"I don't know what happened." Ibhis raised a tear-stained face into the half-light of his underground cell. The scratches from forehead to chin had become infected and flamed a vivid red against his pallor. "I tell you I don't know!""Forgive me." Qui-Gon had been provided with a chair, and an armed escort. He left them both to kneel beside the criminal on the floor. "If I could leave it at that I would, but what happened to you may not be the end of this. It may simply be the beginning."
This close he could feel the young man's shame and terror like a forcefield, and knew it would burn him if he touched it. He tried to make himself smaller, non-threatening, but it didn't work, Ibhis only squeezed himself further into his corner and hugged his knees as if they could, somehow, protect him.
Qui-Gon had seen all these symptoms before. He backed off, found the guards. "Please leave."
They turned yellow, both of them, like a splash of Coruscant sunlight against the stained brown walls. "We can't leave you in here with a murderer."
"You don't think I can defend myself against an unarmed child?"
Uncertainty coloured them like flowers. He waited, as they spoke together in their own language - rapid shifts of pattern and colour over their whole bodies; long spaces of time when he couldn't tell if they had gone black, or if they still conversed in marvellous shades of ultraviolet he would never be able to see.
The Force told him they were suspicious of his motives, afraid for him, and of him.
"But we will watch on vid."
"Of course. I have no secrets."
Ibhis watched them go with an increase in terror, as if Qui-Gon had withdrawn a protection from him. It's me! he realised, surprised. He had thought the guards' aggression and their blasters were contributing to the young man's nervousness, but no, It's me.
"Why are you afraid of me? I want to help." And I'm the only one who does.
Ibhis' long hair was tied in thousands of braids, thin as a Padawan's. Each braid bore many bloodstained silver beads, tiny as stars. He toyed with them now, avoiding Qui-Gon's eyes. "You did it. Didn't you."
"I did what?"
Terror flared into weak anger - the words trembled with unshed tears. "Someone broke into my head, tore my mind apart, made me see...." He swallowed, thin face grim, "And we all know about the Jedi and their mind tricks. Was it you? You had some kind of plan, maybe, and you used me?"
Indignation pushed words into his mouth 'What do you think I am!' but he didn't say them. He sat down on the floor, slowly. After all, given what Ibhis knew, the conclusion was reasonable enough.
"I'm not saying that I couldn't have done it, and other Jedi could do it far easier than I." The desire to give comfort was too strong for him this time, he reached out, tried to touch, to make some kind of reassuring contact. Again Ibhis cringed away, broken and scarred, an object lesson in why this kind of defence was always a last resort. "But none of us would."
He sighed, accepting his own helplessness and going on, "I know I can give you no evidence for that. I can only ask you to trust me."
When the questioning glance came, he caught it, "It wasn't me. Please let me help you."
Ibhis turned his hands over again - they had not let him wash, and black blood still clotted the nail-cut palms. "If you wanted to help me you should have come sooner. You, with your training! You should have gotten it off me before I..."
Like the voice of his conscience. Yes, I should have come sooner. But he caught the thought with discipline - there was nothing but pain down that road. He would not go there, would not trap himself, as Ibhis had, in endless cycles of blame and remorse. "We each did what we did, and now we must deal with it. If I can't help you, perhaps you can help me."
He expected a dull 'I can't do anything,' and was impressed when the youth straightened, sniffed the tears back. "How?"
"Tell me what you experienced - what you saw, felt, everything."
"There were monsters." How old was he, Qui-Gon wondered. With his face blank in memory and his voice trembling he looked barely older than Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan who had gone to his meeting this morning wearing duty like a cloak of lead. I hope he hasn't said anything too inflammatory yet.
"They chased me, and I was so scared." Ibhis was, Qui-Gon remembered, a translator, and he had an awkward eloquence as he began to explain; "Do you know, when you're young, you lie in the dark in your room and you know - you just know - the monsters are there. Next moment you'll see them and their faces will annihilate you. Just looking at them will be more terror than you can withstand."
He turned his head, leaned his infected cuts against the dirty wall, his voice small and calm. "You know they're going to do things to you that you can't imagine, but that's not the worst - the worst is just seeing them. Like their faces could violate your soul. Only when you're little you're always in that moment just before. It always never quite happens."
He stopped, swallowed, and Qui-Gon, who had never felt this fear, still knew what he was going to say next. "This time it happened. I saw them."
The hands, which had relaxed slightly, balled up as he tugged his knees in closer. "I tried to make them go away. I fought.... And then it all went away and I found I was a murderer."
The hands again, pushed out, aggressive, showing the stains. "Look at me. I'll never be clean again."
Force! That was a familiar pain. He remembered his own first kill, rehearsed the familiar, inadequate excuses - I was nine years old! He was trying to.... But it was no good, he could not shake the sense that something infinitely valuable had been forever lost. What could he say? 'You never will be clean, but you can learn to live with the dirt'? He cleared his throat.
"Cim Beysan is not dead," he said, gently, "Even his limbs will regrow in time. You're not a murderer."
"I feel so ashamed!"
I'm sure you fought the nightmare with all your strength."
Ibhis face crumpled once more. "But I didn't win!"
He remembered saying this to Xan once; Xan, young and furious over his own weakness, furious that he had failed the master whom at one time he had loved. No. I won't go down that road either.
"Ibhis, there's always someone stronger than you - there's always a bigger fish. If you fight against evil, the occasional defeat is inevitable. That's not shameful. In fact it's a triumph to have fought at all."
The young translator looked away, refusing comfort, clinging stubbornly to his injury. Qui-Gon sighed. "You weren't aware of being compelled? Of someone else, directing your actions?"
"No. They were my own monsters."
It was rare to find such massive power in harness with subtlety. Whoever was behind this was invisible even to his victims. Troubling, but the only piece of information Ibhis seemed able to give.
"Master Jinn?" Ibhis actually volunteering a communication? Qui-Gon looked up with hope.
"I didn't ask you to be my champion. Why can't you just leave me to be punished? It's what I want."
Sympathy exhausted itself in the face of this craving for martyrdom. He could not force the young idiot to be healed. "I'm not doing this for you," he said, perhaps a little more harshly than he had intended, "But for me. I don't want your innocent blood on my hands. Or on the treaty."
He rapped on the door, waited for the guards to unlock it. "I know you understand that. Understand this too - there comes a point where despair is just selfishness. You should ask yourself if you've reached that point."
Perhaps the reprimand would help, he thought as he climbed the endless stairs back to ground level, more likely it would not. It had been unworthy of him, sparked by irritation and the contagion of Ibhis' misery, but there, it was done and couldn't be taken back. Next time he would do better.
He stepped out into the gardens and felt the slow, cool lives of the plants like a soothing balm. The slight breeze was pleasant and the green sun warm on his face. Letting the anger go, he breathed in scents of distant water, hringbell flowers nodding in grass, and madderley, pervasive as light.
Obi-Wan was standing by the lake, skipping stones. As soon as he sensed Qui-Gon's presence he dropped the handful of pebbles and wiped his hand guiltily on his cloak, ashamed to be caught doing something so frivolous.
It was nice to see him - nice to see someone who didn't think they were to blame for anything. "Report."
Obi-Wan drew himself up, folded his hands formally, just as if he was reporting to the Council. Why must he try so hard? Is he still trying to make up for what happened on Melida/Daan? Does he really think I'm that remorseless?
"It wasn't a very productive meeting." Even the language was carefully chosen to impress. It filled Qui-Gon with frustration, made him want to shake the boy until he did something real. Instead he stooped to pick up the discarded stones, turned away to send them slapping over the lake. Watching the shudders and circles of light he heard Obi-Wan sigh - a tight sound, full of confusion.
I'm not incomprehensible, Obi-Wan - I'm just not what you expected.
A moment later the boy abandoned his polish for the truth, "Actually it was rubbish."
"In what way?" He held out the handful of muddy pebbles to his apprentice, smiled, hoping to share something innocent before he had to go back and talk about war. Hoping too that Obi-Wan would see this as an invitation to relax a little, to let up on his impossible quest to be the best Padawan who ever lived. I don't want perfection, I want you to be who you are.
Obi-Wan took one, but he took it as if it was a test, grimly, determined to pass.
"There was a lot of posturing. A lot of 'we won't negotiate with murderers like you'." He skipped the stone, and it wrote 'anger' all over the surface of the water. "Several Nimgoni accused you of taking sides, and the Beta Systems clerks were embarrassingly nice to me in front of everyone."
He bared his teeth as he hurled the last stone. It raised one heavy splash and then sank, and he seemed to take that as an admission of failure.
Qui-Gon hunkered down to wash his hands in the lake. "But you managed to get them to talk about the treaty in the end."
"The last sticking point, apart from Nam Gillet's political cowardice, seems to be the shared moon - DraZim."
There were white animals in the water. At first he thought they were snakes, but as they came closer he could see the sleek hair, tiny paddle feet. Aquatic mammals. They nudged at his fingers, and he waited to see if they would bite.
"It's strategically important for both sides, but there's only enough land for one." Obi-Wan's voice lost some of its colourless accuracy, a hint of curiosity flavouring the tone. "There are seas. Both sides have technology to build underwater, but...."
"But the seas are sacred to the Nimgoni. They won't live underwater, and they can't permit their enemies to do so either."
One of the serpent-like creatures had hooked its forepaw over his thumb. He kept still, aware of the huge step of faith it was making, aware too of the crunch of shingle behind him which told him Obi-Wan was coming to look.
It crawled up into his palm, then cast itself in a loop around his arm, claws snagging on the rough-woven sleeve. Opening a pink mouth, fringed with teeth, it made a comical croak, and stared at him with eyes like silver mirrors. Its grip was surprisingly warm, surprisingly strong.
"What is it?" Obi-Wan knelt down beside him, allowing himself to be enchanted, like the child he still was.
"I don't know." He risked a light stroke - the fur already drying in the breeze - and it preened in response. "It wasn't in the briefing, so I'm guessing it's not dangerous."
"Or it's dangerous in some way we're going to be the first to discover."
The joke was a blessing. If Obi-Wan could joke in his presence then there was some hope for them after all. He shifted position so that Obi-Wan could do what he was obviously itching to do - get the animal to come to him - and thanked the Force for this brief moment when they were not at odds.
Give me time, Obi-Wan. I just need time and space to heal.
It didn't like being told to go somewhere it hadn't chosen. Twisting, snakelike, in the boy's hands it hissed at him. He let it go quickly, and they watched it swim off, while Qui-Gon wondered whose dignity was ruffled most - the Jedi or the beast.
He offered up a failure of his own to soothe it: "My meeting was fairly rubbish too. Ibhis knew nothing."
Ripples whispered on the shore. Noon smelled of algae, soil and far off smoke. "What are we going to do now?" Obi-Wan asked, sure there must be a plan.
"We're going to wait."
Obi-Wan looked up, eyes sharp and blue as his lightsabre. "That's all?"
Always trying to push things to move faster than they could. "Obi-Wan," he sighed, "The Force is like that little animal. It's not tame. You have to make yourself available to it, wait for it. At the right moment it will come to your hand, and with it you will change the universe. Try to hurry and it'll just run away."
He could see the message hadn't got through. Perhaps because it wasn't what the boy wanted to hear. He wanted to go striding out into the galaxy and bend everything until it fitted how he thought it should be. That's unfair. You were young once too.
He recast the idea for his apprentice's more practical mind. "When you don't know what you're facing and you don't know what to do, it's not the best time to act. We're going to wait until the situation becomes clearer."
A silence, filled with something heavy. Obi-Wan was nerving himself to say something. The peace between them was slipping through his fingers like water.
"You weren't there when I looked for you this morning."
With that one sentence Obi-Wan placed them back in the world of failure and accusation. "I don't know if I'm doing the meditation right - I'm not getting anything out of it. You said...."
"I'm sorry." What was it that drove him to his feet, made him feel claustrophobic, pressured beyond endurance whenever Obi-Wan started down that road? He didn't know, but he would have to find out. He would have to face it, and soon, before it ruined everything. As soon as this mission is ended. As soon as I can.
"We should go in for lunch. I'll talk to you about it later."
Something had changed during the morning, but not for the better. Yesterday there had been humans working among the Nimgoni - representatives of the capital's large human settlements. Loyal citizens of the planet, Nimgoni in their hearts, now those humans sat apart, ostracised by everyone. This has to stop!
The reception had exhausted all attempts at grandeur. Today battered droids moved among a mismatched assortment of tables, and the food was Pel-grain and protein cubes. There was a resentful feeling in the air, as if everyone knew this couldn't go on, but no-one wanted to face it.
On the edge of the human contingent was a scratched wooden table with two place settings, the only chairs unoccupied in the room. It was the first thing he'd found genuinely amusing all morning.
"Obi-Wan, grab your food, go sit with the Nimgoni humans. I'm going to talk to Nam Gillet again." Half in jest, half in earnest - Obi-Wan had a tendency to sarcasm; "Be pleasant."
The boy moved to obey, walking out of the light of the garden into darkness. People got up, moved to let him pass, faces polite. Nimgoni tentacles waved formal greeting, acknowledging him without hostility. And terror - stupid, irrational terror - grabbed Qui-Gon like a draigon's jaws, shook him.
"No!" he shouted, ignoring the turned heads, the looks of shock, "Obi-Wan come back. Quickly!"
This time it was like a tidal wave. Salty, stinking, a wave of blood, it came crashing invisibly through the room. Faces twisted, eyes full of shadows turning on them.
Diplomats began to pull apart chairs to make splintered clubs. Nam Gillet wrenched the arm off a droid.
Obi-Wan was hurled backwards, rolled, came to his feet, rubbing his neck. A line of sucker marks stood out black on his throat. "What's...?"
Politicians, clerks, ambassadors shuffled forward like an army of zombies. Qui-Gon breathed out shaky relief. Thank the Force, it's us they want and not each other.
Obi-Wan had the hilt of his lightsabre in his hand, unkindled. Qui-Gon grabbed the wrist "If you harm any of these people it could cause a war. We can't defend ourselves."
"Well what...?"
He turned the boy, pushed him through the door, shoved him forward, hand in his back. "Run, Obi-Wan. Get away."
Still the boy dithered "What about you?"
"No discussion. Get moving!" Gods! Let me protect you this once!
Surely there must be something he could do. He concentrated, but he couldn't break the compulsion on one victim without another going under. He picked up three of the tables with the Force, used them to gently push the army back. Just to buy some time, to let Obi-Wan get well away.
Like fighting a tidal wave. Dark force plucked the things from his grasp, sent them hurtling at his face. When he dodged they hit the ground and exploded, shrapnel and splinters showered him, showered the crowd that was now only a step away.
I hope you're fast, Obi-Wan. He turned and ran, and a howl went up from a thousand throats behind him as the hunt began.
"I'm going to haunt you, Qui-Gon." The ground was black and the sky grey. Black dust was falling like snow. Xanatos stood on the lip of a pit, and the breeze, acrid with the smell of acid, whipped his long hair across his face, striped it with shadows. He was grinning, teeth glistening in a rictus of triumph. "You killed my father and you ruined me. Now I'm going to eat you out from inside, Qui-Gon. Live with that!"
There was a hatred Qui-Gon had felt once in his childhood - a glory of rage and power. He had held it in check ever since. Now he let it go. He dropped his lightsabre and ran. Shoulder strike to Xan's chest, the jolt pleasant as he followed it through with a back fist across the bastard's face. Xan fell, and the boiling acid closed over him. Qui-Gon stood looking down with satisfaction until the last of the black hair dissolved.
NO!
Something stirred, behind him. Shapes, just beyond vision, scraped and slithered. His danger sense screamed at him that there were monsters out there, and he had just killed his Padawan.
No.
Thinking was like trying to lift worlds out of orbit. He struggled for calm, mind slowly forming words. That's not how it was. I wanted to save him.
He saw the dropped lightsabre. A common motif in his dreams, but in real life it had never happened. Now, as he always did in the dreams, he leant down, and picked it up again. It felt like a picked bone, cold tendons and grease sending shivers of disgust up his arm.
Something is in my head.
The monsters were almost visible now. The pressure to believe in them drew at him, like the gravity well of a star. Wouldn't it be ironic if they were real. But I can't deal with them until I have my mind to myself. First things first.
The vision of Xan had hurt him more than he cared to think about. It was heavy on him as he knelt, composed himself, and began to pry the long tendrils of nightmare out of his mind. Uncanny, the way they had found all those places in his soul where he really didn't want to go.
With the Force, like a medical laser, he cauterised each infected spot. As he did so his sight cleared. He was terrified to look, in case he had struck down some innocent in his madness, but now there was no pit or body, only the greenish dust of an empty street leading out into the salt plain and far away, beneath the hills, a silent city of tombs.
I should be there. An insight came like a gift from the Force.
Then a stone smacked into his face, making his concentration waver and the fear pounce; If this is happening to me, what has happened to the ambassadors? And Obi-Wan?
He remembered the hunt - losing them in the rubble and bombed-out houses at the edge of the city. When the immediate danger was over he had tried to track the dark influence, to find its source. He had touched it, and been overwhelmed.
Remembering the dreams was a pain he didn't need. If he lost concentration...
Again, a stone gouged his arm. Flint from the ruined houses peppered the night, flying at him, sharp edged. Force-pushing them away made his grip on reality waver and the blackness press back down, prying at his mind's defences.
What's happened to Obi-Wan? Useless, to everyone, focusing on that thought now. Fear would have him jumping at nightmares of his own making, wear him down, make him miss the moment to act. And Obi-Wan was not exactly defenceless; he could survive alone.
Against this? While it was useless to worry, it was another struggle not to.
He breathed out the anxiety, abandoning it in order to think. Behind this dark power he had sensed a single controlling mind. How many places could it be, how many people could it control if one was fighting back? Perhaps, if he was sufficient trouble, he might draw its attention away from the ambassadors, away from his Padawan, focus it all on himself. Perhaps he could make it personal?
He got up, and began to run out into the empty plain towards the place where he was meant to be.
With the rhythm of his footsteps as an aid to meditation he reached out, not to the centre of the dark power - implacable as a Black Hole on the landscape of the Force - but to the very edges, where the dirty tentacles of its influence were thinnest. They were vile to touch and there were millions of them, but he began to snap them one by one.
Close enough to be visible even in daytime, X'zim, the shapeless moon came up. Even as he watched it shouldered its way across the heavens, brown shadows and lights shrinking and lengthening as it passed - one of many rapid circuits.
The salt flat took its color like a bruise. Ahead, the cold shapes of Nimgoni tombs began to define themselves against the sky; massive shapes of pallid marble behind a low transparisteel wall.
His diplomatic briefing had included a section on the necropolis; '"The white mausoleums of Nimgoni nobility make a splendid sight when viewed from the air. However, Nimgoni priests have bred semi-sentient guardians, ferocious and cunning, to protect their revered ancestors from tomb-robbers. On no account enter this area on foot."'
But that was where the Force told him he should be. Of course, he thought wryly, I should have known when I read it that I'd end up there. He had become familiar with the Force's brand of humour over the years.
The barrage of flint eased off. Smooth underfoot, salt crunched at each step - the loudest sound in the night. A change was coming; he felt the darkness paused and consider, dissatisfied, frustrated. He allowed himself a moment's satisfaction; I have annoyed it.
Then its attack redoubled. Salt came up in a tornado around him, its sharp crystals grating across exposed skin, driven into nose and mouth. Each intake of air became full of a million needles. Warnings of danger clamoured in a Babel of nonsense through his body, making his hands shake with adrenaline.
Impossible as it was to tell which was real and which was false, the sensation was worse than having no danger sense at all. The pressure of evil was like a vice tightening around his heart.
He stopped, began the 'arch of peace' meditation, took the breathing mask out of his belt and fitted it, tugging his hood down to protect his eyes, and flung out the thought like a challenge; Is that the best you can do?
He was just chiding himself for overconfidence when the first gravestone came barrelling out of the storm of salt and slammed into his chest.
Agony tore through him - ribs had broken, pushing in, the ends knifing through a lung. As he fell, curled up over the scorching pain, he knew that his enemy had given up trying to control him. It wanted him dead. Even through the sensation of blood pooling in his throat he felt relieved. Now he had its full attention, the others should be free.
A maelstrom of white stone thrust through the veil of circling salt. Massive boulders, driven like racing speeders through the air, accelerated towards him, bounced off the Force shield he was holding around himself. It was hard to watch them recoil and not to think of the huge weight, the impact.
There is no difference between these and the weight of a single leaf. Strange how implausible the lessons became in a situation like this. In an effort not to become desperate he repeated his master's words to himself "Size matters not." I could move these with a breath.
Except that breathing was a torture he wasn't sure he could endure much longer. Nausea swept over him, and a grey light prickled behind his eyes. The world receded. I must not go into shock!
How long his attacker could carry on he didn't know. Certainly longer than he could. Time for a decisive move - or death. Stilling everything, abandoning any defence, he focused the Force like a beam of light into the darkness. He was going to see who he fought.
There was a sense of surprise, and retreat over vast distances, through tunnels where reality dislocated as it did in hyperspace. Then the face began to take shape; shadows showing in the solid blackness. I will know who you are.
And it was gone, quickly as a flipped switch, the deep purposeful vileness which had formed its core disappearing in an instant. The edges faded. As he touched the unravelling tendrils the sense was the same as he'd once had in a Hutt torture chamber - the psychic residues of countless ugly deaths.
Pain was the beacon which brought him back to his own body - lying sprawled like a sacrifice in the centre of a ring of fallen monoliths. He tightened his grip on the hilt of his lightsabre - I must find Obi-Wan - tried to stand, and shock felled him like a blaster bolt to the head.
