Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [112]
Leia said softly, “That’s what scares me.”
“I know.”
She sliced off the tape, finished attaching a cutout sole of cu-pa leather to the broken ruin of Leia’s boot, and handed it back, folding up and pocketing the knife, one-handed again, with the quick economy of a longtime jury-rigger. The face that had been Cray Mingla’s had changed. Look as she might for the features of the young scientist she had known, the woman who had given up her body to Callista that she herself might seek her lover on the Other Side, Leia could see only the lost Jedi, the woman her brother so deeply loved. In colorless starlight, no trace of Cray’s blond remained in the thick masses of Callista’s hair. Dark with the darkness, in daylight it would be the soft, medium-brown that it had been turning when last she’d seen this woman with Luke. Her gray eyes were mostly hidden in the shadows of level dark brows.
“I don’t think Luke understands that, really.” Callista moved her head a little at some sound on the other side of the great black gun muzzle, pointing skyward in the center of the station’s open roof. It was only one of the other Therans setting up a small but powerful electroheater to make supper, calling out to a couple of the young women of the troop. The evening wind had stilled. Bé, the troop Listener, a twig of a man who might have been thirty or fifty, passed like a shadow among the riders who spread blankets, cleaned weapons, spoke softly among themselves all around.
The Force was a dark sea, sounding in the night. Leia wondered if Callista could feel it as she could.
“People have tried to use him,” Callista went on, “from the moment he put out his hand and summoned his lightsaber to come to him. Vader wanted to turn him. Palpatine wanted his services. Palpatine’s clone managed to enslave him for a time. But Luke is strong, stronger than he knows. And Luke has a single purpose. I suppose you could say that he has a pure heart.”
She folded her arms, more relaxed than Leia had seen her toward the end there, in Luke’s presence. Her breath made a smoke of diamonds as she spoke. “Luke doesn’t hunger after power. In some ways I don’t think he understands those who do.”
“No.” Leia had never thought of it in those terms, but she recognized that Callista was right. Luke had never sought to be a commander of anything except a wing squadron. He wasn’t the tactician Han was. At the Jedi Academy, all he sought was to teach, to learn, to further the ways of the Force for all. He wanted a Jedi Order so that he could be part of it, not for the sake of having pupils at his beck and call.
“But you understand.”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand why I had to leave.”
Leia sighed, a whisper of regret. “Yes.” In a way, she had always understood.
There was silence for a time, the crystals of the high peaks catching the fragmented glare of the bitter stars. “I’m like Luke,” Callista went on, speaking softly, almost to herself. “I never wanted power. Only to learn. Only to be with other people who understand. But people use those who have our power, Leia. Vader wanted to use you. If he hadn’t spoken of his intention to do so, I don’t think Luke would have been angry enough to go after him, to fight him to the death. You told me how Thrawn and Pellaeon tried to kidnap your children, how C’baoth wanted them as weapons of his own ambition. I’ve seen how hard you try to teach Jacen and Jaina to listen to their own hearts, to have a sense of fairness, of justice. So they won’t be pawns. So they won’t be twisted. But for a long time they’ll be weak, because they’re children, and it’s easy to influence children by love and hate and lies.”
“Yes,” said Leia again. She pulled on her boot, drew