Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) (8 page)

He’s slow with the Force
, she sends, and she knows that Master Ter’cay hears.
But he wants to learn
.

No
, Ter’cay says.
I sense no eagerness in him. Only resistance. No delight, only suspicion
.

He’ll do his best
.

They reach the edge of the cavern, where a large opening in one wall leads to small,
busier tunnels. Six-armed droids amble back and forth offering drinks. Taller droids
provide physical care to a group of people who are dressed in grubby clothing, their
skin sun reddened, faces drawn, and eyes haunted. They don’t stop talking, as if it’s
a novelty. Lanoree suspects these are Journeyer students having just finished another
surface lesson.

If he will do his best, then so will I
, Ter’cay says, but Lanoree already hears his doubt. It seems to echo her own.

Master Ter’cay speaks then, including them both. “The main climb to the surface. There
are elevators and rising tubes, but I like my students to walk. Physical exercise.”
He thumps his chest and laughs. “Good for the lungs! The heart!” And he strokes his
forehead. “The health of the body feeds the health of the mind.”

They start climbing the naturally formed stairway. Lanoree counts more than a thousand
steps.

Their first evening, as the sun blazes red across the western desert and the sands
come alive with scorpions and serpents and other shadowy things, Lanoree Forces an
illusion before Master Ter’cay. A shire with graceful veined wings and a single horn
protruding from its head dances in the sand, beating its hooves against shadows that
do not notice, snorting, and she hears every beat and breath. Ter’cay smiles at the
solocorn that prances before him, and he nods once at Lanoree.
Good work
, he speaks silently.
But you’ll find that making an illusion of reality that much harder. You know the
solocorn is a creature of myth, rich in your mind, and so an illusion is easy to form.
Try something more mundane. A rock, a fruit, a shoe. Not so easy
.

Lanoree lets the illusion flitter away in the dusk and does as Ter’cay suggests. She
cannot do it.

Your lessons have only just begun
, Ter’cay says. He turns away from her and sits close to Dal, holding the boy’s hands
in his own, touching his cheeks and his temples, and then the Master closes his eyes
and Dal’s own eyes grow wide.

He hears him!
Lanoree thinks, delighted.
He feels the Force, and hears with it!
But her excitement is short-lived.

Dal stands and kicks at the sand, sending it spraying into Master Ter’cay’s face.
He reacts like he has been invaded or touched by something disgusting. Then he turns
and walks away into the twilight. Lanoree wishes she could call her brother back.

Their first dawn camped in the Silent Desert with Master Ter’cay is one of the strangest
times of Lanoree’s life. Camping with Dal on their way here had been nothing like
this; they were times of fear and worry, not wonder. Perhaps being so close to the
temple—a natural nexus of the Force—drew life to that place.

As the rising sun sets the eastern horizon aflame, the desert comes to life, and the
silence seems more staggering than ever before. Night creatures have already gone
to ground an hour before dawn, as if aware that sunlight will soon expose them. Shadows
retreat, the coolness of the night is burned away, and shimmering heat haze dances
across the sands. Desert birds take flight from wherever they sleep. A small species
of shire—thinner than those elsewhere on Tython, with water humps on back and neck—moves
in herds across a distant hillside. Lizards frolic and dance around rocky areas; gliding
pendles flap their mighty wings as they ride the dawn air currents; and she sees a
giant mankle stalking in the distance, its vicious spines raised for the hunt. Yet
this magnificent display of life and diversity exists in the desert’s unnatural silence,
the cries and calls, the flapping of wings, the growls and roars of the hunt, all
unheard.

There, toward the hills. Look. Blink and you might miss it
. She was not even aware that Ter’cay had risen; his tent looks undisturbed, untouched.
Yet as he speaks in her mind she sees him hunkered down south of the camp, as motionless
as the rock pile beside which he sits.

She looks where he said, and sees.

There seems to be no wind lifting the sand, no disturbance in the ground that might
raise such a thing. The sculpture looks about the size of a human, though distance
can be deceptive. It seems fluid, moving and dancing as the billions of sand particles
within constantly shift and flow. The shape is ambiguous.

Dal should see this
, Lanoree thinks. Yet she knows she cannot wake him with a thought, and to move him
might break this moment.

Reach
, Ter’cay says, and Lanoree reaches. The Force is alive within her and she probes
outward with her senses, feeling that distant sand sculpture is slightly warmer than
the surrounding sand, its smell is like something long buried exposed at last. And,
most amazingly of all, within its confines the sand sings out loud. The sound is confused
and seems to make no sense. There are no words there that Lanoree knows. Yet she can
sense something of unbridled freedom and passion in the noise, and for a few beats
of her heart she is filled with a blazing optimism that puts the sun to shame.

Then the shape disintegrates, and with one more heartbeat it is returned to the desert.
The sound has vanished. The movement has ceased. Lanoree is left breathing hard with
excitement, and as she glances across at Ter’cay she catches his smile.

What
is
that?

A mystery. You should wake your brother. Your training starts again now
.

They spend the rest of that day, and the two following, training in the Silent Desert.
Lanoree is delighted with the talents she possesses and those she is introduced to,
and thrilled at how adept she already seems. Ter’cay pushes her. Tests. And she performs,
pushing back with silent requests for harder tasks, more complex problems. Her relationship
with the Force expands rapidly in that silent place, and she feels fully a part of
it for the first time. Suggestion, telepathy, control, her skills grow and expand
with each passing moment. She enjoys her time there with Master Ter’cay. And yet many
times she realizes the strength of her pride when she forgets that Dal is not finding
any of this easy.

He cannot flow with the Force, and the more Ter’cay works with
him, the less Dal wants to try. Lanoree becomes frustrated and annoyed with his frequent
displays of petulance. In the evenings, when they are eating and relaxing, she tries
communicating with him. A sisterly touch on his mind, borne of love and concern. Yet
she’s met with a deluge of chaotic thoughts—frightening, furious, and yet scared.

As dusk falls on the third day and they make their way back to the temple, Lanoree
is enlivened by her successes and saddened by Dal’s failures.

She takes his hand, surprised when he holds on. And she smiles at him.

She has an idea.

A subtle push and—

They are walking along the river back at home, close to Bodhi Temple. This is the
one place where Dal feels most at peace with himself. Weave birds have been here recently,
and countless golden threads are carried on the breeze. The river flows fast and heavy,
swollen by recent rains in the hills of the Edge Forest. The air smells of blossom
and hangs heavy with the promise of a family meal that evening, when their father
will cook rumbat stew and their mother will read some of her poetry. It is beautiful
.

It is false
.

Dal squeezes her hand so tightly that she feels bones grinding, and the hook hawk
wounds start to bleed again. Then he crumples to his knees in the sand and vomits.

Lanoree kneels beside him, wondering if she has done wrong. He
hates
her touching his mind, using the Force to invade his thoughts. They have fought about
it more than once. But after so long in this strange place, she’d thought that perhaps
he would have welcomed those thoughts of safety and calm, those images of home.

When he looks up at her, she sees the venom of his gaze.

She cannot touch his mind again to say sorry.

Never place all your reliance in the Force. It’s always there, but that does not mean
it can always be called upon. Each Je’daii is his own person with his own talents.
Learn to use them. Nurture them. If the Force is the dream, you are the dreamer, and
sometimes you have to wake up. Sometimes, you are all you have
.

—Master Shall Mar, “A Life in Balance,” 7,523 TYA

Tre Sana had already told her more than the Je’daii Masters who had sent her on this
mission. They had mentioned a loose network of rich Kalimahr apparently involved in
Dal’s Stargazer sect, and Tre had backed that up with talk of tracking down a particular
person to question. They had spoken of dark matter being used to attempt activation
of a supposed hypergate. But they had not mentioned the Gree at all.

What was known about the Gree was so far back in history, so deep in time, that it
had taken on the sheen of myth and legend. Lanoree wanted to get back to her ship’s
computer to find out what she could.

But first she had to discover who, or what, was following her.

She imagined that this district of Rhol Yan must be somewhere at the lower end of
the tourist experience—the streets were grubby; some vendors very probably dealt in
illegal goods, services, or substances; and the clientele of the various establishments
displayed little evidence of being mere visitors. A rough area, but not one in which
Lanoree felt out of place. Every city on every planet had them, and she had visited
many.

Sometimes, she fit right in.

Cloud Chasers drifted above, speeders buzzed along a slightly raised roadway in the
center of the street, and several types of indigenous beasts of burden carried people
on their backs or limbs. But Lanoree chose to walk. It meant that she had complete
control of her movements, and it would be easier to keep watch. She wanted to draw
her follower out, not escape from him or her.

She used the polished shine of speeders, the glass of display windows, and the reflections
in the eyes of those passing by to look behind her. And when she could not see, she
blinked slowly, casting her senses back to try and discover who and where her pursuer
was.

It was frustrating. She felt observed, and it could no longer be the usual curiosity
for a Je’daii Ranger; she had removed her Ranger star to try to blend in.

The end of the street opened up into a large market, stalls built across a wide marble-paved
square and suspended on three massive treelike structures around the square’s perimeter.
Small Cloud Chasers moored at some of these trees, ferrying people and freight to
and from the larger vessels that buzzed and drifted above. Lanoree trotted down the
curved stone steps that led to the square. Then she stopped, turned, and ran back
up.

She paused on the top step and looked around. The street she had walked along was
bustling. She looked at people walking toward and past her, human and otherwise. She
watched many more walking away. Probing with her senses, touching the pulse of the
Force, she felt for any image of herself in someone else’s regard … and found it.

Just standing there, watching, don’t forget she’s a Ranger, dangerous, mysterious—

She touched the haft of her sword and pulled it partway out of its
sheath, turning, seeing a Cathar family paused twenty paces from her while the mother
and father fussed over their six children. Standing just behind them, pretending to
be a part of their group and yet so obviously not, was a shape that did not belong.

The man was small but stocky, wearing an expansive gray robe and a large mask. Lanoree
was sure he was Noghri—reptilian, skilled fighters, prized assassins. As she laid
eyes on him, he looked up and met her gaze.

She raised one hand, ready to Force-push him to the ground for the moment she’d need
to reach him.

He pulled a laser blaster and fired into the family group.

Screams. Panic. People running, fleeing, falling. The Noghri fired again, shooting
at random.

Lanoree drew her sword and ran at the shooter. He was already fleeing, blaster in
one hand and something else in the other. She could not make out what the device was.
She reached for him, shoved, but he dodged sideways, and her Force punch tripped a
beast of burden, spilling its three passengers.

As she passed the Cathar family, she glanced down and saw the woman on the ground,
blood pulsing from a terrible, black-tinged wound in her furry scalp. The father was
trying to pull the children away while crying out in mad grief. Lanoree wanted to
stay and help, but there would be others to do that.