"This is the end for you, Master," he said. "I wish it were otherwise."

"Yes, Anakin, so do I," Obi-Wan said as he sprinted into a leaping dive, making a spear of his blade.

Anakin leaned aside and deflected the thrust almost contemptuously; he missed a cut at Obi-Wan's legs as the Jedi Master flew past him.

Obi-Wan turned his dive into a forward roll that left him barely teetering on the rim of a low cliff, just above the soft black sand of the riverbank. Anakin snarled a curse as he realized he'd been suckered, and leapt off his droid at Obi-Wan's back-Half a second too slow.

Obi-Wan's whirl to parry didn't meet Anakin's blade. It met his knee. Then his other knee.

And while Anakin was still in the air, burned-off lower legs only starting their topple down the cliff, Obi-Wan's recovery to guard brought his blade through Anakin's left arm above the elbow. He stepped back as Anakin fell.

Anakin dropped his lightsaber, clawing at the edge of the cliff with his mechanical hand, but his grip was too powerful for the lava bank and it crumbled, and he slid down onto the black sand. His severed legs and his severed arm rolled into the lava below him and burned to ash in sudden bursts of scarlet flame.

The same color, Obi-Wan observed distantly, as a Sith blade. Anakin scrabbled at the soft black sand, but struggling only made him slip farther.

The sand itself was hot enough that digging his durasteel fingers into it burned off his glove, and his robes began to smolder.

Obi-Wan picked up Anakin's lightsaber. He lifted his own as well, weighing them in his hands. Anakin had based his design upon Obi-Wan's. So similar they were. So differently they had been used. "Obi-Wan . . . ?"

He looked down. Flame licked the fringes of Anakin's robe, and his long hair had blackened, and was beginning to char.

"You were the chosen one! It was said you would destroy the Sith, not join them. It was you who would bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness. You were my brother, Anakin," said Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi. "I loved you, but I could not save you."

A flash of metal through the sky, and Obi-Wan felt the darkness closing in around them both. He knew that ship: the Chancellor's shuttle. Now, he supposed, the Emperor's shuttle. Yoda had failed. He might have died. He might have left Obi-Wan alone: the last Jedi. Below his feet, Darth Vader burst into flame. "I hate you," he screamed.

Obi-Wan looked down. It would be a mercy to kill him. He was not feeling merciful.

He was feeling calm, and clear, and he knew that to climb down to that black beach might cost him more time than he had. Another Sith Lord approached.

In the end, there was only one choice. It was a choice he had made many years before, when he had pa.s.sed his trials of Jedi Knighthood, and sworn himself to the Jedi forever. In the end, he was still Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi, and he was still a Jedi, and he would not murder a helpless man.

He would leave it to the will of the Force. He turned and walked away. After a moment, he began to run.

He began to run because he realized, if he was fast enough, there was one thing he still could do for Anakin. He still could do honor to the memory of the man he had loved, and to the vanished Order they both had served.

At the landing deck, C-3PO stood on the skiff's landing ramp, waving frantically. "Master Ken.o.bi! Please hurry!"

"Where's Padme?"

"Already inside, sir, but she is badly hurt." Obi-Wan ran up the ramp to the skiff's c.o.c.kpit and fired the engines. As the Chancellor's shuttle curved in toward the landing deck, the sleek mirror-finished skiff streaked for the stars. Obi-Wan never looked back.

=21=.

A New Jedi Order ANaboo skiff reverted to reals.p.a.ce and flashed toward an alien medical installation in the asteroid belt of Polis Ma.s.sa.

Tantive IV reentered reality only moments behind.

And on Mustafar, below the red thunder of a volcano, a Sith Lord had already s.n.a.t.c.hed from sand of black gla.s.s the charred torso and head of what once had been a man, and had already leapt for the cliffbank above with effortless strength, and had already roared to his clones to bring the medical capsule immediately!

The Sith Lord lowered the limbless man tenderly to the cool ground above, and laid his hand across the cracked and blackened mess that once had been his brow, and he set his will upon him.

Live, Lord Vader. Live, my apprentice.

Live.

Beyond the transparent crystal of the observation dome on the airless crags of Polis Ma.s.sa, the galaxy wheeled in a spray of hard, cold pinp.r.i.c.ks through the veil of infinite night.

Beneath that dome sat Yoda. He did not look at the stars.

He sat a very long time.

Even after nearly nine hundred years, the road to self-knowledge was rugged enough to leave him bruised and bleeding.

He spoke softly, but not to himself.

Though no one was with him, he was not alone.

"My failure, this was. Failed the Jedi, I did."

He spoke to the Force.

And the Force answered him. Do not blame yourself, my old friend.

As it sometimes had these past thirteen years, when the Force spoke to him, it spoke in the voice of Qui-Gon Jinn.

"Too old I was," Yoda said. "Too rigid. Too arrogant to see that the old way is not the only way. These Jedi, I trained to become the Jedi who had trained me, long centuries ago-but those ancient Jedi, of a different time they were. Changed, has the galaxy. Changed, the Order did not-because let it change, I did not."

More easily said than done, my friend.

"An infinite mystery is the Force." Yoda lifted his head and turned his gaze out into the wheel of stars. "Much to learn, there still is."

And you will have time to learn it.

"Infinite knowledge . . ." Yoda shook his head. "Infinite time, does that require."

With my help, you can learn to join with the Force, yet retain consciousness. You can join your light to it forever. Perhaps, in time, even your physical self.

Yoda did not move. "Eternal life . . ."

The ultimate goal of the Sith, yet they can never achieve it; it comes only by the release of self, not the exaltation of self. It comes through compa.s.sion, not greed. Love is the answer to the darkness.

"Become one with the Force, yet influence still to have . . ." Yoda mused. "A power greater than all, it is."

It cannot be granted; it can only be taught. It is yours to learn, if you wish it.

Slowly, Yoda nodded. "A very great Jedi Master you have become, Qui-Gon Jinn. A very great Jedi Master you always were, but too blind I was to see it."

He rose, and folded his hands before him, and inclined his head in the Jedi bow of respect.

The bow of the student, in the presence of the Master.

"Your apprentice, I gratefully become."

He was well into his first lesson when the hatch cycled open behind him. He turned.

In the corridor beyond stood Bail Organa. He looked stricken.

"Obi-Wan is asking for you at the surgical theater," he said "It's Padme. She's dying."

Obi-Wan sat beside her, holding one cold, still hand in both of his. "Don't give up, Padme."

"Is it ..." Her eyes rolled blindly. "It's a girl. Anakin thinks it's a girl."

"We don't know yet. In a minute ... you have to stay with us."

Below the opaque tent that shrouded her from chest down, a pair of surgical droids a.s.sisted with her labor. A general medical droid fussed and tinkered among the clutter of scanners and equipment.

"If it's ... a girl-oh, oh, oh no . . ."

Obi-Wan cast an appeal toward the medical droid. "Can't you do something?"

"All organic damage has been repaired." The droid checked another readout. "This systemic failure cannot be explained."

Not physically, Obi-Wan thought. He squeezed her hand as though he could keep life within her body by simple pressure. "Padme, you have to hold on."

"If it's a girl . . . ," she gasped, "name her Leia . . ."

One of the surgical droids circled out from behind the tent, cradling in its padded arms a tiny infant, already swabbed clean and breathing, but without even the hint of tears.

The droid announced softly, "It's a boy."

Padme reached for him with her trembling free hand, but she had no strength to take him; she could only touch her fingers to the baby's forehead.

She smiled weakly. "Luke . . ."

The other droid now rounded the tent as well, with another clean, quietly solemn infant. ". . . and a girl."

But she had already fallen back against her pillow.

"Padme, you have twins," Obi-Wan said desperately. "They need you-please hang on . . ."

"Anakin ..."

"Anakin . . . isn't here, Padme," he said, though he didn't think she could hear.

"Anakin, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry . . . Anakin, please, I love you . . ."

In the Force, Obi-Wan felt Yoda's approach, and he looked up to see the ancient Master beside Bail Organa, both staring the same grave question down through the surgical theater's observation panel.

The only answer Obi-Wan had was a helpless shake of his head.

Padme reached across with her free hand, with the hand she had laid upon the brow of her firstborn son, and pressed something into Obi-Wan's palm.

For a moment, her eyes cleared, and she knew him.

"Obi-Wan . . . there ... is still good in him. I know there is . . . still . . ."

Her voice faded to an empty sigh, and she sagged back against the pillow. Half a dozen different scanners buzzed with conflicting alarm tones, and the medical droids shooed him from the room.

He stood in the hall outside, looking down at what she had pressed into his hand. It was a pendant of some kind, an amulet, unfamiliar sigils carved into some sort of organic material, strung on a loop of leather. In the Force, he could feel traces of the touch of her skin.

When Yoda and Bail came for him, he was still standing there, staring at it.

"She put this in my hand-" For what seemed the dozenth time this day, he found himself blinking back tears. "-and I don't even know what it is."

"Precious to her, it must have been," Yoda said slowly. "Buried with her, perhaps it should be."

Obi-Wan looked down at the simple, child-like symbols carved into it, and felt from it in the Force soaring echoes of transcendent love, and the bleak, black despair of unendurable heartbreak.

"Yes," he said. "Yes. Perhaps that would be best."

Around a conference table on Tantive IV, Bail Organa, Obi-Wan Ken.o.bi, and Yoda met to decide the fate of the galaxy.

"To Naboo, send her body ..." Yoda stretched his head high, as though tasting a current in the Force. "Pregnant, she must still appear. Hidden, safe, the children must be kept. Foundation of the new Jedi Order, they will be."

"We should split them up," Obi-Wan said. "Even if the Sith find one, the other may survive. I can take the boy, Master Yoda, and you take the girl. We can hide them away, keep them safe-train them as Anakin should have been trained-"

"No." The ancient Master lowered his head again, closing his eyes, resting his chin on his hands that were folded over the head of his stick.

Obi-Wan looked uncertain. "But how are they to learn the self-discipline a Jedi needs? How are they to master skills of the Force?"

"Jedi training, the sole source of self-discipline is not. When right is the time for skills to be taught, to us the living Force will bring them. Until then, wait we will, and watch, and learn."

"I can . . ." Bail Organa stopped, flushing slightly. "I'm sorry to interrupt, Masters; I know little about the Force, but I do know something of love. The Queen and I-well, we've always talked of adopting a girl. If you have no objection, I would like to take Leia to Alderaan, and raise her as our daughter. She would be loved with us."

Yoda and Obi-Wan exchanged a look. Yoda tilted his head. "No happier fate could any child ask for. With our blessing, and that of the Force, let Leia be your child."

Bail stood, a little jerkily, as though he simply could no longer keep his seat. His flush had turned from embarra.s.sment to pure uncomplicated joy. "Thank you, Masters-I don't know what else to say. Thank you, that's all. What of the boy?"

"Cliegg Lars still lives on Tatooine, I think-and Anakin's stepbrother . . . Owen, that's it, and his wife, Beru, still work the moisture farm outside Mos Eisley . . ."

"As close to kinfolk as the boy can come," Yoda said approvingly. "But Tatooine, not like Alderaan it is-deep in the Outer Rim, a wild and dangerous planet."