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"She was with me." Mace stared at the traces of portaak amber that stained his palms. "We fought-or we spoke-I can't seem to remember-"

?????? ,'/ is pelekotan you recall.

"The Force-? You're saying it was some kind of Force-vision?"

Pelekotan brings us waking dreams of our desires and our fears. Vastor's tone was grave, but not unkind. When we desire what we fear and fear what we desire, pelekotan always answers. Have the Jedi forgotten this?

"It seemed so real-it seemed more real than you do."

Vaster shrugged.,'/ was. Only pelekotan is real. Everything else is forms and shadows: less even than a cloud, or a memory. We are pelekotani dream. Have the Jedi forgotten this as well?

Mace didn't answer. He had only then become aware of the balanced weight of his vest: he put a hand to his right-side ribs, and felt through the stained panther leather the outline of a lightsaber, matching his own, which he wore on his left.

Depa's lightsaber.

And if what he'd seen in the compound had been a vision in the Force, what then? Did it change the truth he'd seen? Did it change the truth she'd seen in him?

From the Force, those truths become more real, not less.

"A dream," he heard himself murmur. "A dream..."

Vaster gestured for him to mount up. Dream she may be, but refuse her summons and you will learn how swiftly dream turns to nightmare.

Mace climbed into the saddle without telling the lorpelek that he already knew.

Some obscure impulse prompted him to ask: "And you, Kar Vaster: what visions does pelekotan bring to you?"

His response was a limitless stare, inhuman, as full of unguessable danger as the jungle itself. Why should pelekotan show me anything? I have no fears.

"And no desires?"

But he had already turned to lead the grasser away, and he gave no sign that he had heard.

FROM THE PRIVATE JOURNALS OF MACE WlNDU

Kar Vaster led my grasser on foot; he was able to find a path through the densest, most tangled undergrowth so effortlessly that we could move at a steady trot. After a time, I began to believe-as I now do-that his ability to move through the jungle was only half perception; the other half was raw power. Not only could he sense a path where none could be seen, I believe he could at need make a path where none had existed.

Or perhaps make is the wrong word.

I never saw this power in action; I never saw trees move, nor knots of vines unbind themselves. Instead I felt a continuous current in the Force: a rolling cycle like the breath of some vast creature alone in the dark. Power flowed into him and out again, but I did not feel him use it any more than I feel my muscles use the sugars that feed them.

And that is exactly how it seemed: that we were carried through the jungle effortlessly, like corpuscles in its veins. Or thoughts in its infinite mind.

As though we were pelekotan's dream.

In that ride from the rear to the front of the guerrillas' line of march, I got my first view of the fabled Upland Liberation Front.

The ULF: terror of the jungle. Mortal enemy of the militia. Ruthless, unstoppable warriors who had driven the Confederacy of Independent Systems off this planet.

They were barely alive.

Their march was a ragged column of walking wounded, tracking each other through the jungle by splashes of blood and rich stink of infection. I would learn, later, during the days of hellish march, that this latest operation had been a series of raids on jungle prospector outposts; they were out here not to kill Balawai, but to capture medpacs, food, clothing, weapons, ammunition-supplies that our Republic cannot or will not provide for them.

They were heading for their base in the mountains, where they had gathered nearly all that was left of the Korun people: all their elders and their invalids, their children, and what was left of their herds.

Living in confined, crowded space was unnatural for Korunnai.They had no experience with such conditions,