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"Yes. Where her Mark of Illumination once was. I recognize that this is painful for you, Master Windu, but please. The Jedi are vital to the survival of the Republic, and Master Billaba is not the only Jedi we have lost to the darkness. Anything we can learn about what might cause one to fall is incredibly important."

I nodded. "But I cannot offer a specific answer."

"Well, the scar, then. Was she tortured?"

"I do not know. Possibly. It is also possible that the wound was self-inflicted. We may never know."

"It is a pity," Palpatine murmured, "that we cannot ask her."

Some few seconds passed before I was able to respond. "I can only speculate in general terms, based upon what she told me, and upon my own experiences."

Palpatine's eyebrows twitched upward. "Your own?" I could not meet his gaze; when I lowered my head, I found Yoda staring up at me. His wise wrinkled face was filled with ancient compassion. "Fall you did not," he said softly. "From this, strength you can take."

I nodded, and found myself once again able to face the Supreme Chancellor. "It's war," I said. "Not just that war, but war itself. When every choice you make means death. When saving these innocents means that those innocents must die. I'm not sure that any Jedi can survive such choices for long."

Palpatine looked from Yoda to me, his face a mask of compassionate concern. "Who would have thought that fighting a war could have such a terrible effect on a Jedi? Even when we win," he murmured. "Who would ever have thought such a thing?"

"Yes," I could only agree. "Who would have thought it, indeed?"

"Wonder, one must," Yoda said slowly, "if that might be the most important question of all..."

There followed a long, uncomfortable silence, which Palpatine finally broke. "Ah, sadly, questions of philosophy must wait for peacetime. We must focus on winning this war."

"That's what Depa did," I said. "And look what it did to her."

"Ah, but such a thing could never happen to-say, for example-you,"

Palpatine said warmly. His lips wore an enigmatic smile. "Could it?"

I didn't tell him that it could. That it nearly had.

I think about that a lot, these days. I think about Depa. About everything she said to me.

And did to me.

I think about the jungle.

She was right about so many things.

She was right about her Jedi of the Future. To win this war against the Separatists, we must abandon the very thing that makes us Jedi. Yes, we won on Haruun Kal-because our enemy broke under the club of KarVastor's monstrous ruthlessness.

Jedi are keepers of the peace. We are not soldiers.

If we become soldiers, we will be Jedi no more.

Yet I do not despair.

She was wrong about some things, too.

You see, she got lost fighting someone else's war. She was fighting: the wrong enemy.

The Separatists are not the true enemies of the Jedi. They are enemies of the Republic. It is the Republic which will stand or fall in the battles of the Clone War.

Even the reborn Sith are not our enemy. Not really.

Our enemy is power mistaken for justice.

Our enemy is the desperation that justifies atrocity.

The Jedi's true enemy is the jungle,

Our enemy is the darkness itself: the strangling cloud of fear and despair and anguish that this war brings with it. That is poisoning our galaxy. This is why my dreams of Geonosis are different now.

In my dreams, I still do everything right.

But I do in my dreams exactly what I did in that arena.

If the prophecies are true-if Anakin Skywalker is truly the Chosen One, who will bring balance to the Force-then he is the most impor-, j tant being alive today. And he is alive today because my Jedi instincts were working just fine. a;

Because my mistake on Geonosis wasn't a mistake at all. f *

If I had done as Depa said I should have-if I had won the Clone War with a baradium bomb on Geonosis-I would have lost the real war. The Jedi's war.

Anakin Skywalker may be the shatterpoint of our war against the jungle.

If