Chapter Six
Siri growled as she sifted her position, drawing her legs up on the cot. "The sooner we get this mission over, the sooner I can leave this frozen wasteland."
"It is not so bad."
"Says you. I'm freezing."
"You do not look so cold now."
Roughly, she tugged at the edge of her cloak in an exaggerated action. Then she reached into the folds of the dark material and produced an ultra thin data reader.
Obi-Wan remained still, watching her scroll through the mission file. A little worried that she jumped from one discussion to another so quickly as if she were running from something inside. She had not always been like that. At least he had never noticed it, not in the times they had bumped into each other in the Temple, not since the end of her undercover assignment to take down the slaver. The change was more recent, he thought.
"I always thought the Prak'sha was a myth," she muttered, leaning forward slightly but never offering to move from the center of the cot.
"The lightsaber itself is real. The legend surrounding it may be another matter." He did not need to peruse the mission file. He had gone over it quite extensively on the transport to Selvax. The legend had always held a place in his heart.
A youngling's tale filled with verifiable facts.
Every little initiate for many generations had been told the tale of the Prak'sha. Woken from a good night's sleep, the younglings would be led from their rooms, through the quiet Temple to the Great Assembly Hall. Glow rods and lanterns the only light allowed.
Obi-Wan always been certain the initiate supervisors had chosen the hall for the resonance it gave their voices as they told the story.
He could still remember Masters Na'tho and Triamvar herding their groups of sleepy and excited younglings together. Na'tho sitting among a few of the youngest initiates while the tall and beautiful Togruta, Triamvar, walked about the circle in her flowing robes.
While other younglings drowsily obeyed their teachers, a six-year-old Obi-Wan and his best friend Garen wiggled in excitement, eager for adventure. He still remembered looking into the darkened chamber, filled with a thousand shadows from the small lights the masters had brought with them.
The race of his heart when Master Triamvar stepped to the center of the circle and placed a single lantern on the floor before retreated beyond the line of small bodies. The other lanterns went out leaving only the one in the center of the room. Beautiful white light cascaded from the center of the circle.
Looking up from her data reader, Siri broke into a wide grin and smoothly waved a hand about in the air. "Let me tell you a story of old," she said in high, formal voice, much like the one Triamvar had spoken with as she voiced similar memories.
Laughing, Obi-Wan settled into the chair. "They were not much for originality."
"They were entertaining sleepy six-year-olds."
The somber mood in the room lifted with shared smiles and memories of Triamvar's story.
Dormus Escario was a Jedi Master Historian who lived nearly five thousand years earlier. More than a thousand years before the age that would be remembered for Jedi like Nomi Sunrider.
The scholar, Dormus, had spent many long years researching and collecting the myriad stories and histories attributed to the ancient Bendu monks. He had believed that were they not gathered and preserved would be lost to time. He felt that the Jedi were the sum of their whole and they could not be complete missing so much of their early history.
His works formed the basis of what would eventually become the Temple library.
Consumed by the teachings of the early Bendu mystics that first explored the Force, Dormus abandoned the civilized world choosing to live many decades as a hermit.
"This is where the legend begins," Siri said, the skepticism heavy in her voice.
"You cannot imagine he would look younger upon reemerging from his self imposed exile?"
"I think it was confusion. Seven decades is a long time and many who would have known him would have passed on into the Force by then." She shrugged her shoulders. "Maybe someone thought he looked young for a two hundred-year-old Ryemeol and it got confused in all the retellings."
"Possibly."
Siri laughed meeting the curious blue eyes of the other Jedi. "Don't tell me, you are taken in by all the legends and myths surrounding the Prak'sha. I thought better of you, Obi-Wan Kenobi."
Dormus Escario serenely entered a galaxy more unsettled than the one he had left. Undaunted he called a council of Jedi and told them of his many experiences while in solitude. The old master told them that after many decades of listening to the Force, he had heard its true voice singing to him. He told of the many conversations he had held with those long in the Force. His conversations with Aben Tel'Urotth, an ancient Bendu philosopher whose writings had formed the early basis of the Jedi Code.
"In those turbulent times, his stories were widely dismissed as the ravings of a madman. They thought he was visiting sacrilege on the dead in order to push his own ideas." Obi-Wan leaned forward slightly, his eyes cast to the floor remembering how sad he felt learning that the wise old Jedi had been mocked, scorned and nearly forgotten for following the will of the Force. For doing what Jedi spent their entire lives doing, listening and answering the call of the eternal energies that bound the universe together. "He probably would not even be remembered for cataloguing the Bendu histories if it were not for the story of the Prak'sha."
Driven back into exile for his unpopular claims, Dormus spent the next twenty years recounting the conversations with the long dead philosopher. Thousands of long and winding journal entries carried on Aben Tel'Urotth's writings, or at least that was what Dormus believed. Many rambling essays that explained the dual nature of the Force while claiming one could not exist without the other. Texts upon texts were written in Basic as well as the dead tongue of Benedaact, the scriptural language of the Bendu monks.
"He had conversations with Force ghosts'," the blond haired Jedi said. "How could anyone claim to take him seriously?"
"Just because we have not seen one does not mean they do not exist," Obi-Wan calmly replied.
Siri just looked at him, her bright blue eyes wide as if he had suddenly grown a second head and she was deciding which one to address.
"I cannot be so small minded. There is much in this universe that I have not seen, but I cannot dismiss it as simply not existing."
"I am hardly small minded," she retorted.
Obi-Wan offered up a mischievous smile. "Well–"
"Careful." Siri grabbed the second bedroll from the foot of the cot and pitched it at the ginger haired Jedi.
Some years later, a Chalactan, Master Chak'Bra'Ikal, went in search of her former teacher after he had not been heard from in some time. Seeking out the hermitage Dormus had returned to after being derided by the Jedi he called family, Chak'Bra found the one room cell long devoid of an occupant. Her presence was the first to stir the accumulated dust in years.
Sitting at a simple desk and draped over the chair were the tunics and cloak that Dormus had been accustomed to wearing. Layered upon each other as if draped over flesh but no trace of the old master remained. In the lap of clothing, lay Dormus' lightsaber.
"I think Master Triamvar made that part up."
"It is in all the documentation on the story. Chak'Bra'Ikal was believed to state everything as succinctly and truthfully as possible. Her essays on the Code Reformation do not give a lot of room for interpretation."
"You are just being difficult."
"I am stating a fact."
Chak'Bra took the weapon of her former teacher in hand, wondering why it had been abandoned. She had never seen Dormus without it even if he had never raised it in battle during his life.
"See, I just can't believe that," Siri argued as she shifted in her place on the cot allowing one foot to dangle over the edge.
"Believe what?"
"That Dormus never raised his saber in battle. How can you not do that?"
"Times were different." Obi-Wan stowed the rumpled bedroll on the floor next to his chair. "Some Jedi today have never raised their weapons except in practice."
"Then there those like us who can't suffer a mission without brandishing our blades at least once." There was something biting, hurt in her voice be she did nothing to elaborate on it.
In the silver body of the hilt, Chak'Bra found the vertical script of Benedaact carved into the smooth surface.
Peace may only be achieved through balance.
Carved around the emitter piece.
The light is the beacon in the shadows.
Curving along the handgrip was another string of characters.
May the Force be with you.
Obi-Wan studied Siri. Even in a semi-relaxed state, there was always that fire that burned in her. "Maybe this mission will be different."
"I doubt it."
In her own writings, archived in the Council of First Knowledge Tower, Chak'Bra wrote of calling out to the missing Jedi but received no answer. Fearful that some terrible fate had befallen Dormus, she started to search for the old Jedi.
The instant she turned her back to the table and the abandoned robes and lightsaber, she wrote that the room filled with the most brilliant of light. It was blinding before she turned around to face the source.
"It reeks of a ghost story pawned off on initiates to scare them into being good."
"Just because that is how the initiate supervisors used it, doesn't invalidate it."
"You just love this story."
"Yes, I do," Obi-Wan said with a grin as battle roughened fingers smoothed out the ginger hairs of his beard. "We all need some fantasy."
"There is too much reality to worry about drifts of imagination."
"It reminds me of the simplicity of being an initiate," came a soft reply. "When stories like this were believable because one did not have the experience of life to dissect and destroy them."
Until the day of her death, Chak'Bra swore that she had faced the ethereal form of Dormus Escario wielding the pale blue blade of his lightsaber. The shimmering white Force ghost answered none of the Chalactan's startled questions. Without ever speaking a word, the Jedi's spirit reached out and offered the hilt to the stunned woman.
We must seek Balance, for there can truly be no light
Chak'Bra gripped the offered hilt.
without dark.
The mysterious light and the image of the missing Jedi Master vanished, retuning to the shadows of the dimly lit room. Startled by what she had witnessed, Chak'Bra took up the mess of hand written pages of philosophy and code that should be honored, as well as the lightsaber that was possessed of a brilliant light and fled the hermitage.
"And in five thousand years, outside of tales involving the lightsaber no one has seen a Force ghost since?" Sir interrupted folding her arms across her chest as if daring Obi-Wan to argue with her. After a long silence, she grinned when Obi-Wan did not defend against her statement.
"Those who have seen the Force ghosts associated with the Prak'sha believe what they have seen."
"Dead Jedi do not haunt a lightsaber." Pressing into the wall, Siri added, "If they were going to haunt anything, don't you think it would be the Temple or at least something a little larger than a saber hilt?"
In the memory of the Great Assembly Hall, the memory of the lamp in the center of the ring went out and younglings squealed.
Rising from his seat, Obi-Wan paced the short room. "Whether it is true or not, the organization of Dormus' writings–be they his or the spiritual recitations of Aben Tel'Urotth–and the continuation through Chal'Bra'Ikal is the basis of much of the Jedi Code. It is interesting for that alone."
Deep inside, behind carefully constructed shields, Obi-Wan also admitted that the existence of the Prak'sha was frightening. He had spent many hours of his youth entranced by the stories surrounding the haunted lightsaber and the many great Jedi that defined the Order and who had possessed the weapon over the millennia. Nearly a dozen masters, knights and even a padawan had held the "brilliant light" in their grasp. Jedi, whose names were now etched in history for their service to the order.
Every time the ancient lightsaber resurfaced from oblivion it heralded the coming of a great trial to face the Jedi Order. In his heart, he hoped it was nothing but a rumor or hoax and the High Council was overreacting sending them on a wild buus chase.
He had all ready had enough of prophecies to last him a lifetime.
Sensing Siri's intense gaze upon his back and the question rising in the Force, he paused his pacing and without turning to face her, nodded toward the refresher unit. "They have hot running water."
The Force burbled with excitement. "Not when I'm finished," the female Jedi teased.
Obi-Wan turned to face a grinning Siri. Wicked smiles and a flurry of activity filled the small chamber as both Jedi sprung toward the open refresher door.
"No fair!" Siri playfully growled as she slid into the open doorway and braced herself against the frame blocking Obi-Wan's access to the unit. "You were standing closer."
"No fair? I sat in that grubby tavern for an hour before you showed up," Obi-Wan growled trying to break her grip. Changing tactics, he wrapped strong arms around the young woman's waist. Siri struggled in his grip but he was too powerful and pulled her from the doorway.
"No! No!" Siri called out as she fought to hold onto the frame. "I want in there first." Twisting in the ginger haired Jedi's hold, she slid a long leg down and around the back of Obi-Wan's knee. Were it anyone else, she would have snapped the bones in his leg with ease, but she only moved to trip up her captor.
Obi-Wan cried out in surprise as his leg was ripped from beneath him sending him tumbling to the floor with a dull thud.
The instant his grip had loosened, Siri threw herself out of his reach into the fresher. Turning about she offered a teasing laugh as she straightened her mussed tunic up. "You look like you could use a cold shower," she purred. Folding her arms across her chest, she mock shivered then sealed the door closed between them.
As Obi-Wan lay on the floor, the look of shock eased into a pleased grin. He bounded to his feet and straightened his own tunic and brushed fingers through his wavy locks. Remaining still just long enough to listen to the sound of falling water, he returned to his chair and picked up his cloak.
Then, placing Siri's data reader on the desk, he stretched out over the length of the still warm cot and draped his cloak across his legs.
"She who takes shower first, sleeps on floor," he mumbled before drifting off to sleep.