The Courtship Of Princess Leia Part 24

If he was drawing energy from other living things, sucking them as if he were some leech bleeding them dry, how could he really justify what he did?

And there was a further matter. In his battles with Darth Vader and the Emperor, Luke felt he had never truly tested his powers to the limits.

Vader had sought only to turn him, had kept Luke alive. Yet Luke had no illusions that Gethzerion would be so lenient.

"What's going on here, Ben?" Luke whispered, staring back into the deep green jungle. The dying sunlight flashed on the leaves. "Is this some kind of test, or what? Are you trying to find out if I'm ready to stand alone? Do you think I don't need your help? What's going on here?"

Yet Ben did not answer. An evening breeze rustled through the tops of the trees so that leaf shadows danced over the ground. Luke looked up at the setting sun, found himself surprised. The forest carried the scent of leaf mold and some type of fruit in the upper branches of the trees. The evening was warm and perfect, the sun s.h.i.+ning on him. Overhead, oblivious to the Nightsisters or Zsinj, lizards jumped among the upper foliage of the forest. In spite of everything, Luke realized, Dathomir really was a beautiful world. If the map in Augwynne's war room was correct, humans seemed to have explored perhaps only one-hundredth of the livable surface of the planet. And for most of the creatures here, and on millions of planets elsewhere in the galaxy, Gethzerion's schemes mattered less than the scattering of a handful of sand in the desert.

As Luke wandered into the forest, Isolder sat and listened to Han talking to his droid. Leia soon fell asleep, but Isolder woke a bit later, noticed Teneniel sitting by the fire, outside the circle of light, watching the stars. He went and sat by her.

"Sometimes at night when I'm out in the desert," Teneniel said softly, "and there are no clouds, no trees to obstruct my view, I lie awake at night and look at the stars, wondering who lives there, what the people are like."

Isolder studied the points of light above them. In his pirating days he had worked this part of the galaxy, and he had a gift for astrogation. By noting a couple of major stars, he was able to picture where he was in s.p.a.ce. "I've often done the same," he said. "Except that between my history books and lessons in diplomacy and a little travel, I've learned a great deal. Pick a star," he waved at the stars. "I'll tell you about it."

"That one," Teneniel said, pointing at the brightest one on the horizon.

"That's not a star," Isolder said. "That's just a planet."

"I know," Teneniel smiled at him, "but I had to test you. All right, there are six stars up there right next to each other that form a circle," she said, pointing directly above them. "The brightest one is blue. Tell me about it."

Isolder studied the star a moment. "That's the Cedre system, and it's only about three light-years from here. There is no life around that star, for it's too young, too hot. Pick another star?a yellow one, or an orange."

"What about the dim star to its left? That one?"

Isolder considered. "That one is really two stars, a double system called Fere, or Feree, and it's pretty far away. Two hundred years ago, the people there had a very great culture, and they built some of the better stars.h.i.+ps in the galaxy?small luxury cruisers. I have an uncle who collects antique stars.h.i.+ps, and he has a restored Fere."

"Don't they build s.h.i.+ps anymore?"

"No, during some wars a lot of people were moving around, checking out new worlds to hide on. Someone accidentally carried a plague to Fere and wiped out the planet. Still, if you had a powerful enough telescope, you could view the people there as they once were. The Fere were very tall, with soft skin a rich ivory, and six delicate fingers on each hand."

"How could I see them, if they are all dead?" Teneniel asked, disbelieving.

"Because with a telescope, you would be seeing light that reflected off their world hundreds of years ago. Since the light is just reaching us, you would be looking into their past."

"Oh," Teneniel said. "Do you have such a telescope?"

"No," Isolder laughed. "We don't make them that well."

"What about the dim star beneath it?" Teneniel asked.

"That's Orelon, and I know that star very well," Isolder said. "It's big, and it's bright, and from here it is the only visible star from my home cl.u.s.ter, Hapes. There are really sixty-three stars very close to each other in that cl.u.s.ter, and my mother rules over them."

Teneniel remained quiet for a long time, thoughtful. "Your mother rules sixty-three stars?" she asked, her voice shaking.

"Yes," Isolder said.

"Does she have soldiers? Warriors and stars.h.i.+ps?"

"Billions of warriors, thousands of stars.h.i.+ps," Isolder said. She drew a deep breath, and Isolder realized that his answer must have frightened her.

"Why did you never tell me this?" she asked. "I did not know I had captured the son of such a powerful woman."

"I told you that my mother was a queen, and you knew that when I chose a wife, she would be queen."

"But?I thought she was the queen of a clan village," Teneniel gasped. She lay back on the gra.s.s and held her hands up to her head for a moment, as if dizzy. Isolder decided to give her time, let her become accustomed to life on his grand terms. "So," Teneniel said thoughtfully, "when you leave Dathomir, if I look up at that star, I will know where you are?"

"Yes," Isolder said.

"And when you are on your home world, will you ever look up in the sky at night and see my sun, and think about me?" Her voice was choked, desolate.

"From Hapes, we cannot see your sun. It's too dim. Hapes has seven moons, and they drown out the light from stars this dim," Isolder said, wondering at her tone of voice.

He turned to the side, studied Teneniel's face in the starlight. As with most Hapans, his night vision was poor; the light of seven moons and a brilliant sun made night vision unnecessary, so over the millennia his people had gradually lost the ability to see well in the dark. Still, he could make out her silhouette, the tight lines of her face, the curve of her breast. "I don't understand you," Isolder said. "What do you think I am to you? You say that I am your slave. You say that your people kidnap men to be husbands, and the fact that you own me gives you some kind of status in your clan, if I understand correctly."

"I would never force you to do anything against your will," Teneniel said. "I .

. . I couldn't. As I have said, if some other woman captured you, perhaps you would not be so lucky." Isolder recalled Teneniel's enigmatic smile as she had first approached him, shyly walking around him, singing softly, yet watching him intently, copper eyes never flicking away. He had smiled in return, thinking only to be cordial, and then as he reached out to take the cord she offered, it had entangled him. Now he understood. She had given him every opportunity to escape, and he had let her catch him.

As far as mating rituals went, this one was not particularly complex, but the players on both sides had to understand the rules.

"I see," Isolder sighed. "What if you and I did not like each other? What if the marriage didn't work? Then what would you do?"

"Then I could sell you. If you preferred another woman, then an honorable master would try to sell you to her, setting whatever price seemed reasonable given the purchaser's wealth and circ.u.mstances. Or, if there was no one you liked in our clan, you could arrange to be captured by someone outside the clan?or you could run away up into the mountains, to let me know you were not satisfied, and if I thought it could still work out, I would hunt you down again. There are many things you could do."

Isolder considered. Though it sounded barbaric on the surface, the witches' way of mating sounded no less onerous than most other systems.

As on his own world, the women dominated, but the men here had recourse.

He tried to imagine this world as it had been for thousands of years?small human bands battling the rancors without weapons. Given such an alternative, marrying a witch, gaining her protection even if only to become a slave, would have been a great boon.

And now Teneniel was giving him his freedom. She would let him run away, try to make it off this planet, and she wanted only one thing in return: to be remembered, to be thought of fondly.

Given the grasping nature of his aunts, the avarice of his mother, he wondered how many women on his own world would have been so generous, so understanding. She had a beauty to her that he had seldom seen matched.

Isolder got up on his elbows, crouched over Teneniel, and kissed her softly on the cheek, knowing that he was kissing her good-bye. He found that her face was wet. She'd been crying. "If I ever make it back to Hapes," he said, "I'll remember you. I know where you are, and sometimes I will look toward Dathomir, and I'll wonder if you are looking across the heavens at me."

An hour later, Luke woke the others, and they mounted the rancors and rode hard, driving the rancors mercilessly through the forests, over mountains and through deep canyons. Late in the night, they halted again deep in the woods just fourteen kilometers from Singing Mountain. The rancors were too exhausted to move any farther. Luke could feel a sense of urgency, wanted to hurry, but the rancors were too tired and the whole camp was exhausted.

"We'll rest here for a bit," Luke said, and as one the group sloughed off their mounts, and lay on the ground with blankets. Both of the droids had already powered down for the night.

Luke ate some meager rations in near silence without a fire, and the rancors stood heaving from exhaustion in the shadows, sleepy-eyed. They weren't recovering well from their exertions, so Teneniel filled a water skin, and as the others in the party slept, the monsters bowed down to her and let her sponge their faces with a wet rag. Luke wondered at their behavior, then realized that since the rancors had no sweat glands, the rigors of the trip left them suffering from the heat. He went to Teneniel.

"Here," he said. "Use the Force to help them. It can cool their bodies."

He touched the first rancor, let the Force wash over the creature. It sighed contentedly, touched him with a great muddy claw, as if to pet him.

Teneniel shook her head in frustration. "I still don't see how you do it," she said. "It seems to me that it would be so much easier with a spell."

"If saying some words helps you concentrate," Luke said, "then I don't see that it would do any harm. But the Force cannot be bound by words, encapsulated in words."

"I'm sorry?for what I did back at the prison," Teneniel said. "I almost killed them. I . . . suddenly, when I was angry, it seemed that nothing you had said made sense. I only wanted to kill them, put an end to their evil, yet your rules prevented me."

"They wanted you to try to kill them. They wanted you to give in to hate."

"I know," Teneniel said, "but in that moment, I couldn't see how the light side of the Force was stronger than the dark."

"I've never said it was stronger," Luke answered. "If it is power that you want, it may be that both sides serve equally well. But look at the Nightsisters?look at what the dark side offers: fear instead of love, aggression instead of peace, dominion in place of service, and instead of contentment, consuming appet.i.te.

"If you crave easy power, then the dark side of the Force offers what you desire?at the expense of all else that you value."

Luke touched each of the rancors in turn, cooling them. Teneniel put her arms around Luke's chest, hugged him from behind, her cheek nuzzling his shoulder.

"And what if I crave love more than anything else?" Teneniel asked. "Will the light side of the Force lead me to it?"

It was hard not to understand her question, but Luke was tempted to feign confusion. Luke found her attractive, but to profess love . . . would be misleading. "I don't know," Luke said honestly. "I believe it could."

"Before you came," Teneniel said, "I saw you and Isolder in a vision. I'd been lonely for so long, living in the wilderness, and I only wanted to find a husband, rejoin my clan. For many days I worked at casting the seer's spells, and then I saw you in my dreams. I think perhaps you are my destiny."

Luke took her clasped hands in his, held them. "I don't believe in destiny. I think we forge our own path in life through the choices we make. Look, I have something I have to say, but I haven't said it because I don't want to hurt you: I feel like we hardly know each other. I think, that we need to just calm down."

"You mean I need to calm down," Teneniel whispered. "Among my people we choose our husbands quickly, often in the flas.h.i.+ng of an eye. When I saw you, I knew in a moment that I wanted you. I haven't changed my mind. But you act as if love must come tentatively."

"I'm not sure it comes tentatively," Luke said. "It's just that sometimes it grows, but usually it dies a quick death."

"So?" Teneniel said. "If our love dies a quick death, what have we lost?"

"I can't do that," Luke answered. "Love is more than a mere curiosity or a momentary excitement. I don't think that two people can know it's real until they've spent time together, until they have a history together.

But I have a duty to fulfill. I'm going to finish my Jedi training, and after I leave this planet, the truth is that I'll probably never see you again. You and I won't ever have much of a history."

Luke wanted to say more, wanted to tell her that someday he hoped to meet a girl like her, but over in the deeper shadows under the trees, Han stirred in his sleep, raised a hand in the air, and said loudly, "No!

No!" Then he pulled a hide to cover his head and rolled over.

Luke thought it strange. He'd never seen Han talk in his sleep before.

Then Luke felt it, a disturbance in the Force, as if something invisible had moved under the canopy of the trees with them. He could feel it floating nearby, and wondered if some kind of animal lurked in the shadows. He turned to look up, and a pressure encircled his head, as if a dark helmet had been placed upon it. A chill ran down his spine, and he fought to remain calm, invisible. He recognized that it was some sort of probe.

"What's going on? What is it?" Teneniel asked, and Luke waved his hand, gestured for her to remain silent. He held still for several minutes, fighting for control, drawing upon the Force. Then the feeling faded.

Teneniel gasped, as if she'd suddenly been struck by cold water. She tried to cover her head with her hands, then looked up at the night sky and laughed. "Gethzerion, you'll never learn anything of value from me!"

Gethzerion's brittle voice rang through Luke's ears, filling the woods, coming from everywhere and nowhere. "But I already have," Gethzerion said. "I've learned that Han Solo is alive, and that he dreams with hope of repairing his s.h.i.+p. I must confess, I am glad he was able to salvage his precious generators. Believe me, I want as much as you do for him to get that s.h.i.+p running smoothly."

Luke reached out with the Force, tried to touch Gethzerion's mind. He saw a brief image of Imperial walkers marching in the darkness, and then Gethzerion recoiled, hiding herself.

"Get the saddles back on the rancors," Luke said, feeling grateful that he had been able to heal the beasts of their discomfort, even if only for a few moments. "We've got to leave now. Gethzerion has been marching her troops through the night so that she can attack your clan at dawn."

Chapter 22.

The group hurried to mount their rancors for one last ride. Something subtle had changed during the night. Teneniel and Isolder rode together, as did Han and Leia. Luke rode with Artoo, and realized that his talk with Teneniel had sobered the woman somewhat. She'd given up on him, and in a sense, he felt relieved.

As the rancors raced toward the clan stronghold at Singing Mountain, plunging through the jungle at breakneck speed, their macabre chain mail rattled and clacked, making the only sound to disturb the night. No reptiles leaped through the branches or croaked in dismay at the sound of their approach. No birds flapped from their limbs. Instead, it seemed almost as if the animals of the jungle had died, dropping silently from the vines, they were so quiet.

They ran the rancors for another hour, climbed over a chain of hills, and stopped, gasping, to look into the bowl-shaped valley where Singing Mountain lay five kilometers off. Overhead the sky was a dull red, firelight reflecting from smoke-filled skies. The Nightsisters had set fire to the jungle on the surrounding hills, so that the mountain looked as if it sat in a tureen of smoldering embers. Very clearly, Luke heard Augwynne's voice call in his mind, "Luke, Teneniel, come quickly!"

And Luke shouted in return, "We're on our way!" He urged the rancors to run faster so that dirt flew up behind as their claws ripped the forest floor.

Luke could feel the darkness hurtling toward them. In the pit of his stomach, he could feel the wrongness, like a sickness. The air carried the scent of flames and soot. Ash and smoke drifted in the copper-colored sky. Luke regretted that he had to lead the group in a huge semicircle, come at the mountain from its northern rim. A terrible sense of urgency drove him, but he could not take them to the more a.s.sailable south side of the mountain where the Nightsisters would be gathering for their attack.

The rancors circled to the cliffs at the north slope of the mountain, and Luke could feel the presence of Nightsisters nearby. He raised his hand, silently ordered the rancors to halt, and looked up the sheer face of the rock cliffs, wreathed in smoke. Firelight reflected on the rock, lighting all but the deepest crevices.

Luke gazed steadfastly at the cliff. They couldn't go up there without exposing themselves to attack.

The brown smoke hung ominously above like a pall to cover the world, yet it was utterly motionless. Somehow, the Nightsisters were manipulating the smoke, using the Force to wield it like a hammer. The air felt charged with static electricity.

Luke said, "Artoo, do a sensor scan, tell me if you pick up any electronics." Artoo raised his antenna dish, let it rotate.

"Master Luke," Threepio commented, "the air is very highly charged, and the ionization is wreaking havoc with my circuitry. I doubt that Artoo will be able to pick up much. This is no weather for a droid."

"This is no weather for anyone," Luke said, sniffing the air. The clouds were not the gray of storm clouds filled with heavy rain or the white of billowing clouds that promise summer sprinkles. These were dense clouds of dirt and soot rather than of water. He looked up, and suddenly the clouds above the valley swirled, as if a hand had waved above a cooking fire. Gethzerion's face filled the sky, a face made of reddened smoke that frowned down upon them, eyes twitching. Then the face dissolved, but Luke was left with the uncanny feeling that Gethzerion was still up there, hidden behind the clouds, watching them. The rancors snarled and backed away from the cliff.

"Don't worry," Teneniel soothed the group. "Gethzerion is only trying to frighten you."

"Yeah," Han said, "well, it's working."

Artoo rotated his antenna uncertainly, finally began shaking, pointing southeast. He squealed and gave an electronic blip.

"Artoo can read several Imperial walkers in that direction," Threepio said.

Luke glanced southeast, then looked back up at the mountain. The shadows in some of those crevices above them were dark enough that human eyes might not be able to see the rancors if they crept up through the deeper cracks. But Luke knew that the life-sensors on an Imperial walker would spot them in a second. He would need to take out those walkers so the others could climb the cliff, and he didn't have much time.

Luke reached down, patted his rancor. The beast was overheating again. He could feel its fatigue, its dizziness. He let the Force flow through him, cooled the rancors and took away their thirst, then spoke to them. "Tosh, have your best climbers get my friends up to the clan stronghold. I will stay down here with two of you to fight, and I will join the others as soon as I can."

Tosh began grumbling orders to her children, and the two smaller males took the generators from her pack. Tosh and her daughter unstrapped their pikes and nets from their backs as they prepared for battle.

"Han," Luke said, glancing over at Han and Leia on their rancor. "Get Leia and the droids up into the Falcon and start working on the s.h.i.+p." To emphasize his words, Luke raised his hand, and Artoo floated from Tosh's back over to sit between Han and Leia. "There's nothing you can do down here. Teneniel, they might need your help."

"What do you mean?" Han said. "I'm staying with you. I've still got my wits and my blaster."

"And they won't do you any good," Luke said.