Traitor by Matthew Stover (chrome ebook reader txt) 📕

A wave of chill shivered through Ganner then, as though some cold shadow had flowed into the Force. “I don’t understand.”

“You don’t have to. Repeat after me: ‘I have seen the Light of the True Way, and go to the Gods with joy in my heart, full of gratitude for Their Third Gift.’ ”

“You must be crazy.”

Jacen nodded thoughtfully, as though he’d spent some time considering that possibility and had come to the conclusion that it could not be denied.

“What makes you think I’d go along with this?”

Jacen’s durasteel stare fastened on Ganner. “I’m not asking, Ganner. I’m offering. I don’t need your cooperation. Ten minutes after I walk through the door of the Well, we’ll both be dead whether you play along or not.”

“So why should I?”

Jacen shrugged. “Why shouldn’t you?”

“How do I know I can trust you? How do I know I shouldn’t jump you right now?” Ganner shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, reaching a balanced stance from where he could spring in any direction. “I know you’re stronger now, Jacen—stronger than I’ve ever been. I felt it on the camp ship. I know you can kill me if you want. But I can make you kill me here.”

Jacen spread his hands. His face was blankly expectant. “Choose, and act.”

“Choose? What do you mean, choose?”

“Choose to die here for nothing, or choose to die in the Well of the World Brain: where your death can change the galaxy.”

Ganner licked his lips. “But how am I supposed to decide? How do I know whether I can trust you?”

“You don’t.” Jacen’s face softened again, and a hint of the Solo half smile traced itself ruefully onto his lips. “Trust, Ganner, is always an act of faith.”

“Easy for you to say—!”

“I guess it is. You want to see how much I trust you?” He reached again within his robe. When his hand came out, he opened it toward Ganner, offering. “Here.”

On his open palm balanced the handgrip of a lightsaber.

Ganner blinked. He rubbed his eyes.

When he looked again, it was still a lightsaber. “Take it,” Jacen said. “Use it, if you must. Even if you choose to use it on me.”

“You’re giving me your lightsaber?”

Jacen shook his head. “It’s not mine.” He lifted his hand. “Go ahead. Take it.”

“So what is this? A fake? Another trick? Is it going to blow up in my hand?”

“It’s not a fake,” Jacen said with a sadness so profound it could only be expressed with quiet, dry exactitude. “It’s not a trick.”

For the third time, he extended the lightsaber toward Ganner. “It’s Anakin’s.”

“Anakin’s—!” A sharp, hot thrill shot through Ganner’s whole body, as though he’d been narrowly missed by a stroke of lightning. “How did you get Anakin’s lightsaber?”

“A friend kept it safe for me.” Jacen squinted as though mildly surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth—then he nodded, reluctantly agreeing with himself. “A friend.”

Ganner could only stare, drop-jawed. Dazzled. Awed. “And you want to give it to me?”

“You might need one. Since I destroyed yours.”

Ganner’s hand shook as he took the lightsaber. It was warm in his hand, warm with Jacen’s body heat, smooth and gleaming. He could feel its structure in the Force, could feel the way it fit together, the individuality of design that made it Anakin’s. He could feel Anakin in the handle.

And he could feel a gap: where his own lightsaber had held a Corusca gem, this one had only a void, an empty space in the Force—but to his eye and hand, the handgrip held a shining amethyst that seemed to flicker with its own interior light.

He triggered the activator and the blade snarled out to full extension, brilliant, eye-burning, buzzing with a hum he could feel in his teeth.

It lit the whole room with a vivid, unnatural purple glow.

“What about you? Where’s yours?”

Jacen shook his head. “I haven’t seen my lightsaber since Myrkr. For what I have to do, weapons are irrelevant.”

“But—but—”

A dull thudding penetrated one wall, a wall dominated by a huge knurled pucker like a pursed mouth carved from wood. Voices came thinly from outside, snarling in the guttural retching hacks of the Yuuzhan Vong tongue.

“They’re here,” Jacen said. He nodded toward the lightsaber in Ganner’s hand. “Better put that away. If they find it on you, they’ll kill us both.” A gently ironic smile quirked his lips. “I mean, they’ll kill us both too soon.”

Ganner was floundering, choking on unreality. His dream had made a great deal more sense than did his waking. He waved Anakin’s lightsaber as though he’d forgotten what it was. “You have to help me understand—!”

“Just remember: ‘I have seen the Light of the True Way,’ ” Jacen repeated firmly, meaningfully, “ ‘and I go to the Gods with joy in my heart, full of gratitude for Their Third Gift.’ ”

As Ganner stood gaping helplessly, the puckered mouth on the wall suddenly yawned into a hatchway that opened on an enormous vaulted hall beyond. He jerked, nearly dropping Anakin’s lightsaber in his haste to deactivate it and stuff it into one of his white robe’s voluminous sleeves.

The hall was full of scarified Yuuzhan Vong warriors standing rigidly at attention, weapons extended in present arms.

Just beyond the opening stood a pair of nervous, sweating Yuuzhan Vong of a caste Ganner did not recognize. Both held leashes attached to reptilian creatures the size of banthas; the reptilian creatures crouched on their haunches while their taloned forelimbs forced the hatch sphincter to full dilation. Several steps farther in, a dozen or more impressively costumed Yuuzhan Vong, caparisoned in identically fantastic arrays of clothing that shone and shimmered and writhed with restless life, formed a half circle that framed two individuals.

One of these wore the immense spiny headdress Ganner had heard was favored by shaper masters; the other wore a long black robe, and grinned a lipless, needle-toothed smile Ganner recognized from his dream.

Nom Anor.

Jacen faced them without the slightest appearance of concern. “What signifies this interruption?”