There was no applause. No whistling, no hissing, no celebra tory cracking of joints. In ones and twos, alone and in family groups, the clan Yiwa simply rose from their seats and melted away, returning to their collapsible homes and ceremonial fires. A number of armed males headed for their guard posts, to take up the nocturnal watch for shanhs and other predators that might try to prey on the slumbering herds. Sooner than expected, only the visitors were left, together with Mazong and his advisers.

"The clan has hosted many recitals by many guests," the chieftain of the Yiwa began, "but never in living memory have any been so diverse, so unexpected, and so remarkable."

"I didn't get a chance to show off my juggling," Bulgan muttered disappointedly. Kyakhta jabbed him in the ribs.

Mazong ignored the aside, pretending not to have heard it. "You have more than fulfilled your end of the bargain." His gaze fastened on Luminara.

"I would give much to know how you did that."

"So would I," Anakin put in intently. "It would be useful in a fight."

Turning toward their host, Luminara launched into a discus sion of the Force: what it was, how the Jedi made use of it, and the nature of its essence-dark as well as good. When she was finished, Mazong and his advisers nodded solemnly.

"You traffic in dangerous matters," he declared somberly.

"As with so much that holds great promise, there is always some danger,"

she replied. "Such as this proposed agreement between the Unity of the town folk and the Alwari clans. But when it is treated with respect, the Force is ultimately a power for good. The same can be true of this concordance that we hope to achieve."

Mazong conferred with his advisers. The two elders appeared to have lightened up considerably, Barriss decided. As the chieftain finally turned back to his guests, she drew her clothing tighter around her.

Though the winds of Ansion tended to diminish along with the daylight, they did not always cease entirely, and she was cold.

"We concur." He gestured magnanimously at Kyakhta and Bulgan. "We will give your guides such directions as will enable you to find the Borokii soonest. Clanless these two may be, but they raise themselves high by their choice of employers."

"How long until we reach their outlying factions?" Obi-Wan inquired.

"That cannot be foretold." As Mazong stood, his guests rose with him.

"The Borokii are also Alwari. They may be encamped, as are the Yiwa. But if they are on the move, you will still have some tracking to do. We can only point you in the direction of their last known campsite." He smiled rea.s.suringly. "Do not despair. With our directions you will find them far sooner than if you continued searching on your own."

"We thank you for your kindness, and for your hospitality," Luminara told him.

He responded with a gesture she did not know. "You have more than repaid us. Indeed, we are shamed by our suspicions."

"One never need apologize for caution." Obi-Wan stretched. A Jedi could go without sleep for an amazing length of time-but would not by choice.

He was tired. They all were.

Anakin in particular could not get the Jedi Luminara's presentation out of his head. It kept him preoccupied as he prepared for sleep and awake well into the morning hours. He thought he had seen or read everything that could be done with the Force. Once again, he had been shown the error of his a.s.sumptions. He could not imagine the amount of study and control it took to realize such a feat. The complexity of it, the skill needed to simultaneously control one's body as well as thousands of individual grains of sand, was quite beyond him.

For now, he thought as he lay on his back in the visitors' house. Though aware of his present limitations, his confidence in his abilities was boundless. It was the same confidence that had allowed him to survive a difficult childhood, had gained him the skills necessary to master the intricacies of droid repair that had made him so valuable to that winged reprobate Watto, and had permitted him to partic.i.p.ate in the liberation of Naboo from the subjugation of the Trade Federation. It was the same confidence that would one day enable him to achieve anything he wished.

Whatever that might be.

There was no celebration when they departed the following morning. No chorus of young Yiwa lined up to serenade them on their way. No line of mounted clanfolk escorted them northward, banners flying and horns tootling. The visitors were simply given the requisite directions and sent on their way.

As they trotted off on their well-rested suubatars, Luminara asked Bulgan about this absence of a departure ceremony. The one-eyed Alwari gestured diffidently.

"The life of a nomad is a full one, though not so hard as in the old days. There is little time for frivolities. There are animals to care for, young to instruct, houses to be erected or broken down for travel, elders to see to, food and water to be distributed to Alwari and animal alike. That's why rites like last night's are so important. Diversion is necessary, and respected, but only when there is time for it." He rode on in silence for a bit, then added, "You certainly left the Yiwa with a favorable impression of the Jedi Order." A long-fingered hand waved at the other mounted suubatar. "All of you did."

"We enjoyed it ourselves," she told him. "It's not often we're asked to reveal that side of our personas. Most of the time we find ourselves explaining Republic policy, or defending it, or preparing to do both.

Believe me," she added forcefully, "few in the galaxy would better understand or sympathize with what you just said about the life of a nomad than would a Jedi."

The guide nodded gravely, then brightened. "But like the Alwari, you also know how to have fun!" When she failed to respond, he added hopefully, "Don't you?"

She sighed, shifting her position high atop the loping suubatar.

"Sometimes I wonder. There are times when the words fun and Jedi seem to be mutually exclusive." Remembering something, she smiled. "Though I do remember a joke Master Mace Windu once played on Master Ki-Adi-Mundi. It had to do with three Padawans and the number of available eyeb.a.l.l.s in the room ..."

She proceeded to relate the tale to the interested Bulgan, who listened attentively. When she finished, he could only gesture helplessly, his face showing the strain of trying to comprehend the unfathomable.

"I'm sorry, Master Luminara, but I find nothing amusing in your story. I think maybe Jedi humor is as mysterious as Jedi strength." He was very earnest. "Perhaps one has to know the Force to understand the humor."

"I wouldn't think so." She rode on in silence for a while, then sniffed slightly. "Well, I thought it was funny."

They continued to make excellent time. Everyone's spirits had been raised by the encounter with the stolid but ultimately cooperative Yiwa, and they now had something in the way of a specific destination. At least, Barriss reflected as she relaxed in the saddle of her suubatar, they weren't galloping aimlessly over open prairie in the hope of accidentally b.u.mping into the migrating overclan. Mazong's directions had been quite specific, though they still had to take into account his admonition that the Borokii might be on the move. She wondered how their habits and rituals would compare to those of the Yiwa. Within the numerous clans of the Alwari, Kyakhta had told her, there existed much differentiation.

They were traveling steadily north when their guides unex pectedly called a halt. Sitting up in her saddle, Barriss scanned their surroundings. The horizon was the same in every direction and had been for several days.

Endless gra.s.sland, waving fields of native grains only rarely interrupted by clumps of small trees, an occasional depression holding water or mud, and the isolated hillock. Not a building of any kind, nor anything higher than a suubatar standing up on its rear and middle legs. So it was with interest she wondered why Kyakhta and Bulgan had brought them to a stop-and why they appeared more than a little apprehensive.

"What is it?" Luminara and Obi-Wan trotted forward to query their escorts. Attentive inspection of the four horizons left them no more enlightened as to the reason for the halt than it did their equally confused Padawans. "Why have we stopped here?"

"Listen." Both Alwari were leaning slightly forward in their seats, obviously straining to hear-what?

Luminara and her companions went quiet. Only the muted munching of the suubatars nibbling the tops off the ripe wild grains, the constant rustle of wind through the gra.s.ses, and the occasional querulous hooting of a kilk stalking soft-sh.e.l.led arthropods broke the silence.

Then she heard it. Faint initially, like a first cousin to the wind itself. It strengthened slowly, a soft ripping sound approaching from the north, from the direction they were headed. It intensified until it became an audible buzzing, still muted but rising ominously in the distance. Peering hard in the direction of the ascending susurration, Luminara thought she could make out the first hints of a low, dark cloud.

The suubatars began to stir uneasily, throwing back their sharp-ridged skulls and pawing at the ground with middle and forefeet. She struggled to control her mount. At the same time, Kyakhta's eyes bulged with realization.

"Kyren!" he exclaimed fearfully.

"Quickly, my friends!" Bulgan was suddenly standing upright in his saddle, looking frantically in all directions. "We have to find shelter!"

"Shelter?" Obi-Wan held his seat, but began searching their immediate surroundings nonetheless. "Out here?"

"From what?" Barriss wanted to know. By now she, too, saw and heard the onrushing blur. "What's a kyren?"

Without suspending his search, Bulgan edged his steed closer to her own.

"A flying creature that travels the plains of Ansion, migrating from region to region as it follows the seasons." He gestured downward. "When the gra.s.ses in one area mature and the heads of each stalk are ripe with seed, the kyren resumes its flight, eating until it is sated. Then it settles down to rest, and to breed. When the young are fledged, they take flight anew in search of further nourishment."

She blinked in the direction of the diffuse shadow on the horizon. "That can't be all one creature coming toward us."

"It's not," Bulgan disclosed apprehensively. "There are many more than one."

"I don't see why it matters." Anakin had moved forward to join the conversation. "What have we to fear from a flock of seed eaters? They are just seed eaters, aren't they?" he thought to add.

A strange expression came over the guide's face; strange even for a pop-eyed, long-maned, single-nostriled Ansionian. "Seed is their preferred food, yes. But once they have taken flight, they are unable, or unwilling, or simply disinterested in changing course. Nor will they fly higher to pa.s.s over anything unexpected in their path." He swallowed hard. "Rocks they will smash themselves into. Trees they will cut down.

Living things like hootles, or suubatars, or cicien, they will eat their way through. Unless those creatures can somehow find a place to hide, or manage to get out of the way."

"Hootles or suubatars?" Barriss asked softly. "Or-people?" Somehow she wasn't surprised when Bulgan nodded solemnly.

Anakin's hand strayed to his belt. "We have lightsabers, and other weapons. Can't we stand and defend ourselves from these things? How big are they, anyway?"

Raising his long-fingered hands, Bulgan placed them on ei ther side of his head. "This is the average of their wingspan."

"That's all?" Anakin frowned. "Then I don't see why you and Kyakhta are so concerned."

"How many of them are there?" Barriss asked. "In the average flock?"

Lowering his hands, the guide looked back at her. "No one knows. No one has ever been able to stay in one place long enough to count an average flock." He gestured toward the now rapidly darkening northern horizon. "I think this flock may be a little larger than average."

"Take a guess." The fingers of Anakin's right hand continued to hover in the vicinity of his lightsaber. "How many of these things are we likely to be facing?"

Turning in his saddle, Bulgan considered the horizon anew. "Not a conspicuously great number. But enough to pose a seri ous danger if we don't find cover quickly. No more than one or two hundred million, I would say."

Anakin's hand moved away from his lightsaber. " 'Hundred million'? 'One or two'?" The only shelter in sight was a trio of wolgiyn trees standing forlorn and isolated off to their right. They did not cast much of a shadow.

"This way!" Pointing forward and to his left, Kyakhta urged his mount in that same direction. The two Jedi Knights followed, with the Padawans bringing up the rear.

Barriss tried her best to conceal her unease. Instead of fleeing, they were riding straight into the oncoming adumbration. On a collision course, kyren flock and speeding travelers drew rapidly toward one another. Though she had never seen a kyren in her life, she trusted that Kyakhta had seen something more substantial than a mirage, and more solid than faint hope.

10.

Several minutes of hard riding later, it was still impossible to make out individual kyren, but their collective screeching had come to dominate all other sounds on the prairie. Usually frightened of nothing, a pack of shanhs went racing past in the opposite direction. The fearsome carnivores were absolutely terrified. Terrified of something that cracked gra.s.s seed for breakfast, Lu-minara reflected. A small, lightweight, winged herbivore she could hold in the palm of one hand. The sight of the fleeing shanhs was anything but rea.s.suring. As she had been instructed, she urged her suubatar faster, not wanting to fall behind. There were some instruments of nature even a Master of the Force could not stand against. One kyren, without question. A dozen, surely. A few hundred, perhaps. A few thousand? Questionable.

A hundred million of anything was too vast a number for even several Jedi to stand against. Even if the adversaries in question were nothing more than small, soft-bodied, seed-eating fliers.

By the time she finally saw where Kyakhta was leading them, the collective cries of the millions upon millions of kyren were a steady stabbing in her ears. They blocked out the sun, creating their own eclipse, and their stench threatened to overwhelm her inundated sense of smell and send her reeling. Grimly, she clung to the reins of her mount and kept her feet jammed resolutely into the forward-facing stirrups.

With one hand she pulled a bit of robe across her face to shut out a little of the dust and smell.

"There, that way!" Peering into the gathering darkness, she barely managed to hear Kyakhta's cry, and see where he was leading them.

Looming out of the gloom just ahead and towering above the gra.s.s, a crazy conglomeration of tilted pillars and columns took shape. Ranging in hue from a light tan to dark umber, more than anything else they resembled alien tombstones set in the middle of the open plain. The a.n.a.logy was not encouraging. Roughly triangular in shape, each rose to a sharp point. Not all were perfectly vertical. Some thrust upward from the ground at marked angles, and several lay broken and shattered, having fallen over on their sides.

She later learned they were the mounds of the jijites, tiny creatures that lived in the soil and fed off the wide-ranging root systems of the numerous gra.s.ses. Constructed of tiny, even minuscule pebbles, they were bound together by a natural mortar extruded by specially designated jijite workers. Each pillar served to vent hot air from the living tunnels below the surface, cooling the jijites' immediate environment.

They were also lookout towers from which farsighted jijites could keep watch on the surrounding plains-and on other, marauding members of their own kind. They were not insects, but a kind of collective small reptilian life-form.

No four-legged lookouts were visible now, peering watchfully out of red, slitted eyes at the surrounding prairie. Having long since detected the oncoming kyren, they and their brethren had moved deep into the earth, down to multiple burrows safe from the onrushing swarm.

Luminara had to work hard to slow her speeding suubatar so that it wouldn't race past the aggregation of pillars. Shouting to make himself heard, Kyakhta indicated that they had to split up into groups of two, since even the largest of the columns could effectively shelter no more than that.

Obi-Wan didn't like the idea, but they had no choice, and no time for debate. True, they could have stayed together, clinging to one another for support and rea.s.surance, but that would have meant tethering their mounts separately, with no riders to control them. They hurriedly dismounted.

"If one suubatar panics," Bulgan explained, putting his mouth close to Luminara's ear in order to make himself heard, "the rest may stampede with it. That's the way it is with all herd animals on the prairies. They rely on each other's reactions for protection from danger. If you are potential prey, it's better to bolt than to stand around a.s.sessing the situation for yourself." He clung tightly to the reins of his own steed.

"If we don't stay with our mounts, we might well lose them." He nodded in Obi-Wan's direction. "I know you have the means for contacting Cuipernam and calling for rescue, but not even an armored land-speeder could force its way through a kyren flock. This is our only chance."

She indicated understanding. "I doubt we have time to call for help, anyway. Very well, Bulgan. We'll split up."

They discussed the situation quickly, with no wasted words. Much as Luminara wanted to stay with Barriss, and Obi-Wan with Anakin, it made more sense to pair each of the Padawans with one of the more experienced guides. The two Masters would take their own animals down behind the largest of the artificial pillars. Though the distance between columns was small, the sense of parting was disproportionately great.

As soon as she and Obi-Wan succeeded in persuading their animals to lie down behind the brown column, they took shelter themselves, huddling close together in the middle of the triangular pillar. The suubatars'

reins had been wrapped around the stony column itself and secured in the manner hurriedly demonstrated by Kyakhta. When all was in readiness, she found that she had to smile. Her companion couldn't help but notice.

"I see that you've found a source of humor in our present situation. If it isn't private, I could use a touch of amus.e.m.e.nt myself."

Barely able to make herself understood above the deafening ma.s.sed screeching that was now nearly on top of them, she nodded forward. "Years of difficult study spent mastering innumerable skills, more years of crisscrossing the galaxy in the service of the Republic, the accolades of peers, and here I am: relying on a rock for protection while staring at the oversized backsides of a pair of alien steeds."

Gazing himself at the pair of outsized behinds as he pressed himself back against the shielding stone, Obi-Wan soon found himself, despite their desperate situation, smiling uncontrollably.

The sky was now as dark as during a cloudy sunset. Something made a faint smacking sound behind the two huddled Jedi. It was followed by another, and then more, in rapid succession. Then the swarm began to pa.s.s by overhead, and the smacking noises became a steady dull battering and splatting against the other side of the pillar. Luminara found herself giving thanks to tiny burrowing creatures she had never seen. It was their regurgitative engineering that was providing protection for the travelers, and keeping them alive.

But for how long? The sound of airborne kyren slamming into the pillar rose in volume until the conglomeration of stone and cementlike saliva began to tremble against their backs. How far did the flock extend? How long would it take for it to pa.s.s over? Would their pillar, and those shielding their companions, be able to withstand the relentless pressure of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kyren hurling themselves aimlessly against it?

Black shapes numbering in the tens of millions pelted past at high speed.

In the crush of small bodies, it was impossible to make out individuals.

The swarm was a cyclonic ma.s.s of wings, eyes, and gaping mouths.

Something struck her right ankle and, Jedi restraint or not, she jumped slightly. Reaching down, Obi-Wan gently picked up the fluttering, hopping creature in both hands. Wings and body broken, it twitched for another minute before lying still against his palms.

Almost jet black, it had four membranous wings: two that spanned the Jedi's cupping hands and emerged from extended ribs, and two half the size that sprouted from its back. No wonder it could stay aloft for so long, Luminara reflected. If necessary, it could glide on the lower wings while being propelled forward by the top pair. A bright yellow splotch decorated each wing, perhaps an aid in identifying itself to its brethren while all were airborne. Instead of legs, it boasted a pair of thick, furry tufts that ran the length of its underside, like runners on a sled.

Spending most of its time aloft, it evidently had little need for pedestrian locomotion.

The kyren's method of ma.s.s feeding was made clear by its mouth-a wide gape lined top and bottom with twin ridges of horn. The flock hurtled along, those flying low clipping the nourishing crests of grain without stopping, the sharp lower ridges of horn acting like tiny airborne scythes. As soon as they were sated, those soaring along near the underside of the flock would change places with their hungry brethren flying above or behind them. Riding in the middle or the top of the swarm, those that had eaten would digest their meals while still aloft.

The cloud of kyren would remain in constant motion not only on its chosen forward path, but within itself as well.

Another appeared, flopping and fluttering its way helplessly along the ground. Stink aside, they really were rather cute, sad little creatures.

Leaning forward slightly, Luminara looked to her right, past Obi-Wan.