CHAPTER SEVEN: THE TEMPLE
ASAJJ
Asajj stepped down off of the shuttle's landing ramp and onto the sandy canyon floor. The Tuskens were waiting for her, a score of them with a pair of their huge horned banthas. The creatures lowed in agitation and the larger of the two swung its great head, matted hair sweeping the sand, but its rider stroked its thick neck and murmured a command. The beast fell still, its black eyes fixed on Asajj. She smiled thinly as the sun beat down on her pale skin. The Tuskens were easily understood, a people she could identify with. Blood, honor, death and family.
A Tusken Raider stepped forward. He walked with the stately dignity of a hunter. His shoulders were broad and he was taller than any of his tribesmen. A long brown braid hung over his shoulder. His robes were sewn with the teeth of womp rats, the bandages that covered his neck and head interwoven with the feathers of one of Tatooine's rare avians. His gloved hands rose in greeting, empty of weapons. "Asajj," he said, his expression unreadable behind his mask and goggles, his mind unreadable behind defenses any Jedi would have envied. "Suns smile on you."
"You have the woman," said Asajj to the man who had been a Jedi.
"A-hey," said the chieftain. He turned his face briefly toward one of the banthas. A long, heavy brown roll of burlap hung from its high-cantled saddle. A funeral shroud for the mother of Skywalker. The chieftain's men muttered darkly to one another in their harsh, hard language. The bantha carrying Shmi Skywalker lowed again, sadly this time.
Ventress felt a thrill in the pit of her stomach. Skywalker would come. He would come flying down from the void with murder in his heart, and perhaps the interesting Master Kenobi would follow. "We'll move to the caves," she said quietly. "As we discussed, A'sharad." She bowed low.
A'sharad did likewise. "As we discussed, Asajj," he said.
More joined them on the long trek to the Cliffs of Silent Stone Falling Downward. A hundred Tuskens and their banthas, all moving through the sand in staggered single-file. More arrived in silence. Asajj rode sidesaddle behind A'sharad on his bantha. The Cliffs loomed ahead, tall and red and stark in the light of the setting sun. Two hundred kilometers from Mos Eisley, ninety from Mos Espa. The caves had never been found by a non-Tusken. It was there that they buried their dead, there that they laid the bodies of the sick, the wounded, the senile naked beneath the blazing suns and let the eaters of carrion take their taxes in flesh. It was there, in the dark, that the Tuskens died.
"It's beautiful," said Asajj to A'sharad.
He held up a hand for silence. Asajj pulled up her hood and said nothing.
They reached the Cliffs of Silent Stone Falling Downward as night fell. There was a camp in the rock formations at the base of the great stone scarp, a place for the stabling of the banthas. They left the beasts, pausing only to untie the unconscious Shmi, and continued on foot into the rugged foothills, led by A'sharad. Asajj followed. For hours they climbed, sometimes up sheer drops with only cracks and crevices to cling to. Stubborn gorse and dead vines clung to the cliff face. In some places narrow stairs had been carved from the sand-blasted rock, leading always up and up. Asajj followed A'sharad as he climbed. He was a natural, springing lightly from one handhold to the next without pause for consideration.
In the dark, they came upon a cave mouth. A'sharad reached it first and his people waited below on a narrow ledge as their chieftain went down on his knees to the shadows and the dust. Asajj stood at his shoulder, arms folded. She felt something from the man, a strong surge of emotion quickly stemmed and stifled. A name, shouted to the dark in anguish. Father!
A'sharad rose, his mind silent once again. He looked at Asajj, masked and silent, and then turned and strode into the shadows. She went with him, the sounds of the other Tuskens climbing the ladder to the cave echoing quietly from the walls around her. With them was Shmi Skywalker, carried between two raiders on a travois.
Six hundred paces, and the cave ended in a sort of clearing. Cold, flat moonlight shone down through a well in the stone on a circle of hide tents. A bonfire blazed in the center of the circle and nine Tuskens bent by age and war sat cross-legged around it. A'sharad moved past the tents and into the light. He cleared his throat. The nine Tusken elders turned to him, then stood. Their robes were longer and finer than those of the people now clustered behind Asajj at the mouth of the cave. They wore necklaces made with the teeth of Krayt Dragons. "A'sharad," said one of them.
Another growled and snarled something in the impenetrable Tusken tongue. A'sharad replied in kind, spreading his hands wide.
The first Tusken barked something else, then gestured to the shadows at the cave mouth. Asajj turned and saw the two raiders carrying Shmi move forward. They laid the woman at the edge of the fire, then bowed low and withdrew. The elders stared in silence at the woman, faces unreadable behind their masks. Asajj could feel their fear and confusion. One elder put a hand to his face and turned away, overcome. Another merely nodded.
Consent.
Raiders came forward to join the elders at their fire. Others took Shmi away to the largest of the tents, where the prisoners of the wars between the tribes were kept. Asajj watched the older woman's face, lined and careworn. The tent flap closed behind Shmi Skywalker and her captors. At the fire, one of the elders had begun to tell a story. The tribe listened with rapt attention.
"Come," said A'sharad, laying a hand on Asajj's shoulder. "We will speak."
They went to the chieftain's tent, a structure of hide and sand-scoured wood no different from any of the others in the circle. Inside it was hot and close, bare but for a half-filled bookshelf of dark wood and a simple sleeping pallet. Asajj pushed back her hood and threw her cloak aside as A'sharad unwound the bandages that kept his mask and goggles pressed against his face. The red lines of both were visible on his pale, chapped skin. He had a strong face, lined and bitter. His eyes were a deep, dark black. A man, not a Tusken.
"Skywalker will come here," said A'sharad, working with gloved fingers at the buckles of his overtunic and heavy robes.
"A sort of test, I think," said Asajj. She reached behind her back and undid the fastenings of her long, heavy skirts. They pooled around her feet. "Lord Sidious and my master mean to see him tried before he joins them."
"You will see that he kills none of my people," said A'sharad. His torso was lean and muscular beneath his robes. He bent down to unlace his soft leather boots, and then he kicked them away. Straightening, he crossed the tent and gripped the front of Asajj's singlesuit in one hand. "Swear it."
"Make me," hissed Asajj, pushing her face close to A'sharad's.
He kissed her, hard. His lips were dry, his jaw unshaven. He tasted of sandalwood and sweat.
Asajj flattened herself against the older man, her hips moving in a slow rhythm. He tore her singlesuit down the front and his right hand moved to cup her left breast as his left hand slipped down her back to the curve of her buttocks. She stepped out of her smallclothes and pushed back against A'sharad's mouth, forcing him toward the pallet. They fell down together onto the hard bed. Asajj undid A'sharad's breaches and took him into her. He thrust, grunting, and she laughed high and loud and clear. Faces danced before her eyes as A'sharad's teeth grazed her neck, her lips, her shoulder. Dooku, grave and powerful. Grievous, wrath dripping from his every flat, mechanical word. Maul, scarred and tattooed.
Kenobi, quiet and authoritative.
"Yes," she snarled, arching her back as A'sharad moved in her, faster and faster. The chieftain's dark eyes bored into hers as they fucked in the dark, in the shadows and dust.
OBI-WAN
Obi-Wan sat for the first time in one of the high-backed seats in the Jedi Council's innermost sanctum. The other councilors sat around him, present either in the flesh or via hologram. Yoda, Mace, Ki-Adi transmitting from orbit above Rodia, Shaak Ti from the Chancellor Palpatine Surgical and Medical Center in Coruscant's Menari District. Of the others, only Master Plo Koon and Master Eeth Koth were physically present. It was a council of ghosts, blue and shimmering.
"Hmm," said Yoda, scratching at his chin with pointed nails. "Dark news, this is."
"An inquiry must be made on Kamino," said Plo Koon. "That we missed something so far-reaching...it shames me, Obi-Wan."
"Please, Master Plo," said Obi-Wan, "set your guilt aside. You are the finest head of judicial affairs this council has seen in a hundred years. The Kaminoans were deeply compromised by internal intrigue before the Republic ever contracted their services."
"That the clones themselves could be a liability to the Republic," said Shaak Ti, shaking her head sadly. "Unthinkable."
"More and more this war becomes a thing in shadow," said Oppo Rancisis, gesturing with a long-fingered hand. "The hands of the Sith are everywhere, my friends. We must move with caution."
"The matter of Count Dooku's information still stands," said Mace, his hard voice cutting through the low murmur of speeder traffic in the skylanes outside the council chamber's windows. "We can't afford to pass up a chance to strike at Confederate leadership."
"What we cannot afford is another Naboo," said Master Rancisis, shaking his head sadly. "Gunray may be dead, but his lies are not. Theed still burns every day on the morning news. This war has damaged our credit with the public and the Senate. I fear it may be irreparable."
"Impossible to undo, nothing is," said Yoda. His nails scratched the crown of his wrinkled and balding head. "Shadows, you fear, Master Rancisis. To keen to the ways of war, your mind is. Forget not that a Jedi Dooku once was. His Padawan, he mourns."
Rancisis acquiesced with a graceful nod, hands spread.
"It is a trap," said Obi-Wan. "The planet's fortifications are...formidable. If we consider invasion, we must be prepared for a long and difficult engagement."
"Mmm," said Yoda, shaking his head sadly. "Clouded, the future around this matter is. Obscured are Dooku's motives." The ancient Master rubbed his wrinkled forehead.
"I do not believe we can pass by this opportunity," said Master Windu, steepling his fingers beneath his chin. His dark eyes, creased at the corners with age, were troubled. "Too many of us have been claimed by this war, Master Kenobi, Master Rancisis.
"We have a duty to the Galaxy, and to the Force."
"Much suffering the Clone War has caused," said Master Yoda. He stepped down from his worn council chair and limped to one of the sweeping windows, his coarse brown robes sweeping the polished floor. "Correct you are, Master Windu," he said heavily. "Prepare, we must."
Obi-Wan stood as the rest of the Council left their seats, talking quietly amongst themselves. He stared for a moment at Master Yoda, small and old and bent. The most learned and powerful Jedi in the Galaxy. The war, Obi-Wan knew, was killing him. As it was killing the Order, drowning it in a Galaxy's worth of pain and suffering. Yoda felt it more deeply than any of them, bore the wounds of the Republic on his tiny frame and led the Order in a war it had never been meant to fight.
"Master Kenobi," said Yoda, not turning. "Come. Talk, we will."
Obi-Wan crossed the council chamber as the other councilors, excepting Mace, made their exits. He halted beside Yoda and joined the old Master in staring out at the twilight skyline. "I sense grave danger should the Order go to Hypori, Master," he said quietly.
"Sense it as well, I do," said Yoda, passing a hand over his wrinkled face. He faltered, his claws tightening on his cane. His hand went to his chest. His old lips moved, mouthing words.
Obi-Wan felt it a moment later, an explosion of rage so white-hot and virulent that it made his stomach turn to water and his knees buckle. He saw Anakin standing in an empty room, saw the wrath and anguish in his Padawan's eyes. He saw death come slashing and crackling out of nowhere as Anakin exploded into vicious motion. "No!" he cried, and it seemed another voice cried out with him. A familiar voice. Obi-Wan staggered, pressing a hand to his temple. "Anakin."
"Grave danger, young Skywalker is in," said Yoda. He looked down at the Coruscant skyline. His expression was pained, his skin greyish with strain. "Face it alone, he will."
"I'll signal the ninth rimward fleet," said Obi-Wan. His thoughts were spinning madly around the focal point of Anakin's helpless rage. "They can move to support him, wherever he-"
And then the hate, the fury, the rage and the hurt all went suddenly cold.
"May the Force be with us," said Yoda quietly.
Obi-Wan sagged into his seat. The world seemed to tilt and crash around him. "Anakin," he said quietly.
COUNT DOOKU
Count Dooku paced the long, bare gallery corridor leading from his apartments to the High Council Hall at the heart of Confederate Tower. Outside, the sun was setting over Hypori. Dooku paced, reflecting. At thirteen he had been made Padawan. A Knighthood before the age of twenty-five. Full Master at thirty-seven. Qui-Gon, brave and wise and better than all the ivory-tower Jedi on their high seats of justice. A seat on the Council, until he had seen the corruption of the Senate creeping beneath the doors of that august chamber. Count of Serenno, twentieth to leave the Order.
Palpatine.
Kneel, my friend. Wrinkled hands gripped the sides of his face, raised his eyes to Palpatine's harsh yellow ones. Do you know the ways of the Dark Side?
Yes, Lord Sidious.
A smile, cold and reptilian. Take the Sith within yourself, to the deepest reaches of your heart and mind. Cast aside the unnatural limitations of the Jedi Order, doomed by its arrogance to fall, and at last...Lord Tyranus...know your true self in the way of the Sith.
Yoda's anguished expression as Dooku left the Council Chamber for the last time. The ancient Master hobbling after him, frail and desperate. My Padawan. Why?
There is nothing for me here.
The flames of Qui-Gon's funeral pyre. My son.
"Damn," snapped Dooku. He halted by the window, hands resting on the sill. "Damn and blast." His hands became fists. He turned his back on the sunset and strode down the hall, toward his private entrance to the High Council Hall.
He could not trust Kenobi to bring the Council down upon Maul. That much was clear, for Obi-Wan had failed to learn his Master's boldness. There was nothing of Qui-Gon in him. No, if the Jedi failed to make their appearance at the Grand Ball then there was only one real alternative. Killing Maul himself. Lord Sidious cares nothing for him. He is an animal, and his uses are behind him.
Dooku strode into the High Council Hall to the thunderous applause of thousands of representatives and the retinues of the Leadership Council. Neimoidians, Gossam, Aqualish, Koorivar, Skakoans, Muun and swarms of Geonosians. Hardly a human to be seen. Masking his revulsion, Dooku moved with stately vigor to the raised podium at the center of the hall. Huge holo-screens threw his smiling face up on the walls of the vast, soaring chamber and throughout the city. Circling droids broadcast it to relay stations in the city, and from there throughout the Galactic Core and the Holonet. He gripped the edges of the podium as the applause died down.
"My dear friends," said the Count, "today we stand on the brink of Galactic history. Today, in this chamber, we are poised to usher in a new era of civilization!
"Where the diseased heart of the Republic now beats, ruled by a corrupt and invalid aristocracy, we will place a new organ! A government of industry, of progress, of merit and initiative! We will sweep away the millennial dross that has choked the life out of this great Galaxy, and we will make Coruscant a beacon of hope and authority, not a breeding ground for nepotism and corruption!"
How they applauded him. How their vile knuckles clicked and snapped. How they hooted, screamed, alien mouths contorting and twisting. The Count raised his arms to accept their adulation, a beneficent smile masking his urge to vomit. He spoke for the better part of three hours, railing against Palpatine, against the Jedi, against the failing edifice of the Republic. He paced his dais, gesturing and declaiming, flinging his conviction out into the air with every shouted word. The Force gathered around him and he drank of it, infusing it into his voice and person until there was no separation. And when his speech reached its end, he had them. There was no sense of triumph, no victory march blared as the holo-droids panned around the Confederate Head of State. He was a picture of nobility, distinguished and composed at the podium in his black suit and red-lined cape. His eyes pierced out through the recording lenses, striking pride and fear into the hearts of billions of beings.
"Tomorrow night," said the Count, "we will inaugurate the beginning of the end of this war. As we speak General Grievous stands poised to bring the ax of Confederate might down on the neck of the Republic. Tomorrow night, my friends, we will celebrate the beginning of the Confederacy.
"And the end of Coruscant's rule."
The applause was wild, and it went on, and on, and on.
Dooku strode away from the podium, flipping his cape back over one shoulder with desultory ease. Soon, everything would be in place.
ANAKIN
Anakin Skywalker flew down the hillside steps to Varykino's recessed hangar. His robes whipped around him in a high wind. His mother was dying. He ran faster than he had ever run before, mindless and terrified. He could see her in his mind's eye, could feel her arms around him. She stood in their apartment on Tatooine, sweeping clean the dusty floor of their dining room. She sat in a dress of fine silks on a window seat beside a young man, prematurely silver-haired, and sipped from a glass of clear water. She was young and old, beautiful and careworn, loving and confused and frightened.
They had lived in a house in the dark.
They had lived on Tatooine; Watto's slaves.
The mouth of the hangar loomed before him and Anakin flew through it, bounding over a maintenance station with ease to land softly on the polished deck. Padmé was there, stepping out of a concealed lift tunnel just behind the long, sleek K-type Nubian yacht perched delicately on its spidery landing legs. She wore a long black dress and a headpiece hung with strings of tiny gems. A shawl draped her shoulders. Anakin skidded to a halt beside the yacht's landing ramp, his heart pounding in his chest. He could feel the Galaxy burning around him. He could smell the smoke.
"Anakin," said Padmé. She was walking toward him, beautiful and graceful and breakable. How could she delay him now, when he needed most to go, to flee, to run back to his mother's arms? Her hand touched his, light and cool.
"You can tell me. What's wrong?"
Statement before question. Establish trust. Politicians. A moment of white-hot rage swallowed Anakin, burning through his chest and reducing his skin to ashes. "The Sith have her," he said, and his voice was flat and dead in his own ears. He pulled his hand away from Padmé's, turning toward the ship. "They have my mother, on Tatooine."
In the house in the swamp, a man stands at the window beside a tall Muun. They wear fine robes and they are talking about my mother. Arguing.
The man turns away from the window and smiles faintly. He is familiar.
"You're certain?" asked Padmé. Her fingers were clenched in the folds of her cloak.
Anakin could smell her fear, sweet like perfumed wine as it beaded on her skin. "Give me the launch codes," he said, not turning. "Now."
Power rang through his voice. He held it close to fire within him, clinging to its slick coils as it bit and savaged his feverish skin. Power to crack bones, to rip up earth and rend minds to dust.
Padmé stared at him for a long moment, and then something sad and fragile flickered in her eyes and she moved past him. Her long, slim fingers tapped out the code on the keypad beside the landing ramp. The ship's hydraulic airlock doors slid open with a hiss of equalizing pressure. Anakin swept up the ramp and into the yacht's silent silver interior, heading for the cockpit. Padmé followed him and he did nothing to stop her. His hands found the control panel and he primed the yacht's powerful engines, ignoring the preflight routine. The hangar echoed with the roar of ion ignition as smoke blasted out of the Nubian's vents. The ship left its berth with a scream of metal on duracrete as its landing legs failed to collapse in time. Anakin ignored the instantaneous hails from planetary control and Theed's air towers. Padmé buckled herself with practiced speed into the co-pilot's chair, fingers flying over the instrument panel to clear their launch.
An hour to clear the atmosphere. Anakin could barely hear the crash and thunder of his own thoughts. His heart smashed against his breast, battering itself apart. He saw sand, the Tuskens in their long, coarse robes. A pale woman standing on a cliff, hands behind her back. An hour to clear the atmosphere. Anakin gripped the control yoke so tightly that his knuckles went white. He flung the yacht up through Naboo's stratosphere and into the void. Padmé said something quiet and the subdued beep and whistle of an R2 astromech droid answered. Anakin glanced to his right and saw the droid beside Padmé's seat, resting on its three treads as it entered hyperspace coordinates into the navicomputer with a programming probe.
The ship flashed to lightspeed, stars blurring around it. Anakin swept out of his seat and began to pace the spacious bridge, unable to stand still. He was betraying his Master and the Order, ignoring his mission and Padmé's-the Senator's-safety. And he didn't care.
"Anakin."
He stopped, half-turning. His hands shook on the steering yoke. Padmé was looking at him with fear and tenderness and a deep, cold hurt in her eyes. "I can't leave her," he heard himself say.
"I know you can't," said Padmé, rising from her seat. She put a hand on his shoulder. His fingers found hers and he clung to her, desperate to shelter for a minute or a day in the circle of her arms. To let himself go and be hers like a kite was the wind's.
"It's alright," she said, her lips close enough to brush his ear. "It's alright, Anakin." She embraced him from behind and Anakin's hand slid from her arm. He sagged, a sob ripping free of his chest. Anger boiled away into helpless grief and anguish. Padmé held him close against her body.
"I know you want this," said Anakin, tears drying on his cheeks as he slipped from the seat and turned to kneel before her, leaning his head against her belly. "I know you wanted him."
Padmé took his head in her hands and raised his face to look at her. Her thumb slipped in between his lips, moving softly in and out, and a kind of floating calm came over him as they plunged through darkness and infinity. All his control, he thought as she seized his hair and dragged him up to kiss her, as her nails dug red crescents in his back, all his discipline and meditation.
How much easier it was to just let go.
ASAJJ
A'sharad rose from his bed when they had finished. He dressed himself, braided his hair and wrapped his face, hiding every inch of skin. His face vanished behind the mask of the Tusken chieftain he had become in exile. "Kill him, when he comes," he said. "I do not wish complications."
Asajj laughed and rolled onto her side, naked on the coarse sheets. "Don't worry, Hett," she murmured softly. "I'll kill him."
A'sharad left the village, and took his people with him.
ANAKIN
They landed in the desert's heart, at the base of a sheer sandstone cliff. Anakin triggered the landing ramp and walked down it without looking back, though he knew Padmé was watching him from the ship. He could feel it. He could feel everything. The stair in the cliffside was easy to find. He ignored it, launching himself thirty feet up the rock face and seizing the bare stone in his hands. He climbed, hauling himself hand over hand toward his mother's anguished presence in the Force.
The Force. It pounded madly all around him, so much more real than it had ever been. This was the solution, then. Not to shut everything away behind a wall of iron discipline but to give it free rein. To feed it until it burst its chains and ran wild.
Anakin climbed until he came to a cleft in the rock, and then he took his lightsaber from his belt and pulled up the hood of his cloak, and went on into the darkness. The Tusken camp was like any of a hundred he'd seen from a distance, Bantha-hide tents stretched over bone frames, all set around a burned-out cookfire. Walls of weathered red stone rose over all of it, but the sky was open. Blue, washed-out and endless. Anakin staggered into the circle of tents, letting his senses drag him onward, onward to the largest pavilion. He stalked through the gaping entryway and saw her hanging there, tied to a wooden frame by her wrists. Her skin was chapped, her lips cracked and bloody. What they had done to her, he could not say.
Totems hung from the ceiling. The grinning skulls of animals. Feathers and dried gourds.
The power went out of him, yanked away in a single vicious moment. He was drained, useless, a burned-out torch. He crossed the room in three long strides and slashed her bonds with a sweep of his saber. She crumpled and he caught her, holding her close. Her heartbeat stuttered weakly in her chest. Her eyes fluttered open and the faintest of smiles creased her lips. "Anni," she wheezed. Blood leaked from the corner of her mouth in a sluggish trickle. "Look at you."
"It's alright, mom," he said. The words fell from his mouth and broke on the tent's dirt floor. "It's alright. You're going to be fine."
"I knew," she said. Her hand rose to brush her son's cheek. Her fingers trembled. "I knew...you'd come back."
He closed his eyes, shutting her ravaged face away. "Mom, please..."
"I...l-l..."
And she was still.
Anakin stood, letting his mother's corpse slump to the floor of the tent. What was she now? Just so much meat. His hands shook. He stared down at her, at the little scars on her calloused hands, at the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, at the sunken, papery skin stretched over her skull.
And then he turned and stalked out of the tent into the dying light of Tatooine's suns, into the shadows of the cliff walls. There was a woman standing by the fire pit, tall and pallid, her skull hairless and traced with delicate blue veins. Her eyes were colorless, her bloodless lips curved into a predatory smile. She wore two lightsabers, hilts curved in the old style, at her belt. "Skywalker," she murmured, tasting the word.
Anakin flung himself across the circle in a rushing leap. His lightsaber snarled to life in his hand, bathing the rock faces with blue-white radiance. The woman met his eyes, and then she sidestepped with unnatural speed and ignited her own weapons with a double flick of her slender white wrists. Burning bars of crimson snapped to life as Anakin landed, staggering, and slashed at the air where she'd been a moment before. His cloak swirled around him as he blocked her overhand blow, lunged out in a vicious riposte and ducked under a scissoring strike. The Force burned in him, coiling like a lover in his chest, spreading in a warm current through his veins and into his brain. Where a fire raged, consuming thought and reason.
The woman spun, skirts flying, and then came on in a wild flurry of blows. Light flashed across her angular face, first blue then red as their sabers crossed and parted, clashed and broke apart. Sparks exploded around them as they moved in a rough and brutal dance around the circle. Anakin hammered at the woman's defenses, beating her down with his greater strength. His arms were iron, his chest a roaring furnace. He beat her back. He broke her forms. He screamed with wordless rage, spittle spraying from his lips as he spun and slashed and drank of the Force until it leaked from his pores and spread across the sandy ground beneath his feet. The woman laughed and danced away from him, her small feet sliding over the sand. Her lightsabers flicked and darted, slashing Anakin's cloak and blistering his skin. He followed, lurching through a twisted repetition of the Ataru Obi-Wan had drilled into his stance.
And the woman turned and fled, laughing as she ran like oil toward the darkness of a crevasse in the rock. Her lightsabers winked out, and she was gone. Into the darkness. Anakin followed, racing into the cleft in the stone. On and on, over piles of fallen rock and past odd carvings and the scrimshawed skulls of dead banthas hanging like sentinels from the crevasse walls. Blue light washed the bones of Tatooine as Anakin raced onward, down and down. Following the woman's harsh and loveless laughter. He came at last to a temple carved into the earth, its face looming over him at the far side of an expansive well. Somewhere, water dripped.
The temple was old, its columns broken and sagging, the statues to either side of its yawning entrance weathered by time into featureless forms. Tuskens, perhaps. Anakin strode onward, his breath rasping in his throat. He passed through the door and into the shadows, eyes searching within the dim sphere of his saber's illumination. His senses raced, probing for any trace of the woman. The Force thundered in his ears like a raging waterfall.
Somewhere, water dripped.
She attacked from behind, dropping down from the ceiling and drawing deeply on the Force to throw herself feet-first at Anakin's back. He flew, winded, and hit sand-covered stone. He rolled over the floor, through an entryway and onto the lip of a decaying gallery. Water dripped. The woman came toward him, hips swaying, sabers sparking as they brushed the ground. "Skywalker," she said, rolling the word on her pointed tongue. Her chest heaved with exertion. Her pale skin was slick with sweat.
Anakin lurched to his feet. The woman struck, sliding forward and thrusting with both glowing blades. He parried, reeling, and felt his foot slip over the gallery's lip. Silence. The scuff of cloth-wrapped boots over silt-strewn stone. The woman leaning toward him, thin lips peeling back from white, even teeth in a mad grin. Falling, he slashed at her face, twisting with the force of the blow as though he were a dancer. She fell into a crouch, letting blue plasma bathed her face in harsh light as the blade whipped over her head. Her own saber lanced out in a neat stop-thrust, severing Anakin's left arm just below the elbow. He grunted in surprise, numbness spreading through him as he slipped off of the gallery and into open air.
And he fell.
