He stepped over tendrils that crept along the cracked floor, new tendrils. Sekot still lived here, still felt its way through the broken shafts and voids. There was still life here, and something like the voice of their ship, soft in his thoughts, almost drowned out by the tumult of Ke Daiv's death.
Anakin thought for a moment that he saw Vergere gleaming softly ahead, and wondered if she had died on Zonama and left behind a spirit to guide him. But the image was not there when he reached that point, and Anakin shook his head. He was dreaming, hallucinating. Perhaps he was going insane.
His mother had many waking dreams, disturbing and strange, she had once told him. That had scared him a little.
He came to the circular chamber with its high, thickly vaulted roof, the skylight now collapsed, and a thick pillar of rubble fanning out. Jabitha stood by one side of the rubble, on her knees, her head bowed.
Anakin approached her. She looked up and held a powered torch beam on his face. She had found the light somewhere in the rubble, perhaps in her rooms in the palace.
Sticking out between two large carved stones was an arm, most of the flesh gone now. On one finger gleamed a thick steel ring set with a pentangle of small red stones. Anakin recognized one of the old signet rings once handed out to Jedi apprentices.
'He's dead,' Jabitha said. 'Only the Magister could wear this ring. It meant he was linked with the Potentium.'
'We have to go,' Anakin told her softly. The corridors echoed with more groans, more shrieks and rumbles. The floor beneath them trembled.
'He must have died during the battle with the Far Outsiders,' Jabitha said. She shone the torch beam around the chamber, looking for any others. The chamber was deserted. 'But who was sending his messages?'
'I don't know,' Anakin said. Then once again, from the corner of his eye, he caught a gleam of light in the darkness, away from Jabitha's torch. He turned and saw the feathered Jedi Knight standing on her reverse- articulated legs, feet splayed as if prepared to leap, staring at him with no apparent emotion.
Jabitha could not see her. Nor did the girl see the figure become the Magister, her father. The transformed figure stepped forward.
Anakin felt no fear. He felt instead in the presence of another young person very like himself, a friend. This made him consider once again the real possibility that he was going insane.
'I sent the messages,' the figure told Anakin.
The girl remained crouched over her dead father. Anakin bent and touched her head, and she was comfortable, then stood and faced the image.
'Who are you?' he asked, his voice cracking.
'A friend of Vergere,' it said.'I think my name, to some, is Sekot.'
Chapter 56
To prepare the way for a retrieval ship to land on the mountain, Tarkin ordered a swarm of droid starfighters to take any other ships in the area.He watched with satisfaction from his lofty orbit, Sienar at his side, as the starfighters harried the outmoded YT-1105 and another Sekotan ship.
'We'll sacrifice one to gain another,' Tarkin said.
'Take care with the larger Sekotan vessel,' Sienar said, though he was not at all sure that Tarkin was willing to hear reason.'It may be exceptional.'
'Sir,' the captain said, 'we are losing most of our starfighters over the inhabited valleys in the north.Their defenses are relentless and apparently without limit.And there are-'
'Quiet!' Tarkin shouted.'I think you overestimate these primitives.Once we are done with our primary mission, we will sweep up the rest by main force.No more delicacy.If they do not submit, we will destroy them utterly.'
Chapter 57
Anakin stayed close by Jabitha, as much for his sake as for hers. The atmosphere within the chamber was thick with dust. Dust sifted from the ceiling, puffed from the outer halls as ceilings collapsed elsewhere in the ruin.
Tendrils on the floor moved with deliberation toward Jabitha, encircled her. Sekot itself would protect the Magister's daughter. In some fashion Anakin could not yet fathom, the figure before him regarded the Magister's children as brothers and sisters.
'You are the Jedi apprentice,' the image said.
Anakin nodded.
'And your master is elsewhere, fighting the new invasion.'
'I feel him out there,' Anakin said.
'How I would love to learn the secrets of the Jedi! What can you teach me?'
'Who are you?' Anakin said. Like Obi-Wan, he was now finding mystery and delay to be a real irritation.
'I don't know for sure. I'm not very old, but my memories go back billions of turnings. Parts of me saw the pinwheel grow in the sky.'
