The Legion Renewed
Chapter Nine
The seeker rose above Briande's head. Briande heard the slight wind it made as it moved, swung her lightsaber in the direction of the sound, and missed.
Luke sighed. He had blindfolded her for the exercise, trying to get her to stretch out with her feelings instead of her other senses. It was one of the first drills he had ever learned, but it was obviously not working on Briande.
Thinking back to his own training, Luke tried to think of how the lessons he had been given had matched his needs. He had been little more than a precocious school-boy then, strong with the Force, but wild and unfocused in its use. He had needed the discipline of Ben and Yoda's training to learn how to control it properly. Briande, on the other hand, already had the control-perhaps too much of it. What she needed was the energy, the strength. But Luke had had no lessons in that to pass on to her now. All he had was Yoda's books, handwritten volumes bound in old-fashioned paper, difficult to read, not indexed, and not organized in any particular order.
Briande's training was a test for Luke as well. The only way to prevent the Jedi order from dying out was to train other knights, but such training was a serious business. Luke could not afford to have a single failure. He knew all too well what might happen if a single knight turned to the Dark Side.
He wondered, at times whether he shouldn't just face Briande's sister himself, and abandon the idea of training altogether. Perhaps the Jedi Knights were becoming obsolete for a reason. Perhaps, with the New Republic in power, it was only his own need that made him want to bring the order back.
The time when the Jedi Knights would no longer be needed should be a time of great rejoicing. Instead, as the last knight, he felt only a great loneliness. He wanted to share the Jedi traditions with others, but he was not the gifted teacher that Ben or Yoda had been. Here he was with what should be the easiest pupil he could hope for-one who had already received some training-yet he could not get the simplest lessons across. Was he so selfish about his own desires that he could not give up the dream which his head told him he hadn't the talent to accomplish? For all his lessons, Briande seemed to be moving backwards-regressing instead of progressing. He wondered if it wouldn't be better to stop now, before he did any more damage, than to let things go on as they had been going.
On the other hand, it was possibly too soon to give up entirely. If what Briande was demonstrating now was the result of two years of steady training, then maybe he himself had been the exception to the rule. Maybe it did take years instead of months to train someone. He didn't know. He had nothing to compare with except his own experience.
Maybe he needed to rest from it for a while.
"All right," he said, deactivating the seekers. "Let's take a break for now."
"I don't really need one," Briande replied, holding her weapon at the ready. "Shouldn't I keep practicing?"
Luke shrugged. He had always been extremely grateful for whatever breaks Yoda would give him, yet Briande always seemed to resent them. "As you wish," he replied. He reactivated the seekers and set them on automatic. Then he watched for a moment as Briande swung at them blindly once more, before setting off down a lonely path to find a place to think.