Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [130]
At that time, Leia realized, Irek had to have been at least four years old, and Roganda already gathering her own power base, laying her plans. From things Magrody said, she must already have been training her son in the ways of the dark side of the Force.
There was no way Palpatine would have let such power exist without using it for his own ends. And having acted for him in some things, it would be easy to say, These orders come from him.
She wondered how Roganda had come to the old man in the first place, and whether it was he who had turned her to the dark side, as he had turned Vader and for a time turned Luke, or whether Roganda had sought him out when she saw the fate of Jedi who tried to stay free. Somehow, Leia strongly suspected the latter.
Looking back at that levee, she had the tremendous sense of seeing yet another palimpsest, one set of circumstances rising up through another in a complex jungle of double meaning, which at the time she—eighteen years old and filled with her father’s Republican ideals—had been completely unaware of.
Her own response to Celly’s words still made her wince at her own naïveté: She’d indignantly quoted a dozen points concerning the transfer of power from the Senate Constitution, just as if Palpatine weren’t going to tear up that document later in the year.
But in fact, in the power vacuum that had succeeded Palpatine’s fall, the generals, with a few notable exceptions, had mostly gone each for him- or herself. None had wanted a regent, particularly not one for an infant child.
The boy is now thirteen years old [wrote Magrody in his final paragraph]. His control over droids and mechanicals increases daily; his use of the various artifacts of the Jedi his mother brings to him is ever more adept. He can alter sensors and sensor fields, keeping abreast of the wiring patterns of all the standard makes; he amuses himself by causing minor machinery to malfunction. His mother demands much of him, and in consequence of this I fear he has begun dabbling in substances of which she disapproves—telling himself they increase his perceptions and his abilities to use the Force, but in actual fact, I believe, simply because he knows she would disapprove.
I see well what I have created. Mon Mothma—my friend Bail—all those who tried to enlist my support and help against the rise of Palpatine’s power … I can only beg for your understanding, for I know that what I have done is not something that can be forgiven.
I will try to get these notes to you in some fashion. Should I not, I fear that all will believe the worst of me. I tried to make the best decisions I could … with what results, I pray that you will never have occasion to see.
To you I sign myself in all wretchedness,
Nasdra Magrody
Leia folded the notes together and slipped them into the pocket of her t-suit.
I fear that all will believe the worst of me …
With all her power, once the Emperor was dead Roganda had not joined in the immediate and general grab for power—possibly because Irek was too young to use his powers, and possibly because warlords like High Admiral Thrawn had something against Roganda that Roganda considered insurmountable … a DNA comparison, for instance, between the Emperor and the child Irek that proved that the boy was not, in fact, Palpatine’s son.
Possibly Thrawn simply didn’t like the woman.
It was a viewpoint for which Leia had a good deal of sympathy.
Instead Roganda had come here, to her own childhood home, where she knew she could raise and train her son unnoticed—and where she knew the Jedi had left at least some training aids. Raise him and train him until he could not be ignored.
It occurred to her to wonder whether Roganda had been grooming and preparing her own child to replace Palpatine at all.
It sounded very much more, thought Leia uneasily, as if Roganda’s intent had been to raise up not another Palpatine … but another Darth Vader.
Chapter 19
“Master Luke?”
It was very important.
“Master Luke?”
He had to wake up, come out of it, cross back over to