"Nonsense. You met with him."

"No. It is clear now."

"The Magister is not dead!" Shappa cried out, and shook his fist at Obi-Wan. "He sends instructions to us from his palace!"

"Perhaps even the palace no longer exists," Obi-Wan said.

"I will not hear of this!" Shappa shouted. "I will help you rescue your boy, and then. . you must leave!" He turned away, intensely agitated, and studied his displays. "Perhaps the Jedi did send you here to disrupt us. And the Republic ships-

The sky ahead filled with tiny points of light. Sky mines were descending through the upper reaches of the atmosphere, spreading out for thousands of kilometers around like diffuse orange blossoms.

"They're trying to destroy us all!" Shappa groaned, his face a mask of fear and disappointment.

Anakin brought his ship low around the peak of the mountain, flying in a smooth, beautiful arc, with perfect control.

All was quiet within the cabin. Jabitha had curled up on her couch and seemed to be trying to sleep. Anakin felt very protective toward her, but there was nothing he could do now. Rash behavior would get him killed, and now was not the time to indulge his brash and youthful tendencies.

"The palace should be right around here," Anakin said. Ke Daiv remained silent, the tip of his lance blade poised near Anakin's neck. "I don't see anything… no landing field, nothing!"

"You have been here before?" Ke Daiv asked.

"Just a few days ago," Anakin said. "It was huge… it covered the peak of the mountain."

"And this is the only mountain," Ke Daiv mused. "You wouldn't trick me, Jedi?"

"No," Anakin said, frustrated. "I tried that… it didn't work."

Ke Daiv made a small clucking sound. "Circle again."

Jabitha spoke up. "Are we at the palace?" she asked. Anakin did not know how to answer.

"Come here and show us where to go," Ke Daiv ordered. She rose from the couch and stepped forward gingerly.

"I don't see it," she said tremulously. Then her eyes widened. "Wait-that's the Dragon Cave, full of steam right next to an underground glacier. . We used to hike there, years ago. But what's that? I've never seen that." She pointed to a long slope of talus, huge pieces of rock tumbled into temporary stasis on one side of the mountain, jumbled terrain dropping below the clouds. "That's new."

"You said you haven't been here in a year," Anakin said. "Not since the attack?"

Jabitha's face colored. "Father said never to discuss the attack with strangers."

Ke Daiv watched and listened with cautious interest.

"It looks like the mountain's been hit by laser cannon fire, or something even more powerful," Anakin observed, mindful that this was probably not what the girl would want to hear.

Ridiculous! Father told us the mountain was-"

She clamped her mouth shut and shook her head stubbornly. "I won't tell secrets."

"Too late now for secrets," Ke Daiv said. "Tell all." "I don't know what to say!"

"She doesn't know anything," Anakin said. "I was here just recently, and I saw a palace."

"It is still on the maps at Middle Distance," Ke Daiv said, by way of agreement.

"We must find fuel, whatever has happened." "We have to find the palace!" Jabitha insisted. "It's here. My father's here. They have to be!"

Anakin swung the ship up for a higher-altitude sweep. It was now that he spotted the blossoms of sky mines spreading out overhead. Ke Daiv saw them at the same time.

"Looks like they won't mind losing you," Anakin said tersely.

The Blood Carver stared through the port, his face unreadable, but the lance tip fell slightly. Anakin knew that now was the time to bring the ship down, release Jabitha, and take on Ke Daiv once again, all by himself.

The sky mines would provide the perfect excuse. They were designed to prevent ships from leaving a planet; they rarely if ever exploded on the surface.

"We have to land somewhere," Anakin said.

"Do it," Ke Daiv said.

Jabitha had crowded up beside Anakin to stare through the port. Suddenly she gave a sob. "There!" she cried.

They had come halfway around the peak of the mountain. Buried in a massive landslide from the higher elevations lay the ruins of a huge complex of buildings. The area had been altered so drastically, and the complex covered so completely, that they had missed it on their first circuit.

Anakin saw the spare edge of the old landing field, with its reddish black lava surface. "I'll put down there," he said.

"Where's Father?" Jabitha asked, her cheeks wet with tears.

The sky mines zigged and zagged in search of prey, their contrails catching the sunset light over the clouds like flaming letters in the sky. They numbered in the hundreds of thousands, tiny highly explosive oblate spheroids equipped with fierce tracking ability and split-second maneuverability. They were forcing Shappa to drop lower and lower.

"We won't be able to stay in the air for long," he said. "A few minutes at most, and then they'll find us."

Obi-Wan said nothing for a long moment. Following the sky mines would come hunter-killer starfighters, and the air over the clouds would be filled with swift destruction. The Sekotan ship was unarmed. They wouldn't stand a chance.

"Then take her down," he said.

"They've landed on the Magister's mountain. At least they will have some protection in the palace." Shappa glared at him, challenging Obi-Wan to contradict his beliefs, his hopes.

The Sekotan ship dropped through the cloud deck, and they were surrounded by a silvery gloom. Winds whipped them this way and that before Shappa brought his craft down on a scourged prairie of bare, blackened rock. All around, jagged outcrops of twisted stone showed that a fury of destructive energies had melted and rearranged the landscape, killing all life.

Shappa removed his hands from the controls and bustled around the rear of the cabin, making checks on the equipment installed there. He came forward and found Obi-Wan still in his seat, lost in intense thought.

"Look what they did," Shappa said softly, peering through Obi-Wan's port. "What did we ever do to deserve such destruction? How could the Potentium have allowed such evil?"