She went over to the wall for a closer look. The etched lines showed hundreds of muscular tongues dragging hundreds of humans into hundreds of hungry mouths.
There was something about the way it was drawn that made the whole thing even ghastlier than the already ghastly subject matter. Even though Mayv was getting only glimpses of it, she could tell that the artist had been celebrating the feast…and worshipping the beast.
Now she was sure they were in a temple. A temple built by people who had created a religion around the awful creature and the dark power that oozed out of the chasm.
What sorts of horrors would those people have recorded in a book? Maybe the people had learned how to use the dark power. Maybe their book held dark secrets that even the Emperor did not know…at least not yet.
Mayv shuddered. This was an awful job in an awful place. But it had to be done, she reminded herself. The Mola Oktaro was at stake.
But—for the first time since she had left Oktaro, she wondered—was reclaiming the Mola Oktaro really worth any price?
She didn’t know. So she repainted her triangles in the symbol for wisdom and hoped the answer would come to her.
By the time Mayv finished with her triangles, K-2 was back.
“There is a high probability that I have found what we are looking for,” he announced.
“The book? Where is it? Let me see!”
“I did not bring it,” said K-2. “I did not know which one to bring. There are many books.”
“Like a library?” asked Mayv.
“Yes.”
“Well,” she said, “I guess that is what I came for.”
“I saw something else: animal waste material.”
“You mean…?”
“Yes, that. In big piles. Fresh.”
“GLUURRPH,” croaked Chewie, wrinkling his nose.
“So…there’s something big living down here, huh?” Mayv said, sighing. “Well, no sense waiting for it to find us. We better get the book and get out of here as fast as we can.”
Chewie got to his feet, stretched his very sore arm, and pulled a spare light from his pouch.
K-2 asked if he still had to carry the crate.
And then, guided by a lying robot, they set off down a tunnel into a temple of fear that was the lair of…well, you’ll see.
There were many doors and many rooms. Some big, some small, some with small vents in one wall to let in the green mist directly from the chasm. And all of them with more doors leading to more rooms and so on.
“NROFFFF!”
“If you’re saying you don’t like this, then I agree,” said Mayv, correctly translating Chewie’s mood. “It’s like a maze of little twisty passages. We could get lost forever down here.”
“I cannot get lost,” said K-2. “My navigation system has automatically mapped every room, and I am taking you by the shortest possible route.”
If the mission had been less urgent and the lighting had been better, looking through the rooms would have been fascinating, though disturbing.
The artwork, the artifacts, even the rooms themselves told a dark and dreadful story.
Parts of that story were made clear to our heroes as they wandered the empty temple and saw bits and pieces of its history. But most of it they would never know.
After quite a bit of research, I’ve learned the rest. Are you ready to hear it?
It won’t seem that bad to you, of course. On whatever nice friendly planet you are reading this, you’ll be able to view it all as the ancient history of a place you will hopefully never have to visit. But for Mayv and Chewie, the oppressive hatefulness of the place grew and grew with each strange thing they saw. And the fear had to be conquered each time they rounded a corner.
Most of the inhabitants of Ushruu had stayed well away from the creature and the chasm. But some had been drawn to it. Drawn by the dark side itself. But knowing nothing of the Force, the people had assumed the creature was the source of the terrifying power. So they worshipped the creature.
The creature, in turn, gladly ate all who came to worship it.
Finally, one worshipper dodged the snarlers and sniffers long enough to find a cave—an offshoot of the chasm—that let him squeeze into a tight space where the snarlers and sniffers couldn’t follow. There he could bask in the green mist and worship the creature without being eaten.
Of course, he was murdered by the next worshipper who came along. And that one by the next. They were, after all, the worst people on the planet. Those who eagerly responded to the dark side.
At last came one who was especially Force-sensitive. She might well have become a Sith, had she known what a Sith was.
She didn’t kill the other pilgrims who came after her. She used them. Under her orders, the cave was expanded and made into a temple—her slaves endlessly chipping away at the rock walls. And as they died off, they were always replaced by new pilgrims—because there were always people who sought power and there was always the dark side to offer it…for a price.
So the temple had grown underground, stretching out along one side of the chasm. And the Enchantress—as she was known—lived an unnaturally long time. Centuries. She learned much about the dark side and recorded it all in a sacred book. She even began to suspect the truth, that the creature was like her—feeding off the dark side, not creating it.
She decided that one day she would share her power and her knowledge with another…an apprentice. She would train that person, let them read the sacred book, let them grow almost as powerful as herself. Almost.
But she hadn’t found the right apprentice yet. So while her slaves kept digging, she kept learning.
Eventually, she grew so powerful that the creature became aware of her. It hated her instantly.
For decades it tried to get at her, and finally, it found a weak spot in the temple. A place where the slaves had dug too close to the chasm. The wall was too thin, and a hundred sniffers striking at once cracked it open.
Before the slaves could repair the breach, the sniffers rushed through, not creeping and sniffing but whipping and flailing—powered by a rush of rage and hatred that the creature had never felt before.
Every worshipper died. They didn’t run. They didn’t fight. They gave themselves to the sniffers and died happy—well, not happy but content.
The Enchantress wasn’t about to give herself up. She used her own dark powers to push back the sniffers and get above ground. She fled into the forest, back the same way she had come centuries earlier. Woe to any snarler that got in her way. They were smashed by a wave of her hand and a blast of hateful power.
But that power ebbed with every step she took away from the chasm.
By the time she reached a settlement, she was weak and impossibly old.
She told the people who found her the story. She told them of her mighty power. She told them of the book. She told them they could use it to destroy the creature. That was all she had left in her heart—a desire to kill the creature that she had once worshipped and now hated.
But the people who heard her story were not like her. They didn’t like the fear and would never dream of going near the chasm or the creature. And the idea of killing the creature seemed absurd and unnecessary.
So the Enchantress died, hating those fools almost as much as she had hated the creature, her slaves, and herself.
And sensing her death, the creature returned to its usual hungry half slumber.
And her story became a legend. Told and retold many times—because other than the chasm, the planet was really pretty boring. A powerful sorceress, even a dead one, was big news.
Gradually, the story spread across the planet, and eventually, when space traders discovered the planet, it spread even farther. Losing its power along the way, it was passed on as a fairy tale, an anecdote, an amusement, and finally a rumor.
The Emperor had heard many things, but something in that rumor caught his interest. A forest of fear, where a book of dark power was
guarded by a monster with many mouths…Yes…that book would be worth having….
So the Emperor expressed an interest in the book.
And his minions—Janus Greejatus and Sim Aloo—had each hoped to fetch it for him. Greejatus had rushed the job, sending in a team of Trandoshans whom the snarlers had found delicious.
Sim Aloo had been smarter. Well, actually his daughter had been smarter.
She had thought it through.
The job needed a Wookiee to get through the forest, a librarian to fetch the book, and a cargo droid to carry it (and any other valuables it might find).
She found them and “hired” them, and here we are.
“Have you noticed that a lot of these pictures seem to have the same woman in them?” Mayv asked the others as they passed yet another image scratched into the wall. “And she’s never being eaten by the creature. She’s usually standing on dead bodies. And she seems to be able to shoot flames out of her hands.”
“GRUMLLRRRRK RRRUHPTA,” muttered Chewie, comparing the woman in the picture to Han’s last girlfriend. Neither Mayv nor K-2 got the joke, of course.
“Kay-Tu, are you recording these pictures we’re passing?”
“I was actually planning to erase any memory that I had ever seen them.”
“Well, I need you to record them for me. Look at this,” she said, pointing to a string of careful scratches. “This looks like writing of some kind.”
“That is almost as exciting as the tree bugs,” said K-2 flatly.
“Ugh, it’s not supposed to be exciting! It’s supposed to be useful! If there are a lot of books to carry, then I’m going to have to pick the right one. The words on these paintings may be the only clue to what the books say.”
“I thought you did not know this language,” said K-2.
“I don’t. But I may not need to. I read a book about these Old Republic code breakers called the Squill Sifters once. They could crack codes in languages they didn’t know. It’s like a puzzle. And I may only need to figure out a word or two.”
“The chances of figuring out the meaning of a certain combination of unknown letters would be one in four hundred twenty thousand, three hundred seventy-six, even if there were only fourteen letters. This language appears to have at least—”
“UUUUURUNK!” interrupted Chewie, suggesting that the droid just take the pictures quickly so they could get moving. He was getting used to the constant fear, but the smell seemed to get worse and worse.
K-2 wasn’t sorry to get moving, either, so he led them on, turning his head now and then to take a holovid of the art.
But his criticism had greatly shaken Mayv’s confidence. After all, she wasn’t even a real librarian, much less a code breaker.
Chewie, seeming to sense her growing worry, put a friendly hand on her shoulder.
“LLLURRRUN RHHHUNGA,” he told her. “LLLURRRRUN RHHHUNGGGA.”
She didn’t exactly know what that meant, but really she did: for some reason, the Wookiee believed in her.
They walked on in silence, except for the occasional complaint from Chewie about the smell, which really was getting worse.
Then, as they descended a steep tunnel and stepped out into a long hallway, they found the source of the smell. Or actually, I should say sources.
“Here is the fresh animal waste material I observed,” said K-2.
“Yeah, we noticed,” croaked Mayv, trying to bury her nose in her tunic.
“MMMYYYYURRRRRRRRRRRRRRG,” lamented Chewie and Goldie, making almost the same sound of disgust and distress.
“I just hope it’s from those bugs and not from something worse,” said Mayv. “But judging by the size of it, I’d say we may have big, nasty company down here.”
“HISSSS,” added Goldie, who knew exactly what kind of company it was: snarlers.
“Hey, look down there,” said Mayv, wiggling the light to draw their attention to the far end of the hall. “It’s a door. I mean, not just a doorway to another room, but an actual door. We should see what’s behind it.”
“That is the room I am taking you to,” said K-2. “The door was locked previously, but I opened it to see what was inside.”
Mayv shone her light in and knew instantly that it was the library—even though the “books,” as she had predicted, were nothing like any books she had ever seen. Thousands and thousands of flattened rolls were stacked neatly on floor-to-ceiling shelves. One shelf had rotted away, and the books it had held were in a heap on the floor.
Mayv picked one up. The material was several times thicker than paper. And though faded, it had once been blue. She guessed correctly that it was tree bark. Dead and dried for centuries, it no longer gave her the sensation of hope and courage that the living trees did.
She unrolled it a bit and saw words like what she had seen on the walls. Tiny intricate writing scratched into the bark by hand.
“The people on this planet must have never developed any kind of ink,” she said, mostly just thinking out loud. “And no way of printing copies of books, either. Many people must have spent many years creating all of these.”
She unfolded it a little more and saw a picture of a battle. The artist seemed to have delighted in drawing the horrors of war in disgusting detail. Mayv shuddered.
She dropped the roll back on the heap.
“This must have been the history shelf. We need to find the sacred religious books.”
She moved about the room, looking at books and comparing them to the holovids of the wall writing that K-2 had sent to her vidscroll.
The others realized this process was going to take a while, and they tried to settle in to wait.
Chewie was hungry and opened another ration stick, but the smell from the tunnel was bad enough to ruin even a Wookiee’s appetite, as the old saying goes. He threw the stick aside and groaned with his impatience to get out of that stinking hole in the ground.
Goldie was in full agreement, mewling and pacing back and forth in front of the door.
K-2 at first appeared to be the most patient of the three, but he was the first to interrupt Mayv.
“Are you done yet?”
“No,” she answered distractedly. “I’ve got it narrowed down to these two shelves, but…”
“The reason I ask,” said K-2, “is that my sensors are detecting life-forms in the tunnels.”
“HYRUNNNNH,” growled Chewie softly, and crept to the door to listen.
“They’re still some distance away,” said K-2, “but they appear to be moving in this direction.”
“Oktar smugnuk!” growled Mayv. And while I do not normally approve of that sort of language, I think she was justified. When you find out which life-forms were headed toward them, you may feel the same way.
Mayv forced herself to focus. She shone her light on tiny scratchy scribbles and tried to decide what they meant. She felt like she’d found the right shelf, but none of the books seemed like anything special.
Then she stood on her toes to look at the shelf above it. There was only one of the flattened rolls there. Similar in shape but smaller than the others and made out of a different material (tanned sniffer skin, if you must know).
Mayv pulled it down. She folded back the first blank page to look at the text. It was different from the others in some way she couldn’t explain.
“At last…”
The voice came from nowhere. Not from the book or from behind a shelf. It was just there.
Mayv heard it in Oktarian. Chewie heard it in Shyriiwook. Goldie even heard a strange yowling that made her bare her teeth and crouch into a fighting stance.
K-2 heard nothing. But they all saw something. A formless redness in the center of the room.
“At last…you’ve come for my secrets.”
“Who are you?” asked Mayv.
“I am class nine Imperial cargo droid Kay-Tuessbee,” said K-2.
“I’m not talking to you!”
“Then who are you—”
“Shhh! Just shhh!” hissed Mayv. Then she turned back toward the red light. “Who are you?”
“You must know who I am….You’ve come for my secrets. For the secrets I learned here on the edge of the great chasm. The secrets that my slaves died for. The secrets that the foolish Vathyr could never understand but which I alone have mastered.”
“Well…yes,” said Mayv.
“Good, good. I’ve grown impatient waiting. Once I’ve passed them on, I can at last let go of this world and join the dark power that flows just on the other side of these stone walls. And then woe to the Vathyr, for I shall poison every one of its thousand mouths!”
“HGGGRUUURRAH!” Whoever was talking, Chewie didn’t like it. He just wanted to be away from the dripping evil of that voice.
“If you’re saying we should go,” said K-2, “I agree. The life-forms are getting closer.”
“Are you picking up a life-form in the room with us right now?” asked Mayv.
“No,” said K-2, “just you three.”
“A life-form…No, that was long ago. I do not live. I only wait. I wait for the right one to give my secrets to.”
“Uh…can we have them?” Mayv asked, starting to edge toward the door.
“Wait,” cautioned the voice. “Before I give this power away, I must know who will get it. I sense no desire for the power in any of you. Who really wants it? Who has sent you all this way?”
“What do you think, Chewie? Should I tell her?”
“MMMRRRONGGG,” said Chewie with a shrug.
“Tell who?” asked K-2.
“I think it’s the writer of the book,” answered Mayv.
“Ha! The child calls me ‘the writer’! To think that a thousand voices once called me ‘Enchantress’ and now…But no, that doesn’t matter. Soon I will be much more. Yes, child, I did write. I wrote the book you hold, the only one here that really matters. The question I ask is…who shall be the reader?”
“Uh…we think it’s for the Emperor. Emperor Palpatine.”
“Ah…yes…I believe I have sensed him. His great power, though far away, has of late echoed in the chasm….Yes, he will make good use of my secrets.”