Star Wars: Coruscant Nights III: Patterns of Force Read Free

immense Jedi Temple complex. He went there to absorb data as much through the pores of his skin as through any study of the copious amount of information stored there. He frequently went there to think—but just as often he went there to
not
think.
    He was there now—not thinking—and almost as soon as he recognized the place, Jax Pavan also realized that this was a dream. The Temple, he knew, was no more than a chaotic pile of rubble, charred stone, and ashy dust. Order 66 had mandated it, and the horrifying bloodbath that the few remaining Jedi referred to as Flame Night had ensured it.
    Yet here he was in one of the many reading rooms within the vast library wing, just as it had been the last time he had seen it—the softly lit shelves that contained books, scrolls, data cubes, and other vessels of knowledge from a thousand worlds; the tables—each in its own pool of illumination—at which Jedi and Padawans studied in silence; the tall, narrow windows that looked out into the central courtyard; the vaulted ceiling that seemed to fly away into eternity. Even as his dreaming gaze took in these things, he felt the pain of their loss … and something else—puzzlement.
    This was clearly a Force dream. It had that lucent, almost shimmering quality to it, the utter clarity of presenceand sense, the equally clear knowledge that it was a dream. But it was about the past, not the future, for Jax Pavan knew he would never savor the atmosphere of the Jedi library again. His Force dreams had, without exception, been visions of future events … and they had never been this lucid.
    He was sitting at one of the tables with a book and a data cube before him. The book was a compilation of philosophical essays by Masters of the Tython Jedi who had first proposed that the Force had a dual nature: Ashla, the creative element, and Bogan, the destructive—light and dark aspects of the same Essence. The data cube contained a treatise of Master Asli Krimsan on the Potentium Perspective, a “heresy” propagated by Jedi Leor Hal that contended—as many had before and since—that there was no dark side to the Force, that the darkness existed within the individual.
    Yes, he had studied these two volumes—among others. He supposed that all Padawans studied them at some point in their training, because all entertained questions about the nature of the Force and desired to understand it. Some, he knew, hoped to understand it completely and ultimately; to settle once and for all the millennia-long debate over whether it had one face or two and where the potential for darkness lay—in the Force itself or in the wielder of the Force.
    When had he studied these last? What moment had he been returned to in his dream?
    Even as he wondered these things, a shadow fell across the objects on the table before him. Someone had come to stand beside him, blocking the light from the windows.
    He glanced up.
    It was his fellow Padawan and friend Anakin Skywalker. At least he had called Anakin “friend” readily enough, but the truth was that Anakin held himselfaloof from the other Padawans. Even in moments of camaraderie he seemed a man apart, as if he had a Force shield around him. Brooding. Jax had called him that once to his face and had drawn laughter that he, through his connection to the Force, had known to be false.
    Now Anakin stood above him, his back to the windows, his face in shadow.
    “Hey, you’re blocking my light.” The words popped out of Jax’s mouth without his having intended to say them. But he
had
said them that day, and he knew what was coming next.
    Anakin didn’t answer. He simply held out his hand as if to drop something to the tabletop. Jax put out his own hand palm-up to receive it.
    “It” was a pyronium nugget the size of the first joint of his thumb. Even in the half-light it pulsed with an opalescence that seemed to arise from deep within, cycling from white through the entire visible spectrum to black, then