Rogue Planet

Chapter 54

Jabitha walked across the landing field toward the two figures crouched next to each other. Their struggle, if struggle it had been, had lasted only a few seconds, and yet somehow they had moved into the shadow of a huge boulder, where she could barely make out their outlines. She walked slowly, fearful of what she might find. She did not want to feel the Blood Carver's lance once again, nor did she wish to find the boy dead. But she dreaded something else almost as much.

Her skin crawled at the thought that this young boy could have survived against so formidable an opponent.

"Anakin?" she called, a few steps away from the rock.

The Blood Carver emerged from the shadow, triple-jointed arms loose by his sides. He seemed exhausted. In the last of the daylight, his skin glimmered a deep orange color, and Jabitha's heart filled her throat. He was still alive. The boy had not moved from beneath the overhang.

"Anakin!" she called out again, her voice trembling.

Ke Daiv stepped toward her and lifted a hand. She was almost too afraid to look at his face, but when she did, she screamed. His eyes had turned white, and the flesh around his head and neck had cracked. He was bleeding profusely, and his dark orange blood dripped down over his shoulders. He was trying to say something.

Jabitha backed away, speechless with terror.

"I tried to control it," Anakin said, and emerged into the twilight. The pinwheel's purple glory illuminated them with the fading of the dusk. The Blood Carver lurched forward step by step toward the edge of the field, away from the Sekotan ship.

"Stop him," Anakin said. "Please help me stop him."

Jabitha walked beside the boy toward the pitiful figure of their enemy.

"Is he dying?" she asked.

"I hope not," Anakin said as if ashamed. "By the Force, I hope not."

"He was going to kill you," she said.

"That doesn't matter," Anakin said. "I should never have let it loose like that. I did it all wrong."

"Let what loose?"

He shook his head, trying to erase a nightmare, and grabbed the Blood Carver's arm. Ke Daiv swung about as if on a turntable and fell to his knees. Blood dripped from his mouth.

Jabitha stood before the two, the young boy with the short, light brown hair and the tall, gold-colored Blood Carver who might be dying. She shook her head in desperate confusion. "You saved us, Anakin," she said.

"Not like this," he said. "He was being brave in the only way he knew, the only way they taught him. He's like me, but he never had the Jedi to help." To Ke Daiv, he said, "Please be strong. Don't die."

Jabitha could stand this no longer. "I have to find my father," she said. She turned and ran toward the ruins.

Anakin gripped Ke Daiv's arm and glanced up at the sky. The awful glyphs written by the mines were fading, contrails pointing east now, drifting and diffusing in the winds over the clouds.

Ke Daiv spoke in his native language. Each sound cost him an agony. By the cadence, he was repeating something familiar, a poem or a chant. He fell to one hand, then lowered himself to the ground.

Anakin stayed beside him, holding his arm, until he died. Then the boy rose, turned around once, and screamed, heard only by the mountain, the skies, the broken and charred stones, the crumbling ruins of the Magister's palace.