10

The sleep of a Jedi was rarely troubled by dreams. Pure rest brought about through concentration and meditation techniques left little room for disturbing thoughts or shadow plays. But this time nightmares did break through to Luke Skywalker.

A voice called him across a misty blank dreamscape. “Luke, Luke my son. You must hear me!”

A shadowy form rose out of the mists even as the surroundings began to sharpen. Luke saw himself in his pale-gray flightsuit, stained with sweat, grime, and pain—as he had looked when he took his father’s body from the second Death Star.

The features on the spectral silhouette shimmered with a pale aura. Luke saw the firm face of Anakin Skywalker, restored from the ravages Darth Vader’s evil had worked on his body.

“Father!” Luke called. His own voice had an odd, echoing quality, as if it bounced off the mists.

“Luke,” the image of Anakin said.

Luke felt tingling amazement surge through him. It was another sending, just like his last contact from Obi-Wan Kenobi. But Obi-Wan had bid him farewell, claiming that he could never contact Luke again. “Father, why are you here?”

Anakin stood taller. His robes rippled in a rising wind that drove back the mists. Suddenly the world surrounding them was no longer featureless. Luke recognized that he and the image of his father stood atop the Great Temple on Yavin 4. The orange gas giant hung overhead, and the timeless jungles below looked unchanged. But the stones of the temple were white and new with bright scars from fresh quarrying. A sketchy framework of scaffolding laced one wall of the ziggurat. Far below, Luke heard mumbling and chanting, incantations from suffering slaves.

He saw people of the vanished Massassi race laboring together, straining to haul enormous stone blocks along roads they had chopped through the jungle. The grayish-green Massassi were humanoid, smooth-skinned, with large lanternlike eyes. Anakin Skywalker stood on the highest point of the temple, as if directing the work gangs below.

“Do not be deceived, Luke. Do not trust everything you think to be the truth.” Anakin’s words carried an odd, distant lilt, like the faint accent of an ancient race. “Obi-Wan lied to you, more than once.”

Luke felt uneasiness well up within him. No matter how much he loved Obi-Wan Kenobi, he knew the old man had not always been completely forthcoming with him. “Yes, I know he hid the truth from me. He told me Darth Vader had killed you, when you had really become Vader.”

Anakin turned from the illusory Massassi laborers below. He met Luke’s gaze with eyes as bottomless as the universe itself. “Was that the only lie Obi-Wan told you?”

“No. He hid other things from me.” Luke looked off into the jungled distance, toward the moon’s foreshortened horizon to see another clearing, another tall temple being erected.

“And Obi-Wan rationalized it as being for your own protection. Did you ask for such protection, Luke?”

“No.” Luke tried to fight back his uneasiness.

“Obi-Wan wanted you to be his student, but he wouldn’t allow you the freedom to make your own decisions. Did he trust you so little? Did you always agree with his ‘certain point of view’?”

“No,” Luke said, feeling the words swallowed up in doubt.

Anakin’s voice became tinged with anger. “Obi-Wan fought against the complex Sith teachings I had uncovered. He did not understand them himself, but he forbade me to study them—though he always insisted that I must learn for myself and choose my own path. I rebelled against him for his narrow-mindedness, and I insisted on unlocking secrets for which I was not ready. In the end it consumed me—I fell to the dark side, and I became the Dark Lord of the Sith.”

Anakin looked at Luke with an anguished, apologetic expression. “But if Obi-Wan had let me learn the teachings at my own pace, I would have grown stronger. I would have remained uncorrupted. He never understood that.”

Anakin’s image shook his head. “If you are going to teach other Jedi, Luke, you must understand the consequences of what they may learn. You, too, must study the ancient heritage of the Sith. It is a part of your Jedi training.”

Luke swallowed. “I’m afraid to believe you, Father. I have already felt the power of the dark side.”

Below, Massassi labor crews hummed and sang in stuporous unison, far beyond exhaustion, as they hauled an enormous block up a mud-covered ramp made of stripped logs.

Atop the dream temple, the wavering image of Anakin Skywalker spoke more forcefully. “Yes, but the ways of the Sith can lead you to a stronger grasp of your own power. You can wipe out the last vestiges of the pitiful Empire that continues to harass your New Republic. You can become more than a mere servant to a frail and corrupt government. You can administer the galaxy yourself as a benevolent ruler.

“You deserve it more than any other person, Luke. You can control everything, if you use the Force as your tool, instead of allowing yourself to become its servant.”

Luke stiffened, unable to believe what his father was saying. Then he noticed that with the rising passion in his voice, the image of Anakin Skywalker became less distinct, wavering, until it transformed into only a black outline, an engulfing hooded form that sucked energy from the air.

Slowly, Luke realized the truth. “You are not my father!” he shouted as the illusion began to crumble. “My father was a good man in the end, healed by the light side.”

Streaks of brilliant light flashed across the dreamscape sky of ancient Yavin 4. Below, Massassi slaves fled into the jungles in terror as the monumental temples crumbled under a barrage of laser blasts from orbit. Old Republic battleships had arrived, immolating the moon’s surface.

“Who are you?” Luke shouted at the figure through the roar of sudden blazing devastation around him. “Who?”

Instead, the hollow shadow laughed and laughed, ignoring the destruction that erupted from the construction sites—or amused by it. The Massassi temples exploded. The thick rain forests burst into flame.

The dark man’s silhouette grew larger and larger, swallowing up the sky. Luke backed away from it, but his dream feet reached the edge of the imposing temple, and he stumbled backward, falling away, falling.…

Surrounded by the thick stone walls of his quarters, Gantoris did not even attempt to sleep. He sat on his bunk dreading the arrival of the dark man from his nightmares.

He fingered the lightsaber he had constructed, feeling its smooth cylinder, the rough spots where he had welded the pieces together, the buttons that would activate the energy blade. He wondered how he could use it against the ancient spectre who had taught him things that terrified him, things that Master Skywalker would never show his Jedi trainees.

“Do you mean to strike me down with that weapon?” the hollow voice said.

Gantoris whirled to see the oily, infinitely black silhouette ooze out of the massive stones in the wall. His impulse was to ignite the lightsaber and slash the violet-white blade across the dark form. But he restrained himself, knowing it would do no good.

The shadow man laughed, then spoke with his antiquated accent. “Good! I am glad to see you have learned to respect me. Four thousand years ago the entire military fleet of the Old Republic and the combined forces of hundreds of Jedi Masters could not destroy me. You would certainly be unable to do so alone.”

The dark man had shown him how to borrow energy from other living things, to shore up his own reserves. His mind was alert, but his nerves were frayed and his body exhausted. “What do you want with me?” Gantoris said. “You don’t just want to teach me.”

The shadow man agreed. “I want your anger, Gantoris. I want you to open the doorways of power. I am barred from the physical plane—but with enough other Sith followers, I could be at peace. I could even live again.”

“I won’t let you have my anger.” Gantoris swallowed, searching for a core of strength within himself. “A Jedi does not give in to anger. There is no passion; there is serenity.”

“Don’t quote platitudes to me!” the dark man said in a cold, vibrating voice.

“There is no ignorance; there is knowledge,” Gantoris continued, repeating the Jedi Code. “There is no passion; there is serenity.”

The dark man laughed again. “Serenity? Let me show you what is happening at this moment. Do you recall the people you saved from Eol Sha? How happy you were to learn they had been taken to a place of safety, a paradise world? Observe.”

Inside the black cut-out form of the hooded man, an image appeared, displaying the grasslands of the planet Dantooine. The scene looked familiar to Gantoris after seeing the progress tapes delivered by Wedge Antilles.

But now he saw Imperial lasers striking down, leveling colony buildings, giant armored walkers striding across the savanna, blasting anything that moved, igniting the temporary living units. People ran screaming. His people.

Gantoris recognized most of their faces, but before he could name them, they dissolved one by one in brilliant flashes as they tried to flee. The trees blazed in conical bonfires; black clumpy smoke rose in jagged swirls.

“You lie! This is a trick!”

“I have no need of lies when the truth is so devastating. You can do nothing to stop it. Do you enjoy watching your people die? Does that not spark your anger? In your anger lies strength.”

Gantoris saw the old man Warton, whom he had known his entire life, standing in the middle of the holocaust. Warton stared around him, hands dangling at his sides, frozen in shock, until a thick green bolt cut him down.

“No!” Gantoris shouted.

“Let loose your anger. Make me stronger.”

“No!” he repeated, turning his head away from the images of burned ruins and blackened bodies.

“They are all dead. All of them,” the dark man taunted. “No survivors.”

Gantoris ignited his lightsaber and lunged at the dark man.

With an insistent bleeping Artoo-Detoo woke Luke from his nightmares. He snapped awake, using a Jedi technique to dispel the weariness and shock of the sudden waking.

“What is it, Artoo?”

The droid whistled, telling him something about a message waiting in the command center. Luke shrugged into his soft robe and hurried across the cold floor in the early light of planetrise. Taking the turbolift down to the second level of the temple, he entered the once-bustling command center.

“Artoo, bring up the lights.” He picked his path through the equipment, dust-covered chairs, shut-down computer consoles, document tables cluttered with debris. He powered on the communications station that Wedge had insisted on installing during his last supply run.

The image of Han Solo waited impatiently for him, fidgeting in the holofield. When he saw Luke appear in the transmission locus, Han grinned up at him. “Hey, Luke! Sorry I forgot to account for time differential. Not even dawn there, is it?”

Luke brushed his brown hair into place with his fingers. “Even Jedi need to sleep sometime, Han.”

Han laughed. “Well, you’ll be getting less sleep when your new student arrives. I just wanted to tell you that Kyp Durron has had enough of his vacation. I think after all that time in the spice mines, he got used to being miserable. The closest thing to the spice mines I could think of was your Jedi academy—that way he can work all day long, but at least he’ll be improving himself in the process.”

Luke smiled at his old friend. “I’d be honored to have him join us, Han. I’ve been waiting for him. He has the strongest potential of all the trainees I’ve seen so far.”

“Just wanted to let you know he’s coming,” Han said. “I’m trying to arrange for the next available transport to Yavin 4.”

Luke frowned. “Why don’t you just bring him in the Falcon?”

Han hung his head, looking extremely troubled. “Because I don’t own the Falcon anymore.”

“What?”

Han seemed filled with embarrassment, eager to end the communication. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll tell Leia hello for you and give the kids a hug.”

“All right, Han, but—”

Han gave a sheepish grin and quickly terminated the transmission.

Luke continued to stare at the blank space where Han’s image had been. First his nightmare of a dark man masquerading as Anakin Skywalker, and now the grim news that Han had lost the Millennium Falcon—

Luke heard a disturbance coming down the hall: clumsy footsteps slapping on the stone floor, panicked shouts. He looked up, ready to scold one of his students for such blatant lack of control, when the cloned alien Dorsk 81 rushed into the control center. “Master Skywalker! You must come immediately!”

Luke sensed waves of horror and misery spilling from his candidate. “What is it?” he asked. “Use the calming technique I showed you.”

But Dorsk 81 grabbed his arm. “This way!” The yellow-olive alien urged him out of the cluttered control room. Luke sensed widening ripples of alarm traveling like an earthquake through the solid stone of the temple.

They ran along the flagstoned corridors, up the turbolift, and into the section of living quarters where the trainees made their homes.

A sour, smoky stench filled the air, and Luke felt an icy lump in his stomach as he pushed cautiously forward. Hard-bitten Kam Solusar and addled Streen both stood outside the open doorway to Gantoris’s quarters, looking pasty and ill.

Luke hesitated for a fraction of a second, then moved through the doorway.

Inside the small stone chamber, he saw what was left of Gantoris. The body lay crisped and blackened on the floor, burned from the inside out. Singed stains on the flagstones showed where he had thrashed about in the conflagration. Gantoris’s skin flaked in black, peeling ashes over his powdery bones. Rising wisps of steam curled from the remaining fabric of his Jedi robe.

On the floor the newly constructed lightsaber lay where Gantoris had dropped it, as if he had tried to fight something—and lost.

Luke leaned against the cool stone wall to catch his balance. His vision blurred, but he could not tear his gaze from his dead student sprawled in front of him.

By now the other eleven trainees had gathered. Luke grasped the worn stone bricks at the edge of the door until even the rounded corners bruised his fingers. He applied a Jedi calming technique three times before he felt confident enough to trust his voice. The words tasted like wet ash in his mouth, as Yoda had told him so long ago.

“Beware the dark side,” he said.