Embers: Sequel to Crash and Burn

Jacen would have gotten to Dathomir a lot faster, but Han still wasn’t talking to him, and certainly wouldn’t let him borrow the Millennium Falcon, so he had to wait for a ship that he could rent and fly out of the system with for at least a few weeks. He rented a small, slow transport on credit – he couldn’t afford anything faster – and set out. Ingvor was still looking for a buyer for her gem, and she didn’t like the prices she was being quoted, so all she was able to loan him was the money from the medal she sold to a collectible shop and the blue gold she’d sold to a jeweler. That, with his existing savings and low credit line, was enough to get him fuel and four weeks in a personal cargo ship.

I really needed the Falcon, he thought. Or even one of Jaina’s ships. Why did she have to go out to Bakura now, of all times?

He wasted no time in flying down to the surface, and he found the home of the Singing Mountain clan quickly. He’d been there several times before, although none of them recent, all of those instances being before the Stellar Imperial War.

He expected a few changes, and the most obvious change he found, ironically, assured him that much had stayed the same. The clan homes were a mass of shambles, and looked like recent damage, not years of neglect. Clan raids.

Why doesn’t Anakin answer me? He’d called several times over the comlinks, hoping that Anakin would pick up, but he didn’t. The best explanation was that the comlink Anakin had taken with him wasn’t compatible with his, and its scrambled messages came through as static because they couldn’t decode what the other was sending. The worst explanation – Jacen didn’t want to think about that, and he was sure that, if nothing else, Anakin was still alive. He’d feel it in the Force if Anakin died. He was certain of it.

“Father!”

Jacen turned towards the voice. For a moment, he didn’t recognize Allana, because she was dressed in the brown homespun of a Dathomiri girl. She’d put her hair into small warrior braids, like her mother used to wear, and for a moment Jacen thought that she was starting to look more and more like Tenel Ka as she grew up. But his own influence was still obvious, and he could tell that she didn’t quite belong where she was – slight differences in her gait, and the lines in her face. Still, those would continue to change as she grew.

“Allana!” He simultaneously wanted to hug her and give her a good old-fashioned spanking. He’d traveled halfway across the galaxy to find her.

“I hope you didn’t see the ship,” Allana said worriedly. “Then you would have gotten scared for me.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

“I crashed Ingvor’s ship,” Allana went on. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I landed it badly and when I climbed out, it tipped over and fell over the edge of a cliff.”

Jacen sighed. “Ingvor isn’t going to like that,” he said. An elderly woman that he recognized as Augwynne Djo appeared behind Allana, but Allana turned to her, and Augwynne waved Allana away, towards Jacen. “What you did was wrong. You shot a civilian and you stole something that wasn’t yours.”

“I didn’t steal the Hadron Boson, not exactly,” said Allana. “I left her enough money for it.”

“That’s not the point. You can’t just go around taking whatever you want and leaving the money. Some things aren’t for sale. I’m glad you’re here and you’re safe. A lot of things could have happened to you. It isn’t safe to be out in the wilderness by yourself, and you were very foolish to attempt a long space flight on your own. Any number of things could have happened that you weren’t trained for!”

“The hyperdrive blew out,” Allana said, and she scuffed the dirt with the toe of one of her boots.

Jacen embraced Allana and held her tightly. “Don’t you ever, ever even think about doing something like this again. I was worried sick. The galaxy is a dangerous place and you’re not ready to go out into it.”

“Ingvor did. And so did Zekk.”

“Ingvor was older than you and more streetwise. And Zekk, he had friends helping him, like old Peckham. And if you recall, he was caught by the Shadow Academy, and Ingvor had to move around in scummy areas for years. She lived on Nal Hutta, for crying out loud. She was lucky to survive the early years. You can’t rely on luck.”

“I’m sorry I upset you,” said Allana. “How did you find me, though?”

“You left a trail as bright as lightning. And even if you hadn’t, I would have guessed you’d come here.”

“Well – I still don’t want to go home. I’m not going to Hapes, and that’s that!”

“We can talk about it later. I have to have a few words with Augwynne.”

“Okay,” said Allana, and she sighed. “Before you do that, though, I have some news. And I don’t think you’ll like it very much.”

Jacen ground his teeth. “What is it?”

“We found Welk. Well, okay, nobody really found him. He wasn’t hiding. He’s in the Fire Island clan with his mother.”

“Lord Welk is here?!”

“He’s not a Lord anything anymore. He just lives with his mother and his grandmother and his daughter. His grandmother is Augwynne’s sister but they’ve been at war with Singing Mountain for a long time. Before you were born.”

Jacen clapped his hand to his forehead. “Any other good news, Allana?”

“Um, no, but I have more bad news.”

“Out with it.”

“Welk has a daughter. You know, the one that was a baby in the war and her mother gave her some virus that went out to the Jedi?”

Jacen nodded. Darth Inferna had wanted to spread a plague among the galaxy, one that killed midichlorians but didn’t attack normal mitochondria, effectively stripping the Jedi and other Force users of their powers without killing anybody but those who were already extremely ill. Jacen and Anakin had escaped the plague, because they were isolated from the rest of the galaxy, and Jaina had been able to obtain a few vaccines. However, most of the Jedi were without their powers until the plague passed and their bodies were able to heal. And Inferna had used her own two-year-old daughter, whose father was Welk, to be the initial vector of the virus on Coruscant. After Inferna and Welk caught Jacen and Anakin and tortured them, Inferna had tried to kill Anakin, and Jacen killed her instead. Welk escaped, and took his daughter out to the Unknown Regions, although he was rumored to have returned a few years later.

“She’s grown up now,” said Allana.

Baby Desa would be seventeen, Jacen realized.

“And she caught Anakin.”

“She what?”

“She caught Anakin when he came to Dathomir. He’s her slave now, or something like that. I knew because she took his ring and it fell off her finger when the Fire Island warriors came here to steal our slaves. I found it.”

“I’m going to go get him,” said Jacen.

“Wait! You don’t want to do that. There are a lot of warriors and they’re all witches! All of them! You won’t just fight Desa. She could get her dad to back her up. And probably her grandma and all her cousins and all her friends. They’d catch you, too!”

“What do you want me to do, Allana? Just go home without Anakin and without you? I’m not leaving him in Welk’s hands! He’s a Sith Lord!”

“He’s not a Sith Lord now,” Allana said, exasperated. “If he started to do Dark Side stuff he’d be kicked out of the clan. You have to bargain with them. You have to trade them something they want and then they give Anakin back.”

She is right, Jacen, said Augwynne, speaking directly into Jacen’s mind. Fire Island has been a thorn in the side of the entire clan for many years, and their warriors are strong. Surely you have something that you would give to them, and Saria, the clan leader, might pressure her great-granddaughter into giving Anakin to Allana.

“What about me?”

You have no standing here. You are safe within the Singing Mountain clan; you were the husband of Tenel Ka, my own granddaughter’s daughter, and she loved you. She bore you a daughter that we are proud to take in as one of our own. But you own nothing, you have nothing but that which you brought with you, and anything you take belongs to us.

“I have a score to settle with Welk. The things he did to me and Anakin are things I’m not going to forgive and not going to forget. He tried to kill us three times. I’m not going to let him, or his daughter, have Anakin. She’s probably as bad as he is.”

We may have problems with the Fire Island clan, but they are not Nightsisters. They hate the Nightsisters and fear them as much as we do. You can be assured that your brother is being cared for properly, and if Desa decides that she no longer wants him, then she will sell him to someone who would love him more.

“You don’t get it, do you? We don’t live this way. We don’t take slaves, and we don’t leave members of our family to become slaves. We just don’t.”

Perhaps you do not, but that is the Dathomiri way.

“I am not some weak-willed child that you just picked up from someone else’s camp. I am a Jedi Knight. I could be a Jedi Master in a few years. Do you remember Luke Skywalker? He’s my uncle. He trained me.”

I know that, Jacen.

“And I’m going to do whatever I have to do to free Anakin.”

I will not help you. I am already making many concessions to allow you to stay here, and if it were not for your daughter and your late wife, I would not. Whatever you do, once you leave the boundaries of our territory, you are out of my hands. Should you find yourself in danger, I will not come to your aid, nor will any of the members of the clan. Is that clear?

“Maybe he could get away by himself,” said Allana.

I doubt that, said Augwynne. Not unless they were willing to give him up.

“You underestimate the Jedi,” said Jacen.

I do no such thing. You underestimate Clan Fire Island. I leave you now to make your own fate. It is clear that you will not listen to a woman’s reason and you are too headstrong from years of running free. Ask your daughter, even; she has more reason than you do.

Allana folded her hands behind her back and looked at the ground. “I still think it would be better to try to make a deal with them,” she said.

“Some thanks you give your Uncle Anakin,” Jacen snapped. “He was like a second father to you!”

I have heard quite enough. Come along, Allana.

Allana reluctantly started to follow Augwynne back to the clan hall, but she ran back to Jacen just for a moment. “Be careful, okay? Be really careful. They killed some of our witches. Four of them died in the fight and then one more the next day because she caught a spear to the chest and the healing spells couldn’t help her.”

That was too much for Jacen. Allana looked worried, even scared for him, and it was clear that she didn’t like what she had seen – but she somehow accepted it. She was becoming an adult, little by little, and there wasn’t anything he could do to stop it. She wasn’t quite a child anymore, and soon, she would be a woman. That bothered him, on top of everything else that he had just learned. A part of him had never believed there would be a day when Allana was no longer a small thing in his care, something for him to love and guard and protect. She was making her own choices, and perhaps doing that too early and in an immature way, but he certainly hadn’t given her many opportunities to do it with his guidance.

“I’ll be careful,” he managed to say.

His mind raced ahread of him as he returned to his ship and brought out a small speeder bike. It wasn’t particularly fast, but it would carry him much faster than his legs would, and a little bit faster than a rancor could ride. He didn’t know what he would find when he got to the Fire Island camp, but whatever it was… no, it wasn’t anything he could plan for. He had to just let the Force flow him, and roll with whatever came his way. Without more information, guessing would do him more harm than good.

He quickly descended into the river valley and followed the shallow river to the place where it split, leaving a large splotch of dry land that the river flowed past on either side. He had a sense of foreboding, and saw smoke rising from the island. When he got closer, he could see blackened wood and several fires burning in haphazard arrangement across the island.

He heard a few shouts, and crossed over the thin left side of the river in less than a minute. Now he could smell it as well as see it; burned wood, the faintly rancid and sickly-sweet smell of flesh beginning to ripen and rot in the hot, moist air.

“Stop!” he shouted when a figure began to move in the shadows, racing towards him. “I’m not here to cause any trouble! I just need to talk to Saria.”

What business is this?

“I’m from the Singing Mountain clan. Well, my daughter is and my wife was, before she was killed. But I have to talk to Saria. I will talk to Saria.” He put the strength of the Force behind his voice.

You must be another of those Jedi men, the woman said. I can feel your strength. Come, and I will take you to Saria, but she may not want to talk to you. If she does not, then you will return to the place you came from and not bother us anymore.

“I agree to that,” said Jacen. He reached out, to find Anakin, and didn’t find him. But he still is alive, Jacen reminded himself.

Saria was also an old woman, although not quite as aged as Augwynne. She was a little bit taller and a little bit thinner, and looked even more severe and impassive. Another one, she said. I am beginning to think that the Jedi are ill luck.

“I am Jacen Solo,” Jacen began. “My mother was Princess Leia of Alderaan, and she was in your sister clan for a short time, as was my wife, and now my daughter.”

That is not important. Saria looked him over. You are not one of the evil ones. That is enough for now. She sighed. The Nightsisters found us, when we were weakened from war. They destroyed our clan hall. You did not bring them, but you Jedi do nothing good for us. Leave at once.

“I’m looking for Anakin Solo. He’s my brother.”

He is not here. Three of every seven warriors were killed when the Nightsisters attacked. Five more may die. And almost all of our slaves were carried off.

“Wait,” said Jacen. “Anakin...”

Was subdued by a Nightsister. They are more powerful than we are because they use the dark arts that bring destruction to all. You will have to seek them out if you wish to return him to us. Should you do that, then you would buy your own freedom.

“I am a free man, by the word of Augwynne Djo,” Jacen said.

I do not care. If you fight alongside us we too will recognize your freedom. If you do not, then I suggest that you leave.

“I will have to ask Augwynne, but I will fight with you, if she allows it,” Jacen told her. If that was how they wanted to play, that was fine. He didn’t care, as long as Anakin got away from his captors.

He felt the little hairs on the back of his neck stand up. He felt a presence he had not felt in… in fourteen years. Welk, he thought.

Jacen turned around. He saw the familiar face of Welk, only ten paces behind him. He looked a little worse for wear, and traded in his black suits for brown trousers and a cream-colored shirt, but Jacen instantly recognized him.

“I was hoping you were gone for good,” Jacen spat. “You had something to do with my brother getting captured, didn’t you?!”

“Calm down,” Welk said. He spoke in normal Basic, although he had picked up even more of an accent than Jacen remembered. “I hold no ill will towards you, Jacen, and I did not directly do anything that led to your brother being brought into the clan. My daughter did that, and I suppose if it weren’t for me she would not exist, but other than that, I am blameless. I am not even armed.”

“And you just let her do whatever she wants?”

Welk frowned. “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

Jacen reached out and punched Welk in the face. He felt Welk’s nose crack under the impact from Jacen’s knuckles. Welk stumbled backwards with his hands to his face, and a little bit of blood oozed out from between his fingers.

Jacen felt a gust of air smack him in the stomach, and it threw him back a meter. He landed on his bottom and gasped for breath. “You attack my father,” a young woman said. “I destroy you.”

“Desa,” he said. “You’re the one who caught Anakin.”

“Catched him fair. He come down in the ship, and out, and I find him.” Her grammar was terrible and her words lilting like the tones of the Dathomiri tongue, but he could understand her. “I am the warrior. He does not win.”

“You look like your mother,” Jacen said. “He probably thought you were her and was afraid of her. Not of you.”

“You, not know my mother.”

Welk said something in Dathomiri, but cut himself off mid-sentence. Jacen didn’t need to understand the words to know what he had said; he obviously had let slip too much information about Inferna’s death, because Desa turned to Jacen with unbridled rage in her green eyes.

“I don’t want a fight,” Jacen said. He was confident that he could defeat Desa, but probably not Desa, Welk, and Saria all at once. “Your mother tried to kill Anakin. And then you couldn’t have caught him. I saved his life.”

“You, kill my mother!” Desa reached her hand back, and in a moment a spear was hurtling towards Jacen. He ducked out of its path with Jedi reflexes and caught it as it swooshed past him. “Now I take another, I take you!”

Whether she had murderous intent or not, it was clear that Jacen wasn’t going to get what he wanted by fighting her. And if he actually won, then he would be facing the wrath of the remaining warriors, even if they wouldn’t immediately jump to her aid now that she had issued a challenge. “I only wanted to get Anakin back,” he said. “I will fight against or with you, whatever it takes.”

Leave us, said Saria. We have had enough of Jedi tricks. I will speak to my sister and perhaps we will unite against the Nightsisters. But we will do it without you.

Desa shouted at Saria, and she shouted back; Desa then stormed away. Jacen retreated and returned to his bike, and before nightfall he had returned to the Singing Mountain clan.

It might be time to join together against the Nightsisters and get rid of their threat once and for all, said Augwynne. Allana, if you want to leave with your father, you may.

“I don’t want to,” Allana insisted.

“I won’t make you go back to Hapes,” said Jacen. “I can take you home, and you can stay with Jaina and Zekk for awhile, and come back after we’re done.”

You misunderstand, said Augwynne. Both of you will leave.

“I’m not leaving unless Anakin comes with me.”

Augwynne would not speak of it again until she had called a council of the elder witches of the clan together, and they discussed what to do. Reports of other raids came to them, and several were nearly wiped out. It was decided that the Singing Mountain clan would join together with every other clan that wanted to repel the Nightsisters and destroy their base of operations, and all the warriors that fought with them would share in the spoils. Furthermore, any man who wanted to fight and whose owner would allow him to fight would be granted his freedom if he killed at least two Nightsisters. In return for this permission, his owner would then be able to take any of the recaptured slaves currently held by the Nightsisters as her own.

“Am I allowed to fight with you?” Jacen asked.

I suppose so, said Augwynne. Many of the other clans wish to keep the Jedi out, but we need all the help we can get. The Nightsisters are too numerous and too strong for us to turn away help that is honest.

“But Allana won’t be going.”

No, she is not old enough, Augwynne agreed.

Jacen sat alone that night, near the gate, and he couldn’t sleep. It bothered him that he could barely feel Anakin in the Force, just enough to know that he was still alive. This is all Allana’s fault, he thought angrily, but he could hardly blame Allana for doing what she did. She’d been pushed to the breaking point, and that was Jacen’s doing, not hers. He hadn’t listened to her, and he was without his daughter for two weeks, and now Anakin was gone. The war would have started whether any of them were on Dathomir or not, but now Jacen couldn’t leave it in the hands of the clan leaders without participating.

Whatever forces the Nightsisters had, they must have been strong, to take over Fire Island and the other clans and steal Anakin away. And all of Jacen’s choices were bad; the least bad of them all was to fight next to them, not as an equal but practically as a hired mercenary, in the hopes of saving Anakin.