Journey to Star Wars: The Force Awakens the Weapon of a Jedi: A Luke Skywalker Adventure (8 page)

The tunnel ran straight through the rock, as far as the illumination of his lightsaber reached. He tried to estimate which direction the tunnel headed, then stopped. He already knew where it
led—straight
into the Temple of Eedit. He knew because the Force was tugging at him, its message blessedly clear. This was what it had wanted him to find.

Getting the droids up the cliff took the better part of an hour and required haggling with Sarco over the use of his block and tackle. The alien had brought the equipment for
hoisting a dead pikhron so the beast could be skinned; Luke was glad to use
it for some other purpose.

Artoo suffered being hauled up to the cave with his dignity relatively intact, beeping encouragingly at Luke each time he caught his breath and fantasized about being able to lift the droids
through the air using the Force. But Threepio spent the entire time declaring that the rope was slipping and predicting his imminent demise. With the protocol droid standing
safely in the cave and
marveling at his miraculous survival, Luke lowered Sarco’s equipment and then tossed the rope down to him.

“We’ll be inside for a few days at least,” Luke called down to Sarco. “I’ll raise you on the comlink when we’re ready to return.”

Sarco raised his head from where he stood in the riverbed, arranging his equipment on his shoulders.

“If you come out of there
alive,” he said.

Luke hesitated. He didn’t believe in ghosts, but Ben had warned him about the power of the dark side of the Force—it had corrupted his apprentice Darth Vader. What if it was behind
the stories of spirits in the temple? What if some malevolent energy still lingered there?

“I can take care of myself,” he told Sarco, scanning the forested cliffs across the river. For a
moment he thought he’d seen something glinting in the sun.

“You’ll get more credits, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” he added.

I’m running up quite a bill for the Alliance,
he thought wryly.
I better learn to use the Force to trick a quartermaster into approving it
.

Sarco cocked his head back and forth in that strange, vaguely clockwork habit he had.

“We’ll meet again, Marcus,”
he said, and strode off across the rocky valley to where the happabores were waiting.

“What an unpleasant creature,” sniffed Threepio.

“I kind of feel sorry for him,” Luke said. “But look, he got us this far, didn’t he?”

“Wherever that may be.”

“Right,” Luke said. “That’s a good question. Let’s find out the answer.”

They walked for longer than half an hour, footsteps echoing
in the close confines of the tunnel, while Threepio imagined various calamities that were certain to befall
them.

As they walked, a sense of calm settled over Luke. His father’s lightsaber felt like an extension of his hand, and his senses were quick to register each chip and divot in the tunnel, each
slight current of air. He was aware of his breathing in and out, and of the unhurried
beat of his heart.

It’s the Force,
he realized.
It’s getting stronger. Stronger, or perhaps I’m feeling a deeper connection with it
.

Something gleamed in the pale blue light of his saber. Luke held up his hand for the droids to stop, interrupting Threepio’s speech about what it would be like to be entombed for millennia
without power while vermin chewed through his wiring.

There
were pieces of stone scattered across the floor. Beyond them, the passageway sloped upward but was blocked by fallen rocks. Luke advanced cautiously, clambering up the pile and peering
through the tumbled stones.

“Oh no, it’s obviously completely impassable,” Threepio said. “I suppose we’ll have to go back to Tikaroo.”

“No, it’s mostly loose stone,” Luke said. “I can feel fresh air,
in fact. Come and help me clear this stuff out of the way.”

“But, Master Luke, I’m not programmed for demolition.”

“Neither am I. We’ll just have to do our best.”

Artoo hooted at Threepio and rolled to the edge of the pile. He extended a utility arm and plucked a small stone out of the tumble, then turned and rolled away with his prize, whistling
cheerfully.

“Well, that’s no
end of help,” Threepio said.

Together they shoved the loose rock aside, Luke carving away at some of the bigger blocks with his saber, careful not to let the liquefied rock burn him. He found himself whistling a sprightly
tune as he worked.

“Master Luke!” Threepio exclaimed. “That sound you’re making—it’s the first Whiforlan fluting form!”

“Is it?” Luke asked, smiling. “It’s catchy.”

Luke climbed to the top of the pile, pushed at a slab of stone with his shoulder, and was rewarded when it slid aside and then toppled out of sight, landing with a crash.

“We’re almost there,” he said. “If we get the big pieces moved you and Artoo should be able to get through.”

He pushed his head through the gap he’d created, then his shoulders, saber raised to illuminate his surroundings.
What he saw made his heart catch in his throat.

“I’m going to take a quick look around,” Luke said. “I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“Be careful, Master Luke!” Threepio said.

Luke scrambled through the gap and found himself on the edge of what once had been an enormous hall, lit by the light of late afternoon.

Much of the roof had tumbled down, columns were shorn off or toppled,
and the floor was covered with drifts of leaves that had blown in through shattered windows. The center of the floor was a
crater, surrounded by rubble. Something screeched in the shadows, the noise of its scrambling retreat echoing around Luke. He whirled in a circle, brandishing his father’s lightsaber in front
of him, then forced himself to take a deep breath.

It’s not a demon or dark-side
ghosts—just jungle creatures,
he thought.
You’ve invaded their home, that’s al
l.

He raised his saber high and saw two statues at the far end of the hall, their faces bubbled and blackened, their arms ending in cauterized stumps. The temple had been bombed and then vandalized
with heavy energy weapons—someone had worked hard to erase any sign of beauty that had escaped the initial spasm of
violence.

The Empire,
Luke thought.
The purpose of the attack was to ruin this place and eradicate what it stood for. What it meant to people
.

He felt his anger rise—anger for the people of Alderaan, for his aunt and uncle on Tatooine, for his father, and for so many millions of others.

He nearly tripped over the stone hand on the floor. It had come to lie on its side, atop a pile
of rubble. The wrist was blackened where it had been sheared away, but the hand itself was intact,
as if stretched out toward him in welcome. The stonework was beautiful, he thought, running his hand over the fingers, appreciating the detail some lost artisan had created over untold hours. His
eyes jumped to the statues looming above, and he saw where the hand had been attached.

Luke deactivated
his lightsaber and hung it on his belt. He pushed the stone hand aside and sifted through the rubble beneath it. Here was the upper part of a face, with an eye captured in
swift, confident strokes, the eyebrow arched in good humor. There was a chin, bearded, and above it a smile.

His anger drained from him, to be replaced by a quiet joy. The Empire had tried to erase everything that had
been beautiful there, but it had failed. He could still see that beauty, just as he
could feel the power of the Force surrounding him.

At the end of the grand hall, the remains of massive double doors hung from their hinges. The entrance was filled with rubble higher than Luke’s head, and the wind had mounded up leaves in
the corners. He started toward the doors, then decided against it—the
Empire might have other safeguards against intrusion, in addition to the perimeter sensors. He turned the other way
instead, passing corridors choked with wreckage, and found a series of arches leading to an open space overgrown with trees.

Luke squeezed between two tumbled slabs and found himself in a circular courtyard created from the space between the two ruined towers and the rubble
of smaller buildings that had been part of
the temple complex. Once manicured, the courtyard was now wild. Impact craters had opened yawning pits in the ground, through which Luke could barely make out tumbled stone in the gloom far below.
The bowl of a ruined fountain occupied the center of the space, with water bubbling up from inside and spilling out over flagstones covered with grass, forming
a shallow pool. Faceless, limbless
statues, much smaller than the ones in the great hall, formed a perimeter around the fountain.

Luke looked around in mingled disbelief and joy. It was the place he’d seen in his vision—the fountain, the statues, the grass and trees. Somehow its disheveled state made it even
lovelier than he imagined it had been when carefully groomed and tended.

Something made a low sound nearby, and Luke saw pikhrons standing quietly among the trees on the far side of the courtyard, watching him warily. An old matriarch tossed her head, and the group
pushed its way through the trees, peering at Luke with small black eyes. They climbed a low mound of rubble, all that remained of one wing of the temple, and were gone.

They feel safe here,
Luke thought.
They know the hunters don’t come inside the perimeter
.

“Luke…”

Luke turned in surprise, looking for the source of the voice he’d heard.

“This place is strong with the Force,” Ben Kenobi said in Luke’s head. “It was the will of the Force that guided you to this place. Here you will learn to open yourself
to the Force, guiding its possibilities and obeying its commands. And passing
its tests. May the Force be with you, Luke.”

“Ben!” Luke called, but the voice of his old teacher was silent.

Luke sat down on the rim of the fountain, in one of the long shadows the statues cast across the glen. He could feel the power around him—power and a sense of peace. This was the place the
Force had shown him, and where it had brought him.

“Master Luke?”

That voice hadn’t
been in his head. Luke looked up and saw Threepio and Artoo standing in one of the archways to the great hall.

“Over here, Threepio.”

“There you are! Master Luke, we’ve found something.”

“What have you found?”

Artoo let out a torrent of accusatory beeps.

“Oh, very well,
you
found it,” Threepio said. “Artoo found a damaged frieze—apparently without
my
help—and we thought it
might be of
interest.”

“Let’s see what you’ve got,” Luke said, following the droids back into the ruined hall, to a section in deep shadow.

Artoo activated a spotlight on his dome and traced it along the wall. Luke leaned forward, hands on his knees. The sculpted figures on the wall were as damaged as the statues, the scenes
interrupted by craters left by blaster fire. But Luke could
make out children in Jedi robes, lightsabers raised in front of them as an instructor demonstrated the proper defensive stance.

Farther down the wall, Luke saw fragments of scenes in which Jedi fought warriors wearing spiked armor and masks. Even frozen in stone, the Jedi looked like deadly dancers, captured in the act
of leaping and tumbling, their lightsabers like extensions of their bodies.

I’ll never be able to do that—I can barely fend off an attack from a training remote. I wouldn’t even know how to
learn
to do that. So much knowledge has been lost.
No, not lost—stolen from the galaxy. Stolen by Vader and the Emperor
.

The frieze ended in shattered stone, and Artoo shut off his light.

“I’m glad I got to see that,” Luke said. “But everything here took place a long time
ago. This place is important because of the present, not the past. The Force told me
so.”

He returned to the glade, which was filled with birdsong, and looked around the courtyard again. His gaze lingered on a stone pillar whose surface was broken by a lever extending from the stone
two-thirds of the way to the top, meters above his head.

“Unless the Jedi who lived here were very tall,
that was designed to be opened with the Force,” he said.

Luke unbuckled his belt and holster and set it down on a tumbled slab of rock next to the droids. Holding his deactivated lightsaber in one hand, he walked over and stood beneath the pillar, its
surface turned orange by the setting sun. He breathed deeply, tuning out the squabbling droids and pushing away the distracting thoughts crowding
his head.

Keep your concentration here and now
.

He reached out with his hand, imagining it gripping the lever and pulling.

Nothing happened.

Luke shook his head and tried again, ordering the lever to move, then conjuring a picture of the Force taking on the form of something that could pull it. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine
it was only him and the lever he was trying
to move. When he looked again, the lever would have shifted and the pedestal would be open.

Luke opened his eyes. Nothing had changed.

He wiped his brow on his sleeve, took a deep breath, and tried again.

And then again. And again and again and again.

Luke tried until the glade was shrouded in gloom, with only the tops of the ruined towers still painted in the colors of sunset.
The birds had stilled their songs and sought their nests. But the
lever still hadn’t moved. No matter what he did, the Force refused to obey his commands—or his pleas.

I can’t do it. I don’t understand how, and there’s no one to teach me. And there never will be—I’m the last of the Jedi.

The last of the Jedi sank to the grass in despair.

Farnay had watched through her macrobinoculars
as Luke disappeared into the cave, gasping when he seemed to look straight at her for a moment. She’d observed Sarco as he
trudged back across the rocky valley and scrambled up to where his beasts waited. She was about a hundred meters away from him, crouched behind a thick tree trunk, her pack beast staked nearby.