"Hoth?" Luke's bright blue eyes widened as he glanced about.
The crystalline wall wasn’t glass, but ice!
He must have been blind to have missed it.
Still, ice on Tatooine didn't seem as far-fetched
as.... "Another planet?"
She nodded, pausing to extract
something from the heart of the fire. Immediately
the flames hissed and died. In her
silver hand a crystal, amber and multi-faceted, glimmered and pulsed as though
alive. She pocketed it quickly with
the words, "We will have need of this later," and only then did he
notice the curious device which hung suspended from her braided belt.
It looked like a sword without a blade.
"What is that?" he asked
pointing to it.
She glanced down and then answered,
deliberately misunderstanding him, "A way to bring heat where there is
none. Now, finish dressing.
We must go."
Luke spread his hands wide and shook
his aching head. "Whoa, now.
Wait a minute. I'm grateful you rescued me, but who said I was going
anywhere with you? Just point me in
the direction of the nearest settlement and I'll find my own-"
She pivoted sharply and fixed him with
her dark stare. "Even if that
was permitted, you would not make it one mile.
It would be suicide." She
gestured wide, encompassing the great ribboned wall and the dark tunnels beyond.
"Beyond these walls there is nothing but ice and wind.
The temperatures are extreme even for my kind.
Your puny pink flesh would freeze before you knew it.
If not for the gift of the Protector, you would be frozen even now."
Her tone brooked no dissension, but that meant little to Luke.
He was used to arguing with his uncle, as mule-headed a task-master as
you could find.
"What Protector?
Lady, you must think I'd make a deal with the Jawas without first
inspecting the merchandise." He
hastily fitted grey boots to his feet and threw a light-weight jacket over his
sleeveless shirt. "Even if
there is snow and ice out there -if-
I can take care of my - "
The
dark woman sighed and reached toward her belt.
Her finely tapered fingers clutched the strange device at her side and
found a recessed jewel near the top of the handle. She closed her eyes and muttered a few indecipherable words
before concluding with, "I see you must be shown...."
Luke waited, not knowing what to
expect. At first it seemed as
though nothing had happened, but then he noticed his skin was no longer
glistening, but was instead a dull greyish-blue the color of gun-metal. Seconds later he was seized by a bone-numbing cold that
penetrated his body and gripped his heart, all but stopping it.
Overcome, he collapsed to the floor with a whimper,
"Pl-please...."
Moments later, a welcome tingling told
him The Protector - whatever it was -
had been reactivated. He found his
knees and lifted his head and regarded the silvery woman with a new respect
tinged with fear. Her stern gaze
bid him remember the power she held over him.
From where he rested on the floor, he asked uncertainly, "What do
you want of me?"
She fingered the handgrip of the sword
at her hip and answered matter-of-factly, "Only that which is my due.
I must return to the settlement that until of late, I have called home.
Someone is killing my people. I
seek information which will help me free them from this curse.
You will help me do this." She
paused when she saw his startled look and then added soberly, "I have foreseen it."
Luke swallowed and then replied,
tentatively, "And what if I refuse? Assuming,
of course, that you won't simply turn off your ‘Protector’ and let me freeze like a piece of meat."
He paused, aware that was quite an assumption.
"What if I choose not to help you?"
She stepped closer to him and the
sight, the scent, the very presence of her was intoxicating. "You have no choice, little one," she whispered
seductively, "you are mine."
Blue eyes narrowed. "Yours?" he repeated incredulous, "and what
does that
mean?"
She inched forward to press her
wine-drenched lips against his. He
was startled by the way her being seemed to invade him, consuming his will.
As her touch lingered, he felt his body temperature rise until sweat
broke out on his exposed skin. Breaking
away abruptly, she laughed. "It
means 'you are mine'. When I
chose to save you, you became bonded to me.
While you lay dying, our souls passed through the Eye together. Moreover,
you have taken my food and partaken of it.
I am now responsible for you until such a time as you perform a like
service." She stepped away
from him and placed her finely chiseled hands on lusciously curved hips.
"We are one."
"Wait a minute," he
stammered, “L-last night? What do
you mean? I ate your food, but last
night?" As she continued to
stare at him, he suddenly recalled the feel of her flesh against his, her lips
on his neck, "I never~"
Narrow black brows arched.
She smiled and her teeth were like polished black pearls.
“Didn’t you?”
A question at last.
###
Several hours later Luke found himself
in an unlikely position, bundled in furs and nestled protectively between the
giant snow-white forequarters of a strange creature known as a Tauntaun and the
enigmatic woman's muscular arms. Her
warm breath blew evenly across his cheek and he could feel her heart beat as he
was thrown against her. The animal
itself was vaguely familiar from his vision, but that one had been grey and not
nearly as aesthetically pleasing as this snowy beast she commanded.
Capable and sturdy, it bore the two of them without complaint or incident
over the remote and forbidding landscape, past frozen canopies of ice and snow
that concealed death-trap crevasses and fragile ice shelves.
Periodically she would sing to it softly, running dark fingers through
its coarse fur as if questioning its choice or offering an alternative route.
Each time it would bleat in reply and hasten forward, as though pleasing
her mattered as much - if not more than life itself.
As the light dimmed and cold wind began to howl like a maddened creature
through the narrow valley they traversed, she elected to seek shelter in one of
the many ice caves whittled into the crystallized tide.
Explaining the beast could not survive the brutal cold of the Hothan
nights, she drew it in after them and bedded it down near the door. In answer to Luke's query, she told him the planet's surface
temperature never rose above freezing and often - on night's such as this
- would plummet nearly one hundred
degrees below zero, instantly petrifying anything that dared contest its
absolute sovereignty.
Luke leaned against one of the cave's
glossy walls and hugged the comforting animal skins about his narrow shoulders.
He was comfortable - thanks to the presence of the mysterious Protector
and his captor's continued beneficence - but uneasy.
Earlier in the day the woman had given him a device similar to the one
she wore at her hip. She said it
had been his. Roughly twenty-four
to thirty centimeters in length, it was made of metal and felt strangely
familiar in his hand. Several
unmarked switches dotted its side and a mirrorlike concave metal disk graced one
end. When activated, invisible
power cells emitted a cold beam of blue-white light that was nearly blinding.
He had almost dropped it when first it had sprung to life with the raging
sibilation of a hive of enraged insects. It
terrified and enthralled him.
He had tried to throw it away, but the woman had forbidden it.
Glancing at her now where she sat deep in meditation near a small fire
conjured from her pocketed crystal, he sighed.
He didn't know if he was a prisoner or a pet....
He only knew he no longer had any desire to leave her.
Like the pulsating blade, she was both compelling and frightening at one
and the same time.
As though sensing his thoughts, she
rose and stretched, her supple flesh undulating in the firelight.
She crossed to where he rested and then knelt to fix him with her intense
eyes. Unexpectedly she said,
"You have not asked my name."
"I...." He hesitated, uncertain.
Somehow it had seemed...inappropriate?
"Nor you mine," he countered quickly.
"And yet I know it. You have
heard me use it," she answered softly, "as you already know mine."
He began to protest, puzzled, but fell
silent as a sound, harsh and yet as lovely as the world that had begat her,
tickled the edge of his tongue. He
grinned and then volunteered, "Khr'shaia?"
Fire lit her eyes. "Yes. I
thought so." She leaned
forward and planted a possessive kiss on his forehead, "Now you should
sleep."
He blinked and protested, "But I
just... You...."
And yet, even as he spoke, his eyelids were already beginning to close.
"I don't-"
"Hush.
It is time," she insisted, laying a cool hand upon the lingering
kiss, "sleep. Remember who you
are."
"But I'm not....."
Dark blond bangs fell, veiling his eyes, "No...I won't....
I don't..."
###
He dreamed.
A dark shape towered above him
breathing menace, the scarlet slash of light it wielded screaming like an open
wound against a field of sterile grey. Stunned,
Luke raised a hand to ward off the blow and watched helplessly as it flew off
into the darkness, diminishing until it disappeared into the depths of Cloud
City's central core. Tears stung
his battered cheeks as he heard his own agonized cry.
Still the ominous figure advanced, compelling him to retreat to an
insecure purchase scarcely wide enough for a child.
Words.
There were words. Words so
vile they wounded his very soul. And
lies. Lies he could not
-
or
would not
-
recall. He remembered the suicidal
plunge. Remembered hanging
upside-down believing he would die. And
once again he felt the seductive call of the dark side.
The memory in his bones of another's life, another man's choices....
If he was not very careful - or
extremely fortunate - the face behind the black visor would be his own.
He awoke with a start to find Khr'shaia watching him, her obsidian eyes
narrowed and her dark lips pursed. She
searched his fevered eyes and then blew out a slow breath.
"You are
the one."
###
They traveled all of the next day and
well into the night. There was no
moon, nor was one necessary. An
electrical storm the likes of which Luke had never seen filled the upper
atmosphere, illuminating the black night as though as second sun had mounted
high above the frozen wastes. Like
a ghostly veil it blanketed the sky with color, emerald-green near the darkly
silhouetted hills, blood-red above where the stars danced.
The snow at their feet glowed a ghostly amber where the two met and
mixed, lighting the path they traveled. Khr'shaia
called it the Ihr’el
or the Breath of the Inspirer. She
held her hand up and when he stilled his own harsh breathing, he could hear the
air crackle and hiss like drops of water on glowing embers.
Once again the Tauntaun carried them
through a fantastic landscape peopled by tiny icebergs which had melted and
frozen into shapes graceful as glass sculptures.
The wind was ferocious. It
whistled past the glacial figures, keening as though for the lost.
Just short of a rise, the silvery woman
reigned in the beast. It
panted and shifted its webbed feet as though uneasy.
Luke understood its restiveness. He
could feel it too. Beyond the
ghostly white dune that rose before them, blocking their view, something waited.
Something
powerful.
Luke gasped and turned to face the
dark-skinned beauty who rode silently behind him.
He spoke softly, as though he feared to break the silence, “What is it?
What’s down there?”
The amber curtain in the sky painted
her silver-grey skin a sickly green. She
swallowed hard and answered, “My home. Ihr
Kahrn’t. The dwelling place of
the Eye of the Inspirer.”