A Bittersweet Homecoming/Part 4

"This is a rare honor," Tyson Dumiel said. "The last time a Jedi Grand Master visited our humble Enclave was…never."

Tem-Fol-Rytil assembled a gracious look. "The Force leads us whither it will, Master Dumiel."

"My Knights and I have found the same thing, Grand Master."

Tem-Fol-Rytil swallowed back the first few replies that occurred to him as Tyson led him inside the Enclave. At least now he was inside and had escaped the holojournalists crowding the square and gardens without. What they thought of the inaugural visit of a non-Corellian member of the High Council to the rogue Jedi, he did not know and almost dreaded to contemplate. He sensed his pair of Padawan companions exchanging a look behind his back, but he did not call them on it.

The high ceilings, trees, and statuary of the Green Jedi Enclave recalled the Temple, though many banners hung from the walls, all bearing the Corellian stars or the Green Jedi sigil; neither the Republic's spoked wheel nor the Order's winged lightsaber were anywhere to be seen. But those cosmetic differences paled next to the truth of the place in the Force—where the Coruscant Temple was a fountain of light, the sacred mountain's natural affinity for the Force strengthened a thousandfold by hundreds of generations of Jedi in the Temple built upon it, all serving the light side of the Force, the Green Jedi Enclave was…a building. The Force echoed from its walls, but its power was only an echo. These walls might shelter the Corellians and their ilk from prying eyes and nature's elements, but they would not shield the Corellians against the dark as would the Temple. How all of them could miss it, when they had all trained on Coruscant themselves, was a mystery so profound it was all Tem-Fol-Rytil could do not to ask.

Tyson had assembled his three followers in the entrance hall, though only Ainar Zylorus met the Cerean Grand Master's eyes longer than a second or two. Tem-Fol-Rytil gave them a moment to shift under the weight of his gaze, then folded his hands and said, "Good morning."

"Welcome, Master Tem-Fol-Rytil," Ainar said, bowing. "You honor us, and all our forebears who hallowed these halls before us."

Was it no more than a Guardian's attempt to impart poetry to his words, or did Ainar and the others truly not sense the difference between the Enclave and the Temple? Before he could ask, Tyson said, "Shall we give you the tour, Grand Master?"

"Under other circumstances, I'd enjoy that," Tem-Fol-Rytil said, and the wistfulness in his voice was no artifice. "But Senator Rose has been kind enough to offer us transit back to Coruscant, and so we're on her schedule. I'd like to see Master Arodion at once."

Tyson scratched the corner of his bearded jaw. "She'll have more than just you three to take back, will she?"

Tem-Fol-Rytil wanted to riposte with the obviousness of the answer…but he stayed his tongue, struck by the sudden premonition that the answer might be less obvious than he had thought. He looked instead at Vinette Cas-Valo and Shan Deckell. "Would one of you be so kind as to escort me to Master Arodion?"

Tyson was not the only man who could intuit and strike another's weak spot. Vinette and Shan traded uneasy looks, but Ainar stepped forward and said, "Nonsense, Grand Master. It'd be my honor to take you personally."

Tem-Fol-Rytil sighed through his nose, but time really was a factor, so he bowed his great domed head and followed the Human up into the Enclave, gesturing for the Padawans to wait; they were from Ralltiir and Palanhi, he had learned, so he thought it unlikely Tyson would tempt them into schism in his absence. He saw spots that might have served for meditation, and ample training space, but the farther they went, the more the Enclave became nothing but a shadow of the Temple, and his misgivings faded. Even before her service on the High Council, Nawsa had taught in the Temple for years; she would perceive at once what was lacking here.

"How is your former Padawan, Ainar?"

"Which one?"

"Mali."

Ainar raised his eyebrows. "I'm surprised you don't know."

"The High Council knows the what of every Jedi operation, but the need to maintain survey knowledge of everything challenges our ability to know the intricacies of…all that falls upon our shoulders." Tem-Fol-Rytil kept his face carefully calm; there had been a moment there in which he had nearly said the intricacies of anything. "Elata has the theater command, so she'd be better versed in Mali's immediate frame of mind, but since you're here, I thought I'd ask."

Ainar frowned. "He's troubled, as I'm sure you can guess. Focused and committed, of course—he's still Mali—but he doesn't know if Aresh might try to turn Aldayr, or harm him because he's Mali's apprentice.  Or just harm him because he's a Jedi.  And I gather Elata and the other commanders thought they had Aresh on the back foot after Eviar's death; I think Garqi blindsided everyone."

That much Tem-Fol-Rytil had intuited from Elata's contributions to the High Council sessions—the ones she attended, anyway, now invariably by holo from her command ship. Some Jedi might have found Ainar calling Eviar Seldec by his given name perturbant, but Tem-Fol-Rytil knew they had been colleagues as Initiates—he himself was not that much older, and could remember Ainar and Eviar in their youth. Each in his own way, they had chosen paths apart from the light of the Order—Ainar sideways into Tyson's folly, and Eviar down into darkness. Tem-Fol-Rytil was not such a zealot as to believe the two equivalent, but the Order had failed each man—failed to instill in him that clear purpose of Jedi commitment to keep him on the ideal path that ages of Jedi learning and experience had charted.

"And your Padawan?" asked Ainar.

There was no need to clarify there, for of the two Jedi Tem-Fol-Rytil had trained to Knighthood, only one yet lived. "Still a Watchman. Concerned, I think—Darth Hokhtan's forces are encroaching on her sectors—but resolved to do her duty, come what may."

"You trained her well."

"I can only hope it was well enough."

Ainar clapped his shoulder. "That's all we can ever do."

Tem-Fol-Rytil had gotten out of the habit of physical contact—something about the titles 'Leader of the High Council' and 'Grand Master of the Jedi Order' made his colleagues skittish—but he had known Ainar many long years, and he accepted the gesture of camaraderie for what it was. Ainar led him to an open, multilevel room, with mezzanines on both sides overlooking a central hall with a single conference table surrounded by chairs. Nawsa stood alone at the table, running her hand over the back of one chair and wearing an expression Tem-Fol-Rytil found difficult to understand.

Ainar and Tem-Fol-Rytil had taken the stairs to the lower level and come within a few meters before she noticed their presence and bowed. "Master."

"Come now, Nawsa," Ainar said, before Tem-Fol-Rytil could respond. "I appreciate the sentiment, but that's far too formal for us simple Corellians."

Nawsa gave him a look, and though he laughed, Ainar took a step back too. Raising his hands placatingly, he said, "I'll leave you both to it. May the Force guide you, Nawsa."

Nawsa watched him go; Tem-Fol-Rytil rather thought she was avoiding his gaze.

"I heard you went to visit Sil," she said.

"Yes."

"How is he?"

"Cantankerous, sharp-tongued, and very nearly unpleasant."

"I'm so glad to hear he's recovered his spirits…for a while there, I was concerned."

She smiled, and Tem-Fol-Rytil chuckled reluctantly. As she drummed the back of the chair with her fingertips, he asked, "What is this place?"

Nawsa's fingers came to rest. "At the end of the Galactic War—during the Battle of Corellia, not long before the Empire's downfall—the Sith broke through to this place. The Masters of the Green Jedi Council fell fighting them, one by one."

Tem-Fol-Rytil followed her finger as she pointed. "Master Arfan Ramos, the leader of the Green Jedi, died right there. But even at the brink of defeat, we fought on.  We won.  We rebuilt and carried on the fire."

Selecting his words with care, Tem-Fol-Rytil said, "The Hero of Tython, the Bar'senthor, and their allies came to Corellia's aid, yes. The light side of the Force will always hold against the dark, so long as a single flame still burns."

Nawsa nodded, but said nothing more. Frowning, Tem-Fol-Rytil said, "I came to collect you before we return to Coruscant. Master Dumiel seemed uncertain you'd be departing."

Nawsa took her time answering. "I failed to protect Satir. I failed to protect Galera when she was barely farther from me than you are." She shook her head. "A Jedi Master shouldn't fail that way—certainly not a Master of the High Council."

"We've all failed in our ways," Tem-Fol-Rytil answered, working to keep his voice calm and collected. "I lost a Padawan; Mar lost two. Elata lost an entire battle group at Garqi.  Multiqi and the others on the Crescentia did not foresee their end, and Sil was so focused on Darth Hokhtan that Darth Vandak stabbed him at point blank range.  The Force makes us powerful, not invincible."

"Still—"

"Nawsa, you have a life seat on the Council," Tem-Fol-Rytil said flatly.

"Until death or resignation," she reminded him. "The Guardians are always complaining there are too many of us on the Council. Perhaps some new blood would better enable the Council to meet the threats of our time."

Gripping the back of one chair, Tem-Fol-Rytil abandoned subtlety. "Nawsa, we need you—on Coruscant. Your experience, your knowledge…we can not govern the Republic without you."

"The Senate governs the Republic."

Tem-Fol-Rytil sighed. "Once, perhaps. I hope to see the day when it does again.  But right now, that is a fiction—a necessary fiction that prevents the galaxy from claiming the Jedi have usurped control for our own ends, but an illusion nonetheless.  Nulu is Chancellor because we nominated him to be.  I wasn't on the Council when Nicolian became Chancellor, but even then, the Senate rallied behind a Jedi Chancellor in such droves you'd have thought it wasn't a novel idea.  Levri and Phnyong's elections were the same."

"But Nulu is Chancellor now. Even if we objected, he'd be no less the Chancellor."

"And yet, would we name a Chancellor to whom we'd have cause to object? I won't say the Senate has no role, or that democracy has outlived its utility, but the Chancellor's Office and the High Council form a unitary executive now.  You know it as much as I."

He could see on her face that she did, but the concession was buried beneath her clear discomfort. Under any other circumstances, Tem-Fol-Rytil would have sympathized. They all knew the political reality on Coruscant, but he had never spoken so openly of it to any other Jedi save Phnyong, after his second election, and old Ogan Broze, shortly before the former Grand Master had passed into the Force. It was as if the words held some talismanic power—as if to speak them made the condition so. Tem-Fol-Rytil was a Jedi Master, not a primitive given to superstition, so he lent that feeling no more credibility than it deserved, but he could admit, in saying the words, that the truth of them troubled him.

''As it should. May it always.''

"Even…even if that's so," Nawsa managed after a moment, "you and Mar are just as well versed in politics as I am, if not more. Elata, Kussam, and Gavhys are infinitely better strategists.  The others have profound gifts in the Force and depth of experience.  A single Jedi Master—"

"—can fortify or imperil the Republic."

She frowned. "How so?"

"You heard Senator Rose's speech."

"Yes, I did." Nawsa crossed her arms. "It was beautiful."

"Beautiful, and stirring, and dangerous," Tem-Fol-Rytil countered. "Surely you've seen the protests these past two days? I have no doubt Senator Rose grieved Satir Solo's death; I could sense that much for myself.  But grief, no matter how real or profound, is not exclusive of political genius, and I'm certain she chose her words with great care.  People who sought nothing but to mourn the Solos heard their grief expressed in her words, and those who wish to wage war upon the Sith may well have been inspired to service and action…but those who seek to blame the Republic for Corellia's losses also feel they have an ally in her."

"Is that what you believe?"

"If you do not know where she stands, I barely dare hazard a guess." Despite her youth and the relative recency of her election to the Senate, Jendaya Rose had the cunning of politicians thrice her age, and her mind was opaquer than most. Nulu, who had spent more time in the Senate than any of them even before his election to the Chancellorship, thought her one of the most gifted politicians he had ever known. "But the Republic can not lose Corellia. Tirien, Raven, and the others have bought us time, nothing more; if the Corellian system, let alone the whole sector, withdraws from participation in the Republic, the entire galaxy will suffer.  And you stand at that door, able to close it or step aside and let our enemies through."

Nawsa's dark eyes flashed. "If one being can make or break the entire Republic, it's in a sorry state indeed."

"Food shortages, diminished enlistments, Jedi and soldiers dying in droves, lost planets and systems and sectors…the Republic is in a sorry state. Our governance is the only thing holding it together.  And think of our history.  Awdrysta Pina, Nomi Sunrider, Revan…how many times has one being made or broken the galaxy?"

Nawsa paced around the table in agitation. "Whether here or there, I have no special power over Jendaya Rose. She works in partnership with the Diktat, and she thinks very highly of Je—of the king, but she was elected by the system's people; she answers only to them."

Tem-Fol-Rytil caught an unwonted hint of emotion from Nawsa—some attachment he could not understand—but it paled beside her real slip. Whether here or there…was there truth to Tyson's needling, then? Did the Order stand to lose yet another Jedi to dissension?

"You are the most prominent Corellian Jedi in the Order," he said, "and while you sit on the Council, Corellia has a voice in Jedi affairs. Already Kirthi's death and Tyson's doomsaying have pulled Shan and Vinette away, along with whatever Ainar is now.  You are the only Corellian Jedi Master left who holds true to the Order; if you…express support for the revival of the Corellian Jedi, that trickle may become a flood.  And a system with Corellia's economic and military might, and defended by its own corps of Jedi?  The temptation to place Corellia first and leave the rest of the galaxy to its misery might be very strong indeed."

Nawsa sighed. "Am I nothing to you but a Corellian, then? Just a demographic?"

"You are what you are. Some days the Order might require you to be the warrior you can be, other days the teacher, the scholar, the historian.  We all of us serve the Order with every facet of ourselves, however we're needed.  But today you must be the Corellian—and the Corellian Council Master."

She rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. Tem-Fol-Rytil felt for her obvious exhaustion—a weariness that passed beneath the crude flesh and into the soul—but he knew he could show no weakness now. As the Order needed Nawsa, so it needed him—needed Tem-Fol-Rytil to be not the friend and comrade, but the Grand Master, impartial and unattached, focused on the true war against the darkness, in which any Jedi—every Jedi —might be sacrificed if it would at last bring the end of the Sith.

"I know you…love this world, and these people." When she did not deny it or respond in any way, Tem-Fol-Rytil pressed, "If you truly love them, then protect them—not only from the Sith, but from themselves, and the fears and temptations they can't hear the Force to avoid."

"That doesn't bother you?" she asked. "That we think for them? Decide for them?  Tell them what's best for them?"

"If we truly align ourselves with the will of the Force, we do know what's right for them, because there is only one right for all of us—the end of the dark side and the Sith. And in submission to the Force's will, we must do whatever we can to bring about that end."

Nawsa took her hands away from her eyes, and Tem-Fol-Rytil had to take a second for Jedi composure in the face of her piercing look. "Sil really is still himself, then, isn't he?"

Tem-Fol-Rytil locked his jaw to prevent himself swallowing visibly. How much would the Council be impoverished without that intellect… Releasing a breath he hadn't even realized he had been holding, he said, "He shares that view, yes, and he voiced it to me.  But however caustic and impolitic Sil's commentary may be at times, that does not make him wrong."

The fire behind Nawsa's eyes dimmed, but Tem-Fol-Rytil felt something else dim within her. For the span of a few heartbeats, he had time to wonder just what he had done—or undone. Then the moment passed and she said, "No. I suppose it doesn't."

"Senator Rose will be ready to depart soon."

"Then we shouldn't keep her waiting."

Tyson's disappointment was obvious, but Ainar cut him off before he could really get going. Neither Tem-Fol-Rytil nor Nawsa stopped to take questions from the holojournalists, and Tem-Fol-Rytil's Padawan companions almost had to jog to keep up. Anti-Republic protestors lined a street in the Government District; the speeder driver got them through before the first flickers of recognition and dislike radiated into the Force. Sensing Nawsa deep in thought as the speeder ferried them to Coronet City Spaceport, Tem-Fol-Rytil left her alone, his own mind racing with doubts and concerns. Did accepting the ride from Senator Rose suggest to the people that she and the Jedi were in accord, or did it serve to enfeeble them in the public eye—make them look dependent on her favor? Had Sil's legendary asperity and his obvious feeling that his greatest contributions to the Order were behind him tainted his counsel, or had he spoken the plain truth as only he could—so plainly that even Tem-Fol-Rytil squirmed to hear the actions of the Jedi described so baldly? And while having Nawsa back would strengthen the Council and the Order, what effect would it have on her?

Senator Rose's transport had availed itself of a restricted access docking bay, protected by CorSec officers and bounded on one side by a curving viewport wall of tinted transparisteel. Nawsa wandered over to the viewport; Tem-Fol-Rytil sent the Padawans aboard the ship and walked slow circles of Moving Meditation around it so as not to disturb her, but when Senator Rose's entourage began to file into the bay, he approached and tapped Nawsa on the shoulder.

"It's time."

She nodded, but did not turn away at first. Tem-Fol-Rytil looked over her head, following her gaze to the span of Coronet City—the gleam of the noonday sun on the sea, the bustle of traffic both terrestrial and going to and from orbit, and, in the distance, the Green Jedi Enclave, the government offices, and Castel Solo. Nawsa pressed her fingertips to her lips, then stretched out her hand toward the city.

"Until the stars burn out, and beyond," she whispered.

If Tem-Fol-Rytil had learned anything on this trip, it was the sheer volume of Basic idioms and adages unique to Corellians. Chalking it up to yet another patriotic Corellian maxim, he did not inquire, but followed Nawsa as she turned away toward Senator Rose and the ship that would ferry them home to Coruscant and the duties that awaited them there.