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Though they had remained untouched for thousands of years, these three gems had flaked off as Gantoris stared at them. They fell to his feet in the crushed lava rock surrounding the lost temple. Gantoris had picked up the gems, cupping the warm crystals in his hands as Streen wandered among the obelisks, chattering to himself.

Now Gantoris removed the jewels—one watery pink, another deep red, and the third starkly transparent with an inner electric blue fire along the edges of the facets. He was meant to have these jewels; they were destined for his own lightsaber. He knew that now. He understood all of his former nightmares, his former fears.

Most lightsabers had only a single jewel that focused the pure energy from the power cell into a tight beam. By adding more than one gem, Gantoris’s blade would have unexpected capabilities to surprise Master Skywalker.

Finally, his fingers raw and aching, Gantoris sat up. Pain embroidered firelines across his neck, shoulders, and back, but he washed it away with a simple Jedi exercise. Outside the Great Temple he could hear the changing symphony of jungle sounds as nocturnal creatures found their dens, and daylight animals began to stir.

Gantoris held the cylindrical handle of his lightsaber and inspected it under the glowlamp’s unforgiving light. Craftsmanship was everything in a weapon like this. A barely noticeable variance could cause a disastrous blunder. But Gantoris had done everything right. He had taken no shortcuts, allowed no sloppiness. His weapon was perfect.

He pushed the activator button. With a snap-hiss, the awesome blade thrummed and pulsed like a living creature. The chain of three jewels gave the energy blade a pale purplish hue, white at the core, amethyst at the fringes, with rainbow colors rippling up and down the beam.

Accustomed to the dimness, Gantoris squeezed his eyes to block out the glare, then gradually opened them again, staring in amazement at what he had made.

He moved the blade, and the air crackled around him. The hum sounded like thunder, but none of the other students would hear it through the mammoth thickness of the stone walls. In his grip the blade felt like a winged serpent, sending the sharp scent of ozone curling to his nose.

He slashed back and forth. The lightsaber became a part of him, an extension of his arm connected through the Force to strike down any enemy. He sensed no heat from the vibrating blade, only a cold annihilating fire.

He deactivated the blade, awash in euphoria, and carefully hid the completed lightsaber under his sleeping pallet.

“Now Master Skywalker will see I am a true Jedi,” he said to the shadows along the walls. But no one answered him.

6

The private investigatory proceedings of the New Republic’s ruling Council stood closed against Admiral Ackbar. He waited in the anteroom outside, staring at the tall steelstone door as if it were a wall blocking the end of his life. He stared unblinking at the designs and scrollwork modeled by the Emperor Palpatine after ancient Sith hieroglyphics, and they disturbed him.

Ackbar sat on the cold synthetic-stone bench, feeling only his misery, despair, and failure. He nursed his bandaged left arm and felt pain slice up and down his biceps where tiny needles held the slashed salmon-colored skin together. Ackbar had refused standard treatment by medical droid or healing in a bacta tank programmed for Calamarian physiology. He preferred to let the painful recuperation remind him of the destruction he had caused on Vortex.

He cocked his enormous head, listening to the rise and fall of heated voices through the closed door. He could make out only a mingled murmur of mixed voices, some strident, some insistent. He looked down and self-consciously brushed at his clean white admiral’s uniform.

His remaining injuries seemed insignificant compared to the pain inside him. In his mind he kept seeing the crystalline Cathedral of Winds shatter around him in an avalanche of shards, hurling a storm of glassy daggers in all directions. He saw