The Golden Padawan Read online

  “Prepare,” said Brenan.

  Then in turn I found every cell in his body, the expectation of every movement in his limbs. I found his perfectly calm joy at what we were about to do.

  “Engage.”

  If last night’s Syzac’s had been wonderful, this one was heaven itself. I absolutely couldn’t tell which one of us was controlling our motion, or if either of us was. Our centers never wavered, and they were linked in perfect balance, so every stroke we made was flawlessly graceful, every transition was clean, every movement pure. I moved as Auri-Owan; what could be better than that?

  It passed in moments, more natural than breathing. The final sweep, from tail to upper, and it was complete.

  I heard the sudden burst of noise—a gasp of wonder followed by applause—and only then noted how perfectly silent the room had been apart from the sounds of our lightsabers. It was not like waking from a dream, for if anything, I became less alert, more tossed about in action and emotion. I looked into Brenan’s face and to my surprise found a certain amount of unconcealed amazement.

  So apparently this, too, had never happened before.

  We made nothing of it at the time, he proceeded with the rest of the seminar undaunted, and I likewise managed to carry on and stay rational enough to learn more than a few things. The second half of the morning we got out on the floor and practiced, and Brenan made the rounds giving everyone a comment or two. I found him an excellent teacher, and at lunch, Cal said the same.

  “He should teach lightsaber here all the time,” my friend declared over his bowl of stew. “Except for the fact that the Council wouldn’t want to waste a warrior like that.”

  “Besides,” I said, swallowing a bite of bread, “I’m sure battle suits him a lot better than choreography.”

  “No doubt,” agreed Cal fervently. “Sometimes I prefer practice sabers, at least it’s more like fighting and less like ballet. Competition rather than cooperation.”

  “The best of all,” I said pensively, “would be competition that required cooperation.” My dream of the night before came back to me. “You know, working with your fellows to conquer your mutual foe.”

  Cal stared at me a minute. “Yes, I’d like to see you and Brenan backing me up, that’s for sure.”

  I set down my bread. “That was an incredibly flattering thing to say, Cal.”

  “There’s something going on when you two fight, I’m not stupid. Okay, Syzac’s isn’t as hard as Celanarian’s, but your drill with Auri-Owan was even more impressive than when he fought the Master. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, even in a hologram.”

  “You should see him do the Master’s part in Celanarian’s,” I said wistfully.

  Cal frowned. “Okay, when did you see that?”

  “We did it last night, after the banquet. In the south courtyard. That’s when he asked me to do that demonstration this morning.”

  My friend stared in some consternation. Finally he exclaimed, “Well, I’m glad you didn’t cut his head off!”

  I laughed.

  “Seriously, Aeli, have you given any thought to how little sense this all makes? The galaxy’s best lightsaberman comes to Coruscant and takes this trainee under his wing?”

  I decided it would be best to keep secret the fact that I’d be training every afternoon that week with Brenan. “Yes, I know it makes no sense,” I agreed. “That’s why I’ve been so distracted.”

  Cal sat for a moment deep in thought, then said, “You’ve been weird about Brenan from the moment you laid eyes on him. Has he said anything to you about any of this?”

  I wasn’t sure how much I should reveal on that subject. “I’ll probably talk to him about it,” I said, and left it at that.

  “You should discuss it, something’s definitely going on. You should have seen yourself in that drill.”

  In point of fact, feeling it had been even stranger.

  * * *

  My training with Brenan over those five days provided no shortage of strangeness. Practice was strange, conversation was strange, it was a constant challenge to deal with the familiarity and intimacy which came unbidden.

  I loved to hear him tell stories from his past, and the experience was made even more interesting because in the process he would clarify some impression of his character I already possessed psychically, without yet having a basis in fact. For example, he told me of how he resolved his differences with one of the other Knights while on an assignment to Azzipa. The other Jedi, by the name of Puer Xis, was determined to capture a local murderer alive. The criminal was hiding out in a dangerous part of the city with a number of his associates, and they were well armed. Brenan was leading the mission and in charge of making the call as to the level of violence the action would require once it was underway. But he had a good idea Xis wouldn’t necessarily follow his lead when they were under fire.

  Xis was unruly, but there was one arena in which he played by the rules: Azzipan dice. He was a high roller but never cheated, and took great pride in his honorable reputation for the game. Brenan challenged him to a round, but instead of betting money, he pledged control of the mission. It was risky, since he really didn’t have the authority to hand the reigns to Xis. It was also risky because Brenan admitted to me his telekinesis skills were very poor and he was going to have to win fair and square.

  It was at this point in the story where my déjà vu kicked in: That is, my weird psychic connection to Brenan had already revealed to me his ability to creatively find his way out of any situation. Consequently, before he even told me, I knew he was going to lose the game, but have his way with Puer Xis anyway.

  “I can’t say I was happy when I rolled those evens,” said Brenan, as he wiped the sweat off his brow with a towel—we were taking a break. “But Puer certainly was pleased. I’ll never forget the look on his face, like he just opened some big present he’d always wanted. Xis didn’t care about what he was winning, he just liked winning.”

  “Well, how exactly did you get out of that one?” I asked, smiling.

  “Salesmanship, of course. Some impressive line of orloo manure about my determination to convince the rest of our party that Puer was in charge.”

  “Orloo manure, eh?” I asked, skeptical. I knew this was bluster.

  “Well, all right, at the time I was actually sincere. After all, a bet’s a bet, it was my stupidity to try it. And ironically, it was my sincerity that got through to him. That was the kind of thing that impressed the man, being honorable to your word. The fact that I was willing to put him in charge because I lost the game gave him some weird respect for me. We ordered a few more ales…quite a few…and by the end of the evening he was swearing allegiance to me and the Force and the Republic with passion and tears.”

  “What happened with the mission then?”

  Brenan leaned forward, a light in his eyes. “Here’s where the story gets really good. He saved my life. During the skirmish the murderer we were after got me cornered without my weapon. Puer Xis had to kill him to save me. He wasn’t happy about it but he also knew it had to be. There are times he makes me want to punch him, but I’d be glad to have him with me in any fight, he’s a good man.”

  Yes, it was truly an odd feeling to be getting to know someone, and rather than learning new things about them, to be constantly experiencing confirmation of what you already knew before. But even more unnerving was when it happened in reverse. Another time, while we were getting ready to start practice, I was telling Brenan the story of how I met Calnor.

  “We were both fourteen, and we were partnered together for a wilderness exercise in the Roughlands,” I began. “We hit it off right away, and at the time I was really searching for a good friend. The exercise was going very well, and the better I got to know Cal, the more I liked him. I already had it in my head we were going to be best friends. But the last night things didn’t go so well…”

  “How so?” asked Brenan.

  “We were doing a night
hike, we were supposed to locate this particular rock formation, and we stopped in this creek bed. The stars were unbelievable. I was staring up at the sky, admittedly for a pretty long time, and I guess Cal just decided it was time to get going again. Only I didn’t notice. When I looked around he was just gone.”

  “This is not a good thing,” said Brenan, and I could tell from his tone he understood without my saying further word. What might have been mildly alarming to a normal child was, to me, terrifying and grief-inducing. There were few I could make fully understand how I felt about abandonment—Mace Windu might have been the only one—but here was Brenan comprehending without a word of explanation from me.

  “At first I couldn’t believe it,” I continued. “I figured if I went even a little way on the path I’d spot him again. It made no sense that he had left without me. But after a couple minutes I still hadn’t found him. At that point I started to cry a little…very bad, since back then I was still struggling a lot with feeling inferior to my friends because I was a girl…”

  “It’s hard in the early stages when everything is about the physical, when you’re not spiritually advanced enough to even the playing field.”

  “Exactly,” I agreed. “So I was crying, and first I was angry that he left me, but that quickly changed to feeling like it was all my fault for staring up at the stars like that. I wanted to kick myself for being so stupid, for losing Cal like that.”

  Brenan smiled at me affectionately, trying sincerely not to find this youthful tale amusing. But in spite of his expression, I could still perceive he sympathized. It made me wish he would have been around to talk to when I was fourteen.

  “I remember wandering down that trail for what seemed like hours, and I was less scared of the capanids in the bushes than of the mere fact that I was alone and my friend had actually left me behind. I cried harder and harder, and then I was afraid I actually would find Cal and he would make fun of me for crying.”

  “Sad to say, I don’t blame you…if I’d been Cal I would have done just that I’m sure.”

  I gave him a look but realized he was teasing me again. “Okay, so I ended up giving up on Cal and decided I was going to find that damn rock formation myself or die trying. Well, turned out that I did, sometime a few hours before dawn, and meanwhile Cal got himself hopelessly lost and the Master had to retrieve him.”

  “That’ll teach him.”

  “We’ve been friends ever since.”

  “A classic Jedi friendship.”

  Meanwhile, my friendship with Brenan was anything but classic. Our conversations always had these bizarre elements, and it was no better when we worked on the lessons. Uncanny things never failed to happen. The most unsettling aspect proved to be when we fought with practice sabers, which was impromptu because they couldn’t hurt you too much, unless you were struck inappropriately hard. When Brenan and I fought with practice sabers, when we actually tried to compete rather than cooperate, it didn’t work. After a minute or two it was always the same: we would slip into this state of connection. It was seductive, really; there was such exhilaration at being able to feel the other person’s moves, anticipate every action, that it made one want to be as much in sync as possible. The element of surprise was out of the question. So our sessions might as well have been choreographed.

  On the fourth day, frustrated by the drought of competition, Brenan told me, “We need to challenge someone to a doubles fight.”

  “What a good idea,” I said wickedly.

  We looked at each other and I sensed in him the same feeling I possessed myself: an intoxicating urge of competitiveness.

  By this time there was no point in our attempting to keep secret what we had been up to with the training all week. On the one hand, Brenan had gotten proper authorization from my Masters; on the other, the rumor of it was all over the trainees’ quarters by the second day. So the doubles fight—Brenan recruited Master Wed’azon and I coerced a reluctant Cal—could hardly be kept private. We scheduled it for late afternoon in the main training room.

  Practice saber fighting was an art in and of itself. It was even done in formal competition, during which the combatants wore special suits made of fabric that gave off a glow when struck. Thus it could be declared that the loser “gave up an arm,” “took a mortal to the belly,” or “was beheaded.”

  After three minutes Brenan and I were victorious. My best friend took a mortal to the heart from Brenan while I kept my lightsaber Master occupied. Wed’azon was not much more of a challenge, even though by the rules Cal was allowed to keep fighting after his “injury.” Brenan sensed I was getting an upper hand on my Master, so he kept Cal out of the way until I had dealt the death blow. It was only the presence of Auri-Owan on the floor that would save face for Master Wed’azon, after he was beheaded by the practice saber of a trainee.

  Brenan leaned to me as the crowd applauded us. “We should have challenged three,” he said quietly.

  “Damn straight,” I agreed.

  It was likewise great fun each day when we practiced Celanarian’s: perfecting the details, upping the tempo, to the point that I knew I would do wonderfully well when I did it for my final. However, training with Auri-Owan was not all glory and amusement. He was obsessed with repetition, and ran me through drills until I wanted to kill him. I was dreaming the five positions all night long, something I hadn’t done since I was a novice. Nevertheless, I found the more I went through what seemed like meaningless exercises, the more instinctual the physical became, thus freeing me to focus on the spiritual. And I knew I needed to. I wouldn’t always have Brenan there as a crutch when it came to doing the Third Focus.

  “You’re not taking enough time,” he told me firmly on the fifth afternoon. “Don’t rush yourself.”

  “In a real situation, I won’t have any time,” I replied, frustrated and testy.

  “By the time you’re in a real situation, you won’t need any time. But only if you listen to me now.”

  We were standing on the floor of our training room, saber-less, working on the Third. Again working on the Third, and I knew I was getting mad because of my awareness that if he helped me, there was nothing to it. But of course, he wouldn’t help me.

  “Why can’t I do it without you?” I cried, barely restraining myself from stomping my foot like a spoiled child.

  Brenan sighed. “Because you’re young, because it’s hard. Believe me, it’s only because you’re rushing. You have to tell yourself you have all the time in the world, you have hours, you can take hours if you want to. Now try it again, but make it take hours.”

  I thought this was crazy. I stared at him, not exactly defiantly, but I knew he knew I thought it was crazy.

  His eyes narrowed then. I got a sudden feeling that I had been grabbed and lifted and was dangling in mid-air, only it was my mind and not my body that had been seized. His hard glare held me pinned, frozen, and in a way I had never felt before, terrified.

  “Obey me,” ordered Brenan.

  Had I ever experienced authority before that moment? What authority could provoke such a sense of urgency that I felt just then? I felt like if I didn’t do what he said, even a minute ago before he had uttered it, I would simply perish. I think I said “forgive me,” or perhaps “yes sir,” but at any rate there was no thought in my head but this one: “Make it take hours.”

  My mind rushed back to the first time I had read “A Treatise on Physical and Spiritual Preparation for Lightsaber Battle, in Three Parts” by Brenan Auri-Owan, to the passage on the Third Focus, and I read it again. I read it again, all four pages, over and over, perhaps ten times. As I read it, I superimposed over it the times I had accomplished Third Focus under his imposition. It all made sense, it made perfect sense…

  But that was the wrong way to look at it. In the final analysis, it didn’t matter if the Third Routine made sense. Sense was completely irrelevant. It was really about…about trust… After all, he had told me how, he had showed me how, what
more did I need to have faith in the Force?

  It started to come over me, but I didn’t rush it. If I rushed, it wouldn’t take hours. And he had ordered me to make it take hours. So I slowed it down, I let the tranquility trickle down like slow beads of glycerin through my nervous system. It established itself over me in the tiniest of increments, but as slow as it was, it was thorough and complete. I crystallized, only softly, flexibly. I could feel myself, and Brenan, and we were both so still we didn’t need to breathe to sustain our life.

  I opened my eyes.

  “You’re there,” Brenan said. “I only counted to three.”

  I blinked slowly, registering no amazement, although I knew it would be very appropriate. “I read your treatise ten times, Brenan.”

  “Did you really think time matters to the Force?” he asked me. The question resonated through my body. I wondered if I would ever forget it.

  * * *

  Perhaps time didn’t matter to the Force, but that didn’t change the fact that our two-hour sessions passed much too quickly, as did the five days. I changed over that time in ways it would take me weeks to comprehend. That my lightsaber skills improved was undeniable, but that was the least of it. My connection to Brenan seemed to evolve on a daily basis, and me with it. At first it was a combination of exhilarating and uncomfortable, a thrill that was as stressful as it was exciting. But as the days passed, while I didn’t exactly get used to it, it became more a part of daily existence and therefore easier to accept. Experiencing emotions that came from a source other than my own heart awakened me to the larger world beyond my five senses, and that in turn helped me greatly to trust the Force. Meanwhile, understanding this other person so effortlessly only emphasized to me how shallow were my bonds with the other people in my life. I resolved, for example, to get to know Calnor better. No doubt he would find my efforts peculiar, but I didn’t care. All in all, these seemed like positive developments to me.

  However, I became more and more apprehensive about Brenan’s departure. The last couple days I was no longer successful at holding off my dread. Being left behind was hard enough for me, how would I deal with the world without his presence? For as the week wore on, we became more and more sensitive to each other, until I found I could always establish his general location and was frequented often by little whispers of his emotional state. The question was, just how far away could he go before I lost touch? He hadn’t specifically told me his destination when he took the transport off of Coruscant, but I had a good idea it wasn’t anywhere close. I could only pray that physical distance might make no difference.