The Golden Padawan Read online

  I quickened my pace to keep up with his long strides. “Shouldn’t you be instructing me right about now to have some humility?”

  Still looking straight ahead, he smiled. “Oh no, I’m not going to be the one to rain on your parade. Enjoy the moment all you want. This is your reward for all those hours in the training rooms.”

  This hardly seemed like Jedi philosophy to me, but I certainly liked hearing it. “I don’t know, I feel like I ought to be taken down a peg or two.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said, giving me a stern look. “Over the next days I’ll take you down three or four, believe me.”

  Just as I started to worry about his reproving tone, he cracked a smile; I wondered if the man was ever not joking. My elation flooded back. “You’re really going to train me…” I actually skipped as I said this.

  “I’m really going to train you.”

  “I still can’t believe it. How can I repay you?”

  As swiftly as if he had been expecting the question, he replied, “Do a demonstration with me tomorrow morning.”

  I almost tripped. “A demonstration?”

  “I thought your execution of Syzac’s doubled was really fine.” I stared at him, speechless. He ignored my incredulity and continued, “Although bear in mind I will have criticism, which of course I’ll share with all your fellows, regardless of any humiliation it might cause.”

  “I dare say I’ll have a worse problem with everyone being jealous and hating me.”

  “Too bad, it’ll simply be your task to deal with that.”

  In my giddiness I slapped his arm for this comment. He burst out laughing. I wanted to hug him but I still had a little mastery of myself, and refrained. “All right, all right…I thank you for asking me, I’d be honored of course. Do you want me to try to make some mistakes so you actually have something to criticize?”

  “Ahhh…” he said, turning to me with an approving smile. “Very amusing. I’m making a mental note to take you down five or six pegs, soon-to-be Padawan.”

  We came upon the Borx and he opened the door for me. It was dark, warm, and lively inside, but not so crowded that I was intimidated. “My old table!” cried Brenan, and led me to a corner where a very old table indeed stood, flanked by three padded, worn out chairs. We took two of them and Brenan called over the steward and ordered two cups of ale.

  “I’ve been away too long,” he said nostalgically as we settled in.

  “How often do you come back to the Temple?” I asked.

  “Only when the Council has business with me, maybe twice a year at most.”

  This news stung, but then it came as no surprise. He was a Knight, he had business all over the galaxy, it wasn’t as if Coruscant would see much of him. But I wasn’t going to think about this now, not when the prospect of five days training with him loomed ahead.

  “About the training,” I said, “how is your schedule? I mean, they must have you busy most of the time.”

  “My schedule gives me two hours each afternoon at three, for meditation. That’s standard operating procedure.”

  “But you can sacrifice that?”

  “Hmm…meditation or lightsaber training, which would I choose?”

  I laughed. “Well, I’ve got those two hours free, and if I didn’t, I would make them so.” Our cups were delivered to the table; we both drank. Then I said, “Tell me though, what did you think was my greatest weakness?”

  Brenan set down his cup, smiling. “You had a bit of a problem with emotional control, but then I think you know that.”

  “Yes, I do,” I said, feeling myself blush. “It’s chronic. It’s not that I’m not aware, it’s not that I don’t try to do better…I know I can’t become a Knight without beating it. And I knew full well I had to get a grip before I could fight you.” It came back to me then, the feeling of falling/being pulled into his eyes, the quieting blueness of it, and I shivered. “But then,” I said cautiously, “you fixed that.”

  He looked back at me steadily. “So it seemed.”

  I squinted at him. “How did you do that?”

  He paused. “It’s not something that’s actually happened before,” he said, all seriousness now.

  “It hasn’t?”

  “Describe it to me,” Brenan said, fixing me with strangely compelling gaze.

  “You took me in your eyes,” I told him, unhesitatingly. “It was so calming, irresistibly calming. I lost myself. No, that’s not it, I was still there, I was almost more there…but all the rushing in my head stopped. Oh gods…” Something amazing had just occurred to me. “That’s it!”

  “What?”

  “The key to the Third Routine. Now I see it…”

  A half smile came over his face. He knew what I meant.

  I went on excitedly. “I doubt I could do it on my own, but at least I think I see it now. I was truly more there, and yet—no passion—”

  Brenan looked most amused. “There’s hope for you yet,” he said gently.

  His hand was curled around his cup, and I reached over and folded mine over it, urgently. “Only if you teach me,” I told him. “No one else has, and believe me, they’ve tried.”

  “You’re that intractable?” he laughed.

  “No really, I am, I’m completely intractable!” I pulled back my hand.

  “Imagine me, a teacher.”

  “You’re a natural…how else could you have—?…but you said this never happened before?”

  The mirth left his eyes. We stared at each other for a long moment. The emanation I felt from him waxed more intense, there was a new aspect to it, half agitation and half elation.

  “It never happened before,” he said.

  “What’s happening to me, Brenan?” I asked him. “Can you feel it too?”

  He took a swallow of ale to buy himself a moment. Then he said, “I heard you. When you came up to me at the banquet.”

  “You…‘heard me’?”

  “Not audibly. Telepathically.”

  “What did I say?”

  He set down his cup and looked at me. “You said, ‘I’m so scared.’”

  My stomach dropped out of me.

  He went on, “I could feel it too, your fear and this intense confusion, almost panic. I wanted so much to reassure you, to make your fear go away, but of course we hadn’t even spoken yet.”

  I grabbed his hand again. “But I heard you!” He stared back at me quizzically. “I heard you say ‘Don’t be scared,’ and all my fear left me. I heard you say it.”

  “I’ll be damned,” he said, in a whisper.

  “What is this?” I asked him, pleading. “There was another time, too—”

  “When I first came in the hall.”

  “Yes, that’s it. What happened when you first came in the hall?”

  His eyes glazed over a little as he recalled it. “I walked in the room, and I felt something. Something very unfamiliar. Like a life-force, only…only it was…the only word I can think of is magical. It felt this peculiar, magical way. I looked for the source of it. I reached out to find it, I used the Force. Then I found you. When I looked at you, across the room, I forgot what I was doing, because you were so agitated. I could feel you, exuding…how can I describe it?… something like awe.”

  “Yes.”

  “Directed towards me. It was all focused on me.”

  “What did I say to you?”

  His stare had become so intense I started trembling. “You said…” He blinked slowly and forced it out. “You said, ‘Why do I love you so?’”

  I swallowed hard. Then I said hoarsely, “That must have been quite frightening.”

  “It wasn’t,” he replied at once. “Which I agree is odd, in and of itself.”

  “And how did you answer?”

  He looked at me long and hard. Then he said, “Aeli, you tell me.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “You said, ‘Our destiny.’”

  He blinked, silent.

  “Brenan, there was g
reat certainty in it. You know what’s happening to us, don’t you?”

  He sighed. He looked down at the table with fierce concentration. I let him think, I watched him think and I felt it, I felt it as a wrestling, a struggle between caution and euphoria. Finally he looked up and me and said, “Yes, I think I know. But I’m not certain. And I can’t tell you until I know for sure.”

  “When will you know for sure?”

  He leaned forward. “There’s something I have to do first. Once I’ve done it, I’ll know. And I promise I’ll tell you then.”

  My reaction to this surprised even me. I wanted this opportunity to trust him. I wanted my patience and faith to be tested. I wanted to experience him keeping a promise to me.

  “All right,” I said.

  “Thank you,” he replied.

  It wasn’t until then that I realized all this while I had been holding his hand, clinging to his large, strong fingers with a veritable death grip. I pulled back my hand. We both leaned back and took deep breaths. Well, I thought, even a Knight can become agitated and distraught. Rather than amusing me, this thought only increased my alarm. So then I said, by way of changing the subject, “Tell me a story, a good one.”

  He smiled slightly. “What kind of story?”

  “Tell me about the most terrible foe you beat in battle.”

  “You weren’t frightened enough by the story of the geddotubers?”

  I laughed. “No, I want something even more horrific. If you can decide what was the worst.”

  He raised his cup to drink. “No problem there.” A long swallow, and he began, “Do you remember two years ago, that terrible problem the Republic was addressing with heaven’s chain trafficking?”

  “The drug cartel on Naboo? Of course. That was shut down, I remember it was big news.”

  “That was me,” he said softly.

  “It was?” I leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “Swear you won’t tell anyone else.”

  “I swear.”

  “And it’s a grim story. How much detail do you want?”

  “If a Knight had to endure it, then I might someday. Whatever you want to tell me.”

  “All right, and I pray you won’t.” He leaned forward too and spoke more quietly. “I can’t believe I’m going to tell this. Oh well… His name was Quel-zil, the cartel made him a guardian, their most important guardian, and not because he was any great mind or strong fighter. He was just mad beyond all comprehension. They put him in charge of their hoard of heaven’s chain. Nobody knew how much they had in there, in this cave in the Regoine Mountains, but there was no doubt as to the importance of the stash. Our spies found the location, learned about Quel-zil, or something of him at least. I had to go in alone, it was the nature of the mission.”

  “Alone? Why you?”

  “My Master made that choice.”

  “Yoda,” I said, knowing that Brenan had served as Padawan under the great Jedi Master. “Not much arguing there.”

  “And I had to go alone because of the entrance to the lair. It was a long, narrow tunnel, maybe a quarter of a mile, in places barely big enough for me to pass. Some of the turns were so sharp, I had to lay on my back to have the angle to get my body through them.”

  I pictured this, the experience of crawling in pitch darkness through this dreadful maze, and shuddered.

  “There were sections half deep in water…or I hope it was water…it smelled like orloo piss and was icy cold too. Sometimes I swore I’d come up against a blockage, but it was only another tight bend in the tunnel. And in some places there were sharp rocks—crystals embedded in the stone, it felt like, which protruded. I cut my forearm on one and it hurt like hell. But that wasn’t the worst of it—”

  I swallowed. “What was the worst of it?”

  “There were small things in there…at first I thought it was just loose stones, and I was knocking them around. But at one point I was stopped, with my hands on the rock in front of me, and they scurried over my hands.”

  “Gods, what a horror! How did you bear it?”

  “Three things enabled me to go on. One, I was following an order from my Master. You’d be surprised how hard it is to disobey the order of your Master.”

  I thought I understood, and nodded.

  “Two,” and at this he came the closest to smiling that he had yet, “the thought of retreating backwards was more horrible than going on. Three, I found a way to manage it. The Force. The Force, you see, extends in all directions, up, down, north-south-east-west. Nothing walls it, nothing limits it. It’s like a wide open plain, or a bright bare desert. I thought of myself as crossing that open desert, only I had to bear on this narrow path because Yoda bid it so. Still, if the worst happened, if I had to leave that narrow path, the Force would permit it if I needed to.”

  “Ohhh…” I said, “and you could sustain your trust in this?”

  “I can’t do everything, I’d be the first to tell you that. But this thing I could do well.”

  I started trembling inside. I took a swallow of ale but it made no difference.

  Brenan continued. “Finally I saw a lightness, and then the actual point of brightness that was the end of the passage. I said to myself, ‘Oh good, I am nearly to the fiend.’”

  I laughed at this jest, but my trembling increased as well.

  “When I looked out into the cavern, the first thing I saw was sacks upon sacks of chain. One wall, the one to my right, was stacked with sacks to the ceiling. And the ceiling was maybe 25 feet high. There were no open sacks I could see, but still, it was like the cave walls were coated with the chain dust, that orange color like fennira wings. It was illuminated by a single, painfully intense lantern, held in a bizarre cage that cast crazy shadows everywhere. And then I saw him. Quel-zil. Sitting under the lantern just staring at the opening of the passage, as if all he did day and night was watch it. Of course, it was me he saw just then.”

  I put my hands over my mouth.

  “I burst out and to my feet, the adrenaline hit me and I recovered from my long crawl in an instant. He was silhouetted against the light then, I could only see his outline at first as he came toward me. He was so wasted he wasn’t much more than bones, but he moved quickly nevertheless. There also seemed to be things wrong with him…his arms were too long, his knees were jointed at a freakish angle. He actually rushed past me, to put himself between me and the highest piles of sacks, and then the light fell on him. The flesh was coming off his nose. It didn’t look like recent decay either—I’m sure he had used chain for years and that was the result of it. There was a flap of skin that had fallen down over the tip of his nose, it flapped when he moved, which he did constantly.”

  “Gods, Brenan,” I breathed.

  “If only that was the worst of it,” he said, and I noticed then that the narration seemed to be wearing on him. Still he went on. “The monster drew his lightsaber, and that alerted me. He had Sith training. I drew my saber too and discovered in an instant that my Jedi training was little use to me. As I said, the creature was insane. His dementia was so extreme, I could get no sense of his presence, no bearing even on myself. It filled the room like a noxious stench, mingled with the smell of the chain. Then he cried out to me, in this voice that was high and raspy and infernal, ‘Jedi, the weedins in the passage have crawled into your head!’ You may laugh at me, but that scared me more than anything else. I don’t know why. But I couldn’t find him with the Force, and I wondered if something really was wrong with my head. Quel-zil gave me this hideous grin, his nose flapping, and cried, ‘Weedins in your head, and up your ass, Jedi!’”

  Brenan stared at me, waves of horror coming off him which only made the story more terrifying, capped by what I was certain was an excellent imitation of Quel-zil’s hideous voice. I pushed his cup at him and ordered, “Drink.”

  “It’s gone,” he replied.

  I held my hand up for him to be silent until I had ordered the steward to bring another. We didn�
��t speak for the minute or two until a full cup stood before him. He took a long drink, then smiled at himself.

  “Why am I telling you this? I’ve never told anyone all this, not even Master Yoda.”

  “Perhaps, once you’ve done this thing you have to do, you’ll know why,” I replied.

  He gave me a long pensive look. “You’re probably right,” he said. “But now the finish. We fought, for how long I couldn’t say, but I had nothing on my side but my physical skill, and somehow that maniac matched it. He was wearing me down, and I figured his madness would sustain him as long as it took. Finally he managed to slash my upper arm, the full length, a good quarter-inch deep, a half in places. I felt myself bleeding and when that happens, you know it’s time to make the kill or maybe you never will.”

  He paused to take another drink, then slid the cup over and leaned closer to me. “I called on my Master then. Nothing else to do. And he said this to me: ‘Guilty make him. Punish himself he will.’ I caught Yoda’s meaning right away, thank the gods. For all the confusion Quel-zil shot at me, it was clear his psyche was sustained by one driving force: protecting the chain. So I led him over to that big wall of sacks, I backed up and backed up, hoping he would have enough logic in him to be greedy for the opportunity, I feigned weakness and then…I lowered my lightsaber.”

  I waited breathlessly.

  “He dove for me, lifted his saber to full height and brought it down, but at the last moment I leaped to the side. His momentum carried him forward…he sliced open a dozen sacks of chain. Better still, there was a chemical reaction from the saber beam, and they caught on fire.”

  For the first time, Brenan did smile, albeit grimly. “And I said to that bastard, ‘Quel-zil, weedins in your head and up your ass. You’ve destroyed the chain, you fool!” That was a message he could understand. He stepped back in horror from the sacks—horror and self-loathing. He was lucid enough then, and therefore for a moment so was I, so I blasted him with all the guilt the Force could muster through me. And then—” He paused, lowered his voice. “Have you ever seen somebody kill himself with a lightsaber?”

  I shook my head.

  Brenan mimed taking the handle from his belt, holding it up to the side of his head, and pressing the activation panel.