The lor pelek stood on the slope below Mace, holding the reins of a saddled grasser. The grasser kept one of its three eyes fixed warily on Vastor, and when he spoke, the grasser trembled as though it would shy away were it not held in place by an invisible force that overpowered its instincts.

Jedi Windu. You are sent for, dôshalo.

Mace did not need to ask by whom. “Where is she?”

An hour’s ride ahead. Resting in her howdah. She no longer walks.

Mace felt dizzy; the world shifted focus as though he looked at its reflection in a rippling pool. “An hour … no longer walks—?” It made no sense, but in the Force it felt like the truth. “She was here—she was just here—”

No.

“But she was—she greeted me, and—” Mace passed a hand over his skull, checking for blood or swelling: searching for a head wound. “I returned her lightsaber—we fought—we fought the gunships—”

You fought alone.

“She was with me …”

I sent two of my men to check on you, when you did not join the march. They watched from below, hiding from the Balawai ships. They saw you: alone in the compound, your blades flashing against the blasterfire. My men say you drove them off single-handed, though they did not seem to be damaged. Perhaps you have taught Balawai to fear the Jedi blade. He showed Mace his sharp-filed teeth. Nick Rostu spoke much of your victory at the pass. Even I might not be equal to such a feat.

“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—”

It is pelekotan you recall.

“The Force—? You’re saying it was some kind of Forcevision?”

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.”

Vastor shrugged. It was. Only pelekotan is real. Everything else is forms and shadows: less even than a cloud, or a memory. We are pelekotan’s 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 …”

Vastor 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 lor pelek that he already knew.

Some obscure impulse prompted him to ask: “And you, Kar Vastor: 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.


- Shatterpoint, Chapter 9