Part 13 (1/2)
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.