and preserve the strength of their mounts, the travelers chose to continue forward through one of several meandering gaps that cut through the range. None of these was particularly steep- sided, being more gully than gorge. Erosion, Luminara re flected, had long since worn down these old mountains.
Riding alongside Kyakhta, she noticed that the guide's atten tion was unusually fixed. 'You see something that troubles you, Kyakhta?'
'No, Master Luminara. But the Alwari dislike this kind of country. We prefer flat lands, grassy plains, and open spaces. Being born to the wide prairies, we are uncomfortable in enclosed places.' He indicated the gentle, grass-covered slope on his left. 'My mind tells me there are few places up there in which to hide, my eyes tell me there are no dangers to be seen, but my heart is full of concerns hammered into me from childhood, when my mane was but a line of immature fuzz running down my back. Old suspicions die hard.'
Scanning the same hillside, she tried to cheer the guide. 'If it means anything, I don't see any likely source of trouble, either.'
Which was because it could not be seen. Only felt.
Sweeping down through the undulating hills, the ever-present wind of Ansion was strengthened by the natural funnel-ing effect of narrowing canyons and clefts. Wind speed did not reach gale force, but it grew strong enough to induce the travelers to cover their mouths and nostrils with protective cloth.
Bulgan suddenly sat up straight in his saddle. Or at least, as straight as his bent back would permit. No question that he saw something, Obi-Wan noted. The Jedi did not have a chance to ask what it was.
'Chawix!' Bulgan exclaimed. Reining in his suubatar, he began looking around wildly. Hearing his friend's warning cry,
Kyakhta turned his suubatar quickly toward the nearest of the overhangs they had passed.
'In here with your mounts, quickly!'
Unable to see any danger, Luminara nonetheless hurried to follow Kyakhta's lead. She barely had time to direct her own suubatar to its knees to allow her to dismount when the guide appeared in front of her.
'Stay here, Master Luminara.' Looking back over his shoul der, he winced as something shot past the opening to the undercut. 'I think we're safe in here, but if you go farther out, you might catch a gust of wind.'
'What's wrong with that?' Having lowered the protective cloth from the front of her face, she was staring outside. There was nothing to be seen except the narrow gully they had been traversing and the rising slope of the hill on the other side.
'You might intercept a gust of wind carrying a chawix.'
Obi-Wan had come over to join his colleague in studying the seemingly innocuous gulch. 'What kind of animal is a chawix?'
'It's not an animal,' the guide explained. 'It's a plant.' Turning, Kyakhta dropped into a crouch. As he approached the edge of the undercut and the first pebbles of the sun-washed gully, he dropped to his belly and beckoned them to follow.
Lying flat on the ground, they were able to watch as several, then dozens of what appeared to be large bundles of impossibly intertwined, ropelike branches came bounding past. Lightweight and propelled by the constant wind that blew down the gully, they would hit the ground, bounce into the air, and soar a substantial distance before touching down once more and bounding skyward once again.
'Not good to get hit by a chawix.' With the two Padawans following him, Bulgan had slithered up alongside the prone Jedi.
'I can see how it could be uncomfortable,' Barriss mused aloud. She was interested, but not happy. Crawling flat on hard alien dirt was not one of her favorite pastimes. 'But I don't see why it should cause anyone to panic.'
'Maybe our friends worry about one of them striking a suu batar in the face.' Anakin shielded his eyes against the dust and the glare as he watched the bundles of vinelike material come bouncing past their rocky shelter. 'It looks like they might have some thorns.'
As they looked on, a membibi emerged from its den on the far side of the ravine and started upwind, heading for another burrow. The small, four-legged insectivore was hairless, with splotchy pale white skin, a long whiplike tail, and a low-slung protruding snout it carried only a thumb-length above the ground.
Flying through the air, propelled aimlessly forward by the wind, a spinning chawix arced downward to land on top of the scurrying membibi. Luminara expected the plant to bounce off, as it had bounced off the rocky surface of the gully itself. It did not.
Sensing proximity to flesh, it extended a dozen or more thorns from fingernail to finger in length, like a feline extending its claws. Pierced by these multiple woody stilettos, the membibi gave a muted shriek and fell over onto its side, legs kicking. Within minutes it lay still. The chawix, its position secured by the thorns thrust deep into the animal's flesh, began to feed on the dead membibi. The onlookers safe beneath the overhang on the other side of the gully could see the pallid penetrating thorns darken as they sucked up the liquefied flesh of their victim.
'So the chawix is a carnivorous plant that uses the winds of Ansion to get around.' Having carefully retreated to the back of the overhang, Obi-Wan kept his attention focused on the gully.
'I don't think a good pair of wind goggles would be much protection.'
'The membibi certainly died quickly enough,' Luminara pointed out.
Close to her, Bulgan grunted. 'The feeding thorns hold within them a strong nerve poison. Membibi or person, it makes no difference to the chawix. Or to the poison.'
'First the kyren, now the chawix. Both examples of mass subsistence that rely on steady, constant wind to help them feed.' She shook her head. 'I can see why on the plains of An-sion, a calm day would be a cause for celebration among the Alwari.'
'We would be safer in the cities and towns,' Kyakhta admit ted. 'But we would not be as free. And we would not be Alwari.'
