C-9 made it easy for Azlin to prefer droids to people.

  But Azlin had liked Padawan Kevmo Zink. He’d been easy to laugh with.

  The emergency message had interrupted his sleepy flight to Jedha, containing a request from Jedi Master Lahru that he stop on the small planet Dalna to check in on Master Zallah Macri and her Padawan, Kevmo. There’d been no contact from them in days, and the local sheriff had notified the outpost of their apparently abandoned shuttle. The credits they’d put down for the spot in the docking yard were nearly out, and locals wanted to confiscate it.

  But Jedi did not simply vanish. Something awful must have happened. Though Azlin could imagine Kevmo just falling into a hole or something equally silly, Master Zallah Macri would never. She was serious, skilled, and particular. She’d have left a warning or sent for backup if she’d had a chance.

  So they must have been caught off guard.

  He and C-9 had landed a couple of hours earlier, made quick work of breaking into Zallah’s shuttle with shared codes, and downloaded the computer’s information onto a datapad. Azlin had spoken with the sheriff, Jinx Pickwick, a no-nonsense human both concerned for the missing Jedi and extremely reluctant to help Azlin get involved in whatever mess had slurped them in. But the owner of the boarding house where Zallah and Kevmo had stayed was very quick to blame the local cult for the Jedi’s disappearance.

  Azlin had heard of the Path of the Open Hand. He knew quite a lot about the various planets, moons, settlements, and communities out on the frontier. He found that a solid research background was necessary to completing any missions with a satisfactory outcome, and if he wanted to aim toward exemplary, more information was essential. Knowing everything he could before he dove into anything dramatic had saved him on several occasions. There hadn’t been much time to investigate Dalna when the emergency message reached him, but thanks to his efforts to study constantly, he had what he needed: the Path was a Force cult that preached living in harmony with the Force in a way that meant non-interference with it. They believed to touch the Force, to use it or influence it, was wrong. Azlin could easily imagine how much trouble any Jedi, but especially someone like Kevmo, could get into with such a group.

  Two days before, the Path, according to Sheriff Jinx, had shuttled all their people up to a large hyperspace-capable ship they’d been building for months. They’d left. Whether they intended to return, Jinx couldn’t say, but they’d certainly all gone for now.

  Azlin had walked throughout the compound, the garden and small honeycomb of cells, the small plots of vegetables, a barn, and communal buildings, and he stood before a locked door with a panel of numbers. There were underground rooms, according to rumor in Ferdan, and this was proof. The caves had flooded recently, Jinx told him, and the Jedi had helped the cult survive.

  Closing his eyes, Azlin brushed his fingers against the cool metal of his lightsaber in a self-comforting gesture he allowed himself only when alone. Which, fortunately, was most of the time. He reached for the Force. This world was flush with it, vivid and alive with life and tangles of hope. But there, Azlin felt it go thin. Thinner, at least.

  Under most circumstances, he wouldn’t be worried, but for some reason his skin pebbled with nerves. Azlin was not a fearful person. He was cautious, careful, but trusted in the Force. It was part of him and he part of it. Adrenaline was useful in times of stress and action. But Azlin did what was required of him. That was all any Jedi could do: what was required by their calling, by the light.

  Breathing carefully, Azlin aligned himself with the Force around him and patted C-9 on the dome. Instead of asking the droid to pick the electric lock, he unclipped his lightsaber and thumbed it on.

  The pale blue glow sliced through the night, and Azlin smoothly stepped forward, pushing the blade directly into the metal door. It hissed, and Azlin raised the saber. He cut easily through the door. In moments, he flicked the lightsaber off again and gently kicked the door in. It clanged, echoing ahead.

  Only darkness greeted him. A narrow black tunnel, heading down shallow stone stairs.

  Taking out his glow rod, Azlin turned back to C-9. “Stay here. Be ready to send that emergency burst back to the ship if anything happens. I’ll keep in touch with the comlink.”

  C-9 beeped a reluctant affirmative.

  The white light cut through the darkness, and Azlin started down.

  “Hello?”

  His voice rang out, not quite echoing. No reply came. He walked steadily but with caution, his pulse beating thickly through his body. Azlin kept his breathing even and latched on to the Force, ready, listening, feeling anything he could. There was very little.

  The stairs ended only a handful of meters underground, but there were three tunnels. Each was marked with paint: blue, black, pink. Nothing hinted at where they led. There weren’t any rugs or stools or anything. Just a damp stone smell and a musty breeze from behind him.

  Reaching out again, Azlin pushed his awareness of the Force in every direction. There was little life, barely the sense of anything as simple as lichen or the sort of root systems one might find underground. Nothing sentient.

  But…

  Azlin moved instinctively toward the only unusual feeling. A sensation, a yearning almost.

  He held the light before him, lightsaber in his other hand, and walked with his eyes closed. The Force guided him. He turned twice down different tunnels, walked down another shallow set of stairs, and nearly stumbled as he hit a wall.

  Not a physical wall: a thin wall like a Force mirror, reflecting his own growing dread back at him.

  He opened his eyes, fighting off a shiver. He was in some sort of chamber. Toward the far edge, a pile of boulders hulked in shadows beside another dark exit. The rounded ceiling glinted under his glow rod in strange rainbow streaks and spots. The opal found in this valley. There was a basin clearly meant for water and a musty damp towel. And on the smooth stone floor, an odd scatter of what looked like crumbled chalk, chunks of stone that had been pulverized inside brown and white cloth.

  Frowning, Azlin went to one knee beside it. He reholstered his lightsaber and reached out. His finger had just come into contact with a long stretch of the brown cloth when he flung himself away. Azlin didn’t stop until his back hit the stone wall.

  That was a Jedi’s cloak.

  His hand shook as he shone the light back onto the pile of crumbled stone and clothing.

  Heat flooded his face as shock pounded with his heartbeat, insisting he knew what that was.

  Jedi. Jedi.

  As if—as if the body had been turned to stone. Calcified and broken.

  “Kevmo,” Azlin said softly. He knew. There were two missing, but he knew. He felt it.

  Despite horror thickening his stomach, crawling up his throat, Azlin gripped his lightsaber again and walked past the remains of Kevmo Zink. He’d return. He would come back for Kevmo. He would.

  Azlin made himself reach for the Force again, ready for the echoes of dread layered in this room.

  It was awful. He’d never felt anything like it.

  One step, then another, and another—he was out of the chamber containing what was left of Kevmo Zink. He breathed carefully. Listened. Moved forward along the strange yearning thread in the Force. Azlin clenched his jaw, mouth locked in a grimace, and tried to breathe through it all. The Force was all around him. There was nobody there. He would be all right. He—

  It didn’t matter, he told himself. He had to find Zallah Macri. He had to know what had happened, where she’d died. There was no pretending she was anything other than dead.

  Underground, deep in the twisting caverns, it was only Azlin and the Force, and shadows pressing in. He tried to ignore the part of himself that couldn’t stop thinking about Kevmo laughing, stuffing fish stew in his mouth, urging Azlin to join them on this mission. Zallah Macri’s tolerant rebuke of her Padawan.

  The Path was supposed to be harmless. Jedi didn’t just vanish. They didn’t just die, either, not out there, not in such inexplicable ways.

  Azlin stopped.

  In the darkness, under meters of pink sandstone, he took another deep breath and reached out to the Force with everything he had.

  It answered. It always answered.

  Reassurance, connection, the living Force was all he needed. He was where he needed to be, and even alone he was never alone.

  Azlin breathed out, slow and firm with determination. Then he continued on.

  The room in which he found the remains of Jedi Master Zallah Macri lit up when he entered. Automatic lights, warm and eager, flooded the chamber. Smaller than Kevmo’s sepulchre, this one retained curtains and a few small pillows shoved to the side. Light green. Empty shelves were carved into the stone wall. Azlin felt—he felt a hidden door in the wall and knew there had been powerful items imbued with the Force beyond it once. But no more.

  This place was nothing now.

  Azlin knelt beside the crumbled gold, brown, white of Zallah Macri’s remains. He would need to collect them. Somehow. Her belt, boots, utility items, they would not usually be burned with her upon death, but her robes could be. Sent back home to Coruscant. Kevmo’s, too.

  Both their lightsabers were missing.

  Without realizing it, Azlin touched two fingers to the rough, chalky remains of her body. A shudder passed through him, deep as his bones, deep as the Force.

  Azlin had no idea what had happened there. What could have done this. Destroyed them.

  Whatever it was, the idea of it filled him with a nameless dread. Thick and awful. It pressed in from every edge of the stone chamber, but even with his eyes wide open, Azlin saw nothing—and he knew, he felt that this razor-sharp sensation came from inside himself. Suddenly, he had a name for it.

  Fear.

  Tessa Gratton is the author of adult and YA novels and short stories that have been translated into twenty-two languages and nominated multiple times for the Otherwise Award; several have been Junior Library Guild selections. Her most recent novels are the dark queer fairy tales Strange Grace and Night Shine, and the queer Shakespeare retelling Lady Hotspur. Her upcoming work includes the YA fantasy Chaos and Flame. She resides at the edge of the Kansas prairie with her wife. Nonbinary. She/any. Tessagratton.com.

  Justina Ireland is the author of Dread Nation, a New York Times best seller and YALSA 2019 Best Fiction for Young Adults Top Ten selection. Her other books for children and teens include Deathless Divide, Vengeance Bound, Promise of Shadows, Ophie’s Ghosts, and five Star Wars novels. She lives with her husband, kid, dog, and cats in Maryland. You can visit her online at www.justinaireland.com.

 

 

  Tessa Gratton, Path of Deceit

 

 

  Thank you for reading books on GrayCity.Net
Share this book with friends