She looked back down, to find that the three children had halted their game and formed a straight line in front of her. “Hello,” she said, trying a smile on them.
The child in the middle stepped forward and dropped to his knees in an awkward but passable imitation of his elders’ gesture of respect. “Male’ary’ush,” he mewed. “Miskh ‘hara isf chrak ‘mi ‘sokh. Mires kha.”
“I see,” Leia said, wishing fervently that she had Threepio with her. She was just wondering if she should risk calling him on the comlink when the child spoke again. “Hai ghreet yhou, Mal’ary’ush,” he said, the Basic words coming out mangled but understandable. “The maitrakh whaits for you bin the dukha.”
“Thank you,” Leia nodded gravely to him. Door wardens last night; official greeters this morning. Noghri children seemed to be introduced early into the rituals and responsibilities of their culture. “Please escort me to her.”
The child made the respect gesture again and got back to his feet, heading off toward the large circular structure that Khabarakh had landed next to the night before. Leia followed, the other two children taking up positions to either side of her. She found herself throwing short glances at them as they walked, wondering at the light color of their skin. Khabarakh’s skin was a steel gray; the maitrakh’s had been much darker. Did the Noghri consist of several distinct racial types? Or was the darkening a natural part of their aging process? She made a mental note to ask Khabarakh about it when she had a chance.
The dukha, seen now in full daylight, was far more elaborate than she’d realized. The pillars spaced every few meters around the wall seemed to be composed of whole sections of tree trunk, stripped of bark and smoothed to a black marble finish. The shimmery wood that made up the rest of the wall was covered to perhaps half its height with intricate carvings. As they got closer, she could see that the reinforcing metal band that encircled the building just beneath the eaves was also decorated leafily, the Noghri believed in combining function and art. The whole structure was perhaps twenty meters across and four meters high, with another three or four meters for the conical roof and she found herself wondering how many more pillars they’d had to put inside to support the thing.
Tall double doors had been built into the wall between two of the pillars, flanked at the moment by two straight-backed Noghri children. They pulled open the doors as Leia approached; nodding her thanks, she stepped inside.
The interior of the dukha was no less impressive than its exterior. It was a single open room, with a thronelike chair two-thirds of the way to the back, a small booth with an angled roof and a dark-meshed window built against the wall between two of the pillars to the right, and a wall chart of some sort directly across from it on the left. There were no internal support pillars; instead, a series of heavy chains had been strung from the top of each of the wall pillars to the edge of a large concave dish hanging over the center of the room. From inside the dish-just inside its rim, Leia decided-hidden lights played upward against the ceiling, providing a softly diffuse illumination.
A few meters in front of the chart a group of perhaps twenty small children were sitting in a semicircle around Threepio, who was holding forth in their language with what was obviously some kind of story, complete with occasional sound effects. It brought to mind the condensed version of their struggle against the Empire that he’d given the Ewoks, and Leia hoped the droid would remember not to vilify Darth Vader here. Presumably he would; she’d drummed the point into him often enough during the voyage.
A small movement off to the left caught her eye: Chewbacca and Khabarakh were sitting facing each other on the other side of the door, engaged in some kind of quiet activity that seemed to involve hands and wrists. The Wookiee had paused and was looking questioningly in her direction. Leia nodded her assurance that she was all right, trying to read from his sense just what he and Khabarakh were doing. At least it didn’t seem to involve ripping the Noghri’s arms out of their sockets; that was something, anyway.
“Lady Vader,” a gravelly Noghri voice said. Leia turned back to see the maitrakh walking up to her. “I greet you. You slept well?”
“Quite well,” Leia told her. “Your hospitality has been most honorable.” She looked over at Threepio, wondering if she should call him back to his duties as translator.
The maitraich misunderstood. “It is the history time for the children,” she said. “Your machine graciously volunteered to tell to them the last story of our lord Darth Vader.”