“I only want to learn.”
“And yet you still have not shown me your money.”
Thinking on his feet, sticking with his story, Karr said, “You haven’t given me any prices.”
The Ithorian laughed, his hands fluttering and his underdeveloped chin bouncing. “You think you’re quite the negotiator, don’t you?” the woman said for him. “How about this, then—I say the lightsabers are not for sale.”
“But—”
“None except for this one.” Dok-Ondar pulled out an oddly shaped saber hilt from beneath the others. “Which is broken. It’s the only one I might be persuaded to part with, and only if you ask more nicely than you’ve asked so far. I know a ruse when I see one, and I know a farm boy from a lesser world when I see one, too.”
“I’m no farm boy!”
“Not literally, no. Your hands have held something softer than a plow. But you know the sort I mean.” The Ithorian held the broken lightsaber close to his chest. “Such deception may work on lesser beings, but it will find no quarter here.”
“I told you, I have money.”
Dok flicked his wrist. “If you had money, you would’ve shown it by now—which means you have less than you pretend.”
Karr was beyond frustrated. He hadn’t come so far just to be turned down because of the way he looked. He waved his hand before the Ithorian’s face and said, “You will give me the lightsaber.”
Dok-Ondar stared blankly at the boy. So did the woman beside him.
Karr couldn’t tell if it was working, so he tried again. “You will give me the lightsaber.” Still nothing. So he added, “At a reasonable price.
“Please,” he interjected one more time with another hand gesture.
Dok-Ondar locked eyes with the boy, and Karr felt like he was looking directly into the Ithorian’s soul. He could see it wasn’t working. But that didn’t stop him from waving his open hand once more as he said, “You will forgive me for even trying this.” By then Karr had waved his hand in front of Dok-Ondar so many times it looked like he was checking to see if the shopkeeper was blind.
The Ithorian sighed and spoke. The woman looked like she was trying to fight a smile as she translated, “I am going to let you see it. Not because of the ridiculous stunt you just pulled. But because of the difficult path you have chosen if my suspicions are correct.”
That made Karr feel uneasy, but he said, “Yes, please.” The collector released the saber from his grasp. Cold and dead, its handle was in two pieces—both of which the merchant set down on the counter.
“This lightsaber belonged to an Inquisitor,” the woman said.
“Not a Jedi? What’s an Inquisitor?”
“The Inquisitors were the weapons of the Emperor, sent out into the galaxy after Order 66 to track down and kill any Jedi who remained.”
Karr’s mind reeled. He had never heard of these Inquisitors and had no idea the Jedi were hunted even after the Clone Wars ended. That would explain why they seemingly disappeared.
“When assembled,” Dok continued to explain through his translator, “this particular lightsaber could be used in one of two modes: crescent or disc. In crescent setting, it would produce a single blade. When used as a disc, a second blade would appear—and do tremendous damage if spun around at any speed. It was a terrifying weapon when it was intact.
“Here. Tell me what you think. How you feel. Is this perhaps within your price range?”
Before there was any chance of talking himself out of it, Karr touched the nearest chunk of the lightsaber’s handle.
Fireworks erupted in his head, but they were familiar fireworks and he ignored them. He pushed them out of the way and listened, and watched, and struggled to pay attention to the scene that flashed through his brain.
Then he jerked his hand back and stared wide-eyed at Dok-Ondar.
Quickly, he grabbed the other half of the saber and clutched it hard in his naked fingers.
He saw a figure. A Jedi? Perhaps, but different. Then another. This one was definitely a Jedi. The two faced off in battle. Lightsabers swinging, robes swooshing. Karr could feel the tension and the fear in the air. It reminded him of the scene he had just witnessed involving Skywalker. The vision hopped, skipped, and jumped. Fires burned. Men shouted. He saw the figure catch a break and cut the Jedi down. The knight fell to the ground, the light of his saber and the light of his soul both snuffed out in one blow. Karr’s vision darkened. All that remained was the glow of the survivor’s weapon. Was it Skywalker again? Karr focused on the lightsaber. Followed it down to the grip and up the arm of its wielder. He was getting better at this. No longer were the visions as blurry, and the crispness of the image allowed him to glide along the length of the figure until he came to focus on the face. But it was a face that struck fear into the young boy’s heart. Because the face—was his own!
Karr gasped. No, that couldn’t be him. But it was, wasn’t it? In a fraction of a second, a fragment of a vision. Karr was again wielding the lightsaber, again attacking the Jedi who swung his own in defense. But whose fate would remain the same no matter how many times Karr saw it. And no matter how many times it replayed in his mind, Karr saw himself slay the Jedi. The vision fizzled. It sparked. It jolted him back to the present.
Karr dropped the broken lightsaber, and he must’ve looked as grim as death itself, because Dok-Ondar stared at him like he’d just set himself on fire.
“Sir, are you quite all right?” RZ-7 asked. You don’t look like yourself at all.”
The merchant agreed with the droid. “You’re pale as a ghost. Does that mean you’ve found something you want—or something you wish to escape from?”
Karr struggled to find words, failed, then managed to nod. “I…how much do you want for this? I’ll buy this. I’ll…I’ll take it. This should come with us.” He pulled out his credits and dropped them on the counter like he didn’t care how many the shopkeeper took. He retrieved his gloves and wormed his fingers inside them.
Warily, Dok-Ondar looked at the payment. He pushed it back toward the boy and then looked Karr up and down with those bulbous eyes. “If this is so important to you,” the woman translated, “if you’re looking for more, or even looking to run from something—you might try a friend of mine. In exchange for this lightsaber, broken and worth very little, if I’m being honest with you…I would rather have a favor than your money.”
“A favor? What kind of favor?” Karr asked, his voice a little shaky.
“I have a package I’d like to send to a friend. On Takodana, you will find a pirate castle and its queen, Maz Kanata. Don’t look at me like that—like a frightened mouse. She’s no danger to you, so long as you appear before her with pure intentions. I have something for her, and I have not yet been able to send it. If you’ll serve as courier, you can have the lightsaber. Is that fair?”
RZ-7 saw that his master was still flustered and trying to gather his thoughts, so he answered for them both. “More than fair, good sir. We would be happy to deliver your package to your friend.”
Dok-Ondar nodded. “Very good. But you must go straight there. That is my one condition. No detours, no side trips. Can you promise me that?”
Karr wanted to speak for himself this time but was still reeling so only nodded.
“Good,” Dok-Ondar grunted. “Give me a moment, and I’ll prepare it for her. Stay here. There are many things in my shop that are dangerous, to those who aren’t paying attention.”
He and the woman disappeared back into his storeroom, and RZ-7 turned to Karr. “Sir, what did you see? What is it that’s rattled you so badly?”
“Arzee, I saw more Jedi fighting. One of them killed the other one—and the murderer…the murderer was me!”
Back on board the Avadora with their package for Maz Kanata, Karr sat in the copilot chair while RZ-7 readied the ship for another hop across the galaxy. The boy was still stunned, staring straight ahead through the viewport as if he could learn something from the
open space on the other side, but it didn’t tell him anything at all except that the galaxy was made of so much darkness, with precious little light.
“Sir,” said RZ-7, “there is almost certainly a mistake. You are not a Jedi, nor have you ever been one. You could not have seen a vision of yourself dressed as one, because you’ve never worn such robes. You could not have seen yourself killing a Jedi, because you’ve never met one. There is some other explanation. We simply don’t know what it is yet.”
“I know what I saw, Arzee. It was me. I was the one with the lightsaber, and its beam was so bright.…It was green, and I held it like I knew how to use it.”
“Another problem, sir. Considering you’ve had no training and, if you’ll forgive me saying so, no idea how to use one.” The broken one was stashed in a cabinet back beside Karr’s bunk, next to the package they were carrying to the pirate queen.
“I know you’re right, but I still know what I saw.”
“Your visions have never shown the future before, have they, sir?”
Karr shrugged. “Sifo-Dyas said he saw the future. What if I can do the same? What if I’ve seen my fate and it’s not to become a Jedi, but rather to become one of those Inquisitors? I’ve seen so many confusing images, Arzee. I don’t know what to believe anymore. Were the Jedi good? I saw Skywalker cut down his fellow Jedi like they were made of shimmersilk. What if they were bad? What if they deserved to be taken down? What if—”
Arzee quickly cut him off. “The answers are out there, sir, but one thing I know for certain, we’re not going to find them tonight.”
“You’re right. Let’s settle in for the night, or for a few hours at least. We can run this package to Takodana once I’ve had some sleep. And something for my stomach. Whatever I ate in that market, it’s not agreeing with me at all.”
The droid brightened. “Perhaps that’s the problem, sir! Indigestion could have affected your abilities. I’m led to believe that it’s a mighty distraction for your species, and your family in particular.”
“Yeah, we’ve got to watch what we eat, and I’ve been…pretty adventurous lately.”
“Well, you’ve been planet-hopping, and you’ve made do. All in all, sir, I’d say you’ve done remarkably well and accomplished a great deal. One bad vision on one bad day does not undo all your progress.”
“Thanks, Arzee. I appreciate it.”
Karr left the droid to manage the coordinates and set the course, and he retreated to his bunk to get some rest, but all he could do was worry. Had he seen his own fate? The fate of someone else, a Jedi murderer from long before? His visions were seldom crystal clear, but this one had seemed so very close. So very terrifying. More than sleep, he needed distraction.
First he tried to call up Maize on the holocomm, but she didn’t answer and he couldn’t think of anything he wanted to say in a message, so he disconnected. He wasn’t about to tell her that he’d seen himself murdering a Jedi, after all. Maybe he could tell her he was headed for Takodana, but a moment of paranoia stopped him. What if someone was listening? He knew that his signal had to snake through multiple connections to reach her, and any one of them could be compromised if someone had the know-how.
He didn’t care if Maize knew where he was headed, but maybe he didn’t want the whole universe to know just yet.
He still needed the ship, and he had a mission to finish.
And after that?
He folded his hands behind his head and sank back onto the small pillow that was barely soft enough to work as a pillow at all. After the trip to Takodana, maybe he’d just go home. At home, the odds of him murdering any Jedi Knights were very low—virtually nil—and at home, there was no need to worry about getting caught with a stolen ship or getting lost somewhere at the edge of the galaxy.
Then again, home wasn’t even going to be home much longer. It was going to be a trade school on the other side of the galaxy.
He didn’t know where else to go. He didn’t know where to find the Jedi Temple, if it still existed anymore, or even the planet with two suns—and he didn’t know who the dead Jedi in his visions were. In some ways, he felt he was spinning his wheels, making no progress at all. Were the Jedi getting closer or farther away? Was he becoming a knowledgeable protector of the galaxy, or was he stuck as the small-town boy who knew nothing more than useless facts like “Never stare directly into a double-haloed Tatooine eclipse”?
Karr shot straight up, his head hitting the low ceiling of the bunk. “Double-haloed Tatooine eclipse!” he shouted. “That would mean—I mean obviously that suggests—” He couldn’t even complete the sentence. “Arzeeeeeee!” he screamed as he leapt from the bunk. “How could I have forgotten that?” he said to himself.
“What is it, sir?”
“Tatooine!” he declared. “Tatooine has two suns!”
“Does it?”
“Yes! At least I think it does. A pilot—some guy I was trying to barter with on Merokia—handed me his goggles and said, ‘They’re pretty good, but mostly for glare and protection. You never want to stare directly at the sun with them. Certainly not during an eclipse. And definitely not during a double-haloed Tatooine eclipse.’ And I’ve never forgotten that—I mean I did, until just now, but I remembered again. That could be our planet with two suns that Nabrun Leids told us about.”
“Indeed it could, sir.”
“Set a course for Tatooine!” he bellowed. “We’re on to something!”
“But, sir.”
“Maybe a Jedi still lives there. Maybe he could train me to use my powers so I don’t become a threat. Maybe he can explain what I saw!”
“But, sir,” the droid repeated, raising his volume three quarters of a decibel.
“What?” asked Karr.
“We promised Dok-Ondar that we would deliver his package to Maz Kanata directly.”
“Yeah, but…Certainly he would understand, wouldn’t he?”
“We gave our word, sir,” the droid reminded him.
Karr exhaled loudly. He could think of nothing more important than following a Jedi lead, but he also knew Arzee was right. He desperately wanted to hone his Jedi traits, but not at the risk of forgetting his own decent human ones. “Okay, Arzee. We’ll head to Takodana first, but then we are definitely heading to Tatooine.”
“Agreed.”
Karr went back to bed, but his thoughts were racing, and they kept him company until they became dreams about swishing robes and swinging sabers.
A few hours later, he shot awake. He didn’t know how long he’d been out, but after taking a moment in the refresher, he staggered back up to the cockpit to find a blue-and-green planet on the distant side of the glass. It took him a moment to realize that it wasn’t Batuu anymore. Was it?
“Arzee?” he began.
“I took the liberty of making the hyperspace jump to Takodana, sir. While you were…indisposed. It was a short hop, with clean coordinates and a clear path with no First Order or pirates to be seen. I hope you don’t mind and the trip didn’t bother you.”
“No?” he said, accidentally adding a question mark. “No,” he said again. “That’s fine. That’s good, actually.”
RZ-7 headed him off. “Glad to hear it, sir. I know you were disappointed we didn’t go directly to Tatooine, but we might yet find something promising at this pirate castle. From what I’ve been able to learn, it’s a special place. Anyone can come or go, but everyone must get along or the pirate queen herself will toss them out. So it would be in our best interest to be polite to her. Perhaps forget everything I said about channeling your inner Maize. I believe we will get farther on Takodana by playing nice.”
“Hopefully I’m better at ‘nice’ than ‘entitled.’”
“Now, sir,” the droid protested gently. “You did get something useful from Dok-Ondar. Eventually.”
“It wasn’t anything I wanted to see.”
“No, but that’s always been a possibility—that you’d find things you don’t wan
t, and learn things you don’t like. No quest is ever guaranteed a positive outcome, sir. I daresay that most of them come to less than ours has already.”
Before long, they were down on the ground again, parked at the rim of a pristine lake on the outskirts of the castle owned and operated by Maz Kanata, the pirate queen. It was more of a compound in Karr’s opinion, and RZ-7 agreed with him. “Or else it’s the kind of castle that’s effectively a city of its very own,” he added.
“Kind of old-fashioned, isn’t it?” asked Karr, staring up past the walls at the hundreds of banners flying over the buildings. They waved and flapped in every color, every shape, and every size, like decorative confetti against the clouds.
The droid checked his databanks. “By all reports, the castle has stood for a thousand years or more—and its mistress along with it.”
Karr let out a low whistle. “Wow. Well, old things were built to last.”
“Some of them, it would seem.”
“I’ve got a lot of books that are antique guides, back at home. There are a lot of antiques out there, that’s all I’m saying. Old stuff has a way of sticking around.”
“Do you have the package we’re meant to deliver?”
He nodded and patted the satchel he carried across his chest. “Right here. Let’s go find this lady.”
It wasn’t hard to track down Maz Kanata, since everyone knew her and everyone was a little afraid of her—and a little affectionate toward her. Never mind the giant statue of her that overlooked the castle. You couldn’t miss it, not even for trying.
Everywhere Karr and RZ-7 went, the response to her name was the same, and directions to her likely location all pointed toward the heart of the castle itself.
Karr wanted to try the dining hall first but confessed that it was mostly his stomach talking. “Maybe she has an office or something,” he proposed loudly, since a fair amount of raucous music spilled out of the bar and into the street. “Or…living quarters, I don’t know.”
“Me either, sir.”
A tap on Karr’s shoulder interrupted their speculation. He turned around to see a copper-colored droid of significant height and considerable age. Never before had he seen anything quite like the feminized humanoid design or the yellow sensors. “You are looking for Maz Kanata, unless I am mistaken?”
Journey to Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Page 13
