Jedi Meet a Force Cult in Latest Star Wars: The High Republic Novel

New Disney+ sequence Andor is grabbing all of the Star Wars consideration currently, however for High Republic followers, there’s a brand new story out subsequent week properly worthy of discover. io9 is thrilled to have an unique excerpt from Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Deceit, the newest within the sequence. It’s by Justina Ireland (2021’s Out of the Shadows) and Tessa Gratton (who has Quest for Planet X due subsequent 12 months).

Here’s a abstract of the e-book to present you some context within the galaxy far, distant:

Set on this planet of the High Republic, 150 years earlier than the storytelling of Phase I, an period of change brings new hopes and potentialities . . . but in addition new risks.

The Outer Rim planet Dalna has turn into the main focus of a Jedi investigation right into a stolen Force artifact, and Zallah Macri and her Padawan, Kevmo Zink, arrive on the pastoral world to observe up on a potential connection to a Dalnan missionary group referred to as the Path of the Open Hand. Members of the Path imagine that the Force should be free and shouldn’t be utilized by anybody, not even the Jedi. One such believer is Marda Ro, a younger girl who goals of leaving Dalna to unfold phrase of the Path all through the galaxy.

When Marda and Kevmo meet, their connection is instantaneous and electrical—till Marda discovers Kevmo is a Jedi. But Kevmo is so form and wanting to study extra concerning the Path, that she hopes she will be able to persuade him of the rightness of her beliefs. What Marda doesn’t notice is that the chief of the Path, a charismatic girl recognized solely because the Mother, has an agenda of her personal, and it’s one that may by no means coexist peacefully with the Jedi.

In order to observe her religion, Marda could have to decide on to turn into her new buddy’s worst enemy. . . .

Here’s the total cowl, adopted by the excerpt from Path of Deceit’s fifth chapter; it explores Marda assembly Kevmo for the primary time—and shortly after that, realizing his true identification.

FIVE

Marda’s day had lightened significantly when she first noticed the Pantoran boy’s smile. She’d been feeling melancholic after the Mother’s rejection of her plea to hitch the Children the day earlier than. Despite the brand new hatchlings in Ferize’s nest, the stunning day, and the nice tangle of the Littles beneath her cost, she had not been in a position to unspool the thread of disappointment twined round her throat. Disappointment and one thing worse: a gnawing guilt that she’d by no means be sufficient, regardless of how arduous she labored, regardless of how arduous she believed, as a result of she was Evereni. She didn’t even know why her folks had been mistrusted. Nobody would inform her. As if she was simply supposed to simply accept it, like gravity and dawn. Evereni weren’t worthy of representing the Path to the galaxy. Except Yana was allowed, so it needed to be one thing mistaken with Marda herself.

The Mother, placing a hand on Marda’s cheek, had tasked her once more with the Littles. “You are the one I can trust with the sparks of belief in their young hearts. You nurture their understanding of our Path, Marda Ro, here in our home. This home that we share must remain true, and you are its caretaker. Will you accept that for me?”

Marda had nodded and lowered her eyes towards stinging tears. The Mother was a real avatar of the Force, current in excellent concord, readability, and freedom with it. As she willed, so Marda should do. “I accept,” she whispered, and she or he meant it—solely, the galaxy was so huge, so nice. She knew she may broaden to suit it.

There needed to be one thing mistaken along with her if she couldn’t be content material with this objective freely given to her. Marda had tried to bury her uncertainty beneath comfortable smiles and softer fingers as she led the Littles to forage for magnificence alongside the river and within the rolling meadows. Gifts from Dalna into their fingers, gathered and ready to turn into items from their fingers to the wanderers of Ferdan.

They’d settled on the out there desk available in the market, the one Grandfer Aurin—an outdated Umbaran who offered used droid elements—usually saved for them. They didn’t want to be part of the Path, however they favored the best way Marda preached about residing with and for the Force. Eff, the youthful of the Klatooinian siblings, cherished Grandfer Aurin and sat on their lap for the primary hour of gifting. The different youngsters performed video games and tied bouquets and waved fortunately at passersby, solely sometimes arguing as Marda welcomed everybody to the desk, providing her religion in return. Jerid, a brown-skinned human boy, the oldest of the Littles with Marda, teased Utalir, who was solely 9, that her sun-yellow head tendrils had been prettier than the flowers and he questioned what would return to the Path if Utalir provided herself as a present freely given. Marda had discovered it essential to separate them, urging Jerid’s little sister, Vemian, to unlatch herself from Marda’s hip, the place she favored to cover and imitate every little thing Marda did. Meanwhile, Tromak hid beneath the desk rolling pebbles into the sq., Jezra’lin wouldn’t cease bouncing, and Hallisara, Simi, and Ferali wouldn’t cease competing for the love of the honey glider who had connected itself to Simi just a few weeks earlier, making the most of the boy’s willingness to share his porridge. The honey glider was omen, although, the identical brilliant blue as their brikal-shell paint from consuming the larvae of the arthropods.

The antics of the Littles distracted Marda from the worst of her melancholy, nevertheless it had clung to her nonetheless in that busy market, as she felt like the one individual on your complete planet who wasn’t allowed to depart.

Then the Pantoran boy. He drew her consideration out of the blue and unerringly: tall and interesting in layered robes merely made, in colours not dissimilar to her personal, with elaborate black braids, heat blue pores and skin, a smile that confirmed off blunt tooth, and fairly gold markings throughout his face.

When he caught her gaze, he got here straight for her, as if he knew her already.

Marda’s abdomen flipped.

He stopped at her desk, grinning on the youngsters however not taking his brilliant yellow eyes from her for lengthy. His pores and skin was practically the identical blue because the brikal shell, the gold vivid. She wished to the touch the markings, discover out in the event that they smeared or had been indelible, or perhaps simply blossomed on his pores and skin naturally. Like tiny trails of sunseed.

Then he spoke, and she or he spoke again, and he was from offworld. Of course; everybody was. But he had simply arrived, from the celebrities, and one thing inside Marda pinched in longing. The Pantoran boy—Kevmo—was good with the Littles. Liked them. And he knew the Force. That was how he stated it. I do know the Force.

Breathless, Marda thought this was why the Mother had denied her repeatedly: this second, this boy. For Marda to be there that day. She felt the knowledge effervescent up as if she would giggle.

Then.

Then he abused the Force.

“Stop!” Marda cried, reaching out. She grasped at Vemian, nonetheless holding her hip, and turned the human woman’s face away as if that might defend all of them from what Kevmo had completed.

“Marda,” he stated when the river rose fell to the dusty floor, the reward freely given dashed at their ft. Shaking, Marda lifted her jaw and tried to be fierce. “You do not know the Force.”

He watched her mouth, wide-eyed, then licked his backside lip. Marda knew what had occurred: he’d seen her sharp tooth; he knew she was Evereni, and he would go away.

That was for the very best. Kevmo Zink used the Force for a sport! The penalties of unbalancing the Force similar to he had completed may result in the dying of residing beings! And he’d completed it to tease a baby. Marda swallowed her grief away and let indignation rise. She walked the Path of the Open Hand. She would clarify. “The Force is not a tool. It is only itself. Life. Light. Everything that connects us. Not a tool.”

Kevmo leaned nearer, expression critical. “It can be. We use the Force if we can, use it for the betterment of the galaxy, for everyone.”

“How can you know you are bettering the galaxy when you cannot predict the effects of touching the Force?” Marda struggled to sound calm, largely for the sake of the Littles, who paid avid consideration, eyes huge, antennae attuned.

“My training is quite thorough,” Kevmo stated. “Of course I know the effects of using it.” Suddenly all of the flowers lifted off the desk to hover delicately within the air between them. “It is exact, especially on this scale. No one is in danger.” He stated it coaxingly, voice comfortable.

But Marda stared on the trembling pink and yellow petals earlier than her. “Please,” she whispered.

“This is a gift,” he continued, slowly spinning the flowers into a delicate spiral, a rainbow galaxy. “You believe in gifts freely given. That’s what you said?”

“Uh-huh!” squeaked Jezra’lin, then clapped their fingers over their huge mouth.

Marda squeezed her hand right into a fist. More folks had been gazing them, together with Grandfer Aurin.

Kevmo stated, “Being able to use the Force like this is a gift. It flows through me, is part of me, and using it is like using my hands or my ears or my voice.”

She couldn’t assist glancing at his mouth as he spoke, and centered there as she stated once more, “Please stop.”

The flowers fell. Marda closed her eyes in reduction for a second. “You can know what you do here, but how can you predict the consequences in the Force? Use it here, for nothing but teasing? For—for impressing me?”

The boy grimaced.

Marda pressed on. “This incident here alters the Force, changes it in ripples, pulls it, directs it, and those changes change other things, out in the galaxy. Who is to say that your tricks here have not set in motion ripples that will result in something dangerous where you cannot see it?”

“That’s not how the Force works,” he insisted.

“Yes, it is.” Marda very practically bared her tooth. “It is not to be controlled.”

“Jedi don’t—”

Marda gasped. “You’re Jedi?”

Kevmo paused, lips parted, and really slowly nodded. “You do control the Force! You seek to bend it to your will! I know of the Jedi.” How silly that it felt like her coronary heart was breaking. There had been Jedi on Jedha, and she or he’d heard so many tales of that nice world, the other ways of monks and wanderers and witches who got here collectively there on the temple. Jedi got here from the Core Worlds, with their very own ways in which had been the other of the Path’s.

“That’s not true.” Kevmo leaned urgently towards Marda, placing his fingers on the desk. “We don’t impose our will on the Force! But—”

“You use it. The Force must be free, Kevmo Zink. It is for us to live in harmony with it. Part of it. Not using it.” Marda clicked her tooth simply barely, to maintain from gnashing them, to maintain from crying. She ought to have recognized he was Jedi the second he named his weapon a lightsaber. But she had at all times averted occupied with them, and knew so little.

Kevmo checked out her with one thing akin to longing, and she or he paused. This gulf between them was huge, although solely moments earlier than she’d felt so proper and good about assembly him.

Finally, the Jedi stated, “The Force is warm, and bright. It is life. And using it—” He glanced on the Path banner, hand-painted by Marda and Er Dal and Old Waiden years earlier than. Kevmo turned his fingers over so the paler blue pores and skin of his palms confronted the solar. “Using it feels right. Good. Like basking in starlight.”

The pit of Marda’s abdomen opened, as a result of he gave the impression of she did when she begged to go together with the Children into area. She shook her head. “Give out the flowers, everyone,” she stated, reaching for little Simi. “Ferali and Utalir, fold the banner, please. Let us go from here.”

The Littles shortly grabbed flowers and dashed throughout the road handy them to the sellers and buskers they knew, a last blessing earlier than they left. Marda knew she was working away. She collected the pan of chips and credit and cash they’d been given and tucked it right into a small bag earlier than giving it to Tromak for safekeeping. She didn’t have a look at Kevmo once more.

Until she turned to depart and he stated, “Marda Ro.”

She paused and intentionally glanced at him over her shoulder.

“Will I see you again?” he requested, gaze intent, fingers transferring, flexing, as if they may not discover a solution to relaxation.

Every a part of Marda wished to vow, only one extra time, to depart him with a final reward freely given: hope. But it was higher this fashion. She stated, “No,” and ushered the Littles earlier than her, by no means wanting again.

She needed to chunk the tip of her tongue to handle it. The sharp style of her blood put her firmly again in her physique.

It took solely till they had been simply out of the market, the Littles in a sequence as they walked, hand in hand in hand, for Jezra’lin to pipe up, “My older sibling was Force-sensitive! I wonder if they could do that with the flowers. I hoped I would be.”

“Not me,” Jerid stated. “It’s easier to follow the Path if you can’t even be tempted to touch the Force. That’s what my mama said.”

Hallisara stated, “That weapon was incredible! It was pretty, too. I wonder what it does.”

“What’s a Jedi?” Utalir requested softly, tugging at Marda’s sleeve with brilliant yellow fingers.

Marda paused. Jerid took benefit by saying, “Warriors! They fight monsters, I heard.”

“Monsters!” shrieked Simi, startling the honey glider, who had as soon as once more hidden within the boy’s purple tangles.

This was getting out of hand. Marda stated, “That’s enough.” She stared on the chain of Littles and nodded arduous. “Come this way, and I’ll show you something important.”

They skipped and cheered a little bit as they fell again in line.

Marda led them out of Ferdan towards the compound however veered south to the quarry and development grounds, the place many elements of the Gaze Electric—the elements distinctive to the Path of the Open Hand, not droids or hyperspace or shielding—had been being constructed.

Members of the Path had been utilizing the massive kilns to warmth varied metals meant for the enormous molds on the fringe of the grounds. Steam and smoke rose into the blue sky, and the ting-ting of hammers was like bells. Droids stepped right here and there, hauling the glittering pink granite from the quarry, others breaking it up. There had been piles of skinny black slate to be chipped into shards for the huge mosaic flooring of the temple corridor within the Gaze Electric. Soon it might all be taken as much as the ship and put into place, and Marda can be allowed to go to and paint the partitions with waves of brikal-shell blue.

It was tough to see the form of the ship in these piles of stone and sweating folks, whereas the ship itself hung in orbit. Sometimes the solar shone excellent and glinted off the hull, and from planetside it regarded like a star, like each different ship. But it was not like every other ship in any respect.

“Littles,” Marda stated, main them to a quartet of alloy buttresses leaning towards the rise of a hill. “Do you know what we are making?”

“The Gaze Electric,” Jezra’lin answered, bouncing on their toes.

“That is its name. But do you know what it is?” Marda lowered herself to take a seat along with her legs crossed and beckoned the Littles to array themselves round her.

“A ship.”

“A temple!”

“A sanctuary!”

The replies layered collectively into enthusiastic chaos, and Marda smiled. Their consideration bolstered her, serving to her settle the trembling in her fingers left over from that encounter with Kevmo Zink.

“That’s correct,” she stated. “All of those things. The Mother had a vision of this grand ship, a beautiful, vast place large enough for every member of the Path, and many more. We can grow our family out amongst the stars, take ourselves anywhere we like, wherever the Force needs us to share our clarity with other beings.”

“Clarity,” Vemian stated very quietly, gazing Marda with awe-filled aquamarine eyes. Marda thought out of the blue that she herself regarded like this when she spoke with the Mother, as if the Mother may do no mistaken and each phrase from her lips was the phrase of the Force itself. Realizing Vemian noticed Marda that method made her really feel taller, stronger, however a little bit bit frightened, too.

“Clarity,” Marda stated. “And freedom, and harmony with the Force. That is the Path of the Open Hand. The Force is everywhere, in everything, blazing through the particles of the universe, and it is not our place to touch it. We are not above other creatures or things. We are not above the Force. We are it, if we are lucky.”

Ferali, the older Klatooinian sibling, frowned, his massive brow bulbs shading his eyes. “That is why that Jedi shouldn’t have moved the flowers.”

Marda nodded solemnly. “He took from the Force. Stole. Abused. Even that alone is wrong, you understand? We do not take. We only hold out our open hands.”

The Littles slowly turned their fingers over, palms to the sky.

“When you are open, gifts freely given will come to you, as long as you are alive. As long as the Force flows through you.”

Simi put his little white hand in Marda’s grey one. She squeezed. The honey glider pushed off his neck and landed on Hallisara’s knee. The Rodian grinned. “Thank you,” she stated. “For the gift of your friendship.”

“I’ll be your friend, too,” stated Eff, Ferali’s little sibling, coaxing the lovable blue glider.

“Me also,” Tromak stated, all three eyes blinking quick.

Marda smiled softly. She led them by way of the remainder of their catechisms whereas members of the Path labored noisily, the longer term sanctuary of the Gaze Electric surrounding them in a snug nest. Yet Marda couldn’t assist considering of the Jedi boy holding out his open fingers to her, and the way badly she had longed to open her fingers to him in return.

Excerpt from Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Deceit by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland reprinted by permission of Disney Lucasfilm Press.

Star Wars: The High Republic: Path of Deceit by Tessa Gratton and Justina Ireland shall be launched October 4; you may pre-order a replica right here.

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