Shatterpoint

Another shockwave rattled the cavern. Loose rock clattered from the ceiling.

"Kar," Mace said, "this is not the way. We don't have time." Vastor's eyes stayed closed. His expression did not so much as flicker. Is there something better for me to be doing right now?

"As a matter of fact," Mace said, "yes. There is." Does it involve killing Balawai?

Mace said apologetically, "Probably not more than a thousand. Maybe two." Vaster opened eyes filled with pelekofan's darkness. Chalk lifted her head, rag hanging forgotten from her fist.

"So," said Mace Windu. "Are we on?" Smoke and dust clouded the huge cavern; it reeked of grasser fear-musk, of dung and urine and blood, and with each new DOKAW-shock the smell got worse.

Torchlight flared and blazed and vanished again. The stinking fog swirled with gigantic shapes: grassers bucking and clawing at each other, some with jaws panic-locked on their own or others' limbs. They charged at random, slamming into each other, trampling the injured and their own young. Koru

A swirl opened a gap: a looming akk dog paused to stare into Mace's eyes, measuring him with saurian malice as a thick rope of bloody drool looped from its jaws, then it ponderously turned aside and slipped into the murk, tail tapering so smoothly it might have been dissolving.

Mace threaded through the chaos.

Behind him followed a pair Koru

Five more pairs of Koru

Erratic booming shivered the air, sharper and much smaller than the DOKAW-shocks, but still powerful enough to vibrate the floor. Mace pointed toward the source of the booming: a side cave where the great ankkox paced in restless fury. The concussions were its angrily whipping tail mace striking the walls and floor of its pen.

The nearest Korun stretcher bearer saw his gesture, and they moved in that direction, followed by Nick and Chalk.

Mace paused, and looked back over his shoulder. At the mouth of an upper passageway stood Kar Vastor and his Akk Guards. Behind them crouched all twelve of Vastor's Force- bonded akks. The lor pelek met Mace's gaze and nodded.

Mace returned the nod, spreading his hands as though to say, Whenever you're ready.

Vastor and his akks marched grimly down into the grasser cavern. The akks spread out in huge leaping springs, knocking over panicked grassers on all sides, crouching over them to let drool fall from razor teeth and moisten the fur on their necks. The humans stayed together in a flying wedge with Vastor at the point, moving in to manually separate struggling grassers, intimidating the wi

Mace watched, stonefaced. It was wasteful. It was brutal.

It was necessary.

He turned once again to his own task.

He gestured and the mass of struggling beasts and men parted before him, and the smoke and dust cleared, and he saw her.

She sat on a ledge like a natural gallery that coursed one long-curving wall of the cavern. Her feet hung over the lip, dangling free: a child in a chair too tall for her. Her face was buried in her hands, and even from across the cavern his chest ached with a silent echo of her sobs.

And when he reached her side, he still did not know what to say.

"Depa." She lifted her head and turned to meet his eyes, and knowing what to say would not have helped him because he could not speak.

The rag-the one she had worn across her brow these past days-was gone. On her forehead- On her forehead, where the Chalactan Greater Mark of Illumination should have been- As it had been in his hallucination, days ago at the jungle prospector outpost: on her brow was only an ugly keloid ripple of scar. As though the Greater Mark of Illumination had been carved from the bone of her skull with a blunt knife. As though the wound it left behind had festered, and had not been treated.

As though it festered still.

The Lesser Mark, called the Seeker, still gleamed at the bridge of her nose. The Lesser Mark is fixed between the eyes of one who aspires to become a Chalactan adept: it symbolizes the centered self, the shining vision, the elegant order that seeking illumination creates within the seeker. The Greater Mark is called the Universe; it is an exact replica of the Seeker, writ large.

It is fixed to the frontal bone in a solemn ceremony by the Convocation of Adepts, to welcome another to their company. The two, together, represent the fundamental tenet of Chalactan philosophy: As Without, So Within. The Adepts of Chalacta teach that the celestial order, the natural laws that govern the motion of planets and the wheel of galaxies, regulate as well the life of the Enlightened.

But for Depa, the universe was gone. All that remained was the Seeker.

Alone in the void.

"Mace." Her face twisted once more to tears. "Don't look at me. You can't look at me.

You can't see me like this. Please." He lowered himself to one knee beside her. He reached a tentative hand for her shoulder; she clutched his fingers and pressed his hand in place, but turned her face away.

"I'm so sorry." Her head twitched as though she shook tears out of her eyes. "I'm sorry for everything. I'm sorry things can't be different. Better. I'm sorry,'can't be better." "But you can." He squeezed her shoulder. "You can, Depa. You have to." "I'm so lost, Mace." Her whisper could not be heard in the riot of the cavern, but Mace could feel her meaning, as though the Force itself murmured in his ear. "I'm so lost…" The Depa of his hallucination-what had she told him?

He remembered.

"It is in the darkest night," he said gently, "that the light we are shines brightest." "Yes. Yes. You always say that. But what do you know about dark?" Her head sagged, chin to her chest, as though she could no longer think of a reason to hold it up. "How does a blind man know the stars have gone out?" "But they haven't," Mace said. "They still burn as bright as ever. And as long as people live around them, they will need Jedi. Like I need you now." "I am. I'm not a Jedi anymore. I quit. I resign. I withdraw. I thought you understood that." "I do understand it. I don't accept it." "It's not up to you." He pulled his hand from her shoulder and rose, looming above her. "Get up." She sighed, and once again a smile struggled onto her tearstained lips. "I'm not your Padawan now, Mace. You can't order me-" "Get up?' Reflexes burned into her by more than a decade of unquestioning obedience yanked her instinctively to her feet. She swayed dizzily, and her mouth hung slack.