"You still have honor," Anakin said. "You can still make up for what you did." But something else built inside, a shadow far thicker than the descending night. It could easily fill his being.

The Blood Carver had hurt Obi-Wan, threatened Jabitha, called Anakin a slave. For these things there was no possible redemption. The banked anger threatened to spill over, unconverted, pure and very raw, hot as a sun's core. Anakin's fingers curled tighter.

"My benefactor cursed me," Ke Daiv said.

Let it be done now. Anakin had made his decision, or it had been made for him. No matter.

Anakin let the fingers go straight.

Ke Daiv closed on the boy, swinging his lance. "Stop that," Anakin said coldly.

"What will you do, slave boy?"

It was the connection Anakin had sought, the link between his anger and his power. Like a switch being thrown, a circuit being connected, he returned full circle to the pit race, to the sting he had felt with the Blood Carver's first insult, with the first unfair and sneaky move that had sent Anakin tumbling off the apron. Then, back farther, to the dingy slave quarters on Tatooine, to the Boonta Eve Podrace and the treachery of the Dug, and to the last sight of Shmi, still in bondage to the disgusting Watto, to all the insults and injuries and shames and night sweats and disgrace piled upon disgrace that he had never asked for, never deserved, and had borne with almost infinite patience.

Call it instinct, animal nature, call it the upwelling of hatred and the dark side-in Anakin Skywalker, all this lay just beneath the surface, at the end of its journey out of a long, deep cave leading down to unimaginable strength.

"No! Stop it, please!" Anakin yelled. "Help me stop it!" The rumbling of his ascending power drowned out this plea for his master to come and prevent a hideous mistake. I am so afraid, so full of hate and anger. I still don't know how to fight.

Jabitha appeared in the doorway, eyes wide, watching the boy crouched low before the Blood Carver. Ke Daiv lifted his lance. What would have once seemed quick as lightning was now, in the eyes of the young Padawan, a slow, curiously protracted swing.

Anakin raised his hands in the twin and supremely graceful gestures of Jedi compulsion. Pure willful self flooded his tissues. The urge to protect and to destroy became one. He straightened and seemed to grow taller. His eyes became black as pitch.

"Stop it, please!" Anakin shouted. "I can't hold it back any longer!"

They have many more ships than we suspected," Tarkin observed. He looked down in wonder at the battle unfolding on the planet below. Sweat appeared on his brow. Sienar, re signed to whatever might happen, took some comfort in Tar- kin's concern.

Magnified scenes of conflict spaced themselves around the command bridge of the Rim Merchant Einem. The sky mines themselves were sending signals back to their delivery ships, and the ships forwarded them to the command center.

Droid starfighters engaged countless ships rising from opening hangars in the jungle, swarms of ships like green and red insects. These defenders seemed lightly armed but highly maneuverable. Their principal tactic was to catch up with the starfighters, grasp them in tractor fields, and drag them down to impact in the jungle below. Tarkin was losing a great many starfighters this way.

"They will not escape the sky mines," he said. Indeed, many mines were finding their targets, destroying the red and green defenders before they could fly far from their concealed bases.

But Sienar saw something else was happening. It was subtle at first. The rectangular bulges in the jungle they had noticed earlier now cast long shadows as the terminator between night and day approached. Natural enough, but the shadows were lengthening faster than the lowering angle of sunlight would explain. The rectangles were rising.

Sienar estimated the tallest of them stood more than two kilometers above the jungle.

They reminded him of trapdoors slowly opening.

But he said nothing to Tarkin. This was no longer Raith Sienar's fight.

Tarkin murmured under his breath and moved his viewpoint farther south. Thousands of projected images flashed before him like revealed cards. "There," Tarkin said, a note of triumph in his voice. "There's our prize, Raith."

Parked on the extreme edge of a talus-covered field on the only mountain to rise above the southern cloud deck was a Sekotan ship. No figures were visible in its proximity. It seemed to have been abandoned.

Raith leaned forward to see the ship in more detail. It was larger than any he had heard of and different in design, as well. The very sight of it made his mouth water. "Are you going to destroy it?" he asked Tarkin bitterly. "To complete my disgrace?"

Tarkin shook his head, saddened by Sienar's mistrust. To the captain he said, "Direct sky mines away from the mountain. And let's take care of that pesty YT-1150. Put all the mines in that sector on its track." He faced Sienar with the expression of a beast of prey about to pounce. "We're going to capture that ship and take it back to Coruscant. To be fair, I'll give you credit, Raith. Some credit."

The mines are dropping below the clouds," Shappa observed. "We won't be safe here much longer. But they seem to be abandoning the Magister's mountain."

Obi-Wan flexed his fingers and leaned forward in the seat. "Is Anakin still on the mountain?"

Shappa swallowed hard and nodded. "Your ship reports her passengers are outside, not visible. Her mind is young, Obi- Wan. She does not understand what is happening, and she misses contact with her pilot. But something else is causing alarm. I'm not sure what."

"The mines?"

Shappa shook his head. "I doubt it."

"If we are not safe here. ." Obi-Wan ventured.

"Then we should attempt a rescue," Shappa concluded. "The Magister's daughter was on that ship."

Shappa raised his vessel from the dark and desolate rocky prairie and quickly ascended through the clouds. "Our sensors will warn us of immediate mines, but these ships are not designed to be weapons of war, or to understand defensive maneuvers. I will do my best."

Obi-Wan nodded, still flexing his fingers. He knew that Anakin was alive, but he also knew that something significant had happened, a minor unknotting in the boy's pathway. He could not tell if the outcome was positive or negative.

To bring back a spiritually damaged boy of Anakin's abilities might be worse than finding him dead. It seemed cruel, but Obi-Wan knew it was a simple truth. Qui-Gon would have agreed.