Why in the name of the Force was he taking such a terrible risk?
And it was a terrible risk. Luke could feel the danger involved, his Jedi senses tingling almost as strongly as if the threat had been aimed directly at him. Surely Builder With Vines couldn't be that hungry. Could he?
"Offhand, I'd say he's showing off," Mara muttered, answering his silent question.
"For who? Us?"
"Hardly." Mara nodded toward the wall behind Luke. "For the kid."
Luke craned his neck to look. Balanced precariously on a stone near the Qom Jha opening, Child Of Winds was watching in utter fascination as Builder With Vines swooped over the mass of insects, his wings quivering with excitement or nervousness or envy. "Uh-oh," Luke said. "You don't think?"
"I would hope he's not that stupid," Mara said. "But the Qom Jha have been riding him ever since we headed out on this little trip. He just might."
Luke grimaced. "Child Of Winds, you stay where you are," he ordered, putting Jedi firmness into his voice. "You're not to try to do what Builder With Vines is"
And suddenly, a terrified shriek screamed through his mind. "What?" he gasped, his body twitching violently with the shock of the sound.
"It's Builder With Vines," Mara bit out, her fingers tightening around Luke's to help maintain their balance. Luke looked down
To a horrifying sight. Builder With Vines, his wings flapping frantically but uselessly, was struggling half-submerged in the living river flowing through the passageway. Dozens of fire creepers were already crawling across his head and wings, biting and stinging. Even as Child of Winds's terrified cry joined Builder With Vines's scream in Luke's mind a hundred more of the insects crawled onto the Qom Jha, their weight forcing him still deeper beneath the flow.
There was no time to waste. Stretching out with the Force, Luke hauled Builder With Vines up and out of the flow, holding him suspended in midair. He shifted his focus to the insects, grabbing them through the Force and throwing them off him.
"Don't bother," Mara said quietly. "There's nothing you can do."
Luke bit back the reflexive impulse to deny it. He was a Jedithere had to be something he could do.
But no. She was right... and as Builder With Vines's mental scream died into the silence of death he let the body sink gently back into the mindless flow.
"Easy on the fingers," Mara said softly.
With an effort, Luke turned his gaze back to her, focusing on their joined hands. His fingers were all but white where he was squeezing hers tightly in frustration. "Sorry," he muttered, forcing himself to relax his grip.
"That's all right," she said. "You know, you've got a pretty good grip there. I thought you Jedi usually concentrated more on the mental aspects of the Force than you did in keeping in shape."
She was trying to deflect his attention, he knew, trying to turn his thoughts away from the horror he'd just witnessed. Sympathy from Mara was a new experience all by itself; but neither words nor sympathy had a puddle's chance of smoothing over the guilt and anger rising in his throat like a twisting sand-devil. "It's not all right," he snapped back at her. "I knew it was dangerousI could have stopped him. I should have stopped him."
"How?" Mara countered. "I mean, sure, you could have used the Force to pin him to the ceiling. But what right would you have had to do something like that?"
"What do you mean, what right?" Luke bit out. "I was the one in charge here. Their safety was my responsibility."
"Oh, come on," Mara said, the sympathy still there but with a tinge of scorn around the edges now. "Builder With Vines was an intelligent, responsible adult being. He knew what he was doing. He made his choice, and he suffered the consequences. If you want to start feeling guilty about mistakes, start with ones that were actually your fault."
"Such as?" Luke growled.
For a long moment Mara gazed coolly at him, and Luke felt a sudden wave of misgiving ripple through his anger. "Such as?" Mara repeated. "Well, let's see. Such as not moving your Jedi academy off Yavin when you first found out a really nasty dark side power was infesting the place. Such as not slapping down a tipped turbolaser like Kyp Durron the minute he started showing dark side tendencies of his own. Such as not providing adequate protection for your sister's children against kidnapping, despite the fact it had already been tried a couple of times. Such as unilaterally declaring yourself a Jedi Master after less than ten years on the job. How long a list do you want?"
Luke tried to glare at her. But there was no strength behind the glare, and with a grimace of embarrassment he dropped his gaze from her face. "You're right," he sighed. "You're absolutely right. I don't know, Mara. It's been... I don't know."
"Let me guess," she said, the sarcasm gone from her voice again. "Life as a Jedi has been a lot foggier than you ever expected it to be. You've had trouble understanding what you're supposed to do, or how you're supposed to behave. You've been gaining tremendous power in the Force, but more often than not you've been paralyzed with fear that you're going to use it the wrong way. Am I getting warm?"
Luke stared at her. "Yes," he said, not quite believing it. How had she known? "That's it exactly."
"And yet," she continued, "sometime in the past couple of months, things have suddenly become clearer. Not that you've had any great lightning-bolt insights, but a lot of the hesitation has disappeared and you've found it easier to stay on what seems in hindsight to have been the right path."
"Right again," Luke said. "Though there have also been one or two pretty impressive revelations," he added, thinking back. "The vision on Tierfon that got me in touch with Karrde just in time to hear about you being trapped here, for one." He eyed her closely. "You know what's been going on?"
"Yes, it's been only slightly more visible than blindingly obvious," she said dryly. "Certainly to me. Probably to Leia and Corran and some of your other Jedi students, too. Possibly to everyone else in the New Republic."
"Oh, thank you," Luke said, trying to match her tone and not entirely succeeding. "That makes me feel so much better."
"Good. It was supposed to." Mara took a deep breath, and Luke could sense her reluctance. "Look, you're the one in the middle of this. You're the one who has to make the final call on what's going on. But if you want my reading, it all started with that little jaunt you took out to Byss about nine years ago. Where you facedwhatever it was you faced out there."
Luke shivered. "The reborn Emperor."
"Or whatever," Mara said with an odd touch of impatience. "Personally, I'm not convinced it was really him. But that's beside the point. The point was that you decidedstupidly and rather arrogantly, in my opinionthat the best way to stop
him would be for you to pretend to join up and let him teach you some of his dark side techniques."
"But I didn't really go over to the dark side," Luke protested, trying to remember those dark days. "I mean, I don't think I did."
Mara shook her head. "Debatable; but it almost doesn't matter. One way or the other, you still willingly dabbled in it. And from that point on, it colored everything you did."
One of Master Yoda's pronouncements floated up from his memory. If once you start down the dark path, his old teacher had warned, forever will it dominate your destiny. "It did, too, didn't it?" he murmured, half to himself, as all the errors and mistakes and, yes, the arrogance of the past nine years rose accusingly before his eyes. "What was I thinking?"
"You weren't thinking," Mara said, an odd mixture of impatience and compassion swirling together in her voice and emotions. "You were reacting, trying to save everyone and do everything. And in the process you came within a split blaster bolt of destroying yourself."
"So what changed?" he asked. "What happened?"
Mara's eyes narrowed fractionally. "You telling me you don't know?"
Luke grimaced, wondering that he hadn't seen it earlier. That critical moment off Iphigin, as he and Han had prepared for combat against the pirate gang Han had deduced was on its way. The moment when he'd seen the vision of Emperor Palpatine and Exar Kun laughing at him... "No, I know," he conceded. "I made a decision to stop using the power of the Force so much."
And suddenly, through that mixture of compassion and impatience came a wave of something completely unexpected. An overpowering flood of relief. "You got it," Mara said quietly. "Finally."
Luke shook his head. "But why?" he demanded. "The power's obviously there, available for a Jedi to use. Is it just because I touched the dark side that using it is so bad for me?"
"That's probably part of it," Mara said. "But even if you'd never done that you'd still have run into trouble. You ever been in a hullplate-shaping plant?"
"Ahno," Luke said, blinking at the sudden change of topic.
"How about an ore-crushing facility?" she suggested. "Lando's had a couple of them at one time or anotheryou must have visited at least one of them."