Disclaimer: George Lucas owns Star Wars. This story is entirely a work of fan fiction, from which I am not making any profit.

Author's note: This chapter is dedicated to the people who left reviews last time: pronker, What-Ansketil-Did-Next, and Estora. Your lovely comments gave me so much encouragement!

CHAPTER TWO

It took Anakin the better part of an hour to admit he'd screwed up with Ryn, nearly two to go look for her to try again, and a full three hours before he began to worry about what he'd do if she wouldn't talk to him.

He finally tracked her down in the stables, where she is discussing the disposition of cavalry with an older man Anakin recognized as one of Aharu's warriors.

"Ryn," he said, and she turned to face him, her face too carefully blank.

"Yes?" she said, perfectly measured, but Anakin couldn't breathe because there was a stranger in her eyes.

He took a step backwards. "I - I wanted to talk to you."

"Here I am."

But it's not you, he wanted to say, but that would sound ridiculous. Her green eyes were cold and somehow remote, yet stared right through him. It was unnerving. Anakin wet his lips. "Can we ... go outside?"

"Certainly." Ryn made her excuses to the warrior and led the way out into the sunlight.

In the bright spring air she turned to face him. "Well? What did you want?"

"I just ... I came to ..." This was all wrong. Ryn was supposed to be hurt and sad, and he was supposed to apologize profusely, and then they would make it better by promising never to doubt each other again. "Would you really have killed me?" he blurted instead.

Ryn sighed, hands braced around her slender hips. "That's what you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Just answer the question!"

Ryn lowered her head in resignation, glancing away from him across the rolling plains. "I loved you more than anything in my life." Anakin didn't miss the past tense. "I'd die in your place, if it would do any good. But for the safety of Loreth, and maybe the galaxy ... yes, Anakin, I would kill you." She turned and met his eyes. "Was there anything else?"

There were too many things, but he couldn't find words for any of them, so in the end he shook his head silently and watched her walk away.

[]

About an hour after she overhauled the dun's forces, Ryn found Aharu's advisor hidden in her little cell, outside the main house but close to it, a small den of a place partly sunk below ground level so that she had to step down to go inside.

"I have to confess," she announced, stooping warily into the first room, "all my experience of torture so far has been on the receiving end." She gave the sorceress a conspiratorial grin. "So you'll have to tell me if I'm doing it wrong."

The witch hissed in indignation. "Impudent bitch-whelp!" she crowed. "You think your brute strength is any match for the wisdom of the ages?"

"Aw, thanks," Ryn said, not taking the bait. "I've never been credited with brute strength before."

The crone made a dart toward the door and Ryn slid left to block her path, eerily certain that the witch couldn't possibly be dull enough not to anticipate her move. "Here's the thing," she said evenly. "You are going to tell me everything you know about the offworlder Granta Omega, including anything you and your assistant may have told him about the dark goddess Khalî."

The crone hesitated. "And in return?"

Ryn bared her teeth again, fiercely genial. "Not a damn thing."

The old witch snorted. "That's not much incentive for me to cooperate, is it?"

"Sure it is," Ryn said. "Because when you give me what I want, I'll stop pounding on you."

She hissed again. "The hands that touch me will be cursed."

"Welcome to my life," Ryn said, and pinned her anyway.

[]

In the end Aharu's witch - though maybe it was more the other way around - did tell her what she knew, though Ryn suspected this was probably out of apathy rather than fear. Slamming the crone's head into her apothecary table a few times wasn't enough torture to make anyone break, and if she had been easily intimidated, she wouldn't have outlasted three regimes and two stormings of the dun.

When she was done, she left the old witch under guard and went to tell Evinne and Anakin the good news.

"Not that there's much of it," she added when she'd tracked them down - Evinne first, because it hurt too much to be alone with Anakin. "The crone says she suspects Omega is trying to rival Khalî, usurp her source of power, rather than ally himself with her. She claims to know nothing about Obi-Wan's capture, but says that if Omega is using a Jedi, he may be trying to find that power using the Force."

"That's bad, right?" Anakin said. His eyes were wide with worry, and Ryn felt her heart twist in her chest, aching in sympathy.

Stop that, she told herself, and kept going. "She seems to think it won't work," Ryn said. "I couldn't make sense of all she said - it's beyond my training - but I gathered that the crone thinks trying to find Khalî's power is a mistake, and that the Force will only ... flow around it, or something. Once she started talking, it was pretty clear she didn't think much of Omega."

"He's dangerous," Anakin said, and Ryn nodded.

"Fools often are," Evinne said, and Ryn nodded to that, too.

"The crone says Omega thinks we're ... some sort of heathen, worshipping natural phenomena. She thinks he has gone North to find the source of power. Her apprentice has gone with him as a guide, but she says she did not give her permission."

"He knows we don't actually worship Khalî at all, right?"

Ryn grimaces. "Have you searched your father's room?"

"What?" Evinne said. "No!"

Ryn reached into her utility belt and pulled out a rough stone carving, dark with blood. "Here." She tossed it to Evinne. "I'll lay odds you'll find its match in your father's chamber."

She saw Evinne's eyes go wide with fear, her face taking on the sickly cast of nausea. "But this - this is Khalî's token."

"The womb of death," Ryn agreed, feeling a little sick herself. "I searched the dun after I left the advisor's cell. I'm sorry, Evinne."

Evinne's hands were shaking. "But how could I ... how could I not know?"

"You want my guess?" She waited for Evinne's nod. "You were part of the deal," she said slowly. "I don't have proof. But that man he ordered you to marry ... there wasn't something wrong about him."

"I know," Evinne said. "That's why I ran."

"Good move," Ryn said. "But I don't think he was bidding with what you thought he was. I heard rumors, then and after. He was ... off, somehow. So maybe you were meant to be the sacrifice, and you weren't supposed to know."

Evinne looked sicker; Ryn could sense her forcibly restraining the urge to vomit. "That's ..." she said, her voice trailing off as she searched for a word.

"I know," Ryn said. "And maybe I'm wrong. But the pieces fit. And Aharu's rise to power was ... well, contrary to reason."

"I'll have his quarters searched today," Evinne whispered, and then shook herself. "No. I'll do it myself. The men shouldn't have to ... but something is bothering me."

Just one thing? Ryn thought, but she said, "Yeah?"

"The girl ... the apprentice. She couldn't have left without Aesin'Uleia's knowledge."

Ryn shrugged. "Maybe. I sensed a lot of anger there, but it was pretty unfocused. Here's the really bad news: the crone knows we're trying to raise the land. She says she knows how to do it ... but only with living sacrifice."

"Sentient?" Evinne asked, and Ryn nodded once more. The older girl closed her eyes.

Anakin made a frustrated noise: the fury of a trapped animal.

"Yeah," Ryn said, glancing at him. "That was my reaction, too. So either the crone was lying, which I didn't get, or ... we're in more trouble than we thought."

"There has to be another way," Anakin said angrily.

Well. That was Anakin all over. Ryn did her best to take it in stride. "That won't help us unless we can figure out what it is," Ryn answered. She rubbed her acing forehead with dirty fingertips. "I have the beginnings of an idea, but even I don't like it."

"I'm afraid to ask," Evinne said.

Anakin shot her a look. "What is it, Ryn?"

Ryn hesitated, biting her lip. "I can make flowers bloom," she began slowly.

Anakin frowned. "How does that help?" he asked, but Evinne was getting it.

"You need more of that power," she deduced. "This is the same thing, on a larger scale."

"Maybe not the same," Ryn cautioned. "But I'm hoping it's close enough." She scrubbed her hands through her filthy hair. "There is a condition some women have that Healers call a hostile womb. I don't know what causes it, exactly, but ... we need to make Loreth hostile to Khalî. And I guess to Omega, as well."

"How?" Evinne asked, and Ryn sighed.

"I'm working on it." Evinne's expression said plainly what she thought of that. "It's the best I can do," she said, shrugging helplessly. "This isn't my field. And there's ... something else."

"What now?" Evinne asked wearily.

Ryn winced. "She cursed me."

Evinne closed her eyes. "Of course she did. What's the curse?"

"She didn't say," Ryn admitted. "I left her under guard, but I don't kid myself that she won't be able to throw the curse anyway."

"So that's a problem," Evinne concluded. "Saints. Didn't we have enough to worry about?"

"It never rains but it pours," Ryn said.

Evinne laughed without much humor. "Great. Well, don't tell anybody else about it yet. A curse is hell on morale."

You can't give me orders, Ryn thought, but Evinne was right, so she kept her mouth shut. "I'm going to go clean up," she said instead. "See you at supper."