The Courtship Of Princess Leia Part 13

Perhaps there had never been a Jedi academy, he thought. Certainly, Ta'a Chume had lied to him about an academy on one of her worlds. He sensed that.

Perhaps the Force directed acolytes to their Masters when they were needed. Perhaps the only true training of any worth that a Jedi could receive came only as he or she battled against darkness.

If this were true, certainly Dathomir would be the perfect academy. Luke could feel tremendous disturbances in the Force?yawning pits of darkness.

He'd never run across anything remotely like it. Yoda's cave had held such a darkness, but here?he felt it all around him.

Ahead of them, reptilian avians croaked and flapped into the sky on leather wings. Luke stopped, realized that he had just come to the end of a peninsula that jutted into the river. He could go no farther, and the brackish water here bubbled. A tar pit. He cast his eyes about for a place to step.

Isolder said, "What's that?"

Luke looked up. Jutting above the fog in the river sat a huge metal platform, leaning at an odd angle. The flocks of avians flew around the platform nervously. The rising sun cast golden rays on the rusted metal, turning it bronze, and beyond the platform was an enormous exhaust nacelle, rotted through so that Luke could see parts of the heavy turbo generators still intact.

"It looks like an old s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p crashed here," Luke said, realizing after he did so that the wreck was far larger than even one of the old Victory-cla.s.s destroyers. Yet it must have lain here for hundreds of years.

A small wind blew over the river, stirring the fog, and Luke glimpsed a dome out beyond the exhaust nacelle, the transparisteel still intact.

He started to turn to leave when the name on the rusted exhaust nacelle caught his eye: Chu'unthor.

His mind did a little flip. It was not a race of people that Yoda had tried to free from the planet hundreds of years ago, but the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p.

And in all that time, no one had ever gotten it off the planet.

"We've got to get out there," Luke said, his voice husky with excitement.

"What for?" Isolder asked. "It's just an old wreck."

Luke cast about through the fog, looking for a way to the s.h.i.+p. They walked back up the peninsula, circled through the mire for nearly a kilometer until they found two ancient wooden rafts made of logs tied together with rotting hide. They looked like something children played with. There were fresh marks on the bank where the rafts had been tied up.

"Someone was here recently," Isolder pointed out.

"Yeah," Luke said, "well, who could pa.s.s up the chance to look at a really neat wreck?"

"I could," Isolder said. "We don't really need to go out there, do we? I mean, we came here to rescue Leia."

Artoo whistled his agreement, issuing a bunch of clicks and beeps to remind Luke that every time the droid gets near water, there's a monster in it.

Isolder looked off toward the mountains, and Luke could see that the prince really didn't want to delay his trip. Yet the promptings of the Force had led Luke to the place, just as he allowed it to lead him in battle. He knew only too well that he must trust his feelings. Now his feelings told him to get out to that wreck. "It will only take a few minutes," Luke said, hopping onto one of the rafts. "Who's coming with me?"

"I'll wait here," Isolder said, and Artoo's eye swiveled around to look at the prince. The droid was shaking scared, but made a grinding noise at Isolder and rolled onto the raft.

Luke poled the raft out to the wreck. Huge brown fish lazily sunned themselves in the still water. The morning sun had begun burning the fog away, and as he got closer, Luke could see most of the s.h.i.+p?colonies of living domes, the engineering section. The hull around the hyperdrive engines had rusted through. The s.h.i.+p looked to be two kilometers long, a kilometer wide, and eight levels high. The s.p.a.ce between the windows to the living quarters showed that the Chu'unthor had been heavily inhabited, almost a floating city, perhaps some sort of pleasure craft.

It was definitely made to house people. By the tilt of the s.h.i.+p, most of it seemed to be well sunk under the tar pits, with only the upper decks showing, and they were pretty badly rusted.

Yet this was no ordinary wreck?there were no blast marks to show signs of battle, no gaping holes to show an explosion, no crumpled structure to indicate a violent landing. Rather, it seemed that the s.h.i.+p must have developed a technical problem, floated down peacefully, then tried to land in the tar pits.

As he got closer, Luke saw that the s.h.i.+p had been sealed tight. Entryways weren't just closed?they had been welded shut, and many of the transparisteel bubbles on the domes bore heavy scuff marks, as if something had tried to batter its way through the transparent material.

The s.h.i.+p was tilted at an angle, so Luke poled the raft around to the front, which had sunk deepest into the mire, then climbed up onto the wreck. Someone had indeed tried to break into the s.h.i.+p. Luke found many more scuff marks on the domes, bent pieces of crude iron that someone had used to try to pry open the welded doors, along with shattered pieces of giant clubs and broken boulders. Writing had been painted here or there in some strange tongue, and arrows pointed to the weaker welds. Someone had worked for years at breaking into the s.h.i.+p, had made it a great study, but their tools were ineffective.

Kids, Luke thought, but no child could have wielded those giant clubs.

Some of the domes had access sockets that Artoo could have plugged into and opened, but the sockets were far too rusted. Anyway, the whole s.h.i.+p looked as if it had rotted inside too. The transparisteel was pitted by blowing sand, almost fogged. Many of the domes seemed to contain training rooms for gymnastics of some kind?huge b.a.l.l.s littered the floors, as if someone had been playing a game when the Chu'unthor fell. Another dome had been a restaurant or night club. Beverage gla.s.ses and uneaten meals sat on rusted tables, covered with dust. Artoo wheeled along behind, working hard to negotiate the angle, whistling softly and studying all the damage.

"It looks like whoever was on this s.h.i.+p got out fast once they landed, and they never came back," Luke told Artoo.

The droid issued some beeps and clicks, reminding Luke of Yoda's message: "Repulsed by the witches." Luke could feel the disturbances in the Force here, like dark cyclones sucking in all light.

"Yeah," Luke said. "Whatever Yoda encountered on this planet, it's still here."

Artoo groaned.

Luke stopped, looked in at one bubble. Workbenches stood at the center, and several benches held rusted mechanical parts?corroded power cells, focusing crystals, handles for lightsabers?tools to make weapons that only a Jedi could use.

Luke's heart pounded. A Jedi academy, he realized, and everything suddenly made sense. I searched forty planets and never found a sign of an academy, because the Jedi academy was in the stars. Of course they needed a s.p.a.ceborne academy. With so few people strong enough to master the Force, the ancient Jedi would have needed to scour the galaxy hunting for recruits. In each star cl.u.s.ter they might have found only one or two cadets worthy to join.

He pulled out his lightsaber, flipped it on, and began cutting through the transparisteel, feeling desperate. This old wreck, as rusted as it was, couldn't possibly hold anything of worth. But he had to look. Blue gouts of molten transparisteel bounced off the deck of the Chu'unthor, and Artoo wheeled back a pace.

Luke was so involved in trying to break into the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p, that he almost did not feel her presence, but suddenly there was a power behind him, rus.h.i.+ng toward him. He turned just in time to see a woman?long reddish brown hair flas.h.i.+ng, tawny hides from some alien creature, strong bare legs. She spun and kicked at him with a leather boot, and Luke felt the force of her intent, ducked, swung with his lightsaber.

He felt a ripple in the Force signifying an attack, but before he could respond the girl swung a club, smas.h.i.+ng his artificial hand hard enough so that circuits shorted and the lightsaber spun away. She kicked at his belly and Luke dropped and rolled, used the Force to call his lightsaber back to his left hand.

The girl stopped, and her mouth dropped in astonishment as she saw what he had done. Luke could feel her Force?powerful, wild, like that of no other woman he had ever met. Her brown eyes were flecked with orange, and she crouched on the hull of the Chu'unthor, panting, considering. She could not have been more than eighteen years old, perhaps twenty.

"I won't hurt you," Luke said.

The girl half-closed her eyes, whispered some words, and Luke felt a touch, a probing finger of Force that rippled through him. "How can you work the magic, being only a man?" the girl said.

"The Force is in us all," Luke said, "but only those who are trained can become its Masters."

The girl studied him skeptically. "You claim to master the magic?"

"Yes," Luke said.

"Then you are a male witch, a Jai, from beyond the stars?"

Luke nodded.

"I have heard of the Jai," the girl said. "Grandmother Rell says that they are unbeatable warriors, for they battle death. And since they battle for life, nature cherishes them, and they cannot die. Are you an unbeatable warrior?" The Force of the girl rippled, almost as if she would attack, but Luke felt a difference?the rippling was almost like a blanket, smothering him, binding him, and as Luke tried to imagine what it foreboded, an image came to mind.

He saw the girl hunting in the desert, searching desperately for something that others guarded, protected. He saw a hut made of twigs beneath the shelter of a red rock ledge, an evening campfire twisting in the wind, half-naked children playing beside the fire. And the girl was searching, creeping toward the hut, hungering for something within.

The girl smiled at him and began chanting, and the look in her eyes shocked him. He had never seen such fierce l.u.s.t. "Waytha am quetha way.

Waytha ara quetha way . . ."

"Wait a minute!" Luke said. "You can't be thinking?" Broken bits of stones and clubs began rolling over the surface of the Chu'unthor, rumbling like an approaching storm. Behind the girl, the fog over the river swirled violently. We were repulsed by the witches.

"Waytha ara quetha way. Waytha ara quetha way!" Lightning crackled overhead and a dozen small boulders blasted toward Luke, hurtling through the air. Vader had tried similar tricks, but Luke reflected woefully that Vader hadn't been nearly as good at it. He swung wildly with his lightsaber, bursting several pieces of rock, but one caught him in the chest, throwing him backward a pace. Repulsed by the witches.

"Wait!" Luke shouted. "You can't just take men as slaves and mate with them any time you please!" Boulders thundered across the hull of the s.h.i.+p, hundreds of them, lunging toward Luke like a herd of living animals, and he realized that this woman could do just about anything she wanted. He raised an arm desperately, trying to turn the rocks aside with the Force, but his mind was a roiling sea and he could not gain his focus. Repulsed by the witches.

A log whirled toward him, spinning, and he ducked, stones leaped at him in such numbers he could hardly see them whiz past, and suddenly she was before him, whirling and swinging a club. He hadn't even felt her move toward him, yet her club smacked his skull, lights flashed in his head, and he reeled to the ground.

Groggily, he heard the girl yelling at him, realized that she straddled his chest, locking his arms with her strong legs, but Luke was too weak to fight her off. She held his jaw and shouted triumphantly, "I am Teneniel Djo, a daughter of Allya, and you are my slave!"

In the early morning Han struggled up the treacherous flight of steps carved into the sheer mountain cliff. As on most low-gravity planets, the volcanic mountains rose tall and sheer, and they were walking along a cliff face two hundred meters above solid black rock. The stone steps were wide enough even for a rancor, and thousands of feet had worn them smooth. During the night, cold water dripping from the mountaintop had deposited a thin crust of ice over the steps, making them treacherous.

Behind Han, the rancors snarled and paced slowly, grabbing at the bare rock cliffs for support, terrified of falling but driven mercilessly by their riders. Chewbacca didn't look good. He held his ribs and moaned softly as the rancor carried him along.

In the clear morning light, Han could see the three women clearly now.

Under their robes, they wore tunics made from colorful reptile skins.

Each hide tunic flashed in colors of green or smoke blue or yellow ocher.

Over these, they wore thick robes woven of fiber, intricately trimmed with yellow plant fibers or large dark beads made from seedpods. Yet their most ornate decorations were the helms. What he had first thought were antlers in the darkness, he saw now were merely headdresses of blackened metal, curving up like some odd insect wing. Drilled into the helms were holes. A child's playground of ornaments dangled in each hole, swaying with each step the rancors took. For ornaments he saw what looked like pieces of agate and polished blue azurite, the painted skulls of small carnivorous reptiles, a small petrified fist from some creature, bits of colored fabric, gla.s.s beads, a piece of beaten silver, a bluish-white orb that might have been a dried eye. None of the women wore the same style of helm, and Han knew enough about various cultures to be wary. In any given society, the most powerful members tended to dress the most elaborately.

Han kept hold of Leia and Threepio, concerned that if one of them fell, they might all tumble from the cliff. His breath came ragged, steam puffing from his mouth. They turned one last treacherous corner and looked down into an oval-shaped valley hidden in the folds of mountain cliffs. Stick shacks with thatch roofs dotted the valley, and checkerboard squares of green and tan showed growing crops. Men, women, and children worked the fields, fed huge four-legged reptiles in their pens. A large stream ran through the fields to a small lake, then tumbled over a cliff into the wilds below.

They descended the stairs, pa.s.sing a phalanx of ten women, all mounted on rancors. The women were all dressed in similar styles?in rough lizard leather with robes suitable for the cold mountains, helms with antlers.

Most of the women had blaster rifles, though others were armed only with spears or throwing axes tucked into their belts. None of them seemed to be younger than twenty-five, and somehow the dirty faces of the women chilled Han more than the mountain air. They did not smile, did not show grief or worry. Instead, they were cold, brutally impa.s.sive, like the faces of sh.e.l.l-shocked warriors.

Above the narrow valley, carved into the basalt, were fortifications?turrets and parapets and windows. The women had placed slabs of plasteel from the hulls of broken s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps over the rock like a mosaic. A couple of odd blaster cannons pointed out from the mountain stronghold. Black scorch marks and pits in the rock showed that these women were indeed at war. But with whom?

The group reached a landing of stone, and on orders from one of the women, one rancor gingerly carried Chewbacca, leading Leia up toward the fortress, while other rancors marched Han and Threepio down into the valley on a muddy trail, past pens filled with herds of giant dirty reptiles that sat quietly munching fodder, sullenly staring at Han.

They came to a circle of huts made of twigs and mud, and at the opening of each hut was a tall stone urn that Han guessed held water. Through open doors he could see colorful red blankets hanging on the walls, baskets of nuts on small wood tables, various wood hay hooks.

His guard led him to the back of the huts, where he found dozens of men and young women and children. In a sandy lot filled with weeds the villagers had dug holes and filled them with water from buckets, making small puddles. Each adult sat gazing intently into the puddle while children stood quietly outside the circle, watching.

The rancor stopped, and the warrior astride it reached down and tapped Han on the shoulder with her spear, pointed at the puddles. '"Whuffa,"

she said. "Whuffa!" indicating that he should go look into a puddle.

"Do you have any idea what they want?" Han asked Threepio.

"I'm afraid not," Threepio said. "Their language is not in my catalog.

Some terms of their dialogue may be ancient Paecian, but I've never heard the term whuffa."

Paecian? Han wondered. The Paecian empire had foundered three thousand years back. Han went to one old gray-beard, looked at his mud puddle. The puddle was small, perhaps half a meter around and only a finger deep.

The man sneered up at Han, growled, "Whuffa!" He handed Han a copper blade, indicating that Han should use it to dig, and gave Han a bucket of water, pointed toward a free s.p.a.ce in the field.

"Whuffa, right. I've got it," Han said, and he took the items to the clear spot, away from the others, and sc.r.a.ped out a small hole, poured in the water. It smelled terrible, and Han suddenly realized it wasn't water at all, but some form of crude fermented beverage. Great, he thought.

I've been captured by weirdos who want me to stare into a puddle until I have a vision.

He looked at his reflection in the puddle a moment, realized his hair was mussed up, and used his fingers to comb it. The warriors did not seem to know what to do with Threepio; they left him on the sidelines with the children, who gawked at the droid curiously, but not wors.h.i.+pfully. Up at the fortress, Leia had already gone into the shadows of an open doorway.

Distantly, Han heard a TIE fighter screaming through the atmosphere, and the women on rancors searched the sky nervously, hands shadowing their eyes.

It seemed a good sign. If these women were having trouble with Zsinj, then at least Han was in the right camp. But considering the haphazard nature of the fortifications, maybe not. In any case, he didn't like the sound of being "judged." If these women were xenophobes, they might kill or enslave off-worlders out of fear. If they thought Han and Leia were spies, they could be in even bigger trouble. Then there was the fact that the women had automatically a.s.sumed that Han was Leia's slave. He glanced at the warriors on their rancors. The women watched him coldly. He decided to pretend to be hard at work.

For an hour he sat gazing into his puddle of fermented goo, the sun s.h.i.+ning on his back, until he realized he was getting mighty thirsty and wondered if it was permitted for him to drink some of the liquor himself.

Better not, he decided. It might not be allowed of slaves.

Leia hadn't come down from the fortress yet. Han watched a woman come out to a parapet a hundred meters above the valley floor. She was an old woman, wearing a leather hide for a cape, carrying a bucket. She stood gazing down a moment, then waved her hands in the air and spoke, but her words did not carry. After a moment, a crystal ball rose from the valley floor to meet her. She leaned out over the parapet, held the bucket under the ball, and the ball dropped, splas.h.i.+ng liquid over the rim of the bucket. The old woman carried the bucket back into the fortress, and Han sat astonished. It had not been a crystal ball floating in the air at all?but water. Yet it had not been a natural phenomenon. The ball of water had risen slowly.

Han heard a loud sucking sound, looked down at his puddle of liquor. Some form of large worm had risen to the hole and was drinking. Nearby, an old man whispered, "Whuffa!" and Han looked at the toothless geezer. He made grasping and pulling motions with his hands, telling Han to catch the thing.

Han looked at the worm. All he could see at the moment was a leathery, dark brown skin and a hole that it drank through. After a moment it oozed up a little, showed a head about the thickness of a child's arm. All around the crowd, everyone was watching him?children, adults, warriors on their rancors. All of them remaining absolutely silent, holding their breaths. Whatever a whuffa was, these people wanted one pretty badly.

There might even be a reward in it.

After a moment, the worm eeled up a bit more, began rolling in the mud, sniffing for more liquor. Still, it looked pretty big, and there wasn't much to grab on to. Han waited for three minutes, till the worm got up enough courage to ooze farther out of its hole, heading for the bucket of liquor. Han figured it couldn't hurt to let the thing get a little drunk, so he let the worm stick its orifice in, begin draining the bucket accompanied by slurping sounds. The worm had long segments to its skin, no eyes. Han reached down and grabbed it with both hands, afraid he might break it.

The worm jerked back so hard and so quickly it pulled Han to the ground, but he didn't let go. "You're mine!" Han shouted, and suddenly everyone rushed around him, waiting to help, children leaping in delight and crying, "Whuffa! Whuffa!"

The worm twisted in Han's grip, turned its orifice toward him and spat a pitcher of liquor into Han's face, then began wheezing and hissing.

Han held on tight. He could feel the worm tensing, using the friction of the ground to pull itself back, but after a couple of minutes the worm exhausted itself, and Han pulled it forward a meter. Still, there was more in the ground, so he grabbed another handful and pulled. Sweat was running down his face, down his hands, making his grip precarious, but after another three minutes he got another meter of the whuffa up. Behind him, other men had grabbed the thras.h.i.+ng head of the thing and held it.

Han worked for half an hour before he realized that this was going to be a long job?he had twenty meters of whuffa out of the ground, and the thing hadn't begun to taper down or anything. Yet now he was developing a system. When the whuffa fatigued, he pulled out as much as he could as fast as he could, tugging up two or three meters at a time before the whuffa could reestablish its grip.

An hour later, Han was reeling from fatigue when he yanked on some whuffa and found that, miraculously, it seemed, he had reached the end. The force of his tug knocked Han down. Every kid and man in the village had a hold on the whuffa, which had now gone quite limp down near its head. Han estimated that it must be two hundred and fifty meters long. With great fanfare, the villagers paraded the whuffa down to an orchard. Old men clapped Han on the back and whispered their thanks, and Han followed them.

The villagers began draping the whuffa in a bare tree, and Han saw other whuffas there, drying in the sunlight. He went over and touched one. It felt dead, almost rubbery, but the supple leather of its skin felt good in his hand, strong, even elegant. The chocolate color was nice, too. On a whim, he tried to see if he could tear it?but the stuff wouldn't snap, wouldn't even stretch. He looked over at the women on their rancors, saw that saddles on the rancors' necks were tied in place with whuffa hide.

Great! Han realized. So I caught a rope. But the villagers here seemed to think it was a big deal. They were all ecstatic. Who knew what kind of reward they might give him? If they executed offworlders, maybe being Han Solo, the heroic Whuffa Grabber, had just saved his life. And even though it was just a rope, Han had to admit that it was a darned good rope. You could probably sell it offworld to fas.h.i.+on designers, and maybe there was more to it than just rope. What if it had medicinal properties? These people were at war. Maybe they applied whuffa hide to their wounds as an antibiotic, or boiled it to make antiaging drugs. Why, once Han thought about it, there was no telling what you could do with a whuffa!

"Han?" a woman called. He turned. A dark-haired woman sat astride the neck of a rancor at the edge of the orchard. "My name is Damaya. You will follow me." She tapped the rancor's nose with her heel, turned the beast.

Han's mouth felt dry. "Why? Where are we going?"

"Your friend Leia has been pleading your case to the Singing Mountain clan for the past two hours. She has won your freedom, but now your future must be decided."

"My future?"

"We of the Singing Mountain clan have chosen not to be your enemies, but that does not mean we will be your allies. We understand that you have a sky s.h.i.+p that may be repairable. If this is true, the Nightsisters and their Imperial slaves will want it. And, since you are a man of power in the outside world, they may want you. Our clan needs to know whether you want our protection, and if so, what you will pay for it."

Han followed Damaya, still panting, sweat dripping down his back. After nearly a day without sleep, his eyes itched and his sinuses burned as if he were allergic to something on the planet. The messenger led him up toward the fortress, and just before they reached the landing where the stone stairway diverged into three paths, a group of strangers came up from outside the valley?nine women, humanoid, with strangely blotched, purplish skin. They did not wear exotic helms like the warriors, but instead wore only dark, s.h.a.ggy, hooded robes crudely woven from some plant fiber and covered with trail dust. He wondered nervously if these women had been called in to be his judges.

But Han watched the warriors guarding the trail and knew that the hooded women were enemies. The rancors growled and fidgeted, sc.r.a.ping the stone walkways with their huge palms. The warrior women held their blasters at the ready, unblinking, though the leader of the nine carried a broken spear, probably as a sign of truce.