by Claudia Gray
By now, Orla knew what that meant. “What did I do?” she whispered. “I only acted in self-defense.”
“You made no mistakes.” Generally warm and empathetic, Master Laret always tried to reassure her apprentice—but she also always found other things Orla needed to work on. Always. “Yet today you have repeatedly failed to call upon your full training in combat against nonsapient beings.”
I followed my instincts, Orla wanted to say. I stayed alive. I won!
Instead she nodded. “I’ll remember next time.”
Master Laret gave her a rare grin. “Let’s just hope the ‘next time’ is more than five minutes from now, hmm?”
“Definitely,” Orla agreed.
Inside, however, she couldn’t stop thinking, If the Force speaks to me through my instincts…why can’t I listen?
A few short days before, the news that they could safely travel again at last might’ve been cause for celebration. Orla would’ve splurged for a couple of bottles of Toniray wine at their destination—or whatever local vintage they could get—and been the one who got the party started.
Instead she felt nothing. Or, rather, so many emotions were snarled inside her that she couldn’t tell them from each other and was left numb.
“We have unfinished business on this station,” she said to Leox and Geode as she stood in the cockpit with them. From their vantage point, they could see little but an extremely close-up view of the airlock facings; only at the very highest corner could Orla glimpse a sliver of stars. “Including business that can’t really be finished, ever.”
“It’s tough knowing you have to leave a man behind.” Leox shook his head as he took a thoughtful drag on his spice stick. (Orla would’ve objected to the bitter smoke if it hadn’t seemed so petty compared to their other concerns.) “But staying won’t change anything. Besides, I’d think you all would consider yourselves well shed of the place, since it’s tainted with the dark side—that’s what you call it, right?”
Orla nodded. “The thing is, we need to take the darkness with us when we leave, if we can.”
Leox and Geode shared a glance—or at least, Leox glanced at Geode. Orla still found Geode’s moods tricky to read. “Let me get this straight,” Leox said. “You have identified a source of primordial evil in the universe, so instead of heading to the farthest corner of the galaxy possible, you want to bring it on board.”
“If we can contain the darkness in a way that allows us to transport it, it’ll be completely safe. If not, we won’t be able get it on board to begin with.” Assuming that it’s not already, she thought but didn’t say. That was a risk none of them had any control over, and besides—the minute you suggested someone might be under an evil influence, they often began to behave like they were. The Vessel’s crew was better off not worrying about it.
Leox weighed that, then nodded. “Then work that dark magic.”
“It’s light magic.”
“Either way.”
Reath had done multiple research assignments on Force-influenced artifacts, which he really hadn’t expected to pay off so soon in his career as a Jedi. It just went to show you that research and footnotes and all the other bookish stuff some Padawans scoffed at were actually very important.
Master Cohmac, who as an archivist no doubt agreed with him, was the real expert in these matters. But he apparently wanted to see, yet again, how much responsibility the mission’s Padawan could handle. So Master Cohmac sat in the corner, as stoic as any of the idols, while Reath took over the explanations.
“The Jedi elders have identified three main kinds of Force artifacts,” he said to the assembled group in the comm area. “There are artifacts that contain certain memories or even personalities of past Force users. There are artifacts that enhance a Jedi’s ability to use the Force. And then there are artifacts that hinder or confound that ability—Force dampeners, you could call them.”
It was hard to tell if Master Cohmac was really listening; his expression was inscrutable. However, Orla Jareni was listening raptly, and Leox and Affie, watching from different doorways, were at least hearing him out.
Reath began, “These artifacts show up in legends more often than in real life—”
“We’re not ignoring legends,” Orla interjected. Her eyes met Master Cohmac’s, as if they were in on some kind of secret that apprentices were not yet senior enough to know. Reath might’ve thought it was a shared joke, if Master Cohmac had smiled.
Best to simply keep going. “So,” Reath continued, “it looks like the statues were placed on this station some centuries after it was first built. Our best guess is that those statues are of the first type—Force containers. If so, they were put here specifically to contain the dark side. Somehow darkness took hold here; maybe that’s why the Amaxine station was abandoned to begin with. Or maybe it was abandoned first, so people thought this would be a safe place for the idols. Whatever powers the statues are meant to contain, they keep it in check—mostly. Not completely. Which is why most of us have had those weird visions.”
Orla nodded. “Makes sense to me. The Force has been warning us to deal with this or else. What are our next steps?”
Master Cohmac finally spoke. “The statues should be removed from this station. If their containment is failing, then the darkness they hold could break free at any time. Since it looks like this station is already in use by smugglers from time to time”—he nodded toward Affie, who for some reason winced—“that could prove extremely dangerous.”
Leox raised his hand. “How do we keep it from being extremely dangerous to us, is my question.”
“A binding exercise,” said Master Cohmac. “The three of us should be able to summon the necessary power. I’ll teach those who need to learn the ritual’s particulars.”
“I already know it.” Reath could hardly contain his delight. Always going for extra credit had paid off again. “It came up during one of my past projects.”
Master Cohmac put one hand on his shoulder. “Then you already comprehend how dangerous it is. Your bravery is an example to us all.”
The risks, which had previously been theoretical, stood out more sharply to Reath. But he didn’t quail. Learning was most powerful when it was made real. He was ready.
After Reath’s briefing, Orla was finally able to catch a moment alone with Cohmac.
“What’s wrong with you?” The question was half concern, half exasperation. “It’s one thing to be moody, another to turn your duties over to an apprentice who isn’t even your own. Losing Dez is tragic and difficult, but you barely knew him—or is there a connection there I’m unaware of?”
“I barely knew him,” Cohmac acknowledged. His face was impassive, but his dark eyes bored into Orla’s, reflecting the challenge back at her. “And yet I knew him enough to understand that he was full of life and vigor, that he was always willing to help those around him, that he ought to have had decades more. So when I think of his…meaningless, useless death—only one in the wake of the countless deaths caused by this hyperspace disaster—I grow angry.”
Orla nodded. “Of course. We all have to overcome our anger—”
“Why? Why should I overcome it? If I cannot feel anger over the loss of such a life, then I cannot feel anything at all. The Order asks us to excise the deepest parts of ourselves—and for what? So that a young man might die unmourned?”
That stopped Orla short. For all her disagreements with the current direction of the Jedi leadership, she never doubted the fundamentals of their teachings. “So that we may not fall into the path of darkness,” she said to Cohmac as gently as she could manage. “There is no emotion so justified or noble that it cannot lead to madness, if not kept in proper proportion.”
This is also about Master Simmix, Orla realized. Cohmac’s master had been dead a quarter of a century, and yet the loss still marked him.
“You’ve carried that burden a long time,” Orla said, speaking as gently as she could. “You realize you d
idn’t do anything that wrong, back then? And we all shared in those mistakes, not just you.”
Cohmac shook his head. “I have come to realize that it was not my mistakes that scarred me then. I dwelled upon them because the Order would not allow me to grieve. My sorrow had no other outlet. And this, they tell us, is the proper Jedi way.”
She wondered if she should probe more deeply, but that would only prolong Cohmac’s brooding over an incident he should’ve put behind him decades before.
Or is that an excuse? Orla asked herself. A reason to avoid examining the flaws of a friend too closely?
By the time she had questioned her own motives, however, the moment to speak had passed. “You’ve always found this part of the path easier than I have,” Cohmac said. With that, he returned to his preparations for the binding exercise.
Self-doubt flickered in Orla’s mind. Am I leaving to become a Wayseeker because it’s truly the Force’s will? Or am I merely pushing myself away from other people?
Leox and Geode were tasked with readying a storage area aboard the Vessel, which for some reason Leox seemed to consider a very tricky procedure, one that should only be handled by professionals. (“We’ve got it. Don’t worry your heads about it. No need to even come back here till we’re done. Trust me.”)
Master Cohmac led the others into the center of the arboretum, where the four idols they’d found had all been taken. The vast star field of space twinkled through the translucent hexagonal tiles that formed the primary sphere. There, the station’s ventilation caught in the whorls of its rings in such a way that it echoed the sound of the sea within a shell, a distant, granular moan. Reath’s skin prickled with adrenaline, his body reacting to the vision he’d experienced before and might again. He wondered if the other Jedi were similarly affected—was this only his own fear or the mere presence of darkness instilling dread?
No, it wasn’t only him. The shadows under Master Cohmac’s eyes had deepened, and his shoulders were tensed as though he expected to be hit. Orla’s breath was so measured that she had to be working through an exercise to calm and center the body, but she held her hands out as if pushing back the dark.
Finally they all stood in the very center of the sphere. The four idols surrounded them, forming a kind of compass: Reath decided that the crowned insect was north, the human south, the amphibian west, and the bird east. In the light, the faceted jewels shimmered in shades of rust, cobalt, and gold. Plant leaves framed each idol so thickly that both the pedestals and the walls were almost hidden. He felt alien there, as though the plants were the true inhabitants.
Master Cohmac closed his eyes, reaching out with the Force so intently that Reath could sense it—the slightest push on his concentration, the outlines of a consciousness not his own. He said, “The four statues seem to be connected. We must contain them all within a Force binding, or the bonds will be broken.”
“Got it,” said Orla. “Let’s begin.”
The Jedi stood in a circle, each facing outward. Reath gazed at the warrior queen, the human with her breastplate and crown, until he sensed the moment had come to close his eyes.
“Together,” Master Cohmac intoned, “our minds form the nucleus of all energy in this room. We are the center point. The axis. The core. Feel that.”
Reath concentrated until he could feel it, physically, a kind of warm glow that encompassed them all.
“Push the walls of the core outward. Expand the sphere. Allow your mind to fill that space.”
It was as real a sensation as any Reath had experienced, the forward drift that made his entire body sway. The power they held increased exponentially as their minds began to link, and the glowing core they had created filled almost the entire space, stopping just short of the idols.
There, he felt…coldness. Stillness—not peace, but the inertia of the grave.
Master Cohmac said, “Now, all of us, as one…claim the idols.”
Their minds reached out as one, pushing the boundaries of their sphere through the entire room and beyond it. Something undefined within the idols snapped; Reath imagined he could hear it, a quick clean break. Still, darkness swirled around them, but in a very different, more diffuse way than it had before. The Force binding seemed to be in place.
He opened his eyes to see the other Jedi breathing hard and collecting themselves, just like him. As they turned in toward each other, Master Cohmac smiled. “The good news is, these idols are successfully bound,” he said.
Reath asked, “What’s the bad news?”
Orla answered him. “Now we’ve got to carry the things back to the Vessel. And they’re heavy.”
They were. But Reath had rarely carried such a burden with so light a heart.
Affie didn’t bother watching whatever weird magic ceremony the Republic monks were tinkering with. Instead, she busied herself getting visual records of every line of smugglers’ code.
As she ran the scanner along the walls, she couldn’t help trying to interpret more of the symbols. The two rings separated by an asterisk of jagged lines—was that a journey, maybe one interrupted by something disastrous? Surely one of the main functions of the codes must be to warn other pilots of risks.
It’s not all about cheating Scover, Affie told herself, a bleak kind of joke.
There, again, came the star symbol of the Byne Guild. She increased the resolution to make sure these scans were the sharpest and best of the bunch.
And then—
Affie scowled as she saw a drawing of what appeared to be a being’s head, one with a high ridge in the middle. Like a Bivall’s head.
Scover Byne was a Bivall.
They’re conspiring against her. Not just stealing—they’re after her, specifically.
Affie’s eyes focused again on the two rings with the jagged asterisk in the middle. Could that be an explosion? A hint at a future expedition that might be sabotaged?
“Thank the spirits we’re leaving this place soon,” she muttered as she quickly finished making records. There was no telling how far the plot had already gone.
Leox Gyasi had seen some strange things in his day. Enough that he tried not to use the word strange too often. To the prepared mind, no element of the galaxy should seem alien; they were all the same star stuff, merely taking different shapes from time to time.
And yet…
“There’s just something unsettling about having cursed idols aboard again,” Leox said. He was alone with Geode, who knew about their last cursed-idol incident and had never reported it to Scover Byne. (Little Bit was precious to him, but you couldn’t blame a girl for wanting to talk about things with her momma. Luckily, this had been before her time.) “They’re bad luck, as you and I have ample reason to know. Gives me the willies.”
Geode was made of more stoic stuff. However, Leox could tell he didn’t like it, either. Last time, they’d taken the wrong idols to the wrong planet, on behalf of a Rodian who turned out to be very much the wrong client. The intent, so far as Leox could reconstruct it after the fact, was for the Rodian to be worshipped as an idol-dominating god by the fearful populace.
The populace had had other ideas.
Leaning against the nearest console, Leox studied the insect-shaped idol, the one with pincers and wings. “I mean, I didn’t mind the chanting or the incense. The sacrifices were okay since they were just flowers. And, man, that plinth they carved in your honor? Looked just like you. Could’ve been your twin.”
Geode didn’t even have to mention the rather less successful mosaic portraying Leox’s descent from their celestial starcraft. Wasn’t like Leox could ever forget it, no matter how hard he tried.
“It’s not good for the spirit, being worshipped. Corrodes you from the inside out.” Leox shook his head. “Which is the real curse of these kinds of things, if you ask me. We got out of there not one moment too soon. At least the Jedi are packing these away instead of trying to use them for all the wrong reasons.”
That Rodian had wound
up fleeing the planet as fast as he could, and in another ship, since Leox had had about enough of his foolishness by that point. Leox and Geode had remained only as long as was decent before leaving the people with a gentle moral code of kindness. Probably those fellows had come to their senses within a few months, once they’d gotten used to having their most sacred ancient objects back on their world and gone back to using its original name.
At any rate, he hoped so. Otherwise, there was now a planet called Leoxo, and if Affie ever found out, he’d never hear the end of it.
“So I guess this is it,” Nan said.
Reath stood with her near the airlocks. The Vessel was already at the point of departure. “You’re leaving soon, too?”
“We’re actually going to finish some repairs first. Remember the state you found us in?”
“Right,” he said, wincing at his own forgetfulness. “Do you need anything? Supplies, or assistance—”
“Nope, we’re good,” Nan insisted. “We have everything we need. Including time, now, thanks to you.”
Their eyes met. Reath had wanted to say goodbye and had thought Nan might, too. However, as he looked down at her—clearly struggling to find the right words, unwilling to meet his eyes—he realized that their brief time as companions might’ve meant more to her than it had to him. That the way he’d acted might’ve come across as romantic interest, at least for anyone leading a more normal life. People on the frontier didn’t yet understand the Jedi, which meant they didn’t understand the limits on those relationships. Too late, Reath comprehended that he should’ve been more careful.
But there was no need to be unkind. He said, “It was a pleasure getting to know you, Nan. I doubt our paths will cross again, but I wish you well.”
“Paths will cross,” she repeated absently, then straightened. She met his eyes steadily, as though making a vow. “You saved me from being kidnapped. That means you’re responsible for returning me to my people. I don’t take that lightly.”
