Occasionally she heard a rumbling, rushing roar, as if the volcano itself were breathing deeply in its sleep. The stony walls around her took on a cracked, broken look. Some of the larger fissures ran from floor to ceiling and leaked puffs of acrid white steam. But she saw no embedded crystals.
The lava tube wound on and on. Losing patience, Tenel Ka had just about decided to turn back when she rounded one last corner and encountered a wave of searing heat. She had found what she was looking for.
“Ah,” she said. “Aha.”
She wouldn’t be able to bear the heat for long, but she had to risk it. On the floor of the tunnel lay a huge slab of glossy black rock that had broken free from a crack on the tunnel wall. Ripples of scorching air danced before her in the dimness. Rivulets of perspiration ran down her forehead and into her eyes, blurring her vision. Even so, she could not mistake the chunks of spiky crystals that grew on the broken slab, glittering and hazy.
The rock surrounding her was too hot to touch, so Tenel Ka worked quickly. Holding her glowrod in her teeth, she pulled a small scrap of lizard hide from a pouch at her belt, wrapped it around a clump of the crystals, used her grappling hook to chip away at a few of the crystals, then pried them loose.
Tenel Ka tucked the crystals, still wrapped in their protective lizard hide, into her belt pouch, then headed back up the tunnel at a trot. Holding the glowrod high above her head, she raised her voice in a loud ululating cry of triumph that echoed down the length of the lava tube.
Back in her quarters, Tenel Ka sat at a low wooden table with the components of her future lightsaber spread in front of her. Everything she needed for assembling her weapon was here: switches, crystals, the covering plate, a power source, a focusing lens, and the rancor-tooth hilt.
She ran a light fingertip over the intricate battle etchings she had carved on the ivory lightsaber handle. The markings had turned out even better than she had hoped.
After returning from her crystal hunt, she had applied to the rancor tooth a paste made of dampened black sand from the floor of the lava tube. When she polished the tooth to a soft luster, pigment from the dark sand had stained every crevice of her carving to bring each etched line into sharp relief. The decorated rancor tooth was a beautiful piece, worthy of a warrior.
A yawn of contented weariness escaped her lips as Tenel Ka began to piece the components together according to Master Skywalker’s directions. She frowned when she realized that the hollow inside the rancor’s tooth was not quite large enough to contain the arrangement of crystals she had hoped for. She frowned again when she noticed on close inspection that each of her hazy crystals contained a tiny flaw. She suppressed another yawn and shook her head in resignation. Well, she didn’t have much choice. There hadn’t been time to examine the crystals more carefully in the searing lava tube, and now it was too late to search for more.
Tenel Ka thought back over the past two weeks, the drills and exercises she had put herself through. Her reflexes were lightning-fast, her skills and senses sharp as a laser. She shrugged, trying to loosen the knot of weary tension that had crept into her shoulders. She would have to make do. After all, in the long run it was the warrior and not the weapon that determined victory.
She nodded to herself as she picked up the lightsaber handle and began placing the components inside.
4
The jungle clearing was alive with thousands—no, millions!—of living creatures and interesting plants, strangely colorful mushrooms and droning insects, all of which offered great distractions to Jacen. He had to work very hard to keep his mind from wandering. At the moment it was far more important to pay attention to Luke Skywalker as he set up the first lightsaber dueling exercise for the young Jedi Knights.
During the construction of their weapons, the trainees had sparred with dueling droids and with each other, using sticks the same length as a lightsaber blade. After completing their lightsabers, they had spent a week practicing with their real weapons against stationary targets, accustoming themselves to the feel of the energy blades.
Now, though, Master Skywalker had deemed them ready to move on to the next step.
The clearing was a burned-out spot where lightning had sparked a brief but intense forest fire. The jungle dampness and lush foliage had quickly smothered the blaze, but a huge Massassi tree—its trunk charred and weakened by the searing flames—had toppled over, taking with it several smaller trees and bushes. The rest of the clearing was a matted maze of pale green undergrowth—weeds and grasses and flowers attempting to reclaim the burned and crumbly soil.
Because today’s exercises would be both mental and physical, Uncle Luke wore a comfortable flight suit, as did Jacen and Jaina. Tenel Ka’s ever-present reptilian armor left her arms and legs bare, giving her complete freedom of movement. Her long reddish-gold hair had been plaited into intricate braids, with special ornamentation on each one. Lowbacca wore no garment other than his belt, woven of strands he had harvested from a deadly syren plant in the deep forests on Kashyyyk. Em Teedee hung in his accustomed place at the Wookiee’s waist.
All of the young Jedi Knights carried something new and special this time, though—their own lightsabers, completed after weeks of delicate construction.
While Jacen stood with his friends, flicking occasional glances in the direction of rustling leaves that hinted at the presence of strange creatures, Luke Skywalker took a seat on the massive fallen trunk. At last he unslung the mysterious pack he had lugged all the way from the Great Temple.
“What’s in there, Uncle Luke?” Jacen asked, unable to restrain his curiosity. Since he couldn’t investigate the interesting insects and plants, he needed to focus his mind on something else.
Luke gave a secretive smile and withdrew a scarlet sphere the size of a large ball, perfectly smooth except for tiny covered openings that might have been repulsorjets or small targeting lasers. Luke set the ball on the slanted, burned trunk; miraculously, it did not roll down the slope, but remained exactly where he had placed it. He withdrew another of the scarlet spheres, and another, and another.
“Remotes!” Jaina cried, guessing what they were. “Those are remotes, aren’t they, Uncle Luke? What are they for?”
“Target practice,” he said. All four remotes sat balanced on the burned Massassi trunk, refusing to roll, as if they could ignore gravity.
Lowbacca grunted with surprise, and Tenel Ka straightened. “We are going to shoot at them?”
“No,” Luke said. “They’re going to shoot at you.”
“And we deflect the shots with our lightsabers?” Jacen asked.
“Yes,” Luke said, “but it’s not as easy as you might think.”
“I never said I thought it would be easy,” Jacen muttered.
Tenel Ka nodded. “A lesson to sharpen our reflexes and concentration. We must react quickly to intercept each burst from the remotes.”
“Ah, but it gets harder,” Luke said. He reached into the sack again, removed a flexible helmet with a transparisteel visor tinted a deep red, and handed it to Tenel Ka. “You’ll each wear these.” He withdrew another pair of helmets for the twins, but the last one consisted of only a red visor fastened with crude tie-straps. “Sorry, Lowbacca, but I couldn’t find a helmet big enough for your head. This will have to do.”
Jacen slipped the helmet over his perpetually tousled brown hair and suddenly saw the jungle through a scarlet filter. The thick forest held a more primeval quality now, as if backlit with smoldering fires. The details were duller, darker, and Jacen wondered what the helmet and visor were supposed to do—protect them against stray shots from the remotes? He looked over at where the bright red remotes had rested on the burned tree trunk … or rather where they should have been.