[Thrawn Trilogy] - 01(62)

She stared at him. “You’re not serious.”

“Why not?” Luke asked, frowning at her. Her reaction seemed vaguely wrong, somehow. “It’s a big galaxy, you know.”

“A galaxy in which you were supposedly the last of the Jedi,” she countered. “Isn’t that what you said Yoda told you before you died?”

“Yes,” he nodded. “But I’m beginning to think he might have been mistaken.”

Her eyebrows lifted slightly. “Mistaken? A Jedi Master?”

A memory flashed through Luke’s mind: a ghostly Obi-wan, in the middle of the Dagobah swamp, trying to explain his earlier statements about Darth Vader. “Jedi sometimes say things that are misleading,” he told her. “And even Jedi Masters aren’t omniscient.”

He paused, gazing at his sister, wondering how much of this he should tell her. The Empire was far from defeated, and the mysterious Jedi’s life might depend on his defense remaining a secret. Leia waited in silence, that concerned expression on her face …

“You’ll have to keep this to yourself,” Luke said at last. “I mean really to yourself. I don’t even want you to tell Han or Lando, unless it becomes absolutely necessary. They don’t have the resistance to interrogation that you do.”

Leia shuddered, but her eyes stayed clear. “I understand,” she said evenly.

“All right. Did it ever occur to you to wonder why Master Yoda was able to stay hidden from the Emperor and Vader all those years?”

She shrugged. “I suppose I assumed they didn’t know he existed.”

“Yes, but they should have,” Luke pointed out. “They knew I existed by my effect on the Force. Why not Yoda?”

“Some kind of mental shielding?”

“Maybe. But I think it’s more likely it was because of where he chose to live. Or maybe,” he amended, “where events chose for him to live.”

A faint smile brushed Leia’s lips. “Is this where I finally get to find out where this secret training center of yours was?”

“I didn’t want anyone else to know,” Luke said, moved by some obscure impulse to try to justify that decision to her. “He was so perfectly hidden-and even after his death I was afraid the Empire might be able to do something-“

He broke off. “Anyway, I can’t see that it matters now. Yoda’s home was on Dagobah. Practically next door to the darkside cave where I found that beckon call.”

Her eyes widened in surprise, a surprise that faded into understanding. “Dagobah,” she murmured, nodding slowly as if a private and long-standing problem had just been resolved. “I’ve always wondered how that renegade Dark Jedi was finally defeated. It must have been Yoda who …” She grimaced.

“Who stopped him,” Luke finished for her, a shiver running up his back. His own skirmishes with Darth Vader had been bad enough; a full-scale Force war between Jedi Masters would be terrifying. “And he probably didn’t stop him with a lot of time to spare.”

“The beckon call was already on standby,” Leia remembered. “He must have been getting ready to call his ship.”

Luke nodded. “All of which could explain why the cave was so heavy with the dark side. What it doesn’t explain is why Yoda decided to stay there.”

He paused, watching her closely; and a moment later, the understanding came. “The cave shielded him,” she breathed. “Just like a pair of positive and negative electric charges close enough together-to a distant observer they look almost like no charge at all.”

“I think that’s it,” Luke nodded again. “And if that’s really how Master Yoda stayed hidden, there’s no reason why another Jedi couldn’t have pulled the same trick.”

“I’m sure another Jedi could have,” Leia agreed, sounding reluctant. “But I don’t think this C’baoth rumor is anywhere near solid enough to chase off after.”

Luke frowned. “What C’baoth rumor?”

It was Leia’s turn to frown. “The story that a Jedi Master named Jorus C’baoth has reemerged from wherever it was he’s spent the past few decades.” She stared at him. “You hadn’t heard it?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“But then, how-?”

“Someone called to me, Leia, during the battle this afternoon. In my mind. The way another Jedi would.”

For a long moment they just looked at each other. “I don’t believe it,” Leia said. “I just don’t. Where could someone with C’baoth’s power and history have hidden for so long? And why?”