The life of Darth Vader's secret apprentice took a deadly turn the day her Master first spoke of Obi- Wan Kenobi. She had no warning that a moment of such significance was approaching. During her nightly meditations, kneeling on the metal floor of her chamber while construction droids built the Executor, unaware of her existence, she had no visions in the pure, angry red of the lightsaber that she held like a burning brand in front of her eyes. Although she had stared until the world vanished and the dark side flowed through her in a bloody tide, the future had remained closed. Nothing, therefore, prepared her for the sudden devastation from the day's punishing and unpredictable exercises.

Her Master was not a patient teacher, neither was he a talkative one. He preferred action to debate, just as he preferred recrimination to reward. Never once in all the days they had sparred together, with lightsaber, telekinesis, or suggestion, had the Dark Lord offered a word of encouragement . And that was as it should be, she knew. A teacher's job was not to drag a student along a single, well- worn path. Rather it was to let the student forge his or her own way through the forest, intervening only when the student was hopelessly lost and needed to be corrected. Even on the wrong paths, she knew, lay some wisdom. What didn't kill her only made her more powerful in the dark side. And there had been many, many, times she thought she might die... Breathing heavily after a punishing round of blows, lightsaber lowered in submission, she knelt before her Master and waited for the killing strike.

She could feel the wrath radiating from the Dark Lord like heat- a visceral, angry heat that brought out her skin in goose flesh. For a moment that seemed to stretch for years, all she could hear was the regular, implacable respiration that kept the man inside the mask alive. You were weak when I found you. The voice seemed to come from the far end of a long, deep tunnel. You should have never survived my training. She closed her eyes. She had heard these words before. They were the closest thing to a bedtime story she had as a child. The moral she had taken from them was burned inside her mind: Learn... or die. Behind her eyelids she pictured again the clean, cleansing heat of the lightsaber. He had brushed her skin against it many times, defying the pain, and taken numerous small wounds while battling her Master.

She imagined that she knew what the blade would feel like when it struck her down. Part of her longed for it. The lightsaber drifted so close to her neck that she could smell her hair burning. But now, your hatred as become your strength. The lightsaber retreated. With a hiss it deactivated. At last, the dark side is your ally. She didn't dare nod or look up. What was this? Some new ruse to lure her into overconfidence and failure? Her Master's next words made her heart trip a beat. Riss, my Apprentice. Apprentice. She had always thought herself, but never had it been said aloud! And that strange motion with the lightsaber... Could she possibly just been knighted? Her lightsaber retracted. It was all she could do to balance her knees that felt suddenly made of rubber.