ONE

Star Pond had calmed into a dark mirror, and the kaddyr bugs had fallen mysteriously silent. The entire Jedi academy had descended into uneasy stillness, and Luke knew it was time. He ended the meditation with a breath, then unfolded his legs—he had been floating cross-legged in the air—and lowered his feet to the pavilion floor.

Mara was instantly at his side, taking his arm in case he was too weak to stand. “How do you feel?”

Luke’s entire body felt stiff and sore, his head was aching, and his hands were trembling. He tested his legs and found them a little wobbly.

“I’m fine,” he said. His stomach felt as empty as space. “A little hungry, maybe.”

“I’ll bet.” Continuing to hold his arm, Mara turned to leave the meditation pavilion. “Let’s get you something to eat…and some rest.”

Luke did not follow her. “I can last another hour.” Through the Force, he could feel nearly the entire Jedi order gathered in the lecture hall, waiting to learn why he had summoned them. “We need to do this now.”

“Luke, you look like you’ve been hanging out in wampa caves again,” Mara said. “You need to rest.”

“Mara, it’s time,” Luke insisted. “Is Ben there?”

“I don’t know,” Mara said.

Although their son was finally beginning to show some interest in the Force, he continued to shut himself off from his parents. Luke and Mara were saddened and a little disturbed by Ben’s detachment, but they were determined not to push. The turmoil in the Force during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had left him somewhat mistrustful of the Jedi way of life, and they both knew that if he was ever going to follow in their footsteps, he would have to find his own way onto the path.

“Does Ben really need to be part of this?” Mara’s tone suggested the answer she wanted to hear.

“Sorry, but I think he does,” Luke said. “Now that Jacen has convinced him that it’s safe to open himself to the Force, Ben will have to make the same decision as everyone else. All the students will.”

Mara frowned. “Shouldn’t the children wait until they’re older?”

“We’ll ask them again when they become apprentices,” Luke said. “I don’t know whether I’m about to save the Jedi order or destroy it—”

“I do,” Mara interrupted. “The Masters are pulling the order in ten different directions. You have to do this, or they’ll tear it apart.”

“It certainly looks that way,” Luke said. With Corran Horn and Kyp Durron at odds over the anti-Killik policies of the Galactic Alliance, it seemed as though every Master in the order was trying to impose his or her own compromise on the Jedi. “But whether this is successful or not, it’s going to change the Jedi order. If some students don’t want to be a part of that, it’s better for everyone to find out now.”

Mara considered this, then sighed. “I’ll have Nanna bring Ben over.” She pulled out her comlink and stepped to one side of the pavilion. “And I’ll let Kam and Tionne know you want the students there.”

“Good. Thank you.”

Luke continued to look out over the dark water. He had spent the last week deep in meditation, sending a Force-call to the entire Jedi order. It would have been easier to use the HoloNet, but many Jedi—such as Jaina and her team—were in places the HoloNet did not cover. Besides, Luke was trying to make a point, to subtly remind the rest of the order that all Jedi answered to the same authority.

And the strategy had worked. In every arm of the galaxy, Masters had suspended negotiations, Jedi Knights had dropped investigations, apprentices had withdrawn from combat. There were a few Jedi stranded on off-lane worlds without transport and a couple unable to suspend their activities without fatal consequences, but for the most part, his summons had been honored. Only two Jedi Knights had willfully ignored his call, and their decision had surprised Luke less than it had hurt him.

A familiar presence drew near on the path behind the meditation pavilion, and Luke spoke without turning around. “Hello, Jacen.”

Jacen stopped at the entrance to the pavilion. “I’m sorry to disturb you.”

Luke continued to look out on the pond. “Come to explain why Jaina and Zekk aren’t here?”

“It’s not their fault,” Jacen said, still behind Luke. “We’ve had some, uh, disagreements.”

“Don’t make excuses for them, Jacen,” Mara said, closing her comlink. “If you felt Luke’s summons, so did they.”

“It’s not that simple,” Jacen said. “They may have thought I was trying to trick them.”

Luke finally turned around. “Tesar and Lowbacca didn’t seem to think so.” He had felt three other Jedi Knights return to Ossus along with Jacen. “Neither did Tahiri.”

“What can I say?” Jacen spread his hands. “I’m not their brother.”

Mara frowned. “Jacen, your sister used you as a pretext and we all know it. Let’s leave it at that.” She turned to Luke. “Nanna’s on the way with Ben, and Kam says the students have all been waiting in the lecture hall since this morning.”

“Thanks.” Luke joined her and Jacen at the rear of the pavilion, then gestured at the path leading toward the lecture hall. “Walk with us, Jacen. We need to talk.”

“I know.” Jacen fell in at Luke’s side, between him and Mara. “You must be furious about the raid on the Chiss supply depot.”

“I was,” Luke admitted. “But your aunt convinced me that if you were involved, there had to be a good reason.”

“I was more than involved,” Jacen said. “It was my idea.”

“Your idea?” Mara echoed.

Jacen was silent a moment, and Luke could feel him struggling with himself, trying to decide how much we could tell them. He was trying to protect something—something as important to him as the Force itself.

Finally, Jacen said, “I had a vision.” He stopped and looked into the crown of a red-fronded dbergo tree. “I saw the Chiss launch a surprise attack against the Killiks.”

“And so you decided to provoke the Chiss just to be certain?” Luke asked. “Surely, it would have been better to warn the Killiks.”

Jacen’s fear chilled the Force. “There was more,” he said. “I saw the Killiks mount a counterattack. The war spread to the Galactic Alliance.”

“And that’s why you attacked the Chiss supply depot,” Mara surmised. “To protect the Galactic Alliance.”

“Among other things,” Jacen said. “I had to change the dynamics of the situation. If the war had started that way, it wouldn’t have stopped. Ever.” He turned to Luke. “Uncle Luke, I saw the galaxy die.”

“Die?” An icy ball formed in Luke’s stomach. Considering the turmoil the order had been in at the time, he was beginning to understand why Jacen had felt it necessary to take such dire action. “Because the Chiss launched a surprise attack?”

Jacen nodded. “That’s why I convinced Jaina and the others to help me. To prevent the surprise attack from happening.”

“I see.” Luke fell quiet, wondering what he would have done, had he been in Jacen’s place and experienced such a terrifying vision. “I understand why you felt you had to act, Jacen. But trying to change what you see in a vision is dangerous—even for a Jedi of your talent and power. What you witnessed was only one of many possible futures.”

“One that I can’t permit,” Jacen replied quickly.

Again, Luke felt a wave of protectiveness from Jacen—protectiveness and secrecy.

“You were protecting something,” Luke said. “What?”

“Nothing…and everything.” Jacen spread his hands, and Luke felt him draw in on himself in the Force. “This.”

They came to the Crooked Way, a serpentine path of rectangular stepping-stones, set askew to each other so that walkers would be forced to slow down and concentrate on their journey through the garden. Luke allowed Mara to lead the way, then fell in behind Jacen, watching with interest as his nephew instinctively took the smoothest, most fluid possible route up the walkway.

“Jacen, do you know that you have prevented what you saw in your vision?” Luke asked. He was meandering back and forth behind his nephew, absentmindedly allowing his feet to choose their route from one stone to the next. “Can you be certain that your own actions won’t bring the vision to pass?”

Jacen missed the next stone and would have stepped onto the soft carpet of moss had he not sensed his error and caught his balance. He stopped, then pivoted around to face Luke.

“Is that a rhetorical question, Master?” he asked.

“Not entirely,” Luke replied. He was concerned that Jacen had fixed the future again, as he had when he had reached across time and spoken to Leia during a vision at the Crash site on Yoggoy. “I need to be sure I know everything.”

“Even Yoda didn’t know everything,” Jacen said, smiling. “But the future is still in motion, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Thank you,” Luke said. Fearing dangerous ripples in the Force, Luke had asked Jacen not to reach into the future again. “But I still wish you hadn’t acted so…forcefully.”

“I had to do something,” Jacen said. “And when it comes to the future, Uncle Luke, don’t we always plot the next jump blind?”

“We do,” Luke said. “That’s why it is usually wise to be cautious.”

“I see.” Jacen glanced up the Crooked Way, where the steeply pitched roof of the lecture hall loomed behind a hedge of bambwood. “So you summoned the entire Jedi order to Ossus to do something cautious?”

Luke put on an exaggerated frown. “I said usually, Jacen.” He let out a melodramatic sigh to show that he was not truly angry, then said, “Go on ahead. I can see that you’re a disrespectful young nephew who delights in embarrassing his elders.”

“Of course, Master.”

Jacen smiled and bowed, then started up the Crooked Way, now taking the straightest possible line toward the lecture hall. Luke watched him go, wondering whether the jump he was about to make with the future of the order was any less bold—or blind—than the one his nephew had made in attacking the supply depot.

“You have to do something,” Mara said, sensing the drift of his thoughts. “And this is the best choice.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s what worries me.”

Luke followed, taking his time, concentrating on the musky smell of the garden soil, deliberately focusing his thoughts on something other than the address he was about to give. He already knew what he needed to say—that had grown very clear to him as he learned more about the growing rift in the order—and overthinking it now would only interfere with the message. Better to let the words come naturally, to speak from his heart and hope the Jedi would listen with theirs.

By the time they reached the eastern gable of the lecture hall, a familiar calm had come over Luke. He could sense the Jedi waiting inside the building, tense with anticipation, all hoping that he could resolve the impasse that was threatening to tear the order apart. That much was clear, but he sensed more: frustration, animosity, even bitterness and rage. The disagreements had grown intense and personal, to the point that several Jedi Masters could barely stand to be in the same room.

Luke slid open the instructor’s door and led the way down a short, wood-floored hallway. As they approached the sliding panel at the end, the Jedi on the other side sensed their presence, and the low murmur in the auditorium died away.

Mara kissed Luke on the cheek, then whispered, “You can do this, Luke.”

“I know,” Luke said. “But keep a stun grenade handy just in case.”

Mara smiled. “You won’t need a grenade—they’re going to be stunned.”

She pulled the panel aside, revealing a simple but soaring auditorium with pillars of pale wood. The Jedi were gathered in the front of the room. Kyp Durron and his supporters were clustered near the left wall, and Corran Horn and his group were bunched along the right. Jacen and Ben sat in the middle with the Solos and Saba Sebatyne, while the students were interspersed in small groups along both sides of the center aisle.

Luke was shocked by how small the gathering looked. Including the students and Han, there were just under three hundred people in a hall that had been designed to hold two thousand—the academy’s entire complement of Jedi and support staff. The vacant benches were a stark reminder of how small a bulwark the Jedi truly were against the dark forces that always seemed to be gathering in the unwatched corners of the galaxy.

Luke stopped in the middle of the dais and took a deep breath. He had rehearsed his speech a dozen times, but he still had more butterflies in his stomach than when he had faced Darth Vader on Cloud City. So much depended on what he was about to say…and on how the Jedi responded to it.

“Thirty-five standard years ago, I became the last guardian of an ancient order that had thrived for a thousand generations. During all that time, no evil dared challenge its power, no honest being ever questioned its integrity. Yet fall it did, brought low by the treachery of a Sith Lord who disguised himself as a friend and an ally. Only a handful of Masters survived, hiding in deserts and swamps so that the bright light that was the Jedi order would not be extinguished.”

Luke paused here and exchanged gazes with Leia. Her face had been lined by four decades of sacrifice and service to the galaxy, yet her brown eyes still shined with the intensity of her youth. At the moment, they were also shining with curiosity. Luke had not discussed what he intended to say even with her.

He looked back to the other Jedi. “Under the guidance of two of those Masters, I became the instrument of the Jedi’s return, and I have dedicated myself to rekindling the light of their order. Ours may be a smaller, paler beacon than the one that once lit the way for the Old Republic, but it has been growing, both in size and in brilliance.”

Luke felt the anticipation in the Force beginning to shift toward optimism, but he also sensed concern rising in his sister. As a Force-gifted politician and a former Chief of State, she realized what he was doing—and she could see where it would lead. Luke pushed her worries out of his mind; he was doing this to save the order, not to aggrandize himself.

“We have been growing,” he continued, “until now.”

Luke looked first toward Corran and his supporters, then toward Kyp and his.

“Now we are threatened by a different enemy, one that I brought into our midst through my misunderstanding of the old practices. In my arrogance, I believed we had found a better way, one more in tune with the challenges we face in our time. I was wrong.”

A murmur of soft protest rustled through the hall, and the Force near both Kyp and Corran grew unsettled with guilt. Luke raised his hand for silence.

“In the order I envisioned, we served the Force by following our own consciences. We taught our apprentices well, and we trusted them to follow their own hearts.” Luke looked directly into Leia’s troubled eyes. “It was a splendid dream, but it has been growing more impractical for some time now.”

Luke returned his gaze to the other Jedi. “My mistake was in forgetting that good beings can disagree. They can evaluate all of the evidence and study it from every angle and still reach opposite conclusions. And each side can believe with pure hearts that only their view is right.

“When that happens, it’s easy to lose sight of something far more important than who’s right and who’s wrong.”

Luke fixed his eyes on Kyp, who managed to avoid looking away despite the color that came to his face. “When the Jedi are at odds with each other, they are at odds with the Force.”

Luke shifted his gaze to Corran, who responded with a contrite lowering of the eyes. “And when the Jedi are at odds with the Force, they can’t perform their duty to themselves, to the order, or to the Alliance.”

The hall fell utterly silent. Luke remained quiet—not to build the suspense, but to give every Jedi time to reflect on his or her own part in the crisis.

Ben and the students were sitting very still, with their chins pressed to their chests. But their eyes were darting from side to side, looking for clues as to how they should respond. Tesar Sebatyne flattened his scales—betraying the shame he felt for helping precipitate the crisis, and Lowbacca slumped his enormous shoulders. Tahiri sat up straight and stared stonily ahead, her stiff bearing an unsuccessful attempt to disguise her guilty feelings. Only Leia seemed unaffected by the subtle chastisement. She sat with her fingers steepled in front of her, studying Luke with a furrowed brow and a Force presence so guarded he could not read her emotions.

When the mood in the hall began to shift toward regret, Luke spoke again. “I’ve meditated at length, and I’ve concluded that how we respond to a crisis—the one facing us now or any other—is far less important than responding to it together. Even with the Force to guide us, we’re only mortal. We are going to make mistakes.

“But mistakes by themselves will never destroy us. As long as we work together, we’ll always have the strength to recover. What we can’t recover from is fighting among ourselves. It will leave us too exhausted to face our enemies. And that is what Lomi Plo and the Dark Nest want. It’s the only way they can defeat us.”

Luke took a deep breath. “So I’m asking each of you to rethink your commitment to the Jedi. If you can’t place the good of the order above all else and follow the direction chosen by your superiors, I’m asking you to leave. If you have other duties or loyalties that come before the order, I’m asking you to leave. If you cannot be a Jedi Knight first, I’m asking you not to be a Jedi Knight at all.”

Luke took his time, looking from one shocked face to another. Only Leia seemed dismayed—but he had expected that.

“Think about your choice carefully,” he said. “When you are ready, come to me and let me know what you have decided.”