from one Massassi tree to the next, hour after hour, all through the
night.
Distance held no more meaning for him; he had to get to the Jedi academy
He could hear nothing but his own ragged breathing. His injured leg
wobbled unsteadily at each step.
Fatigue blurred his vision, and twigs and leaves matted his fur. He
pushed forward, always forward, arm-leg, arm-leg, hand-foot,
hand-footLowie looked around, confused and disoriented. He had reached
for the next branch, but there were no more branches. Raising his head,
he looked across the clearing-the landing clearing!-and saw the Great
Temple, its majestic tiers outlined in the predawn darkness by
flickering torches.
Lowbacca never remembered afterward climbing down out of the tree or
crossing the clearing. He noticed only the awesome, welcoming sight of
the ancient stone pyramid as he bellowed an alarm. He roared again and
again, until a stream of robed figures carrying fresh torches rushed out
of the temple and down the steps toward him.
The night and the desperate journey had taken their toll on Lowie.
The numbness imposed by his own determination had worn off, and his knee
refused to hold him any longer. His gangly legs gave way, and he
collapsed to the ground, moaning his message.
When he rolled onto his back, a circle of concerned faces filled his
vision. Tionne bent over him and brushed the tangle of matted fur away
from his eyes.
"Lowbacca, we were concerned for you!"
Tionne said gravely. "Are you hurt?"
Lowie groaned an answer, but Tionne didn't seem @o understand. She
leaned closer to him, her silvery hair glowing in the torchlight.
"Were Jacen and Jaina with you? And Tenel Ka?" She paused as he tried
to moan another answer. "Did something happen?"
she persisted. "Can you tell me where they are?"
Lowbacca finally managed to say that the others were in the jungle and
needed help.
Tionne's brows knitted together in an expression of worry. She blinked
her mother-ofpearl eyes. "I'm sorry, Lowbacca. I can't understand a
word you're saying."
Lowie reached toward his belt to activate Em Teedee-but he found
nothing. The translator droid was gone. ----------------TENEL KA RAN
through the cool neardarkness of the jungle floor, trying to come up
with a plan. She held her bent arms in front of her to protect her eyes
and to push obstacles from her path. Branches whipped her face, tore at
her hair, and clawed mercilessly at her bare arms and legs.
Her breath came in sharp gasps, not so much from the effort of
running-to which she was well accustomed-but from the terror of what she
had just experienced. She hoped she had made the right decision. Her
pulse pounded in her ears, competing with the symphony of alien noises
as the jungle creatures welcomed nightfall. Though she searched her
mind, no Jedi calming techniques would come to her.
When the loud squawk of flying creatures sounded directly behind her,
Tenel Ka glanced back in alarm. Before she could turn again, she
fetched up sharply against the trunk of a Massassi tree. Stunned, she
fell back a few paces and sank to the ground, putting one hand to the
side of her face to examine her in'
jury.
No blood, she thought as if from a great distance. Good. Beneath her
fingertips, she felt tenderness and swelling from her cheek to her
temple. There would be bruises, of course, and perhaps a royal
headache. She cringed at the thought. Royal. Although no one could
see it, her cheeks heated with a flush of humiliation.
Tenel Ka pulled herself to her feet and took stock of her situation. In
her newfound calmness she admitted to herself that she was completely
lost. Jacen and Jaina-and by now perhaps even Lowbacca-were counting on
her to return with help. She had always prided herself on being strong,
loyal, reliable, unswayed by emotion. She had been levelheaded enough
during her initial escape, but then she had panicked. She shook off
thoughts of her stupid headlong flight.
Well, she thought, pressing her pale lips together into a firm line, I
am back in control now. She decided to push on until she found a safer
place to spend the night. When ing came, she would try to get her
bearings again and return to the Jedi academy.
As she trudged along, searching in the fading light of day, the ground
began to rise and become more rocky. The trees grew sparser. When she
saw a jagged shadow loom out of the darkness ahead of her, she slowed.
Ahead was a large outcropping of rough, black stone, long-cooled lava
mottled with lichens.
Tenel Ka tilted her head back and looked up, but she could not see how
high the rock went; the jungle dimness swallowed it up.
Cautiously exploring sideways, she encountered a break in the rock face,
a patch of deeper darkness-a small cave. Perhaps she could spend the
night here, in this defensible, sheltered place. The opening was no
wider than the length of one arm and extended only to shoulder height,
forcing her to stoop to explore further. She needed only to find a
comfortable, safe place to rest.
She shivered as she hunched down on the sandy, cool floor of the cave.
Her every muscle ached, but for now nothing could be done about her
pain; she could bear it as well as any warrior. But she had not eaten
since midday. She felt in the pouch at her waist, finding one
carbo-protein biscuit remaining.
As for the cold, she could light a fire with the finger-sized flash
heater she carried in another pouch on her belt.
Dropping to her hands and knees, she scrabbled along the ground near the
mouth of the cave, searching for twigs, leaves, any thing that would
burn. Back on Dathomir she'd had plenty of practice in rugged camping
and outdoor endurance.
As she thought of the cozy warmth of a fire and a soft bed of leaves,
Tenel Ka's spirits rose. The nightmarish events of the afternoon began
to settle into perspective. This was an adventure, she assured herself.
A test of her will and determination.
When she had collected kindling and some thicker branches, Tenel Ka
began to build her fire against the velvety shadows of gathering night.
She fumbled in her belt pouches for her flash heater and groaned as she
remembered that Jaina had borrowed it that afternoon. She rubbed her
cold, bare arms and blew on her hands to warm them.
Tenel Ka thought longingly of the cheery warmth of a crackling fire, of
drinking hot, spiced Hapan ale with her parents. A rare smile crossed
her lips as she thought of them, Teneniel Djo and Prince Isolder. If
she were at home, she would only have to lift a hand to bring a servant
of the Royal House of Hapes running to do her bidding. . . .
Tenel Ka grimaced. She had never known poverty or hardship, except by
choice. Well, you chose this, Princess, she reminded herself savagely.
You wanted to learn to do things for yourself Her father, Isolder of
Hapes, had always said that the two years he spent in disguise working
as a
privateer had done more to prepare him for leadership than any
training the royal tutors of Hapes could provide. And her mother,
raised on the primitive planet of Dathomir, was proud that her only
daughter spent months each year learning the ways of the Singing
Mountain Clan and dressing as a warrior woman-a practice that Tenel Ka
had enjoyed all the more because it annoyed her scheming Hapan
grandmother.
Teneniel Djo had been even more pleased when her daughter had decided to
attend the academy and take instruction to become a Jedi. She had
enrolled simply as Tenel Ka of Dathomir, not wanting the other trainees
to treat her differently because of her royal upbringing.
At the academy, only Master Skywalkerwho was an old friend of her
mother's@s, and the man Teneniel Djo most admired-knew Tenel Ka's true
background. She had not even told Jacen and Jaina, her closest friends
on Yavin 4.
Jacen and Jaina. The twins trusted her.
They needed her help now. She shivered in the cave. She had to stay
safe for the night and then get back to the academy in the morning to
bring reinforcements.
Tenel Ka heard a faint rustling, slapping, and hissing in the darkness
behind her. She looked back into the undulating shadows, blinking to
clear her eyes. Had the shadows really moved? Perhaps she'had been
foolish to spend the night in an unexplored cave, but cold and fatigue
had overruled her natural caution. She looked up and thought she could
discern glossy dark shapes clinging to the ceiling, moving like waves on
an inverted black sea.
Don't be a child, she chided herself. She had always tried to show her
friends how self-sufficient and reliable she was. Right now, she was
cold and bruised and miserable. What would Jacen say if he could see
her? He'd probably tell some dumb joke.
Tenel Ka gritted her teeth. She would just have to build a fire without
the flash heater, using skills she had been taught on Dathomir.
It took an agonizingly long time for her strong arms to produce enough
friction twirling one smooth stick of wood against a flat branch.
Finally, she managed to coax forth a glowing ember and a tendril of
smoke. Working quickly, she touched a dried leaf to it and blew. A
tiny golden flame licked its way up the leaf. With mounting excitement
she added another and then another, and then a few twigs.
A gust of wind threatened to extinguish the struggling flame, so she
encircled her fire with a tiny earthen berm to protect it. She added
more tinder, and soon the snapping blaze was large enough to warm her
and cast a comforting circle of light.
Tenel Ka soon realized that the restless sounds of scratching and
stirring she had heard earlier had grown louder-much louder.
Suddenly, a shrieking reptilian form plummeted from the ceiling, its
leathery wings outstretched. Twin serpentine heads snapped and a
scorpion tail lashed, razor-sharp claws outstretched. Tenel Ka raised
an arm to protect her face as the thing drove directly at her.
Talons raked her arm as she pushed herself backward toward the cave
wall. Sharp fangs opened a gash in her bare leg, and she kicked
fiercely, striking one of the creature's two heads with her scaled boot.
In the flickering light from the tiny fire, Tenel Ka watched in horror
as an entire flock of the hideous creatures-each with a wingspan wider
than she was tall-dropped from the shadowy recesses of the cave and
swarmed toward her.
She struggled for purchase on the sandy cave floor and pushed her feet
against the stone wall. Tenel Ka propelled herself toward the mouth of
the cave on her hands and knees.
She kicked the embers of her fire at the flapping beasts as she
scrambled past, hardly noticing the bits of charred wood and leaf that
singed her own legs. One of the reptilian creatures shrieked in pain.
Tenel Ka smiled with grim satisfaction and launched herself through the
cave opening, ---------------back out into the pitch blackness of the
jungle night.
The monsters followed.
AT GUNPOINT, THE TIE pilot led his captives back to the clearing with
the small, crude shelter where he had lived for some time.
"So this is why you came running," Jaina said to her brother. "You found
where he lives." Jacen nodded.
"Silence!" the Imperial soldier said in a brusque voice.
Jaina, her throat tight and dry, swallowed hard and looked around at the
small, cleared site in the gathering evening shadows. Beside them a
shallow stream trickled past. She couldn't imagine how the TIE pilot
had survived all alone, without any human contact, for so many years.
The climate of Yavin 4 was warm and hospitable, placing few demands on
the home the TIE pilot had created for himself.
He had carved out a large shelter from the hole of a half-burned
Massassi tree, in front of which he had lashed a lean-to of split
branches. Altogether, it provided him with a simple but comfortable
room, like a living cave.
Jaina tried to imagine how long it had taken the Imperial, scraping with
a sharp implement-possibly a piece of wreckage from his crashed ship-to
widen the area under the gnarled overhang.
The TIE pilot had rigged a system of plumbing made from hollow reeds
joined together, drawing water from the nearby stream into catch basins
inside his hut. He had made rough utensils from wood, forest gourds,
and petrified fungus slabs. The man had maintained a lonely existence,
unchallenged, simply surviving and waiting for further orders, hoping
someone would come to retrieve him-but no one ever had.
The Imperial soldier stopped outside the hut. "On the ground," he said.
"Both of you.
Hands above your heads."
Jaina looked at Jacen as they lay bellydown on the ground of the
clearing. She could think of no way to escape. The TIE pilot went to
the thick foliage and rummaged among the branches with his good hand. He
wrapped his fingers around some thin, purplish vines that dangled from
dazzlingly bright Nebula orchids in the branches above his head. With a
erk he snapped the strands free.
The vine tendrils flopped and writhed in his grip as if they were alive
and trying to squirm away. The TIE pilot rapidly used them to lash
Jaina's wrists together, then Jacen's. As the deep violet sap leaked
from the broken ends of the vines, the plant's thrashing slowed, and the
flexible, rubbery vines contracted, tightening into knots that were
impossible to break.
Jacen and Jaina looked at each other, their liquid-brown eyes meeting as
a host of thoughts gleamed unspoken between them.
But they said nothing, afraid to anger their captor.
Marching clumsily through the humid jungle had made them hot and sticky,
and Jaina was still covered with grime from her repairs on the TIE
fighter's engines. Now the cool jungle evening chilled her perspiration
and made her shiver. Her hands tingled and throbbed, as the tight vines
cutting into her wrists made her even more miserable.
in the hour or so sin
ce their capture, neither of the twins had heard
any further sign of Lowie or Tenel Ka. Jaina was afraid that something
had happened to them, that her two friends were even now stranded and
lost somewhere in the jungle. But then she realized that her own
situation was probably.
a lot more dangerous than theirs.
Without a word, the TIE pilot nudged them to their feet, then over to
the large lava-rock boulders near the fire pit he used outside his
shelter. They squatted there together. The stone chairs had been
polished smooth, their sharp edges chipped away slowly and patiently
over the course of years by the lost Imperial.
The last coppery rays of light from the huge orange planet Yavin
disappeared, as the rapidly rotating moon covered the jungle with night.
Through the densely laced treetops, thick shadows gathered, making the
forest floor darker than the deepest night on Jacen and Jaina's
glittering home planet of Coruscant.
The Imperial pilot walked over to the splintered chunks of dry,
moss-covered wood he had painstakingly gathered, one-armed, and stacked
near his shelter. He carried them back and dropped one branch at a time
into the fire pit, stacking the wood in formation to make a small
campfire.
The pilot withdrew a battered igniter from a storage bin inside his
shelter and pointed it at the campfire. Its charge had been nearly
depleted, and the silvery nozzle showered only a few hot sparks onto the
kindling; but he seemed accustomed to such difficulties.
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