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“Very well. Explain your heresy to me.”

“You’ve seen me use the Force. You have to admit it is real.”

“I’ve seen things. They may have been tricks. Talk.”

“The Force is generated by life. It binds all things together. It’s in everything—the water, the stone, the trees in the forest. I am a Jedi Knight. We’re born with an aptitude for the Force, an ability to sense it, to control it—to guard its balance.”

“Balance?”

Anakin hesitated. How to explain sight to a blind man? “The Force is light and life, but it is also darkness. Both are necessary, but they have to be kept balanced. In harmony.”

“Putting aside the stupidity of that whole idea,” Rapuung said, “you’re telling me you Jeedai Knights keep this ‘balance’? How? By rescuing your comrades? By killing Yuuzhan Vong? Does fighting my people bring balance in this Force? How can it, when you admit we do not exist in it? You can move a rock, but you cannot move me.”

“That’s sometimes true,” Anakin admitted.

“Very well. If your superstition demands you seek to balance this mysterious power, why are the Yuuzhan Vong your concern? Why bother with us at all?”

“Because you’ve invaded our galaxy, killed our people, stolen our worlds. You don’t expect us to fight back?”

“I expect warriors to fight, to embrace pain and death, to sing the song of slaughter with bloody lips. That is what Yuuzhan Vong do, and we do it not to bring balance, but truth. What you describe makes no sense. Tell me—are the Yuuzhan Vong part of this ‘dark side’ you speak of?”

Anakin looked at him frankly. “I think so.”

“Does your magical Force tell you this?”

“No. Because—”

“Because we do not exist in it. It is not a part of us or we a part of it. So again, how do you judge us a part of your dark side?”

“By your actions,” Anakin said.

“Actions? We kill in battle. You kill in battle. We kill in stealth. You kill in stealth. You fight for your people. I fight for mine.”

“It’s our galaxy!”

“The gods have given it to us. They have commanded we bring you the truth. This Force of yours is for lesser beings, those who do not know the gods.”

“I do not accept that,” Anakin said.

“And yet you would have me accept something I cannot see or smell? Something you merely tell me exists? Do you believe in the gods?”

Anakin hesitated, then tried again. “You’ve seen me use the Force.”

“I’ve seen you do amazing things. I haven’t seen you do anything that we Yuuzhan Vong could not accomplish. Our dovin basals can move planets. Our yammosks and even the lowly lambent you hold there can speak mind to mind. I admit what I see—that you have powers I do not have. I need not believe your superstitions as to where these powers come from.”

“Then don’t,” Anakin said hotly.

“And what does all of this have to do with building your abominable weapon?”

“A lightsaber is more than just an ordinary weapon. Each Jedi builds his or her own. The pieces are bound together by the Force and by the Jedi’s will and make something greater than the sum of its parts. It becomes a thing alive in the Force.”

“It is made of inanimate parts. It cannot be alive.”

“All living things are made of inanimate parts, if you look small enough,” Anakin pointed out. “Nothing is really inanimate. As I said, the Force is in everything. There will be something of me in my lightsaber, and something of this lambent in me.”

Vua Rapuung nodded thoughtfully. “I begin to see the roots of your foul heresy, now. You make use of abominations because you somehow think them alive?”

Anakin stood abruptly. “I’ve explained what I’m going to do. Will you oppose me? Are you going to snap when I start fighting your people with my lightsaber?”

Vua Rapuung glared at him in the dim light of the lambent. Anakin could hear his teeth clicking together.

“The gods led me to you,” he said at last. “Not Yun-Shuno, that many-eyed mother of snivelers, but Yun-Yuuzhan himself. He told me in a vision that the Jeedai infidel with his blade of light would lead me to my revenge and vindication. That is why I followed you down here, when my instincts screamed