Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their own good, and justifiable only for the security of others.
John Stuart Mill, from On Liberty.
1.
"I am terribly sorry," Dr. Irokini said, pushing a stray lekku out of his eyes. "I fear I may have misheard you."
The young man repeated himself. "I would like you to sever my optic nerve and remove as many of the stem cells from its base as you can."
"But that would leave you blind," the doctor said slowly. "Permanently."
"It would," his patient readily agreed.
Dr. Irokini took a closer look at the boy. He seemed reasonably well put together, somewhat disheveled but not any more than might be expected for a member of his generation. Was he insane or simply an idiot?
"Without the optic nerve," he said patiently, "the connection between your eyes and your brain would disappear. You would see only darkness when you opened your eyes. Without the stem cells, the nerve would never regenerate. The change would be irreversible."
The young man nodded. "I understand, doctor. All the same, I would like to have this operation as soon as possible. "
Dr. Irokini sighed to himself. Though the boy might be insane, he displayed none of the obvious signs, no foaming at the mouth or eyes darting rapidly from corner to corner. Was there was a recent fashion of self-mutilation among humans? What a confused world we live in, he thought mournfully.
"Why would you….?" the doctor began before checking himself. His specialty was surgery not therapy. There was no point in probing further. "Need I inform you that I refuse? I will give you a referral to someone who will talk this through with you." He reached for his prescription chit.
"Won't you reconsider, doctor?" the boy asked.
"No…" Dr. Irokini started to say something when he suddenly felt himself overcome with doubt.
Who was he, after all, to say what was right and wrong? If blindness was what this man wanted, why should he not oblige? Didn't his patient have the right to decide for himself how his life would be lived?
The doctor rubbed his eyes. It was a strange feeling: the complete certainty he felt only moments ago seems to have vanished. It was unprecedented to do what the boy asked. But he was there to help people. Given that his patient was not insane, wasn't it best to defer to the boy's own judgement about what was best?
"I swore an oath to do no harm," he said firmly.
The boy nodded. "You would be doing me no harm, I assure you."
In some twisted way, there was sense to the request. Wasn't the world a dismal place? Images from his own life ran over him. He had always thought of himself as a successful and happy man, with a steady, well-paying job and an attractive mate. But now he felt that his existence had been a disappointment, that whatever potential had lain within him was not unlocked. There was something more to life, though he could not say what it was, and he had failed to discover it. Who could blame the boy for wanting to shut out as much as he could?
He hesitated. "The board of overseers would never approve…"
"Of course," the boy said. "You will need to submit a diagnosis which justifies this drastic procedure." He gave the doctor a half-smile. "A small deception but all for the greater good. I will leave the details to you."
Dr. Irokini nodded. "But..." he began to verbalize a question - or perhaps it was a statement - when he realized he had no idea what to say next. Glancing around mutely for a few moments, he reached for his calendar and looked at the schedule of upcoming surgeries.
"As soon as possible, doctor," said the boy.
2.
"I am ready to take the trials, master," Krava said, putting as much confidence into her words as she could muster.
"Are you indeed?" Master Nimbo's tone was skeptical. His eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down.
She struggled to keep her voice from faltering. "I have been your loyal padawan for over a decade and have learned many things. But it is time for me to start on my own journey."
The master said nothing and in the ensuing silence Krava wondered what was going through his mind. She had applied herself with tireless energy from the day Nimbo took her on. How many of her classmates had become knights, while she remained a padawan? She could not see what it was that she lacked. Surely the master could see the effort she had put into her work, her dedication and commitment? She was always first to arrive at their training sessions and the last one to depart. Her mastery with the saber was matched only by the master himself.
The silence stretched out into minutes.
"I sense turmoil within you," Nimbo said finally. "Only a speck, but it is there."
He paused. "You need more time, padawan."
"How much more, master?"
He shrugged. "You should know better than to ask. Until you find yourself in harmony with the Jedi teachings. There is no other answer."
"In the meantime," he continued without enthusiasm, "it will not hurt to keep practicing your forms. Hone your craft. You are on the path, though I know not how long it will take."
He gave her a curt nod, indicating the conversation was over. She bowed and left the room.
It was not the first time the two of them had this conversation and it always ran along the same course. Each time he had said she was not ready. Was it really true, she asked herself, was there really turmoil within her?
Perhaps, she grudgingly admitted, though any lack of peace within her was probably due to remaining a padawan this late into her life. She thought again of her classmates at the academy who were now knights. Were they really more attuned to the Jedi teachings than she was? She dreaded meeting them, which she occasionally did on trips back to Dantooine or Coruscant, she hated the pitying looks they seemed to cast in her direction.
She would double her resolve, she decided, just as she had the previous times her master had denied her. She would lose herself in the work, make her previous efforts seem lazy by comparison. When she finally achieved her due, it would be all the more meaningful for having passed the high bar her master had set.
With new determination she set off for battle practice, now almost an hour early. She would normally indulge herself during this time, either reading a novel or taking a walk in the temple gardens; but that did not seem right any longer. Though the hall they used for training would be empty, she would practice her stances alone until the rest of the padawans joined her. There was hardly any time to lose.
3.
Noval had imagined that perceiving the world through the force alone would be akin to the exercises he had done as an initiate, when, blindfolded, he had to name the objects which were put in front of him one-by-one. He could not have been more wrong. He had never realized just how many of the things around him were instantly and effortlessly resolved by his field of vision. Now every piece of litter tumbling down the street - every stray leaf - every tree branch shaking in the wind - all had to be sensed and combined at once into one mental picture.
It was too much. He tried it when he first woke up after his surgery but even a minute of it proved exhausting. But the alternative - the pure darkness he saw now regardless of whether his eyes were open or shut - left him terrified. Eventually, he hit on an acceptable compromise: he narrowed his field of sensing, focusing on objects one a time, choosing whatever was directly in front of him. It was a bit like aimlessly groping your way with your hands. Walking felt akin to moving through a dark cellar; he would tentatively put one foot in front of the other while he flailed around with the force, desperately trying to sense enough of his surroundings to make the next step without stumbling.
Even that turned out to be debilitating soon enough. He had arranged to get himself discharged from the hospital that very day - Dr. Irokini had thrown a fit and needed some convincing, though that turned out to be no more difficult than the last time the Twilek needed a nudge in the right direction - and he was now walking down a busy avenue, pedestrians all around him, a busy stream of hovercars zooming by a few paces over. He had been on his feet for a half-hour at the most and already he felt deathly tired. Sensing a bench nearby, he made his way towards it - even those half-a-dozen paces now felt like agony - and collapsed onto it.
The thought of spending the rest of his days like this was horrible beyond imagining. Would he ever see a human face again? Some possibility remained of regaining his sight one day; though the doctor had said it was impossible, he gleaned knowledge of some experimental procedures from his mind, untested and full of promise. Still, it was equally likely that no such procedure would work. He thought of Eeso, then of Reena, trying to picture their faces in all the details, with every curve and every stray hair. Years from now, would he even remember what they looked like?
Yet this was the only way, or so Nerra had convinced him. This was how he would become strong in the force, by giving himself no choice but to rely on it at all times. He was straining himself more than ever and that was a good thing. He would flounder and suffer but he would also learn and grow.
He had come to accept that he was no more adept in the force than the best of the Jedi, nor cleverer than they. It was a realization that would have been difficult for him only a year ago, when he felt it necessary to believe he was special in some indefinable way; now he accepted it easily without question. The only thing that set him apart was a willingness to consider possibilities the Jedi refused.
Moving the galaxy would not come without pain. That was the lesson he chose to learn from the recent past, the lesson that spurred him on now. It was all well and good to say he wanted to bring peace to the galaxy; such ambitions were even considered fashionable among initiates. But few of those who said so thought seriously of what it would really take. Eventually, the dream of peace seemed to recede into the distance as initiates became padawans and then knights, acting to reinforce the importance of the order but never seeming to get any closer to reality. Whereas he was intent on taking the dream seriously; and if he was to be the one to bring peace to the galaxy, he would need power, a great deal of it. More than that, he would need the resolve to do what was necessary.
He regretted now his moment of weakness, that instant when he had sought to disable the explosive and undo the plan he had so painstakingly put in motion. It was a foolish lapse, a betrayal of his path, of himself. "Only human," Nerra had said of it and told him to dismiss it from his thoughts. But he could not; if Eeso had turned out to be a necessary sacrifice on the path to his goal, what he was going through now was nothing, was barely worth mentioning.
He rested for a few more moments, forcing all thoughts out of his mind and taking pleasure in the resulting stillness. Eventually, he felt within himself the power to walk an additional block or so. Time was pressing: though he was thankfully alone now, away from his master who was still attending to the final negotiations between Ulth and Plessians, they would be reunited in only a few weeks time. By then he would need to appear the same as ever: not only would he need to learn walking, he would need to be able to move his eyeballs in tune with normal conversation. Perhaps the biggest hurdle would be to bring his lightsaber skills to what they used to be; anything less would arouse suspicion. He rose from the bench and, pushing through the exhaustion and pain, began to make his way down the street.
4.
The repetitiveness of the work had started to put her into something resembling a trance. Examine; label; record; categorize; shelve. When she had first arrived here, many months ago, she would not last more than a few minutes at it before her mind wandered away. She had grown much since. Now she was in the habit of going entire days between stray impulses of any kind. It was almost as if she lost herself in the task; her sense of self withered into nothingness and there was in peace in the resulting quietness, a sense of harmony with the world around her.
Reena knew her life might seem horribly dull to many; she might have said so herself only a year ago. An early rise with the morning sun, followed by an hour or two of light meditation; then the labor of digging would begin, in which she would partake until her body exhausted itself; a light meal, followed by a longer, more substantive meditation, and finally an evening spent cataloguing the finds. She kept a few of the classic texts beside her bed and once the work was over she would leaf through them until she drifted off to sleep, the books slumping onto her chest.
What sustained her, day after day, was an understanding of the importance of the work they were doing. It was imperative to visit the worlds where the Sith had once ruled, to find their artifacts and destroy them. The masters had often said those things had minds of their own. Because of their work in the here and now, one day the Sith would be uprooted and the galaxy would finally be at rest.
Her mastery of the force grew rapidly, along with her understanding of the Jedi doctrine. For the first time, she felt she was coming to understand the ancient texts; passages that would have left her mystified only months ago now seemed perfectly clear.
She shelved the latest find - a fragment of parchment with some unknown writing scribbled on top of it, dated eight to nine centuries before the present - and, walking over to the next batch, contemplated the passages she encountered on the previous evening.
``...voidness is at the true nature of thy feelings, and before which thine intellect shines; in that state, which is experienced with unbearable intensity, voidness and brightness are inseparable - the voidness bright by nature and brightness void - a state of primordial intellect whose power, unobstructed, radiates...''
"...the path is without difficulty; just avoid picking and choosing...''
"...from the cessation of clinging comes the cessation of becoming..."
The key was to treat the words with care and longing, to turn them over within her soul. She ruminated on reading each night and by morning the words grew within her almost as if a seed had been planted. Her error had always been to analyze them analytically, to square off possible meanings against each other. The words of the masters were beyond logic, were more fundamental than reasoning.
Her path to these insights had not been an easy one.
On one of her first days at the dig site, Master Shayn noticed her admiring a clay figurine. It was about half the length of her elbow, in the shape of a woman, made out of bright red brittle clay. She paid it no special heed when she first discovered it. It was only after she had scraped off a bit of clay from the side to date it and saw the result - over two hundred thousand years before the present - that she felt awe and astonishment. It was a fragment of an old civilization, now altogether lost, one that predated almost everything they knew about the history of the galaxy.
She found herself drawn to it. From time to time she retrieved it out of storage and held it before her. It was beautiful in a way, but it was more than merely that; the clay woman was half-kneeling on one knee and the figure seemed to suggest a story of some sort, one that could no longer be divined. Was she a supplicant stopping before a ruler? Did she act out some sort of ritual? Or was her kneel in jest, for Reena though she could see an unmistakable gaiety hidden in the wrinkles around those eyes?
She wondered who it was that scooped the clay and molded it, so very long ago. Whoever it was, though long dead, the two of them had shared something, improbably, separated as they were by eons of time.
"You are well-aware, I'm sure," Master Shayn said one day, when he noticed her admiring the figure, "that the Jedi frown upon attachment." He walked over and took it in his hands. "Attachment is close to greed and leads to fear of loss, and fear is the path to the dark side. It is a teaching that every padawan must learn before becoming a Jedi knight."
He looked at her searchingly to see if she had understood what he was trying to convey. Whatever he had seen in her face left him unsatisfied for, to Reena's horror, he took the figure and threw it with full force upon the ground. The brittle clay broke into thousands of small pieces.
"Do you now understand me, padawan?" He looked at Reena calmly, as if daring her to challenge him.
She nodded wordlessly. It was all she could to stop herself from bursting into tears.
"Clean it up…" he gestured to the corpuscles of red clay on the ground "... and make sure to record it as destroyed in our catalogues."
He said all this evenly, as if the two of them were discussing what to have for breakfast.
She could barely sleep that night. She lay awake in a blind rage against her master, against all Jedi, against the galaxy. There was a certain inhumanity to the order, a unimodal way of looking at the universe. It was maddening to imagine the figurine surviving for hundreds of thousands of years, only to meet an end as part of her lesson on attachment.
So strong were her emotions that, when morning came, she felt mildly horrified at the hatred that was coursing through her. There was something terrifying about her anger. She was suddenly disgusted by her willingness, however brief, to imagine horrible things befalling her master in a moment of righteous rage.
"Remember," Master Shayn said the following afternoon when he ran across her at the dig site. "Your master is your best friend and also your worst enemy."
Her animosity dissipated over the following days. Wasn't her master right? Attachments were dangerous, big or small. The figurine was beautiful but it was only dust, a transient thing that will disappear like all else. The path of the Jedi was not an easy one. She had made sacrifices already and would have to make more.
"You have great potential, Reena," Master Shayn said to her one evening, as the two of them sat besides the campfire, a few days hence. Though he had not mentioned the figurine, both of them understood what had prompted this praise. "You have it in you to be a great Jedi, someone who adds new chapters to our teachings. I can see it inside of you. I do not wish to see you squander that gift. "
Neither of them had brought up the subject again.
Weeks had grown into months, all spent digging, cataloguing, meditating. She felt herself stronger in the force each day. She even found herself somewhat disappointed when a group of initiates from the academy arrived to aid them. She had grown used to the silence that reigned between her and master Shayn. It was a rich, communicative silence and it was broken now by the constant chatter coming from the students. It was only their first year at the academy. She knew that, one day, she had been just like them, though that felt like ages ago now.
The initiates themselves tested her patience - though perhaps that was a good thing. On one of the days after their arrival, she heard one of them make some irreverant crack about Master Shayn's appearance. The remark itself, neither amusing nor clever, did not sting her; but she was the most senior among them and it was her duty to deliver a rebuke. She walked up coolly to the boy who said it, noticing with satisfaction the awkward silence he lapsed into, along with his companions, as they saw her approach them. She would waste no time with reproofs or remonstrations; what they needed was something that would remind them of who they were and the path they were on.
"One day you will die," she said, looking the boy intently in the eyes. "And then you will be forgotten."
As she left, she saw with satisfaction they were looking in her direction in stunned and confused silence. She knew her rebuke was confusing but perhaps, one day, the words would find a way into the boy's soul.
When a letter from Noval came through the holonets in one of the following days, she caught herself feeling elated. Before she even glanced at its opening lines, as she ran her hands over the thick parchment on which the message was printed out, she found herself recalling their first days at the Jedi temple, when she roamed its halls alongside her new friends. She remembered wonderful days of freedom, the sense of boundless possibilities open before her.
It was a dangerous feeling, she realized for the first time, seemingly harmless and innocent, yet it could hold her back and bind her to the morass of the world. Already, clutching at the parchment, she felt a contraction of the heart, a sadness at the possibilities falling by the wayside. She put the letter away. She would take a few days to center herself and read it afterwards.
She was not the same person she used to be and her reply would reflect that. Her past would always be a part of her, but it was futile to reprise it. It was gone, irreversibly. She remembered the passage from the previous day, ``...the path is without difficulty: just avoid picking and choosing...'' and found its meaning clear as day.
5.
The controlled swings which dominated the start of their bout had given way to wild and far-reaching thrusts and Krava was beginning to find herself at a disadvantage. The rules decreed that a step outside the training mat would result in a loss and her feet were now only a footlength away from a corner. She pretended to swing hard to her left, thinking that Noval's parry would leave her with room to jump to surer footing; but he was not fooled, easily blocking the weak stab of her saber, and starting a counterattack which brought her even closer to the edge.
Paradoxically, his saber skills seemed to have improved during his month of absence. Although Noval had been the best swordsman in his class at the academy, so was she; that tournament that Noval had so unexpectedly won in his last year, when he had caught the master's attention - Krava had won it in each of her final three years. When he had first joined the cohort of padawans the master kept about him, she could defeat him easily.
No longer. A month ago, the master had sent him back to Coruscant with a message to the council bearing his speculations on the rise of the Sith; he had not trusted his thoughts to transmission over the holonets, but instead stored them in a capsule for Noval to hand over. It was to be a relatively short trip. But an unexpected trade embargo made travel difficult and delayed his return. Now he was back and while in some ways he was still the same - still quiet and shy, with an informal tone that endeared him to her and which set him apart from the rest of the other padawans - he seemed a little more withdrawn. There was something strange in the way he looked at her as they spoke, something different that she couldn't quite put her finger on.
He was also a much better swordsman. Krava had never seen him devote much attention to the saber. He was always among the last to arrive for their training sessions and the first to leave, and he often had fairly thin excuses for skipping training entirely. Inexplicably, he was now more than a match for her, somewhat astonishing given that she was more than a decade older and had far more time to hone her skills.
She felt herself losing ground each time their sabers crossed, slowly herded into a corner. Though she was fully focused on the bout, she was also uncomfortably aware that the master himself was standing nearby, having paused his slow amble through the hall they to see how their match would play out. She needed something drastic, something that would stave off defeat.
She put her right foot forward, and brought her saber down hard; he blocked her, just as she anticipated, and then she lunged to his left, physically diving onto the mat in an attempt to surprise him, swinging her saber at his leg as she fell. It was a desperate move and one with a fairly small chance of succeeding, and yet, unexpectedly, it worked; her saber had grazed his leg just before he brought his own saber down upon her.
She did her best to catch her breath quietly and bowed as she rose, trying to hide the relief on her face. Noval bowed back, seemingly taking his loss without much disappointment. The crisis had been averted. Losing to the master's youngest padawan, in front of everyone, would have been quite the embarrassment.
But her thoughts quickly turned from relief to anxiety as she realized that she would not catch Noval off-guard the same way again. His skill with the saber would soon surpass her own - perhaps it already had? - and when the master would see Noval defeat her, his estimation of her would decrease. She sighed inwardly. She could only hope that, however things worked out, she would not remain a padawan forever.
6.
After dismissing the students with the wave of a hand, he motioned for Noval to stay behind. When only the two of them remained, he sat cross-legged on the edge of the mat and put a pebble on the ground between them.
It was an invitation to a contest of wills, the Jedi version of arm-wrestling. One of them would seek to levitate the pebble and the other would push it down. Such contests were a common way to pass the time among the initiates in the academy. Noval, being the more junior, was entitled to the easier downward direction.
Seeing that his padawan was ready, Nimbo began to concentrate, starting off lightly; he wanted to pinpoint the exact moment when he would overcome Noval's resistance. He gently increased the strength of his push as he felt the countervailing force his padawan was producing. He had expected Noval to give way any moment and yet the pebble stubbornly stayed on the ground and Noval showed no visible sign of strain.
He began pushing with most of his strength and the pebble started wobbling, then rose a finger's length into the air. But his advantage was only momentary: his student redoubled his efforts and the pebble began to drift downwards.
He pushed now with all his might, throwing himself into the contest with ferocity. For too long, nothing seemed to happen; finally, when he was more than halfway to exhausting his strength, the pebble began ascending, slowly at first, then faster as he felt Noval's resistance giving way.
They both stopped simultaneously once it had risen above them.
Nimbo snatched the pebble from the air and, sliding it into his pocket, rose and walked to look out the bay window behind them. The padawan was good. It had been decades since anyone had been able to seriously challenge him like this. He took in the view of the city, peaceful, quiet, and yet always reminding him of the Sith danger lurking beneath. Finally, he turned his attention back to Noval.
"You lost your fights today on purpose. "
It was a statement, not a question. He saw the boy nod hesitantly.
"Explain yourself, padawan."
Noval seemed to waver for a few moments before speaking.
"Master, a victory would have only provoked conflict between myself and Krava. I seek to learn as much as I can from my bouts; win or lose, it does not matter."
Nimbo nodded, satisfied.
"You are strong in the force," he said, turning to face the boy.
He had meant to stop there. His plan was to give the padawan some light encouragement and send him on his way. Yet, in spite of himself, he continued.
"You have already surpassed my oldest padawan with the saber. One day, you may even surpass me."
"I had to use all of my willpower to levitate that pebble," he went on, unable to stop. "It is shocking that you were able to match me for as long as you did."
He paused as he ran his senses over the boy in front of him. "I see no trace of conflict within you. You are well on your way to becoming a Jedi."
He had not meant to say any of this but it was all unquestionably true. Still, he would have done better to keep his mouth shut. Showering your padawans with praise tended to diminish their drive. Why had he said it? He searched his mind uncertainly. There was only one logical outcome of the speech he was giving, and, after a few moments, he plunged forward.
"I believe you are ready to take the trials," he said, "though you have been with me for less than a year. I am certain the other masters will appreciate how far along you are."
"Nevertheless," he said thoughtfully, "I fear becoming a knight too quickly will fly in the face of the more traditionally minded members of the council. Let us wait…" he paused to do a calculation "...a year, give or take. Then you will have been my padawan for a little over two years. Quick, certainly, but not unheard of."
Noval nodded, the expression on his face unchanging. There was a certain monotony to his stare. Nimbo found himself wondering at the boy's muted reaction; his previous padawans had nearly leapt for joy upon hearing this news.
"I am happy you think so highly of my efforts, master. Naturally, I defer to your wisdom in such things. I can only say I will endeavor not to disappoint you."
After a pause, his padawan continued awkwardly. "We know now the Sith are well alive in the galaxy. It is a great honor to know I have your confidence, master, given all the trials Jedi knights are likely to undergo."
Nimbo nodded with satisfaction. Suddenly finding himself with nothing to say, he dismissed the padawan.
Once alone, he turned back to look at the city sprawled out before him. The view did little to quell his unease. He had not intended to say any of the things that had come out of his mouth. Was he growing impulsive in his old age?
Still, Noval was quite advanced for his age and he was not sure that he had much to teach the boy. Not only did his padawan master the force to an unusual degree for one so young, he was a walking example of Jedi virtues. Losing his fights on purpose was but one example. Two years was a short time but not outlandishly so. Others had become Jedi knights in less. He wondered briefly how Krava would react if Noval were to become a knight while she was still a padawan before dismissing the thought. It was unseemly for a Jedi to covet. If Krava could not master her jealousy, she did not belong in the order.
Something the boy had said stuck in his mind and he found himself returning to it. The trials Jedi knights are likely to undergo. He understood well enough what was meant. The Sith had always seen fit to recruit wayward Jedi, usually capturing them and breaking their spirits through torture. There was some mystery over what, exactly, they did to their captives; but the husks that emerged when the process was finished were shadows of their former selves and served the dark side. It would take someone of strong mind to resist successfully.
He followed the thought to its natural conclusion. If the Sith were truly alive in the galaxy, the order would need to produce significantly fewer Jedi. There was little room for error now; he ran over his cohort of padawans and thought of several - Wrasho, Krava, others - about whom he was not so certain, who would be easily corrupted by Sith tortures. Too dangerous to let them become Jedi knights now.
Perhaps after everything on this planet was wrapped up with some finality, he would pay a visit to Coruscant. He would put his case to the council. They would need to make the trials considerably harder, even re-examine some of those who passed within the last few decades. They could cull weak-minded Jedi from the order now or they could face them on the field of battle once the Sith had corrupted them. Which was the better choice?
The more he thought of it, the more he grew convinced of the urgency of the matter. He could think of nothing else as important as this. In fact, he suddenly decided, he would short his stay on the planet. The Ulth and Plessians could take care of themselves now. He would set off to Coruscant on the next available shuttle.
He was certain the council would listen to him, though naturally there would be some resistance to overcome. There was much conservatism in the order, much unseemly clinging to tradition. But, in the end, they had little choice. After all, he thought, could the council really ignore the man who ended the last Sith menace, the single Jedi who was apparently so threatening to the dark side that the Sith revealed their presence for a chance to kill him?
7.
Uneasiness welled within her soul. She stood by the window and watched as her ship dropped out of hyperspace and settled into orbit with the other vessels bound for the Corellian star port, and all the while it was as if a thorn was prickling at her side. Reena pushed it away, meditated, focused her mind on other things, but it was still there, waiting just outside the range of her consciousness.
At last, seeing as she had no choice, she confronted the issue head-on. She was, finally, able to visit her mother.
She had sworn an oath, long ago when the order took her from her family, that she would find her mother once she had become a Jedi. That oath, contrary to the Jedi teachings as it was, had always been a source of nourishment for her. She had never truly felt the pain of separation from her family, at least not in the same way as the rest of the initiates at the academy. What, in the end, were a few short years?
Reena quickly did the calculation. She had handed over the artifacts from the dig site to the archivist on Dantooine not one week ago. That meant she was scheduled to rendezvous with Master Shayn in a little over three weeks. Flight times across the galaxy were unpredictable and no one would consider it out of the ordinary if her arrival was delayed. She could board a different ship here on Corellia, visit her mother for a week or so, and rendezvous with master Shayn only a few days late. None would be the wiser.
On some level, she had been aware of the possibility for weeks and had worked hard to push it out of her mind; and yet here it was, forcing itself into consideration. She felt herself almost shaking with desire.
Calling on her years of training, she let the desire pass through her without judgement. She was a creature of flesh and blood; there was no denying her passions. Conflicting emotions were tearing her apart. She felt a sense of sadness that her mastery of the force was insufficient to prevent herself from being tempted so; but she also felt a sense of paralyzing dread at the thought of losing this opportunity. She had spent so many years longing for it.
It would be so easy. One small change in her flight reservations.
She forced herself to think of an old Jedi parable about the so-called sand mollusks of Hjaff. These snail-like creatures were said to subsist on the oil which accumulated on the top of the deserts of Hjaff, most of it coming from the dirt always tumbling about the dry landscape. Occasionally, a mollusk would encounter a particularly oily patch of sand and burrow far into it, soaking up the oil until it found itself deep inside the earth, too deep to rise to the surface again. Stuck within the sand, it would ultimately perish of hunger.
Her feelings were a trap; once she had indulged them, she would be unable to put them aside, and, in a manner of speaking, she would drown in them much like the mollusks of the parable. Not only would they keep her from becoming the person she ought to be but any reprieve they granted would be temporary. Her mother would, one day, die, her family would turn to dust, and without her Jedi training the pain and grief would consume her.
She pictured her mother's death, her body decomposing in the grave, the corpse overrun with insects, the buzzing noise of flies in the air. She pictured the sense of emptiness coming from the place where her mother's spirit ought to be, nothing but empty flesh and bone and ligament in a state of rot.
Oddly enough, she felt herself fortified by this gruesome image. The desire still burned within her, but she felt in control of it rather than the reverse. She would not change her flight reservations after all. Though parts of her still wavered, she knew herself well enough to know she would persevere. Turning her gaze back to the window and taking in the oceans and clouds of Corellia, she found nothing pricked at her side any longer. It was as if a weight had been lifted from her soul. She felt more at peace with herself, with the universe, than ever.
8.
The star port on Anchorhead was nothing like its counterpart on Corellia: cramped, disorganized, with small, woolly aliens constantly dashing about. It was unclear whether there was a particular flurry of excitement just as she arrived or whether this represented the normal state of affairs. The burning suns made it difficult to walk between the outdoor landing pads; between that and the lack of any conspicuous signage, it took her absurdly long to find her shuttle. The locals ignored her polite requests for help, most brushing her off with impatient curses, with the exception of a group of miners who began making obscene gestures the moment she approached them.
Reena felt exhausted by the time she finally found her departure pad. Spending a few hours within a temperature-regulated spaceship would be a very welcome relief. But it was not to be; the Twilek gate agent chuckled the moment he glanced at her ticket.
"You really haven't heard?"
She shook her head.
"Your frigate had a malfunction with the orbital stabilizers," he said cheerfully. "The pilot had to bring it down in the desert, not far from here. Fortunately no one was hurt."
He shook his head, clearly finding it difficult to believe there was anyone on the planet so ignorant as to be unaware of this.
"Not even the sand people?" Reena asked.
"Oh," the Twilek shrugged. "I haven't the slightest idea. I imagine many of them were killed."
Another reminder of the frail nature of the world, she thought, the absurdity of forming attachments to it. She imagined villages of sand people destroyed a crash landing. A small feeling of regret still burned in her like a dull ache and she had made a habit of seeking out such reminders.
Turning her thoughts to the present, she seemed to be facing a considerable inconvenience. Her travel might now be delayed by many months.
"I assume you will find me an alternate route."
"Certainly," the agent scratched one of his lekku and pushed a few buttons on his terminal. "The next intergalactic frigate will visit this sector in six weeks time."
"Six weeks?"
The Twilek nodded.
"What about the ship in the desert? Will it be fixed before then?"
This was met with more chuckles.
"Human, have you any idea how big that thing is? It's planet-sized. It's already fixed, in fact - with brand new orbital stabilizers - but digging it out of the sand will take years.''
"I see," she said icily.
"I'm afraid we don't have the budget to keep you in Anchorhead for six weeks..." The Twilek began to say something but she had already turned aside.
She made her way to the taxi stand outside the starport. In no time she was beset by Jawas, all squawking at her. But when she had made clear her desire to go to the shipwreck, their interest seemed to drop dramatically. In the end, she managed to persuade one of them to take her there and back, for a price that was three or four times as large as it should have been.
She cleared her mind on the trip there, the monotony of the wilderness and the harsh gale on her face lulling her into a state of contentment. The desert was old, and in its own way, it was a repository of all the experiences that were had in it, bounty hunters, sand people, Jawas, miners, all striving, locked in an endless cycle, all part of the force though oblivious to it. Their echoes could be sensed here if one only cared to listen.
She had not truly grasped the scale of the downed frigate until she arrived. Long before they reached it, the ship's shadow obscured sunlight. The vessel itself stretched out as far as the eye could see, jarringly black among the faded yellowness of the landscape. She looked it up on the holo-pad she had brought with her; apparently, the Twilek exaggerated but not substantially so, for the crashed frigate occupied one twentieth of the land area of Tattoine. She ran her force sense over it and felt a piloting crew on deck, felt their idleness, their sense of angry helplessness.
She dismounted from the hovercar, jumping down onto the sand, and fell to one knee as the Jawa looked on in puzzlement. He had been paid to wait for as long as it took the smaller of the suns to do a quarter turn in the sky before ferrying her back. Most likely he judged her to be insane. For a few minutes, she remained motionless. She did her best to concentrate, steadying her spirit, quieting the turmoil within her, tapping into the currents of force swirling about the sand dunes. Finally, she felt herself at one with the planet around her, ancient, cold, unfeeling, a cacophony of lives, each one burning brightly, each unsatisfied, a dissonance of voices, disturbing from one angle and melodious from another.
She opened her eyes and strained herself. The ship rumbled. She pushed against it, feeling the heavy weight of the metal as if it was brushing against her skin and the weight of the steel as if it was pressing on her chest. She pushed harder and felt her stomach constrict and the pain run through her body. She had never tried to draw on so much force before. No one had ever tried to draw on so much force before, at least no master that she knew of.
The ship lurched. She felt suffocated by the amount of force that was coursing through her. It was almost as if the seams of her body were about to give way, as if she was about to burst into a thousand little pieces. She closed her eyes briefly and tried to push the pain away, to overcome it, all without success. No matter. She opened her eyes and prepared for another thrust.
By now the frigate had risen by the length of a fingernail in the air. Pausing for a brief respite, she pushed harder in spite of the agony spreading through her joints. She wished she could stop herself from feeling pain, but that would have lessened her ability to draw on the force. She pushed and pushed and pushed. It felt as if she had died, as if she had become one with the pain. There was nothing to her, no substance, nothing except the sensation of burning agony. The pain was the only thing that was real. She craved for it to stop. She would do anything for it to stop, anything at all. She screamed but no sound came from her lips.
And then suddenly it was all over. The ship had risen halfway to the clouds and she felt the pilots start the engine, the orbital stabilizers kick into motion, and she relaxed, falling to the ground as the world swung back into focus. Behind her, the Jawa was chirping excitedly.
She would make it to Master Shayn's dig site on time after all.
9.
What had the master to talk to Noval about? Krava knew the order held a dim view of excessive curiosity, especially regarding the private dealings of the masters. Still, reeling as she was from the master's refusal to let her take the trials, she was able to think of little else.
She could not get rid of a nagging feeling that there was something strange about their bouts that day. She replayed them in her mind. Noval's winning touches had been ruthless and efficient, whereas her own were barely shaved off, either in windfalls of luck or at times when Noval seemed to unexpectedly lose his guard.
Had he lost their fights on purpose?
If so, then why? And had the master noticed it? Was that why he asked Noval to stay behind?
It was a possibility, one mystery among several. How had Noval improved so quickly, especially on a trip across the galaxy when he was supposedly stuck on alien worlds without anyone to spar with?
Perhaps his improvement had come from further enlightenment in the Jedi doctrine. It was a possibility. Maybe he had come to truly understand that the self is nothing, that all is the force, in some inexplicably deeper way than before. But Krava doubted it. Her feelings and desires, the very things the order had told her to suppress, insisted something else must be at play.
She thought of the night before the explosion, when, worried about the fallout from the coming negotiations, she had been unable to sleep and wandered the halls of the temple. It was quiet and sparse building, with few monks to occupy the ample space. As she walked the largely empty hallways, it occurred to her that Noval seemed a touch jittery for the past few days. She would walk by his room and see if he was awake. When she had walked to the upper floors of the temple where he was housed and stood beside his door, she could sense the room on the other side was empty. He must have been wandering the temple just as she was.
She walked the temple corridors many times that night, thinking she would run into him, but she never did.
Her thoughts were following forbidden pathways now, guided by passion and emotion, and she made no effort to stop herself. It was as if her mind was trying to tell her something, some truth that was bubbling up from her subconscious. She put aside her Jedi teachings and simply let it happen.
Who planted the bomb? That question lay at the heart of her unease. No more deflection, she said to herself, no more deferring to her master's supposedly superior wisdom. Could it really have been the Sith?
The bomb had certainly not accomplished any intelligible Sith objective. If anything, the situation on the planet had radically improved following the explosion, and the holonets were full of talk of a wide-scale war that had been averted. Surely, a galactic war would have been good for whatever it was the Sith intended?
Could the bomb have been intended to kill her master? Nimbo was convinced this was the case. But, even though he was quite adept with the saber, Krava could not help but doubt that her master constituted a significant threat to any Sith.
Besides, it was hard to believe that a Sith agent had been really here that night, found a way into the temple, down to the cellars, planted the bomb, and then vanished - all of it without attracting any notice. She knew the ensuing investigations by the Ulth and Plessians had found no hidden passageways anywhere in the temple.
Noval was not in his room that night. She returned to that thought again.
Where was he when she walked the halls of the temple? Why had they not run into each other? It was admittedly, a large temple, but she had walked its corridors for many hours that night.
She thought back to the way he looked in the garden just before the explosion: standing apart all by himself, nervously glancing around with a clenched face. Wasn't there something a little off about him then?
Could Noval be a Sith? She had not sensed anything out of the ordinary from him; but then, who could say what standing next to an actual Sith felt like?
Even if Noval was not Sith, he must have been the one who had planted the bomb. She felt herself hesitate at this conclusion, almost as if she were saying you do not know this to herself. A Jedi should not reason so. But her intuition propelled her forwards. She had no proof but it was the explanation that best matched the facts.
What should she do? She could tell her master, but, without more convincing evidence, she had little hope he would confront Noval; more likely, he would ascribe the accusation to lingering resentment on her part and punish her by delaying her graduation date still further. The master had already settled on a version of events, and that version involved a Sith attempt on his life; she knew him well enough to know he would not be budged, not without absolutely convincing proof. Besides, Noval had presumably thought through the possibilities and would be ready with a passable explanation for his whereabouts that night.
She paced the short distance of her room. There was, in fact, only one thing she could do. She grasped for the hilt of the saber and turned it over in her hands.
It was time for a rematch.
Once he lay defeated with her saber at his throat, she would wring the truth out of him. Then and only then would she approach her master. Noval was, it seemed, the better swordsman; but she had the element of surprise.
The temple was deserted at this late hour with most of the padawans either asleep or in the midst of their evening meditations. Slowly, mindful that these might well be her last moments of life, she walked up the winding stairs to the top floor of the temple. She encountered no one save a few monks who bowed to her respectfully as she passed.
Noval's door was small and nondescript. Her heart constricted at the thought that she might meet her death on the other side. Taking a deep breath and counseling herself to be brave, she used the force the peer inside.
She felt only a faint presence, almost as if the person in the room was injured. So much for the better! He would be no match for her in this state. She kicked the door open in a single sweeping motion and jumped inside brandishing her saber.
To her surprise, the room was empty.
She reached out and sensed a presence nonetheless, weak, barely at the edge of feeling. It seemed to be coming from a closeted corner, beneath a pile of clothes. Shutting the door, she moved to investigate. A small opening was burrowed within the floor, hidden well-enough to fool the eye but detectable once she concentrated her force sense upon it. She ran her hands over the floor, feeling for any cracks, and when she found one, she slid her nails into the opening and pulled away a crumbling chunk of mortar.
A holocron was neatly pressed inside.
No doubt this was the source of the presence she felt. She held it in her hands; black and sharply angular, it seemed to play off the light in the room. There was something about it that made her marvel, some sense of sleekness or even beauty. Was this Noval's secret, the key to unlocking the anomalies that had puzzled her?
For a brief moment, it felt as if the holocron was speaking to her, though no words were said; it was weaving a tale of promises unfulfilled, hard work unrewarded, petty and narrow-minded men who stymied good will. She blinked rapidly and the feeling passed. What had just happened? But she had little time to think it over, for the holocron started growing warm to the touch and the top of the little pyramid began to radiate bright red rays, rays that were already coalescing into a figure.
Author's note: this is the final chapter, though I am planning to write a sequel to this story eventually. If you've read this far, I'd very much appreciate it if you reviewed it at (click through and scroll to the bottom of page).