"He's dead," Jabitha said. "Only the Magister could wear this ring. It meant he was linked with the Potentium."

"We have to go," Anakin told her softly. The corridors echoed with more groans, more shrieks and rumbles. The floor beneath them trembled.

"He must have died during the battle with the Far Outsiders," Jabitha said. She shone the torch beam around the chamber, looking for any others. The chamber was deserted. "But who was sending his messages?"

"I don't know," Anakin said. Then once again, from the corner of his eye, he caught a gleam of light in the darkness, away from Jabitha's torch. He turned and saw the feathered Jedi Knight standing on her reverse-articulated legs, feet splayed as if prepared to leap, staring at him with no apparent emotion.

Jabitha could not see her. Nor did the girl see the figure become the Magister, her father. The transformed figure stepped forward.

Anakin felt no fear. He felt instead in the presence of another young person very like himself, a friend. This made him consider once again the real possibility that he was going insane.

"I sent the messages," the figure told Anakin.

The girl remained crouched over her dead father. Anakin bent and touched her head, and she was comfortable, then stood and faced the image.

"Who are you?" he asked, his voice cracking.

"A friend of Vergere," it said."I think my name, to some, is Sekot."

To prepare the way for a retrieval ship to land on the mountain, Tarkin ordered a swarm of droid starfighters to take any other ships in the area.He watched with satisfaction from his lofty orbit, Sienar at his side, as the starfighters harried the outmoded YT-1105 and another Sekotan ship.

"We'll sacrifice one to gain another," Tarkin said.

"Take care with the larger Sekotan vessel," Sienar said, though he was not at all sure that Tarkin was willing to hear reason."It may be exceptional."

"Sir," the captain said, "we are losing most of our starfighters over the inhabited valleys in the north.Their defenses are relentless and apparently without limit.And there are-"

"Quiet!" Tarkin shouted."I think you overestimate these primitives.Once we are done with our primary mission, we will sweep up the rest by main force.No more delicacy.If they do not submit, we will destroy them utterly."

Anakin stayed close by Jabitha, as much for his sake as for hers. The atmosphere within the chamber was thick with dust. Dust sifted from the ceiling, puffed from the outer halls as ceilings collapsed elsewhere in the ruin.

Tendrils on the floor moved with deliberation toward Jabitha, encircled her. Sekot itself would protect the Magister's daughter. In some fashion Anakin could not yet fathom, the figure before him regarded the Magister's children as brothers and sisters.

"You are the Jedi apprentice," the image said.

Anakin nodded.

"And your master is elsewhere, fighting the new invasion."

"I feel him out there," Anakin said.

"How I would love to learn the secrets of the Jedi! What can you teach me?"

"Who are you?" Anakin said. Like Obi-Wan, he was now finding mystery and delay to be a real irritation.

"I don't know for sure. I'm not very old, but my memories go back billions of turnings. Parts of me saw the pinwheel grow in the sky."

Anakin thought of Vergere's message contained within the seeds. "You're the mind I sensed, aren't you?" he asked. "The voice behind the seed voices."

"They are my children," the image said. "They are cells in my body."

"You really are Sekot, then, aren't you?" Even under the present circumstances, he could not help but feel awe and wonder.

"I tried to be the Magister, but I can't continue. I grieve for him. He was the first to know me. The Magister was going to reveal me to his people, but the Far Outsiders arrived. I had never known anything like them. The Magister's peoples were gentle."

"Can you see around the entire planet? What else is happening outside?"

"I see wherever my parts reach. I am almost blind down here. They burned me down here. I've never known such pain. The Magister told me to burn them back, so I helped him make weapons. But I did not know what to believe."

"Why?" Anakin knelt beside Jabitha. The tendrils encircled them, rustling faintly across the floor.

"He told me I was the Potentium, the force behind all life. He thought I reached everywhere. I don't. I'm just here. He saw what he wanted to see, and told me what he wanted to hear me speak into his own ears. He said there was no evil in the universe, only good. I did not see how wrong he was until he died. Then I reached out with the weapons we had made, and I killed. The Magister had said that would be good, but I knew it was not."

Anakin sucked in his breath. "Just like me," he said.

"I killed more, but it was still not enough. It was Vergere who drew away the Far Outsiders. She did not kill them; she persuaded them. I wish she was still here, but there is only a little part of her. The message to you and your master."

"Did she know the Magister was dead?"

"No one knew, until now."

Anakin held out his hand to fend off a questing tendril.

The image seemed to be hurt by this. "Why do you distrust me? I want to protect her."

"I don't distrust you. But I don't think either of us knows what we're doing. We should get her outside and wait for my master to arrive."

"It is you I feel closest to," the image said. "The Magister's peoples made me their servant, and you were a slave. I did what they told me to do. You did what your owner told you to do. So like me! I tried to be like the others, but I am not like them. My mind is made up of so many parts, spread out over so much of my world. And your mind is so different from the others. I have no real parents, and your parents-"

Anakin interrupted with a stammered question. "What m- made you wake up? Why did you suddenly appear, after bil lions of years?"

"I had to come into being to communicate with the new ar rivals, the Magister's peoples. All of me came together, reached up to talk with them, and I was-"

A large chunk of the roof collapsed on the far end of the chamber, showering them with splinters and shards of broken stone. "We have to go now!" Anakin said. "Can you help me?"