by Jason Fry
The Empire, Luke thought. The purpose of the attack was to ruin this place and eradicate what it stood for. What it meant to people.
He felt his anger rise—anger for the people of Alderaan, for his aunt and uncle on Tatooine, for his father, and for so many millions of others.
He nearly tripped over the stone hand on the floor. It had come to lie on its side, atop a pile of rubble. The wrist was blackened where it had been sheared away, but the hand itself was intact, as if stretched out toward him in welcome. The stonework was beautiful, he thought, running his hand over the fingers, appreciating the detail some lost artisan had created over untold hours. His eyes jumped to the statues looming above, and he saw where the hand had been attached.
Luke deactivated his lightsaber and hung it on his belt. He pushed the stone hand aside and sifted through the rubble beneath it. Here was the upper part of a face, with an eye captured in swift, confident strokes, the eyebrow arched in good humor. There was a chin, bearded, and above it a smile.
His anger drained from him, to be replaced by a quiet joy. The Empire had tried to erase everything that had been beautiful there, but it had failed. He could still see that beauty, just as he could feel the power of the Force surrounding him.
At the end of the grand hall, the remains of massive double doors hung from their hinges. The entrance was filled with rubble higher than Luke’s head, and the wind had mounded up leaves in the corners. He started toward the doors, then decided against it—the Empire might have other safeguards against intrusion, in addition to the perimeter sensors. He turned the other way instead, passing corridors choked with wreckage, and found a series of arches leading to an open space overgrown with trees.
Luke squeezed between two tumbled slabs and found himself in a circular courtyard created from the space between the two ruined towers and the rubble of smaller buildings that had been part of the temple complex. Once manicured, the courtyard was now wild. Impact craters had opened yawning pits in the ground, through which Luke could barely make out tumbled stone in the gloom far below. The bowl of a ruined fountain occupied the center of the space, with water bubbling up from inside and spilling out over flagstones covered with grass, forming a shallow pool. Faceless, limbless statues, much smaller than the ones in the great hall, formed a perimeter around the fountain.
Luke looked around in mingled disbelief and joy. It was the place he’d seen in his vision—the fountain, the statues, the grass and trees. Somehow its disheveled state made it even lovelier than he imagined it had been when carefully groomed and tended.
Something made a low sound nearby, and Luke saw pikhrons standing quietly among the trees on the far side of the courtyard, watching him warily. An old matriarch tossed her head, and the group pushed its way through the trees, peering at Luke with small black eyes. They climbed a low mound of rubble, all that remained of one wing of the temple, and were gone.
They feel safe here, Luke thought. They know the hunters don’t come inside the perimeter.
“Luke…”
Luke turned in surprise, looking for the source of the voice he’d heard.
“This place is strong with the Force,” Ben Kenobi said in Luke’s head. “It was the will of the Force that guided you to this place. Here you will learn to open yourself to the Force, guiding its possibilities and obeying its commands. And passing its tests. May the Force be with you, Luke.”
“Ben!” Luke called, but the voice of his old teacher was silent.
Luke sat down on the rim of the fountain, in one of the long shadows the statues cast across the glen. He could feel the power around him—power and a sense of peace. This was the place the Force had shown him, and where it had brought him.
“Master Luke?”
That voice hadn’t been in his head. Luke looked up and saw Threepio and Artoo standing in one of the archways to the great hall.
“Over here, Threepio.”
“There you are! Master Luke, we’ve found something.”
“What have you found?”
Artoo let out a torrent of accusatory beeps.
“Oh, very well, you found it,” Threepio said. “Artoo found a damaged frieze—apparently without my help—and we thought it might be of interest.”
“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Luke said, following the droids back into the ruined hall, to a section in deep shadow.
Artoo activated a spotlight on his dome and traced it along the wall. Luke leaned forward, hands on his knees. The sculpted figures on the wall were as damaged as the statues, the scenes interrupted by craters left by blaster fire. But Luke could make out children in Jedi robes, lightsabers raised in front of them as an instructor demonstrated the proper defensive stance.
Farther down the wall, Luke saw fragments of scenes in which Jedi fought warriors wearing spiked armor and masks. Even frozen in stone, the Jedi looked like deadly dancers, captured in the act of leaping and tumbling, their lightsabers like extensions of their bodies.
I’ll never be able to do that—I can barely fend off an attack from a training remote. I wouldn’t even know how to learn to do that. So much knowledge has been lost. No, not lost—stolen from the galaxy. Stolen by Vader and the Emperor.
The frieze ended in shattered stone, and Artoo shut off his light.
“I’m glad I got to see that,” Luke said. “But everything here took place a long time ago. This place is important because of the present, not the past. The Force told me so.”
He returned to the glade, which was filled with birdsong, and looked around the courtyard again. His gaze lingered on a stone pillar whose surface was broken by a lever extending from the stone two-thirds of the way to the top, meters above his head.
“Unless the Jedi who lived here were very tall, that was designed to be opened with the Force,” he said.
Luke unbuckled his belt and holster and set it down on a tumbled slab of rock next to the droids. Holding his deactivated lightsaber in one hand, he walked over and stood beneath the pillar, its surface turned orange by the setting sun. He breathed deeply, tuning out the squabbling droids and pushing away the distracting thoughts crowding his head.
Keep your concentration here and now.
He reached out with his hand, imagining it gripping the lever and pulling.
Nothing happened.
Luke shook his head and tried again, ordering the lever to move, then conjuring a picture of the Force taking on the form of something that could pull it. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine it was only him and the lever he was trying to move. When he looked again, the lever would have shifted and the pedestal would be open.
Luke opened his eyes. Nothing had changed.
He wiped his brow on his sleeve, took a deep breath, and tried again.
And then again. And again and again and again.
Luke tried until the glade was shrouded in gloom, with only the tops of the ruined towers still painted in the colors of sunset. The birds had stilled their songs and sought their nests. But the lever still hadn’t moved. No matter what he did, the Force refused to obey his commands—or his pleas.
I can’t do it. I don’t understand how, and there’s no one to teach me. And there never will be—I’m the last of the Jedi.
The last of the Jedi sank to the grass in despair.
Farnay had watched through her macrobinoculars as Luke disappeared into the cave, gasping when he seemed to look straight at her for a moment. She’d observed Sarco as he trudged back across the rocky valley and scrambled up to where his beasts waited. She was about a hundred meters away from him, crouched behind a thick tree trunk, her pack beast staked nearby.
She expected Sarco to climb atop one of the mounts and start back toward Tikaroo. But instead the faceless alien set up a campsite not far from the edge of the cliff, across the river valley from the cave.
He’s waiting, Farnay thought. Waiting for Luke.
Farnay knew better than to think the Scavenger was waiting in case he might be of
help. She knew what he really wanted—a chance to loot the sorcerers’ temple without attracting Imperial attention. And Luke’s presence wouldn’t be enough to dissuade him. The Scavenger’s customers had a way of meeting accidents in the jungle. Most of the missing were wealthy but eccentric old hunters without people who would report them as missing or come looking for them.
She didn’t know what had happened to them, but she could guess. And if the Scavenger decided Luke was in his way, it would happen to him, too.
IN THE MORNING Luke awoke from a deep, dreamless sleep.
He looked around the glade, momentarily confused, before he remembered where he was. When he sat up Artoo turned his radar eye in his master’s direction, beeping a cheery good morning, then rocked sideways to bump Threepio’s silver knee. The protocol droid gave a startled hop as his photoreceptors lit up.
Luke ate a ration bar, drank some cool, clean water from the fountain, and stood in the dew-speckled grass, staring up at the pillar again.
I was exhausted yesterday, but I’m rested now. The Force will obey me more easily.
He sighed and reached up toward the lever with an open hand, letting his shoulders rise and fall.
Nothing happened.
He tried for longer than an hour, as the morning sun evaporated the dew from the grass and the birds began to zip through the branches. Discouraged, he forced himself to sit against the stone bowl of the old fountain and meditate until he had chased away his negative thoughts. Then he got up, walked over to the pillar, and told the lever to move.
It remained still.
Luke kicked a loose flagstone across the glade, startling a crowd of brilliant green birds, then hopped across the glade with his injured toe in hand.
“I’m fine,” he said before Threepio could suggest that it was only sensible to summon a rebel medical frigate immediately.
Luke stretched out his hand, then pulled it back as a buzzing insect landed on his wrist. He shooed it away, annoyed, but it landed again, its crystalline wings catching the early-morning light. One compound eye swiveled to regard him as the insect picked its way along his wrist, its coiled proboscis darting out to taste the sweat on his skin.
“I’m not a flower,” Luke said. “Buzz off.”
The sap drinker ignored him. Its feet tickled. Luke looked at its teardrop-shaped body, a graceful curve that ended in a barbed stinger. He knew it wouldn’t sting him—that was a defense against creatures that might attack its nest. Luke held up his wrist, admiring the way the little creature’s iridescent blue body shimmered when seen from different angles. He smiled at the exuberant life contained in that tiny, busy living thing.
“To harness the Force, you must first feel it everywhere,” said the voice of Ben Kenobi.
Luke frowned, then reached out with his senses. He could feel the Force inside himself, a bright shining thing bubbling and roiling. He reached for the sap drinker still exploring his wrist, not with his hand but with his feelings. There it was—a point of light in the Force, tiny but brilliant. The sap drinker’s presence seemed to overlap with his own body, his own presence in the Force.
The sap drinker flew away with a whir of wings. Luke tried to track its presence in the Force, but the chaotic ripples in the glade were too confusing. There seemed to be millions of currents around him, all emanating from living things—birds and insects, but also the leaves of the trees and the tiny unseen creatures borne on the wind or scuttling across bark and rock. All those lives were vessels of the Force, containers for its energy.
Luke tried to find the sap drinker’s presence again amid the tumult, then stopped.
Trying to focus on a single living thing was confusing and exhausting. But the Force wasn’t limited to those individual bodies, he realized. They created the Force and made it grow, but it escaped those boundaries, overflowing them just like the spring escaped the broken rim of the fountain.
Luke closed his eyes and let himself sink into the Force, allowing it to wash over him. He let his awareness drift, carried this way and that by the living presences around him and the way they made the energy field ripple and dance. He could feel the Force radiating out from his own body, just as it spilled from the birds and insects and tiny creatures.
New ripples passed over him, and he could feel bright presences nearby. Luke opened his eyes and saw the pikhrons clambering over the rubble of the fallen temple wing. They sniffed at him, then lowered their heads and began to graze.
Luke smiled and reached through the Force again, but this time he wasn’t trying to push the energy field across an empty space—he was swimming through it, meandering across the currents of energy in the glade. He traced the rock of the pillar by the way the Force surrounded it—the rock wasn’t alive, but it was an emptiness defined by the life covering it. He could feel the ridges and crannies, the cracks that offered refuge to microscopic living things. He felt the pillar’s shape as his awareness climbed it and found the lever.
Luke bent his wrist and the lever moved as easily as if he’d held it in his hand.
The compartment inside the pillar contained a dozen training remotes, all covered with moss from their long years in damp confinement. Most of them refused to come back to life, either damaged by moisture or having lost all their charge. But Luke and Artoo managed to get three of them working, scrubbing them free of moss and dirt before closing up their access ports.
“Master Luke, are you sure that’s a good idea?” Threepio asked. “They could be an Imperial trap designed to kill intruders. Shouldn’t you at least have your pistol ready just in case?”
“I’ll risk it,” Luke said with a smile.
He stepped back from the remotes, and they rose into the air, rotating slowly so their sensors could evaluate their surroundings. Artoo turned to roll away, and one of the remotes charged him, retreating hastily when the little droid screeched at it indignantly. After zipping about for a few seconds, two of the remotes returned to the pillar, hovering in front of it for a few seconds and then touching down inside the compartment. The third remote floated in front of Luke, as if waiting for something.
Ben’s voice filled Luke’s head again.
“The lightsaber disciplines the mind and schools the body and spirit,” he said. “Mind what you have learned. Let the lightsaber be your focus.”
Luke nodded and detached his father’s weapon from his belt. He spread his feet wide, ignited the lightsaber, and swung it around one-handed in a loose arc. Then he took hold of it with both hands.
The remote floated before him, turning lazily in the air. It zipped to one side, then the other, and Luke had the distinct feeling the device was sizing him up as an opponent.
“Be careful, Master Luke,” Threepio urged.
Feel the Force, Luke reminded himself. It will give you the reflexes you need to guide the blade where it needs to be.
Luke remembered the first time he’d ever held his father’s lightsaber, in Ben’s little stone house on the edge of the Dune Sea. He remembered how the brilliant blue-white blade had dazzled his eyes and then seemed to draw them in, and the almost hypnotic sound of the blade. And he remembered how even though he’d never seen a lightsaber, let alone held one, the weapon had instantly felt right in his hand.
Ben had told him to hold the grip so the blade would be high and ready when it appeared. He’d shown him that everything you could do with a lightsaber—attack, defend, advance, withdraw—began with the initial stance. Dominant foot back, blade held in parry position on the dominant side. Feet not too wide, the better for speed and agility.
Luke assumed the position, watching the remote as it eased back and forth in front of him, its movements deceptively slow. He wondered if it had a way of sensing his ability, or if different remotes were programmed for different levels of skill. What if the remotes used to train raw apprentices were all damaged and the Force had brought him there to be peppered with laser bolts that only advanced students could have swatted away?
First defensive posture, he remembered. Now pay attention. You can worry about programming remotes later.
The remote returned to its initial position in front of the pillar, with Luke turning to face it. Then his blade was diving down and to his right, to protect his hip. The remote’s laser blast struck the blade, sending tendrils of energy snaking across it, and then dissipated in the morning air.
That was the second defensive posture.
Threepio raised his hands in celebration.
“You did it, Master Luke!”
Somehow Han’s mocking laughter at his getting zapped by a laser blast aboard the Falcon had been less annoying than Threepio’s congratulations. Luke smiled at the thought, then had to dodge left in response to the remote’s feint, holding the blade in the third defensive posture. He glanced quickly at the pits gouged in the glade, marking their position. It wouldn’t do to tumble into the depths.
The remote weaved to the right, then darted behind him. Luke whirled, blade high, and a bolt of energy shot by his head to sizzle in the damp grass. The remote retreated, and Luke brought his lightsaber back to the ready position.
“Excellent, Master Luke,” Threepio called.
“Not really—I should have deflected it,” Luke said. “I got lucky.”
That attack forced me into the fourth defensive posture, he thought. The remote ran through all four basic defensive forms in order. It’s testing what I’ve learned.
Which meant it would now attack him for real.
The remote floated in front of him, its jets hissing faintly as it moved up and down, then left and right. It dodged left, but Luke was already bringing his blade down to the right, even as the remote reversed course and fired at his knee. Luke deflected the laser bolt, then wheeled his blade the other way, sending energy beams flying back the way they’d come.