Read Online Into the Void: Star Wars (Dawn of the Jedi) by Tim Lebbon - Free Book Online
Authors: Tim Lebbon
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creature of myth, rich in your mind, and so an illusion is easy to form.
Try something more mundane. A rock, a fruit, a shoe. Not so easy
.
Lanoree lets the illusion flitter away in the dusk and does as Ter’cay suggests. She
cannot do it.
Your lessons have only just begun
, Ter’cay says. He turns away from her and sits close to Dal, holding the boy’s hands
in his own, touching his cheeks and his temples, and then the Master closes his eyes
and Dal’s own eyes grow wide.
He hears him!
Lanoree thinks, delighted.
He feels the Force, and hears with it!
But her excitement is short-lived.
Dal stands and kicks at the sand, sending it spraying into Master Ter’cay’s face.
He reacts like he has been invaded or touched by something disgusting. Then he turns
and walks away into the twilight. Lanoree wishes she could call her brother back.
Their first dawn camped in the Silent Desert with Master Ter’cay is one of the strangest
times of Lanoree’s life. Camping with Dal on their way here had been nothing like
this; they were times of fear and worry, not wonder. Perhaps being so close to the
temple—a natural nexus of the Force—drew life to that place.
As the rising sun sets the eastern horizon aflame, the desert comes to life, and the
silence seems more staggering than ever before. Night creatures have already gone
to ground an hour before dawn, as if aware that sunlight will soon expose them. Shadows
retreat, the coolness of the night is burned away, and shimmering heat haze dances
across the sands. Desert birds take flight from wherever they sleep. A small species
of shire—thinner than those elsewhere on Tython, with water humps on back and neck—moves
in herds across a distant hillside. Lizards frolic and dance around rocky areas; gliding
pendles flap their mighty wings as they ride the dawn air currents; and she sees a
giant mankle stalking in the distance, its vicious spines raised for the hunt. Yet
this magnificent display of life and diversity exists in the desert’s unnatural silence,
the cries and calls, the flapping of wings, the growls and roars of the hunt, all
unheard.
There, toward the hills. Look. Blink and you might miss it
. She was not even aware that Ter’cay had risen; his tent looks undisturbed, untouched.
Yet as he speaks in her mind she sees him hunkered down south of the camp, as motionless
as the rock pile beside which he sits.
She looks where he said, and sees.
There seems to be no wind lifting the sand, no disturbance in the ground that might
raise such a thing. The sculpture looks about the size of a human, though distance
can be deceptive. It seems fluid, moving and dancing as the billions of sand particles
within constantly shift and flow. The shape is ambiguous.
Dal should see this
, Lanoree thinks. Yet she knows she cannot wake him with a thought, and to move him
might break this moment.
Reach
, Ter’cay says, and Lanoree reaches. The Force is alive within her and she probes
outward with her senses, feeling that distant sand sculpture is slightly warmer than
the surrounding sand, its smell is like something long buried exposed at last. And,
most amazingly of all, within its confines the sand sings out loud. The sound is confused
and seems to make no sense. There are no words there that Lanoree knows. Yet she can
sense something of unbridled freedom and passion in the noise, and for a few beats
of her heart she is filled with a blazing optimism that puts the sun to shame.
Then the shape disintegrates, and with one more heartbeat it is returned to the desert.
The sound has vanished. The movement has ceased. Lanoree is left breathing hard with
excitement, and as she glances across at Ter’cay she catches his smile.
What
is
that?
A mystery. You should wake your brother. Your training starts again now
.
They spend the rest of that day, and the two following, training in the Silent Desert.
Lanoree is
Try something more mundane. A rock, a fruit, a shoe. Not so easy
.
Lanoree lets the illusion flitter away in the dusk and does as Ter’cay suggests. She
cannot do it.
Your lessons have only just begun
, Ter’cay says. He turns away from her and sits close to Dal, holding the boy’s hands
in his own, touching his cheeks and his temples, and then the Master closes his eyes
and Dal’s own eyes grow wide.
He hears him!
Lanoree thinks, delighted.
He feels the Force, and hears with it!
But her excitement is short-lived.
Dal stands and kicks at the sand, sending it spraying into Master Ter’cay’s face.
He reacts like he has been invaded or touched by something disgusting. Then he turns
and walks away into the twilight. Lanoree wishes she could call her brother back.
Their first dawn camped in the Silent Desert with Master Ter’cay is one of the strangest
times of Lanoree’s life. Camping with Dal on their way here had been nothing like
this; they were times of fear and worry, not wonder. Perhaps being so close to the
temple—a natural nexus of the Force—drew life to that place.
As the rising sun sets the eastern horizon aflame, the desert comes to life, and the
silence seems more staggering than ever before. Night creatures have already gone
to ground an hour before dawn, as if aware that sunlight will soon expose them. Shadows
retreat, the coolness of the night is burned away, and shimmering heat haze dances
across the sands. Desert birds take flight from wherever they sleep. A small species
of shire—thinner than those elsewhere on Tython, with water humps on back and neck—moves
in herds across a distant hillside. Lizards frolic and dance around rocky areas; gliding
pendles flap their mighty wings as they ride the dawn air currents; and she sees a
giant mankle stalking in the distance, its vicious spines raised for the hunt. Yet
this magnificent display of life and diversity exists in the desert’s unnatural silence,
the cries and calls, the flapping of wings, the growls and roars of the hunt, all
unheard.
There, toward the hills. Look. Blink and you might miss it
. She was not even aware that Ter’cay had risen; his tent looks undisturbed, untouched.
Yet as he speaks in her mind she sees him hunkered down south of the camp, as motionless
as the rock pile beside which he sits.
She looks where he said, and sees.
There seems to be no wind lifting the sand, no disturbance in the ground that might
raise such a thing. The sculpture looks about the size of a human, though distance
can be deceptive. It seems fluid, moving and dancing as the billions of sand particles
within constantly shift and flow. The shape is ambiguous.
Dal should see this
, Lanoree thinks. Yet she knows she cannot wake him with a thought, and to move him
might break this moment.
Reach
, Ter’cay says, and Lanoree reaches. The Force is alive within her and she probes
outward with her senses, feeling that distant sand sculpture is slightly warmer than
the surrounding sand, its smell is like something long buried exposed at last. And,
most amazingly of all, within its confines the sand sings out loud. The sound is confused
and seems to make no sense. There are no words there that Lanoree knows. Yet she can
sense something of unbridled freedom and passion in the noise, and for a few beats
of her heart she is filled with a blazing optimism that puts the sun to shame.
Then the shape disintegrates, and with one more heartbeat it is returned to the desert.
The sound has vanished. The movement has ceased. Lanoree is left breathing hard with
excitement, and as she glances across at Ter’cay she catches his smile.
What
is
that?
A mystery. You should wake your brother. Your training starts again now
.
They spend the rest of that day, and the two following, training in the Silent Desert.
Lanoree is
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