Heir to the Jedi Read Online Free PDF Page B

turned to the mausoleum. Soonta produced a handheld sonic cutter to clear a path through the undergrowth, which allowed us to reach it in a few minuteswhile saving our clothes and skin from tears and perhaps puncture wounds.
    The mausoleum didn’t have a marker on it or any engraving explaining who was entombed there. Soonta knelt in the soft dirt before the gray stone door and I joined her, bowing my head. She said a few things in her native language that I didn’t understand, but they sounded solemn and respectful and I hoped my silence would be taken in the same spirit. But I could not help wondering what might lie inside the tomb. I know that Soonta said her uncle’s body had been found inside his ship once it landed, but was it truly still there now? I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight of Obi-Wan’s empty robe. That method of dying still didn’t seem plausible to me—and I had seen it with my own eyes. I wondered if perhaps this Huulik had eventually faded to nothingness in the same way.
    When Soonta had finished her oblations I asked, “Forgive me if it’s rude to ask, but … might we see him?”
    The Rodian tilted her head ever so slightly in my direction and regarded me with her giant black eyes. “Did you speak the truth earlier? Do you wish to become a Jedi yourself one day, or was that merely an idle fantasy?”
    “Yes, I truly wish it. More than anything.”
    “Then we should enter.”
    I helped her open the door, and the smell inside was every bit as damp and moldy as the outside. Assorted slugs and a snake wriggled away from the sudden glare of sunlight. A sarcophagus squatted in the middle of the room, almost covered in a carpet of lichen.
    “There’s something in there for you,” Soonta said, pointing with a green finger.
    “I … there is? What?”
    “Help me move the lid.”
    I didn’t argue since it was what I wanted anyway, but her eagernesspuzzled me. I supposed I didn’t know much about Rodian cultural taboos regarding the dead and decided to go with it. We hefted a corner of the slab together and shoved it aside until the top half of Huulik’s remains lay revealed. There wasn’t much left, but clearly he hadn’t passed on to some other state of existence like Obi-Wan. Apart from the bones there were still fragments of the robe left, a few curling clumps of hardy threads that had survived this long against the elements and denizens of the swamp. Soonta leaned over and thrust her hand into the sarcophagus, obstructing my view. She emerged holding a thick black cylinder.
    “This is Huulik’s lightsaber, I believe. We buried it with him since we didn’t know what else to do with it.”
    “Does it still work?”
    “I don’t know.” She handed it to me. “Try it and see. It’s yours.”
    I blinked. “You’re giving this to me? Wouldn’t someone else in your family object?”
    Soonta shrugged her antennae. “At this point I suspect I am the only member of my family who still comes to visit him. And it is not doing any good sealed away like that. I think it’s an inheritance better suited to you than me. Perhaps you can learn something from it and one day become a Jedi like your father and my uncle. It would be good to have the Jedi return, I think.”
    It was a stupefying gift and I had difficulty mustering a response. “Thank you,” I managed after a time, though the words were inadequate. “I’m honored.”
    Huulik’s lightsaber was designed for a Rodian hand and wasn’t quite comfortable in my fist. It had a matte-black finish to it and an odd slick feeling—I didn’t know if that was its original state or if some kind of biological ooze coated it. Pointing it carefully away from both of us, I thumbed it on, expecting the power cell to be long depleted by now. But it ripped into life and thrummed with energy, a brilliant amethyst blade.
    “Now something like that,” Soonta said, “might allow you to survive a direct attack from a ghest.”
    It took