Silently, the doors swung open, revealing the light of what looked to be several hundred candles filling a huge room. Pellaeon glanced once at the old man standing beside the doors, a sudden premonition of dread sending a shiver up his back. Taking a deep breath, he followed Thrawn and Rukh inside.
Into a crypt.
There was no doubt as to what it was. Aside from the flickering candles, there was nothing else in the room but a large rectangular block of dark stone in the center.
“I see,” Thrawn said quietly. “So he is dead.”
“He is dead,” the old man confirmed from behind them. “Do you see all the candles, Grand Admiral Thrawn?”
“I see them.” Thrawn nodded. “The people must have honored him greatly.”
“Honored him?” The old man snorted gently. “Hardly. Those candles mark the graves of offworlders who have come here since his death.”
Pellaeon twisted to face him, instinctively drawing his blaster as he did so. Thrawn waited another few heartbeats before slowly turning around himself. “How did they die?” he asked.
The old man smiled faintly. “I killed them, of course. Just as I killed the Guardian.” He raised his empty hands in front of him, palms upward. “Just as I now kill you.”
Without warning, blue lightning bolts flashed from his fingertips—
And vanished without a trace a meter away from each of them.
It all happened so fast that Pellaeon had no chance to even flinch, let alone fire. Now, belatedly, he raised his blaster, the scalding hot air from the bolts washing over his hand—
“Hold,” Thrawn said calmly into the silence. “However, as you can see, Guardian, we are not ordinary offworlders.”
“The Guardian is dead!” the old man snapped, the last word almost swallowed up by the crackle of more lightning. Again, the bolts vanished into nothingness before even coming close.
“Yes, the old Guardian is dead,” Thrawn agreed, shouting to be heard over the crackling thunder. “You are the Guardian now. It is you who protects the Emperor’s mountain.”5
“I serve no Emperor!” the old man retorted, unleashing a third useless salvo. “My power is for myself alone.”
As suddenly as it had started, the attack ceased. The old man stared at Thrawn, his hands still raised, a puzzled and oddly petulant expression on his face. “You are not Jedi. How do you do this?”
“Join us and learn,” Thrawn suggested.
The other drew himself up to his full height. “I am a Jedi Master,”6 he ground out. “I join no one.”
“I see.” Thrawn nodded. “In that case, permit us to join you.” His glowing red eyes bored into the old man’s face. “And permit us to show you how you can have more power than you’ve ever imagined. All the power even a Jedi Master could desire.”
For a long moment the old man continued to stare at Thrawn, a dozen strange expressions flicking in quick succession across his face. “Very well,” he said at last. “Come. We will talk.”
“Thank you,” Thrawn said, inclining his head slightly. “May I ask who we have the honor of addressing?”
“Of course.” The old man’s face was abruptly regal again, and when he spoke his voice rang out in the silence of the crypt. “I am the Jedi Master Joruus C’baoth.”7
Pellaeon inhaled sharply, a cold shiver running up his back. “Joruus C’baoth?” he breathed. “But—”
He broke off. C’baoth looked at him, much as Pellaeon himself might look at a junior officer who has spoken out of turn. “Come,” he repeated, turning back to Thrawn. “We will talk.”
He led the way out of the crypt and back into the sunshine. Several small knots of people had gathered in the square in their absence, huddling well back from both the crypt and the shuttle as they whispered nervously together.
With one exception. Standing directly in their path a few meters away was one of the two guards C’baoth had ordered out of the crypt. On his face was an expression of barely controlled fury; in his hands, cocked and ready, was his crossbow. “You destroyed his home,” C’baoth said, almost conversationally. “Doubtless he would like to exact vengeance.”
The words were barely out of his mouth when the guard suddenly snapped the crossbow up and fired. Instinctively, Pellaeon ducked, raising his blaster—
And three meters from the Imperials the bolt came to an abrupt halt in midair.
Pellaeon stared at the hovering piece of wood and metal, his brain only slowly catching up with what had just happened. “They are our guests,” C’baoth told the guard in a voice clearly intended to reach everyone in the square. “They will be treated accordingly.”
With a crackle of splintering wood, the crossbow bolt shattered, the pieces dropping to the ground. Slowly, reluctantly, the guard lowered his crossbow, his eyes still burning with a now impotent rage. Thrawn let him stand there another second like that, then gestured to Rukh. The Noghri raised his blaster and fired—
And in a blur of motion almost too fast to see, a flat stone detached itself from the ground and hurled itself directly into the path of the shot, shattering spectacularly as the blast hit it.
Thrawn spun to face C’baoth, his face a mirror of surprise and anger.8 “C’baoth—!”
“These are my people, Grand Admiral Thrawn,” the other cut him off, his voice forged from quiet steel. “Not yours; mine. If there is punishment to be dealt out, I will do it.”
For a long moment the two men again locked eyes.9 Then, with an obvious effort, Thrawn regained his composure. “Of course, Master C’baoth,” he said. “Forgive me.”
C’baoth nodded. “Better. Much better.” He looked past Thrawn, dismissed the guard with a nod. “Come,” he said, looking back at the Grand Admiral. “We will talk.”
“You will now tell me,” C’baoth said, gesturing them to low cushions, “how it was you defeated my attack.”
“Let me first explain our offer,” Thrawn said, throwing a casual glance around the room before easing carefully down on one of the cushions. Probably, Pellaeon thought, the Grand Admiral was examining the bits of artwork scattered around. “I believe you’ll find it—”
“You will now tell me how it was you defeated my attack,” C’baoth repeated.
A slight grimace, quickly suppressed, touched Thrawn’s lips. “It’s quite simple, actually.” He looked up at the ysalamir wrapped around his shoulders, reaching a finger over to gently stroke its long neck. “These creatures you see on our backs are called ysalamiri. They’re sessile tree-dwelling creatures from a distant, third-rate planet, and they have an interesting and possibly unique ability—they push back the Force.”
C’baoth frowned. “What do you mean, push it back?”
“They push its presence out away from themselves,” Thrawn explained. “Much the same way a bubble is created by air pushing outward against water. A single ysalamir can occasionally create a bubble as large as ten meters across; a whole group of them reinforcing one another can create much larger ones.”10
“I’ve never heard of such a thing,” C’baoth said, staring at Thrawn’s ysalamir with an almost childlike intensity. “How could such a creature have come about?”
“I really don’t know,” Thrawn conceded. “I assume the talent has some survival value, but what that would be I can’t imagine.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Not that it matters. For the moment, the ability itself is sufficient for my purpose.”
C’baoth’s face darkened. “That purpose being to defeat my power?”