Tash was awakened by the silence. For a very long time he had lain there listening to the shuffling and wheezing and jangling and occasional unhappy gabbling of the other sacrifices, and he must finally have fallen asleep, but he awoke with a start to a silence like death. No one stirred. No one wheezed or muttered nonsense words to themselves. It was yet harder to see than it had been, for some kind of thick fog had filled the chamber and the lights on the pillars spent themselves in muddled grey-green blobs and failed to illuminate anything more than a few paces distant.
‘I hope they are not all dead,’ said Tash. It would not really have been any worse for him to be chained up with some hundreds of dead bodies than with some hundreds of sacrifices who were to be killed in a few days at any rate, but it was a horrible thing to imagine, and frightened him every bit as much as it would you or me. He felt at the idiot boys chained to his left and to his right, but could not wake them, nor could he tell for sure whether they were breathing or not. When he moved, his chains clanked, but less than they should have, like they were clanking underwater.
‘I wish I was anywhere else at all,’ thought Tash unhappily.
A moment later things became yet more alarming, for Tash felt something crawling on his arm. It was a quick tickly rasping thing with too many legs, as big as his hand, and he could see it only as the merest flicker of movement in the gloom.
‘I must be still and quiet and maybe it will not bite me,’ said Tash to himself. He had learned this way of dealing with biting creatures through painful experience. So he sat very still as the something crawled down to his wrist and sat there in an unruly ticklish way like a newborn sister, and as another something of the same sort crawled onto one of his legs and scrabbled to his ankle, and then another, and another, until the rasping things were perched everywhere the chains bound Tash to the stone post. Then they began to gnaw. Not on Tash – for which he was very grateful – but on the fetters that held him. He could feel the patient grinding of their teeth in his bones, an inexorable gnawing that went on and on without ever slowing down or speeding up. He had the feeling that if these creatures with too many legs set their tiny minds to it they would simply keep gnawing forever through anything that was in their way, flesh and bone and metal and stone, year after year and generation after generation, until they had gnawed a tunnel through the world from one side to another.
After a long time the things with too many legs had chewed through all of Tash’s fetters. The chains fell dully to the floor, one by one, and the many-legged things gathered in a vague mass before him. He could see their green eyes shining now, little pinpricks of light in the fog. They were looking at him.
‘It is better to do something than nothing,’ thought Tash, which was one of the proverbs he had heard all his life whenever he had been found doing nothing. He stood up, which was more difficult than he expected. First one of the many-legged creatures darted away into the darkness, then another one. The remaining green eyes watching him seemed to be brighter. He took a step in the direction the creatures seemed to be going and they took off before him in a rush, their eyes bounding like grith nodules in a pot of boiling water.
As Tash walked away from the pillars where the sacrifices were chained, the fog lifted and the eyes of the creatures grew brighter and brighter. The strange silence also faded, and Tash could hear the scrape of his own feet on the pavement, and the rustle of the many-legged creatures around him. There were more of them than there had been: more and more, until he could dimly see his injured hand by the glow of their eyes, and the shadows cast by their capering bodies. They were leading him away from the doors to the outside, across the vast chamber, deeper and deeper into the evil-smelling darkness.
‘Now I am somewhere else, as I wished,’ thought Tash. ‘It is better, I suppose. How this chamber goes on and on. ’
If it had been outside and lit, it would doubtless have seemed no great expanse, smaller than many of the grith fields in which Tash had spent his life; but it was inside and dark, so seemed to be without beginning or end.
But at last it did end: stone walls closed in around Tash, and the air grew damper and less evil-smelling. The creatures danced around him, steering him first one way and then another through what seemed to be a maze of passages, sometimes down, sometimes up, but more often down. The air grew damper yet, and the walls Tash came close to were slick with slime. Once they passed over a thunderous stream of water, and another time Tash had to climb over a statue that had fallen over to block the way. Tash would have liked to stop and examine the statue more closely, for he had never been so close to any of the great carven images which the Tower was decorated, but the many-legged creatures became so terribly agitated when he bent down to peer at it that he judged it unwise.
‘After all if I scare them away I will have no light at all, and will never be able to find my way anywhere in the dark,’ he thought. And he followed the creatures on, and on, and on, through the maze.
Tash was dizzy from watching the green eyes of the creatures, and weary from not being able to stop and ponder things, and feeling rather sore from one particular place he had been clouted that had not seemed such a big deal at the time, when the passage he was following ended abruptly in a wall.
Several of the creatures took off excitedly into the darkness, while others scrabbled up the walls and even clung to the ceiling above Tash’s head. Before he had time to think of much of anything at all he saw a light that was not dancing and green. It was a bluish light like fire that was very bright – really too bright to look at directly – and it traced a line along the wall in front of him, from the floor to somewhere well above his head. Then it grew wider and wider, and was a door opening into a room, where everything was too bright to see. Of course the light poured out of this room as well, so it was just as impossible to see anything outside, but Tash was vaguely aware of the many-legged creatures capering into the room like mad things. A slightly darker patch loomed out of the brightness, took Tash by an arm and steered him into the room, less roughly than he was accustomed to.
‘Stand still,’ said a voice. ‘Don’t fall over. And straighten up.’ It was the voice of a very old thalarka, and it spoke the words very carefully, as if they were made out of something fragile and would break if spoken too roughly.
Tash did his best to follow these sensible instructions. Little by little his eyes adjusted and he could make out the source of the voice. The unbearable brightness came after all from a rather small lamp, which filled the room with wavering blue light and a sickly sweet smell. The lamp hung from the ceiling above a stone table covered with mysterious devices, which under normal circumstances Tash would have been inordinately curious about. There were books, too, like the ones the tax collectors carried, but instead of one there were scores, stacked on the table and on shelves on the far wall. Clinging to the walls – and the shelves – were very many of the things with too many legs, shifting ceaselessly about and rustling like a crowd of villagers on a festival day. In some curious way Tash was quite sure that they were paying attention to the old thalarka; that he was their Overlord, and that their mindless whispering meant something very like ‘sweeter than narbul venom is it to serve the Overlord’. In the lamplight the eyes that had lit Tash’s way were nearly invisible, buried deep in their wrinkled beastly faces, and they looked every bit as horrid as Tash had first imagined in the darkness.
The thalarka had one withered arm and one blind eye, and stood hunched over so that this eye was level with Tash’s eyes though if he had stood straight he would have been rather tall. He wore a necklace with a sigil of reddish-black stones, and with his remaining good eye he studied Tash with a furious silent intensity.
‘Yes… yes,’ the old thalarka said to himself. ‘You will do.’
It was better to be told that he would do, than to be told he was perfectly and completely useless, Tash thought. He bowed his head and let his arms droop, but he let his arms droop less than he usually did when his elders spoke to him, and when he bowed his head he kept one eye peeking at what the old thalarka was doing.
‘You don’t appear to be witless,’ said the old thalarka, keeping his eye on Tash while picking up a complicated metal instrument from the table. The lamplight reflected prettily from it. ‘Can you talk?’
‘Yes, Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One,’ said Tash. ‘What does that thing do?’
The old thalarka raised the instrument to his eye and looked through it at Tash, making a clicking noise in his throat. He adjusted a knob on its side, took it down and adjusted another knob, then raised it to his eye again. Tash watched these proceedings with fascination. He had not really expected the old thalarka to answer his question, but after making a few more adjustments he said something that must have been an answer.
‘It uses certain little known properties of solar radiation to estimate the eckward component of the aetheric vibrations.’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Tash. ‘Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One,’ he added hastily after a moment.
‘Of course you don’t,’ said the old thalarka. ‘If you did, you wouldn’t be chained up under the Procurator’s tower waiting to be sacrificed. You would be the apprentice of one of my rivals, and I would have brought you here to persuade you betray them. Or perhaps to torture you to death, as a warning to your master not to interfere with my plans.’
‘I see,’ said Tash. ‘Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One.’
‘Don’t look so alarmed,’ said the old thalarka, setting down the instrument and picking up another one – still keeping his one eye fixed on Tash. ‘I have no interest in torturing you to death. It is quite clear that you are an ignorant peasant.’ This new instrument seemed to contain some kind of liquid, which could be ejected in a very thin stream through a small tube when the old thalarka pressed a lever. He did this once, spraying a little of the liquid into the air, and the many-legged creatures seemed to find it of great interest. They began to seethe more rapidly, and a few dropped from the walls to scuttle across the floor.
‘What is that?’ asked Tash, forgetting to add ‘Much-Knowing and Venerable Antiquated One’.
‘Aetheric essence,’ said the old thalarka. Slowly and carefully, he traced a circle with the oil on the floor between himself and Tash about a body-length across. The things with too many legs dropped to the floor in numbers and began to cluster along the circle, climbing on top of each other in their eagerness to be close to it. Tash could hear the grinding sound of their teeth in his bones. It was a very unpleasant sound. It began to smell oddly, like the taste Tash got in his mouth sometimes when he had been clouted over the head.
‘What are they?’ asked Tash.
‘Gnawers,’ said the old thalarka.
‘I have never seen them before,’ said Tash.
‘They are forbidden,’ the old thalarka replied. For the first time, he took his eye of off Tash, to do something fiddly with one of the most complicated looking devices while he consulted one of the books on his table. ‘The penalty for keeping them is death by fire.’
‘Aren’t you afraid I’m going to tell on you? No, you’re not. Oh.’ For the first time Tash considered that there might possibly be worse things than being sacrificed to the glory of the Overlord. The odd smell was stronger now, and the sound of the gnawers gnawing, without becoming any louder, grated more and more insistently on Tash’s mind so that he found it hard to think of anything else. He glanced at the door, considering and then instantly dismissing dashing to it and running off in the dark.
‘What do they gnaw?’ asked Tash after a pause.
‘Everything. Plants. Stones. Men. Even – if encouraged properly – the very tissue of space and time.’ The old thalarka carefully adjusted a knob on the device, glancing every now and again to the book. It was open to a picture, rather than rows of ideographs, Tash saw – some kind of tangle of circles within circles within circles that he wished he could look at more closely.
‘Is that what they’re doing?” asked Tash. ‘Much-knowing…’
‘Oh, you are too clever by half,’ said the old thalarka, amused. ‘Of course. Of course that is what they are doing.’ All the gnawers had clustered in a thick writhing mass around the circle of oil that the old thalarka had made, crawling over one another and sometimes biting through each other’s legs by mistake. The air above them was starting to waver, like the air above the smokeless fires that were kindled in the temples.
Tash asked the question then that had first popped into his mind when he had been brought into the room, but kept being pushed back when he thought of other questions. ‘What are you going to do to me?’
‘Don’t you worry about that,’ said the old thalarka. ‘It will be much more interesting than being sacrificed. Hold out your hands.’
‘Why?’ asked Tash. But he held out his hands, being accustomed to obeying orders. The old thalarka picked a length of silvery cord up from the table and tossed one end across to Tash.
‘You don’t want to let go of that. Just keep holding on, and everything will be fine.’ The old thalarka’s one eye glistened with excitement. He had kept hold of the other end of the cord, which now passed directly over the circle of gnawers.
Tash held the end of the cord tightly. It was comforting, despite everything that had been happened, to be told that everything would be fine if he just held on to it. ‘What does it do?’ he asked.
The old thalarka did not answer, but shifted from one foot to another in his enthusiasm, alternately gazing proudly at the seething gnawers and examining a dial on one of his devices. And a moment later Tash had forgotten that he had asked any such thing.
It was very like when the door had opened. There was a crack of bright light, but it was a crack in the air above the gnawers, rather than a crack in the wall. It swiftly got wider and brighter, and then everything inside it fell out of the world. That was the only way Tash could ever explain it afterwards. A little piece of the universe had been gnawed away at the edges, and it had fallen off into something else. The gnawers stopped gnawing; most of them scuttled backwards, while a few slipped over the edge of the void and were instantly whisked away.
Tash’s eyes refused to tell him what was going on in the space above the circle. It was black and piercingly white at the same time, and it seemed to be in ceaseless motion, but not in any direction that Tash had ever encountered before. The silver cord he held disappeared into one side of it, swaying gently, and reappeared on the other. At the edge of the void the air was shimmering, and seemed to be rushing swiftly like water in a millrace; but the space itself he could not manage to get his thoughts around.
‘Magnificent,’ exclaimed the old thalarka. ‘Exceptional. Look at how smooth the interface is! How stable the aetheric flux! If only Zmaar could see me now. If Tzorch knew how much I have surpassed him. The old fool!‘
The whole thing was so fascinating that Tash forgot to be terrified, and stopped attending to what the old thalarka was saying. He tugged at the cord, ever so gently, to see what would happen. Nothing did. It was as if the void was an immovable object. He stared into the absence of universe, willing himself to make some sense of it. The old thalarka was quite right: whatever else this was, it was certainly more interesting than being sacrificed.
‘Is that clear?’ asked the old thalarka sharply.
‘Yes,’ said Tash without conviction, having no idea what the old thalarka had just said.
‘I am sure the powers – inscrutable as They are – will find you an equitable exchange,’ said the old thalarka, his eyes glistening with triumph. ‘Do not let go of the cord.’
‘Y-‘ Tash began. The old thalarka gave his cord the tiniest of tugs, and Tash’s cord was pulled into the void with inexorable force, as if it was attached to a cart that had fallen over the edge of a cliff. Inwards, upwards, and otherwards, Tash was instantly and irresistibly dragged into a place where nothing made sense.
With Reallusion’s recent update to IClone to version 5.5, new functionality has been added in the ability to edit Terrain directly within the program. Reallusion suggests that if you wish to create entirely new terrain, you should purchase Earth Sculptor, their add-in terrain creator, to adjust the material masks for any changes you make. If, however, you don’t possess Earth Sculptor, it is still easy to create material masks for simple terrain projects.
This tutorial assumes a basic familiarity with both Photoshop and IClone. There are plenty of fine tutorials available demonstrating the use of each.
For this example, we will create a simple terrain with some rocky pinnacles in a desert landscape.
1. Setting up your Photoshop document
Load a terrain map in IClone, go to the Terrain tab, and export the height map to Photoshop. I chose the Butte terrain. The image you export will contain a greyscale height map of the terrain, but we are not interested in this. Exporting the file this way simply gives you the appropriate file type and size for the project.
Create five layers above the height map. I named them as follows: Background, Height, Green, Red and Blue. Once you have your new layers, you can delete the original height map, or keep it as a reference if you choose.
Fill the Background layer entirely with black (0,0,0). This layer will represent the lowest parts of your terrain for the height map, and the fourth material type in your material mask map.
2. Creating and exporting the height map.
The height map is simply a greyscale representation of height, rather like a contour map. The brightest, whitest parts of the map are the highest parts of the image, and the darkest parts are the lowest.
For this example, the flat desert plain is the lowest part of my terrain, so all I need to do is draw in my rocky pinnacles as highlights. (If you were drawing a more varied landscape, you might want to start with a dark grey background instead of black, and add shadows and highlights to create your terrain).
To draw the pinnacles, select the Height layer, set the foreground colour to white, and take a photoshop brush with soft edges and a size of about 100 pixels, and draw some white blobs where you want the pinnacles to be. The final result should look something like this:
For a more gradual terrain, you might use a brush with softer edges, decrease the opacity value of your brush, or adjust the brightness of the image. You could choose to paint in grey instead of bright white. You might paint on layers so you could adjust the opacity of each independently. The height and smoothness of the height map is also adjustable in IClone once it has been imported.
Since the pinnacles should be relatively steep-sided, the rapid change from low to high (black to white) is quite suitable.
I took a large soft-edged eraser, of about 50 pixels and an opacity of 25%, and used it to adjust the pinnacles, as below, in order to make them a little more interesting:
Now is a good time to save your Photoshop document. You should also export the Height Map, by selecting “Save As” from the File menu, and selecting .png as the file type.
If you go into IClone and load a terrain into your project, you can double click on the height map in the Terrain settings, and load in a new map. Select the height map file you just created, load it in, and you will instantly see the basic shape of your pinnacles. Here is mine with the Butte material map texturing it.
3. Creating the material mask map
This is the part that Reallusion would like you to purchase Earth Sculptor to do. I have never tried Earth Sculptor. It does look like a convenient tool, with a “what you see is what you get” style interface that allows you to paint textures directly on the terrain. Using Photoshop requires a degree of back-and-forthing, but seems reasonable for simple projects such as this one.
To achieve a material mask with Photoshop, we will colour in the areas that correspond to four different materials that will be present in the final terrain. It is possible to set what these materials are within IClone later. For this part of the exercise you only have to consider which parts of your scene will use different materials.
Green layer:
Lets start with the green layer. We will use it for the rock face material for the pinnacles themselves. Select the Green layer, and choose a large soft-edged brush (the same one you used to draw the pinnacles is fine). Use a pure green colour with the RGB value of (0, 255, 0).
Now, simply colour in solid green blobs covering the pinnacles on the height map you drew before. The result should look something like this:
Red layer:
Now for the red layer. This is going to be the stony ground immediately around the base of the pinnacles. Select the Red layer. Take a slightly smaller soft edged brush, set the foreground colour to Red (255,0,0) and draw some rings or semi-rings of red to show where this material will be.
There is no need to fill the interiors of the rings in,, although you can if you like–they should look like strange irregular doughnuts. The edges of the red and green should overlap at least a little.
Once finished, you should have something like this:
Blue layer:
This layer is going to be some cracked ground areas in the main flat area of the landscape. If you were working on a detailed project, you could consider including these depressions as part of the terrain map for added realism. Here, let us simply make them a different material, for interest sakes.
Select the Blue layer, and set your brush to Blue, with RGB colour settings (0,0,255), and draw some blobs in an empty space where they don’t overlap with anything you have previously drawn.
It should look something like this:
Exporting the Material Mask Map.
Export the file as a png file. Now you can go into IClone, and load the Material Mask layer you have just created.
4. Tidying up:
Not bad – you can see the terrain and the material map do match up – but the edges between the different materials are too blurry, especially around the base of the pinnacles, where the Red and Green layers meet. Let’s adjust that a little.
To fix the problem above, I went back to myPhotoshop document, and increased the size of the green blobs a little. I also positioned the green layer on top of the Red layer, instead of underneath, so all the green is showing.
Here is my material mask after tidying those edges. It doesn’t look very different – the green area is just a little larger.
After tidying, make sure the three colour layers and the background layer are the only ones visible, and export your material map again. You may want to save it under a different name, in case you want the original one later.
Import the new material map into IClone.
Here are the results of my change – much better!
Of course, your material map may require you to make slightly different changes to your material borders, but I’m sure this demonstrates how easily it can be done. You can go back and forth between Photoshop and IClone and many times as is necessary to adjust your material map to your satisfaction.
5. Applying textures:
You can read about how to change the materials of terrains and adjust the settings in the IClone help files. It is straight forward enough, and if you have already used IClone to change textures of props or characters, you should be familiar with the process already. With the Butte terrain, the material names correspond to the colour layers we used as follows:
Height Map 01 = Red
Height Map 02 = Green
Height Map 03 = Blue
Height Map 04 = Black
Here is what my terrain looks like after playing with the terrain settings and quickly applying some new textures to the map:
Obviously better results could be achieved with a more detailed height map and fine adjustments to the material map. The purpose of this tutorial is, however, to demonstrate that adjusting the material masking layer is certainly possible using Photoshop and well within the capabilities of users familiar with materials, textures and layers in Photoshop and IClone.
Josie held her face into the wind and felt the wild exuberance of it like she had so many nights before. This time there was something different in the air, she was sure. The faintest trace of mists that had hung over ancient hedgerows, winds that had whistled across heather and down the chimneys of stone cottages, smoke belched from factories and railway engines.
‘I can smell England,’ she told Miss Miles.
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Miss Miles. As usual, Josie could hear in her voice that Miss Miles was nervous about being on deck after dark, though she tried not to show it. ‘England is still hundreds of miles away.’
‘Yes, Miss Miles,’ said Josie and sighed. She did not want to get into an argument with her chaperone, in which Miss Miles would invariably be the sensible one and she would be the self-evidently silly one. At the very least Miss Miles would be upset enough to make her come inside. She was always looking for excuses to make Josie come in out of the wind and the sea spray.
‘Do you think father will remember me?’ said Josie.
‘Of course he will, dear,’ said Miss Miles.
‘It’s been almost ten years,’ said Josie. ‘I would think you could bring just about any girl of about the right age and colouring and say she was Josephine Furness. Do you think he could tell the difference?’
‘Don’t be silly,’ said Miss Miles, and gave Josie’s hand a squeeze. ‘Of course he’ll recognise his own daughter.’ But to Josie Miss Miles sounded more nervous than ever.
Josie had only the vaguest memories of her father, a whiskery thundercloud of tobacco and eau de cologne that would roll into her life from time to time and then roll out again as quickly as it had come, ‘on business’ to Perth or the Eastern Goldfields or some other place, until one day just before her fifth birthday he had gone away ‘on business’ to the other side of the world and never returned. And now Josie’s Mama was gone, and her dear sister Gerry who had always looked after her when Mama had one of her turns was gone, and she was going to England to live with the whiskery thundercloud who had abandoned them so long ago.
It had all been sorted out by post. It was impossible to tell, from the stilted words of her father’s letters, if he really wanted her or not. She had made Miss Miles read and re-read them to her on the voyage until she knew every word by heart. It was possible that her father was stricken with grief for the troubles that had happened to the family he left behind, and was desperate to make what amends he could by welcoming his lost daughter, but just could not find the words to say so. Or, it was possible that he found the whole matter a great bother and distraction from whatever he did ‘on business’ and had long ago put out of his mind that he had left a family in Australia. She sighed again.
‘It’s getting terribly cold,’ said Miss Miles, with a shiver. The wind had shifted somehow so that it seemed to blow full in their faces whichever way they were facing. ‘We should be getting inside.’
‘Can I wait out just a moment longer?’ said Josie.
It was a plea she made every night, and every night Miss Miles made the same reply. Miss Miles had been Gerry’s friend- she had been Narelle to Gerry, and was not so very many years older than Josie herself- and did not have the backbone an older chaperone would have had.
‘Just for a moment, Josie,’ said Miss Miles. ‘I’ll wait for you inside.’
‘Thank you, Miss Miles,’ said Josie, and turned to give her a smile.
‘Just one more minute, then you come inside,’ said Miss Miles. She walked away, but Josie could tell she was hovering in the doorway, watching her.
‘Go on,’ said Josie. ‘I’m not made of cut glass, you know.’
Josie heard Miss Miles mutter something about wilful girls and close the door. She was probably still hovering, just on the other side, but Josie did not care.
Josie could no longer smell England on the wind. It was all sea now, heavy with mermaid’s tears and codfish and cold dark water that had spent a few lifetimes circling the world far below the surface before returning to the air again just now. Josie’s face was bitterly cold and if she had been sensible she would have suggested going inside herself ten minutes ago. She refused to admit that she was cold. She let the spray sting her face, trying to recapture the trace of England that she had smelled before. Probably the wind had shifted, and was coming out of the open ocean now. It was certainly getting stronger, minute by minute.
‘If only I could be sure father would be happy to see me,’ Josie thought. Mama had never said a harsh word about Josie’s father, only looked terribly woeful whenever he was spoken of. Not that he was spoken of much. There had been letters when Josie had been younger, but they were the same sort of stilted letters father had sent after the tragedy, and they had stopped coming a long time ago.
The wind seemed to stop entirely for an instant, and start up again from another direction, a proper gale. This wind had the trace of some flower in it that smelled a bit like vanilla bush – it wasn’t vanilla bush, but it was something like it. Josie did not have time to think about what it could be, because at that moment the ship reared up like some fool of a thoroughbred and tipped her over the railing into the sea. Josie had no sensation of passing through the air but felt immediately plunged into the water.
‘I suppose I am going to die now so there was no use worrying,’ thought Josie, surprised at how unafraid she seemed to be. There was no question of swimming in the heavy coat and long skirts she had been wearing to keep off the cold on deck. Josie was not sure whether she was upside down or right side up. She tried to compose herself and say a prayer, but all that came into her head was ‘now I lay me down to sleep’ which was not particularly appropriate for being tumbled through the icy waters of the North Atlantic. Josie felt very sorry for Miss Miles, who would surely think it was all her fault that she had been lost overboard.
‘How silly I’ve been worrying about such a lot of silly things,’ thought Josie. She remembered in particular one time she had been beastly to little Ada Plummer over something that now seemed of no consequence whatsoever.
‘I hope it won’t be too horrible drowning,’ she thought. Then she was afraid, and thrashed desperately about without thinking at all.
Suddenly she was not in the water anymore. She did not feel desperately short of breath, and she did not feel particularly cold. For the merest instant she thought she might be in Heaven. She was lying on her back in soft grass, with sun on her face, and the air was filled with the smell of the flower that was something like vanilla bush- and also lemon blossoms, and jasmine, and three or four other pleasant things that she couldn’t identify.
‘But I can’t see,’ Josie thought. ‘Surely in Heaven I would be able to see.’ She put her hand in front of her eyes and felt the flutter of her eyelids to make sure that she did not just have her eyes closed. She was still blind.
‘And I wouldn’t be wearing these clothes’ she told herself. In Heaven she would have expected to be wearing flowing robes – or possibly nothing at all – but she seemed to be wearing the exact clothes she had been wearing on the deck of the Southern Cross, though they were now dry.
Josie sat up. She could hear birds singing, but not of any sort she recognised. She could also hear running water. She seemed to be only a yard or so from the edge of a stream. There were branches moving in the wind, but not right above her; maybe fifty feet away. The grass had little flowers in it, tufted ones shaped a bit like dandelions, and it was from these that the vanilla bush smell came from. The sun on her face cooled momentarily, then warmed again, and she imagined there must be little clouds scooting across the sky.
‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she said to herself, because she had to hear the sound of a human voice, and the only thing she had ever heard of before that was remotely similar to what had just happened to her was what happened to Alice when she fell down a rabbit hole.
Josie stood up carefully expecting to be aching all over, but was not really surprised to find that she wasn’t. She felt more cheerful than she had in a long time. It had been of course a very cheering surprise to find herself alive at all. But even if she had been in no danger before, she felt she would have found the place she was in cheering. Somehow she had fallen into spring out of winter. She took a few careful steps and heard the whirr of wings- some of the unfamiliar birds had decided she had come too close. A few steps more, and her outstretched hands brushed against a bush. It had soft fleshy leaves that were not smooth, but covered with down, and it smelled marvellous but strange, like the birds sounded. She brushed her arm up and down, side to side, to get a feel for how big the bush was, and as she did so there was the startled sound of a hoofed animal leaping up and cantering away. It sounded like a sheep-sized animal rather than a horse-sized one. She could smell it too, a little- a warm deserty smell that was not at all like sheep’s wool. The noise of the animal startled Josie in turn, and she laughed like she sometimes did when she had a fright that turned out not to be so bad after all.
‘Excuse me!’ she said.
The cantering slowed to a walk and then stopped. ‘What did you say?’ said a voice. It was a voice that seemed to belong to a girl some years younger than Josie, and one that could have made a good living singing on the stage.
‘I said excuse me,’ said Josie. It had not sounded to Josie as if there had been anyone else there, but she supposed there must have been. ‘I didn’t mean to startle it.’
‘I’ve never heard a Daughter of Helen say ‘excuse me’ before,’ said the voice. It really was a very pretty voice. ‘You have a peculiar way of talking’ it added cautiously.
‘You have a rather peculiar way of talking yourself,’ said Josie.
‘I didn’t mean to be disrespectful,’ said the voice. It sounded nervous and so did the animal, which took a few paces back and forth. Josie wondered if she was riding the animal and if in that case she was about to suddenly bolt off. The voice continued. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, and I don’t mean to be disrespectful, but you Daughters of Helen and Sons of Frank are usually too caught up in your own affairs as Ladies and Lords of Creation to care whether you startle gazelles or not.’
Josie hadn’t heard any sound of harness, or of anyone moving about, just the animal. She had been reminded of Alice and the looking glass ever since she arrived in this place, and thinking of the conversation Alice had with a fawn in the wood she asked a question she had never imagined she would ask anyone.
‘Are you a gazelle?’ she asked.
‘Yes’ said the voice. ‘My name is Alabitha. My mother is Falabitha, and my father is Caladru, who is the Prince of all the gazelles in this country.’
‘My name is Josephine Furness,’ said Josie. ‘You can call me Josie instead of Miss Furness if you like. My mother’s name was Annabelle, and my father’s name is Leonard. Pleased to meet you, Alabitha.’
‘I’m so glad you’re pleased to meet me,’ said the gazelle warily. ‘I suppose I’m pleased to meet you as well.’ There was a pause and a shuffling of cloven feet while Josie wondered which of the many questions she had she would ask, but Alabitha spoke again first. ‘Have you come from one of those faraway northern countries where men and animals get along with each other, Lady Josie?’
‘I’m from somewhere a long way off,’ said Josie. ‘It can’t be any of the countries you are thinking of since we don’t have any talking animals. I don’t know how you would get there from here.’
‘Oh’ said Alabitha. ‘Are you lost? Where are you trying to get to? I know all of the ways around here.’
Josie remembered the Red Queen saying that all of the ways were her ways, and for the first time since she arrived in this place felt uneasy. What exactly was she going to do? Where was she, and how was she going to survive in this place?
‘I don’t know,’ said Josie. ‘I expect I must be lost. I don’t know how I got here, or where here is.’
‘That’s too bad’ said the gazelle. She padded a little closer to her. ‘I don’t know how you got here either. I’m sure you weren’t here when I got here, and I’m sure I would have woken up when you got here – unless I’m getting a stuffed ear.’ The gazelle snorted and shook her head three or four times.
‘The last I remember I fell in the ocean’ said Josie. ‘And then I was lying next to the water here.’
‘I’ve never seen the ocean,’ said the gazelle. ‘It’s a frightful long way to the ocean from here. This is Lion’s Pool. See the carved stone where the water comes out of the rock?’
‘I don’t,’ said Josie. ‘I don’t actually see anything. I’m blind.’
‘Oh’ said Alabitha. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s not your fault,’ said Josie. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘I can tell you what the carved stone looks like’ said Alabitha. ‘It’s carved to look like a lion, as large as life. The Sons of Frank and Daughters of Helen made it long ago, to show that it was one of the places where the Lion appeared.’
‘The Lion?’
‘The Lion, you know, Aslan,’ said the gazelle, in the gentle but nervous way you remind someone who has had a bad shock of something that they really ought to know.
At the sound of the name Aslan Josie felt something like she had felt when she could smell England on the wind over the ocean. It was like the first breeze from a far country that was at the same time terrifying and familiar, where everything is larger and brighter and stronger than home, yet at the same time in some strange way more truly ‘home’ than the home she had always known. She felt as if she never wanted to hear the name again, and as if she could listen to it forever. At that moment the first wanting was stronger, so though she was burning to know exactly who this Aslan was and why it was so important, she could not bring herself to say the name.
‘Oh,’ said Josie.
‘It was years and years and years ago,’ said Alabitha. ‘Before anyone who is alive now was alive. Except for some of the trees, probably.’
‘Which direction is it?’ asked Josie. ‘The carving?’
Alabitha told her and she walked up the stream for twenty yards or so on soft springy grass to the place. There was a mass of granite meeting her feet at about a forty five degree angle and she had to clamber up it a few steps and reach forward to touch the carving. The surface was worn and rough but the shape of the Lion’s face was perfectly distinct. She could feel the whorls of the mane worked very clearly, the mouth closed in a calm and serious way and the eyes open wide. It seemed even larger than life to Josie, but she had never been close enough to a lion to touch one. She stepped back down onto the grass.
‘I think it is splendid that you can make such things,’ said Alabitha, who had followed her, and was standing closer to Josie than she had before. ‘It must be wonderful to have hands.’
The strangeness of everything was suddenly overwhelming. Josie could feel tears starting to well up.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ she said.
Alabitha shuffled awkwardly as if she was not used to humans being anything but imperious. ‘You will probably think of it,’ she said. ‘Daughters of Helen always do.’
‘I suppose so,’ said Josie, in a small trembling voice.
Alabitha fidgeted nervously some more.
‘You’re sure to be here for some important reason, or you wouldn’t have turned up at the Lion’s Pool. I’ll tell my father you’re here and he will send someone wise to talk to you, and they will figure out what it is.’
‘That sounds good,’ said Josie in the same small trembling voice, thinking of her own father. ‘Thank you.’ She managed to pull herself together and not cry until Alabitha had trotted off. Then it was all too much.
After a while nothing had changed, but Josie felt better for the crying. She took off her coat- which was much too warm for this place- and her boots and stockings, and lay down in a shady spot where she could feel the deliciously cool grass on her feet. She listened to the tinkling water and the wind in the leaves and the strange birds and listened out for any other creature, but there was nothing.
‘The wise gazelle will be here any minute, so I must be sure to stay awake,’ she thought, and laughed a laugh that was only a little a sob to think she was waiting on a wise gazelle. But she fell asleep anyway.
It may seem that we have not been writing very much over the last six months or so, and this is both true, in terms of publishing things, and not true, in terms of projects that have been trickling along the background. In my case, I have been working on “The Changing Man,” a teen fic novel set in the universe of “Misfortune“, and also on the second volume of Aronoke, More recently I have started a story about a traveller boy in the world of Tsai, called “Sky’s the Limit” (which may never see the light of day), whereas Chris has been diverted into completing his Narnia fan-fiction story, Bride of Tash.
Today I put up the first chapters of Bride of Tash at fanfiction.net, and also at Archive of Our Own, which is a fan fiction site frequented by our children. There are great drosses of trash to be found on fanfiction collection sites such as these, mostly in the style of “What would happen if Major Character X had the hots for Major Character Y?” but there are occasional gems to be found floating in this sea of mediocre slush.
Bride of Tash can also be found here, in the Freebies section, where it will be updated prior to other postings.
Tash had always been told he was perfectly and completely useless.
‘Perfectly and completely useless,’ his father would say, in a voice that was an instrument for making absolutely clear statements of mathematically precise fact. His brothers would nod their heads solemnly in agreement, and his sisters and mothers would creak wheezily from their alcoves to show that they also agreed that Tash was perfectly and completely useless.
Tash would bow his head and let his arms droop, as if to agree that what his father said was true.
‘And yet,’ Tash would think to himself, ‘I am not useless at all.’ And he would daydream of what he would do one day to prove to everyone that he was not perfectly and completely useless and lose track of what his father was saying.
It is not my intention to excuse anything Tash did or didn’t do on the grounds that he had an unpleasant childhood. I am not telling you this so that you will feel sorry for him, or so you can psychoanalyse him. It is only that if Tash hadn’t had an unpleasant childhood, he would have gone on to live a very ordinary life like his brothers and would not come into this story at all.
For the first four years of his life no one said a kind word to Tash. Four years among the thalarka is about the same as fifteen or sixteen of our years, for the world of the thalarka rolls sluggishly around their great green marrow-fat pea of a sun. In all that time no one told Tash that he was anything other than perfectly and completely useless.
In point of fact, he was useless. To live in the Plain of Ua requires stamina, to work all day in the endless fields of mud: planting grith, and fertilising grith, and weeding grith, and warding off the beasts of mire and mist that are eager to eat the tender young grith plants, and harvesting the spindly fruit of the grith that must be picked in darkness and husked and pickled the same night it is picked so it will not spoil. Tash was weak, and could not do any of these things for more than half an hour at a stretch. Furthermore, he was sickly, and was forever getting fevers that made him no good for any work at all for days on end. Worse, he was impatient and easily distracted, and long before he was too weak to work he would usually have wandered off to tease some many-legged crawling thing with a bit of stick, or make little dams and canals in the mud with the hoe he was supposed to be weeding with. And he was clumsy: he would trample the little grith plants, and pull them up instead of the weeds, and at harvest time he would get bits of husk in the pickling pot, and drop fruit in the mud, and stab his fingers on the prickly parts of the fruit so that they swelled up and were perfectly and completely useless for any more husking.
Once in each long year of the thalarka was the festival of Quambu Vashan, which was held in the city where the Procurator of the Overlord had her alcove, some days journey away on the edge of the Plain of Ua. There was always great feasting at the time of the festival of Quambu Vashan, and acrobats and clowns, though only old Raaku of all the villagers had ever seen them.
Two or three times a year the rain would stop and the sun would peer down through a canyon in the clouds. Then the thalarka in the fields would down tools and try not to look up at the great green marrow-fat pea of the sun and mutter proverbs. Tash would always look up at the sunlit sides of the canyons of cloud- which were almost too bright to see- and dream of what it must be like to be up there.
Eight times a year was the frenzy of the harvest, and after the harvest came the feasting, and after the feasting the coming of the Overlord’s tax collectors, to carry off rather a lot of the pickled grith that was left over from the feasting.
Two or three hundred times a year there would be some sort of holiday to break the round of working in the fields, with the proper dates for each holiday kept in order by the priests. There would be dancing in figures, and wagers on fights between caged mire beasts that were things like hairless weasels, and the priests would usually sacrifice something and make patterns on the walls of the priest-house with dripping bits from its inside.
Every day it rained.
The plain of Ua was a plain of grey mud, and the skies were of grey cloud, and the stick-like grith were grey, and the huts of the thalarka were grey. The thalarka themselves were also grey. The huts of the thalarka were dry inside with a fitful clammy dryness, in which lamps burned only with a feeble bluish flame. Tash thought fire was splendid, since it was not grey. That was how he managed to burn one of his hands rather badly just before the harvest. At this particular harvest he was needed more than usual, since his two oldest brothers had been married off into other villages since the harvest before, but because of his injury he ended up being even less useful than usual.
This was not long before the festival of Quambu Vashan. Besides clowns and acrobats, great numbers of sacrifices of a particular kind were always required at this festival, so it was the custom of the tax collectors of the Overlord to demand from each village they visited at the harvest an appropriate sacrifice. This would not be important if it were not that the sacrifices required for the festival of Quambu Vashan were thalarka of about four years of age. It was required that they have all their limbs intact, and have no obvious serious blemishes, but otherwise it was all the same to the Overlord whether they were useless or not. This part of the festival did not feature in Raaku’s stories, and the older thalarka of the village tended not to discuss it in the presence of younger ones.
‘We should give Tash to the tax collectors for sacrifice at the festival of Quambu Vashan,’ said Tash’s father to his mothers one night. ‘For he is perfectly and completely useless for anything else.’
A family that freely gave the sacrifice for the festival of Quambu Vashan would be noted on the books of the tax collectors and not be called upon to give another for a generation, during which time more useful members of the family suitable for sacrifice would be spared to work in the fields. It was also the custom in Tash’s village for the families who had not given a son or daughter to the tax collectors to bring presents to the family that had, and speak approvingly of them, so Tash’s father’s suggestion was quite a good one. It is only fair on Tash’s mothers to report that they did not croak their agreement immediately, not until Tash’s father had reminded them of these things.
So after the harvest when the tax collectors of the Overlord came to the village Tash was sent off with them.
‘You are being apprenticed to the tax collectors,’ Tash’s father told him. ‘You will leave with them when they have finished lunch.’
Tash did not realise why he had been sent off until he had been travelling the rest of that day with the tax collectors. He had spent most of the afternoon staring up at the roiling patterns of the clouds, imagining that they had hidden meanings. They were like secret symbols from a mysterious power in the sky sending orders to its minions in the mire, in a tremendously complicated language that never said exactly the same thing twice. The tax collectors had already collected four other young thalarka for the festival of Quambu Vashan. Three of them were girls, and Tash could not understand their speech – it was another part of Tash’s uselessness that he had a bad ear for women’s language – and the fourth was a boy. He was slow-witted and smaller than Tash, but he had paid more attention to the world around him.
‘Where do you think we will stop?’ said Tash as it started to get dark, meaning ‘where are we going to stop tonight’, but the slow-witted one took him at his word and said, ‘At the festival’.
‘Why did you say, ‘at the festival’?’ said Tash, since he was bored and couldn’t think of anything better to do than quibble with the slow-witted boy. ‘Why not say we’re going to the city of the Overlord’s Procurator?’
‘I don’t understand,’ said the slow-witted boy. He hung his head and drooped his arms in exactly the same way Tash had always done when his father told him how useless he was.
‘So, what does the festival have to do with it?’ said Tash impatiently.
‘I’m going to be a sacrifice at the festival,’ said the slow-witted boy. He said it in the same way that Tash’s brothers would say things like ‘I’m going to weed the south-eastern corner of the field today’.
Tash looked around at the others and thought that the tax collectors had treated all five of them in exactly the same way since they had left the village. Here they were, all walking in a line through the mud. And he realised that his father had very probably lied to him, and that he was going to be a sacrifice as well. For a while he could say nothing at all.
‘I seem to be in terrible trouble,’ Tash thought.
Over the next few days of tramping across the Plain of Ua Tash tried to escape many times, but the tax collectors were experienced collectors of sacrifices, and he had no luck. They went through nine more villages and collected nine more sacrifices for the festival of Quambu Vashan. Five of these were boys, and they were all slow-witted except for Zish, who was contrary.
‘I was opposed to the ways of the village because they were brutish and stupid,’ said Zish, in a way Tash had never heard before, that was bitter and mirthful at the same time, as if it pleased Zish more than anything to call the ways of his village brutish and stupid. ‘So I’m to be sacrificed now,’ he went on. ‘At least my blood will be of some use to the Overlord Varkarian, if it is of no further use to me.’
‘I’m sure there is some way to escape,’ said Tash. ‘If we work together’-
‘There is no way to escape,’ said Zish in his bitter mirthful way. ‘This is our destiny, Valgur’ – he had confused Tash with one of the other boys, whose name was Valgur, and took no notice of Tash’s efforts to correct him – ‘to serve the Overlord by being sacrifices at the festival of Quambu Vashan. Our destiny is inexorable. Our destiny is irresistible.’
Tash stopped listening to Zish as he talked more about inexorable destiny and the usefulness of being sacrificed. Tash was not sure whether this was what Zish really believed or not. Perhaps he did not know himself whether he believed it or not. Sometimes Zish talked in such a way that Tash thought he must be mad, and sometimes Zish told Tash that he was mad.
‘I have said the same thing to you a dozen times, Valgur, and you haven’t said a word back, just gone on staring at the clouds,’ said Zish. ‘You must be mad. It is no wonder you are only fit to be sacrificed.’
At any rate Zish was too contrary to be in any way helpful to Tash.
If he had not known he was going to be sacrificed at the end of it Tash would have had a lovely time. The long hours of walking were dreadfully wearying at first, but he felt himself growing stronger each day, and the sacrifices were fed twice a day with the freshly pickled grith the tax collectors had gathered, which was more and nicer food than Tash had eaten before. Each day he saw new villages, with new and different temples, and new fields cut into different shapes, and great coiling worms of rivers, and broad lakes spotted with rafts, and companies of spear-men and javelin-women marching on the highroads, their armour as silvery-grey as the lakes and spotted with metal spikes instead of rafts. He had seen nothing but his village and the fields immediately around it for his whole life and found he quite liked travelling.
At the edge of the Procurator’s city Tash’s party met up with several other parties of tax collectors. All the sacrifices were collected together and tied in a long chain to keep them tidy, ankle to ankle and wrist to wrist, and in this way they all shuffled together into the Procurator’s city. This city was made of grey stone, huts and palaces alike, and they were scattered together in no particular order over the plain, at first with plenty of space between them but then closer and closer together until they almost blocked out the clouds.
‘Do not let the splendour of this place fool you, Valgur,’ said Zish. ‘Here, too, the ways of the common people are brutish and stupid. But we are irresistibly called to a higher destiny. Inexorably!’
In the middle of the city was the Tower of the Procurator of the Overlord, ten or twelve times higher than any other built thing Tash had ever seen. It was carved on every side with images of mist-beasts and mire-beasts and thalarka, all larger than life, and all making gestures of obeisance to the sigil of the Overlord Varkarian, which was at the top of the tower and was worked in huge blue stones like fire.
‘Sweeter than narbul venom is it to serve the Overlord,’ intoned the most senior of the tax collectors, when the party could first see this sigil in blue stones like fire. All the more junior tax collectors dutifully intoned in unison that it was sweeter than narbul venom to serve the Overlord, and so did the long line of sacrifices. Strictly speaking Tash had no idea whether this was true or not, having never tasted narbul venom nor anything other than grith. But he intoned along with the others. They only had a few moments to look at the tower. Tash would have stared longer, but was dragged along as he was chained to everyone else. Then they were steered through a big black door and down a long ramp which stretched down into a chamber somewhere underneath the tower. The ramp ended somewhere in the middle of the chamber, which stretched off into darkness on every side, over-warm and evil-smelling. Some dozens of boys and girls for the sacrifice were there already, chained to posts set in the floor in groups of six or seven. On top of these posts there were lanterns, and every post that had thalarka chained to it had its lantern lit, with a dancing flame that was more green than blue. Tash’s long line of sacrifices was split up into groups of six or seven and chained to posts, and at the same time the lanterns on top of the post were lit. But there were still many many more empty posts with unlit lanterns.
The chamber was drier than any place Tash had ever been. You or I would have found this its one redeeming feature, but to Tash it was unnerving. The dryness hurt his ears and made his throat itch.
The thalarka who lit the lanterns was an old priest woman, bent over like a grith plant that has grown in too dark a shadow, and she lit the lanterns with a thin silvery stick longer than she was tall. Tash found the lighting of the lanterns very interesting and wondered if the old priest stayed down in the chamber all the time, waiting for a reason to light the lanterns, or if she went somewhere else. She seemed so completely a creature of the dark chamber that Tash could not imagine her being anywhere else. Tash ended up chained with a group of dim-witted boys around one of the pillars at the edge of the darkness.
As soon as all the sacrifices were properly chained a group of younger priests handed out something to eat that was not grith. They were cakes of something very much nicer than grith, though I dare say you or I would still have found them very nasty, and Tash devoured his greedily. So did all the others. When they had finished eating two more priests in more resplendent garments – still mostly grey, but shiny – came and gave speeches, one in male language and one in female language.
The speech that Tash heard went something like this:
‘Welcome in the name of the Overlord Varkarian. Truly it is sweeter than narbul venom, and more pleasant than the song of horn and cymbal, to serve the Overlord Varkarian. Truly are you favoured, for through your sacrifice the Overlord will be glorified. Truly will your sacrifice bring the inscrutable designs of the Overlord closer to their inexorable fruition. Though you may have been useless until this moment, very soon you will attain to a destiny greater than that of many a skilled spear-man or artifex. The part you play in the designs of the Overlord is a very great one.’
There was much more like this and Tash soon stopped paying attention to it. He was more interested in the costumes of the priests than in what they were saying. Their chest pieces were particularly splendid, much more splendid than the chestpieces the priests of his village wore when they sacrificed mire beasts. They were set with such marvellous stones, blue and green and other colours he could not name, and shone delightfully in the lanternlight.
The priest explained while Tash was not listening that they would be given things to eat as nice as the cakes, or nicer, for the next few days until the festival, and that they would be taken out in batches and cleaned and ornamented before the ceremony, and then again that theirs was a rare and glorious destiny.
Because he was not listening Tash was taken by surprise to be taken out and scrubbed and plastered with some sort of oil and hung with jangling bits of fine chain. The only good thing about the oil was that it made it quite impossible to tell how evil-smelling the chamber was. The smell of the oil stung and tickled and burned and it was almost impossible to think of anything else when you had been plastered with it.
‘What’s that you’ve done to your hand, lad?’ asked the young priest who was seeing to the oiling of the sacrifices. ‘Burnt it, eh?’ The young priest found this amusing. ‘Well, mind you keep it away from the lanterns now. Stick one little finger in the fire and you’ll be sizzled to a crisp in an instant, with that oil on you.’
Tash took respectful note of this advice.
Tash had been chained to a post on the other side of the ramp from Zish, and the dim-witted boys who were chained with him were too dim-witted to be any use talking to. He spent the night peering out into the further reaches of the chamber, wondering what was there and thinking of all the marvellous things he had seen in the last few days and what a pity it was that he would be sacrificed in a few more days. The sacrifices around him shuffled and wheezed and jangled in their sleep and the smell of the oil hung thick and heavy in the air. No one came and turned down the lanterns, but they seemed to dim of their own accord, and burnt with feeble flames that were greenish-grey, if such a flame were possible.
Tash found it impossible to get free of his chains. Even if he had, it would surely have been impossible for him to have forced his way through the heavy doors, past the watchers beyond, and made his way to somewhere safe.
‘It seems such a waste, when the world is so big and interesting, to be ending so soon,’ he thought to himself. And a black mood took him and he thought to himself: ‘Perhaps I am useless after all’.
Aronoke was left by himself with a deluge of disturbing thoughts to contend with. How could Ashquash be drugged? How could anyone do such a thing to her, here in the middle of the Jedi temple? Why would anyone want to?
And then the truth hit him. It was a punishment. Not a punishment for Ashquash, most likely, but a punishment for him. He had reported the strange message, reported all the odd things on his datapad. Ashquash was his friend and had been attacked in order to convince him that this was not a good idea.
He slept little for the rest of the night; would have liked to go running, but knew that was not wise. That Razzak Mintula would not have liked him to go alone, not just then. So he meditated instead. After a long time he was able to calm his thoughts enough to fall asleep.
He awoke quite late the next morning, but Ashquash was still not there. Razzak Mintula was not there either. Mintaka, the instructor who sometimes stood in for her was there instead.
“Razzak Mintula will not be here today,” Mintaka announced at the start of their first lesson. “She was up very late tending to Ashquash, who is sick. Ashquash has been taken to the medical bay, and she is fine, but she will not be back for a few days.”
Aronoke could feel the weight of Draken’s eyes and knew that Draken wanted to ask him all sorts of questions, but he refused to meet the other boy’s eye and firmly concentrated on his lessons.
“What happened to Ashquash?” Draken asked as soon as they went off to the refectory for the midday meal. “She seemed fine yesterday.”
“I don’t know,” said Aronoke. “She woke me up in the middle of the night, and Razzak Mintula took her to the sick bay. That’s all.”
“Oh.”
Aronoke did not want to tell Draken about Ashquash being drugged. Draken was his friend, but inclined to gossip with people from other clans. Aronoke thought that if he were Ashquash, he would feel ashamed and wouldn’t want the real story spread about.
But a few days later it became apparent to everyone that there was more to the story than merely Ashquash falling ill. Razzak Mintula was back by then and had reassured Aronoke that Ashquash was fine and was being decontaminated. Aronoke sensed that she was angry that something like this could happen to a student in her care. He felt the same sort of powerlessness himself.
“Today our schedule will be a little different from usual,” said Razzak Mintula as they gathered in the clan room after breakfast. “We will be having our first session in here today, so it will almost be like a kind of holiday. An investigator will be coming to ask some questions about Ashquash. He will want to know if you noticed anything the day before she was sick, because there is some concern that it might have been done on purpose.”
“On purpose?” asked Draken, his voice rising in his surprise. “Ashquash was poisoned?”
“That’s bad,” said Andraia, one of the smaller humans. “I don’t want to be poisoned!”
“It is bad,” said Razzak Mintula. “But you don’t need to worry. There is no reason to think that any of you will be poisoned, but you must be sure to answer the investigator’s questions carefully.”
“Yes, Instructor Mintula.”
When the investigator arrived, he was a man who looked largely human except for his skin, which was marked like that of a spotted cathar. He was accompanied by four droids and Aronoke wondered why he needed so many of them.
“This is Investigator Rythis,” said Razzak Mintula to Clan Herf, who sat cross-legged on the floor. “He has set up his office in our usual classroom, and will want to ask you all some questions, as we have previously discussed.” Even while she spoke, three of the droids began cruising about Clan Herf’s rooms, scanning everything.
The investigator was a dour looking man for a Jedi, Aronoke thought. Either he was of a naturally sombre disposition, or he was not pleased at having to interview a bunch of initiates. Perhaps though, to be fair, thought Aronoke, the Investigator judged the situation was serious enough to warrant such an attitude.
“This is a serious matter,” said the Investigator sternly. “I intend to determine how your clan-mate Ashquash was drugged, so we can find out who is ultimately responsible. I will take you one at a time to ask you questions. I want to know if you noticed anything unusual about Ashquash or anything else, so you should think about that while you are waiting for your turn.”
The way he spoke was very intimidating, and Aronoke noticed several of the smaller clan members edging closer to their fellows.
“Which one of you is Initiate Aronoke?” asked the Investigator. “I would like to speak to him first.”
He pronounced Aronoke’s name wrong, which hadn’t happened in some time.
“I’m Aronoke,” said Aronoke, by means of correction as he climbed to his feet. He met the man’s intense gaze steadily. This was just a Jedi investigator, here to help Ashquash, and Aronoke hadn’t done anything wrong. Besides, he wasn’t anywhere near as frightening as Careful Kras, and Aronoke was determined to show the smaller ones that they need not be afraid.
“Come this way,” said the Investigator, gesturing towards the door that led outside.
“Yes, Investigator,” Aronoke said.
He followed the man across the hall into the classroom on the other side of the hallway.
“You are Ashquash’s room mate?” asked the Investigator, and Aronoke agreed that this was so. “This whole situation seems somewhat irregular,” grumbled the investigator disapprovingly, and Aronoke wondered what he meant. Because Ashquash was a girl? Because they were different species? Because both he and Ashquash had unusual backgrounds and had come late to the Jedi Temple?
The Investigator did not explain himself, but lots of questions followed, concerning what had happened the night Ashquash was drugged. Aronoke did his best to answer all of them. How had Ashquash woken him up? Had she ever done so before? Did she usually touch him like she had when she had shaken him? How did she usually behave around him? What sort of sparring did they do? Did they ever go sparring together alone? Did they go out in the middle of the night?
Aronoke began wondering if initiates did all these strange sorts of things more often than he realised. He also found himself questioning exactly what it was the investigator was investigating.
“Do you have any idea why someone would want to drug Ashquash?” the investigator asked.
“I thought it might be part of the unusual things that sometimes happen to me,” said Aronoke hesitantly. “I thought it might be a punishment, because I did not do what the message in one of them told me to do, because I knew it was wrong.”
“Unusual things?” asked the investigator. “What message?”
Aronoke was surprised, thinking that the investigator would have known about all that.
“I reported all of them, either to Master Insa-tolsa, or Master Altus, or Razzak Mintula,” he said. “Unusual things happen to me sometimes. Someone is trying to manipulate me. I thought what happened to Ashquash might be a punishment because I refused to do as I was directed.”
“These incidents will have to be recovered from any reports that were made by your superiors,” said Investigator Rythis primly, his fingers flickering over his datapad. He seemed annoyed with Aronoke, like this information was not helpful at all.
Aronoke shrugged. He tried to explain everything in detail, but by the end of it he still felt that the investigator was not pleased with him. Whether the investigator had expected to find a connection between Aronoke and the drugging, or thought Aronoke was purposefully concealing things was not obvious.
“What was it like?” Draken asked, he face alight with anticipatory relish, when Aronoke returned. “Was he scary?”
“No, not really,” said Aronoke calmly. “He just asked me lots of questions.”
“What about the droids? They didn’t torture you did they?”
“No, of course not!” said Aronoke. “There was one taking notes. The others seemed to be off scanning things.”
Draken was caught between relief and disappointment.
“He can’t be much of an Investigator then,” he muttered, “if he’s not as scary as he seems. Really it’s an affront to Ashquash to send somebody so tame. How can he be a proper investigator?”
“You can’t have it both ways you know,” pointed out Aronoke. “It’s either scary and then you’ll be scared because he’ll probably want to talk to you next, or it’s not scary and it’s boring.”
“Hm, I guess,” said Draken, unconvinced.
The investigation did not result in any great revelation that Aronoke ever learned of. No culprit was brought to justice, although eventually it was revealed that Ashquash’s toiletries had been tampered with, and that this was how the drug had been administered. Aronoke looked at his own toiletries with new distaste. He had never been fond of them – the water was bad enough by itself – and now he was even less inclined to use them.
It was difficult to relax and be calm after that. He felt angry and unsettled. More and more it seemed that what had happened to Ashquash was his fault, if only indirectly. If he had not been here, than would this have happened to Ashquash? He didn’t think so. It wasn’t fair. She only had this one chance to succeed at being Jedi, like he had, and because she was Aronoke’s friend it was being taken away from her.
It would be better, Aronoke reasoned, if he had no friends. He knew this was not right. After all, clan-mates were supposed to work together to solve problems. But most of Clan Herf was so small. What good would it do to involve the little kids in his problems? What if one of them was hurt next? That thought was unbearable. He wished Master Altus was here to talk to. That in itself was pointless, because it seemed likely that none of this would have happened if Master Altus was here. Aronoke knew he should try to be brave and independent, even if he felt out of his depth.
Ashquash came back a week later, quiet, withdrawn and grumpy, in many ways reverted to the angry uncommunicative person whom Aronoke had first met. Aronoke took care to behave like he had done then. He sat quietly and did his lessons nearby, not ignoring Ashquash, not paying undue attention to her, but focusing on his reading.
Ashquash sat on her bed and did nothing for a long time.
“I don’t think I’m going to make it,” she said finally. Sadly.
“Don’t say that,” said Aronoke, shocked. “I don’t see any reason why you shouldn’t make it. You’re smart and strong as anyone else.”
“Someone doesn’t want me to,” said Ashquash. “It’s obvious. They don’t want me to succeed, so they did this to me. And right now, it’s only the stubborn, angry bit of me that wants to stick it through, just so that they don’t get what they want.”
Aronoke was overcome with remorse.
“That’s not necessarily true,” he said. “It is possible that some Jedi masters think that you shouldn’t be an initiate, but that doesn’t mean they would go so far as to sabotage your efforts. And for every one that thinks you shouldn’t be given the opportunity, there must be even more who think you should, otherwise you wouldn’t be here at all.”
“Hrm,” said Ashquash, unconvinced.
“And it might not be because of you at all,” said Aronoke, ploughing on despite his better judgement. “Strange things have been happening to me practically since I got here. Especially since Master Altus left. Weird things keep appearing on my datapad. A strange holotransmission was delivered by a droid, trying to manipulate me. I reported them all, and it seems to me that this attack on you might have been a sort of punishment. I mean, you are my room-mate, we are friends, right? Maybe you got hurt so that next time I listen to what it says.”
Ashquash looked up at that, warily.
“I reported those things to Master Insa-tolsa,” said Aronoke. “He said they are trying their best to fix them. I really hope it won’t happen again.”
“Why would they want to manipulate you so badly?” asked Ashquash critically. “To do what? Because you’re so special?”
“Because I’m different,” said Aronoke. “I…there are some different things about me.” He thought for one wavering moment that perhaps he should tell her about his back, but it was too frightening, too strange. Too much to burden Ashquash with.
“I am different too,” said Ashquash.
“Yes, that’s true,” said Aronoke. “I don’t know why they would want to manipulate me specifically,” he continued, semi-truthfully, for although he knew it was almost certainly something to do with his back, he didn’t know why his back was so important. “But it’s obvious that they do, because of the message and the other things that have happened.”
“Huh,” said Ashquash.
“I was thinking,” Aronoke said, “that if it’s true that you were hurt because of me, than perhaps it might be better if you were not my room-mate anymore.”
Ashquash looked up at him. Her complexion darkened like a sandstorm was rolling across it. Her eyes darkened and her young face settled into hard, tense lines that made her look much older. Her anger was a tangible, frightening thing.
“I just don’t want you to be hurt because of me,” he explained hurriedly.
“Maybe it would be better,” said Ashquash tightly.
“We could pretend that we had argued,” said Aronoke. “That’s not true of course. We would know we hadn’t argued. We haven’t argued, have we? But it might be enough to keep you safe.”
“How will we decide which of us should change rooms?” said Ashquash flatly, suddenly looking drained and tired instead of angry. Aronoke felt sick, because he didn’t want to travel this path. Wouldn’t the voice have won a victory if he did? But the alternate path seemed impossible. He wanted to protect his clan-mates from this mess, not get them further involved. They were too small to have to deal with such a big problem, he reasoned. Or had too many problems of their own, like Ashquash.
“It’s okay, I don’t mind changing,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to do anything – it’s because of me that this happened, so I should be the one who changes.”
Ashquash said nothing for a long moment.
“Alright, go then,” she said, bitterly.
Aronoke nodded, got to his feet, and went to Razzak Mintula’s room.
“Yes, Aronoke, what is it?” asked Razzak Mintula wearily.
“Razzak Mintula, can I change rooms?” asked Aronoke.
She looked at him for a long moment, studying his expression. “Perhaps that mightn’t be such a bad idea,” she said, finally. “I am reluctant however, to swap you with anyone else at this time. There is an empty room across the hall, not within the clan rooms, that you can use. Although it doesn’t have the same facilities that your current room has.”
“That doesn’t matter. It will be fine,” said Aronoke.
It was a small matter to move his stuff across to the new room. The isolation of the chamber made it easier to think of himself as being separate. It was the perfect opportunity to divorce himself from his clan-mates, at least in appearance. He must be strong, must not let himself be made miserable or angry by this self-imposed distance, because then the voice would have won. He had to be calm and resilient. He had to be a Jedi.
There is no emotion, there is peace.
It was difficult. There was an undercurrent of sadness that Aronoke found impossible to erase entirely. He could control it while he was meditating, but every time that Draken asked him to play a game, or any of the little kids were particularly forthcoming, he forced himself to be friendly but stand-offish and it came back. Draken seemed puzzled and hurt, and the little kids looked at him oddly like he had been replaced by someone who was not really him.
Just when he had felt he could really belong, Aronoke thought, something happened to force him apart again. Was that what it was always going to be like? Eternal isolation?
Nevertheless, Aronoke persevered in his self-imposed solitude for a couple of weeks. Buried himself in his lessons. Increased the amount of time he spent running and meditating and did a great deal of extra reading to pass the time. Walked down to the pool regularly to look at the water. It was difficult to occupy his mind with enough things to keep himself from feeling depressed, although all the meditation helped a lot. He felt he was getting on top of it most days.
One day he was down at the edge of the pool looking down into the deep water introspectively when suddenly Ashquash was there with him.
“Why do you always look at it like that?” she asked. She seemed tense, irritable.
“Because I don’t like it,” said Aronoke immediately. “It makes me feel uncomfortable, so I look at it to help me get used to it.”
He was going to say something else, but all at once, Ashquash gave him a sharp push. For an instant he thought there was a chance he could regain his balance, but in actuality it was hopeless. Windmilling wildly, he toppled into the deep pool.
The water closed over Aronoke’s head, green and smothering. The world of air was abruptly cut off and he could hear nothing except the rising bubbles around him. Even then, he did not immediately panic, but restrained his fear with barely tethered threads of will. He held his breath and repressed the urge to scream.
But he was sinking. Running out of air with every passing second. His terror was rising uncontrollably.
Kick off your shoes, countered the trying-to-be-calm voice in his head. Undo your belt, slide out of your robe. You can’t swim in all these clothes.
He tried, but his gestures were too jerky, too hurried. The robe came half off and rose over his head so he could not see. One arm was twisted somewhere behind him, caught in his sleeve. He was stuck.
Sinking further, faster. Couldn’t move, couldn’t swim in all these clothes.
What if Ashquash was standing up there, angry and cold, dispassionately watching him sink? What if Ashquash had planned this all along?
His fear exploded, unrestrained. Aronoke panicked completely, thrashing and struggling. He only succeeded in tangling himself more thoroughly and disorienting himself so he no longer knew which way was up. He gasped in half a mouthful of water. Coughed it out. Couldn’t breathe. Reflexively he gasped again and burning water flooded his lungs.
He was drowning, a tiny detached part of him realised. This was how it would ignominiously end. This death seemed a lot worse than being decapitated by a lightsaber.
Something grabbed his shoulders none too gently, tugging at him, dragging him through the water. Irrationally he fought, but the hands were strong and insistent. Then his head broke the surface, and he gasped for air, spluttering and coughing. Thrashing uncontrollably.
“Be still!” said Ashquash crossly, but Aronoke was still caught in the blind throes of panic and struggled wildly. She slapped him hard across the face. He subsided a little in shock and found himself pushed towards the edge. He clawed at it and clung to it, wheezing and gasping.
“What are you doing?” came an irate voice from far across the pool. “Stop that immediately!”
Aronoke struggled to climb out, but floundered ineffectively, unable to find the strength. Then Ashquash was there at the top, holding out her hand, and with her assistance he rolled up over the side and knelt there for long moments, coughing and gasping, retching up great gouts of water.
“You initiates are not supposed to be in the pool,” said someone closer now, an Aqualish instructor, coming over in the company of a warden droid. “It has been reserved for Clan Vequish’s use for the entire afternoon.”
“Yes, we know,” said Ashquash petulantly.
Aronoke could not speak, was too busy coughing still.
“You had better leave and return to your quarters at once,” said the instructor.
Can’t he see that I’m half drowned, thought Aronoke. His fear had been replaced by anger. Anger at Ashquash, anger that she had done this to him, anger that the instructor was berating him when none of this was his fault. Was this Ashquash’s repayment for what had happened to her? She thought it was his fault?
“Yes, yes, we’re going,” said Ashquash insubordinately. Aronoke made a brief sign of acquiescence, but still did not want to speak. He was too angry. It was only when they were moving off down the hallway that lead to the elevator banks that he felt he could talk.
“What did you want to go and do that for?” he snarled.
“It seemed to me it wasn’t helping,” said Ashquash defensively.
“Wasn’t helping?” Aronoke had lost it, he realised. Heard the anger in his own voice.
“All the looking,” said Ashquash.
“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you should push me in.” Aronoke could feel his hands were shaking badly. But he was alright, he thought. He wasn’t dead. He had fallen in and panicked, and he wasn’t dead. That counted for something. Maybe Ashquash was right. And as angry as he might be, he was also relieved that she had pulled him out, was not part of the conspiracy, but had acted, it seemed, through a misguided impulse of her own.
He took calming breaths, interrupted by more coughing. Recited a platitude in his head. Slowly felt like he was coming back under control.
“Just don’t do it again,” he said firmly.
Ashquash stopped, looking wild and a little fey. “I should never have said for you to do it,” she said.
“What?” asked Aronoke, confused.
“For us to argue,” said Ashquash. “I shouldn’t have said it.”
And she turned and ran away.
Aronoke stood there dripping a long moment, confused. Was that was this was all about? She was angry with him for leaving? But he had explained beforehand that it wasn’t real…
Feeling more confused and upset than angry now, he made his way back to his room and changed into some dry robes. He had not yet put the wet ones in the laundry chute when Draken rang the door. When Aronoke opened it, Draken’s eyes immediately travelled to Aronoke’s hair and the puddle of wet clothes on the floor.
“Your hair’s wet,” he noted. “And, um, your robe. But I guess you know that. Do you know where Ashquash is? I can’t find her.”
“She ran off,” said Aronoke wearily. “I expect she just needs a bit of breathing space, and she’ll be back.”
“What?” said Draken. “What do you mean she ran off?”
“I was down by the pool, looking at the water, and she pushed me in,” said Aronoke. “Then I was angry, and told her not to do it again, and she ran off.”
“She pushed you in?” asked Draken. He looked at Aronoke stupidly and stared again at the wet robes. “I hope she comes back soon,” he said finally.
“I expect she will,” said Aronoke.
But Ashquash had not returned by the evening meal and when Aronoke went to ask Razzak Mintula about it, he found Mintaka was in the office instead.
“Razzak Mintula’s been called away,” she said, and Aronoke immediately assumed it was something to do with Ashquash’s disappearance. He hoped Ashquash had not done something too crazy, or gotten herself hurt. He spent the rest of the evening sitting in the common room, studying his reading tasks, but Razzak Mintula and Ashquash did not return. Finally he composed his thoughts and went to bed, hoping everything would be cleared up by morning.
But in the morning he was woken up very early by Instructor Mintaka. “Do you know anything about where Ashquash might be, Aronoke?” she asked. “She is not in her room this morning, and it does not look like her bed has been slept in.”
“Oh,” said Aronoke stupidly. “But Instructor Mintula… I assumed…” he stopped to organise his thoughts and began again.
“I argued with Ashquash yesterday,” Aronoke said, “when I was coming back from the swimming pool. I was angry because she pushed me in. I am… scared of the water. And I didn’t say much, only that she must not do it again. But she was upset and ran off. I assumed that Razzak Mintula had gone off because of her, but… I am stupid,” he finished awkwardly, beset with self-loathing.
“You are not stupid, Aronoke,” said Instructor Mintaka. “Do you have any idea where she might have gone?”
“No, I have no idea,” said Aronoke wretchedly. Ashquash missing, wandering around the streets of Coruscant by herself? Surely she couldn’t get far with all the security. “I’m sorry, Instructor Mintaka. I should have said something yesterday.”
“I’m sure everything will be fine,” said Instructor Mintaka. “I must go and report her disappearance. You should go back to your regular schedule.”
“Yes, Instructor.”
After that, Aronoke decided that he should talk to Master Insa-tolsa about the whole affair and called him by holocommunicator to make an appointment.
“I have just been talking about you, Aronoke,” said Master Insa-tolsa enthusiastically when he answered. “I am here with Master Parothis and we were discussing the possibility of taking you and several older members of your clan on some excursions to various parts of Coruscant, rather like Master Altus did with you. We think such excursions might be of considerable benefit to your education.”
“I’m sure that my clanmates would be very excited to undertake such a thing, Master,” said Aronoke, “but…”
“Excellent. It will be several weeks before the arrangements can be properly made, of course. Master Parothis has several interesting ideas for locations we can visit. Well, thank you for your call, Aronoke. I will be in touch with you as soon as everything is organized, to let you know the details.”
“Yes, Master, but…” said Aronoke, but the ithorian had already closed the connection.
He could have called back, but Master Insa-tolsa was probably still speaking to Master Parothis and he did not want to be a nuisance. Instead he left a recorded message asking for an appointment, and later the confirmation came back that he could visit Master Insa-tolsa the next morning in the Master’s chambers.
The next morning, however, there was a new item on Aronoke’s schedule, a request from a Jedi Master Skeirim.
“Initiate Aronoke,” said the message. “I request that you come and speak with me after the conclusion of your evening meal today. I will arrange for you to be collected from your clan rooms. Please be aware that your Instructor has been properly informed regarding this meeting.”
Though that would be easy to say and not do, thought Aronoke. He sent back a message saying that he would, of course, be available to attend. A mere initiate did not deny the request of a Jedi Master. Then he went to check that whoever was currently in charge was aware of the meeting.
“Yes, I received the proper request,” said Razzak Mintula, who had arrived back. “By all means, go and speak to Master Skeirim. I assume he wants to ask you some questions about Ashquash.”
“Ashquash?” asked Aronoke, confused.
“Yes, Master Skeirim is the Jedi who brought her here,” said Razzak Mintula, “much like Master Altus brought you. He is not always stationed here at the temple. He is a colleague of Master Altus’s, involved in researching and retrieving artifacts from distant parts of the galaxy.”
“Oh,” said Aronoke. “Thank you, Instructor.”
The next morning, Aronoke went to see Master Insa-tolsa. He had not visited the ithorian master’s chambers before. They were dim and green, a tribute to the forest world that he came from.
“Your chambers are very peaceful, Master,” said Aronoke, looking around.
“I find them so,” said the ithorian. “These chambers are supposed to be transient, not personalised. But the Jedi Council has not seen fit to station me anywhere else for many years, so I feel that I may take some liberties.”
“That seems quite reasonable to me,” said Aronoke.
“Master Parothis and I have decided that the first of your excursions will take place in a few weeks time,” said Master Insa-tolsa. “We are considering a number of different venues and I will tell you where we are going closer to the actual day.”
“I am sure it will be very educational, Master,” said Aronoke. “But I would like to talk to you about something else.”
“Of course,” said Master Insa-tolsa.
“You remember I told you about the droid with the holotransmission, Master?” said Aronoke. “And then there was another strange article on my datapad, which Razzak Mintula reported to you?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Master Insa-tolsa gravely. “Has something else happened?”
Aronoke related the events surrounding Ashquash’s drugging, surprised that Master Insa-tolsa didn’t already know about them.
“It is unfortunate I was not made aware of this,” said Master Insa-tolsa gravely. “I should have been informed.”
“I’m sorry, Master,” said Aronoke contritely. He had assumed Master Insa-tolsa would have been told by someone else.
“It is not your fault, Aronoke. It is obvious that there has been some breakdown in communication within the temple, either accidental or intentional. In light of the other incidents you have reported, this one could be seen in a different light.”
“Yes, I thought at once that it might be a sort of punishment. Ashquash is my room-mate and my friend. She is not very social, but we do a lot of things together, like studying and sparring. I thought she was getting better recently, much better than when she arrived. But then that happened…”
Aronoke could hear the emotion creeping into his voice. He found Ashquash’s drugging affected him more than any of the fights or deaths had back on Kasthir. Now, those scenes were distant and disjointed like dreams, as muted as if he kept those memories sealed in an air-tight box. He swallowed and tried to speak more calmly.
“I decided it might be better if I changed rooms. So whoever is trying to manipulate me might think Ashquash and I were not friends any more. So she would be safe. I know, Master, that I should be able to share my problems with my clan-mates, because that is part of being a clan, but most of them are so little, Master. I don’t want them to get hurt. So I thought that maybe separating myself was a better way. Then yesterday, I was at the swimming pool looking at the water, and Ashquash came and pushed me in.”
“You don’t like the water,” said Master Insa-tolsa, “if I remember correctly.”
“Yes, Master. Ashquash pushed me in. I got tangled up and thought I was drowning. Then Ashquash pulled me out again. I was angry with her. I did not say much, only that she should not do that again, but she was upset and ran away. I thought she would come back, but now she has gone missing…”
“Oh dear,” said Master Insa-tolsa with some concern. “That is worrying, although I am sure that efforts are being made to find her and that she will be recovered soon.”
“Yes, Master, but I don’t know what to do. I separated myself to keep people safe, and now Ashquash is, if anything, less safe. I think she was unhappy that I left. I did explain the reasons to her beforehand. But maybe because of the drugs, she was not able to cope very well just then.”
“Aronoke,” said Master Insa-tolsa, “You have only been here a very short time, and as you know, your unusual biology has put you into an awkward position amongst your clan mates. You should not have concerns like these at this stage of your training. It is too much.”
“But these things keep happening. How can I not be involved?” asked Aronoke.
“You should do as you have been doing. You must continue to report these things when they happen. You should not attempt to deal with such difficult issues yourself,” remonstrated Master Insa-tolsa gently. “You should not have the burden of such a great responsibility. These things are not your fault, and you must trust us to deal with them on your behalf.”
“But nothing seems to work! They just keep happening! What if next time something even more terrible happens?” asked Aronoke fretfully.
“You must not think that the Jedi Council is doing nothing to attempt to alleviate these problems,” said Master Insa-tolsa calmly. “A great deal has been done, that you, as an initiate, do not see from your protected place in the training halls. Neither is it appropriate that you are burdened with all the details, as you should be free to concentrate upon your studies. Unfortunately everything that has been done thus far has been of little avail. The perpetrator of these deeds must be someone of considerable power, cunning and influence, or they would not have been able to remain at large for so long.”
“Oh,” said Aronoke, humbled by the thought that his problems had stirred up so much trouble.
“Now I suggest that you go back to your clan and attempt to continue with your training as if none of these things had happened,” said Master Insa-tolsa. “I will make new efforts to see that the person who is manipulating you is discovered and an end put to these provocations.”
“Yes, Master,” said Aronoke. “Thank you.”
Nevertheless, he did not feel very comforted when he returned to his clan rooms. Either the Jedi Council was incompetent, or his enemy was as powerful as Master Insa-tolsa suggested. Neither option was at all reassuring.
Master Skeirim’s padawan was a sleek human girl who arrived to collect Aronoke very promptly after the evening meal. Aronoke had only just got back to his room.
“Initiate Aronoke?” said the padawan. “I am Padawan Telarfani. I am supposed to show you to Master Skeirim’s chambers.”
“Yes, Padawan,” said Aronoke, and followed her out along the hall.
“I was not expecting you to be so tall,” said Padawan Telarfani smiling and looking up at Aronoke. He was taller than she was, he realised belatedly, and he was still growing. He would be taller still some day. It seemed strange. “I have some good news for you,” continued the Padawan. “They have found your clan-mate, Ashquash. She will be brought back to the Jedi temple soon.”
“Oh, that is good news,” said Aronoke, relieved. “Is she alright?”
“She is unharmed,” said Padawan Telarfani. “I thought you would like to know before your meeting with Master Skeirim, since I am certain you and your clan-mates must be worried about her.”
“Yes, we have been very worried,” said Aronoke. “Thank you, Padawan.”
She smiled, making a minor gesture of respect, which Aronoke returned.
Padawn Telarfani led Aronoke to a door which opened, not into a chamber, as he had expected, but into an elevator. She gestured him inside but did not get in herself. It was a long ride up to the top, and Aronoke wondered where it was going.
When he got out, it was immediately apparent that he was in one of the Jedi Temple’s towers. The walls of the chamber were lined with banks of data crystals, although one was given over to a large curved window showing the dark cityscape beyond. Ablaze with lights, streams of traffic seethed constantly past.
Jedi Master Skeirim was outlined against the window, a tall and imposing dark-skinned human man.
“Initiate Aronoke,” he said. “Come in. I am Master Skeirim. You will probably understand better why you are here if I tell you that I am the one who sponsored Ashquash’s initiation at the Jedi temple.”
“Yes, Master,” said Aronoke. “Instructor Mintula told me.”
Master Skeirim nodded and continued.
“As I am sure you have realised,” he said, “you and Ashquash have certain similarities which led to your being placed together. You are both unusual students. You have had atypical backgrounds and you are older than the majority of initiates who are accepted into the temple. You suffer unique problems and difficulties that other students do not encounter.”
“Placing you together was something of a risk that I hoped would pay off. There are obviously many ways in which this could have gone awry, but, to be honest, there was no one else who was deemed suitable to share a room with Ashquash because of her problems. I was hoping that here in the Jedi Temple she would be able to adapt to her new situation, that she would come around to the teachings and philosophy and learn a new path which might lead her through life. It has always been uncertain, perhaps unlikely, that she would succeed, and yet thus far the experiment has continued.”
“Now, however, she has run away. She has been recovered and will be returned to your clan rooms shortly. I am hoping that you, as her room-mate, might have some insight to offer as to why she left. I am worried that we are losing her, and should that be the case, her future is dark and bleak. I do not wish that to happen if there is any way in which it might be prevented.”
Aronoke listened to this speech with some relief, glad that someone had such a positive interest in Ashquash’s affairs.
“I think Ashquash was doing a lot better,” he said, when Master Skeirim looked at him expectantly and gestured that he should speak. “When she first arrived, when we first became clan-mates, she was very angry. I know about spice addicts, because I was brought up by one when I was quite small. So that didn’t worry me much, because I knew it was just the drugs. At first, Ashquash was very quiet. We didn’t talk much, just a bit, but before long she began to do things with me. To sit and study, to come and practice sparring during our free time. Later we did a lot more things together. We would go over our lessons, discuss some of the moral stories that we had trouble understanding. Things like that.”
“That is what I hoped would happen,” said Master Skeirim. “Do you know anything about what happened to upset that?”
Aronoke nodded. “I don’t know if this is all true,” he said, a little shyly, “but it’s what I immediately suspected when Ashquash woke me up and wanted to go sparring in the middle of the night. I thought she was drugged right away, because I’ve seen people behave like that before. I thought it might be to do with the strange things that have happened to me here in the Jedi Temple, practically since I arrived. Master Altus knows about them, and so do Master Insa-tolsa and Instructor Mintula. I reported everything to them. Strange articles appear on my datapad. I got a holotransmission message from a droid trying to feed me information. Someone is trying to manipulate me. I reported the holotransmission message shortly before Ashquash was drugged. I thought she might have been targeted as a way of punishing me. Because she’s my friend. It seems an obvious way to get at me. To hurt my room-mate.”
“I see,” said Master Skeirim. “I will have to talk to Master Insa-tolsa and Instructor Mintula and see if they can share their knowledge of these incidents. Aronoke, do you know why Ashquash ran away?”
“Yes,” said Aronoke. He related in some detail all the events that had led up to Ashquash’s disappearance, up to the incident at the pool. “I did not say anything much,” he concluded, “only that she should not push me in again, but she was upset and ran away. I think she was angry that I had left her alone.”
Master Skeirim was nodding. “Thank you, Aronoke. I can see it is not easy for you to talk about these things, but they will be of great assistance to me in helping Ashquash. I would ask a favour of you. I would ask you to help Ashquash as much as you can, like you were doing before things began to go wrong. It would be best, I think, to put these incidents behind us and to try to make things just as they were previously.”
“Of course, Master,” said Aronoke warmly. He would have done whatever he could to help Ashquash anyway. It was also reassuring that Master Skeirim’s words meshed so well with what Master Insa-tolsa had said. “I think you are right, that she will be alright if we make things just as they were, and pretend that nothing has happened without making a fuss.”
“Yes, that is it exactly,” said Master Skeirim. “Thank you, Aronoke. I expect we will speak again at some time in the future.”
“You’re welcome, Master,” said Aronoke, making a small respectful bow in return. He felt a good deal happier and more purposeful as he returned to his rooms. It was good to have something to work towards, a way by which things might be made right. As soon as he arrived, he went in to find Razzak Mintula.
“Can I change back to my old room, Instructor?” he asked. “The new one is too draughty.”
Razzak Mintula stared at him for a long moment. “That would probably be more convenient,” she admitted. “There are some difficulties in having you in a different place from everyone else.”
“Yes, Instructor,” said Aronoke, relieved that no further explanation or persuasion was necessary. He felt his spirit was lightened when he moved back into his old rooms, like he was arriving back in his proper place again. It was a relief to not have to distance himself from Draken and the little kids any more.
Razzak Mintula was not pleased when Aronoke told her about the field trip.
“It’s highly irregular,” she said grumpily, “but I suppose you must go.”
Aronoke put it down to her not being fond of changes in schedule. Perhaps she did not think it appropriate that a Jedi as important as Master Altus should pay so much attention to a mere initiate like Aronoke. That was probably true, Aronoke thought, but he had to admit that he liked it.
“You’re late!” said Hespenara when Aronoke arrived out of breath at Master Altus’s rooms on the prescribed day.
“Everything conspired against me,” said Aronoke. “There was this thing blocking the corridor. Then I got lost trying to find a way around.”
“You should always plan enough time to cover such mishaps,” scolded Hespenara. “Jedi Masters should never have to wait for initiates. You’re lucky we didn’t leave without you.”
“I’m sorry,” said Aronoke, penitently.
“I believe I am ready to go now,” said Master Altus mildly, appearing from the back room.
Hespenara sighed, her authority undermined.
He was always so calm and unruffled, willing to believe the best of Aronoke. Sometimes Aronoke wondered if he really deserved the friendship of such a person.
Today they did not leave the temple by one of the main exits, but took an elevator to the top levels where ranks of speeders awaited the convenience of the temple residents. The machines were all pristine and shiny, and the one which had been assigned to them was especially red and glossy.
“Oh now this is something!” exclaimed Hespenara in pleasure, running a hand along the speeder’s side. “This is one of the recent models. They must have gotten some new ones in.”
Aronoke had to admit that it was very fine. It looked sleek and fast and was very shiny. He could see a distorted image of his face reflected in its side.
“You may drive, Hespenara,” said Master Altus, taking his choice of the seats. Aronoke climbed into another while Hespenara took the controls.
“This should be fun,” said Hespenara eagerly, pressing the control to start the speeder and steering it out towards the exit hatch. The hatch opened automatically in front of them and the speeder swooped smoothly out into the air beyond. Aronoke admired Hespenara’s casual skill and confidence in steering out into the traffic. He could drive a speeder – at least, the sort of speeder they had on Kasthir – but he would not like to try it amidst all the vehicles that swarmed Coruscant’s airways.
As they left the temple, Aronoke prepared himself to be overwhelmed by the city all over again. He had anticipated the great lines of traffic that criss-crossed the sky and the impossible expanse of buildings. What he was not expecting was the great throbbing pulse of the Force that suddenly welled up from the great seething network of lives and entities around them as they moved out from the Temple’s protective bulk.
“Oh!” said Aronoke inadvertently, surprised by how strongly it surged about him. He felt for a moment like a tiny insignificant mote swept along within the tumultuous coursing of that vast network.
“Can you sense the Force flowing through the city?” asked Master Altus.
“It’s huge!” breathed Aronoke, awed. He was not certain if he was drinking it all in or drowning in it.
Master Altus seemed to do something then, something to shield Aronoke’s perception of the currents that flowed so massively around them. Aronoke relaxed a little, unaware that he had been holding himself so tensely.
“You’re lucky, Aronoke,” said Hespenara. “I still sometimes have to try really hard to sense the currents in the Force.”
Aronoke digested that information for a moment. surprised. He was better at this than Hespenara? She was, after all, already a padawan.
It’s nothing to be proud of, he told himself firmly. It’s not like he had put in a great effort to learn it. It had just happened. And yet he felt pleased.
Pleased, and a little scared. It would be easy to be swept away by that endless shifting network. To lose himself in its immensity. He was glad that Master Altus was here to help him.
“It was not like that last time,” he said shakily, trying to make himself relax.
“That is because your abilities have been developing,” said Master Altus. “The shielding in the Jedi temple prevents you from detecting it constantly, but now you are outside you can sense it fully. That is one of the reasons that I thought it important for you to come along on this trip. If Kasthir had been a more populated planet you would have sensed the Force long ago and it would not have come upon you all at once, but because it was such a dead place there was less to sense and your abilities did not develop in the way they usually would. Now they have been opened to a greater stimulus they have developed accordingly, and, of course, been heightened through your training as well.”
Training. Yes, his lessons had heightened his senses, Aronoke realised, and his instructors had also tried to prepare him for this moment, but he had forgotten everything he had been taught in his astonishment. Sitting back in his seat, he closed his eyes and concentrated on his favourite meditation exercise. To his relief, it was still just as easy to find the calm place inside him which helped to steady himself.
All the time they were streaking quickly across the planet’s surface towards Prelix sector, their destination. It took a little over an hour, enough time for Aronoke to become adjusted to the traffic and the noise and to regain his composure. As they arrived he could see that their destination was an immense building with a modular, globular appearance. It looked like many small rounded buildings of varying shapes and sizes, all cemented together, a little like it had been modelled on an insect nest, Aronoke thought. It was not, he judged, as wealthy a district as that surrounding the Coruscant spaceport, but still immense, modern and shiny. As they grew closer, he could see glowing signs and holographic posters advertising a wide variety of products. It was, he realised, an immense marketplace, larger than any bazaar on Kasthir. Indeed, more expansive than Tarbsosk in its entirety,
“We shall go to level fifty-three, Hespenara,” said Master Altus and the speeder swept down towards a parking rank, presumably near that level. Aronoke was highly distracted by the towering advertising holos, the swooping tangle of speeders and the crush of people as they left the vehicle and moved into the bazaar. Most of the people they saw were duros. They were given a politely wide berth; the crowd had a tendency to part around them, and some people made signs of respect. Now and then, Aronoke heard people saying “Jedi,” amongst the crowd.
Inside the bazaar there ranged a confusing plethora of shops, many of which were selling electronic gadgets of interesting kinds. So many things that could be stolen! So much richer than the market in Tarbsosk, where Aronoke had spent his days begging and stealing before he had become a Fumer. Aronoke noticed that there were beaters outside many of the shops, security personnel guarding the premises. He could spot a beater anywhere, even though these had small subtle weapons compared to their equivalents on Kasthir. There was not much time to look at everything; Aronoke had to concentrate on keeping up with Master Altus and Hespenara, who were striding along as if they knew where they were going.
Hespenara led the way over to a bank of elevators and they rode up with startling speed, floors flashing by in a streaky blur of lights and colours outside its transparent walls. Aronoke was glad when it stopped and they could get out, even though the ride had only taken a few seconds.
This level was filled with shops of a different kind. They were like treasure caves full of ancient things. Some seemed dedicated to particular sorts of objects, like antique datapads, while others were stocked with a wide variety of peculiar things, artifacts and relics. Every direction Aronoke looked, he could see a thousand mysterious alien objects which he could not determine the purpose of.
One of the latter shops seemed to be their particular destination. Without explaining their purpose, once inside Master Altus and Hespenara began moving amongst the racks and shelves, perusing the objects on display. Aronoke realised they were browsing for Force-related artifacts which might have found their way into this immense bazaar. Aronoke wondered if this was something which they did often. Wondered how many artifacts did end up for sale in places like this every day. He followed in Master Atlus’s wake, staying close to the Jedi Master, and cautiously looked about himself, wondering if he could spot anything.
Something immediately snatched at his attention like a bright flare of color in his mind’s eye. It was a moment before he was aware that the gold-and-black mask did not actually glow. That his Force senses that were detecting it.
Master Altus was keeping a subtle watch over Aronoke. He saw Aronoke’s head turn towards the mask and looked at it himself a moment later.
“Yes, that certainly is interesting,” Master Altus said.
He picked up the mask to look at it more closely and turned it over in his hands. Brought it over to the vendor and haggled over the price.
“It is not that the artifact itself is so important,” he said to Aronoke when he had successfully purchased it. “It is a minor thing, but it would not do to leave it where anyone might get their hands on it.”
“I can’t see anything else of interest, Master,” said Hespenara, appearing out of the depths of the store.
“Perhaps we should look in that shop over there next,” said Master Altus, gesturing at an establishment further along the row.
But before they could make their way to the new shop, Hespenara caught her Master’s sleeve. She nodded subtly across the concourse.
“Yes, I see him too,” said Master Altus. Aronoke looked about, bewildered, wondering what they were talking about, but by then Master Altus was striding towards a duros standing nearby. The duros saw him coming and quickly turned to dart off into the crowd.
“Hey!” called Master Altus, “I would like to speak to you!”
The duros did not stop. Like Aronoke at the battle scene in the desert he obviously wanted to avoid Master Altus and attempted to hurry away. He did not get very far. Master Altus made a quick gesture with one hand and the duros stopped, held fast, unable to move.
Aronoke felt almost sympathetic. Wondered what the duros had done to attract Master Altus’s and Hespenara’s attention. He did not have to wonder long.
“Tell us why you were watching us,” said Master Altus, standing in front of the captive duros.
“I was not watching you,” the duros said, in a rather stilted voice. It did not look very comfortable, stuck in place like that. “You are mistaken.”
“No, I am absolutely certain,” said Master Altus, his eyes fixed on the duros’ flat-paned green face. “You should tell me why you were watching us.”
He passed his hand in a familiar way in front of the duros’s gaze.
“I should tell you why I was watching you,” said the duros more helpfully. “I was told to watch for any Jedi who came in the building. I am supposed to report their activities to my employer. It is nothing personal.”
“Who is your employer?” asked Master Altus.
“Mangra the Hutt,” said the duros.
“Hm,” said Master Altus, and Aronoke could not tell if the name meant anything to him or not. “Very well, be on your way,” he said to the duros. “And tell your employer that we do not appreciate having our activities monitored.”
“As you say,” agreed the duros, sagging in relief as Master Altus let it go. It scuttled off, hasty and furtive as a bone-sucking worm seeking shelter from the sun.
“My apologies for the interruption, Aronoke,” said Master Altus. “I was not expecting anything other than a quiet outing to do some shopping.”
“It is no problem, Master,” said Aronoke.
They continued on their way, looking for more items of interest.
In the next shop there were racks upon racks of datapads. To Aronoke’s eye they all looked old or used to varying degrees. Apparently it was not the datapads themselves that the Jedi found interesting, but the information that was stored upon them.
“Now, Hespenara, why don’t you take the datapads on that side of the room, and I will take these.”
The two Jedi examined the datapads in a well-practiced efficient manner that Aronoke admired. His reading was coming along quite well, but there were still many words he found difficult. He was too slow to assist with a task like this. Would not know important information even if he read it. Hespenara found something that Master Altus decided was interesting. They brought this datapad over to the vendor and purchased it.
“Now let us find somewhere to eat,” said Master Altus.
They were almost at the large open area where food was sold, when Hespenara said “Master, look,” and Master Altus almost simultaneously: “Yes, I see him.”
They were so perceptive and worked so easily together. Again, for a moment, Aronoke was jealous of Hespenara, but this was not a good time to stop and sort through these thoughts. Instead Aronoke looked too, trying to see what they were looking at. They were passing through a section where there was an open central courtyard, giving a view to higher and lower levels. He saw nothing, not before Master Altus was suddenly running off along the broad walkway, much faster than Aronoke could keep up. Hespenara set off after him, Aronoke following in her wake as best he could.
People moved out of Master Altus’s way, but mostly he was gone before they had finished moving, leaving a confused wash of shoppers behind him. Hespenara and Aronoke had a harder time of it, having to find a path through these people, who were stopping, turning in confusion, and asking questions of each other. They were forced to duck and weave a great deal. Far ahead, Aronoke could see Master Altus make one tremendous leap and then another, propelling himself up to a higher level of the market through the central well. Aronoke lost sight of him then and focussed on keeping up with Hespenara. He found himself falling further and further behind her, and was grateful when she finally came to a stop, looking about for an elevator or a handy set of stairs.
“What are we chasing?” asked Aronoke, a little out of breath. “I didn’t see.”
“Another duros,” said Hespenara. “Watching us and talking into a communicator.”
“Oh? That doesn’t sound like very much.”
Hespenara shrugged. “Master Altus must have seen or heard something interesting to chase him like that. Look, I think there’s a ramp over there.”
It took some minutes to make their way up the ramp. By the time they reached the level above and located Master Altus, the duros he had apprehended was dangling in mid-air, surrounded by a number of bazaar beaters.
“Yes, I’ll think you’ll find he has a very interesting record and is wanted on a number of charges,” Master Altus was saying to the security personnel.
“Yes, thank you Master Jedi,” the most senior of them said. “We will take him from here, if… uh… you’ll just let him down.”
“Oh, of course,” said Master Altus. The hovering duros was lowered to the floor. He was relieved to be taken away by the beaters, Aronoke thought.
“Ah, there you are,” said Master Altus, spotting them in the crowd. “My apologies. Hopefully the rest of our excursion will go according to plan.”
“I don’t mind, Master,” said Aronoke.
“You did have some reason for chasing him, Master?” inquired Hespenara uncertainly. “Didn’t you? It’s not usual for Jedi to pursue criminals – that’s for Coruscant security forces to take care of.”
Master Altus didn’t seem inclined to answer her question. He evasively mumbled something that was lost in the interested hum of spectators watching the duros prisoner being led away.
Aronoke and Hespenara exchanged bewildered glances.
“Let us be on our way,” Master Altus said more clearly, a few moments later.
Aronoke followed Master Altus and Hespenara through the bazaar, admiring the shops as they passed by. Finally they came to a section which sold a great deal of food, although much of it seemed to be marketed towards duros. Aronoke looked at the things that were on offer. Most of them had wavy tentacles or twitchy feelers or other bits that moved. The rest consisted of pots of things that writhed like worms.
Most of the creatures on Aronoke’s planet were highly poisonous. He felt a distinct aversion to eating anything that moved. He was surprised to find a kind of food that he thought he wouldn’t like.
“They are not really alive,” Master Altus said cheerfully, perhaps noting Aronoke’s expression. Just then, the vendor droid arrived to serve them.
“I will have one of those squares with only a few tentacles, please,” Master Altus said, pointing to something that twitched and shuddered in a pile below a transparent counter. “And one of those green drinks, thank you.” He turned to his companions inquiringly.
“I’m not hungry, Master,” said Hespenara quickly.
“I prefer my food not to move,” said Aronoke, emboldened by Hespenara’s refusal. “I am fine, thank you.”
“As you wish,” said Master Altus. He paid the vendor, took his meal, and sat down to eat his tentacles.
“Look, Aronoke, those things over there don’t look so bad,” said Hespenara, pointing to what looked like a sort of white, pasty substance sold in little cones. “Would you like one of those?”
“Sure,” said Aronoke. Hespenara went over and purchased two of them. It was quite pleasant Aronoke decided, after he tasted it, although it had an unusual flavor, minty and musty. He was not certain he wanted to know exactly what the stuff was made from.
“Very tasty,” said Master Altus approvingly, as he finished his tentacular meal.
“Does that food keep moving after you have eaten it, Master?” asked Aronoke curiously.
“No, not if you chew well,” Master Altus replied. “I was thinking, Aronoke,” he said, “that you would probably like to buy some treats to bring back to your clan mates.”
He passed Aronoke a credstick with a comfortable sum of credits – enough to buy some treats for everyone.
“Thank you, Master,” said Aronoke, touched by the green man’s thoughtfulness. He spent an enjoyable hour after lunch finding the right things to bring back to share with his clan. He picked out a complicated puzzle with gaudy flashing lights, and a little holosculpture with a gallery of different images. The rest of the money was quickly spent on some interesting duros candy of a variety that did not move at all.
After that it was time to leave, and Aronoke was pleased to arrive back in the peaceful reverence of the Jedi temple away from the traffic and all the people.
“Thank you for bringing me on this field trip, Master,” he said to Master Altus on the way back in the car. “It was very educational.”
“You’re most welcome,” said Master Altus. “I must apologise again for the exertive interruption. I had not expected anything of the sort to happen.”
Aronoke smiled, thinking that wherever Jedi went, interesting interruptions were certain to happen.
“It does not matter,” he said aloud.
It was fun to come back to the clan room and distribute his small gifts, which were enthusiastically received. Jedi did not collect personal possessions and were not supposed to form attachments to objects, but a few small ornaments in the clan rooms were not considered to be important, as long as the initiates did not treat them as such.
The next few months flew by, and nothing unusual happened, although the days were not uneventful from Aronoke’s point-of-view, absorbed as he was in his lessons in history and philosophy, reading, meditation and physical training. He worked himself hard, although his life still seemed luxuriously easy. Grew like a young rancor, with an intense ferocity that astounded even himself. It seemed he needed new robes nearly every other week, and it seemed wasteful to go through so many clothes so quickly. He felt awkward and gangly most of the time, uncoordinated and unbalanced, like his neural system couldn’t keep up with his growth rate. He was filling out a good deal, but mostly growing taller. It seemed that he would be tall if he did not slow down soon.
During this time too, he found himself plagued more and more by certain distractions. Oddly enough it was hair that usually set them off. Apart from Razzak Mintula’s long, silver pony tail, Riala from Clan Ryllak had that long wisp of hair that sometimes strayed over her face which made him feel distinctly unsettled.
Was it strange that he found these things attractive? Was it abnormal to be attracted to humans? It said in the documents Aronoke had read about Chiss that they were thought to have descended from human colonists, countless ages ago, but they did not seem to be considered near-humans, like the Mirialans were. Yet, the information available on Chiss was limited. It seemed that little was known about them in the Republic, and that Aronoke’s race was mysterious and secretive. Doubtlessly more was known about them in the Sith Empire, but that was of little help here.
In any case, if he wanted to be a Jedi, Aronoke knew he had to put these impulses aside and not dwell upon them. More and more he found he had to take a few steps away from the subject of his attention and school himself to calmness. He tried to employ the meditative techniques which he had been taught whenever it happened, and they did seem to help.
Slowly, even these things became normal. He did not find the changes in his body as disturbing or unnatural as he had thought he might. It seemed that his mind was growing up along with the rest of him, and that he was able to cope better than he had thought he would. It seemed that every day Draken became smaller rather than that Aronoke was getting bigger. More and more the things Draken did, and more especially the things Draken wanted to do, seemed like kids’ stuff. That did not mean that Aronoke did not like Draken. He did. But he looked forward to the day when Draken caught him up.
Aronoke found that he was having more of his serious conversations with Ashquash instead.
“Do you understand what they mean us to learn by this?” Aronoke asked Ashquash one day, looking up from the moral tale they were both studying. “Why does he just walk off into the desert, instead of helping the villagers or killing the Sith? I don’t understand how he can just do nothing.”
Ashquash looked thoughtful.
“It’s because neither is a good decision,” she said. “He chooses consciously to make no decision, rather than to make a bad one.”
“I don’t know if I could do that. To not act,” said Aronoke. “Not when the problem remains unsolved. He doesn’t achieve anything by walking away. He avoids the issue when he is sent there specifically to solve it.”
“But by taking action the outcome would be worse,” pointed out Ashquash. “It is better that the villagers handle their own problem than that he makes a bad decision on their behalf.”
“I suppose so,” said Aronoke uncertainly.
Ashquash was a very different person than when she had arrived, even though only a year had passed. Aronoke would have found it difficult to imagine having a moral conversation with her then. Would have found it difficult to imagine having a moral conversation.
Then came a day when Master Altus asked Aronoke to come and visit him in his rooms. Aronoke had been there often by then. The green Jedi and his padawan had come to visit Clan Herf sometimes as well. They were always popularly received because Master Altus was fond of bringing treats.
“I will be leaving again soon, Aronoke,” Master Altus said. “Departing on another expedition.”
“I think you will not be sorry, Master,” said Aronoke, grinning. “You can leave that paperwork behind you.”
“Yes, there is that,” said Master Altus. “As I think I told you once before, it is only a few Jedi who ever return to the Jedi temple once their training is finished. The vast majority move on to other assignments in distant parts of the galaxy and seldom, if ever, have reason to return to Coruscant.”
He looked at Aronoke seriously. “I have a favour to ask you before I go,” he said calmly.
“Of course, Master. Anything,” said Aronoke.
“I am not entirely sure, but where I am going there may be an opportunity to do some research regarding that image on your back,” said Master Altus. “I have researched it somewhat already, although there is little enough to go on, but I have been unable to find anything quite like it. There are mentions of such things in some records in the Temple archives, but nothing that describes it closely, and certainly not anything from recent times. I would like to make an image of the markings your back so I can take it with me.”
“Oh,” said Aronoke, the old fear rising within him. “An image? I…I suppose so.”
He had said he would do anything. “Yes, of course,” he added.
This was Master Altus after all. Aronoke trusted him more than anyone else, although it was still not easy to remove his shirt. With awkward fingers he undid the ties and catches and pulled it off. He stood still, trying to repress an urge to shudder, and was relieved that it did not take long for Master Altus to record an image onto his datapad.
“Thank you,” said Master Altus, while Aronoke was redressing. “I know that you do not like revealing it.”
“It is not as bad any more,” said Aronoke awkwardly. “It does not matter.” A moment later he added curiously: “What does it look like now? Has it grown through very much?”
“Yes, it is much clearer than it was. Would you like to see?” asked Master Altus.
“Yes,” said Aronoke and he came over to look at the image on the datapad that Master Altus was holding out. He had never seen it so clearly. The design there looked quite distinctive. It was obvious now that it was some sort of map. Although the mass of ridged scars was still there, they had stretched and softened with Aronoke’s growth, and the image seemed to have risen to the surface of his skin. The markings were less blurry than they had been, although still difficult to see clearly in some places.
“It looks different than I remember,” said Aronoke. Brighter as well as larger. It was easier to make out the smaller details. “It certainly looks very strange.”
“Would you like a copy of it?” asked Master Altus. “I can send one to your own datapad.”
“Thank you, but no,” said Aronoke. He did not want to see it all the time, and besides, if it were stored there it would be easier for other people to see it. The file on alien martial arts had appeared unbidden. Perhaps files could be read from his datapad as well. He would rather not have to worry about keeping his datapad concealed as well as his back.
“Very well then,” said Master Altus. “I will let you know if I find anything out when I get back.”
“Thank you, Master.”
“While I am gone, as I’m sure you already know, you may speak to Master Insa-tolsa about anything at all.”
“Of course, Master,” said Aronoke, making a small bow of politeness. He was much more comfortable with Master Insa-tolsa than he had once been, but he could never speak as openly with him as he could with Master Altus.
It was with some sadness that he returned to the clan nest, knowing he was going to miss seeing both Hespenara and the green man.
It was only a few days after Master Altus’s departure that strange things began to happen.
Aronoke thought later that he ought to have anticipated this, but there was no expectation of it in his mind when he saw the odd appointment on his schedule early one morning as he was arriving back from his habitual running session. At once he thought of it as an odd thing, because the appointment was to a room he had not been to before: Creche 237. Also, the appointment did not seem to have either a person or a purpose attached to it.
He immediately went to Razzak Mintula’s office, but she was not in it yet because it was still very early. Went to her rooms instead.
“Instructor Mintula?” he asked, thumbing the door panel communicator. “Can I speak with you please?”
“Just a moment,” came the ragged sleepy voice of Razzak Mintula. “What’s the problem, Aronoke?” She sounded grumpy, but Aronoke knew she just wasn’t properly awake yet.
“I’m sorry it’s so early, Instructor, but there’s an odd appointment on my datapad scheduled for very soon now, and if I don’t speak with you I will miss it entirely.”
“Odd appointment?” asked Razzak Mintula blearily. “What appointment?”
Aronoke passed her his datapad and she took it and squinted at it. Her long silver ponytail was undone, Aronoke noticed, her hair draped over her shoulder in a disorderly straggle. Feeling the heat build in his face, he quickly stared at the floor and shuffled backwards a little. It was embarrassing, but he thought Razzak Mintula was well aware of these feelings he had towards her. She usually was careful to stand at a comfortable distance.
“That is very odd,” said Razzak Mintula. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone being sent to an appointment in that location. I’m not even sure what sort of room it is. It looks like something to do with maintenance.”
“It doesn’t say what it’s for either,” said Aronoke. “Do you think I should go or not?”
“I don’t see what harm you could come to in the Jedi temple…” said Razzak Mintula uncertainly.
“I don’t mind going as long as you know about it,” said Aronoke.
“No, I think it is best that I come with you,” she said, more decisively. “There’s no need for you to go alone. I will be ready in a few minutes.”
The room, when they got to it, was not particularly interesting. It was empty and seemed to be part of the maintenance section. Both Aronoke and Razzak Mintula looked about with considerable care, but the time of the appointment came and went without anything happening.
By the time they arrived back at the clan nest, the appointment had disappeared from Aronoke’s datapad as if it had never existed.
“I don’t like it at all,” grumbled Razzak Mintula, “although it could just be a technical glitch. I will make enquiries.”
A few days after this, Aronoke was coming back from the swimming pool where he had been looking at the water. He still did not like it any better. He was acutely uncomfortable whenever he was near it. This distrust seemed to be strongly embedded in him.
Could you become a Jedi if you were scared of water? Surely such a failing would be deemed an unacceptable flaw, Aronoke thought gloomily to himself as he came up the long corridor to the elevators that would take him back to the residential level. He was considering what else he could do about it, when he suddenly noticed that there was a droid in corridor ahead of him. The droid was in the middle of the passage, and as Aronoke drew close to it, moved to block his way.
“What is this about?” asked Aronoke, suspiciously, looking at it. It was a maintenance droid of some sort, a stocky cylindrical contraption with many tool-bearing arms. The droid acknowledged him by flickering a ray of blue light over his face.
“Identity confirmed. Transmitting message now,” said the droid, and it began projecting a little holoimage that danced and shimmered in front of Aronoke.
There was no figure in the holo, which was unusual in itself. Instead there was a flashing sequence of geometrical shapes and images whirling in confused chaos.
“Greetings Aronoke,” said a voice. Like the image it was scrambled, easy enough to understand but impossible to recognise. Its pitch shifted from high to low in an unpleasantly discordant fashion.
“I am pleased to communicate with you at last. Firstly, I wish to reassure you that I am a friend, an ally who has your best interests at heart. I wish you no harm. Indeed, I am only interested in seeing that you reach your full potential, despite the opposition that you may soon face. You may not be aware of this, protected and lowly as your current position is, but there are those on the Jedi Council who are not pleased with your presence. Troubling times lie ahead of you. The truth has been hidden and it has fallen to me to reveal to you the less-pleasant actuality – that there are many who feel that you can not be allowed to succeed in becoming a Jedi. They will seek to prevent you for many reasons, and indeed many have already argued that there is no benefit in continuing your training. Some think that you are too old to become a Jedi, while others say that a chiss has no place in the order, allied as your people are to the Empire. It has even been voiced that it would be a perversion, should someone who is bioengineered to be strong in the Force, as you are, be allowed to become a Jedi.”
Bioengineered? asked a tentative voice in Aronoke’s mind.
“And who are you?” asked Aronoke aloud. “You can’t be much of a friend if you are not willing to even reveal your identity.”
“I am afraid that I must be cautious,” said the voice. “I am merely one individual amongst many enemies. My identity must remain secret at this time. However, I recognise that this is a difficult situation for you to accept. Please be assured that I ask nothing of you. I will only seek to assist you by giving you information. How does that sound?”
Information. It was a tempting thought. Information was power. But, thought Aronoke, how could he trust anything that came from an unidentified source such as this? False or corrupted information was of no value, and indeed could do great harm.
Look at what had happened to Vark.
“Why are you interested in me?” he asked.
“You are an opportunity that should not be squandered,” said the voice. “I am certain that you will find me to be of benefit in time, for you shall be in need of allies. I will be in contact with you again, as it becomes necessary.”
“Initialising self-destruct sequence in three seconds,” said the droid. “3…2…1…”
Aronoke barely had time to leap out of the way before it exploded with some violence, sparking and smoking. It fell to the ground in a crumpled heap.
Report it, he told himself. He should report it at once. That was the proper Jedi thing to do, he knew, but his mind was racing onwards, digesting what the voice had told him, even as he stumbled on towards the elevators.
Bioengineered? He did not know that exact word, but he could piece the meaning together. A created thing, a purposely made thing, a chiss built to a pattern, just like a droid was built to a design. Aronoke didn’t like the idea of that at all, and yet such a thing made sense. It explained the odd markings on his back. Doubtlessly it somehow explained how he had come to be all alone on Kasthir. Aronoke could feel his wistful childhood dream of a lost Chiss family dissolving away to nothing. Odd, he thought savagely, he thought he had let go of that stupid fantasy years ago, but apparently he had not.
He wondered what the voice had meant when it said he was an opportunity not to be squandered.
He did not trust the voice, did not intend to follow the path it was trying to set for him, but it seemed to know things about him that he did not know himself.
Could he find out more by pretending to go along with it?
But what did it matter anyway? Jedi gave up their past lives, their family and their origins when they joined the Order. It was important that they stood apart from such things, so they could make balanced decisions and wield their power fairly. Aronoke had never had to worry about the difficulty of laying his family aside, although he knew many of his smaller clan-members still missed their homes. Finding out about his origins would surely only complicate matters.
Several days and sleepless nights of introspection did not make anything seem clearer. After realising he had been doing nothing but thinking in circles, he told himself firmly that he did not want a mysterious ally who spoke in riddles, who had secret and underhanded plans for him. Who chose the very moment that Master Altus left the Jedi temple to make overtures to him. It might, after all, be lying. Even about the bioengineered thing.
And yet, even though he told himself that, Aronoke was inexplicably sure it was not lying about that.
He knew what Master Altus would have him do. Master Altus would surely be disappointed if Aronoke faltered in his obvious duty as soon as he was absent.
He had to go and speak to Master Insa-tolsa about this, as much as he wished he could forget the whole mess.
He spoke to Master Insa-tolsa in one of the atrium gardens. This particular one was frequented by the Jedi masters who were permanently assigned to the temple and contained a cafeteria where they could sit and eat amongst the trees. It was one of Master Insa-tolsa’s favourite places, and Aronoke was glad to see the giant ithorian waiting at one of the tables, consuming an elaborate sugary construction.
“Ah, Aronoke, come and sit down,” said Master Insa-tolsa. “You can help me eat this. It is far too large for one person, and I know you initiates are always hungry.”
It was true that Aronoke was always hungry these days, probably because he was growing so fast, but the meals in the temple still came so regularly and so often that it seemed like nothing. Nevertheless, he took his place opposite Master Insa-tolsa and obligingly picked up a piece of the dark brown toasted confection and nibbled on it.
“Master Altus told me to come to you if anything unusual happened,” said Aronoke, “and something unusual has. Well, two somethings really, but I’m sure they are related.”
Quickly he related the incidents to Master Insa-tolsa, telling him about the strange appointment that led to the empty room and then about the exploding droid.
“It is intolerable that these things can continue happening within the Jedi temple,” boomed Master Insa-tolsa, looking as irate as Aronoke had ever seen him appear. It was hard to tell with ithorians. “I believe it is no coincidence that this has happened so soon after Master Altus has left. You have done the right thing, Aronoke, bringing this to me. I will make sure that it is reported to the Jedi Council. We must try to determine the source of these harassments and put an end to them.”
“The speaker said that it was alone and amongst enemies,” said Aronoke. “If it is nearby, as it seems it has to be, then I don’t see how it can be amongst enemies if it is a Jedi. And yet how could a Sith or anything like one remain hidden here?”
“It is very disturbing,” said Master Insa-tolsa. “We must renew our efforts to uncover the identity of this person.”
Aronoke went away from the meeting feeling dissatisfied. Master Insa-tolsa was reassuring, or tried to be, but it seemed that the Jedi masters were not making any progress in finding his mysterious assailant. If they could not find an enemy within their own midst, it seemed difficult to trust them with the protection of the whole galaxy. Still, he told himself, these matters were small difficulties compared to life on Kasthir. No one was trying to kill him. He had enough to eat. He was being taught things. The problems that arose from someone trying to manipulate him were minor and avoidable. He could simply choose to ignore what it said and the voice could do little about it. The idea that someone was trying to influence him was enough to make him stubborn against such interference.
He kept this in mind a few days later when another strange document appeared upon his datapad. It seemed to be something concerning meditation but he didn’t look at it very closely. Told Razzak Mintula about it at once.
“This is getting annoying,” said Razzak Mintula impatiently. “Just delete it Aronoke and I will send a message informing Master Insa-tolsa.”
This was duly done. Aronoke wondered what his mysterious assailant thought they could achieve by sending him these documents when surely he had made it clear that he was not interested. That he would not read them.
But a few days later the situation changed again.
It was the middle of the night and someone was shaking him by the shoulder. He came awake very slowly, tired out by training with Clan Ryllak the day before. Was glad that it was just Ashquash.
“Aronoke,” came Ashquash’s hissing gravelly voice, sounding almost gleeful. And again: “Aronoke, wake up! I want to go sparring!” Her fingers were digging into his shoulder, and he suddenly felt more awake. Apart from cooperative activities in physical training class she had never touched him before.
He was instantly more than usually aware that Ashquash was a girl. A strange girl, but still, a girl.
“Aronoke!” said Ashquash insistently.
“I’m awake,” said Aronoke swinging into a sitting position. “What is it? Is something the matter?”
“Come on! Come out to the training ground with me! I want to spar!” Ashquash’s usual cautious behavior was gone, replaced with a strange new enthusiasm. She bounced from foot to foot and swayed rhythmically. Her eyes were huge, her expression frighteningly exhilirated.
“What’s wrong with you?” asked Aronoke, dismayed. This was not the Ashquash he knew – it was a stranger.
Ashquash bounced around the room as if staying still was completely impossible.
“Nothing is wrong with me!” she said. “I just want to spar, what’s wrong with that?”
She spun and wheeled, spreading out her arms like she was trying to fly. Coming to a dizzy, staggering halt, she grinned at Aronoke and stepped towards him mischievously.
“It’s the middle of the night!” protested Aronoke, resisting as she took his hand and tried to pull him to his feet. “There is something wrong with you. You’ve been drugged, or something.”
“But I feel…” said Ashquash. She stopped and looked confused a moment, still holding his hand and never stopping swaying and rocking on the balls of her feet.
“We should go and report it,” said Aronoke, but Ashquash frowned suddenly.
“No! I want to go and spar! Aronoke, I thought you were my friend. Come and spar with me!”
“No, I can’t do that,” said Aronoke, although somewhere in his mind the thought of sparring was not unattractive. With Ashquash, who was a girl, and behaving very peculiarly. Anything could happen, out there on the empty training ground, out of sight of everyone. Ashquash’s hand felt warm and nice within his own, a tempting warmth that spread through his whole body. He began to feel very peculiar indeed.
But Ashquash was his friend and his roommate, and he must not think of her in that way. He had promised not to think of her as a girl. “And you must not go either. We should tell Razzak Mintula. This is terrible – people should not be able to do things like this to you. Not here.”
Who knew what this would do to Ashquash, who was still recovering from her addiction to riksht? It would be a great setback, Aronoke knew, once she got off her high.
Ashquash frowned. “No,” she protested. “Maybe I have been drugged, but don’t tell them. I won’t go sparring if you don’t want to, but don’t tell them. It’ll spoil everything.”
“We have to tell them,” said Aronoke. “Don’t you see? If you don’t tell them, you become part of the whole crime, even if it’s not your fault. This is something that’s been done to you, and it shouldn’t be allowed. They have to know so they can help you and make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
Ashquash’s head hung down. She didn’t say anything, but she made no move to stop Aronoke when he stood and went over to the door.
Razzak Mintula was obviously fast asleep when Aronoke palmed her door chime. Her voice came out through the door speaker, creaky, tired and not completely patient.
“What is it?” she asked, in a weary tone that made Aronoke realise that disturbances to her sleep were probably not all that uncommon. If you were the primary custodian of ten children, seven of whom were quite small, there were probably all sorts of things you had to get up in the middle of the night for. Even if they were being trained to be Jedi.
“Razzak Mintula, it’s me, Aronoke,” said Aronoke.
“What is it, Aronoke?” came Razzak Mintula’s tired voice.
“I’m sorry it’s so late, Instructor Mintula, but it’s Ashquash. She’s behaving really oddly, and I think someone has drugged her.”
“Drugged her?” said Razzak Mintula. “What? Wait a minute.”
There was a short delay, and then Razzak Mintula appeared at the door in person. Aronoke was so disturbed by what had happened to Ashquash that he didn’t even notice her silvery hair.
“What’s happened to Ashquash?” asked Razzak Mintula.
“She’s behaving really oddly,” said Aronoke. “She woke me up and wanted to go out sparring, even though it’s the middle of the night. She’s acting all crazy and bouncing off the walls. I think someone must have drugged her.”
Razzak Mintula led the way over to Aronoke’s room, where Ashquash was trying her best to look sober and restrained, although not making a very good job of it.
“Aronoke says I’ve been drugged and I think it’s probably true,” admitted Ashquash reluctantly. “I don’t know how it happened, I just woke up feeling that way.”
“You had best come with me over to the medical bay to see if we can get this sorted out,” said Razzak Mintula, and she steered Ashquash firmly out the door.
ArcheAge is an up-and-coming sandbox MMO which has been in production for some time. It floundered about for a good long time, having difficulties finding a company to bring it to the west, but Trion Games eventually took it up. Even now, only vague snippet of information are forthcoming regarding it, although what has been promised is enticing – ships, wagons, player-built housing, large-scale battles, player-judged legal system, prisons… I wonder if it will actually all come to fruition, and not be the vast disappointment previous games (Vanguard, for example) that have promised such wide-ranging systems have been.
Bare-chested male toons fishing in boats and riding donkeys? No problem.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynJTQRdTkMI
My recent obsession with making the first chapter of my Star Wars fan fiction story, Aronoke, into a short film has been highly time consuming. Who knew that 3d modelling software like 3ds Max could be so complicated? Well, I did, but on this occasion I have made more progress than on my previous forays, and I am pleased with the results. Why, two months of steep learning curve and mounds of texturing has given me over two minutes of film!
At this rate I should finish by the time I am eighty. With any luck.
Admittedly I have managed, with considerable help, to also install a stack of kitchen cupboards as well, but most of my other projects have been left wandering, lost and alone. Even my MMO activities have been largely neglected. Save for the latest Secret World update.
How could I possibly resist Action Adventure combined with tasty fedora-imbued goodness?
Master Altus’s revelation made Aronoke more wary of everything. It was all very well for Master Altus to say that the Jedi temple was safe compared to Kasthir. That meant nothing, because on Kasthir, nothing was ever safe, no matter how carefully it was defended. There was always someone stronger and nastier waiting for you to be off your guard. Beyond that there was the planet itself – the weather, the wildlife.
In the Jedi Temple it was different. The chances of being stabbed physically in the back were minimal, but despite logically knowing that he was safer than he had ever been, Aronoke never felt completely at ease, except when he was meditating. There was always that haunting feeling that he was being watched. Typically, everywhere he went, that was true. There was no one else like him, so people tended to look at him. He wished again that he was not different – wished he was a boring standard human like any of billions of others that no one paid especial attention to, instead of a Chiss, a species allied to the Sith Empire, the uneasy almost-enemies of the Republic. He wished too that he didn’t have a strange picture tattooed on his back that he had to keep hidden.
It was difficult for Aronoke to know what was unusual and what was normal. He found himself scrutinizing all his daily activities more closely. He knew he had not told Master Altus about every strange thing that had happened. He had wanted to think more carefully about things first – about what had happened with the droid in the shower. Was it just a stupid thing, or was it one of the unusual things that Master Altus had said he should look out for? Aronoke had a very strong desire to not appear stupid in front of Master Altus, even though he knew the mirialan master would never embarrass him over it even if he was.
He decided the only way was to investigate more closely first. To attempt to take care of things himself. He wasn’t a little kid – he had been a fully fledged skimmer. How hard could it be?
“Do you remember how that droid drilled those holes in our shower cubicle?” Aronoke asked Draken.
“Do we need to put more stuff in the holes?” Draken queried.
“No, they’re still blocked,” said Aronoke, “but I still think it’s strange that the holes were drilled at all. I wonder if they were drilled in all the bathrooms, or just ours?”
“I could sneak in and look,” said Draken at once, just as Aronoke had hoped he might.
“You’re much better at sneaking than me,” Aronoke admitted, and Draken looked pleased.
“Years of practice, son,” he said sagely, clapping Aronoke on the shoulder and grinning, and went off at once.
Draken found it an easy enough matter to investigate all the nearby bathrooms. People went in and out of each other’s Clan rooms all the time. Before long he was back with his report.
The walls in Clan Zegrith’s showers were smoothly pristine. So were those in the showers belonging to Clan Drexl, Clan Miim and all the other surrounding clans. Draken had checked all those walls for small holes and found none.
“If the maintenance was only performed in our showers, and nothing was broken, then it must be something unusual,” he told Draken seriously. “I think I should report it.”
“If you want to,” said Draken, shrugging. “It’s probably the only way we’ll find out anything else about it.”
Aronoke did not want to bother Master Altus about every little thing – not when he had seemed so tired. Thought it best to go and see Razzak Mintula.
“Yes, Aronoke?” she asked, when he knocked on the open door of the room that served as her office.
“I was just wondering, Instructor Mintula. There was a droid in our showers, doing some maintenance. Weeks ago now. Was there supposed to be?”
“It’s quite normal for droids to go about doing maintenance, Aronoke,” said Razzak Mintula calmly but firmly.
“Yes, I know,” said Aronoke. “But this was strange. It was very early in the morning. It drilled lots of tiny holes in all the walls and said something about hypercapacitors. I don’t think showers even have hypercapacitors. And none of the other clans’ showers have had that done.”
“Well, it may just be a mistake. I remember when a whole lift was sealed off for years because of an error in a droid’s programming. Everyone walked across to use another lift bank, assuming it was intended.”
Well, it would be better if they had questioned it, wouldn’t it, thought Aronoke. Fuelled by this thought, he ploughed on doggedly.
“It still seems strange that it’s just our shower,” he said firmly. “I don’t like the idea of strange droids wandering around in there, Instructor. It’s unsettling. And what if Ashquash finds out?”
Razzak Mintula eyed him speculatively at the mention of Ashquash, and Aronoke stood there quietly, giving her time to envision that scenario. He could imagine it quite clearly himself.
“I will send a query to the maintenance department,” said Razzak Mintula. “I’m sure it is nothing serious, but there is no harm in asking. If it is a mistake then it will be fixed.”
“Yes, Instructor,” said Aronoke. He would feel a good deal more comfortable if it were fixed.
Aronoke’s discussion with Master Altus had also made him more suspicious of his lessons with Clan Sandrek. Whereas before he had considered the older students to be merely resentful of his presence, he had thought that they would have gotten used to him in time, once the novelty had worn off. In the Fumers, new recruits had always felt the need to put Aronoke into his place when they first encountered him. He had to fight most of them in ‘friendly’ matches at least once, and then, after they had inevitably beaten him, they mostly left him alone.
With Clan Sandrek he still felt like they disliked him, even though they had all beaten him in duels by now.
In the Fumers, he had been pushed around, beaten up, been the target of numerous jokes and nasty pranks, but he had still felt like one of them. He had always known that if anyone from any other compound tried to hurt him, the Fumers would be sure to kick in their teeth or other mouthparts.
With Clan Sandrek, he still felt completely like an outsider.
He had told himself numerous times that on Kasthir, Clan Sandrek would be considered green pushovers, that they weren’t as good as they thought they were, but it had taken Master Altus to point out that their greatest failure was that they weren’t behaving like Jedi. Aronoke had felt it was his place to struggle to catch up and fit in with the others, like he always had. To endure any punishment that process required. From what Master Altus said, it should have been Clan Sandrek’s place to welcome him and help him.
Well, they had helped him. At least Vark had, but Aronoke couldn’t help but pay closer attention and realised anew that many of the things Vark said were subtly wrong.
“You have to learn to strike harder and faster, or you will never be good enough to be a Jedi,” Vark said, the very next day on the training field.
Mentor Tolto and the rest of Clan Sandrek were some distance away, practicing advanced moves that Aronoke was too inept to even attempt. The sounds of their voices created a masking background murmur, doubtlessly making Vark inaudible to anyone but Aronoke. Vark was missing out on the advanced lesson, but he didn’t seem bothered by it. He had patiently smiled and taken Aronoke aside to help him practice.
“You must learn to strike with everything you have,” Vark continued. “To use every weapon in your arsenal, every advantage at your disposal. You’re already quite good at doing that defensively, dodging and rolling, like when you fought Zujana. You must learn to do the same thing offensively. To facilitate that, let’s try something different – we’ll act out a scenario.”
“A scenario?” Aronoke was not familiar with that term, but Vark did not bother to explain.
“Imagine I’m your enemy,” the green duros said, bringing his blade up into a threatening position. “Imagine I will kill you without compunction. Imagine that I’ve just killed a member of your clan, and spat on his body as it lays twitching at my feet.”
Vark’s eyes dropped to look at the ground as he gestured at it with his blade, and immediately Aronoke could imagine Draken lying there.
Aronoke had seen dead bodies before. Had been made to clean up afterwards, when he was a menial. He could imagine Draken’s dead body all too clearly. Draken’s face contorted with pain, the life fading from his eyes as his blood soaked into the ground. The smell of spilled intestines. Imagined the spit running down Draken’s pale cheek as Vark spat on the grass and laughed.
“Behind you are the other members of your clan,” Vark continued, prowling slowly from side to side, grinning nastily at Aronoke as he switched his brandished practice-sabre rapidly from one hand to another. “Helpless prisoners. If you don’t strike me down, I’m going to do the same thing to them. I’m going to make you watch, while I torture them and kill them slowly.”
Aronoke could imagine them there too – the frightened silence of the little kids, struggling to stay calm, because they were brave and going to be Jedi. Ashquash defiant and glowering, wrestling with her bonds.
“Don’t listen to him, Aronoke,” imaginary-Ashquash hissed. “He hasn’t got the balls to go through with it.”
It seemed so real, Aronoke almost turned to look.
Vark was coming closer, closer. He was going to do horrible things and kill them all. A terrible memory flashed in Aronoke’s mind, of being tied naked to a bench awash in his own blood, while Careful Kras set aside his knife to pick up the syringe of liquid fumes. The pain, the humility and helplessness that swallowed the world.
“Can’t you feel how much you hate me?” came Vark’s soft insistent voice. “How much you want to kill me, so I can’t hurt your friends? That strength is the only thing that can help you stop me now.”
That was right. Aronoke was not tied down now and he had a weapon in his hands. He could feel his anger begin to build. When he was angry enough, there would be no room to be afraid.
But acting without thinking got you killed, Aronoke suddenly remembered. Being angry made you slow and stupid. It was a lesson he had learned many times on Kasthir, where learning it the hard way meant you didn’t survive to be tested again. He had learned it again here on Coruscant, fighting Rancolos.
Besides, fear was wrong, anger was wrong, wasn’t it? He should strike out of a position of calm contemplation, having considered all his options. That was what the Jedi teachings said. Even the younglings in Clan Herf had been taught that.
Why was Vark goading him to act in this way?
Aronoke froze, captured by indecision as Vark came darting closer, his practice-blade dangling uselessly in his hand.
Vark’s blade thwacked into Aronoke’s shoulder, hard enough to leave a bruise.
“And you’re dead,” said Vark, rolling his eyes in weary frustration. “And all your clan with you. You’re not supposed to just stand there like gundark bait, you hopeless moron.”
Vark’s tone was puzzled and irate, and his comment instantly released the tension. It also released the catch on Aronoke’s temper. Hopeless moron, was he? He wasn’t the one doing everything wrong…
Later, when Aronoke remembered that moment, he thought to himself that if he had come from a world where talking could solve problems, he would have questioned Vark then. If he had been a more experienced Jedi, he might have said: “Why are you doing this? Don’t you know that what you’re trying to teach me is wrong?” He might have at least followed the scenario through properly, in the role of a Jedi, calmly defending the imaginary prisoners to the best of his ability. But at the time, Aronoke didn’t think of doing any of those things any more than he would have considered having Twi’lek head-tails grafted on his head and taking up pole-dancing.
For a moment he considered striking out at Vark, but instantly realised that would make Vark the victor. Instead he threw his practice blade down on the grass and stalked off across the field without saying a word.
“What was all that about?” came Mentor Tolto’s voice, drifting over the grass, as Aronoke walked away simmering, taking deep breaths and trying to recover his calm. Vark’s voice was too low for Aronoke to hear his reply.
He had to be careful, Aronoke decided. Had to watch his temper, not let them make him angry and push him over the edge. Attacking Rancolos had been a mistake.
It was not at all easy to do. He continued avoiding the issue, although the strategy was not one he enjoyed employing. Whenever he grew dangerously close to losing his temper, he would throw his practice blade to the ground, as if in disgust, and walk off across the field, ignoring any jibes along the way. He would say nothing.
Of course Mentor Tolto did not like this at all. Probably thought Aronoke was throwing a childish temper tantrum. Aronoke was careful to be polite to him. Would acknowledge him with a little bow to show he meant respect. But he would not say anything until he felt calm again.
It was not long after he began practicing this strategy that Razzak Mintula asked him to come and speak with her.
“An opportunity has arisen, Aronoke, for you to join a different clan for physical training sessions, instead of Clan Sandrek. This group is not as far advanced in their training as Clan Sandrek is, but they are still substantially ahead of Clan Herf. They might suit you well.”
Aronoke was in multiple minds about accepting. To back down now seemed like giving up. Sparring with Clan Sandrek was difficult but he had steeled himself to do it. He had accepted that to get better and catch up he would have to endure being beaten over and over again and that to lose against such odds was no shame. But it was painful. He had an interesting collection of bruises from the older students’ training sticks. It was confusing. He was still learning what was supposed to be right and wrong according to the Jedi. The things Vark said made sense according to how things had been on Kasthir, but he knew that was not the way things were supposed to be here.
Master Altus’s disapproval regarding Clan Sandrek’s behaviour suggested that another group might be more welcoming to newcomers, but what if the next group was equally difficult? Then it would be obvious that he, Aronoke, was the problem. That he had somehow gotten things wrong. Maybe they would kick him out, and what would he do then?
Could Razzak Mintula’s invitation be considered an unusual event? Was this part of an even more convoluted conspiracy? Or was he being given a way to back away from an unpleasant situation gracefully?
But he had taken too long thinking.
“You don’t have to decide immediately,” Razzak Mintula said. “You can tell me any time within the next few weeks if you would like to take up this opportunity.”
“Thank you, Instructor,” said Aronoke. “I will think about it.”
Aronoke did try thinking about it, but that did no good – it was all too hard. Whether it was stupid or not, he should talk to someone about it. But still, he put it off a little longer, hoping he would come to a decision on his own.
Then a few days later, Aronoke was just coming into the clan room when Draken came up to him, bubbling over with excitement. A trail of younglings followed after him, just as enthusiastic.
“Guess what?” Draken said. “We’re going to be learning to swim as part of our physical training program. It’s up on the extended schedule. I know how to already, of course, but it’s going to be a lot of fun!”
The little kids jumped around everywhere like pop-lice. Sometimes Aronoke despaired of them ever learning to be calm. “Learn to swim! Swim! In the water!”
“It’s going to be such fun,” laughed Golmo, obviously copying Draken.
Aronoke did not like the sound of it at all.
“What? When?”
Ashquash stood up and came over. She did not look very happy either.
“Next week,” said Draken. “There’s a big pool on one of the lower levels of the Temple. I looked it up on the holonet to see what it’s like, and it’s huge! That’s where we’ll be learning. It’s going to be great! I used to go swimming on the lower levels, in the filtration ponds, but this should be better, because we always had to dodge the droids down there and watch out for security.”
He suddenly seemed to realize that Aronoke was not as enthusiastic as he was.
“Oh! I forgot. You don’t like to take off your robes, do you? Or to shower, even.” Draken seemed almost gleeful and did not lose any of his own enthusiasm. “Well, you’ll have to now I guess. You’ll get used to it,” he said blithely.
Aronoke was not so sure. It depended what they had to wear while they swam, he thought. Surely they would wear something. Doubted it would be robes. That would be too hard. He would sink. Drown. If it was something very revealing, he didn’t know if he could do it. He did not want to make a fuss like he had in the medical bay. That had only drawn more attention. It would be good to know what to expect in advance.
Aronoke did not want to ask Razzak Mintula. Would be too hard to explain. She did not know about the thing on his back and he did not want to be forced into an explanation about it. Combined with the other matter, about Clan Sandrek, he decided it warranted going to to talk to Master Altus. Certainly before the swimming started.
He put through a call on his communicator and reached what seemed to be a holo-simulacrum of Master Altus which wanted to take a message.
“Hello Master Altus,” said Aronoke, feeling strange talking to the simulacrum. “I was hoping I could come and talk to you soon.”
“Aronoke,” said Master Altus’s real voice. “Yes, by all means, come by this evening, if that is convenient.”
“Yes, Master,” said Aronoke. “That will be fine.”
“Hespenara is not here at the moment. She is busy preparing for some tests, so she will not be able to collect you as usual.”
“That is no problem. I can find my way myself, Master.”
Aronoke closed the communications channel flooded with a great sense of relief. Surely Master Altus would be able to sort these things out if anyone could.
There was a droid in Master Altus’s chambers when Aronoke arrived. Aronoke eyed it with some suspicion. It was a busy droid, churning out convoluted holodisplays of numbers and other data that cluttered up the usually dim and calm environment of Master Altus’s chambers. To Aronoke’s eye, Master Altus himself seemed more rested than he had on his previous visit, although not quite back to normal.
“This is LT-37,” said Master Altus. “He is helping me with some of the calculations and data evaluation resulting from my last expedition. It is looking to be a more time-consuming business than I had anticipated, but that is all to good advantage, since I had hoped to spend some time here on this visit.”
“It sounds more like a good reason to stay away, Master,” joked Aronoke.
“Yes, it is perhaps one reason why I am usually eager to depart the temple as soon as I am able. And yet there are some Jedi for whom a permanent assignment to the temple seems to be the greatest pleasure imaginable.”
“Like most of the librarians,” said Aronoke.
“Yes, like many of them,” said Master Altus. “No dinner today, I’m afraid, since I don’t have Hespenara to run out and get it, but I have collected a store of confectionary just for such occasions.”
Aronoke would have been happy to fetch dinner for both of them, but Master Altus seemed so pleased with his confectionaries he felt it would be churlish to suggest it. Besides, people worried too much about food here. They sat down, and Aronoke tried the confectionaries and found them pleasant, if a little oversweet for his tastes. They were coated balls of a chalky sugary substance with a distinctive but not unpleasant aftertaste. Master Altus spoke of inconsequential things while they ate, obviously expecting that Aronoke would come to the point of his visit in his own good time.
It took Aronoke a little while to begin properly. It felt awkward talking about what must seem like trivial difficulties to someone as powerful as Master Altus. And yet Aronoke could not imagine saying those things to anyone else. Perhaps one day he might trust Master Insa-tolsa enough, he thought, because he had already grown more accustomed to the big gentle Ithorian, but he still wasn’t the same as Master Altus.
He swallowed firmly.
“There’s several things I would like to talk to you about, Master, if you don’t mind,” Aronoke said at last.
“Of course,” said Master Altus, calmly. “You can always come to me with any problem you may have, Aronoke.”
“Firstly, Instructor Mintula told me that an opportunity had come up for me to transfer to a different Physical Training group, one that is not quite as advanced as Clan Sandrek, although it is still more advanced than Clan Herf.”
“Well, that is good news,” said Master Altus immediately. “That sounds like a good idea.”
Aronoke had been going to weigh out the pros and cons as he saw them, but Master Altus’s warm approval washed Aronoke’s misgivings completely aside. Obviously Razzak Mintula’s offer was not an unusual thing, he thought to himself. Perhaps backing away from his struggle with Clan Sandrek was an acceptable withdrawal from a difficult situation, and not a demonstration of weakness.
“Yes, I thought so too, but I wanted to be sure,” Aronoke said instead.
“You know, Aronoke,” Master Altus continued, “that I never approved of you undertaking such advanced combat training so soon. I was willing for you to continue as long as you were happy with the situation, but I must admit I am relieved that another option has presented itself.”
“I don’t like to give up easily,” admitted Aronoke. “It usually makes things worse.”
“It is good to be determined,” said Master Altus tolerantly, “but unwise to throw yourself against an obstacle which can be avoided. On my homeworld they say ‘the river always flows around a stone’.”
“On Kasthir they say ‘sand eats rock’,” countered Aronoke.
“Persistence is certainly a quality that may lead to success,” said Master Altus comfortably, “but we must learn to choose which obstacles must be worn down, and which are better side-stepped.”
Aronoke turned this over in his mind . It was like bone-sucking worms, he realised. You didn’t go looking for them, unless you had to. You simply tried to avoid them. Sandrek clan’s strange attitude was like a poisonous creature, best avoided entirely rather than weathered.
“Then I will tell Instructor Mintula that I am happy to change over,” Aronoke said. The thought of not having to spar against Clan Sandrek any more took a greater burden off his mind than he had anticipated. “I don’t mind losing or getting bruised so much,” he said confidingly, “but some of the things they said made me feel confused.”
“Confused?” asked Master Altus, a little more sharply. “What sort of things?”
Aronoke had not meant to tell him about Vark’s strange lessons, had never been the sort of Fumer who ran to the higher-ups with titbits of information about his peers, hoping to be rewarded. Had stayed away from the higher-ups as much as possible, on account of avoiding Careful Kras’s attention.
“I didn’t notice at first,” said Aronoke reluctantly, “because I was thinking too much like a Fumer, but Clan Sandrek don’t act like the other Jedi I know in the temple. One of them, the one instructed to act as my mentor, seems to be trying to teach me things in a way that seems different to the other things we are taught.”
“Oh, and how is it different?” asked Master Altus.
“I might be wrong, Master, because I am still very new at all these things,” said Aronoke apologetically, “but he seems to be trying to make me use my anger to fuel my fighting, like we are not supposed to do. At first I thought he was merely trying to trip me up into making a mistake, but now I am not so certain.”
“You don’t mean he is merely trying to make you angry?” said Master Altus.
“No, Master. They do that too and I mostly have the trick of it now, although I do get angry sometimes. This is different. He is the one who is most friendly and helpful to me in my training. He encourages me to do things in a particular way, but I don’t think they are the right way. He encourages me to use my anger, my fear, and my desire to win to help me fight more successfully.”
“That is a serious matter, which will have to be investigated,” said Master Altus. “I will have to report it.”
Aronoke fidgeted uncomfortably.
“I don’t like the idea of getting him in trouble,” he said. “It seems almost treacherous.”
“Oh? So I shouldn’t report it?” Master Altus was calm as always, watching Aronoke with warm interest.
Aronoke felt put on the spot. He stared at the floor. Sighed. Looked up to see those blue eyes still regarding him patiently. Master Altus would always act in this way, he realised, in a way that would make Aronoke think about the situation and come up with his own solution. Well then. He forced himself to try to think objectively.
“If I had been here longer, then I think it would be better if I talked about it to him myself first,” said Aronoke slowly. “That I should tell him that I think he’s doing the wrong thing, to give him the chance to change his mind. But I haven’t been here very long and I don’t know the right things to say. I think he would talk circles around me and I would be even more confused. Besides which, he’s nearly ready to become a Padawan. He must know that it’s wrong already.”
Master Altus waited patiently, saying nothing.
“I am changing groups, so he will not hurt me,” Aronoke continued slowly, “but he might still hurt someone else. And then why did he try and teach me that way at all? Perhaps Clan Sandrek might be being manipulated by someone else too.”
Aronoke looked at the floor again. “I suppose you really do have to report them,” he admitted.
“Very well then,” said Master Altus. “Now, there was something else?”
“The next matter is something that happened quite some time ago. I was going to take a shower.”
Feeling silly and self-conscious, Aronoke repeated to Master Altus the story about the droid, and everything it had said and done during its two visits.
“When you said I should try to notice unusual things, I thought of the shower at once, but I was not sure that it was one of those things,” said Aronoke. “So I thought I would investigate a little more first. Draken went to look into some of the other clans’ bathrooms, but none of them had the holes in them. So I told Instructor Mintula about the maintenance. She said she would report it, and now the wall has suddenly been fixed again.”
That had happened only this morning, and Aronoke had taken it as evidence that whatever maintenance had been originally performed was highly suspicious.
“There will be records in the maintenance department,” said Master Altus. “I can have them checked to see why the walls were tampered with and what was done to them.”
“Yes, Master. It just seemed odd to me.”
“You can bring anything that seems odd to my attention, Aronoke.”
“Yes, Master, I will. Although some of them might be stupid things.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“The last thing is a personal thing,” said Aronoke, feeling himself starting to get even more nervous. He found it hard to speak smoothly. Words seemed to desert him. He tried to focus, and ploughed resolutely on.
“It was on the schedule. Earlier… in the week. We are supposed to learn… to swim.”
“And that makes you uncomfortable,” said Master Altus.
“Yes, Master.”
“I assume it is because of your peculiar markings?” he asked calmly. “You don’t like to take off your outer garments?”
“Yes, Master. Mostly.”
“Hm,” mused Master Altus. “When I was in training we wore swimsuits. They were certainly a lot more revealing than the robes you wear, but they still covered quite a lot of our bodies. They would almost certainly cover most of the scars and markings, although not all of the ones on your arms and legs.”
“Those don’t matter, Master,” said Aronoke. “It is the other ones that worry me.”
“Then I think it should be alright. You should try to conquer your fear, of course, Aronoke, but I think you are right to be cautious.”
“I am?” said Aronoke, surprised. He had thought his fear about his back was a failing. Something to be ashamed of.
“Yes. I believe you should trust your instincts to keep those markings hidden. I think it might prove important.”
“I am not sure I always felt this way about them though, Master,” said Aronoke reluctantly. “When I was small…the first time…I did not even know they were there.”
“Nevertheless, your instincts are trying to protect you,” said Master Altus. “And while you should try not to be afraid, there is no harm in taking note of the warning they present to you.”
“Yes, Master,” said Aronoke, feeling more cheerful.
“So you will be able to attend your swimming class, do you think?”
“I am not sure what will happen,” Aronoke admitted. “I don’t like the water – it is a strange thing to me – but I will try.”
“Good,” said Master Altus. “You are doing very well, Aronoke. You need not worry.”
The swimming suit appeared in Aronoke’s cupboard the next day. It was black, tight and stretchy and looked very small amongst his other things. He took it out and looked at it in some distaste. He determined to try it on before the swimming lesson so as to avoid any unpleasant surprises on the day. Took it to the shower cubicles very early in the morning.
He felt very naked in it. It was made of some thick almost foamy material that did not show every ridge and scar on his body, but it still seemed very revealing. He steeled himself to exit his cubicle so he could see how his back looked in it in the mirror outside.
It was not so bad. Almost the entirety of the scars on his back were covered. You could only see one small matted patch up near the back of his neck and none of the mysterious markings at all. He was filling out more, Aronoke noticed as well, with more flesh covering his ribs. His shoulders were getting wider, his legs more muscular, longer yet still lean. He stood surveying himself with some interest, until a noise from the corridor outside sent him fleeing back into the shower cubicle. He had barely shut himself inside before a great gaggle of his clan-mates swarmed in to get ready for the day.
On the day of the first swimming lesson Aronoke felt sick with nerves. He hadn’t felt so unhappy about anything, he realised, since he had been told to undress during that first proper medical examination. Since he had shown his back to Master Altus.
He had decided that it would be a good idea to dress in the swimsuit beforehand. To wear it all day under his other clothes to prevent any worrisome mishaps. This worked well. No one seemed to notice. He felt very exposed when it came time to get changed and actually go out of the changing rooms and down to the water.
That was the first time he had seen the pool where they were going to swim and he baulked instantly. It was immense. He had never seen so much water all in one place before. It stretched across the chamber in a huge sheet, great and shiny like the eye of some gargantuan creature.
He did not like it at all. Could not have gotten into it at that moment if he had been promised all of Coruscant to do so. Draken gave a loud whoop and ran into the water, making an immense splashing jump at the end and Aronoke’s stomach lurched sickly.
The water was not deep in this part, he saw. The little kids were running into it like it was great fun, splashing and cavorting around. The swimming instructor, an aqualish, began lining them up and showing them exercises.
You’re being really stupid, he told himself. It’s not hurting them. They like it. It won’t hurt you either.
But it made no difference.
“Come on, Aronoke!” said Draken. “Just jump in! It’ll be over in a moment and it’s less cold that way. Or I could push you in.”
Aronoke’s legs had turned to plastisteel welded to the floor. “No,” said Aronoke hurriedly. “I don’t think I can.”
He could hardly breathe. He felt heavy and sick like he was going to faint.
Don’t be stupid, repeated the sensible little voice in his head. It won’t hurt you. Just walk in.
But he couldn’t. It was as horrible an idea as throwing himself over the edge of one of Coruscant’s impossibly high buildings.
“Are you alright, Aronoke?” asked Razzak Mintula, appearing out of the water clad in a sleek black swimsuit. Her silver ponytail was draped attractively over her chest. Despite his fear, Aronoke felt even more unsettled. He could feel his face heating. Shook his head. Said nothing. Stared at the ground.
“Come on Aronoke! It’s fun!” cried Yeldra.
“You’ll like it! Look at me, I’m an aqualish!” called one of the younger clan members.
“I can push him in,” said Draken again, helpfully.
“Or I can,” said Ashquash, uncharacteristically impish, grinning from the water, carefully concealed up to her neck.
Aronoke shook his head dizzily.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea,” remonstrated Razzak Mintula. “Why don’t you go and sit over there and meditate, Aronoke, and you can join us when you feel able to.”
“Yes, Instructor,” mumbled Aronoke, and went to sit with his back to the changing rooms, as far away from the pool as possible.
He was glad that she had not pressured him to enter the pool. Was grateful to sit there and find the calm centre of his mind where everything seemed safe. He was surprised at himself. He had not expected to find the challenge of entering the water greater than that of wearing the swimsuit. It was a silly thing, he knew. The little kids were doing it. So could he. He must not let it beat him.
He got to his feet.
Each step was difficult, slow and hesitant, incongruous with the absurdly fast thumping of his heart. He felt horribly self-conscious, even though his clan-members were not paying him any attention, all being absorbed in their lesson. He hovered on the very edge for long minutes, and then waded slowly in, to stand awkwardly about waist deep. It was by sheer force of will that he held himself there, frozen in place, trying his best to keep the fear at bay. He could not bring himself to splash around. Could not have tried to do any exercises. Could not move. It took every bit of his attention just to stand there. By then the lesson was almost finished.
“Very good, Aronoke,” said Razzak Mintula when she noticed, but Aronoke felt no pleasure at her praise, only awkward and stupid, like he had failed at something that was terribly easy.
He had to overcome his fear, he told himself sternly, but when the lesson ended, he fled the water with great rapidity and hurried to put his robes back on.
Afterwards he went to talk to Razzak Mintula.
“Instructor Mintula?”
“Yes, Aronoke?”
“Can I come down to the pool in between lessons? Just to look at it? So I might get used to it?”
“I don’t see why not,” she said kindly. “I am sure you will not disturb any other groups who might be using it. It is probably a good idea.”
“Thank you, Instructor,” said Aronoke. He was not sure whether to be pleased or not. He didn’t like looking at the pool. It seemed malevolent and alien to him.
And so, in the afternoons, sometimes alone and sometimes in company, Aronoke would go down and look at the water. At first he just looked. After a while he could make himself touch it with his hands or dabble his feet in it. He kept visiting it through all the swimming lessons, in which he did not improve greatly, and kept visiting it once or twice a week after these stopped.
Aronoke began his new physical training classes with Clan Ryllak. Their instructor was a bothan named Mentor Snesgrul.
“This is Aronoke,” Mentor Snesgrul announced to the class when Aronoke first arrived. “He is a late starter, and belongs to Clan Herf, so he will be joining us for some of his physical training.”
“Hello, Aronoke,” chorused the class cheerfully.
“Hello,” said Aronoke, thinking that they looked very different from Clan Sandrek. They were bigger than he was, but not by so very much. Clan Ryllak had only recently started using practice-sabres, and most of the exercises were performed in one large group, with everyone standing in rows practicing the basic forms over and over again.
Aronoke already knew those, so it was easy, but he was glad of the repetitive training. He had never felt completely comfortable with the moves when training with Clan Sandrek, while now they were quickly becoming so ingrained that he hardly had to think about them.
Mentor Snesgrul called a brief rest break partway through the lessons, encouraging the students to stretch and drink water. The Clan Ryllak people crowded around Aronoke in between turns at the drinking fountain, smiling and asking questions.
“So you’re from Clan Herf, are you?”
“It must be tough, being bigger than everyone else in your clan.”
“I hope you like training with us, Aronoke. If there’s anything you need help with, you just have to ask!”
Aronoke nearly melted in gratitude, it was all so much easier. They did some simple sparring exercises at the very end of the lesson, and he found his human opponent, Riala, was far more nervous of injuring him than she needed to be.
“Tell me if I’m going too fast,” she said, smiling at Aronoke as they traded cautious blows. “I tend to get carried away once I get started, and I know that you’re only new.”
She was cute when she smiled, Aronoke thought. Her face dimpled in an interesting way. Cute and distracting, especially since one hank of brown hair had escaped its bindings to hang down in front of her face.
No, best not to pay too much attention to that!
“It’s fine,” said Aronoke, smiling back. “You can go a bit faster if you like.”
It was strange, but even though the lessons were so much simpler, he thought he was learning a great deal more.
Without the constant unpleasantness of sparring with Clan Sandrek, Aronoke hardly noticed the weeks passing. He worked hard at his lessons, spent time with his clanmates and diligently practiced his extra meditation lessons. Whole days went by without him thinking of Kasthir at all. Weeks trailed by in a pleasant mish-mash of predictable activity.
Then one day Master Altus arranged a meeting in one of the atria.
“This is the closest thing you can get to a forest planet here on Coruscant, or at least in the Jedi temple,” he said, when Aronoke met him and Hespenara in the large internal courtyard.
The massive trees in the garden towered high overhead and were clustered so close together that Aronoke could hardly see the ceiling for the huge, broad branches. Aronoke could scarcely believe that such big things were actually alive. There were no trees on Kasthir.
“You’re growing so fast my mind can’t keep up,” complained Hespenara. “I swear you’ve grown an inch in all directions since I saw you last.”
Aronoke smiled. He knew he was growing with impossible rapidity by human standards. His appetite was increasingly huge, and all his old robes had disappeared to be replaced with new ones Even his boots had needed to be replaced, although they were hardly worn out yet.
They sat on a bench between the trees, but even there, in that peaceful place, the mechanical hum of Coruscant pervaded. In most of the Jedi Temple it was no louder than the whisper of a breeze in the desert, so constant that Aronoke hardly noticed it anymore except when it was very quiet. Like it was here.
“I thought this would be more convivial,” said Master Altus. “LT-37 is very useful at performing the tasks he does, but it does become a little overwhelming to have him in my chambers constantly. It is perhaps more pleasant for us to have our meeting here.”
“Oh, Master!” said Hespenara exasperatedly. “It’s not like you couldn’t request the Jedi Council to set aside a room for that purpose. For the droid to work in. It is hardly like they wouldn’t agree.”
“It is a good exercise for me,” said Master Altus stubbornly. “And it should not be very much longer.”
Aronoke wondered if Master Altus did not want his research getting out of his sight. Perhaps he was worried that something unusual would happen to it too.
“There are a couple of matters I wish to inform you about today, Aronoke,” Master Altus continued, obviously wishing to avoid discussing the droid any further. “Firstly concerning Clan Sandrek. When questioned, Initiate Vark said that he did not personally decide to try to influence your training. He said he was merely following the dictates of a document left upon his datapad.”
“Oh,” said Aronoke, frowning as he remembered the document that had appeared on his own datapad. Were they from the same source?
“I find it hard to believe that an initiate who has nearly completed his training would not know such a document was wrong,” said Hespenara, shaking her head.
Aronoke nodded.
“He did admit that he knew he was doing something wrong,” said Master Altus. “He knew it was contrary to the teachings, although he claimed it was difficult for him to pinpoint precisely why it was so.”
“What will happen to him?” asked Aronoke.
“If that had been the only thing, his behavior would be corrected and he would be given another chance,” said Master Altus. “However, in this case, the Jedi Council has stepped in and decided that the whole of Clan Sandrek should be expelled. Something has gone sadly awry with that group. I am not aware of all the details.”
There was a brief silence as Aronoke digested this. He felt guilty that he had been responsible for an entire Clan being expelled. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault, but it had still happened because of him. Were they really all caught up in it? Had they all received peculiar documents on their datapads, or had Vark misled them all? Why had none of them questioned what was happening? What about Mentor Tolto and Clan Sandrek’s other instructors? Hadn’t they noticed something was amiss?
How could something like that pass unnoticed in the middle of the Jedi Temple?
“How is your training with Clan Ryllak going?” asked Master Altus, breaking into Aronoke’s internal circle of unanswerable questions. “I hope you are finding them more helpful.”
“It’s going very well,” said Aronoke. “They are very different. The lessons are much better, the other students are helpful and welcoming and I feel I am learning well.”
“Good,” said Master Altus. “Your training results have been pleasing. You are progressing quickly, which is in accordance with your physical growth. There is but one thing that I think your education is lacking, and that is you have not been outside the temple. Not since we brought you here from Kasthir. Hespenara and I are intending to make a short trip to a part of Coruscant called Prelix Sector and I think it would be a good idea if you came along.”
“Yes, Master!” said Aronoke, an unusual feeling of excitement building in him. There was the old nervousness, of the endlessly busy streets, the roiling traffic, and the tangle of monstrous buildings, but they were not as frightening as they had been. He thought it would be interesting to see more of this great city planet where he now lived. “I would like that.”
“You may tell your instructor that I will be taking you on a field trip,” said Master Altus.