Star Wars_ Planet Of Twilight Part 26

Luke was silent for a time, his whole soul crying out against the darkness of the past eight months. At last he whispered, "Was she?"

Liegeus smiled, and touched his wrist. "I think the human capacity for loving is too great for a single loss, however enormous, to blight. At least I hope that's the case. You do not believe me now, but I have walked this road, Luke. I can tell you, if you keep walking, you do come out of the dark at last. The love I have for your sister is no less for the love I felt for both my wives, bless their long-suffering hearts.

There is always love."

Not like this, thought Luke. Not like this.

He had meant to stay awake, to fight the drag of weariness that seemed to be pulling him to the edge of a bottomless dark well. In any case it seemed impossible to sleep with the itching crawl of electricity tingling in his flesh, cleansing the vile energies of the drochs, and with the night's unplumbed cold.

But he found himself nodding, dragged himself awake with all his strength only to nod again. As darkness gathered him in the voices that had, it seemed, all this time been whispering in his mind stepped to the fore again, like men and women stepping out of shadows, and as he drifted from the mooring anchors of his consciousness he could hear what they said.

They spoke of time and of still, tideless waters imbued with life and heat. They spoke of the heartbeat of the moonless world, and of the stars. This was a deep-colored background on which the bright flashes of closer consciousness moved like ephemeral dayflies: amus.e.m.e.nt and concern at the flutrying little creatures come to live in their minute enclaves of soil and water and vegetative fluff. Worry about danger, some terrible danger.

And then anger. Deep, burning, violent anger, the anger of those who have seen their friends and family members raped and murdered and enslaved before their eyes, the memory of voices outcrying in pain as their minds were stripped from them, helpless fury and pain.

Don't let them. Don't let them. Why did he think they were standing all around him, looming shadows in the canyons' rocks, looking down at him while he slept. We can still hear their voices. Still they cry to us.

Still they are part of us.

Luke shook his head. I don't understand.

He was on Tatooine. He was standing in the courtyard of his old home, restored, no longer just a subsidence half-filled with sand, as the stormtroopers had left it so many years ago. There were stormtroopers in the courtyard, and out of the kitchen doorway that led into the court they were dragging Jawas-shrieking, pleading, kicking, jabbering. Aunt Beru, of course, would never have permitted a Jawa into her clean kitchen, but dimly Luke realized that this wasn't the point. Someone standing just beside and behind him, someone he couldn't see, was making these images, someone very old and very patient and very angry, trying to make him understand.

Two stormtroopers seized a Jawa by the arms. A third one raised up a huge hand drill of the kind used for taking water rock samples, and drove the spinning bit down into the Jawa's head. Horribly, the Jawa continued to kick, continued to struggle, as the drillmaster set aside his drill and withdrew from a tub at his side a brain, naked and gray and dripping clear fluid, and packed the stuff into the opening in the Jawa's head like a sapper packing explosive into a hole. Then the Jawa ceased to struggle and remained standing pa.s.sively while the two storm-troopers released it, picked up white stormtrooper armor from a giant pile in front of the workshop door, and stuffed the Jawa inside it, closing up the armor like a trooper-shaped box and locking it along one side.

Though the suit was rigid while it was being manipulated, once the hapless Jawa was inside it, it became articulated, like regular armor.

Though it was impossible that anything as small as a Jawa would be able to fill it out, it seemed, within, to have grown to size.

It saluted the others and walked smoothly up the steps and out of sight, just as if there were a man inside.

A second Jawa was brought out of the kitchen (Aunt Beru must be havinG a fit. It had its head drilled and packed with brains, and was in its turn packed into armor-given a weapon, he now saw, an Atgar-4X blaster rifle, and sent on its way.

I don't understand. He turned, to try to get an explanation out of the one who had invented the vision, but found himself back in the canyon with Liegeus. He was standing over his own body and that of the engineer, and though he could have sworn that the one who had shown him the images, the one who was trying to communicate with him, had returned to this reality with him, he saw nothing behind him by the dull-gleaming facets of the rock wall.

Callista's voice said to him, "It's their world, Luke. It's their world."

He saw' her walking away from him, her long brown hair hanging in a tail down the back of her jacket of leather and nerf wool that, though it was black in the starlight, he knew was red.

Walking away down her own road in the starlight, toward a destination that he could not see.

Around her, Leia was conscious that the glittering walls of crystal had changed. When she had entered the cave, a crevice far up the canyons above the Theran camp, she had been dazzled by the lights thrown from the thick encrustation of gems. But as she extinguished her lamp, as she had been instructed, and walked farther into the dimly radiant chamber, she was aware that somehow the deep-buried geode had been transformed, morphed into something familiar, a room she knew...

Dark pillars ascended to the striated greemand-gold gla.s.s of the vaults.

Shadows chased one another across the dull gold intricacy of the floor.

Palpatine's audience hall. Why did she dimly hear the funky j.i.z.z-wailing of that horrible band Jabba the Hutt had kept to play in his palace? Why did she smell, behind the perfumes and incense and subtle hurlothrumbic gas with which the Emperor had flooded his court hall, the rank stink of Hutt, the greasy odor of meres and soldiers of fortuneS.

She walked farther. The fear that came over her she attributed to the gas. Her father had warned her about it, the first time she'd had an audience with the Emperor, when she was a youngster. "Don't be afraid,"

Bail Organa had murmured as he opened the door for her. "It's just a trick he's playing on you, to make you think he's more dangerous than he is."

She had been afraid, but had known it wasn't real. That memory remained with her, that knowledge, whenever afterward she felt fear.

There was someone on Palpatine's throne.

Leia stepped clear of the pillars. A robed figure, stooped forward, face in the shadow of a hood. She saw the gleam of eyes. At the foot of the throne huddled a woman, nearly naked in sc.r.a.ps of gold and silk, long chestnut hair braided down her back and a chain collar around her neck.

Herself, eight years ago. Eyes downcast, beaten, submissive as she had never been, not even in Jabba's awful palace. Hopeless, knowing that this time there would be no rescue.

Her hand went to the lightsaber at her belt, but she remembered what Callista had said, that it was better not to use a weapon until she knew against whom to use it. Leia stood still, but her heart hammered in her chest.

"Draw it," drawled a deep voice, a woman's voice, like smoke and honey, and she recognized the voice as her own. The robed figure on the throne put back her hood. Leia saw' herself, matured and beautiful, beautiful beyond description: nearly six feet tall, with the attenuated, slender grace she had always envied Mon Mothma and Callista. Though there was maturity and wisdom in her face the crow's-feet around the eyes were erased, the mouth was fuller and stronger and redder, the hair a cinnamon cloud. Every beauty idealized and raised to terrifying perfection.

"Draw it. You must give it to one of us."

She stood up from her throne, shrugged aside Palpatine's robe so that it folded down her back in dark curtains. Leia saw that she, too, wore the gold slave harness, jeweled and flashing, but she wore it like an Imperial gown. The Empress Leia leaned back her head and laughed and stretched forth her hands to the shadows of the ceiling. Force lightning rained from her fingers, crawled up the pillars, illuminated the perfect cheekbones, and cold auburn eyes. Behind her, as in Jabba's palace, Leia could see on the wall a man frozen in carbonite, but the contorted face was Luke's, not Han's.

She didn't know where Han was. Dead, she thought.

Dead of the Death Seed, somewhere in Meridian sector. And she, the Empress, was free of him at last.

"Which of us will you give it to, Leia?" The Empress jerked the golden chain, pulling the slave Leia sprawling. The wretched girl buried her face in her arm and wept, as Leia had sometimes longed to do at that time, in that place, in her life. "Draw your lightsaber, and give it to one of us. This is what you must do."

Leia unhooked the weapon from her belt. She held it in her hands, slender and silvery, the weapon she had made under Luke's tutelage and later feared to use. The hands of the slave Leia, clutched into fists of frustration and hopelessness, were nerveless and weak.

Those of the Empress before her throne were large, strong as a man's, long-fingered, and white as Leia had always wished her hands could be.

Behind the throne she could see Jacen and Jaina, smiling, lightsabers in their hands, and just visible was the corner of her father's white robe, the one he had been wearing in her other dream, when Anakin had cut him dead.

There was no sound but the slave girl's sobbing.

The Empress walked toward her, Palpatine's robe billowing around her like wings of smoke containing the flame of her golden harness.

"Give it to one of us," she commanded. "Give it to me."

Leia backed away, frightened of the woman's power. Even as bad as I am with this, i could kill her here. She deserves it, for what she did to my father. She wasn't sure why she thought this or of whom she actually spoke. If she gave it to the slave, the Empress would only take it from her. Besides, the slave was a crawling weakling, sobbing miserably, not raising her face. Leia felt a stab of shame and embarra.s.sment, knowing that, too, was her.

I could kill her. i could kill them both.

She backed farther, holding the lightsaber in both hands, her breath coming fast. The auburn eyes-her own eyes, raised to the glory of suns-stared into hers, compelling her, as Palpatine could compel. On the dais, the slave girl groveled and wept. Leia clutched the weapon's hilt, not willing to surrender it, yet feeling she must. She was almost panting with fear, and the thin choke of gas in her throat was what brought her to her senses.

It isn't real. Her father-her true father, the father of her heart-had said. It's just something he wants you to feel.

She stepped sideways, out of the Empress's path.

"I don't have to give it to anyone," she said. "It's mine, to do with as I choose."

And turning her back on them, she walked out of the palace, out of the cave.

"Luke was able to confront Vader," said Callista. "To be defeated by him-to cut off his hand, as his own had been cut off to accept that this was his father. To surrender that fact, and go on from there. You never had that chance."

"It's not an experience I'd stand in line for," remarked Leia drily.

"I knew Vader. I saw him tagging after Palpatine every time I went to Court. Believe me, I'll never accept that he was my father."

"Then you'll always be the slave to his shadow."

Anger sprang to Leia's eyes. For a long moment they met the other woman's gray gaze in the campfire's wavering glow, the chilly flare of sodium lamps set here and there around the Theran camp. Most of the cultists had lain down around the mouth of the largest of the glittering caves, when the aftermath of the Force storm had blown itself out. Save for a few mounting guard farther up the canyon, they had given themselves up to sleep. Be had disappeared, to commune with the night, someone said.

Apparently this was what Listeners commonly did, because everyone just nodded.

Leia and Callista, apart from the others, were virtually alone.

It was Leia who looked aside first. Her nightmares came back to her, the shape and face of her fears. She recalled the rage that came over her, the need to prove herself other than Anakin Skywalker's daughter.

She had taken and used his weapon, the Noghri, for her safety and that of her children and to repair the damage that he had done them; but she flinched from the thought of standing up and saying, I am Lord Vader's daughter.

"I don't know what it would mean," she said slowly, groping for words, "if I accepted it. If I made him a part of me, the way Luke has."

"You mean for others'." Callista wrapped her long arms about her knees, sitting perched on a smooth hunk of crystal like fused gla.s.s, her dark hair frayed by straying winds across the crimson leather of her jacket.

"Those who would ask what his daughter was doing ruling the Council?"

"Maybe," said Leia. "Mostly for myself. And for the children. It will take time." The thought of it revolted her, furious anger succeeded by the heat of tears in her throat.

"No one is asking you to do it tomorrow. But if you know what parts of him are inside you, you can know what to build a wall around and what to take into yourself. Because you cannot afford not to be strong, Leia,"

she said. "You cannot afford to let this kind of thing happen to you, ever again."

"No," she said softly. "I know that."

Callista stood and unhooked the lightsaber from her belt. The sun-yellow blade slid forth like a lance of summer into winter's dark.

"Then let's begin."

Sparring with Callista was in some ways easier than sparring with Luke, though the lost Jedi was of a height with her brother and no less exacting a teacher. Still, Callista understood the differences in technique required of Leia's lesser height and lighter weight, knew the finer points with the instincts of one who has been rigorously coached for many years, and was far more conscious of distance and timing than any man Leia had ever worked with. As when she worked with Luke, Leia had no sense of danger whatever, no fear of the softly humming laser blades that could slide through flesh like a hot silver wire through cheese; only a strange exhilaration, a sense of freedom that she mistrusted instinctively because it felt so utterly right.

"Footwork," said Callista dispa.s.sionately, searing a tiny curl of smoke from the rock a centimeter from Leia's much-taped golden boot.

"Footwork. Don't be afraid of your spirit. Don't always be watching yourself."

Leia stepped back, the blade whispering, shedding pale azure light over her sweating face, the long tendrils of her cinnamon hair hanging down in her eyes. "If I don't watch myself I'm afraid I'll do something wrong."

"I know," said Callista. "You've watched yourself like that all your life. What are you afraid you'll do?"

"Hurt someone," said Leia, and knew it for the truth from the bottom of her soul. They weren't talking about combat now. They both knew that.

"You'll know when the time is to strike," said Callista. "And when to step away. The only way to learn it is to do more of this, not less."

"I don't want to be another..." The words froze in her throat.

"Another Palpatine?" asked Callista. "Another Vader? You aren't.

You're not even another Bail Organa. You're Leia."

Leia was silent, regarding the soft-shining blue light of the blade, the paler glow of Callista's just beyond. Those two heatless beacons illuminated the darkness around them, isolated the two women in the heart of an ember fire, statesman and warrior, thinker and feeling heart.

"Haven't you seen that yet?" asked Callista, her voice more quiet still.

"Luke has."

Leia's panting breath steadied. The weapon felt more stable in her hands, more a part of herself. For the first time ever when she had held the lightsaber, she smiled. And smiling, signed to the younger woman and stepped into the fray again.

It was Callista who gestured to stop. Leia lowered her weapon.

Callista turned her head, listening, her dark, level brows drawn together.

A moment later B came into the circle of torchlight, his scarred, thin face intent in the braided frame of his long hair.

"They're moving on the gun station," he said. "From Ruby Gulch, dozens of them. On other gun stations as well."

"How did he know that?" Leia asked, as she and Callista followed the others to the caves where the cu-pas and speeders were hidden She climbed onto the back of a repulsor-lift sled with three other cultists; Callista swung into the saddle of a pale golden cu-pa, wrapped the gray veiling close around her face, and settled her rifle and grenades over her shoulder "Voices tell them, they say. Voices that speak in their minds if they sleep in certain places, far back in the hills, or drink preparations of certain herbs-as far as I can tell, that suppress left-brain linear activity. Be is a Healer, strong in the Force. Many of the other Listeners are, tOO."

She tossed Leia a rifle and a bow. There were arrows in the back of the sled, being pa.s.sed among those who cl.u.s.tered there, men and women alike, as the vehicles and animals began their swift trek through the icy darkness of predawn, flowing like water down the silent canyons.

"The Force is so strong here," she said softly, her gloved hand steady, easy on the cu-pa's rein "I'd heard the rumor of it from Djinn, my Master. There was a story about two young Jedi who came here centuries ago seeking gifts and strength in the Force that they themselves lacked Nothing further was known of them, but one of them supposedly was a Hutt.

I know Hutts live a long time" She shook her head, wonderingly, as if regarding that desperate young woman of nearly a year ago, fleeing the ruin of Admiral Daala's demolished fleet and seeking a place to go, a clue to lead her through the labyrinth of her quest for her own lost gifts.

"What I found, you know. Pettiness, old feuds, slavery to the base. ..

And I thought, never again. Never again am I going to be anyone's p.a.w.n, because of the powers I was born with, the powers I don't even possess anymore But while I was a prisoner I saw the Reliant. I had seen Dzym and guessed what he was planning. I take it you didn't get my message?"

"I got it." Leia grimly shifted the rifle on her shoulder, clung to the struts of one of the sled's makeshift gun turrets. "It's just that by that time things had progressed too far to be called off. It reached me the day I left."

"You should have said you were sick."

"It took Q-Varx and the Rationalists months to set up the meeting.

They were operating in good faith-p.a.w.ns, not spies. I read their correspondence.

I wasn't willing to risk the political repercussions of refusal."

Callista shook her head, and Leia said, "You have to make these decisions." She hesitated, and then, because she herself despised surprises, added, "Luke came, too. He was on Hesperidium to see me off.

He took a fighter to the planet's surface, to look for you."