Yoda by Sean Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

him spattered with rain; behind it, a cheerless gray sky. Before him on the desk lay the candle Yoda had sent.
    â€œWe should talk,” Dooku said. He did not look at the holocam, as if, even across weeks of time and the endless black chasm of space, he was afraid to look his old Master in the eye.
    â€œThere is a cloud around me now. Around all of us. I felt it growing in the Republic years ago. I fled it then, and tried to bring the Order with me. You wouldn’t come. Cowardice, I thought then. Or corruption. Now…” He rubbed his face wearily. “Now I don’t know. Perhaps you were right. Perhaps the Temple was the only lantern to keep the darkness at bay, and I was wrong to step outside, into the night. Or perhaps the darkness was inside me all the time.”
    For the first time he looked up. His eyes were steady, except for a faint flicker of pure anguish, like the sound of weeping from a locked room. “It’s like a sickness,” he whispered. “A fever in the blood. War everywhere. Cruelty. Killing, and some in my name. Blood like rain. I feel it all the time, the cries of the dying in the Force, beating in me like a vein about to burst.” He gathered himself; shrugged; went on. “I have come to the end of myself. I don’t know what is right anymore. I am tired, Master. So tired. And like any old man, as the end nears, I long to go home.”
    The tiny hologrammic Dooku touched the candle Yoda had sent, turning it over in his old fingers. “I want to meet. But nobody outside the Temple must know. I am always watched, and you are betrayed more profoundly than you guess, Master. Come to me; Jai will show you the way. We will talk. I promise nothing more. I cannot think you corrupt, but even you, Master, are snared beyond your understanding. If word reaches my allies of your coming, they will stop at nothing to kill you. If they guess
why
you are coming, they will stop at nothing to destroy me.”
    His eyes came fully back into the present: shrewd and practical. “I would be disappointed if you took my invitation as a tactical opportunity. If I see even the slightest sign of new forces deploying in the direction of the Hydian Way, I will abandon my current location, and carry the war forward until droid battle cruisers burn the life out of Coruscant with a rain of plasma fire. Bring none but Jedi with you.” He gave a sad, crooked smile. “There are some things that should be kept inside the family…”
    Count Dooku of Serenno, warlord of a mighty army, among the richest beings in the galaxy, legendary sword-master, former student, notorious traitor, lost son, flickered in front of Yoda’s ancient eyes, and went out.
    Yoda tabbed the lightsaber’s power switch and watched the recording again, three more times. He clambered back onto his favorite rock, deep in thought. Somewhere above him, in his private quarters, messages from the Republic would be piling up: dispatches from military commanders, questions from far-flung Jedi about their various assignments and commands, perhaps a summons from the Senate or a meeting request from the Chancellor’s office. He had come to know the weight of all those anxious eyes far too well. Today they would have to wait. Today, Yoda needed Yoda’s wisdom more than anyone else.
    He breathed deeply, trying to clear his mind in meditation, letting thoughts rise up before him.
    Dooku’s hands on that candle, the hum of emotion like a current, making his fingertips tremble.
    Jai Maruk giving his clipped report in the Council Chamber with the charred welt of a lightsaber burn on his gaunt cheek.
    Farther back, he and Dooku in a cave on Geonosis. The hiss and flash of humming lightsabers, darkly beautiful, like dragonflies, and Dooku still a boy of twenty, not the old man whispering on top of poor dead Jang’s blade. Yoda’s ears slowly drooped as he sank deeper into the Force, time melting