Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (17 page)

Drola didn’t answer immediately. His mouth moved as if he were reluctant to speak. Finally the word came: “Nightsisters.”

“Yes, Nightsisters. The Nightsisters have caused a tragedy today. The Skywalkers have prevented us from having a second one.”

Kaminne now addressed the crowd. “We will double the guard tonight. If you see or feel anything strange, untoward, report it to a clan leader or chief.”

“Tonight we will have funeral rites for the fallen, and tomorrow, special games in their honor.” Dest’s tone became more forceful. “We
will
watch out for each other, Broken Columns for Raining Leaves and Raining Leaves for Broken Columns. And in giving us a common enemy, the Nightsisters will find that they have furthered our union of the clans, not prevented it.” He turned as if to speak privately with Kaminne, all but telling the gathered onlookers,
You are dismissed
.

Conversations rose among those gathered, but Ben was relieved to feel a lessening of tension. The rear edges of the crowd began to turn away, people drifting back toward the campfires.

Luke stepped in close to Ben. He pitched his voice low enough that it would not carry beyond the two of them. “Nice work with the knife.”

Ben shrugged. He returned the lightsaber to its clip. “The arm would have been an easier target. But it’s kind of clear that there aren’t lots of prosthetics to be had on Dathomir.”

Dest and Kaminne moved in their direction, but Luke spoke first. “So, where are these Nightsisters?”

Kaminne gestured out among the departing crowd. “Some live in the forests and mountains in small groups. But these days, the majority are among us. They keep the fact that they are Nightsisters a secret. They are better these days at concealing the effects that dark uses of the Arts have on their flesh. It is said that all clans have a few Nightsisters among them. And sometimes there are Nightsister gatherings.” She looked unhappy. “It seems that there is such a gathering now, and that it wants to prevent this union of clans.”

“New ways threaten them.” Dest seemed matter-of-fact about it. “I guess we’ll just have to keep shooting them.”

Wynn Dorvan paused before reentering his office. He had to brace himself for the remainder of his encounter with the Jedi waiting for him. Seldom had Dorvan encountered a personality that was simultaneously so strong, so focused, so … dull.

But Dorvan was a professional. He put on a pleasant smile he didn’t feel and walked toward the door. It rose to admit him to his private office.

In a chair, his back to the door, sat Sothais Saar. The Chev Jedi did not visibly react as Dorvan entered.

Dorvan moved past to resume his seat behind the desk. “The Chief of State regrets that she cannot join us, but reiterates that she, too, is an enemy of slavery both within and outside the Alliance.” He glanced at Saar to gauge the Chev’s reaction to these perfunctory words.

Saar was asleep, slumped in his chair, his head lolling to one side, his eyes closed.

Dorvan looked at him in surprise. He smiled, amused. Never before had he caught a Jedi napping—in this case, literally. It was all he could do to keep from laughing. “Jedi Saar?”

“Eh?” Saar jerked and his eyes opened. He looked around as if confused.

“Obviously, the Jedi schedule is one of long hours and uncertain timing.”

“Uh, yes.” Saar looked at him as if Dorvan had suddenly grown a third eye—as if only half recognizing him. The Jedi seemed to compose himself rapidly enough, though. “I should be going.”

“Without hearing what the Chief of State has to say?”

“No, of course not.” Saar twisted to glance at the door, as if half expecting to see Daala standing there. He returned his attention to Dorvan. “Perhaps you could walk me out and tell me as we go.”

“Of course.”

As they left the office and headed toward the lift accessing the main entrance level, Dorvan tried again. “Chief Daala wants you to understand that she is as devoted as anyone to eliminating the remnants of slaver mentality from the galaxy.”

“Yes, yes.” Saar fidgeted, and as soon as the door opened to give them access to the turbolift, he darted inside.

Dorvan followed. “But she does have many other demands on her attention and resources, of course.”

“Of course. Main level.” The turbolift doors dropped into place, and the lift descended.

Dorvan felt a flash of impatience. Saar normally played the verbal-politics game with skill and enthusiasm. Now it seemed he couldn’t be bothered. “So perhaps you could put together a proposal for a cooperative effort between the Jedi and the government, using resources of both, for her to evaluate. Achieve both our ends. Perhaps engender a greater feeling of cooperation between us than we’ve experienced recently.”

Saar turned to look at him, a stare of evaluation. Dorvan felt unsettled by it. It was as if the Jedi were staring through a magnifying lens at him, discovering for the first time that Dorvan belonged to a hitherto unknown species. But he merely said, “Good idea.”

The turbolift stopped and the door shot up. Saar stepped out into
the building’s main entrance hall. To the right, a hundred meters away, was sunlight. Between here and that exit were innumerable cross-corridors, doors into offices, bustling politicians, ambling protocol droids.

Saar set off at a rapid walk in the direction of the exit. Dorvan struggled to keep up with him. “Jedi Saar, let me speak frankly. Tensions between the Jedi Order and the government are damaging both. It behooves us to go out of our way to find common ground. To calm things down before something sparks a tragedy. Before our differences become irreconcilable. If the heads of both groups cannot find this common ground, perhaps lower ranks can. Yes?”

“Yes.” Saar sounded not in the least interested.

And it was then, finally, that Dorvan realized what he was seeing, what he was hearing. The realization was almost like being hit by a stun beam—though in this case, it was a wash of fear rather than energy.

If he was right in his guess, he was in more danger at this minute than he had been in years.

But he had to know.

He thought back over recent events, over the odd behavior of other Jedi, and finally he said, “You’re probably wondering what I’ve done with the real Wynn Dorvan.”

If Dorvan was wrong, if Saar’s behavior had some more innocuous explanation, Dorvan could explain the comment away as a figure of speech.

Saar stopped and spun to face Dorvan. Suddenly his lightsaber, unlit, was in his right hand. His eyes were wide—not with fear, but with the awareness of a man ready to enter combat, taking in as much visual data as he could.

Dorvan stopped, too, uneasily aware that a single wrong move might lead to his death. He felt as if a heavy weight were resting on his chest. It was difficult to breathe. “Jedi Saar, I’m unarmed.”

Saar seemed to disappear. Dorvan blinked and realized that Saar was still before him, now a dozen meters away and running at such speed that he appeared to blur as he headed for the exit. There was a shriek as the Jedi brushed past an aide carrying a precariously balanced
stack of datacards; the cards went flying in an arc, clattering to the stone floor of the hallway.

Dorvan grabbed his comlink. “Lockdown, lockdown!”

Those words, broadcast by his comlink, triggered an instant and automated response in the building’s security system. The sunlight ahead suddenly narrowed as blast doors began a rapid close-and-seal. A low, bone-rattling alarm tone began cycling.

The blur that was Jedi Saar suddenly became even harder to focus on as he raced to the exit, diving through the closing doors when there was less than a meter’s gap between them.

Dorvan cursed.

“Dorvan, this is Captain Brays in security. What is—”

“Jedi male, Chev, leaving main entrance, dark robes, is a mad Jedi. Repeat, mad Jedi. Bring all resources to bear to track him. Do not confront him unless you have the resources necessary to take down a Jedi Knight.”

“Understood.”

J
EDI
S
AAR RACED ACROSS THE PLAZA BEFORE THE
S
ENATE
B
UILDING
. He had to get away from the broad open space and had to do so fast, before the inevitable stream of security airspeeders launched to follow him. He couldn’t keep up that Force-boosted running speed for the entire distance. He slowed to a rate that was merely that of a championship runner.

Ahead was the security station that screened all pedestrians and speeders entering the plaza from that direction. The agents in it would just now be receiving the alert. He raced past, ignoring the cries of the helmeted workers. The station’s automated defenses, designed to detect and bring down vehicles coming in from the other direction, could not impede him as he passed by.

Now he was on the street beyond, a street thick with pedestrians. It would take him a mere second to shuck his cloak, perhaps grab a gaudy tunic from a passerby, making himself visually distinct from the image he’d presented to the Senate Building holocams—

He almost gasped in relief. Ahead of him, departing from a hired
airspeeder and awkwardly handing credcoins to the driver, was Master Cilghal. She would know what to do, she—

It was not her. In the seconds it had taken him to cross most of the thirty meters separating them, Saar realized that the Mon Calamari female he was facing, for all that she was identical in garb and appearance to Master Cilghal,
was not Cilghal
.

He stopped. He heard a
snap-hiss
and realized that he had ignited his lightsaber without meaning to. Its blue-black blade glowed as it stretched like a teacher’s pointing tool. Pedestrians exclaimed, changed direction, drew away from the two Jedi.

The driver of the hired speeder hit his thrusters and sped away, scattering Cilghal’s credcoins. They clattered to the permacrete pavement and rolled in all directions.

The Mon Cal Jedi looked steadily at Saar. “Jedi Saar, I suspect I know what you are experiencing.”

“What have you done with Master Cilghal?”

The false Cilghal blinked at him, each eye blinking separately, as she considered her answer. Finally, she nodded, as if coming to a decision. “I know how this conversation progresses. There is no point to it. You cannot be reasoned with.” She reached for her lightsaber, drew it forth, ignited it.

Saar leapt toward her.

Their blades came together in a spectacular clash of sparks and
pop-zapp
noises. Those few people surrounding the scene who had not already drawn back did so now, in a hurry. A moment later the hum of the lightsabers was drowned out by the sirens of oncoming official vehicles.

Saar threw a quick series of blows, intended to draw his larger, clumsier opponent into an ever more extravagant series of blocks, the last ones pulling her out of line or off-balance. But she
wasn’t
clumsier. She fought like a Jedi Master, lightning-fast, anticipating every attack, not being fooled by feints.

He backflipped to put a few meters’ distance between them, but when he was upside down and facing away from the false Cilghal, he felt a pulse of Force energy from her direction. He was hurtled forward into the granite facing of the closest building. With his own use of the Force he tried to slow his rate, to soften the impact, but to no avail. He hammered into the building edifice.

The last thing he saw was the street pavement above his head sliding down to meet him.

Daala looked up as Dorvan walked into her office. Her expression was hard, but there was concern in her voice. “Are you all right?”

“I managed not to impale myself on his weapon while we were talking.” Clearly upset, he flopped down into a chair without waiting to be asked. “I’m mostly mad because the lockdown
I
called for didn’t even slow him down but it kept me from getting here for half an hour. What does security say?”

“He ran into Jedi Master Cilghal, dueled with her her briefly, and was flattened like a bug. She commandeered a passing commercial speeder and took him back to the Temple.” She glanced down at the monitor on her desk. Her eyes flicked back and forth as she read an update. “The Coruscant Security officers I dispatched to the Jedi Temple are there now and have issued an order to the Jedi. They must turn over Jedi Saar within the hour or there will be consequences.”

“Will
there be consequences?”

“Oh, yes. Definitely, yes.”

The news about Jedi Saar’s madness and the Coruscant Security officers parked on the Temple’s front steps circulated with the speed of comm traffic. When Jaina swept into the medical ward, the first thing she saw was news coverage of the event on the chamber’s main monitor. It showed an aerial holocam view of the Temple, uniformed security officers and Jedi guards standing stiffly, meters apart, in a temporary standoff.

Cilghal or Tekli had switched the sound off. Jaina turned to Cilghal, who was bent over the unconscious form of Saar. The Jedi Knight lay on his back on a hovergurney, the device currently settled on the floor. His tunic was off, and he wore a monitor ring on his brow
like a headband. His eyes were closed; his wrists and ankles, shackled to the bed. There was a formfitting blue plascast on his nose.