elevations lay the ruins of a huge complex of buildings. The area had been altered so drastically, and the complex covered so completely, that they had missed it on their first circuit.
Anakin saw the spare edge of the old landing field, with its reddish black lava surface. 'I'll put down there,' he said.
'Where's Father?' Jabitha asked, her cheeks wet with tears.
Chapter 50
The sky mines zigged and zagged in search of prey, their contrails catching the sunset light over the clouds like flaming letters in the sky. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands, tiny highly explosive oblate spheroids equipped with fierce tracking ability and split-second maneuverability. They were forcing Shappa to drop lower and lower.
'We won't be able to stay in the air for long,' he said. 'A few minutes at most, and then they'll find us.'
Obi-Wan said nothing for a long moment. Following the sky mines would come hunter-killer starfighters, and the air over the clouds would be filled with swift destruction. The Sekotan ship was unarmed. They wouldn't stand a chance.
'Then take her down,' he said.
'They've landed on the Magister's mountain. At least they will have some protection in the palace.' Shappa glared at him, challenging Obi-Wan to contradict his beliefs, his hopes.
The Sekotan ship dropped through the cloud deck, and they were surrounded by a silvery gloom. Winds whipped them this way and that before Shappa brought his craft down on a scourged prairie of bare, blackened rock. All around, jagged outcrops of twisted stone showed that a fury of destructive energies had melted and rearranged the landscape, killing all life.
Shappa removed his hands from the controls and bustled around the rear of the cabin, making checks on the equipment installed there. He came forward and found Obi-Wan still in his seat, lost in intense thought.
'Look what they did,' Shappa said softly, peering through Obi-Wan's port. 'What did we ever do to deserve such destruction? How could the Potentium have allowed such evil?'
Obi-Wan rose from his seat. No sense contradicting Shappa now. Didacticism-always a tendency in him-was of no use here. Shappa was an ally and had to muddle through as best he could with the beliefs that gave him strength.
'How far are we from the mountain?' Obi-Wan asked.
'About a hundred kilometers.'
'And where is Charza Kwinn?'
Shappa looked at his displays. 'The other ship has also descended below the clouds.'
There was nothing Obi-Wan could do for now. His sense of the future was as clouded as the sky. Anakin's fate was pushed up against a knot, a fistula in the pathways to different futures. What struck Obi-Wan most was the terrifying connections between so many futures that bunched up in these next few hours. So many events whirled around his Padawan, so many interconnected lives.
He wished he could speak with Mace Windu, Yoda. Qui-Gon. This was completely beyond his comprehension.
If he felt this way, after more than a decade and a half of Jedi training, Obi-Wan could hardly imagine how Anakin felt.
Obi-Wan closed his eyes to consult the wisdom that Qui- Gon had left behind.
The boy's trial. . he will face it alone. You must trust in your Padawan. And you must trust in the Force. After Qui-Gon's death, in a way, you lost that trust. You relied on a sense of duty and a daily regimen of work and study and training to replace what had once been a marvelous sense of awe and wonder at the ways of the Force.
The Force disappointed you, did it not, Obi-Wan?
It allowed your Master to die.
It could allow Anakin to die.
And if it does, that will kill any chance of your remaining a Jedi.
The future could not be read. The Force was silent and compressed around them all, as if holding in a giant breath.
Chapter 51
Jabitha walked across the barren field, climbing up and over ribbons of once-molten rock. She breathed in thin, ragged jerks. The air was too thin for her. She was used to the luxurious and rich atmosphere of the northern valleys, not the desolate and dead atmosphere on her father's mountain.
'The palace should be over there,' she said, her voice little more than a whisper.
Anakin's vision swam for a moment, and he worked a small Jedi technique on his blood pressure and chemistry to give himself more strength and clarity with less oxygen.
Ke Daiv stood a few steps behind them, lance blade ready. Anakin measured all the distances, estimated the times. The Blood Carver was closer to Jabitha. He could easily kill her before Anakin could reach him, and what would Anakin do to him anyway?
