Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (13 page)

Tre scrambled across the ship’s smooth back and tipped inside headfirst.

Lanoree dropped in beside Tre, landing softly on her feet, and the hatch closed above
her. At home once more, she hardly even swayed as the ship powered away from Rhol
Yan and out across the dark sea.

“Are you mad?” Tre shouted. “Insane? What if your ship hadn’t been there, what if—”

She raised one hand, silencing him, and took a deep, calming breath. “A simple thank
you would be fine.”

With the Peacemaker’s computers patched in to Kalimahr’s nav sats and the ship flying
across the ocean toward the Khar Peninsula, Lanoree wanted to use the time to take
stock. At first Tre Sana tried to talk, but she held up a finger in warning and nodded
at her cot.

“Sit. Still. Quiet. You’re on my ship now. It was easy getting you on board. It’d
be even easier for me to fling you off.”

“You call that
easy
?” he spat.

“The cot! And silence.”

Tre sat, his lekku so pale they were almost pink. He was all front, but Lanoree could
see his relief at having a chance to rest.

She turned the cockpit seat toward the front and sat back for a moment, staring at
the sea flashing by below. Moonlight caught the waves. Ships’ lanterns speckled the
surface, and here and there the
navigation lights of airborne craft moved across the night. It was clear, and a swath
of stars smeared the sky. Her ancestors had come from somewhere out there, and now
her brother was preparing to risk everything to travel there once again.

Her brother, and others.

Lanoree was aware of the dreadful danger Dal’s efforts might be putting Tython and
the wider system in, and it chilled her to even imagine him getting close to his aims.
But at moments like this, looking up at the stars, she could not hold back her interest.
Her fascination. In many ways she was as curious as anyone about their origins, but
she went about feeding that curiosity in different ways.

Kara had appeared quite open about her affiliation with the Stargazers. Her Je’daii
past was a mystery, especially as she now exuded dislike for their society and beliefs.
If the information she’d imparted was correct, she had willingly sent them to a Stargazer
temple, and perhaps one step closer to Dal. Yet she had also been hiding secrets.

Lanoree had brought one of them with her.

Quietly, she took the book from her jacket and placed it on the control panel before
her. She sensed no movement from Tre. If he so much as stood from the cot in the living
area behind her, she would be aware, and she did not need any Je’daii senses to know
this. The Peacemaker ship was as much her home as the one with her parents had ever
been, and she knew every waft of air, every creak of loose paneling, and every shadow
cast by the ceiling lights or control panel indicators. She was safer here than anywhere.

The book was leather bound, its cover worn around the edges and blank. It was thin;
perhaps fifty pages. Age emanated from it, a combination of its hand-worn appearance;
the faint smell of dust; and the mere fact that it was a book of paper, card, and
ink. There were those who still produced books, but only as novelty or special items.

This was the real thing.

How many have touched this?
she wondered.
How many have stared at it as I am now, readying themselves to see inside?
Haunted by history—the scent of lost times, the feel of ages—it represented something
that no flatscreen or holo display ever could.

She opened the cover and looked at the first page. The little that was printed there
was in a strange symbology she only faintly recognized.
She ran her fingertips across the page and felt grittiness beneath them, the dust
of ages.

Stroking a pad on the arm of her seat, she listened for Tre as a small globe rose
from the Peacemaker’s control panel. He was silent and still.

Lanoree picked up the globe and twisted it to aim at the book. It floated beside her
right cheek, and when she touched the pad again it flickered on and started to hum
softly. A faint blue light splashed on the book, and beneath it the symbols started
to shiver.

It took longer than she had expected. The print seemed to flow and shift, though only
within the globe’s blue light, and at last the shimmering settled into words she could
read.

The Gree, and Everything I Have Found of Them in the Old City
. The name below was Osamael Or. And that name rang in Lanoree’s memory.

Frowning, she leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes to concentrate. Who was
it?
Where
did she know that name from? She looked again, out at the stars so far away from
everything she knew and loved, and the concept of exploration came to her. What was
she, if not an explorer? A Ranger of the Je’daii, a traveler of this system that still
contained countless unknowns even though it had been inhabited for ten thousand years.
There was so much more to know—mysteries, confusions, ambiguities. There were …

“There are depths,” she whispered. These, too, were the words of Osamael Or, and she
remembered where she had heard them before. A bedtime story from her father, told
so long ago and never remembered again until now. Even after everything that had happened
with her and Dal, the Je’daii temples, the search, and what she had found of him.
Even then she had not thought of that time almost twenty years before when her father
sat in the chair beside her bed, long hair loosened to flow across his shoulders,
hands folded on his chest as he relayed the cautionary tale of Osamael Or and his
final, greatest adventure—in the depths of the Old City, where he insisted there were
secrets still to be found. So he embarked on his next expedition alone, because by
then no one wanted to go with him anymore. They said he
was mad. They said there were more important things to do across Tython, and that
the surroundings were too dangerous. This was nine thousand years ago, you have to
remember, back at a time when dreadful Force Storms still ravaged the planet and the
Je’daii were sometimes swept along with them, instead of taking power and balance
from them. There were many like Osamael Or back then. Frontiersmen, they called themselves,
but for Osamael Or the greatest frontiers did not necessarily exist at the greatest
distances. So he went down into the Old City on Talss alone. And he was never seen
again. They searched for him. His family felt a sense of responsibility, though they
thought him mad as everyone else. So they looked, but nothing was ever found, and
no one was willing to go deep. “There are depths,” Osamael had told his sister the
night before he went, and she repeated his final words whenever anyone asked her about
her brother. Because she was the one member of the family who insisted he was still
alive. “He’s still exploring down there, in those depths,” she’d say. “He’s going
deeper, and finding more, and one day he’ll emerge with news that will astound us
all.” But he never did come back. And that’s why the Old City is such a dangerous
place, my sweet Lanoree. Because there are depths.

“Osamael Or’s diary,” Lanoree whispered, awed. For her to be holding this, now, nine
thousand years later … he must have come back.

A chill went through her, as if someone from a great distance touched the deepest
part of her, and knew her.

She turned the page and started reading.

No one can fight without balance
.

—Master Rupe, Stav Kesh, 8,466 TYA

Stav Kesh. The name itself inspires a shiver of anticipation, a frisson of excitement.
For Lanoree, Qigong Kesh was a place of contemplation and immersion in Force Skills,
nursing and nurturing them, and considering what the Force meant to her. At the Martial
Arts Temple of Stav Kesh, she will learn to fight.

It is dawn as Lanoree and Dal approach the temple. They’d camped several kilometers
to the north, and breaking camp when the sun rose above the eastern horizon is an
incredible moment. The air here is thin, the mountains high, and they are both dizzy
with breathlessness. But the thin air seems to purify the amazing colors of dawn.

Dal seems excited. He was always good in a fight, as several arguments with the children
of other Je’daii at Bodhi Temple had proved. Lanoree hopes that he will find the Force
here and truly welcome it at last. When he sees what it can do … when he feels how
it might help …

“This is my time,” he says as they stand on a rocky cliff path, a shallow ravine to
their right. Snow had fallen in the night, and a light covering softens their harsh
surroundings. “Don’t try to be my teacher here, Lanoree. And don’t try to be Mother
and Father. You’re my sister, that’s all. Whatever happens to me here is my responsibility.”

“Our parents made you
my
responsibility.”

“We’re not children anymore. And I’m my own man.” It’s a surprising thing for Dal
to say. But as he walks ahead of her toward the temple, and she sees the strength
in his stance and the determined set of his shoulders, it does not seem ridiculous
at all.

The breeze is picking up. Snow dances through the air. The landscape is harsh, weather
likewise. Lanoree knows that Stav Kesh is never an easy place to be.

“My name is Tave, and I’m one of the Masters of the temple. We’ve been expecting you.
How was your journey south from the sea?”

“No problems,” Dal says. He does not mention the fire tygah, and when Master Tave
glances at the healing burns across his forearms, Dal says nothing.

After a brief pause, the Noghri Master smiles. “Good. Wait here and I’ll send a droid
to show you to your quarters. You have the morning to perform breathing exercises,
acclimatize to the altitude. After lunch your training begins. This afternoon, Force
breathing.”

“Breathing?” Dal says. “I thought this was the Martial Arts temple.”

Master Tave stares at Dal, glances at Lanoree, then turns his back on them both.

“Dal!” Lanoree whispers. “Don’t be rude!”

“Rude?” he asks, but at least he’s keeping his voice low. “But—”

“Don’t you think Master Tave knows what he’s doing?”

“Yes. Well. But breathing?”

“I’m sure it’ll all make sense.” She walks past Dal and between the wide temple doors,
suddenly afraid that they will swing closed and shut her outside.
Perhaps this is how Dal sometimes feels
, she thinks. Her brother follows her inside, and together they take in their surroundings.

She has seen plenty of holos of Stav Kesh, and heard many stories
from those Journeyers who visited there before Bodhi Temple in their own Great Journeys
of learning. But nothing could have prepared her for the real thing.

The strength of the Force, for a start.

Lanoree can feel the Force here as an almost physical presence, Ashla and Bogan exerting
a gravity upon her that seems to stretch, pull in all directions, and give her body
an incredible lightness. It is easy to let herself fall into the flow, and the talents
she honed at Qigong Kesh feel even more refined here. The Force is close, and it takes
so little effort to become one with it.

She glances at Dal. He is looking about him in wonder, and she hopes that some of
it is recognition of the Force. But after what he said outside, she will not ask him.

Stav Kesh does not so much cling to the mountainside as form it. Rocky outcroppings
are visible here and there, but most of what Lanoree can see above her are buildings.
They start at her level and rise up the slope of the mountain, projecting out over
heavy buttresses and elsewhere forming sheer cliffs of smooth gray stone. Windows
pock wide facades, and balconies held up by slender, incredibly strong supports stretch
out over long drops. Canvas window shades are already flapping in the dawn breeze,
lending splashes of a dozen colors to the sandstone city. A waterfall tumbles from
high above, leaving glittering icicles on the buildings and rocks it passes by. A
series of wheels are driven by the fast-moving water. Spray hazes the air, and the
newborn sun casts several rainbows across illuminated parts of the city. As Lanoree
watches the sun line move around the mountain’s girth, the rainbows seem to be driving
shadows before them. The scene is beautiful, and she remembers at last to draw a breath.

On the mountainside below them sits the Tho Yor. They passed it on their ascent, mysterious,
enigmatic, and the recent snowfall coated it with a glittering layer.

“Bet our room’s right at the top,” Dal says. Lanoree laughs more than the comment
warrants, because she is so pleased at hearing even a hint of humor from her brother.

A floating droid arrives and utters their names in an electronic buzz. They follow.
By the time they reach their quarters, Dal is laughing hard, and panting, and perhaps
crying just a little.

“One thousand three hundred,” he says, gasping. “I lost count of the steps after that.”