Yoda, Dark Rendezvous Read online

  Leem?" She nodded. "Your second?"

  "Third. Rees Alrix was my first. She is fighting with the clone troops at

  Sullust. My second . . . my second was Eremin Tarn," she said reluctantly.

  Eremin had become a follower of Jeisel, one of the more outspoken of the

  dissident Jedi, who believed the Republic had lost the moral authority to rule.

  Eremin had always resisted authority—including hers when she was his Master—but

  he was fiercely principled. Intellectually, Maks could understand his decision

  to withdraw from the Order, but it had torn a hole in her Gran heart to see her

  very own Padawan, one she had taught from thirteen years to the status of a full

  Jedi Knight, deliberately cut himself out of the Order.

  As if reading her mind, Yoda asked, "Does he fill that empty place in your

  heart, this new Padawan?" Maks flushed and looked away.

  "No shame in this, there is. Think you the relationship between Master and

  Padawan is only to help them?" Yoda cocked his head to one side and looked at

  her with ancient, knowing eyes. "Oh, this is what we let them believe, yes! But

  when the day comes that even old Yoda does not learn something from his

  students—then truly, he shall be a teacher no more." He reached up to give her

  hand a little squeeze, his three fingers around her six. "No greater gift there

  is, than a generous heart."

  Tears came to Maks Leem, and she let them come. "Attachment is not the Jedi

  way, I know. But . . ."

  Yoda gave her hand another squeeze, and then returned to considering the

  handle of the lightsaber. For a moment she saw his finger stop on a little piece

  of metal, surprisingly clean and fresh looking, as if it had escaped the blast

  or been added afterward. Yoda frowned. "This Padawan of yours—ready for the wide

  galaxy, is he?"

  "Whie? No! And yes," she said. "He is young. They are all so young. But if

  any of them are ready, he is. The Force is strong in him. Not so strong as in

  young Sky-walker, but in the next level down: and between you and me, he carries

  it better than Anakin ever has. Such calm. Such serenity and poise; truly it is

  incredible in one so young."

  "Truly."

  Something in Yoda's voice caught her ear. "You think it impossible?"

  "I think he wishes to please you very much," the old Master said carefully.

  Before she could ask him what he meant, a gong sounded the hour. "Ah—my

  class!" Maks said, slapping one hand against her forehead horns. "I am supposed

  to be teaching hyperspace navigation in Tower Three."

  Yoda bugged out his eyes and made little shooing motions with his hands.

  "Then engage your hyperdrive you must!" He watched, chuckling, as she ran from

  the chamber with the hem of her robe flapping excitedly around her hairy ankles

  and her boots thudding into the distance.

  When he was sure he was alone, he tabbed the power switch on what had once

  been Jang Li-Li's lightsaber. As he had suspected, the weapon had been modified;

  instead of Jang's blue blade humming to life, a hologram appeared: Count Dooku,

  ten centimeters tall, as if standing on the lightsaber handle. He looked old . .

  . much older than he had on Geonosis. Careworn. He was sitting at an elegantly

  appointed desk. There was a window behind him spattered with rain; behind it, a

  cheerless gray sky. Before him on the desk lay the candle Yoda had sent.

  "We should talk," Dooku said. He did not look at the holocam, as if, even

  across weeks of time and the endless black chasm of space, he was afraid to look

  his old Master in the eye.

  "There is a cloud around me now. Around all of us. I felt it growing in the

  Republic years ago. I fled it then, and tried to bring the Order with me. You

  wouldn't come. Cowardice, I thought then. Or corruption. Now . . ." He rubbed

  his face wearily. "Now I don't know. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps the Temple

  was the only lantern to keep the darkness at bay, and I was wrong to step

  outside, into the night. Or perhaps the darkness was inside me all the time."

  For the first time he looked up. His eyes were steady, except for a faint

  flicker of pure anguish, like the sound of weeping from a locked room. "It's

  like a sickness," he whispered. "A fever in the blood. War everywhere. Cruelty.

  Killing, and some in my name. Blood like rain. I feel it all the time, the cries

  of the dying in the Force, beating in me like a vein about to burst." He

  gathered himself; shrugged; went on. "I have come to the end of myself. I don't

  know what is right anymore. I am tired, Master. So tired. And like any old man,

  as the end nears, I long to go home."

  The tiny hologrammic Dooku touched the candle Yoda had sent, turning it over

  in his old fingers. "I want to meet. But nobody outside the Temple must know. I

  am always watched, and you are betrayed more profoundly than you guess, Master.

  Come to me; Jai will show you the way. We will talk. I promise nothing more. I

  cannot think you corrupt, but even you, Master, are snared beyond your

  understanding. If word reaches my allies of your coming, they will stop at

  nothing to kill you. If they guess why you are coming, they will stop at nothing

  to destroy me."

  His eyes came fully back into the present: shrewd and practical. "I would be

  disappointed if you took my invitation as a tactical opportunity. If I see even

  the slightest sign of new forces deploying in the direction of the Hydian Way, I

  will abandon my current location, and carry the war forward until droid battle

  cruisers burn the life out of Coruscant with a rain of plasma fire. Bring none

  but Jedi with you." He gave a sad, crooked smile. "There are some things that

  should be kept inside the family . . ."

  Count Dooku of Serenno, warlord of a mighty army, among the richest beings in

  the galaxy, legendary sword-master, former student, notorious traitor, lost son,

  flickered in front of Yoda's ancient eyes, and went out.

  Yoda tabbed the lightsaber's power switch and watched the recording again,

  three more times. He clambered back onto his favorite rock, deep in thought.

  Somewhere above him, in his private quarters, messages from the Republic would

  be piling up: dispatches from military commanders, questions from far-flung Jedi

  about their various assignments and commands, perhaps a summons from the Senate

  or a meeting request from the Chancellor's office. He had come to know the

  weight of all those anxious eyes far too well. Today they would have to wait.

  Today, Yoda needed Yoda's wisdom more than anyone else.

  He breathed deeply, trying to clear his mind in meditation, letting thoughts

  rise up before him.

  Dooku's hands on that candle, the hum of emotion like a current, making his

  fingertips tremble.

  Jai Maruk giving his clipped report in the Council Chamber with the charred

  welt of a lightsaber burn on his gaunt cheek.

  Farther back, he and Dooku in a cave on Geonosis. The hiss and flash of

  humming lightsabers, darkly beautiful, like dragonflies, and Dooku still a boy

  of twenty, not the old man whispering on top of poor dead Jang's blade. Yoda's

  ears slowly drooped as he sank deeper into the Force, time melting out beneath

  his mind like rot
ten ice, setting past and present free to mix together. That

  proud boy in the garden sixty years ago who murmured, Every Jedi is a child his

  parents decided they could live without.

  Little Jang Li-Li, eight years old, misting the orchids in the Room of a

  Thousand Fountains. A bright day, sunlight pouring through transparisteel

  panels, Li-Li making puffs of water with her mister and shrieking with laughter

  as every little cloud she made broke a sunbeam into colors, fugitive bars of red

  and violet and green. Master, Master, I'm making rainbows! Those colors hadn't

  come to mean military signals, yet, or starship navigating lights, or lightsaber

  blades. Just a girl making rainbows.

  Dooku newly brought from Serenno, grave-eyed, old enough to know his mother

  had given him away. Old enough to learn one can always be betrayed.

  Water bubbled and seeped and trickled around Yoda, time past and time

  present, liquid and elusive: and then Qui-Gon was beside him. It would be wrong

  to say the dead Jedi came to Yoda; truer would it be to say Qui-Gon had always

  been there, in the still point around which time wheels. Qui-Gon waiting for

  Yoda to find his way down the untaken path and pass through the unopened door

  into the garden at the still heart of things.

  Yoda opened his eyes. The feel of Qui-Gon in the Force was the same as

  always: stern and energetic, like a hank of good rope pulled into a fine

  sailor's knot. Become a wave he has, Yoda thought. A wave without a shore.

  Yoda tapped the handle of Jang Li-Li's lightsaber. "You saw?"

  I did.

  "Cunning, it is. If I move to see him, I must keep any Republic ships away

  from the Hydian Way. Deny the chance of peace utterly, must I, or else give him

  extra months unharried in his lair."

  He is a fencer, Qui-Gon agreed. Leverage, position, advantage—they are as

  natural to him as breathing.

  "My old student—your old Master, Qui-Gon. The truth he is telling?"

  He thinks he is lying.

  Yoda's ears pricked up. "Hmm?"

  He thinks he is lying.

  A slow smile began to light Yoda's round face. "Yessssss!" he murmured.

  A moment later Yoda felt a vibration in the Force, a ripple rolling out from

  the student dormitories far below, like the faint sound of distant thunder.

  Qui-Gon shivered and was gone, as if the Force were a pool of water and he a

  reflection on its surface, broken up by the splash of whatever disturbance had

  just struck the Temple.

  They didn't happen often, the true dreams. To be honest, Whie tried not to

  have them.

  They weren't like regular nightmares at all. He had plenty of those,

  too—almost every night for the last year. Rambling, confused affairs, and in

  them he was always failing: there was something he should have done, a class he

  was supposed to attend, a package he had meant to deliver. Often he was pursued.

  Sometimes he was naked. Most of these dreams ended with him clinging desperately

  to a high place and then falling, falling: from the spires of the Temple, from a

  bridge, from a starship, down a flight of steps, from a tree in the gardens.

  Always falling, and down below, waiting, a murmuring crowd of the disappointed,

  the ones he had failed.

  The true dreams were different. In those he came un-stuck in time. He would

  go to sleep on his dormitory cot, and then wake up with a jerk in the future, as

  if he had fallen through a trapdoor and landed in his own body.

  Once, going to sleep when he was eight, he had woken to find himself eleven

  years old and building his first lightsaber. He worked on it for more than an

  hour before another boy entered the workshop and said, "Rhad Tarn is dead!" He

  tried to ask, "Who is Rhad Tarn?" but heard his own voice say something quite

  different. Only then did he realize that he wasn't the Whie building the

  lightsaber—he was just riding around in his head like a ghost.

  There was nothing—nothing—worse than the horrible feeling of being buried

  alive in his own body. Sometimes the panic was so intense he woke himself up,

  but other times it would be hours before he jerked upright in bed, weeping and

  gasping with relief at the sound of an alarm, or the touch of a friend's hand.

  This time he fell through the true dream and landed in a strange room, richly

  furnished. He was standing on a deep, soft rug embroidered with a tangled

  woodland pattern, thorn-trees and thorn-vines and venomous green moss; in the

  shadows, the glinting eyes of evil birds. The rug was spattered with blood. From

  the burning pain in his left arm and the slow dull ache in his ribs, he guessed

  some of the blood was his.

  An ancient chrono, hanging in a metal case crafted to look like a tangle of

  thorns and brambles, ticked dully in the corner of the room. The beats seemed

  slow and erratic, like the beating of a dying heart.

  There were at least two other people in the room. One was a bald woman with

  stripes painted on her skull and lips the color of fresh blood. He could smell

  the dark side on her like wood smoke, like something burning on a wet night. She

  scared him.

  The other was another Jedi apprentice, a red-haired girl named Scout. In

  waking life she was a year older than Whie, bossy and loud, and had never paid

  much attention to him. In the dream, blood was dripping down her face from a cut

  on her scalp. She was staring at him. "Kiss her," the bald woman whispered.

  Voice soft. Red teardrops crept from the girl's cuts, spilling by her mouth.

  Blood trickled in a red line down her throat to soak into the lapels of her

  tunic just above the tops of her small breasts. "Kiss her, Whie."

  The dreaming Whie recoiled.

  The waking Whie wanted to kiss her. He was angry and sick and ashamed, but he

  wanted to.

  Blood dripped. The chrono ticked. The bald woman grinned at him. "Welcome

  home," she said.

  "Whie!"

  "Hnn?"

  "Wake up! Whie, wake up. It's me, Master Leem." Her kind face was looming

  over him in the darkened dormitory, all three eyes worried. "We felt a

  disturbance in the Force."

  He blinked, gasping, trying to hold on to a now that still felt slippery as a

  bar of wet soap.

  The boys who roomed in the dorm with him were clustering around his bed.

  "Were you having one of those dreams again?"

  He thought of the girl, Scout—another Jedi apprentice!—the trickle of blood

  along her throat. His guilty desire.

  Master Leem laid her six fingers on his hand. "Whie?"

  "It was nothing," he managed to croak. "Just a bad dream, that's all."

  The boys around the bed began to drift off, disappointed and disbelieving.

  They were still young enough to want to see miracles. They thought having

  visions would be fun. They couldn't understand how terrible it was, to see a

  moment loom out of the future like a pillar suddenly revealed on a foggy road,

  and no way to keep from hitting it.

  Who had the bald woman in the vision been? She stank of the dark side, and

  yet he hadn't been fighting her. Would some strange fate make them allies? And

  the girl, Scout—how would blood come to spill red onto her red lips, and why

  wou
ld she—someday look at him with such intensity? Perhaps Scout would become an

  ally of the evil bald woman. Perhaps she would give in to her desires, her

  anger, her lust. Maybe she would try to trap him, too; seduce him; deliver him

  to the dark side.

  "Whie?" Master Leem said.

  He gave her hand a reassuring squeeze, trying to sound more normal. "Just a

  bad dream," he said again. He kept insisting, politely and gratefully, that he

  would be fine, just fine, until she finally left the dorm.

  Another interesting thing about the true dreams: they had haunted Whie like a

  curse all his life, but this was the first time he had ever woken into a place

  other than the Jedi Temple. And never once, in a score of visions, had he found

  himself in a body much older than the one he had now.

  His death was coming. Soon.

  3

  The white walls of the Combat Training Chamber in the Jedi Temple had been

  newly cleaned, the white floor scrubbed, and new white mats laid down in

  preparation for the day's tournament. Nervous Jedi apprentices in sparkling

  white tunics prepared for the upcoming test, each according to personality. In

  her mind, Jedi apprentice Tallisibeth Enwandung-Esterhazy—nicknamed Scout—had

  them loosely grouped into four categories:

  Talkers, who clumped together, murmuring in low voices to distract themselves

  from the mounting tension;

  Warm-ups, who stretched their muscles, or ligaments, or pulse-fibers; cracked

  various numbers of knuckles; and jogged, or hopped, or spun in place, according

  to their species-specific physiological needs;

  Meditators, whose usual approach to sinking into the deeper truth of the

  Force, in Tallisibeth's opinion, mostly involved keeping their eyes shut and

  assuming an affected expression of smug serenity; and

  Prowlers.

  Scout was a prowler.

  Probably she should try a little meditation. Certainly her history suggested

  that getting too tense and excited was her worst problem. At the last

  tournament, back before the devastation on Honoghr and the Rendili Fleet Crisis,

  she had gone out in the first round, losing to a twelve-year-old boy she nearly

  always beat when they sparred. The defeat had been all the more humiliating