by Tim Lebbon
Now it is time for Dal and Lanoree to journey across Tython to the other Je’daii temples, there to learn the ways of the Force. Science and combat, meditation and healing, the raw talents Lanoree has now will be honed and practiced throughout the coming two years. She is excited and nervous. And when her mother calls her close and asks that they walk across the grassland until they are alone, she almost knows what to expect.
It is a fine, sunny day, and the sky is clear. Tythos blazes above, giving them heat and light. The Force binds her and her surroundings together, and she wears her Je’daii training sword on her hip. Though nervous, she is at peace. Until her mother begins to speak.
“Look after your brother, Lanoree.”
“I’m only two years older than him, Mother.”
“True. But the Force is strong in you. You welcome it, and it nurtures you. Your father and I both sense your strength, and we also sense Dal’s weakness. He and the Force … there’s little love lost.”
“He’ll learn, Mother. He has you and Father to look up to. You’re powerful Je’daii, and he’ll be the same.”
“You are destined to follow us, I believe,” her mother says. She smiles at Lanoree, but there is little joy here. “But my worries for Dal are genuine and heartfelt. His interest in the distant past, our ancestors and history outside the system, places on Tython like the Old City … I’m afraid his fate leads away from the Force. Away from Tython.” Her voice hitches, and Lanoree is startled to see tears in her mother’s eyes, glistening on her soft brown cheeks.
“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen! I’ll guide and help him, I promise. That’s what we’re traveling for, after all.”
“You’re traveling to learn to control and expand your powers. If the Force isn’t there to begin with—”
“It is there,” Lanoree says, interrupting her mother. “I see it in his eyes. I think Dal just has trouble letting go.”
“He wants to be his own master.”
“And he will,” Lanoree said. “You know the teachings, Mother. ‘The Force is neither light nor dark, master nor slave, but a balance between extremes.’ Dal will find balance.”
“I hope so,” her mother says.
Lanoree frowns, pouting slightly. It’s a little unfair, she knows, using the look that her mother can so rarely resist. But it might be the last time. She is leaving as a child, and when she returns she will be a woman.
“Fine, Lanoree,” her mother says, smiling. “I’m sure he’ll find the balance he needs.”
Lanoree smiles and nods, and a little while later she and Dal take the first symbolic steps away from their parents. They look back along the river several times and their mother and father remain there, watching them go and waving them on their way.
Dal says nothing. Neither does Lanoree. Lost in their private thoughts, hers are troubled. I’m sure he’ll find the balance he needs, her mother said of Dal.
Buried deep beneath her childish enthusiasm, in truth Lanoree is far from certain. And yet unsettled by whatever future her brother might face, she also leaves her parents and home behind with excitement burning in her heart. This is the start of a real adventure, and one that every Je’daii on Tython has to undergo at some point during their training.
Balance in the Force is essential to become a great Je’daii, and to achieve that one must also gain balance in one’s abilities and talents. Being adept at Force skills is nothing if you do not know how to use them. Having a great talent in channeling the Force through writing and art is fine, but if you cannot also protect yourself in combat, then you will never reach the heights of Je’daii Master. Ashla and Bogan cast their light and dark shadows upon the surface of Tython, and true balance exists within as well as without.
Lanoree can feel the Force thrumming through her sometimes, matching the beating of her heart or, perhaps, vice versa. And she is looking forward to every day that follows. She and Dal often wander together, and they’re very familiar with Bodhi, the nearby ocean, and the lands around it. But other than their time at Padawan Kesh, they have never gone beyond.
The start of their journey will take them northwest across the large island continent of Masara to the other coast. A flight by Cloud Chaser eight hundred kilometers over the Thyrian Ocean will follow; and after their arrival on Thyr, they will journey across rocky plains and through extensive forests until they reach Qigong Kesh, the Temple of Force Skills. It lies beyond the forests and three days’ walk into the Silent Desert, that mysterious place where sound is soaked up by some unknown quality in the constantly drifting sands. The winds are relentless there, and it’s said that some of the sand sculptures that persist sometimes for mere seconds are sentient, part of a species that has existed on Tython for millions of years. No contact has ever been made with these sculptures—indeed, there are those who believe they are simply another unusual quality of the Silent Desert. But Lanoree is always ready to believe.
Beneath the desert, in deep caverns, they will undertake the first lessons in their journey of learning.
They crest a gentle hilltop around midday and turn to look back down upon Bodhi Temple in the distance. The sea shimmers beyond it, constantly moving yet at peace. The Tho Yor at the temple’s center reflects the bright sunlight, and the river snaking inland is a dancing rainbow of light.
“When we return we’ll be real Je’daii,” Lanoree says. “Aren’t you excited, Dal? Isn’t it just thrilling?”
“Yeah,” he says. He grasps her hand and squeezes, but never quite meets her gaze.
“Mother and Father will be so proud.”
Dal shrugs. “I suppose.”
Lanoree knows of their parents’ hopes—that their journey will imbue Dal with more of the Force, that he will come to know and love it, and that perhaps he is simply a late starter. It happens, they said. Sometimes it just takes time and experience.
But Lanoree also knows that a Journeyer has to want it to happen.
“Come on,” she says. “Race you to that fallen tree!”
They run down the slope, and soon Bodhi is out of sight behind them. Neither of them comments on the fact. And for a while, as they race each other through long flute grasses and listen to the gentle hum and hoot of the breeze around them, they are young children again.
Lanoree let the Peacemaker’s computer fly them out of Tython’s atmosphere, and this gave her time to look down upon the planet that had once been her home. To reach escape velocity they passed over Tython’s largest continent, Talss, and even from this distance she could see the vast wound in the land that was the Rift. Six hundred kilometers east of the Rift was Anil Kesh Temple, and it was here, on her Great Journey, that she had truly found her peace with the Force for the first time. It was also here that her brother’s doom had been sealed.
But she wished she could look down upon Masara, home to Bodhi, the Temple of the Arts. There, her parents still lived and taught. They mourned the son they had believed dead, but who now seemed to have become an enemy of the Je’daii and a danger to everyone. Her parents now knew that he yet lived, of that she was certain—Master Xiang’s comments about their understanding the circumstances made that obvious. But she would have liked to speak to them and tell them to continue mourning their son. Whatever the outcome of her mission, the Dalien Brock they had known and loved was no more.
He had shunned his family, and let them continue for nine years believing he was dead. Not everyone is lucky enough to finish their Great Journey, her mother had said to her at Dalien’s memorial ritual. It seemed now that luck had little to do with it.
“Little shak,” Lanoree said. She laughed bitterly. She’d used the term before to describe Dal, but only to herself, when he got his own way with their parents or infuriated her so much.
The ship shuddered with its efforts to tear itself from Tython’s pull, and she wondered why leaving did not trouble her equally. She’d spent four years believing it was because she was a wanderer, a seeker of knowledge and enlighten
ment, and the farther she went, the more she knew. A large part of that was true; her passion in the Force made it so.
But she also suspected that in ranging beyond Tython, she had left behind the lingering guilt that Dal’s death had been her fault.
Where could such feelings reside now?
She withdrew the message pod from her pocket and slipped it into the ship’s computer. The flatscreen snowed and then a picture faded in from the darkness. Master Dam-Powl’s face, though this time she seemed more tense than before.
“Lanoree, I’ll be brief. By the time you view this message you’ll have stood before me and other Je’daii Masters and been given a mission. What I offer you now—privately, the reason for which I’m sure you will understand—is help. Your ship’s computer now contains all we know of your errant brother and his intentions, though, as you will see, that’s precious little. A rumor, a warning, a few words of worry from our Rangers and spies out in the system. On Kalimahr you should proceed to the city-state of Rhol Yan, where you will meet a Twi’lek called Tre Sana in Susco’s Tavern. He lives close by, just ask the tavern’s owner. Tre will tell you more. He’s not a Je’daii. Indeed, many of his interests are on Shikaakwa, and on any other occasion you might seek to arrest him rather than take his advice. But he’s served me well several times before. Greed drives him, and I pay.”
She sighed, and looked for a moment incredibly sad. “I hate to go behind the backs of the other Je’daii Masters in this, because no one on the Council wanted a non-Je’daii involved. But I justify doing so in the knowledge that it will help. You’ll know more than most that some on the settled worlds don’t trust the Je’daii, even though perhaps they hold us in awe. Some actively dislike us. A few harbor hate, still nurtured and fresh following the Despot War twelve years ago, and I suspect it is these levels of society where your investigation will take you. Tre might help you past this mistrust. He knows those levels. But … be wary of him. Stay alert. He has his own interests at heart, and only that. He’s as dangerous as … Well”—Dam-Powl smiled—“almost as dangerous as you.”
She touched the corner of her mouth with one finger, a habit Lanoree knew well—the Master from Anil Kesh was thinking. “I hope your studies go well,” she said softly. “I hope you’re still learning. I’ve never seen such potential in anyone. Go well, Lanoree Brock. And may the Force go with you.”
The message ended and the screen faded to black. The computer ejected the message pod, but Lanoree sat for a while in the cockpit, seat turned away from the windows and the amazing views beyond.
“Kalimahr it is, then,” she said. Over four years spent mostly alone, the habit of talking to herself—or Ironholgs, which was almost the same—had grown. “But I don’t like the idea of a partner.” She liked her own company. Sometimes she spoke to the second, empty cockpit seat beside her, though it had never been occupied.
She swiveled the pilot’s seat and looked to the stars. There was already much to absorb and muse upon, and she had the time it would take to reach Kalimahr to do so. All these secrets being entrusted to her should have made her feel honored. But instead she was unsettled. There was so much she still didn’t know.
After running through standard checks to ensure that her Peacemaker was not being tracked or followed at a distance—being alone was more than habit—she turned to the flatscreen once again.
“So let’s see what all the Masters wanted me to know.” She lifted a keyboard onto her lap, tapped in some commands, and started to view the information that had been loaded into the ship’s computer.
Lanoree and Dal’s parents told them that the ritual of visiting each temple would be best done under their own steam as much as possible. Not for them the ease of a speeder or the comfort of a shire, one of the most common beasts of burden on Tython.
Walking, their parents said, will bring them closer to Tython, which itself is incredibly rich in the Force. It will make them understand, experience, taste, and smell their surroundings instead of viewing them through a speeder’s windshield or from the high back of a shire. And sometimes it means there will be dangers to confront. Dreadful dangers.
Forty days and twenty-four hundred kilometers from home, on the strange continent of Thyr, they reach the expansive Stark Forests that lead eventually to the Silent Desert. The trees of these forests store water in pendulous, leathery sacs, useful to travelers and constantly refilled as the skeletal branches suck what moisture they can from the air. It is here that their lives are threatened for the first time.
Tythos shines down on them, the weather neither too hot nor too cold. The going through the forest is gentle, and they are following a shallow stream that meanders lazily toward the desert some kilometers ahead.
“I’ll harvest ground apples for dinner,” Dal says.
“I’ll catch a rumbat to cook,” Lanoree says.
And then a flight of hook hawks swoops out of the high trees and attempts to hypnotize Dal and Lanoree with their sweet song. Carnivores, these birds hunt in packs, singing their prey to a somnolent standstill and then tearing into eyeballs and throats with their wickedly hooked beaks and sharp talons. They hover in a rough circle around the brother and sister, wings beating a gentle rhythm, voice glands whistling and humming in practiced harmony. Their eyes are dark and intelligent. Their claws shine.
Lanoree has heard about these creatures but has never seen them before. She is terrified. Never has she faced such danger, and the knowledge that their lives are at risk strikes a heavy blow. And yet a thrill rushes through her as she thinks, This is what the Great Journey is all about! “Quick,” she says, “down to the stream!”
“What good will that do?” Dal asks. She realizes that he is also afraid, and she feels a rush of protectiveness.
“The splashing of water can sometimes smother their song.”
“Really?”
“Don’t you listen in any of our lessons?” She grabs Dal’s hand and tugs, but already his eyes have taken on a hazy sheen, the corners of his mouth lifting in a lazy smile. “Dal!”
“I’m fine.…”
A single hook hawk drifts down, slow and casual, still singing as it aims its claws for Dal’s eyes.
Lanoree punches wildly, and in her panic she feels the Force flailing within her. It is against everything she has learned, but she does not have time to berate herself—her fist ruffles feathers, and she feels the cool kiss of the hawk’s claws across her knuckles.
It screeches in anger as it flaps back, and in that moment she manages to calm, focus, and flow with the Force.
When the bird swoops down once more and turns its beak toward her eyes, Lanoree reaches out and Force-slaps it aside. This time her hand hardly touches the creature, barely a kiss of feathers across her fingertips. But the impact is much greater. Bones crackle, and with a single weak cry its body disappears into some undergrowth, leaving only a few feathers dancing on the air.
“Come on!” she says, dragging Dal with her.
The hook hawks are still singing, and their voices silence the rest of the forest. A cool cascade, a pleasing symphony, and though Lanoree tries to close herself to their influence she can feel a distance growing around her. She is dragging Dal along, and when he trips and falls, his hand is jerked from hers.
She turns back, and her brother is lying on his back, smiling up at the Stark Forests’ canopy. They will never reach the stream in time. The hook hawks are coming close. This is all on her.
Lanoree feels like screaming in fury and fear, but instead she finds serenity and balance. She draws her consciousness inward and crouches, breathing deeply. Perhaps the hook hawks see this as her succumbing to their charms. But they could not be more wrong. As the first of the birds swoop, Lanoree stands and sends an air-splitting Force punch their way. Two creatures are knocked from the sky with broken wings and ruptured innards, and a third is smashed into a tree trunk in an explosion of feathers. The surviving birds change their song to one of panic, and fly up th
rough the canopy and away.
Lanoree smiles at Dal, who is still shaking with fear. His eyes are distant.
“But they were so …” he says.
“Beautiful? A trick. They’d find beauty in your flowing blood and open flesh.” Pleased that she has protected them, yet wary of pride, Lanoree helps Dal stand.
“Your hand,” he says. It is bleeding. He tends his sister’s wound silently, dripping in medicines from his rucksack that will clean the talon cuts. Then he wraps her hand in a bandage. All the while, Lanoree listens for a return of the hook hawks, and a small part of her wants them to come back. Her heart is beating fast, and she delights in her success. But the birds have finished hunting for the day.
Dal leads the way through the diminishing forest, and as dusk starts to fall they see the sparse desert landscape visible on the horizon. The edge of the forest leads down a gentle hillside, and the boundary between forest and desert is a gradual lessening of undergrowth, a greater spread of creeping sand. They pause for a while, filling their water canteens.
And as they move out into the desert they are cocooned within a deep, encompassing silence.
Lanoree speaks her own name, and feels it only as a vibration in her chest and jaw. It is as if the desert does not wish to hear. She looks at Dal and he is wide-eyed and afraid, and Lanoree thinks, I have already saved him once. Pride swells once again. She tries to push it down, because pride is distracting.
That first night they camp on the cooling sands. They have eaten and are seated close to the campfire, blankets huddled around their shoulders, packs resting beside them, sleeping rolls already laid out. Yet neither of them wishes to sleep. This place is so strange that they relish each other’s company as never before. Lanoree fears the dreams such utter silence might bring.
