Star Wars: Trials of the Jedi (The High Republic) (Star Wars: The High Republic Book 6)

by Charles Soule

Ultimately, though, Vern’s dislike of him didn’t matter, any more than the fact that Avar Kriss did like him very much. All of that needed to fade away. They were all Jedi, nothing more, nothing less. Ties of emotion, history, and duty connected and strengthened everyone in the chamber. They had fought together, studied together, loved and lost together. Strands of obligation and memory and expectation and shared experience swirled through the room.

Marchion’s She’ar, his elite bodyguards.

Forget what isn’t, think about what is.”

“The question isn’t Will I return to the light, boy. It is Will the darkness ever let me go?”

A lot can happen in a few hours, thought Sevran Tarkin. She stood in a hardened command bunker built into the mountains north of Eriadu City, an old place, a hidden fortress called the Raven’s Peak. Her gaze flickered across tactical displays depicting the attempt to retake her planet from the Nihil.

Great swaths of Eriadu City and other cities around the planet were burning. Sevran could appreciate the tactic even as she was horrified by its impact.

The Nine were determined to bring the Nameless home.

There is no emotion, there is peace, Azlin Rell thought, or said, he didn’t know which. There is no ignorance, there is knowledge. There is no passion, there is serenity. There is no chaos, there is harmony. There is no death, there is the Force.

Now, though, the metal cave had taken her to a place that was by far the worst she’d visited since leaving Elphrona. The feel of the place was just bad, a swirling mix of confusing energies she didn’t understand. It felt like anything could happen at any time, good or bad. Danger could come from any side. Everything here wanted to eat her or hurt her friends. Ember was not complicated, and this was a complicated place. She had decided that the best thing would be to stay close to Home Friend and Tall Friend and keep them safe. So she was with them when they found a new person, a person that was definitely not a friend.

Packs came and went, but a very simple rule applied to them all. This rule held a place as high in Ember’s decision-making hierarchy as Find Food and Love Well. The rule was this: Protect the Pack You Have.

“Do you know what I used this for?” Marchion said, taking a short leap back and holding up the glowing yellow lightsaber. “I cut off your master’s head-tails with it.” A surge of white-hot hatred rushed through Bell, so strong that it took everything he had not to let the emotion swallow him up. He was a Jedi, he was trained, but he was also a person, a young man who had loved his teacher. Jedi were not emotionless automatons. They felt deeply. Want, need, anger and love and hate and fear—Jedi used those feelings to understand the needs of others, to find ways to help them.

“Nothing is over until it is over,” he said. “And that decision is yours.”

“When things are dark, and there is no one else, the Jedi are there,” Bell said. “We don’t have to know you, we don’t want anything from you, we will not put ourselves above you because of the things we can do. We always help. We always save what we can, even if it costs us everything. We love all beings equally, without attachment or condition.”

“You can believe in us.”

“Come on. You want to leave the fate of the galaxy in the hands of that guy? It has to be us, Avar. You will be the light, and I will be the dark, and we will use our strength in the Force to maintain balance here on this world until the Nameless eggs can hatch.”

Many Nihil war criminals had been brought before the Republic’s justice. Ghirra had seen most of the trials. All were handled with scrupulous attention to applicable law, all given the full benefit of due process, legal advocates to argue on their behalf, and sentenced within existing parameters of the law. No one could accuse the Republic of being vindictive—only fair and correct. Which was, of course, the point. Drawing the contrast. Showing the many, many people watching across the galaxy that there was a better way. There was a path forward. Justice would be done. But none of those poor fools mattered compared to Marchion Ro.