“I thought I might find you here.”
I turned and saw Luke standing in the doorway. “Am I not supposed to be here?”
Luke held his hands up. “This room is perfect for you, believe me. It’s certainly better for you than any of those in the upper levels.” He gestured easily and one of the lockers slid silently fifty centimeters to the left. “Look down there, at the block three up from the floor.
I walked over and crouched down. Mildew and some lichen had grown over that block, creeping up from the ground, but I easily managed to brush it away. Sunk into the stone were letters and I smiled as I read aloud. “The Empire or Us—there is no compromise. Biggs Darklighter, Wedge Antilles, Jek Porkins.”
A boyish grin tugged at the corner of Luke’s mouth. “Back then the three of them bunked in here—I came late and had the room up above. We met here and swapped stories before we headed out—we were too excited to sleep. We all thought we would survive, despite the odds. I think their inscription was a hedge against death for them. If they didn’t survive, if the whole Rebellion died, at least there would be a record of their names.”
“But your success has guaranteed everyone knows those names, and yours as well. What you did here changed the course of life for billions.”
Luke lowered his hands and his cloak enfolded him in shadow. “What we will do here, now, will change the lives of billions.”
I straightened up and turned back toward him. “I want to apologize for my questions. You’re a Jedi Master and I’m here to learn. I did not mean to show you any disrespect.”
“No offense taken. Your questions were valid, but you based them on a life lived without the touch of the Force.” His grin broadened somewhat. “My Master, Yoda, thought me impatient and impossible to train. You fare much better in that regard. You do tend, by nature, to think too much and to be suspicious. This could be a problem. Suspicion raises walls, allows fear to grow. That can interfere with your ability to use the Force.”
I nodded. “Then, at the risk of making you worried about me even more, I need to ask you another question.”
“Please.”
“You mentioned that both Kam and Brakiss have experiences connected with the dark side. You didn’t bring the three of us in together with the intent of having me watch over them, did you?”
Luke adamantly shook his head. “Not at all.” His eyes hooded themselves in shadow, yet pinpoints of light seemed to sparkle at their centers. “During the time of the Emperor’s return, I, too, went over to the dark side. I did so for a variety of reasons, some of which seemed to make sense at the time, and many of which still cause me difficulty. What I experienced then has given me an understanding of the dark side which is vital to fight it. More importantly, the love of my sister and my friends drew me back. It redeemed me. Even the most foul victim of the dark side can be redeemed. By turning their backs on evil, Brakiss and Kam have already begun their journey into the light. I want to help them complete that journey.
“Don’t be so suspicious. Don’t think, feel. Your task is not to watch over them, but to learn from them.” Luke’s voice began to harden and his words thundered through me. “You will find, at some point, that the dark side will speak to you. It is seductive, offering you everything with little effort on your part. Learn from the lessons the others have endured, so their strength can become your strength when you face this test.”
I nodded slowly. “I understand.”
The Jedi Master’s face brightened. “Good. Sleep well, Keiran Halcyon. What you will face in the future might not seem as difficult as destroying a Death Star, but I assure you that it is easily just as important.”
NINE
Within a week the rest of the Jedi candidates had reached the academy, filling the Great Temple with the life and color and laughter I guessed it had not known since the celebration following the Death Star’s destruction. Still, that celebration had to be tinged with sadness at the loss of so many comrades, whereas we were looking forward to the future and that made us much happier.
Master Skywalker allowed each of us to approach our training on an individual basis. While there were group exercises and organized teaching sessions, we all had a fair amount of latitude in what we did. I missed the sense of camaraderie I’d established with other trainees at the CorSec Academy; but we all knew here that we were pioneers and vital to the future of the New Republic. That put a significant amount of pressure on us to succeed, and a harder, tougher training program could easily have ended up pitting us against each other.
And some of that happened naturally anyway. Because I took to heart Luke’s suggestion that he wanted each of us to be comfortable with ourselves and our efforts, I would get up at dawn and go for runs along trails within the rainforests. Being up that early I got a chance to see what I dubbed Prisma storms. When the moon traveled behind the gas giant and spent time in its shadow, the nights would get very cold. Water crystals would form in the upper atmosphere and as the moon came out from behind the gas giant, the sunlight would be shattered by millions of prisms. The light danced and sparked through the atmosphere, crackling along like varicolored lightning. The first time I saw it I thought a fleet had showed up in orbit and had started fighting with another fleet. I quickly saw it was nothing to worry about and learned to look forward to seeing it.
I shared the news of it with the others, of course, and some of them dragged themselves out of warm bunks to watch the storm’s brilliant display. They stood there looking skyward while I stretched out and prepared for my run. As I started off and turned to toss a quick wave to them, I noticed that one of them was more intent on watching me than the storm.
Gantoris.
I think I knew that personality conflicts would be inevitable, but with our unity of purpose I was hoping they would be trivial. A tall, broad-faced man who wore his long black hair woven into a braid, Gantoris had been something of a head man in his community. His abilities in the Force helped his people survive and he had all the earmarks of being a leader. He carried himself as one and had a healthy ego. He was not used to being second to anyone in anything, and I think he decided I did all the extra training I did to curry favor with Master Skywalker.
In truth, I was doing the extra physical training because I was just stubborn. I had decided before I arrived here that I needed to get into shape to be able to do well, and if I didn’t continue, I’d have to acknowledge that I’d been in error. Gantoris was not the only person present with a healthy ego, and mine wasn’t inclined to take any shots by having me admit I was wrong.
I did my best to ignore the hard glance Gantoris had shot me and just tried to enjoy the run. The rainforest and humidity made doing just that very difficult. Despite small herds of runyips coursing their way along these paths often enough to leave a crowd of hoofprints, the local vegetation seemed determined to reclaim the paths. If it wasn’t knobby tree roots trying to trip me, the woody, skeletal roots of nebula orchids clawed at my face. The orchids were eye-catching in another sense—I’d never seen flowers that had such swirls of color in them. Part of me wondered what other patterns someone like Ooryl, who could see in the ultraviolet range, would discover in their blossoms.
The humidity dragged at me the most and my clothes would become soaked with sweat within the first kilometer and a half. My run took me out and around past the Temple of the Blueleaf Cluster. With such a name you would expect it to be surrounded with the blueleaf shrubs that tended to encroach on most other clearings, but this was not true. The name came from the leaf patterns carved onto the surface and around the doors of this smaller temple. I’d not yet been inside, but Master Skywalker had mentioned it contained a blue crystal that pulsed with power. He said he had no clue as to its origin or purpose, leaving me a mystery to solve in my spare time—if we ever had any.
The main hazard in running through the forest came from some of the creatures living there. Running into a swarm of piranha-beetles would put an end to my ca
reer as a Jedi fairly quickly. The blue bugs could strip flesh off bone faster than Jawas took to dismantle an airspeeder. Fortunately the beetles tended to move through the upper reaches of the forests, and most creatures cleared out of their path with a maximum of hooting, hollering and other useful warning sounds.
Woolamanders with their blue and gold fur moved in packs through the forest and seemed to take great delight showering passing targets with leaves, sticks, fruit and anything else that comes easily to paw, like the occasional tree-tick. I learned not to like woolamanders pretty early on, and found myself cheering silently for the prowling stintarils stalking through the trees like an army on a search and destroy mission. The rodents had enough teeth and powerful enough jaws to take healthy bites out of the bigger woolamanders. While I didn’t want a host of stintarils to move into the Great Temple, I was happy to see them flocking in the direction of any woolamander pack that decided to harass me.
The thing I enjoyed most about the runs was that it gave me something to do that was distinctly mine and for me. That sounds selfish, but Luke had begun to stress that each of us would find that we had talents in certain areas of the Force—talents that no one else might share, in fact. Their discovery would be just a small part of our self-discovery and growth as a Jedi. The runs gave me something to bridge my past life with my new one, and they also provided me a chance to think about what I was learning and where I wanted to direct my efforts in the future.
Running was good for me, no matter what Gantoris or anyone else thought of my efforts.
Kam and I had come up with a plan for teaching some basic combat skills to the other recruits, and Master Skywalker approved our plans with a few slight modifications. We took the others through the standard procedures, walking them through drills at slow speeds, then working along faster and faster until their reflexes sharpened and responses to attacks came automatically. Into this whole mix Luke injected the Force, asking us to feel our opponents through the Force and monitor what was happening to them.
In the walk-throughs I had a great deal of trouble doing what he asked. I remember squaring off with Tionne, the slender, silver-haired woman who was more scholar and singer than she ever would be a warrior. Still, her enthusiasm for becoming a Jedi, and her ready laugh, made her a good student and a better comrade. She came at me, her hands held high as if she meant to batter me down with overhand blows. I sensed her approach and could feel subtle shifts in her balance as she came in, but what I felt had little significance to me, since it was very easy to turn into the direction of her attack and use her momentum to toss her over my hip.
Which was exactly what she and I knew would happen the second the exercise began.
As Kam began to layer in lessons about fighting with a lightsaber, sensing my opponent became more important. My ability in that area began to grow, but I didn’t trust it enough to abandon myself to it. Though we sparred with padded wooden practice swords, I treated each cut or slash as if it were from a true lightsaber. Very defensive, I relied upon the basics that Kam taught and found they stood me in good stead close to ninety percent of the time.
In that other ten percent, Gantoris inflicted some nasty bruises on me.
Kam’s instruction can’t be faulted at all in this regard because he taught us well the three rings of defense. The outermost ring consisted of four guard positions: upper right, upper left, lower right and lower left. The lightsaber’s hilt would end up wide of the body, with the tip coming back toward the middle to pick up the grand sweeping blows that are very powerful, but also take longer to deliver.
The middle ring also involved four guard positions: high, low, left and right. Whereas in the outer ring the blade tended to be held at a diagonal, in the middle ring up and down were parallel to the ground at head and knee height, while left and right were perpendicular to it. The idea with the middle ring was to pick up quicker blows and stop them before they could intersect with the body. Luke also noted that the middle ring was effective against picking off blaster bolts.
The inner ring involved parries instead of blocks and was proof against lunging attacks. For this third line of defense, the lightsaber was kept in close, with the hilt covering the navel. By angling the blade’s tip and picking up attacks on the lower third of the blade, attacks could be shunted aside, and a riposte to the opponent’s chest or stomach became a very real possibility. The inner ring was the last line of defense, dangerous to be defending from, and dangerous to be attacking from.
That afternoon saw me pitted against Gantoris in a basic sparring match. Because he was taller than me, he had something of a power and reach advantage. My only salvation would be quickness and the years I’d spent involved in rough and tumble battles as a CorSec officer. It also helped that, because of my CorSec experience, I knew I could beat someone as big as he was; whereas I doubted Gantoris ever had found himself in a real fight with someone like me.
We bowed to each other as we entered the circle described by our panting and sweating comrades. I turned to my right and saluted Master Skywalker, and then to my left and saluted Kam. Kam raised his right hand, then lowered it quickly and shouted, “Begin.”
Expecting a charge, I took a step back. Gantoris’ eyes blazed with triumph as if this concession of a meter’s worth of territory was somehow a great victory. He gave me a cold smile, then slowly began to pace forward, much like a stintaril stalking a tree-tick. He kept his feet shoulder width apart as he came in, and his knees bent, but I knew the attack wasn’t going to be coming until he rose on the balls of his feet and set himself to strike.
My sense that he was going to do just that came nanoseconds before I saw him gather himself for the attack. I almost lost the impression in the violence of his attack, but I’d begun to react to the Force-sense before the attack came in. My blade rose up to the upper right guard while I slipped to the left. I picked up his attack and knocked it aside so quickly that I surprised myself. Because I had moved out of the line of his attack and was already drifting past his left flank, with a flip of my wrists I could have brought the wooden blade down and across his stomach, but I didn’t. Instead, trying to cling to the warning I’d been given, I danced past him and set myself for a new attack.
Another one came hard and fast. Gantoris’ blade came up, around and down in a crowning blow that would have split me from skull to navel. I snapped my blade up into the high guard, bracing myself to pick up the blow, but it never landed. Proving himself far quicker than I expected, Gantoris whipped the wooden practice sword around in his left hand and slapped it across my right shin.
Despite the padding on the blade, the blow hurt a great deal. As pain jolted its way up my leg, I tried to remember some of the Jedi techniques for shunting aside pain that we’d been taught, but being in the middle of a fight wasn’t the most conducive circumstance for meditative arts. As I reeled away, Gantoris slashed at me again, catching me across the back of my thighs, making me yelp aloud.
My face burned with shame. Here I was, someone who was helping instruct the others in self-defense, and Gantoris was slashing at me with impunity. He had me hurt and I was all turned around and vulnerable. My self-image imploded as I read the shock and horror and comical smiles on my friends’ faces. In their minds I was victim and clown, and those two images succeeded in grinding the image I’d held of myself as Keiran Halcyon, Jedi Hero, into little tiny bits.
Then I got the very clear impression that the next blow would land on my right ear and do all it could to drive it into my brain. Without conscious thought, I dove forward on my belly, then scissored my legs and rolled over onto my back. My legs tangled themselves up with Gantoris’ legs and twisted the larger man to the ground. I brought my own stick around and smacked him across the buttocks, then kicked his legs free of mine.
Gantoris got up, his eyes narrowed, while I just sat on the ground and drew my knees up to my chin. I resisted the urge to rub my shin and forced myself to think past the pain about what had just
happened. At that moment when I had been the most vulnerable, when I had been beaten, I had known what he was going to do and I had been able to react to it.
What surprised me was that my access to the Force had come at a point when I had been forced to abandon the image I had been trying to present to the others. Once I got past pretense and had just been what I was, the Force flowed more freely. It was as if the role I had created for myself had inhibited the flow, whereas abandoning the role brought me closer to it.
Perhaps it is not for me to sculpt the Force’s flow to my purposes, but for me to be sculpted into that which more easily works with the Force.
Gantoris pointed his practice sword at me. “Let us go again.”
I tossed my wooden blade aside. “I’m ready. Come on.”
“Take up your blade, Keiran.”
I shook my head. “Whenever you want, I’m here.”
Gantoris looked over at the Jedi Master. “Tell him to defend himself, Master Skywalker.”
Luke’s blue-eyed gaze flicked between Gantoris and me, and then back again. “It appears he is content with his defensive posture, Gantoris.”
The taller man pulled his chin up. “It is dishonorable for me to strike someone who is defenseless.”
Luke smiled. “Then, if you will not strike, he has won. Won without striking a blow. That is a lesson for you to learn, Gantoris.”
“Yes, Master.”
Luke gestured to my sword and it floated back over to me. “That, however, is not the lesson Keiran needs to learn. If you will, Keiran, defend yourself.”
Star Wars: I, Jedi: Star Wars Page 9