Chapter
17

The next morning as Isolder sat at the campfire cooking a clutch of lizard eggs, he looked up at the cave walls, at stick figure paintings of women that danced on the rough stone. The smoke above the fire gathered at the top of the cave, an ominous blue cloud. Outside the sun had just risen, and flecks of sunbeams beat through the wiry trees. A long green lizard on a nearby tree flapped its gills and made spitting noises.

At the back of the cave Teneniel stirred, propped herself on one elbow. “Thank you for staying with me,” she said, blinking sleep from her eyes.

“It was nothing,” Isolder said.

Teneniel argued softly, “You could have run away.”

Isolder nodded, looked down at the fire to avoid seeing the gratitude in her eyes. Teneniel seemed thoughtful. In the corner, Artoo’s lights suddenly flashed as he powered up for the day. The little droid looked around the cave, whistled and chimed.

After a moment, Teneniel said, “Your metal friend asked to know where Luke is.”

A chill ran down Isolder’s spine. Every time he turned around, it seemed that Luke or Teneniel was doing one more superhuman thing. Teneniel had first come upon him by the river, danced around him, singing to him coyly, then held a rope out for him. He’d thought perhaps it was some odd custom, and as he reached to take it, the thing had leaped in the air and wrapped its coils around him so fast he’d thought it was a snake. Before he’d even thought to yell, Teneniel had stuck a gag in his mouth. Later in the afternoon he’d seen the devastated forest where she’d battled Zsinj’s troops—trees stripped of leaves, denuded of bark; even the ground had been gouged. Now she was interpreting some cybernetic code for him. It gave him the chills to be in the presence of beings with such power.

“Luke just went to fill the canteens. He’ll be back in a moment. How much farther till we reach your clan?” He turned the eggs, listened to them sizzle and pop.

Teneniel got up, wrapped her robe around her naked body, and walked over to the fire. Isolder thought she would sit to warm herself, but instead she leaned over and cupped his chin in her hands, then kissed his lips tenderly, experimentally. He was so surprised that he did not pull back. On all of Hapes, no woman had ever treated him that way: so casually forceful. Instead, the women around him had been respectful but distant. When she finished, she stepped back, licked her lips as if to taste him. “You are very handsome,” she said. “I wish you were Luke, and not just some commoner.”

Isolder had to think for a moment. He’d never been called a commoner before, being the prince of the hidden worlds, yet when he saw her power, he understood how she could think of him that way. “Luke’s … a good man—a great man,” Isolder agreed. “I can see why you would like him.”

“All night long I dreamed about him,” Teneniel said. “You could never take his place in my heart.”

Isolder thought it such an odd thing to say that he suddenly realized that more was going on than he understood. Luke came in at that moment. “I’ve got the water bottles filled, and the trail ahead seems clear. Let’s go.”

Isolder scraped the rubbery eggs from the pan, gave several each to Luke and Teneniel. Teneniel wrinkled her nose in disgust, but Luke said, “They’re pretty good. You ought to try them.”

“I do not know what you eat on your worlds,” Teneniel said, “but it is obvious that you do not know how to cook.” She did not eat the eggs.

They broke camp and walked a kilometer through the forest, then came to a wide, lightly graveled trail leading north and south. Teneniel led them south on the trail for four kilometers, then took a better road east, following a river. By midmorning they came to a low valley where fog climbed up the stone mountainsides. Teneniel led them up a winding stone trail, still wet from the night’s rain. She took Isolder’s hand and held it the rest of the way, as if he were some schoolchild that might slip off the face of the cliff. When they reached the top, he thought they had come into a valley of oddly shaped stones, but as they walked through the fog he saw the witches, dark shapes in the white fog, straddling shadowy monsters.

Isolder stopped to stare at the women with their helms, their intricately embroidered cloaks and glittering tunics of scaled leather. Luke’s R2 unit began to rattle in its housing and moan softly. Teneniel gripped Isolder’s wrist tighter, pulled him urgently, and Luke followed.

As they passed between the monolithic mounts, the women stared down at Isolder and gave a loud ululating cry, smiling at Teneniel and laughing. He could not doubt the meaning of the hoots and chatter. These women cheered him as if he were a stripper.

Teneniel led them to a landing, then up a flight of stairs to a stone fortress marred from battle. Apparently their presence was causing some kind of stir, for a crowd followed behind.

There, at the doors of the fortress, an old woman came out, bearing a staff of golden wood with a great white gem near a knob at the top.

“Welcome, Teneniel, my daughter’s daughter,” the old woman said. “It has been months since you last visited us. Did you find what you seek?”

“Yes, Grandmother,” Teneniel said, still holding Isolder’s wrist. She dropped to one knee. “I hunted near the old wreck at the throat of the desert, guided by a vision, until I almost despaired. But I captured this man from the stars, and I claim him as my husband.” She raised Isolder’s wrist in the air. “His name is Isolder, from the planet Hapes!”

Isolder was stunned. He pulled his wrist down and backed up a step, but the women around him crowded close, cooing in admiration. “All of you sisters see this man,” the old woman said. “Do any of you dispute Teneniel’s ownership?”

A tenseness to Teneniel’s stance told Isolder that this was a dangerous moment. The old woman searched the faces of the crowd, and Isolder looked at the warrior women. Many had dark looks on their faces, openly envious. Others smiled at him playfully, lustily.

“I do!” Isolder said, because no one else spoke up.

The old woman jerked back a step. “You claim that some other sister of the Singing Mountain clan is your owner?”

“He came with me peaceably!” Teneniel argued. “He could have run away, but he gave himself!” Her voice was filled with such pain, such betrayal, that Isolder did not know how to answer her.

“I—I only wanted to help you!” he said, looking to the old woman to referee. “She was injured. I only wanted to help care for her!”

From the recesses of the stone archway, Leia appeared in a gown of glittering red scales. “Isolder? Luke?” she called, and Isolder’s heart swelled inside him.

He choked back a cry, and Leia rushed into his arms, hugged him. “Are you all right?” Isolder asked.

“Fine,” Leia said. “I can’t believe you came all this way. I can’t believe you found me! Luke,” she cried, and she hugged the Jedi. Isolder stared at them agape a moment. Somehow, he had never realized that they were so close.

The old woman said to Leia, “Do you know this man? Is he your slave?”

“No, Augwynne,” Leia said, separating from Isolder and Luke a bit. “He’s a friend. Where I come from, we don’t have slaves.”

Augwynne thought a moment. “So, Teneniel captured him fairly. This one belongs to her.”

“Isolder once saved my—” Leia began to argue, then tensed as Augwynne gave her a hard look.

“What?” Augwynne asked. “You would plead for his freedom on the same ground that you did for Han Solo?”

“We were attacked,” Leia said. “Isolder saved me.”

Augwynne studied Leia’s face and said skeptically, “You seem uncertain. Why? What is the whole truth?”

“It was a brief melee,” Leia answered regretfully. “I’m not sure who our attackers were firing at—me or Isolder.”

“Thank you for answering honestly,” Augwynne said, patting Isolder’s hand.

Augwynne glanced at Luke. “What of this one?” she asked Teneniel. “He’s not bad looking. Will you also take him for a slave?”

As one, both Teneniel and Leia said, “He saved my life,” and Teneniel added, “This one is a male spellcaster, a powerful Jedi. He slew Nightsister Ocheron.”

At those words, many of the clan sisters hissed and stepped back, gauging Luke skeptically, and some of them began whispering to one another in their own language. From the cautious glances, the frowns, the whispered voices, Isolder guessed that more was going on here than he knew. It was almost as if they found Luke’s presence to be … portentous.

Augwynne studied Luke carefully and then glanced at the other women. She shook her head and laughed, feigning dismay. “Bah! Three new men in the village, and only one of them eligible—and him just barely? It sounds to me as if every man up there in the stars must have saved Leia at least once. All of my life I’ve wanted to travel offplanet, but now—I wonder how I’d fare. Tell me, Sister Leia, are people always trying to kill you?”

Isolder could not miss the uncomfortable tone in her voice. She was nearly begging Leia to change the subject. “Well, the last few years have been pretty rough,” Leia admitted.

“Perhaps some evening, you will have to sit by the fire and spin your tale,” Augwynne said. “But for now, I must make a ruling. I give this man Isolder into custody of Teneniel Djo, to keep as her husband.”

“What?” Leia asked so loudly that Isolder jumped.

Augwynne whispered into her ear insistently, as if to keep her quiet. “He belongs to Teneniel. She hunted for him, she caught him, and she is very lonely.”

“But, you can’t just take him as a slave!” Leia said.

Augwynne shrugged, waved at the women around her as if to give proof. “Of course we can. Every woman on the council owns at least one man.”

“Don’t fear,” Teneniel said, trying to calm Leia, “I won’t use him harshly.”

“Luke,” Leia urged. “You’ve got to stop them! You can’t let them do this!”

Luke meditated a moment, shrugged. “You’re the New Republic’s emissary. You know galactic law better than I do. You handle it.”

Leia stopped speaking a moment, looked at Luke and Isolder. Isolder thought about it quickly. Under New Republic law, the normal administration of affairs on any planet would be handled by the planetary governor, whoever that was, or by regional heads of office in case there was no planetary governor. In this case, Augwynne was a regional head of government, and all the New Republic could do was lodge a formal protest.

“I protest this,” Leia said. “I protest this very strongly!”

“What does that mean?” Augwynne asked. “Do you wish to fight Teneniel Djo for right of ownership?”

Isolder shook his head no, and Leia held his eye a moment. “What kind of fight?” Leia asked. “Are we talking to the death, or what?”

“Perhaps,” Augwynne said, shaking her head. “You might be wiser to offer to buy him …”

Luke shook his head at Leia and said, “Don’t worry, Leia, it will be all right.”

Leia waited for a long time, and said, “Teneniel Djo, I wish to buy this servant. What would you require for him?”

Teneniel glanced around the crowd, and Isolder suddenly realized that she might have more than one bidder.

“He is not for sale—yet,” Teneniel said.

Leia looked at Isolder, and said, “I’m sorry.”

Teneniel took Isolder’s hand, looked up at him, and her eyes shone in a strange shade of copper that Isolder had never seen on Hapes. Isolder let her hold his hand, and he did not feel uncomfortable. That in itself seemed odd. Everything in him, all of his training, screamed that he should fight these barbaric customs, yet on some deep level he didn’t fear Teneniel, and in fact trusted her implicitly.

Luke hugged Leia to comfort her, and Artoo came close enough so that she could pet his sensor window with her hand. Luke said, “So where are Han and Chewie? I thought they’d be with you.”

“They should be down soon,” Leia answered. “The sisters dragged the Falcon in early this morning. Han is checking the damage now. It got pretty well trashed during the ride down to Dathomir, but it looks like the only way off this rock. What about your ship?” Leia had an undertone of warning in her voice when she asked about the ship.

“We could probably sell whatever is left of it for scrap,” Luke said, but Isolder noted that the Jedi did not mention that Isolder’s fighter was still intact. Isolder took it as an unspoken warning. The fog was continuing to climb up the mountain even as they spoke, and now it hung over their heads by an arm span, like some celestial ceiling.

Isolder felt someone touch his buttocks, turned. The witches were pressing close, brushing against his back. He thought perhaps they were trying to get a better look at Leia, but suddenly realized that they weren’t trying to get a view of Leia or Augwynne, they were trying to get a closer look at him. One young witch patted his hip and whispered lustily, “My name is Ooya. Let me show you where I sleep.”

“I think we’d better go in to talk,” Leia told Teneniel, grabbing the witch’s arm with her left hand. Leia also grabbed Isolder’s hand possessively, pulled him along. “Come on, let’s go find Han,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the other women. Isolder thought it odd how much Leia’s grip was like Teneniel’s. She had not been on the planet two days, and already she was mimicking the witches’ body language—the way they held their heads high, their peculiar strut. In another week he imagined that she would fit into their clan as if she’d been born to it. It was the type of subtle thing that only a diplomat with a great deal of training could manage.

They went into the fortress, and though many of the witches did not follow, some of the women began whooping and making lusty ululating cries. Isolder felt his face going red.

As they walked through the door of the fortress, Augwynne touched his arm momentarily, stopping both him and Luke. “Go visit your friends,” she said to Luke, “but come see me immediately afterward. Your coming here is no accident.”

Leia led them through a maze of stone passageways up six flights of stairs, then down a hallway to a huge cavelike room. The Falcon filled almost the whole space. Isolder could see no large opening, no way that they could have brought the ship in.

He studied the walls for a moment, saw that several huge stones had been cracked on the far side. Which meant that the witches had somehow broken a hole through the stone wall, hoisted the Falcon vertically over two hundred meters in the air, then resealed the wall once they had gotten the Falcon inside under the cover of fog. The witches had done a lot of work. Given the simple Iron Age technology of the place, all of these feats seemed impossible, and Isolder realized that somehow, in the back of his mind, he did not want to know how the women had accomplished so much.

The Falcon lit the room with one headlamp, and the ship’s running lights were on. Han couldn’t have powered up so many systems outside without worrying about detection from orbit, but Isolder realized that the thick rock would cover the electronic signature.

They went up the ramp into the Falcon, found Han and Chewbacca in the cockpit running diagnostics. A protocol droid was messing with fried wiring around the main generators.

“Han!” Luke said, as they entered the cockpit, but Han didn’t return the enthusiastic greeting; instead, he turned back to his computer, and Isolder realized that Han felt guilty, couldn’t face Luke at the moment.

“So, you found us, kid? Well, I figured it was only a matter of time. Things have gotten pretty sticky here. You didn’t happen to bring any spare parts, did you?”

“What’s going on, Han?” Luke asked. The Wookiee patted the Jedi on the shoulder, growled affectionately. “You don’t just kidnap Leia, drag her halfway across the galaxy, and then say hi, as if nothing happened.”

Han spun in his captain’s chair, looked up, smiled a controlled smile, as if he would scream if he did not smile. “Well, see, it happened this way: I won a planet in a card game and really wanted to see it badly. Meanwhile, the woman I love was planning to run off with another man, so I convinced her to take a short trip with me. Only when we got here, I found the skies full of warships that shot me down—because no one bothered to warn me that the planet was interdicted—and after we crashed, a bunch of witches decided to start a war over who gets the wreckage of my ship. So I’ll tell you, Luke, I’ve had a really bad week so far. Now, to top it all off, I suppose you’re going to lecture me, or arrest me, or beat me up. So tell me, how is your week going?”

“About the same,” Luke said. He held his tongue a moment, looked at the control panel. “What’s wrong with your ship?”

“Well,” Han said, “we blew our anticoncussion field generators, cracked the sensory array window, fried the brains out of my astrogation computer, and leaked about two thousand liters of coolant from the main reactor.”

“I brought Artoo,” Luke offered lamely. “He can navigate the ship.” Luke looked back at Isolder, as if asking him to speak. Isolder could see that now was not the time for reprimands or fisticuffs. Right now, they needed to work together. But it was all he could do to keep from bashing Han Solo in the mouth.

“I’ve got my fighter here,” Isolder said, and Teneniel took his hand. Isolder didn’t want to speak about it too loudly, and he glanced behind him. None of the other witches had followed them into the ship.

“You’ve got a working ship on this planet?” Han asked. “How many people can it hold?”

Isolder considered his answer. If he told him two, would Han try to steal the ship and take Leia with him? “Two.”

Luke looked at Isolder curiously, and Han drew a breath in relief. “I want you to get Leia and fly her out of here, right now!” Han said. “There’s a bunch of people here who would kill for that fighter, and believe me, you don’t want to meet them!”

“He’s testing you,” Luke casually said to Han. “His fighter holds only one, and we’ve already met the Nightsisters.” Han’s face got dark with anger, and his eyes looked hollow, haunted.

“You passed the test, General Solo,” Isolder said.

“We’re in serious trouble here,” Han warned Isolder. “Don’t play so rough with me.”

Isolder didn’t like Han’s tone of voice. “You’re lucky I don’t play rougher,” Isolder said. “I’d gladly beat your face in for what you’ve done here. You’ll be lucky if I don’t.”

Luke watched Isolder calculatingly.

“Go ahead and try it,” Han said, “if you think you can handle me.”

Isolder glanced at Chewbacca. Wookiees specialized in their own form of hand-to-hand combat, and when a Wookiee disarmed an opponent, the opponent was literally disarmed. And if that didn’t subdue you, the Wookiee would go ahead and rip off your legs, too. Isolder wanted to make sure the Wookiee didn’t join in the fray. Chewbacca shrugged, whined something in his own language.

“Hold on, now,” Leia said. “We’ve got enough problems here without fighting among ourselves. Isolder, I came here with Han willingly … sort of. He asked me to accompany him as a friend, and I agreed.”

Isolder glanced at her, disbelieving, not sure what was going on. He’d seen the holo vid clips of the alleged abduction, but he couldn’t call Leia a liar. “Uh,” he said, embarrassed. “General Solo, I think I owe you an apology.”

“Great,” Han said. “So, let’s get back to work. Why don’t you start by coming up with a way to get us out of here?”

“I’ve got a fleet on its way,” Isolder said. “They should be here in another seven or eight days.”

Han asked, “When you say fleet, how big a fleet are you talking?”

“About eighty destroyers,” Isolder said.

Han’s jaw dropped, but Leia said, “Seven days isn’t quick enough. If Augwynne is correct, the Nightsisters will attack in three.”

Isolder put his arm around Leia. “My astrogation droid can pilot the ship for a jump. We could send Leia home.”

“I don’t think so,” Leia said. “I’m not going without the rest of you. Han—if you had all of your spare parts, how soon could you get this ship fixed?”

Han calculated. Plugging the rupture to stop the coolant leak would take only a few minutes. You might even be able to pour the coolant in while in flight. The R2 unit could patch in on a moment’s notice to navigate. Installing new anticoncussion field generators might take two hours. The easiest thing would be to put on a new sensory array window. Two hours, if everyone helped and they hurried.

“Two hours,” Han answered.

“I suggest we cannibalize Isolder’s ship,” Leia said, “fix the Falcon, and get out of here.”

Isolder looked at the Falcon skeptically. It was a big ship compared with his fighter—four times the length. With all the extra shielding and cargo space, it had to be forty times the mass. “What kind of anti-concussion field generators are you using?” Isolder asked.

“I’ve got four banks of Nordoxicon thirty-eights. All of them are down. What are you running on?”

“Three Taibolt twelves.”

Chewbacca roared something.

“Yeah, that’s a bust,” Han admitted. “What about your sensory array window?”

“Point six meters across,” Isolder said.

“That’s a little small for us,” Han grimaced, “but if we had to, we could weld some plate over my current array, make the window narrower. It would cut our sensor capabilities a little.”

“Yeah, that would work,” Isolder agreed. “But where are we going to get a big enough field generator?”

“Could we fly without it, sir?” Threepio asked.

“Too dangerous,” Han said. “We’re not just worried about missile attacks, we’ve got to deflect micrometeorites. If one tore through the sensor array, it could take out a lot of sensitive instrumentation.”

“Maybe there’s some kind of field generators near the prison,” Han said, throwing his hands up. “An armored gun emplacement, a wrecked ship, something. I’ll just have to go there and see.”

“If we can find some generators to steal, it will be a four-man job just to pull them, and we might need a sentry to watch for trouble,” Isolder said. “Then there’s the problem of transporting the stuff. We’re talking nearly two metric tons of equipment here.”

“We can worry about moving the stuff once we get it,” Han said. “The prison’s got to have some antigrav sleds at least.”

“You can count me in,” Luke said.

“I’m already in,” Leia added.

Isolder considered a moment. They wouldn’t be able to take the Wookiee into the city. Chances were that no one on this planet outside of the soldiers had ever seen one. The same was true of Threepio. That left them short-handed. He didn’t like the idea of having Leia endanger herself, but they were running short of options. He looked back at Teneniel, pleading. The witch appeared to be frightened but determined.

“I’ll guide you to the prison,” Teneniel said. “But I’ve never been inside. I don’t know what you are looking for, and I don’t know where to find it.”

“Have any of your clan sisters been inside the prison?” Leia asked.

Teneniel shrugged. “Augwynne would know such things better than I. I’ll get her.” Teneniel took off, returned a few minutes later with the older woman.

“None of our clan has been inside the prison,” Augwynne said, “except those who have become Nightsisters.” She was silent for a long moment.

“What of Sister Barukka?” Teneniel said hesitantly. “I heard that she has become forsaken.”

Augwynne hesitated a long time, then looked up at Leia. “There is a woman of our clan who joined the Nightsisters, but has recently left them at great price. She now lives alone as one of the forsaken and has petitioned to rejoin our clan. Perhaps she could help guide you, tell you where to find what you seek.”

“You seem reluctant to recommend her,” Leia said. “Why?”

Augwynne answered, softly. “She is fighting to cleanse herself. She has committed unspeakable atrocities that have left a great mark upon her. She is forsaken. Such people are … untrustworthy, unstable.”

“But she’s been inside the prison?” Han asked.

“Yes,” Augwynne said.

“Where is she now?”

“Barukka lives in a cavern called Rivers of Stone. I can send one of our warriors to guide you.”

“I’ll take them, Grandmother,” Teneniel offered, placing a hand on Augwynne’s shoulder. “Perhaps you could escort them to the war room and get some lunch. You could show them the map and plan our route. I’ll have some children prepare mounts.” She took Isolder’s hand. “Come with me, please,” she said. “I’d like to speak with you.” She pulled him along as if she expected him to follow.

She took him down some stairs through a maze of corridors and stopped to pick up a pitcher of water, then led him into a small chamber that held a single mattress and a trunk. A large mirror made of silver sat on one wall, with a sink beneath it. “This used to be my room, when I lived here with the clan at Singing Mountain,” Teneniel said. She opened the trunk, pulled out a soft tunic of red lizard hide, another of green. She held them up. “Which do you think Luke would like the best on me?”

Isolder didn’t dare tell her that the whole idea of wearing lizard hides seemed rather barbaric. “The green goes better with your eyes.”

She nodded, casually stripped off her torn and soiled tunic, pulled off her boots, and stood gazing in the mirror as she took a rag and gave herself a sponge bath. Isolder swallowed hard. He knew that on some planets, humans had different notions of modesty, and the businesslike way in which Teneniel bathed seemed to indicate that she really wasn’t trying to entice him.

“You know, I don’t understand your customs,” Teneniel said. “Yesterday morning when I captured you, I thought you wanted me, and the idea flattered me. I gave you every opportunity to escape first, and you took the capture rope in your own hand. I knew that you had come seeking a woman. I could feel that about you.” She frowned, glanced over her back at him. “But now I see that it is this Leia woman you want.”

“Yes,” Isolder said, looking at the sculpted muscles in her back. Teneniel was not a beautiful woman by Hapan standards—in fact, she was rather plain—but Isolder decided that she had some rather fascinating musculature. She was definitely athletic. He’d seen few women on Hapes with her kind of build—not the compact, beefy muscles of a bodybuilder, nor quite the leanness of a runner or swimmer. Instead, she was something in between. He asked, “Do you like to climb a lot?”

Teneniel shot a smile over her back. “Yes,” she said. “Do you?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

Teneniel toweled off, slipped on her tunic, pulled her long hair back over the top of it and began combing the tight curls from her hair. “I like the feel of climbing rocks,” Teneniel said, “getting all sweaty. When you get to the top of the mountain, if the weather is right, you can take off your clothes and bathe in the snow.”

Although he really felt no attraction for the girl, he realized he would have to be pretty tired not to dream about her tonight. “I suppose you could.”

When she finished combing her hair, she put on a headband of bright white cloth, turned to him and smiled. “Isolder, I would give you back your freedom outright, but if I did, the other clan sisters would only capture you. So until you leave, I think it best if I give you your freedom in all but name.”

Isolder knew she was trying to be kind. “You’re very generous.”

She gave him a friendly kiss on the forehead, and took his hand again, led him down to the war room.

Leia and the others stood around a huge map on the floor, molded of clay and painted. A clan sister was plotting a route through the mountainous countryside, a route that would keep them away from established trails that Gethzerion’s spies might be watching. The route would take them on a tortuous path over a hundred and forty kilometers of mountain and jungle, to the edge of the desert where the prison lay. Only the strongest rancors would be able to make such a journey in just three days.

Isolder looked at Leia, kept wondering about her, wondering if she were really all right, wondering if Han had really kidnapped her. She did not seem to be angry with Han or frightened of him. Yet Isolder could not imagine that she would simply run away with him on some wild fling. He swore in his heart that if she had chosen Han, he would win her back. He casually made his way to her side, held her hand. Leia smiled up at him, gazed at him fondly, and though they stood there for ten minutes while the witch marked their trail, Isolder studied only the curve of Leia’s neck, the color of her eyes, the scent of her hair.

After they had eaten, Augwynne took Luke and Isolder to a side bedroom where a toothless crone with wisps of white hair sat wrapped in a blanket, snoring. Her seat was a stone box with a cushion atop it, and two elderly women attended.

“Mother Rell,” Augwynne whispered to the crone, lightly shaking the woman’s shoulder. “We have two visitors to meet you.”

Rell caught her breath, opened her eyes and squinted at Luke. Her leathery skin was spotted purple with age, but her eyes gleamed like brown pools. She tenderly took Luke’s hand. “Why, it’s Luke Sky-walker,” the crone smiled in recognition, “who started the Jedi academy all those years ago.” Luke flinched, for the crone had not been told his name. “How are your wife and children? Are they well?”

Luke stuttered, “We’re all fine.” The hair on the back of Isolder’s neck stood on end. He had the odd feeling that he was looking into a brilliant light.

The crone smiled knowingly and nodded. “Good, good. If you have your health, you have much. Have you seen Master Yoda lately? How is that old flirt?”

“I haven’t seen him lately,” Luke answered, and Rell’s grip went slack, her eyes dimmed. She seemed to forget that Luke was even standing there.

Augwynne directed her attention to Isolder. “Luke brought another friend to see you,” Augwynne said, and she put the old woman’s spidery fingers in Isolder’s hand.

“Oh, it’s Prince Isolder,” the old woman said, leaning close to peer at him. “But, I thought Gethzerion killed you. If you’re alive, then …” She studied him a moment, then her face went dark with realization and she looked up at Augwynne. “I’ve been dreaming again, haven’t I? What century is it?”

“Yes, Mother, you’ve been dreaming again,” Augwynne answered soothingly, patting the old woman’s hand, but Rell would not loose her grip on Isolder’s hand. Her eyes lost their focus.

“Mother Rell is nearly three hundred years old,” Augwynne explained, “but her spirit is so strong that it will not let her body die. When I was a child, she used to tell me that someday a Jedi Master would come with his pupil, and that when he did, I should bring them straight to her. She said she had a message for you, but she is not lucid at the moment. I’m sorry.”

Augwynne seemed tense, and she tried to pry the old woman’s grasp free from Isolder’s hand. Rell smiled at them all, her white head bobbing like a float on the water. “It’s been pleasant visiting you,” Rell told Isolder. “Please come see me again. You’re such a nice young girl or boy or whatever you are.…”

Augwynne got the old woman to free Isolder’s hand, and she took the men from the room, ushering them hurriedly.

“She sees the future, doesn’t she?” Luke said.

Augwynne nodded mechanically, and Isolder became extremely uncomfortable, for if the old woman was right, Gethzerion would kill him within the next few days. “Sometimes she gets lost in it as easily as she becomes lost in the past,” Augwynne explained.

“What else did she tell you about me?” Luke said.

“She said that after you came,” Augwynne answered softly, “she would let herself die. And she said that your coming would signal the end of our world.”

“What did she mean by that?” Luke asked, but Augwynne only shook her head and went to the hearth. Her manservant ladled some soup into her bowl. Luke must have seen the fear etched into Isolder’s face, for he put his hand on Isolder’s back.

“Don’t worry,” Luke said. “What Rell saw is only one possible future. Nothing is written. Nothing is written.”