Shadow Academy

9

Tenel Ka woke to pitch-darkness, cramped and confined, surrounded by a dull vibration. Her heart drummed a rapid cadence, and perspiration prickled her skin. An urgency, a feeling that something was terribly wrong, nudged the back of her mind. She tried to sit up and bumped her head—hard—against the unyielding bottom of the bunk above her. Stifling an exclamation of annoyance, she remembered that she was aboard the Off Chance. She relaxed slightly—but only slightly.

When they had finished with the Hutt information broker on Borgo Prime, Luke and Tenel Ka decided their best hope for finding Jacen, Jaina, and Lowbacca lay in going directly to Dathomir, homeworld of the original Nightsisters. Their only clue was the mysterious Nightsister, and they had to find out who she was and whether she had the twins and Lowbacca.

Luke had urged Tenel Ka to get some sleep while they made their journey. It was the first opportunity she had had to rest since her friends had been kidnapped, and Tenel Ka gratefully accepted.

And so she had slept, sealed away from light and sound, in one of the berths aboard the Off Chance, but her rest had again been disturbed by shadowy dreams. She touched a switch by her head and winced as bright cabin light flooded the sleeping cubicle. She rolled onto her stomach, swung her legs over the side of the bunk, and dropped a meter and a half to the floor of the cabin. Shaking back her tumble of loose red-gold hair, Tenel Ka stretched to her full height and noted with pleasure the freedom of movement that her tough, supple lizard-hide armor afforded her. She was glad to be dressed as a warrior again.

The uneasy feeling left by her dream persisted as Tenel Ka made her way to the cockpit and lowered herself into the copilots seat next to Luke. She gazed through the front viewport at the swirling colors that indicated the Off Chance was traveling through hyperspace.

Luke looked up from the controls. “Did you get some sleep?”

“This is a fact.” She fastened the crash webbing around her, then grabbed a thick clump of her hair and began plaiting it into a braid, adding a few feathers and beads that she kept in a pouch attached to her belt.

“But you didn’t sleep well?”

She blinked at this, somehow surprised that he had noticed. “This is also a fact.”

Luke did not reply. He simply waited, and with growing discomfort she realized he was waiting for her to explain.

“I … had a dream,” she said. “It is not important.

His intense blue eyes searched her face. When he spoke, it was in a low voice. “I feel fear in you.”

She grimaced and shrugged. “It is a dream I have had before.”

His eyelids fluttered shut briefly, and he tilted his head as he might have done had he been studying her with his eyes open. “… the Nightsisters?” he said at last.

“Yes. It is childish,” she admitted as color rushed to her cheeks, staining them with embarrassment.

“Strange … I dreamt about them, too,” Luke said.

Tenel Ka looked at him in disbelief. “I used to think they were just a story that mothers and grandmothers on Dathomir told to scare children. But the Nightsisters were all destroyed. How could there be any left?”

“The people of Dathomir are often strong in the Force, and it would not be difficult for someone else to train them in the ways of evil,” he said. He leaned back in the pilot’s seat and stared out at hyperspace as if summoning an old memory. “In fact, many years ago—before you were born—I traveled to Dathomir searching for Jacen and Jaina’s parents, Han and Leia. That was when I met your mother and father, and we all joined forces to defeat the last of the Nightsisters.”

Tenel Ka looked at him curiously. This was a part of the story her parents spoke little about. “My mother thinks very highly of you,” she said, hoping he would elaborate.

Luke slid her a teasing glance. “But did she ever tell you how we met? That she captured me?”

“You don’t mean—” Tenel Ka began. “She couldn’t have expected …”

Luke chuckled at her discomfiture. “This is a fact.”

“Oh, Master Skywalker!” Tenel Ka gasped in chagrin at the very idea of Luke submitting to the primitive marriage customs she had always viewed as quaint and provincial. On Dathomir, a woman selected and captured the man she wanted to marry. Her mother, Teneniel Djo, had done that to Luke Skywalker?

It brought a renewed flush of embarrassment to her face to realize that her mother had captured the greatest Jedi Master in the galaxy and had expected him to marry her and father her children. Then, all at once, the situation struck her as so ridiculous that she let loose with what was, for her, a rare sound indeed—a giggle.

“My mother has always taught me to have respect for Jedi, and most of all for you, Master Skywalker, but … please do not be offended”—she gasped, tears of mirth rising to her eyes—“I am certainly glad she did not succeed.”

Luke, still smiling, reached over and gave her shoulder an understanding squeeze. “So am I. Your parents belonged together.”

“I love my father, you know,” Tenel Ka said, sobering, “and my mother.”

“And yet you’ve never told your friends who your real parents are,” Luke said. “Why?”

Tenel Ka squirmed uncomfortably in her crash restraints, which suddenly felt too confining. She had often mulled this problem over, and had come to the same decision again and again. “It is difficult to explain,” she said. “I am not ashamed of my parents, if that is what you think. I am proud that my mother is strong in the Force and that she, a warrior from Dathomir, now rules the entire Hapes Cluster. And I am proud of my father and what he managed to become, despite the way he was raised—despite the one who raised him.”

Luke nodded sagely. “Your grandmother?”

“Yes,” Tenel Ka gritted. “Of that part of my family, I am not proud. My grandmother is power-hungry. She manipulates. I am not sure she even knows how to love.” She felt a bleak bewilderment as she turned to look at Luke. “Yet my father is loving and wise. He is not like her.”

“No, he isn’t,” Luke said. “Long ago your father Isolder did something difficult and very brave. Realizing that your grandmother loved power so much she was willing to kill anyone who threatened her, he rejected her teaching. She is a strong, proud woman, but her lessons were poisonous. He chose instead to value and honor life wherever he found it. Your father’s difficult decision was the right one.”

Tenel Ka nodded. Her thoughts were bitter. “My lineage is tainted by generations of bloodthirsty, power-hungry tyrants. I am not proud that I was born to the royal family of Hapes,” she spat. “I do not wish my friends to know that I am heir to the throne, because I have done nothing to earn it, choose it, or deserve it.”

Luke’s face was thoughtful. “Jacen and Jaina would understand that. Their mother is one of the most powerful women in the galaxy.”

Tenel Ka shook her head violently. “Before I tell them, I must prove to myself that I am not like my ancestors. I choose to take pride only in what I accomplish, first through my own strength, and then through the Force—never through inherited political power. My parents are very proud that I have decided to become a Jedi.”

“I understand,” Luke said. “You’ve chosen a difficult path.” He smiled at her warmly. “It is a good start for a Jedi.”