Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia Read online

  “General Solo?” Han asked. “You think I’m General Solo? Look, if I were a New Republic general, what would I be doing here?”

  “We’ll be very happy to pry those answers out of you—along with your toenails—during your interrogation,” the pilot said, “but for now, turn around and start marching!”

  A cold chill went through Leia, and they began marching downhill through the woods, the tall trees with their silver bark graceful in the moonlight. The harsh glare of the bobbing headlights on the Imperial walkers made a surreal track. The skeletal rotting leaves at their feet seemed to dance and weave.

  After a while, Leia realized that Zsinj’s men weren’t wholly preoccupied with their prisoners. While two of the walkers kept them covered, the other two played their searchlights on the path ahead and to the sides. From the lights of their control panels, Leia could make out the faces of the pilots and gunners, like the faces of frightened children, eyes darting back and forth, sweat dripping down their foreheads.

  “These guys are more scared than I am,” Han whispered in Leia’s ear as they walked along.

  “Maybe that’s because they know something you don’t,” Leia shot back.

  When they had been marching for two hours, Leia began to wonder in earnest when dawn would come. The night air felt cold on the back of her neck and her eyes felt gritty. The shadows of trees closed in about them like standing sentries.

  Then the attack came: one second they were walking along, and the next she heard heavy footsteps rushing behind. The two walkers on the flanks got tackled from behind by creatures well over their seven-meter height. The middle walkers swiveled to fire their blaster cannons, and for a moment the gunfire flashed like lightning.

  Leia spotted one of the huge beasts involved in the attack, its saberlike canines snapping the air.

  Something enormous behind Leia smashed a walker using a huge club, grabbed the walker next to it and tossed all three tons of its armored hull toward a rock where it crashed in a heap of rent metal. A gunner kept firing into the air as a beast clubbed his walker, smashed it again and again—and in the gruesome blue actinic flashes, Leia saw the beast and her heart nearly stopped: it stood ten meters tall and wore a protective vest of woven ropes with bits of stormtrooper body armor tied on it. Yet in spite of its attire, there was no mistaking those oddly grotesque arms, the gaping curved fangs, the hunched stance of the warty beast with bony headplates. She had seen one before. It had been smaller than the ones here, perhaps only a juvenile, but it had seemed enormous at the time—in the prison beneath the palace of Jabba the Hutt. Rancors.

  Han yelled, turned to run, and tripped. Chewbacca took off leaping through the woods, and one rancor chased him three steps and threw a weighted net. The net caught the Wookiee, knocked him to the ground. Chewbacca roared in pain and remained on the ground, holding his ribs.

  Leia stood, heart drumming, frozen with fear. Yet the sight of the enormous beasts attacking in their wrath was not what frightened her.

  In less than ten seconds, the blasters of the Imperial walkers were all silenced; the machines lay in smoldering ruins at their feet. Leia looked up at the three giant rancors, each more than ten meters in height. On the creatures’ necks sat human riders.

  One of the riders bent low, her dark hair shimmering in the light of the burning walkers. She wore a high-collared tunic of glittering red scales, and over it a supple robe made of leather or heavy material. On her head she wore a helm with fanlike wings, and each wing was decorated with ornaments that bobbled as she moved. She held a very ancient Force pike, its vibro-blade rattling and in need of adjustment, the handle carved and decorated with white stones.

  If the costume and mount were not impressive enough, the woman’s very presence struck Leia like a blaster bolt to the ribs. The woman seemed to radiate power, as if her physical body were a mere shell, and beneath it hid a being of terrible light. Leia knew she was in the presence of someone strong in the Force. The woman swung her pike overhead, motioning for Leia and the others to stay, cried out in an alien tongue.

  “Who are you?” Leia asked.

  The woman bent low in the shadows and sang softly in her own language, then spoke cautiously, as if listening to her own voice, trying to catch the meaning.

  “Is this how you form your words, offworlder?” Leia nodded, realized that the woman was somehow using the Force to communicate.

  She spoke brief orders to the other two women. One of them scurried down from her rancor and began gathering weapons from the corpses of Zsinj’s troops, while the other urged her rancor over to Chewie. The rancor unwrapped the injured Wookiee and carried him in one hand. Chewbacca cried out and tried to bite the rancor, but Han yelled, “It’s okay, Chewie. They’re friends, I hope.”

  The woman with the Force pike leaned over Leia, pointed at Han and Threepio. “Keep your slaves marching, offworlder. We will take you to the sisters for judgment.”

  Chapter

  13

  Isolder gritted his teeth, watched the desert swell toward him as Storm plunged toward the planet. There was nothing he could do to save his ship. Firing his engines would ensure that Zsinj’s forces would detect him, so Isolder only hoped that he could eject at the last possible second, let his parachute open briefly and carry him down, hoping it would slow his fall enough so that he wouldn’t break any bones.

  Off in the distance, eighty kilometers to the west, a small city lit the darkness. Other than that, there were no bright spots in the desert, not even the headlights of a speeder to show a sign of habitation.

  Isolder reached under the control panel to his fighter, pulled out a survival kit. Above him the parachute bolted onto Artoo’s ejection seat opened, and the droid jerked upward. Luke’s demolished X-wing tumbled through the atmosphere. Isolder cracked the transparisteel bubble of his fighter, let the wind catch it and fling it open. He unbuckled his safety harness, checked the small pack that held his parachute to make sure it was strapped tight, slapped his blaster, then leaped from the ship, soaring in freefall.

  The wind whistled through the crenellations in his oxygen mask, and he watched as the ground rushed toward him. The ample light of two small moons let him see every rock, every wind-twisted tree, every gully and switchback. He waited until he could wait no more, flipped the release to ignite the explosive charges that would send up his parachute.

  Nothing happened. He yanked the emergency cord, kept tumbling. He flailed his arms, shouting—and miraculously, some type of repulsorlift field hit him, slowed him so that he dropped as softly as a feather. For one wild moment he imagined that the flailing of his arms was somehow carrying him, and he dared not stop flapping till he hit the ground. The broken hull of the X-wing fighter dropped past him, several hundred meters off, crashed into the ground in a fireball.

  When Isolder’s feet hit rock, his knees shook so badly that he could hardly stand, and his heart raced. Isolder threw off his helmet, gasped the warm night air, looked around at the rocks and sparse trees of the desert.

  Storm had also settled quietly to the ground, but nowhere could Isolder see a sign of the repulsorlift mechanism, no generators, no antigravity dishes aimed into the air. He looked all around, then saw something above: Luke Skywalker sitting with his legs crossed, eyes closed in concentration, and arms folded, floating to the ground. Skywalker, Isolder thought. Perhaps that is how his ancestors got their name.

  When the Jedi had floated within inches of the rock, he opened his eyes and jumped, as if dropping from a ledge.

  “How, how did you do that?” Isolder asked, the hair prickling on the back of his arms. Until that moment, Isolder had never felt like worshiping anyone or anything.

  “I told you,” Luke said, “the Force is my ally.”

  “But you were dead!” Isolder said. “I saw it on my scopes! You weren’t breathing, and your skin was cold.”

  “A Jedi trance,” Luke said. “The Jedi Masters all learn how to stop their hearts, drop th
eir body temperature. I needed to fool Zsinj’s soldiers.”

  Luke scanned the desert, as if getting his bearings, gazed up into the night. Isolder followed his line of sight. Far above he could make out the warships—pinprick flashes of blaster fire, tiny ships bursting into flames like distant stars gone nova.

  “When I was a boy on Tatooine,” Luke said, “I used to love to stay up at night with my binoculars and watch the big space freighters fly into port. The first time I ever watched a space battle was from my uncle Owen’s moisture farm. At the time, I knew that men were struggling for their lives, but I didn’t know it was Leia’s ship or that I would become caught up in that struggle myself. But I remember the thrill it gave me, and how I yearned to be up there, in the battle.”

  Isolder looked up, felt that gnawing desire. Part of him wondered how Astarta and his troops were faring in the battle, and he wished that he could be up there in the fighter, protecting the ship. Overhead, the huge red saucer shape of the Song of War suddenly accelerated away, blurred into hyperdrive.

  “You feel the pull, too, the bloodlust, the call of the hunt,” Luke said, pulling off his flight suit. Beneath it, he was dressed in flowing robes the red color of desert sandstone. “That’s the dark side of the Force whispering to you, calling you.” Isolder stepped back, fearing that Skywalker had somehow learned to read his mind, but Luke continued, “Tell me, who do you hunt?”

  “Han Solo,” Isolder said angrily.

  Luke nodded thoughtfully. “Are you sure?” Luke asked. “You have hunted other men before. I feel it. What was the man’s name? What was his crime?”

  Isolder didn’t speak a moment, and Luke walked around him, watching Isolder carefully, looking through him.

  “Harravan,” Isolder said. “Captain Harravan.”

  “And what did he take from you?” Luke said.

  “My brother. He killed my older brother.” Isolder felt lightheaded, dazed, to be so interviewed by a man he had thought dead only moments before.

  “Yes, Harravan,” Luke said. “You loved your brother very much. I can hear you, as children, trying to fall asleep in the same large room. Your brother sang to you at night, making you feel safe when you were frightened.”

  Isolder felt confused, and tears stung his eyes.

  “So tell me,” Luke said, “how your brother died.”

  “Shot,” Isolder said. “Harravan shot him in the head with a blaster.”

  “I see,” Luke said. “You must forgive him. Your anger burns in you, a black spot on your heart. You must forgive him and serve the light side of the Force.”

  “Harravan’s dead,” Isolder said. “Why should I bother to forgive him?”

  “Because now it is happening again,” Luke said. “Once again, someone has taken a person that you love away from you. Han, Harravan. Leia, your brother. Your rage, your hurt from one ill deed long past colors your feelings now. If you do not forgive them, the dark side of the Force will forever rule your destiny.”

  “What does it matter?” Isolder asked. “I’m not like you. I don’t have any power. I will never learn how to float through the air or raise myself from the dead.”

  “You have power,” Luke answered. “You must learn to serve the light within you, no matter how dim it may seem.”

  “I watched you on the ship,” Isolder said, thinking back to Luke’s behavior on their journey out. Luke had seemed inquisitive, but kept himself aloof. “You don’t talk like this to everyone.”

  Luke gazed at him in the moonlight, and double shadows played over Luke’s face. Isolder wondered if Luke was trying to convert him because Isolder was the Chume’da, the consort to the woman who would become queen. “I talk like this to you,” Luke said, “because the Force has brought us together, because you are trying to serve the light side now. Why else would you risk your life, come here to Dathomir with me to save Leia? Vengeance? I think not.”

  “You are wrong about that, Jedi. I didn’t come to save Leia, I came to steal her away from Han Solo.”

  Luke laughed softly, as if Isolder were some schoolboy who did not know himself. It was a peculiarly disconcerting sound. “Have it your way, then. But you will come with me, won’t you, to rescue Leia?”

  Isolder gestured to the desert, spreading his arms. “Where do we look? She could be anywhere—a thousand kilometers from here.”

  Luke nodded toward the mountains. “Over there, about a hundred and twenty kilometers.” He smiled secretively. “I warn you, the trip will not be easy. Once you choose to walk in the light, your path will lead you places you do not want to go. Already the forces of darkness gather against us.”

  Isolder studied the Jedi, heart hammering. He wasn’t used to thinking of the world in terms of forces of darkness, forces of light. He wasn’t even sure he believed such forces existed. Yet here was a Jedi no older than himself who had floated from the sky like thistledown, who seemed to read his thoughts, and who professed to know Isolder better than he knew himself.

  Luke looked off to the horizon. His droid was floating down on a parachute, a couple of kilometers off. “Are you coming?”

  Isolder had acted almost without thought until now, but suddenly he felt frightened, more than he would have believed possible. His knees threatened to lock, and he found his face burning with shame. Something frightened him, and he knew what it was. Luke wasn’t just asking Isolder to follow him to the mountains. Luke was asking him to follow his teachings, his example. And in the process, Luke promised that Isolder would inherit detractors, enemies, in the same way that all Jedi did. Isolder considered for only a moment. “Let me get some things out of my ship. I’ll be right with you.”

  Rummaging through Storm, gathering a spare blaster, Isolder found that he became calmer. All of the Jedi’s spooky talk really meant nothing, he realized. Perhaps there were no forces of darkness lurking out there. Following Luke around in the mountains really meant nothing. It didn’t mean that Isolder himself would necessarily have to learn the ways of the Force. Luke could very well be deluded, a harmless crank. But he floated from the sky. “I’m ready,” Isolder said.

  During the first part of their journey, the country was incredibly rugged—gullies washed through ground split by crevices. The bones of huge herbivores littered the crevices, creatures with long hind legs, stubby tails, flat triangular heads and tiny front legs. The skeletons showed that the beasts had been large, perhaps four meters from nose to tail. Often the bones had dry, gray scales lying about them. Yet they found no living beasts. Instead, it seemed almost as if the creatures had died out in the recent past, within the last hundred years.

  Little grew in this blasted desert. Short, twisted, leathery trees. Stubby patches of purple grass as pliant as hair.

  Luke made light of the journey, sometimes jumping ten meters into a crevice where Isolder had to climb tediously down. Isolder soon found himself drenched with sweat, but the Jedi did not sweat much, did not pant, showed no sign of being remotely human. Instead, the Jedi’s face was locked in concentration. It took the better part of the night to reach the droid, and Luke would not leave without it, showing uncommon devotion to the small lump of circuitry and gears.

  So they made their way toward the mountains following a tedious route that the droid could navigate, until they reached a desert hardpan that ran over rolling hills.

  There was no sign of water, and the sun began to rise over the desert, casting an ethereal blue glow. Luke said, “We’d better find some shelter for the day—back there.” He pointed to one of the last cracks, went and pushed Artoo over, then jumped in.

  Isolder followed them down into the crevice, rested on his haunches in the sandy soil and drank half of his water. Luke took a small sip, sat and closed his eyes.

  “You had better get some sleep,” Luke said. “It’s going to be a long day, and a long walk tonight.” With that, the Jedi seemed to fall asleep, breathing deep, evenly.

  Isolder cast an angry glance at him. Isolder had
been wakened in the early morning from his sleep cycle, and as far as he was concerned, it was only midday. He had always had difficulty changing his sleep schedule, so he sat with his arms folded, trying to feign sleep, or at least show some portion of control worthy of a Jedi’s disciple.

  Nearly half an hour later, just as the sun was breaking over the desert, Isolder heard the earthquake. It started as a distant rumble moving down from the mountains, growing louder and louder. The earth began to shake, and chunks of dirt broke from the sides of the crevice. The droid Artoo whistled and beeped in alarm, and Luke jumped to his feet.

  “What is it, Artoo?” he asked, and Isolder shouted, “Earthquake!”

  Luke listened to the sound a moment, shouted back. “No—not an earthquake—”

  Suddenly a huge shadow flitted overhead, then another and another. Large reptiles with pale blue scales were leaping over the crevice. One tripped and nearly fell on top of them, used its tiny forelegs to pull itself upright and rush forward.

  “Stampede!” Isolder shouted, throwing his arms over his head. Artoo whistled and wheeled in a circle, seeking shelter. Hundreds of reptiles leaped over the crevice.

  The roaring quieted after several moments, and one huge reptile leaped into the ravine not a dozen feet from them, stood panting, loose folds of light blue flesh jiggling at its throat, as it studied them. The last of its fellows leaped away.

  The beast had bloodred eyes and black teeth shaped like spades. The scales at the top of its head shone slightly iridescent, almost lavender. Its breath smelled musky, of rotting vegetation, and it stared down at them, curious.

  “Don’t worry, we won’t harm you,” Luke said, gazing at the creature steadily. It moved forward, put its nostrils to Luke’s outstretched hand, and sniffed. “That’s right, girl, we’re your friends.” Luke poured some water from his canteen into his hand, let the beast lap it up with its long, black tongue. The creature made belching noises, plaintive whining sounds.