"How, how did you do that?" Isolder asked, the hair p.r.i.c.kling 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 their 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?pinp.r.i.c.k 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 s.p.a.ce freighters fly into port. The first time I ever watched a s.p.a.ce 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 bloodl.u.s.t, 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 gra.s.s 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.

"What are you doing?" Isolder said. "That thing is drinking all of our water."

"It's eighty kilometers through the desert to the mountains," Luke said, "a difficult journey even for a Jedi, and there is no water between here and there?only sand. But every evening, these creatures run to the hills to feed, and every morning, they run back here to hide from predators and the day's sun. That's why we saw so many skeletons here in the crevices, where their old ones have died. They call themselves the Blue Desert People. Tonight, they will carry us to the mountains. We won't need all this water."

"You mean they're intelligent?" Isolder asked doubtfully.

"Not much more so than most other animals," Luke said, gazing at Isolder, "but smart enough. They care for one another and have their own kind of wisdom."

"And you can talk to them?"

Luke nodded, stroked the reptile's nose. "The Force is within us all?you, me, her. It binds us together, and through it I can read her intent, make mine known."

Isolder watched them a moment, then sat down, troubled for some reason that he could not express, could not quite grasp. He slept part of the day, ate from his pack, drank his water. All day long the beast slept beside them, laying its head out flat on the ground so that it could sniff Luke's feet.

That evening just before the sun began to set, the beast raised its head, made a honking noise. Several other beasts answered, came to its call.

"Time to go," Luke said. Isolder climbed up from the ravine while Luke closed his eyes, levitated Artoo up, then climbed up himself.

The Blue Desert People were everywhere, climbing out of their holes, snorting loudly and looking at the sunset. They seemed unwilling, or perhaps by some virtue of genetic memory were unable, to begin the journey until the sun had dropped below the mountains.

Under Luke's guidance, Isolder climbed on the back of a large male, set himself just beneath its arms. When the beast stood, it was a precarious position, but Luke carried Artoo up to the same spot on a larger male and seemed to balance fine.

As the bottom of the sun touched the top of the mountains, the Blue Desert People bellowed, lowered their heads, lifted their tails out straight behind them as a counterbalance, and raced across the sand on their powerful hind legs.

With the beast's head down, Isolder found that his position was quite stable, even comfortable, though Artoo whistled and groaned about it at first. The Blue Desert People thundered across eighty kilometers of pan and towering dunes, their red eyes seeming to glow a glittering black in the darkness, grunting and snorting. Isolder listened to them talk, realized that the grunting and snorting came from animals on the perimeters of the herd, and that they were issuing instructions. If reptiles snorted two or three times on one side of the herd, the herd would veer away. But if animals issued contented grunts, the herd would stay on course.

By early nightfall they reached a wide muddy river where tall gra.s.ses and reeds grew in the shallows. Birds with long necks and leather wings swooped low over the river in the moonlight, taking long drinks. Here the Blue Desert People stopped to water and feed among the rushes.

"This is where we get off," Luke said, and they dismounted. Luke patted the nose of each of their mounts, thanking them with soft words.

"Can't you make them carry us farther?" Isolder asked. "We've still got a long way to go."

Luke flashed an annoyed glance his way. "I do not make anyone do anything," Luke said. "I do not make Artoo follow me, just as I did not make you follow me. The Blue Desert People agreed to take us this far, and now that we have water, our own legs will suffice for the rest of the journey."

Isolder suddenly realized why he found Luke's behavior toward the Blue Desert People so discomforting: among the royal family on Hapes, they did not treat their servants so well. Women were accorded greater respect than men, industrialists more respect than farmers, royalty more respect than them all. But Luke treated his droid and these dumb animals as if they were Isolder's equals, or as if they were Luke's own brothers, and that . . . alarmed Isolder, to think that the Jedi saw him as no more important than a droid or a beast. And yet, Luke showed the Blue Desert People such tenderness that Isolder found himself feeling jealous of them.

"You shouldn't do this!" Isolder found himself saying. "The universe doesn't work this way!"

"What do you mean?" Luke asked.

"You?you're treating those beasts as equals. You show my mother, the Ta'a Chume of the Hapan empire, the same degree of cordiality as you give a droid!"

"This droid, these beasts," Luke said, "all have a similar measure of Force within them. If I serve the Force, how can I not respect them, just as I respect Ta'a Chume?"

Isolder shook his head. "Now I see why my mother wanted to kill you, Jedi. You have dangerous ideas."

"Perhaps they are dangerous to despots," Luke said, smiling. "Tell me, do you serve your mother and her empire above all else?"

"Of course," Isolder said.

"If you served her, you would not be here," Luke countered. "You would have been content to marry some local despot and sire your heirs.

Instead, your heart is divided. You tell yourself that you have come to rescue Leia, but I believe you have really come to Dathomir to learn the ways of the Force."

A thrill coursed through Isolder as he realized that it might be true, and yet, the very idea sounded absurd. Luke was saying that Isolder's every small impulse, each mad decision, could be taken as evidence that Isolder was his disciple, a servant to some higher power that Isolder was not even convinced existed.

True, Luke had floated through the air, carried Isolder's ship to safety, but couldn't that power have issued from Luke's own twisted mind, rather than from some mystical Force? On Thrakia was a race of insects with genetically transmitted memories who worshiped their own power to speak.

Apparently the insects all remembered that in the recent past they had communicated only through scent, and then one day they discovered that they had the ability to communicate by clicking their mandibles. After three hundred years they were all still overawed by the fact that they could communicate this way, and all of them took it as a sign that they had been gifted from some higher being. But it was just their stupid mandibles clacking!

As they walked off through the low hills, following the course of the river, Isolder watched the Jedi and wondered. Was Luke truly led by some mystical Force? Or did he simply follow his own conscience, fooled into believing that his strange powers and crazed notions came from some outside influence?

With each step they took toward the mountains, Isolder had to wonder: are my footsteps guided by the light side of the Force? And if so, where will this Force lead me?

Whatever answer Isolder found to that question, he knew it would change every future moment of his life.

Chapter 14.

At dawn the morning fog blowing off the muddy river obscured Luke's vision so that he could not see more than a few meters ahead. The ground along the riverbank had turned swampy, hindering Artoo's progress. The trees along the river had all burned and rotted, so that limbs pointed up out of the fog like crooked fingers, in shades of ebony and ice. Large speckled lizards clung to the trees, sometimes as many as a dozen to a branch, watching the fog-shrouded reeds for prey or predators.

Behind Luke, Isolder did not speak. Several times Luke turned to see him, deep in thought, brow furrowed. Luke knew only too well what the young man must be thinking. Only a few years ago, Luke had followed Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi off on a similar mad quest to take stolen blueprints to Alderaan.

For these past months, Luke considered, I've wanted so badly to find the records of the ancient Jedi, to find some talented students and teach them of the Force. Yet Luke realized the truth: Isolder had sought him out, even though the prince showed little talent.

This was Luke's chance to practice, to teach someone to follow the light side of the Force, without the pressure of having to worry about whether the student would become another Vader.

He picked his way through the mud, watching for quicksand, wondered if that is how it had happened with Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. Luke had always imagined that the old man had been waiting for Luke to mature, like a farmer watching over his field of grain. But now he wondered if Luke's sudden intrusion into Obi-Wan's affairs hadn't been as much of a surprise to Obi-Wan as Isolder's intrusion now seemed to Luke.

Isolder was obviously moved by the Force. That much Luke could discern, but he could feel no power in the prince. Perhaps the power was so new, so small, that Isolder could not feel it himself.

Luke reached a fork in the trail. One way was high and safe-looking, but the muddy path seemed to draw him. He followed his instinct down the muddy path.