For a long moment C’baoth was silent. Luke waited, jostled by the bumps as the carriage wheels ran over the uneven ground. “No,” C’baoth said at last, shaking his head. “Not now. Perhaps later.” He nodded toward the front of the carriage. “We are here.”
Luke looked. Ahead he could see half a dozen small houses, with more becoming visible as the carriage cleared the cover of the trees. Probably fifty or so all told: small, neat little cottages that seemed to combine natural building elements with selected bits of more modern technology. About twenty people could be seen moving about at various tasks; most stopped what they were doing as the speeder bike and carriage appeared. The driver pulled to roughly the center of the village and stopped in front of a thronelike chair of polished wood protected by a small, dome-roofed pavilion.
“I had it brought down from the High Castle,” C’baoth explained, gesturing to the chair. “I suspect it was a symbol of authority to the beings who carved it.”
“What’s it used for now?” Luke asked. The elaborate throne seemed out of place, somehow, in such a casually rustic setting as this.
“It’s from there that I usually give my justice to the people,” C’baoth said, standing up and stepping out of the carriage. “But we will not be so formal today. Come.”
The people were still standing motionless, watching them. Luke reached out with the Force as he stepped out beside C’baoth, trying to read their overall sense. It seemed expectant, perhaps a little surprised, definitely awed. There didn’t seem to be any fear; but there was nothing like affection, either. “How long have you been coming here?” he asked C’baoth.
“Less than a year,” C’baoth said, setting off casually down the street. “They were slow to accept my wisdom, but eventually I persuaded them to do so.”
The villagers were starting to return to their tasks now, but their eyes still followed the visitors. “What do you mean, persuaded them?” Luke asked.
“I showed them that it was in their best interests to listen to me.” C’baoth gestured to the cottage just ahead. “Reach out your senses, Jedi Skywalker. Tell me about that house and its inhabitants.”
It was instantly apparent what C’baoth was referring to. Even without focusing his attention on the place Luke could feel the anger and hostility boiling out of it. There was a flicker of something like murderous intent—“Uh-oh,” he said. “Do you think we should—?”
“Of course we should,” C’baoth said. “Come.” He stepped up to the cottage and pushed open the door. Keeping his hand on his lightsaber, Luke followed.
There were two men standing in the room, one holding a large knife toward the other, both frozen in place as they stared at the intruders. “Put the knife down, Tarm,” C’baoth said sternly. “Svan, you will likewise lay aside your weapon.”
Slowly, the man with the knife laid it on the floor. The other looked at C’baoth, back at his now unarmed opponent—“I said lay it aside!” C’baoth snapped.
The man cringed back, hastily pulled a small slugthrower from his pocket and dropped it beside the knife. “Better,” C’baoth said, his voice calm but with a hint of the fire still there. “Now explain yourselves.”
The story came out in a rush from both men at once, a loud and confusing babble of charges and countercharges about some kind of business deal gone sour. C’baoth listened silently, apparently having no trouble following the windstorm of fact and assumption and accusation. Luke waited beside him, wondering how he was ever going to untangle the whole thing. As near as he could understand it, both men seemed to have equally valid arguments.
Finally, the men ran out of words. “Very well,” C’baoth said. “The judgment of C’baoth is that Svan will pay to Tarm the full wages agreed upon.” He nodded at each man in turn. “The judgment will be carried out immediately.”
Luke looked at C’baoth in surprise. “That’s all?” he asked.
C’baoth turned a steely gaze on him. “You have something to say?”
Luke glanced back at the two villagers, acutely aware that arguing the ruling in front of them might undermine whatever authority C’baoth had built up here. “I just thought that more of a compromise might be in order.”
“There is no compromise to be made,” C’baoth said firmly. “Svan is at fault, and he will pay.”
“Yes, but—”
Luke caught the flicker of sense a half second before Svan dived for the slugthrower. With a single smooth motion he had his lightsaber free of his belt and ignited. But C’baoth was faster. Even as Luke’s green-white blade snapped into existence, C’baoth raised his hand; and from his fingertips flashed a sizzling volley of all-too-well-remembered blue lightning bolts.
Svan took the blast full in the head and chest, snapping over backwards with a scream of agony. He slammed into the ground, screaming again as C’baoth sent a second blast at him. The slugthrower flew from his hand, its metal surrounded for an instant by a blue-white coronal discharge.
C’baoth lowered his hand, and for a long moment the only sound in the room was a soft whimpering from the man on the floor. Luke stared at him in horror, the smell of ozone wrenching at his stomach. “C’baoth—!”
“You will address me as Master,” the other cut him off quietly.
Luke took a deep breath, forcing calm into his mind and voice. Closing down his lightsaber, he returned it to his belt and went over to kneel beside the groaning man. He was obviously still hurting, but aside from some angry red burns on his chest and arms, he didn’t seem to be seriously hurt. Laying his hand gently on the worst of the burns, Luke reached out with the Force, doing what he could to alleviate the other’s pain.
“Jedi Skywalker,” C’baoth said from behind him. “He is not permanently damaged. Come away.”
Luke didn’t move. “He’s in pain.”
“That is as it should be,” C’baoth said. “He required a lesson, and pain is the one teacher no one will ignore. Now come away.”
For a moment Luke considered disobeying. Svan’s face and sense were in agony …
“Or would you have preferred that Tarm lie dead now?” C’baoth added.
Luke looked at the slugthrower lying on the floor, then at Tarm standing stiffly with wide eyes and face the color of dirty snow. “There were other ways to stop him,” Luke said, getting to his feet.
“But none that he will remember longer.” C’baoth locked eyes with Luke. “Remember that, Jedi Skywalker; remember it well. For if you allow your justice to be forgotten, you will be forced to repeat the same lessons again and again.”
He held Luke’s gaze a pair of heartbeats longer before turning back to the door. “We’re finished here. Come.”
The stars were blazing overhead as Luke eased open the low gate of the High Castle and stepped out of the courtyard. Artoo had clearly noticed his approach; as he closed the gate behind him the droid turned on the X-wing’s landing lights, illuminating his path. “Hi, Artoo,” Luke said, walking to the short ladder and wearily pulling himself up into the cockpit. “I just came out to see how you and the ship were doing.”
Artoo beeped his assurance that everything was fine. “Good,” Luke said, flicking on the scopes and keying for a status check anyway. “Any luck with the sensor scan I asked for?”
The reply this time was less optimistic. “That bad, huh?” Luke nodded heavily as the translation of Artoo’s answer scrolled across the X-wing’s computer scope. “Well, that’s what happens when you get up into mountains.”
Artoo grunted, a distinctly unenthusiastic sound, then warbled a question. “I don’t know,” Luke told him. “A few more days at least. Maybe longer, if he needs me to stay.” He sighed. “I don’t know, Artoo. I mean, it’s just never what I expect. I went to Dagobah expecting to find a great warrior, and I found Master Yoda. I came here expecting to find someone like Master Yoda … and instead I got Master C’baoth.”
Artoo gave a slightly disparaging gurgle, and Luke had to smile at the translation. “Yes, well, don’t forget that Master Yoda gave you a hard time that first evening, too,” he reminded the droid, wincing a little himself at the memory. Yoda had also given Luke a hard time at that encounter. It had been a test of Luke’s patience and of his treatment of strangers.
And Luke had flunked it. Rather miserably.
Artoo warbled a point of distinction. “No, you’re right,” Luke had to concede. “Even while he was still testing us Yoda never had the kind of hard edge that C’baoth does.”