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“The lightsaber is a weapon of the Force and, if you are not similarly armed, must be countered with the Force.”

Luke nodded in agreement. “Did you have any sense of a problem Jacen might have been dealing with, an overriding fear or concern?”

“No. I think he was a man at peace. I would not say he was happy— but he was at peace.”

Luke sat back to think.

Ben asked, “When he left Dorin, did he say or give any indication as to where he was going next?”

“No, I believe not.” The Hidden One's eyes looked back through the years. “He had been talking about returning to Coruscant. I think his search for knowledge was finished for the time being. But there was something … One day he asked me what I knew about places where the energies of the Force concentrate and linger, though there is no indication as to why they do so.”

Luke sat forward again. “I trained in one such place. A nexus of Force energy on a small swamp world.”

“Late in his stay, he evidenced a sudden interest in such things. I believe he had found something in his studies of written materials, though not ours—perhaps something he had brought along from one of his other stops.”

“But he mentioned no names or places.”

“No.”

Luke glanced at his son. “That's about it for me. Does anything else occur to you?”

“Well, on another subject.”

“Go ahead.”

Ben looked the Hidden One square in the eye. “Are you going to kill the Jedi who come looking for me and my dad?”

The Hidden One's eyes widened. “Kill them? That is not what we do.”

“But they will come. And when they don't get answers that help them, they'll send someone like Master Horn, who's trained in investigation. He'll figure things out. So my question is, how many are you going to kill in order to keep your little secret?”

“This is not a little secret.” The Hidden One seemed almost embarrassed by his outburst; he looked back and forth to see if anyone had witnessed it, then returned his attention to Ben. He leaned forward. “This is the seed of the Baran Do, the seed that must take root if the Order itself dies. You have never lived in a time when the threat of extinction of an entire way of life was very real—”

Ben laughed outright. “I was born halfway through the Yuuzhan Vong War. Remember that? Maybe, as far out as you are, you didn't hear much about it. Some of my earliest memories are of hiding, surrounded by darkness, knowing that if we were found we'd be wiped out. Here I am again, same situation.” He gestured at the gray-black stone walls of the chamber. “People are still afraid of it, afraid of annihilation by some unknown enemy. War trauma. Civilians and soldiers both get it. I think it's what you've got.”

“You little larva.” The Hidden One was almost spitting in his anger. “Are you too stupid to realize that you Jedi are facing a new purge?”

Ben gave him a scornful look.

“There's the arrogance of youth.” The Hidden One turned to Luke. “Surely you know better. You're about to experience another purge. If you're unprepared for it, the Jedi may wink out once again, this time forever.”

Luke shook his head. “I don't think so. I've dealt with Chief of State Daala directly. She has no agenda of destruction.”

“She has none, perhaps. What of her subordinates? What of her military planners, all of whom came to power in the wake of a war made so much more horrible by a Jedi? Recent history is not unknown to me; we get the holonews feeds here.” The Hidden One began counting off on his fingers. “One, the leader of the Jedi Order, once immensely popular, is discredited. The Jedi Order is weakened. Two, he is sent off into exile, depriving the Order of his strength and wisdom. The Order is weakened again. Three, each Jedi is accompanied by an observer who tells the government where he or she is at every moment. The Jedi are suddenly more vulnerable to a mass attack, a mass extermination. How soon before the Jedi are wearing tracking devices? How long before they are implanted with explosives? All in the name of Alliance safety?”

Luke gave him a flat, hard stare. “You're wrong.”

“You're wrong! You have