"Two dark Jedi died here. They fought each other and neither one walked away."
Obi-Wan circled the gaping crack in the floor of the ledge with slow, measured steps. His clipped voice sounded curiously blank and his hazy- blue green eyes seemed to see but not see. He did not look into the liquid blackness of the cave. The stones at the edge of the cave's mouth where cold, bare, and seemed to swallow the sounds of the Padawan's footsteps.
"That was over a thousand years ago. Then for five hundred and seventy two years one of the Sith codices was hidden deep down in the cave. Eight hundred years ago a student from Ryloth fell to the dark side. He was attracted to the energy in this place. He lived here until the Jedi flushed him out." Obi-Wan looked back towards Qui-Gon, who stood a few paces away. "Can't you see it?" he asked, earnestly and a little disbelieving.
Behind him the cliff face reared up for miles above the wide stone ledge they stood on. The splintered, reddish gold stone behind him was covered in hardy, multicolored lichen that thrived on the dry windswept canyon walls. It was splashed across the stones like wild colorful graffiti, gray- green, vivid purple, ash blue, sulfur yellow, or blood and rust red. They gave the air a dusty organic smell that mixed with the scent of sun beaten stone, and the sharp sweet smell of tuffa grass that drifted down from the plateaus.
Qui-Gon smiled indulgently at his apprentice for a moment, but his eyes looked as deep and solemn as winter twilight. "No, but I can sense the wreckage of it." He crossed his arms over his chest, carefully rubbing his shoulders as if they ached. "It makes me feel like an old man on a cold night."
They were in the canyonland plains of Ferrio's Southern continent. The vast sea of eerily blue green grassland was so heavily carved with canyons that from the air it looked as if a vast irregular net had been laid across the plains. Rivers great and small, silver, blue, brown, red, and green, flowed through the land like veins. They had etched the towering canon walls out of red rock long ago, creating a tight fitting mosaic of plateau islands and making one county essentially into two.
One was a horizontal country, or rather two horizontal countries thousands of vertical meters apart. This was the plains with their tuffu grass like blue green fur and herds of bounding krishka, or with fields tended by ponderous insectile droids and home to less wild herds of banthas. There was also the web of rivers that were still cutting the canyons deeper. They flashed translucent turquoise blue in the sun as they made there way through the savanna, sometimes forming waterfalls or deep pools. Dunes and flats of rusty sand flanked the rivers, and there were velvety oasis meadows where springs welled up.
Then there was the vertical country; the craggy canyon walls themselves, covered in dry vertical forests and Ferrio cities, worn into pillars, crags, slot canyons, and arches. The canons hung between the lush grassland plateaus that spread over them like a ceiling, and the rivers that rolled under them like a floor.
Between the canyon walls there were sometimes grassy tablelands that were neither part of the plains, the river, or the canyon walls. And everywhere, from the sandy riverbanks to the high ramparts of the canyons, there were ledges, crevasses, and winding caves.
But none quite like this one.
Obi-Wan shook himself, withdrawing from the past. "Yoda took me to a place like this once. He called it a test, a dark mirror, a lesson. What I saw there . . . it wasn't pretty," Qui-Gon saw him frown slightly, still ashamed at having the potential darkness in him revealed all those years ago. He felt sorry for his sometimes overly driven apprentice. When a master sent a student into a dark side vergence, the student was usually not meant to succeed, but to learn a hard and vital lesson about themselves from the failure, a lesson that might well save them from darkness. He would explain that to Obi-Wan tonight, he decided, during the instruction he would need to give about this particular vergence. "but any harm I came to came from myself. I sense nothing different here. A history of hate, anger, and fear, leaving behind malevolent energy."
"But the Jedi here report something that is capable of attack."
"Is that possible?"
"What was one of your first lessons in the force, Obi-Wan?"
"That the word impossible is dangerous."
Qui-Gon nodded. "Look deeper." He took a low, almost purring tone that had the effect of a meditation bell on his apprentice, prompting him to focus and leading the way into the Force. "Look past your own perceptions. Do not let your expectations obscure the truth."
Obi-Wan shut his eyes and focused, all the soft edges in his face tensing in single-minded attention. He struggled to open far seeing eyes, tracing the tangled lines of hate and fear back through the years, the centuries, the millennia. They spread out far like the root of a diseased tree. Obi-Wan thought he saw something, a pattern, a whole out of the threads, but . . . . It was no good, the vision slowly but surely fragmented. Coming away from the Force he opened his eyes and stared at Qui-Gon. Qui-Gon regarded him expectantly, and in a quiet way, pleased.
"I almost saw something more, but it . . . obscured itself, vanishing the moment I looked directly at it. How can I see the whole?"
"Tell your story when we reach the temple. Those who experienced it can best tell us what we are dealing with." He looked around, wary, thoughtful, as if scenting the high winds that washed through the canyons and over the ledge. "I am beginning to think this place may be as dangerous as the Temple Master said it was."
He turned away from the cave and started walking in the direction of the temple.
"Master, why did they send us here?"
Qui-Gon stopped. He narrowed his eyes for a moment in thought. "I have . . . experience in such matters," he said pensively after a moment had passed. "Let's go, Obi-Wan. I don't like it here."
Obi-Wan followed Qui-Gon across the lichen carpeted ledge and up the trail a ways to where there transportation, a feline beast of burden called a Kybus, was tied to a sturdy tree. The animals were widely used to navigate the high and remote canyon trails, and none of them would go too near the cave. It was huge and striped, more than twice Qui-Gon's height, bizarrely graceful with long gangly legs, an S curved neck, and a tapering reptile-like tail. There was more than enough room for the two Jedi to ride double on its long back.
In a contemplative mood, still searching his feelings about the vergence, Obi-Wan began to undo the animal's tether. He tensed and nearly drew his lightsaber as something shoved him hard between the shoulder blades. As he spun around the Kybus craned its neck down to Obi-Wan's level and gave him another affectionate nudge with its velvety muzzle, nearly knocking him off his feet.
"Easy. . .easy," he coaxed, shoving it away from him with both hands. The Kybus made a good natured hissing sound and shook its mane. It swung its head around and commenced to enthusiastically lick Obi-Wan as though it thought he was in desperate need of a bath.
"It likes you," Qui-Gon commented, absolutely straight faced, as his apprentice attempted to fend the creature off.
"I'm so honored," Obi-Wan said sponging Kybus drool off his face. He gave the Kybus a look of almost contained disgust before barking a command for it to go down on its forelegs so they could mount. He boosted himself into the saddle as Qui-Gon checked the harness, loosening a few straps and buckling others tighter. Once he was satisfied he mounted, took the rains and urged the proud looking creature to its feet. Obi-Wan dug his boots into the stirrups and held on tight as Qui-Gon guided the Kybus up the steep trail that led to Ferrio's Jedi temple. Although not native to Ferrio, the animals had evolved in the mountains, and were built to climb. It was very sure footed, but its long legs gave it a rolling, swinging gait that Obi-Wan supposed was actually rather relaxing, if you took care not to get pitched off.
The Kybus climbed the trail quickly without much encouragement from Qui-Gon, as if it was also in a hurry to get far away from the cave. Kybus were not self aware, but they were fairly intelligent as animals went, and one didn't necessarily need to be a Jedi or even sentient to realize that something was very wrong in a place the dark side gathered. And their mount wasn't the only one that noticed the darkness of the place. As they rode up the twisting rocky trail they occasionally passed bantha bone landmarks that the locals had built. Pillars of pale curving-horned skulls had been spiked on tall stakes set on both sides of the trail.
After about an hour the trail cut into the cliffside started to get narrow and then petered out entirely. Qui-Gon looked up, scanning the rock face that loomed above them. Not again, thought Obi-Wan with resignation as he gripped the leather straps on his saddle even harder.
"Hup," Qui-Gon muttered to the Kybus and chucked the rains.
In one huge leap the three-ton animal flung itself and its two riders almost twenty feet into the air and clung to the cliff side. Then, its long limbs spread out across the rock like a spider's on a tree trunk, it began to climb. It looked ungainly, but its flexible paws and hooked retractable claws found a strong hold in even the smallest crevices. Qui-Gon steered the Kybus up the wall of the canyon with the exact expression of unfazed concentration you would expect of someone maneuvering a speeder out of a complicated Coruscant traffic jam. The Jedi do not seek adventure Obi-Wan thought, looking down past the Kybus's swinging tail to the flashing braided chain of rivers miles below, but sometimes they get it anyway.
It was noon before they came within sight of the temple. Qui-Gon rained in the Kybus and he and Obi-Wan sat in silence for a minute, staring out across the pure gulf of space to the temple. The temple was at the end of a box canyon. A mass of terraces and lodges had been built into ledges or caves on the canyon wall, or right on the vertical rock itself like the whole temple complex was some kind of a plant that had grown there. A natural water-worn stone pillar rose up from the canyon floor and level after level of ring shaped terraces circled it. A web-work of bridges linked them to the main complex. A sentinel lodge perched on top of the pillar. The lodge's highest rooftop ended in a tall pole, and from the pole flew a banner emblazoned with the snowflake-like Allcircle, emblem of the Jedi. A wreath of large intertwined circles surrounding a star shaped pattern of smaller linked rings on a field of red.
The main Jedi temple was on Coruscant, but the Jedi by nature could not have just one center. So there were outposts, satellite temples, smaller, but still home to hundreds, built throughout the galaxy, on Kashyyyk, Corelia, Alderaan, Ithor, and here on Ferrio. The temples were safe havens for masters to train their students, and provided a constant home for the Jedi that wanted one. There were also proxeums, smaller centers of learning by action scattered throughout the Republic, and the Chu'unthor II that traveled the space lanes picking up new initiates from planets across the galaxy.
Qui-Gon had never felt any burning necessity to make a home at one of the temples. His Master had been a wanderer, and he was content to be one, too. The Jedi themselves were his home, the sense of peace inside him was his home, the Force was his home. And yet he was glad to arrive at the Ferrio temple. Many Jedi together focused the Force, reflecting and amplifying it. The Ferrio temple was a warm beating heart of energy. He could tell Obi-Wan was relaxing a little too, basking in the light side aura. Although he had been doubtful of the reports about the cave, Obi-Wan had obviously been disturbed by what he felt there.
The Temple Master welcomed them in the main courtyard, beneath a spreading bloodsap tree. She was a small gaunt Ferrio woman, with a short mane of silver and red striped hair that almost seemed to shiver around her head even when she was still. Her face was stern and hard, her strong features etched like the stone cliffs, and her bright black eyes flashed like an edge of chipped obsidian. She wore pale gray-brown robes and carried a knarred ironwood staff.
"Come, Jedi," she said after accepting their bows stone faced, and led them up to her cell. She sat down on the floor with her feet tucked carefully under her knees and laid her staff down in front of her. Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan sat down across from her.
"When did it start?" Qui-Gon asked in a low, grave voice.
"Master Kray took his apprentice to the cave three months ago. Somehow she found more than the darkness within herself. She was half conscious and hallucinating by the time Kray got her out, and when they got back to the temple, Kray was too. He is dead now. There was nothing I could do."
"What will happen to his student?"
The Temple Master's grim features grew even darker. A fierce sadness flashed behind her eyes, but they never flinched. "It will be difficult for her. The power over her is broken, she will continue training, but she is marked forever. The dark side will always be very close to her."
"Can I talk to her?"
"If she will speak to you, Teacher. She may not." She paused. "There was not much anger in her. More troubled students have come out of the vergence unharmed. Suddenly the cave grew hungry."
"The evil is somehow spreading," she continued. "It moves beyond the cave. Several of us have lost their speech. Perhaps until this thing is destroyed. Perhaps forever. One Master feels agony in the presence of any living thing. Three of my clan have left the order. They want no more to do with the Force after seeing this aspect of it." The Temple Master paused again. "The evil is spreading somehow. We all dream of it now."
"There are no children here, no initiates," Qui-Gon said half to himself, a sinister realization coming over him.
"No. The young ones have been sent to safety. This is no longer a place for innocents. But my clan," she said emphatically, meaning the temple's Jedi "and I will not surrender to this evil."
"It took Kray because he tried to help his Apprentice?" Obi-Wan ventured, feeling a little out of his depth. But he had a strange feeling that Qui-Gon himself was a little puzzled by what lay in those wise black eyes, and it didn't seem to bother him.
"Vengeance is of the dark side," Qui-Gon said softly then looked up at the temple master. "Obi-Wan had a vision when we were at the cave. Of the past that created the vergence, and then of something else."
"What did you see, Learner?"
"Connections, a web." The vision flooded back as the Force-sharpened his memory. "Like a fractal, or a plant sending out runners, or axons in a nerve."
"It seemed to look back at us," Qui-Gon added.
"You are not the first Jedi coming back from the cave to say that." She settled her hands on her knees. "I think the cave is sentient. If not that, predatory. An evil thing in it's own right."
He closed his eyes and sighed. "I've never heard of or seen anything like that before, but it sound right. How else would it be able to attack ones so close to the light side so viciously?"
Qui-Gon could feel the student's misery before he even stepped into her room. It was as if her mind kept up a muttered chant of despair through the Force no matter what direction her thoughts went in. It almost swept Qui-Gon along with it, it went so deep. He felt a blackness start to seep into him. Exorcizing the vergence would not make her pain any better, the damage had been done. He would have to remember that. But he did not hesitate as he keyed the door (not hanging curtain of cloth like most of the other rooms in the temple, a thick, sliding sheet of metal) or steel himself against the empathetic pain. This was one of the hardest and most vital things a Jedi needed to learn, to face suffering with an open heart.
The room was almost completely bare of personal possessions, even by Jedi standards, and yet looked cluttered, the objects in apathetic disorder. As Qui-Gon looked over the room he began to understand why it was so empty, the knowledge simply entering his consciousness as it so often did. She had next to nothing because she had given away or destroyed everything she had had when she lived with Kray.
The student, who's name the Temple Master would not say, because to the Ferrio using someone's name was a source of dominating power, was of a species Qui-Gon had never met before, humanoid from the waist up and serpentine from the waist down. She sat by the window, resting back on the coiled loops of her lower body and tail, shoulders back, head unflinchingly up. Her coal colored hair was sheared in a Padawan's short prickly crest, but the cord of her braid had been cut.
"Mang," Qui-Gon whispered softly from the doorway.
"Temple Master told me about you, Master Jinn." She kept looking out into the open air of the canyons, but Qui-Gon felt Force senses wrapping around him and scrutinizing him like a million eyes and feelers. "Enter."
He took slow steps into the middle of the room and stopped in the middle of it. He could feel she was not afraid, not of him, but to go any closer would have been cruel and disrespectful.
"Do you know what happened to me in the cave?"
"The demon attacked you and your Master. That's all I know."
She looked at him silent and hard. Her eyes were dark bronze, slit pupilled and eerily wide. "I went down into the cave, Master Jinn. Only the mouth is narrow, just below, it opens out. A shaft of light comes down from the entrance. I heard something moving in the dark corners, but I couldn't sense it or see its heat. I tried to track it, but the sounds kept jumping across the cave, always far away from where I was. Then Kray grabbed me from behind. Kray attacked me, he dug his claws into me. Kray was going to kill me and leave me down there with the dark side. I couldn't escape so I wrapped myself around Kray and squeezed. He didn't stop until he stopped breathing. That is what I remember, Master Jinn."
Qui-Gon frowned, feeling guilty. Mang had obviously adopted the Ferrio way of using names, and was subtly punishing him for speaking hers. And desperately trying to control the memory of her dead Master.
"You know that's not what happened."
Mang nodded. "Temple Master has told me that again and again. She has protected me. She says the demon got inside Kray and killed him. It got inside both of us, but Kray helped save me. She showed me her memories of Kray bringing me home. But what I remember hasn't changed."
She unfolded her arms and braced her hands on the windowsill. Qui-Gon saw a bracelet around her right wrist, almost hidden by the sleeve of her baggy tunic. A leather thong, dark against her pale skin wound around her wrist several times and threaded through a rough, dark green crystal. Qui-Gon saw an invisible globe of energy around it as it caused a delicate but profound shift in the pattern of the Force. A chiasamus stone.
"She takes care of you. Did she give you this?" He held his hand out towards the crystal, frowning slightly. Was Mang in that much danger?
"I asked her for it. I will never be sure what happened in the cave. At least with this I can know the dark side doesn't still have me."
Qui-Gon was impressed by the Temple Master's devotion to her foster Apprentice. Chiasamus stones were among the rarest minerals in the galaxy, she must have worked long and hard convincing the temple to give her a crystal for Mang. The were treasured, not for their appearance, similar medium hard, translucent green crystals could be found in abundance all across the galaxy, but chiasmus was as rare as rain storms on Tattooine. It was their microscopic structure that made them priceless, that created a resonance in the Force that was extremely painful to Force sensitive. Some crystals affected the light side, others the dark side. A darksider could not stand to be in the same room with the crystal Mang was wearing.
Her taught posture and hard hollow look didn't change but Qui-Gon felt less of her pain and grief. Not necessarily because she felt better, but because he was causing less of it and she felt faintly less hostile. He sensed she accepted his presence and moved quietly to stand by her side in front of the window."
"Hasn't the Force been able to show you what is true and what is not?" he asked.
"No," She said, looking down the canyon to where the cave was. "The Force can't do everything." There was no bitterness in her voice, but there was a matter-of-fact emptiness that hurt Qui-Gon's heart.
"Then why do you continue your training?"
"I don't know." A pause. "But I will," she said with raw determination.
He relaxed a little in a moment of relief. She had great strength. The nature of her strength reminded him so much of himself, so many times lost, hurt, and blind, not knowing if anything could save him, but finding something that might save him and struggling along with it as best he could.
"Some day you might be able to see the truth, like learning to spar blindfolded. I've seen and felt things that no one should, but little by little, you can grow back. You really can."
She hissed far back in her throat. "Not always. Sometimes something inside someone breaks and never gets better. Once Master and I were searching for the killer of a young woman. The second I met her father the Force told me he would never stop grieving."
"You may be right, but I feel that you will."
She turned and looked at him. "The Temple Master told me about you. Your foreseeing isn't worth water on Mon Calamaria."
"Your right, but I still feel it. And I know that whatever happens you will be a Jedi." That meant many things, and it didn't necessarily mean she would heal, but it was a life and better than despair and nothingness.
The sparing grounds were in a huge flagstone floored hall. The walls were painted with murals, and crystal glow-cells hung from the ceiling on chains. A group of Masters and their students were already there when Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon arrived, and they had obviously been practicing for a while. The exercise was focused and serious, like almost all of Jedi training, but the energy between the various men, women, and aliens was informal and friendly. Obi-Wan felt a little out of place. He looked to Qui-Gon for support. Qui-Gon had apparently decided at some point in his past that he belonged everywhere.
As they slipped into the hall and joined the group of Jedi, the Temple Master was sparing with a sleek black Berbel, the apprentice of a Shental Master who sat right in the middle of the group. Somehow you could always tell a teacher and student bound with the Force, just by looking.
The duel they were practicing was like no kata Obi-Wan had ever seen performed at the temple. Obi-Wan had seen a lightsaber hanging from the Temple Masters belt. It was a lean, thin weapon like the longbone of an animal, the handle wrapped in criss-crossed strips of leather worn dark and shiny. She wasn't one of the Jedi who had given up the use of a lightsaber completely. But she fought with only her wooden staff against the fully armed Berble.
It was fascinating to watch. Obi-Wan guessed that seeing this would cure almost any over-eager initiate who thought he or she would not be a real Jedi until they had a lightsaber. The lightsaber would have severed the staff like a wire going through soft clay, but somehow the blade and the staff never met, although the Berble wasn't holding back. It was almost as if the Temple Master had created a dynamic force field around herself.
The duel's speed and intensity built. The two combatants blurred, Obi-Wan had to drop half into battle sense just to follow what was going on. Suddenly the Temple Master blocked a slash aimed at her head and planted her staff behind one of the Berble's scaly clawed feet. He tripped and went down, flat on his back and defeated on the floor.
Obi-Wan felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle. If anyone's gaze actually had weight, Qui-Gon's did. He was staring at Obi-Wan thoughtfully, observing his interest in the unorthodox combat they had just witnessed.
"Why don't you go next?" Qui-Gon asked as the Berble apprentice got to his feet, bowed and returned to the sidelines.
Dutifully Obi-Wan stood up, beginning to stretch and loosed his muscles even as he did. He didn't particularly want to. The Berble hadn't seemed hurt but Obi-Wan still couldn't really see how he could win such a strange duel.
He walked onto the practice floor with a near cocky little stalk in his steps. When you felt as if you where going to lose a fight you had to ignore that feeling, even if it was 100 percent accurate. They met in the middle of the hall and raised their weapons in an en guard salute. Traditionally the more inexperienced fighter made the first move. Obi-Wan didn't really know where to start so he just dove in the way he usually did.
It was nothing like what he had expected. The Temple Master's salute had been deceptively formal and stiff, but once the battle began, she moved like a snake. She never actually tried to hit him. She simply moved much faster than he did, tangling or diverting his movements. Every attack he made was twisted and reshaped, almost sculpted into a harmless new form and he was powerless to stop it. Her defense was so seamless that it actually became offence.
His mind raced, trying to absorb the new style but in a few minutes he lost. The Temple Master swung her staff out one handed at a diagonal, pinning his arm against hers in a grip that was soft, but as strong as durasteel. With her free hand she reached out and took his saber from him. She flipped it around so it pointed downward, the ice blue sparking blade trailing into a blurred half circle of light, and then extinguished it. She released Obi-Wan and bowed, handing his lightsaber back to him.
"Congratulations, Master," he said, rejoining Qui-Gon. "Your Apprentice just lost a duel to an old woman with a stick."
"A weapon and a body have limits, Obi-Wan. The Force does not."
Obi-Wan sighed. As usual his sense of humor came alive right when his Master was in a serious mood.
Obi-Wan would have loved to see Qui-Gon fight against the Temple Master, but he seemed to be feeling even more contemplative than Obi-Wan had thought. Quietly he lead the way out of the practice hall and through a warren of halls towards their quarters.
"Victory does not always look like victory," he continued. "The second you draw your blade you have lost a part of the battle. If you kill you have been totally defeated because your enemy has taken your will and control from you, caused you to damage your soul. Darksiders see Jedi as weak because of this. They think the dark side is stronger because it is fueled by violent emotions that come easily in battle. If someone hurts you and you hate or fear them for it, and it will only make your attack more powerful." Qui-Gon paused and fixed Obi-Wan with a calm, fearless to the point of fierce stare. "But a Jedi dying in the light often has more power than one living in darkness."
Obi-Wan was so transfixed that he barely heard what his master said. He didn't need to. The look on Qui-Gon's face said more than any words could.
Obi-Wan had to look away from his Master's sure, dark-bright eyes. "I'm sorry Master," he murmured. "I'd just never seen anything like that before. You trained me to use a quarter staff but . . . ."
"Hardly anyone practices combat like that anymore, but it's an old, old art. It takes great skill, and most Masters think it's jinxed. Not that they'd ever admit that, of course."
"Why?" Obi-Wan asked, both relieved and disappointed that the fire seemed to have dulled in Qui-Gon, to be replaced with his more familiar, safer, and more comfortable passion for all history and things of the old Jedi.
"Back before the temple was built, a Master often took several students and trained them in a group, like a family. The first Dark Lord of the Sith, Exar Kun, trained in one of these groups, under master Vodo-Siosk Baas, before he fell. First he became arrogant. He thought he was superior to the students he trained with. The Master saw this and decided to take him down a peg by defeating him using only his walking stick."
"But he didn't learn humility from that?"
"No. Master Baas lost the duel. Kun was very skilled. He took a lightsaber from one of the other students and cut Baas's staff in two. The lesson failed, he was more in love with his own power than ever. Not long after that, Kun fell irrevocably and killed his own master on the senate floor."
Obi-Wan grew quiet, and a little cold, thinking of the ancient chaos of the Sith Wars. Vengeful spirits and hate and greed for power as old and common as time grown to freakish proportions. It was almost more than he could imagine in the peaceful galxcy that was his home. But this sentient spirit of the dark side, it was like something from a holocron, or one of Master Qui-Gon's stories.
After they had finished there evening meal Qui-Gon met with the Temple Master again. It was clear to Obi-Wan that they weren't going to need him. He watched them go, walking down the corridor close together, speaking quietly about the implications of the thing in the cave, and what might be done about it.
Obi-Wan paced their room a few times, wondering what he was going to do until they came back. Qui-Gon had left him no specific instructions. After a moment's thought he decided to find some quiet corner of the temple to practice in alone. He headed for the courtyard, immerging from the temple's narrow hallways into the outdoors just as the sun was going down over the cliff's edge. He wasn't the only one. There were a couple other Jedi who had also come to the large sand-floored square for training or a quiet contemplation.
Obi-Wan settled himself against the wall and began to meditate, shutting everything else out. Tiny stones in the sand in front of him trembled, turned over, and began to roll, scrawling a spiraling starburst of twisting furrows in the sand. Like legless armored insects they crawled into a cluster in the center of the patch of tracks. One after another the pebbles floated into the air and began to orbit each other like a model solar system.
Obi-Wan came out of his trance slowly, in time with the setting sun. As the sky shaded from pale and bright to dark and bright, Obi-Wan was aware more and more of normal consciousness. The rocks floated gradually back down to the ground and rolled back to their places. Only a thin bright rim of sun remained on the horizon. Obi-Wan was pleased. Moving large objects was difficult, but so was delicate telekinetic control of small objects. Of course the Masters would insist that neither was really difficult, if one took the correct point of view. Feeling still inside and not wanting to break the stillness around him, Obi-Wan leaned back and watched night fall.
Ferrio's sun had a faint amethyst cast to it, so as it set, the rocks looming over the tiled roofs that framed the courtyard looked like they were soaked in dark purple Corelian wine. The leathery green and red leaves of the big bloodsap tree in the center of the courtyard whispered in a light breeze as dusk fell.
Qui-Gon and the Temple Master came into the clearing, Qui-Gon speaking in throaty, growling but somehow soft Ferrio. Obi-Wan watched as they drifted across the empty courtyard and sat down on one of the benches that had been arranged in a semi-circle under the tree so that lessons could be taught there. They talked for a long time in the dusky blue shadows that trailed down from the tree's twisting branches. Finally the Temple Master stood as if to leave, but then reached out and pressed one gaunt hand against Qui-Gon's forehead. Obi-Wan wasn't quite sure what he was seeing, but even in the distance and low light the look of gratitude on his Master's slightly upturned face was unmistakable. It took Obi-Wan by surprise. He had been, to tell the truth, a little wary of the Temple Master, a little afraid of her. After all, she looked sterner than Yoda, and carried a much bigger stick. And yet apparently she was not without kindness.
Qui-Gon also stood and murmured words of thanks. Then they parted, the Temple Master leaving the courtyard through a stone archway, and Qui-Gon pacing over to Obi-Wan's side.
"We leave before dawn tomorrow. The Temple Master is coming with us," Qui-Gon said. "She tried to restore harmony to the place herself. She gathered the strongest Knights from the temple and spent days meditating there. They hoped that once it was lured into attacking them it would ware out its strength and disappear. It couldn't hurt any of them, but after that it came back even stronger. She couldn't dispel the vergence, but I think she knows it well. Knowledge is one of a Jedi's greatest weapons."
"What can we do that they didn't?"
Qui-Gon folded his hands in front of him, staring at the floor in front of his boots as he walked. "It is not enough to simply outlast it. We must force the presence to destroy itself."
They reached their cell and Qui-Gon pushed aside the brightly patterned hand woven blanket that hung across the doorway.
"Darksiders, and whatever this vergence has become, are creatures of fear. They feed on it and can take advantage of it in others." Qui-Gon turned to face Obi-Wan. It was strange, Qui-Gon was not only speaking to him as an adult, but as an equal, and that surprised him. Qui-Gon had always treated him with respect, but he was not a mature Jedi, and at this stage in his training, the Master still had much more to give than the Apprentice. "You have seen the dark side, my Padawan and you have not chosen that path. But even after all these years, you could still become evil. So could I. So could any Jedi. Meditate on that tonight. Meditate on that choice. I know I will."
That night Obi-Wan had one of the nightmares the Temple Master had told them about. As he lay sleeping he saw himself crouching helplessly on the floor of Master Yoda's cluttered cell, screaming as Yoda blasted him with bolt after bolt of darkside lightning and cackled madly.
He woke up frozen, paralyzed by the strangeness of dreaming at all and the wrongness of the images in the dreams, but Qui-Gon had trained him well. He had long known that the Force could be used to deceive his senses. What he has seen was an illusion. He lay still, holding on to that knowledge like it was a talisman, and then his fear fled.
Qui-Gon was not asleep on the pallet next to him, but that didn't worry Obi-Wan at all. His Master was such a light and wakeful sleeper. He spent as much as half of each night prowling around like a cat in the dark, reading, meditating, visiting anyone else in the temple who was nocturnal, or simply sitting up. On the rare occasions Obi-Wan was awake to see him come back from these nightly walks, Qui-Gon seemed his normal serene self, but Obi-Wan wondered at such apparent restlessness in someone so centered. Qui-Gon could happily repeat an easy three-stage kata that seemed hopelessly below him hundreds of times until it was simple perfection; why couldn't he find the patience to sleep through the night?
But after those dreams, Obi-Wan thought, I could use a walk myself. He bundled himself up in his robe, days in this part of Ferria were warm, but nights were cold, and padded out into the hall.
As he walked he felt the presence of another Jedi moving towards him, not Qui-Gon . . . . There was a flash of amber-green eyeshine in the darkness at the end of the hall, like two floating marbles of Alderainian flame opal. Seconds later the Temple Master stepped into the light of the lone glow crystal mounted on the wall, her eyes holding a phosphorescent glow for a second after she did. If her eyes glowed like that, her night vision must be much keener than his.
"Is there something wrong, Temple Master?"
She shook her head. "No. This is parole against the demon." She seemed to muse. "This destructive thing has nothing to do with lack of light. Yet we name it darkness, so its power grows at night. Have you been dreaming, Learner?"
Obi-Wan nodded. "Yes, but dreams fade." Her eyes narrowed. "And return. And will return as long as long as the vergence dwells here."
She was silent but kept watching him. Her silent, piercing stare, and the feeling that she could see his thoughts themselves made Obi-Wan feel awkward enough to ask a question that had been in his mind all night. "This evening while you were talking to my Master in the courtyard, you . . . did something to him." Obi-Wan wished that hadn't come out quiet so accusing. He gave a barely perceptible sigh of frustration at himself. "What was it?"
If she was offended by his tone she didn't show it. "Your Teacher was wounded by the demon. Not much, but more than he guessed. More than you knew. I helped him heal. He is of the light, but receptive to the whole Force. Easy prey to the darkness in that way." She paused again, her eyes distant and unreadable. "Yet that will help him stand against it, when the time comes. That is why I am glad our Council sent the two of you to me." She clasped Obi-Wan's hand in hers, and lifted it to chest level between them in a Ferrio gesture of solidarity. She smiled a small, hard, but friendly smile. "I think the three of us will stand well together, Learner. Know what your Master already knows. My name is Jang."
Obi-Wan was oddly comforted by her show of trust and respect. An enlightened Jedi mind knew that a name had no power over its owner, but the Temple Master had chosen to keep the Ferrio tradition and culture could run very deep. Then she released his hand and slipped away like a ghost into the darkness, with no sound but the soft beat of her staff on the floor.
They rode out from the safety of the temple at first light, their breath white in the morning chill. A distance from the cave they all dismounted and tethered the Kybus to a tree as Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had when they first saw the vergence, and continued on foot. They headed down the trail in solemn single file, like pilgrims or an honor guard. The morning light was fragile and pale, and there was no sound except the rough-voiced whistling of the wind and the dull gruff thunder of the river rapids echoing up through the canyon. Not a word was spoken as the three Jedi made their way to the wide ledge where the cave lay. They stood at the edge of the rock shelf for a moment in silence. The silence was broken by a stealthy sound, a soft but blade sharp ominous whisper. A deathly coldness that touched the Jedi deep in their bones and deeper than that filled the air.
The cave gaped in the stone like a pool of oil. And then the vergence, given not only a crude predatory sentience but also a physical form by its age and power, rose up out of it.
It was dark but it glowed. That was all Obi-Wan could ever remember, and even while he was looking at it, that was all he really understood. That didn't matter though. What he saw was deceptive, a mask, or at best an inexact translation of its true nature, and although he was not yet a full Jedi he knew the true nature of the dark side all too well.
It hovered for a second, and then rushed from the cave in a high attacking ark to fall upon the Jedi who had come to destroy it. To his horror Obi-Wan found himself petrified by the sheer malevolence of it. How are we supposed to fight something like this? His panicked mind demanded. Beside him the Temple Master raised a howling animal battle cry that lifted every hair on Obi-Wan's body. She jumped, defying gravity, like a raptor taking off from the ground. Her wiry robe-wrapped body twisted and writhed as she flung herself somersaulting through the air, then opened herself to strike the dark thing in mid air, and spun her staff to shred the darkness into fragments like black ash. She landed on the other side of the thing, on her feet, facing Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan. She stood, unharmed, her whole being pulsed with power and light. Her black eyes were like balls of fire. But up in the air above them the darkness was already beginning to reform itself. . . . "Feel the power of your names, Jedi," She called up to them. "or die where you stand!"
Belief, Padawan. Obi-Wan heard Qui-Gon's wise, serene voice whispering to him in the back of his mind. Belief is powerful. Your focus determines your reality. Believe our weapons can defend against it and they will.
In synchronization they ignited their lightsabers. The incandescent blue and green glow seemed to flicker on the dark thing floating high above them. Then it struck. Qui-Gon charged in front of Obi-Wan and attacked the darkness with a roundhouse swing of his saber just as he would have a physical opponent. The fiery green energy blade burned through it as if it were only a cluster of shadows, and the darkness jumped away from Qui-Gon as if it had in fact been wounded.
Obi-Wan saw it hovering against the cliff wall, hanging back for a second, as if angered by the Jedi's ability to fight back, and, even more frightening, as if devising a strategy to counter this new development. Once again Obi-Wan was entranced and terrified by the sense of insidious inhuman intelligence. His mind insisted that such a thing should not be. And yet as the thing spun around and swooped back towards him he moved to attack almost in spite of himself. He had Qui-Gon's strength and guidance to draw on. If they were bound at no other time they were bound in battle. For that second they were in perfect sync and there was no resource one had that the other didn't have.
Obi-Wan slashed it through. The thing struck back instantly, sensing him to be the weakest of the three, but again he met it with his blade. His eyes never left it and as he stared into its pulsing heart he felt a coldness that went to the depths of his soul. He thought of Qui-Gon, who was sometimes physically pained by the darkside, who the temple master had said was hurt by just being near the cave, wondering what he might be suffering. But Qui-Gon had risen above any affect the dark side had on him, his awareness was a raw edge cutting through anything that might obscure it.
He sent a wordless warning to Obi-Wan, and Obi-Wan acted on it before his mind translated it to thought, but he was still too slow. The vergence had had enough, at least for the time being, of Jedi that knew how to fight it. The thing dodged past him, escaping up the trail. Towards the temple.
Obi-Wan turned quickly and ran ahead of the two older Jedi. He could feel the intensity of the Temple Master's urge to protect radiating from her. She was outraged that her clan was threatened. He could feel Qui-Gon's equally strong determination and suddenly realized that it wasn't just Qui-Gon and him, that at lease for this battle, they were all moving and thinking as one to some extent. The three of us will stand well together, the Temple Master had said. They were more than the sum of their parts, and if they were going to win, going to survive, they would have to find their victory in the flow of the battle. It was coming together like a pattern he couldn't quite see the end of yet, like an analog of the vision he had earlier. He began to see that these two opposites would cancel each other out.
He pushed himself as fast as he could go, his braid streaming back over his shoulder, the rock wall flashing by, the Kybus snarling and gnashing its teeth at him as he ran past. Qui-Gon and the Temple Master were close behind him. Obi was rushing towards the end of the end of the trail, the Force driving him. He was ready to leap off the edge of the cliff after the dark thing if he needed to. But then right at the end of the path it turned on him.
Perhaps it got weaker the farther it got from the cave. Perhaps it had only tricked them into thinking it was fleeing. Either way it was suddenly burning black in Obi-Wan's face. It was too late, he was doomed, he was sure, his Master would bring him home dead, ruined as a Jedi, or worse, but even so he hurled himself away in revulsion. And suddenly he was backed up flat against the cliff face, chest pounding, watching a flicker of twisting shadow roar past him and slip between Qui-Gon and the Temple Master. He had been faster than the darkness.
It came down the narrow trail moving like lightning, flashing through the air towards where the Kybus was tethered. It had refused to go anywhere near the cave before, even resisting gentle Force suggestion that there was nothing to be afraid of, but now that it was trapped, backed into a crevice in the rock, it turned to fight like the predator it was. Over twelve feet high on all fours the lanky beast reared up on its hind legs, tail whipping back and forth, retractable claws bared and shredding the air. Its massive head swung forward on its sinewy curving neck, tufted ears flared forward like battle flags, saber fanged jaws open wide and snarling.
The dark thing slashed through it like a blade. The Kybus convulsed in mid lunge and then fell like a rag doll. As it fell it screamed, a frosty sound with the strength of a roar that seemed to shiver the air.
Obi-Wan forced himself to breath deeply running through a calming exercise. How can something not sentient make a sound so full of misery? he though, in disbelief. He didn't share Qui-Gon's need to reach out to all life, but compassion was the soul of the light side and that sound had impaled his heart.
After it struck the dark thing was gone, back towards the cave that had once confined it. They hurried to where the Kybus lay. Qui-Gon crouched down near its head for a second, resting one hand on its muzzle, looking at the animal almost as if the two of them were talking together. Its red-gold eyes were rolled back in its skull and it trembled a little, craned its neck back over its shoulders, and then it was stone dead. Obi-Wan had just caught up with him when Qui-Gon drew himself up to his full height and was running again, plunging down the trail with careless quickness over jagged spurs of rock and uneven ground.
His shape blurred and he actual outran the thing. Then he stopped short and stood in front of the cave the dark thing had come from. It came at Qui-Gon like a hurricane, hypnotic and hungry. Its dark bright surface writhed as it charged. Qui-Gon spun to face it, lightsaber raised to strike . . . and then extinguished his blade, letting his hands fall to his sides. He dropped out of battle stance, raised his head, and faced the avatar of darkness bearing down on him.
Obi-Wan hurled himself forward with all his strength, desperate to protect his Master, only to be jerked back as the Temple Master grabbed him. He slammed into her crossed arms, nearly knocking the wind out of himself. Her grip locked around him like an X of steel bars. Let me go! He screamed mentally. It's going to kill him!
"Be still, Obi-Wan." She hissed, holding him back effortlessly. "Open your mind and see what is before you."
The thing struck Qui-Gon full in the chest, seeming to sink into him. Helplessly watching from ten yards up the trail, all Obi-Wan could think of was how the Kybus had screamed.
Chapter 5
Qui-Gon had opened himself to physical attack but that was so unimportant as to be symbolic. He let the radiating aura of light he had built around himself fall, his inner essence as vulnerable as his body and challenged the dark thing to destroy him from within.
When he had first realized something like this would probably be necessary, he had not bothered to think of what the attack might be like. It was indescribably worse than he could have possibly imagined, anyway. The living dark poured into him like a river of poison. A coldness that seared like a branding iron filled Qui-Gon's world. The dark thing plunged straight to his bared core and sunk in its fangs.
So much hate. So much death. So much brutal horror. Trapped by chance, too strong to fade away, lingering in the force, acid, bitter, sickly sweet emotions and energy, fermenting together over centuries. Magnified until it was no longer chance that brought out the darkness. An ancient whisper of evil that was now almost as much sentient being as he was. All this Qui-Gon felt, and it was agony to his sensitive soul. Everything in his mind and heart rebelled against it. It tested all his years of iron Jedi discipline nearly to the breaking point not to fight in violent, disgusted, denial, to simply wait, but he did. It was too late for shielding, for repelling the darkness. If he tried to fight back now, his own defense would allow it to destroy him. This was every time he had faced a darksider and refused to let fear or hate make him like them. It was every time he reached out to someone desperate, in need, knowing they might abuse his kindness or leave him with a vibro dagger buried between his ribs. It was partly nothing like either of those things, and yet had its roots in both.
But for all his strength and control of the Force he finally shattered under the assault, his flame ripped into a cloud of sparks spiraling away into a vast and ravenous nothingness. Embers, fragments of a sentiency that had once been called Qui-Gon Jinn, tumbling downward in an abyss so deep there was no longer any surface to it, no way up. One by one, blazing points of light flickered and dimmed, one by one, went out as they fell. Drifting like a ghost the last spark lost in the monstrous darkness faded out. But darkness does not rule everything that falls into it.
Then the fire and the light burning in the void. A conflagration, fierce and brilliant, ignited out of the darkness. A column of fire burned high with the heat of a suns core, vital with the heat that drove life, roaring up through the depths, hurling the shadows away. His utter lack of fear, his denial of its power robbed it of strength. He had allowed the thing to attack his spirit, and his spirit caught it like a net. He didn't fight it, he absorbed it.
Obi-Wan felt a disturbance so powerful and strange that the Force seemed to twist and splinter. He felt the sly dark energy whipped into a fury like a cyclone, felt it tearing his Master apart. He saw Qui-Gon go limp for a second, so quickly he didn't even stumble . . . and then it was over. The darkness was gone. There was not even the lingering black afterglow you could feel at places like Degobah. Not even an echo remained.
The Temple Master released him. "Your Master lives." She said, her voice soft and flat.
"Master, are you all right?" Obi-Wan exclaimed dashing towards him. He stopped short a few feet from Qui-Gon, somehow unable to go closer.
Qui-Gon lifted his head toward him, his shoulders a little slumped.
"Yes, Obi-Wan."
Obi-Wan was overcome with relief, and amazement at seeing a small part of his understanding of the Force and the galaxy turned upside-down. But he couldn't help noticing the almost wary look in Qui-Gon's eyes as he looked up at him.
The Temple Master stood, grim and solemn on a cairn of rock looking down on them, her staff held like a ceremonial lance. "I thank you now, Teacher, for what you have done for us. I will thank you again when it is over."
Qui-Gon nodded once in understanding. Obi-Wan looked at him questioningly but Qui-Gon only said, "Let's go. We have a long walk back to the temple."
Flying in hyperspace made it look like the ship was plunging through a swirling tunnel of glowing clouds. A spiral like a glowing Mandela, drawing you forever inward. The light and shadow reflected, flickering in Qui-Gon's eyes as he sat silently in the cockpit, his rough dark brown robes gathered around him like an animal's shaggy pelt. He was silent, he watched, he listened patiently. The play of hyperspace was almost hypnotic; he had been here for hours.
He had prepared himself to spend the trip back to Coruscant feeling deathly ill. As he had told Obi-Wan, he had performed exorcisms like this before, but he hadn't told Obi-Wan that he had never taken anything like this, anything so powerful and purely malevolent into himself. The first time he had absorbed the conflicting, unbalanced energy that tended to build up in the temple's sparing halls, med-bays, and meeting rooms, it had left him miserable, sickened, shaking and clammy like a spice junky in withdrawal. He had been just an inexperienced Knight then, but he had grimly expected the same thing this time, maybe worse. Yet he only felt as strangely clear and calm as the eye of a storm.
He searched hyperspace, musing, as close as a Jedi gets to dreaming. Watched the shadows swirling in the light, drawing him inward. And for a moment as he drifted what he saw framed in the porthole not what was outside but what was within him. For a moment he thought he saw the same thing, shadows swirling in light. His half closed eyes opened suddenly. He felt nothing but fine still light, saw nothing but mottled hyperspace again. Maybe it was nothing, but that chill he had felt leaving Ferrio . . . . He would wait and see.
Home. The word soothed Obi-Wan's mind. Returning home to Coruscant always felt good, felt right to him. He gave a contented sigh as he stood in the doorway of their quarters, appreciating the safe peaceful place, and walked unhurried to the center of the common room. There was the familiar old couch in the corner, a couple of mats on the floor for meditation or light exercise, and the view outside to the glittering towers and streaming air traffic of the capital. A row of pegs was on the wall by the door for them to hang their robes from. One corner was filled with a counter, shelves and cubbies that stored data cards, a few precious books, and non- perishable food. A door beside the window led out onto the terraces that wrapped around the pyramidal temple, and there was a small gnarled reddish barked tree growing in a large blue ceramic pot next to it. Qui-Gon drank tea made from its leaves every morning with his breakfast. And even more important than the comforting physical surroundings, was the sense of both there personalities that seemed to have seeped into the walls and floor themselves.
Qui-Gon followed behind him, disappearing into his private cell. Obi-Wan gazed out the window for a moment, idly wondering what would be requested of them next, then also went to his own room and put away his travel gear. A few minuets latter he emerged to find Qui-Gon waiting for him, a backpack still over one shoulder.
"I am not finished with our mission yet, Obi-Wan." He said, enigmatic, even though he honestly wasn't trying to be cryptic.
"How can that be? You destroyed the presence. What else is there left to do?"
"Not destroyed. Weakened and trapped. It is still here, I am its prison."
The furrow between Obi-Wan's eyebrows deepened as he concentrated, scanning his Master's presence for veins of darkness. "I sense nothing."
"I can barely feel it myself, but it is there. I sensed something strange when we left Ferrio, now I am sure. I have go away for a while, purify myself of this thing. Then the vergence will be gone for good. I think."
Obi-Wan suddenly remembered the searching look in Qui-Gon's eyes after the dark vergence had attacked him. He remembered how quiet he had been on the flight home, spending most of his time in the ships cockpit. Sitting absolutely motionless for hours at a time, not in formal meditation, just . . . watching, as the ship flew through hyperspace. "Let me come with you, incase something goes wrong. We are stronger together. There must be something I can do."
Qui-Gon shook his head. "No. You could not help me and might hurt me, or be hurt needlessly yourself. I will need solitude for this."
Obi-Wan nodded, against his frustration and best judgment. Qui-Gon presumably knew what he was doing, but the idea of his Master slipping quietly away to face some soul-devouring monster in isolation sounded like dangerous lunacy.
"When are you coming back?"
"A few days, a month, I can't be certain." He gave Obi-Wan an evaluating stare, realizing he needed more reassurance. "You need not fear for me, Obi-Wan. As long as I have the Force I will not be alone. Don't morn my death while I'm still breathing." He said gently.
Obi-Wan's face was still grim, but he nodded. "Yes, Master."
Qui-Gon smiled a little, then turned and crossed the room in a few long strides.
"Master?"
He stopped in the doorway. "Yes?"
"Do you know how to defeat this thing?" Qui-Gon looked over his shoulder and smiled. "No. I will have to figure something out."
Obi-Wan looked away frowning as Qui-Gon left. His Master had such wild, spooky power. He was a great Jedi, Obi-Wan was sure of it. But he seemed so eager to dissipate his strength, so unwilling to take full advantage of it. Obi-Wan felt somehow that he could be more than he was. He had once thought Qui-Gon wanted to be on the Jedi Council very deeply. How could he not, when he was so opinionated about matters of the code? But now he wasn't so sure that his Master would take a Council chair if one was offered to him. It seemed it was that way with everything. Qui-Gon seemed to deny himself what he could so easily have, what Obi-Wan couldn't imagine him not wanting. He was so wise, and yet stupid enough the to waste his gifts. He was so reckless with himself, and the universe had shown little inclination to be careful with him.
And yet somehow he always walked out of the fire. He had few permanent scars and wore those he had as proudly as a Tagorian. He wished nothing less for his Master, but it infuriated Obi-Wan to no end.
Obi-Wan sighed, drawing on the Force to try still the emotions that were starting to gnaw at him. He would just have to hope that his Master would walk out of the fire this one more time.
Chapter 6
Many Jedi returned to the world of their training in times of trial or trouble, and Qui-Gon was no different. He booked a public transport to Talgonia, where there was a small proxeum he could keep vigil in alone until the demon left him.
The proxeum was called House of the Bell, and it perched like a rookery on one of a cluster of fanglike mountains that rose up from the desert. Generations ago, Talgonia has suffered a horrific civil war. Ecological weapons had killed millions of sentients, and most of the planet's other life. Almost all the wildlife that was on Talgonia now had been teraformed back into it with help from the Ho'Din government, and these deserts weren't the most desolate sectors of the planet. The armies had blasted some areas down to bare rock and left them so poisoned, irradiated, and geologically unstable that no one could make anything live there. The people of Talgonia, the Finvairra, were now among the galaxy’s most fervent pacifists.
The desert was a flood of golden burning sand. The wind that blew off it had the heat and fiery smell of the air around a raku kiln, but the etched and cracked towers of stone where tall enough to catch the rain that evaporated before reaching the dunes. They were cooler, moister, hung with vegetation: thick stands of bantha pines, flag leaved cable-like rania plants, fur ferns, and ander vines twining around the trees and zal cane. Sometimes, at dawn or twilight, the peaks were even cloaked in a haze of mist. The Finvairra called these oasises green islands.
House of the Bell was log framed with stone floors and pillars, set back under the deep green fronds of tall trees. It was small, and very old. At the time it was home to four Masters and their Learners, who were all working on distant planets at the time, and a Knight caretaker, named Boid Chal, who had agreed to let Qui-Gon live alone at House of the Bell for a few weeks.
When Qui-Gon hiked into the clearing where the proxeum stood, Boid was perched on the ridgepole of the main hall, like a living version of the sentinel carvings on either end of it. He called out to Qui-Gon in his own musical language, a greeting that sounded like a single high note of a flute echoing around the dome of the sky, and glided down on wide, membranous wings to meet him. Boid was one of the Finvairra. He was bat- like, about human sized, with a vulpine head and a long fur-plumed tail. His legs where small and tucked under his body, but his arms where long, muscular, and supported voluminous skin wings that folded neatly at his sides when he was on the ground. Boid was covered in a coat of fog gray fur, and his eyes where as green and flashing as Ryloth serpent stones. Black feathers, iron charms, and strings of small bells were tied into the crest of fur running over his head down to his shoulders.
"Peace, Master," Boid said, dipping his head gracefully.
"Peace, my friend." Qui-Gon folded his hands in front of him and bowed.
"House of the Bell will be empty as long as you need to be here." Boid paused for a moment, holding Qui-Gon in his piercing foxish gaze. "You are entering a time of great danger."
"Yes."
Boid seemed to consider behind his quick eyes. "This was one of the first things rebuilt after the war. There is a spirit of tough hope hear. That might help you. Listen to the voice of the silence, Master Jinn," Boid said, speaking basic. It was a Finvairra saying, meaning roughly the same thing as, 'May the Force be with you.'
He lifted his wings and spread them wide, the membranes glowing pink with the sun shining through them, and leaped from the terrace off into empty space. He fell for a few seconds and then the towering desert updrafts caught and blasted him upward, high above the mountaintop. Qui-Gon watched the other Jedi glide away on a river of air. Boid's shape faded into a black point in the razor blue, aseptically dry sky, and then it was gone, too far off for even Qui-Gon's keen vision.
He stood on the terrace for a long time, absorbing the shaded curves and shadows of the dunes, the arid horizon in front of him, the still, green, mossy forest behind him, and the crystal clear, crystal hard, half orb of sky above him.
The voice of the silence.
Yes, he could hear that here.
It was one past midnight, and a lamp burned in the main chamber of the House of the Bell, casting a warm glow. Qui-Gon had not slept since he had come to this place a week ago, but he was alert and exhaustion did not touch him. He had spent most of his time in intense meditation, preparing himself to counteract the vergence. Now was a deeply important time for him, he had to make himself as pure, as peaceful, as deeply bound to the light side as possible. In the past week he had sunk down to the very pit of his heart, making peace with old pain, mending or reconciling his weaknesses. The silence of the empty proxeum had revealed itself to be something complex, beautiful, vast and intimate at the same time. He felt the light side resonance that generations upon generations of Jedi, living, teaching, and learning here had cast and left behind like fossils, but mostly he was profoundly alone, shedding much of himself and much of his past like a snake skin.
Qui-Gon opened his eyes from the latest period of meditation and got to his feet, unclipped his lightsaber from his belt, and began to practice a kata. Right now the most important thing was for him to be as spiritually healthy as possible, but there would soon come a time when physical strength would also be needed. His body felt unbelievably light as he stood. This was mostly a result of his heightened spiritual state, but also reflected concrete reality. He had eaten little since beginning his vigil at House of the Bell, and though the energy he drew from the Force decreased is need for food, he had lost weight.
He started slow, meditative, as carefully as if he had never held a saber before. Qui-Gon measured grace betrayed his skill, though. Somehow you could see his quickness hidden in near stillness. It was eerie, the slow sequence of spin, sidestep, attack, and block more unearthly than the blinding, inhuman speed he was also capable of.
Then faster. Qui-Gon opened a door inside himself, allowing the Force to add speed to his control. Eyes closed, he listened to the oscillating hiss of his saber as the phosphorescent green blade swung and sheared the air. This was what made him the best of them with a saber, the unteachable ability to flow like the wild wind and yet be solid, to give back what his opponent, even an imaginary one, gave, nine fold. Calm center, hurricane's eye. His movements melted together. He felt himself rise above the limitations of gravity and his own body, those boundaries only a foundation from which he could go anywhere. It was like dissolving into a pool of water. He dissolved into movement. He became the kata. Quick as an adder, agile as a cat, silent as a ghost. As Qui-Gon fought a hypothetical battle alone in the night, his shadow swirled and jumped like flame on the hall's carved wood wall.
The next night Qui-Gon gathered spiny tana fruit from the proxeum's vegetable garden and made tea for his evening meal. Water boiled in a clay pot over cherry-red embers, silver steam rising from it. He sat by the hearth stripping the husks off the fruit, focused on the simple task but also keenly self-aware. He could not feel the demon that he had caged in his psyche, but he did not question his sureness that he had not destroyed it yet. When he had invited it into himself it had lost most of its power. He had chained it, and there was little in his heart that it could use against him. What Yoda had told Obi-Wan was very apt. Places with an aura of the dark side were dark mirrors, only returning the darkness you gave them. This thing was almost the same. Almost. Over time it had become something different, and it would eventually find a way to attack him. When it did he would have to be ready, or more likely, become so quickly. It would probably happen with no warning, but Qui-Gon did not see that as a disadvantage. He often found that too much time to plan exactly could be his undoing.
He took a beautiful, moss-colored jar down from the shelf and shook a handful of shredded, dried leaves into the bubbling, steaming water. As the tea brewed, the water turned clear blood red. He couldn't feel the demon, but he could feel himself changing. Because he had no other task but centering himself in the Force, and because failing to do so would mean he would probably die horribly and in darkness, he was becoming more vibrantly interwoven with the light. A Jedi that stopped learning might as well stop being a Jedi, and Qui-Gon was careful never to let his mind get stiff, but his relationship with the Force had not been in flux like this since his apprenticeship. He was finding greater harmony with the Force and being opened like a bud. Rituals of exorcism tended to stir up things you never expected. The changes were hard to articulate logically right now, but that might be for the best, too. Letting himself be distracted by such things would be dangerous now. He would deal with the now half formed epiphanies in their own time.
By the time he had finished thinking he had a basketful of fruit stripped, and then poured the hot shimmering tea into a rough clay bowl. He ate and drank slowly, the simple meal taking him over an hour to finish.
Then later, after another meditation and kata session, Qui-Gon picked up a lamp, a glass tube containing a culture of bioluminescent algae. The anchient Jedi had built the proxeum over a natural spring, and he headed for the place where it still flowed. He was barefoot so his footsteps were silent but the lantern's light seemed to echo down the narrow hallways.
The flagstone floor had been laid right up to the edge of the pool where the spring water collected. A stream flowed from it, through a channel in the floor, to the outside where it wound its way through the forest and eventually poured down the bare rock face of the mountain. Qui-Gon wasn't thinking of much of anything, just following the actions that came naturally.
He sat down by the edge of the spring, cupped his hands, dipped them into the water and drank. The water tasted soft like rain but had a mineral sharpness to it. For a minuet he only stared into the water with his arms resting in his thighs. The movement of light on the waters surface almost lulled him into a trance.
Qui-Gon stood and began to undo the clasp of his belt, pulling off his long and voluminous robes. He unwound his sash from around his waist, and undid the tabards that crossed over his shoulders, slowly looping the cloth into a loose coil with unconscious care, and then dropped it to the floor. He shrugged off the baggy outer tunic, pulled the snug, long sleeved shirt under it off over his head and stripped to his skin. Jedi were strong as gundarks but rarely very heavily built. Despite his big bones Qui-Gon had always been raw and wiry. The lines and angles of bone and muscle showed starkly, as if everything unnecessary had already been used up. His skin was the same way, somehow worn, even where it was pale and soft. Between Force healing and bacta he was scarless although it looked like he should be scared, and all he had been through still showed on his body. He crouched on the edge for a moment and then slipped into the still water.
The water cradled him as he lay on his back in it, his long hair fanned out around his head. The pool was wide enough for him to float spread eagle and deep enough that he could not stand with his head above water. Weightless in the cool water with his eyes half closed, Qui-Gon felt almost disembodied, the way he had during the kata, the same sensation of dissolving. The water held him up, tingled over his skin, and he felt the power in it, the life force even in the nonliving. The overflowing cycle of life swirled before his mind's eye in the simple touch of water. He could feel the lineage, the power the water had picked up, one day part of the vast salty blue green oceans, another conducting life in the leaves of a plant, another atomized and floating in white clouds, another falling back down to earth to nourish the land, to make the old trees grow, and now in a cold spring bubbling up from deep in the rocks.
After an immeasurable time of perfect motionlessness, Qui-Gon exhaled, held his breath and let himself sink down to the bottom. He knelt, knees digging into the soft sand that lined the spring, and began to meditate. Dim light filtered down from the surface like sunlight through an autumn forest's canopy. It glittered and rippled across pebbles and the jagged chunks of rock embedded in the walls of the pool. The water's cool weight lay on him heavily, yet it was always flowing, always moving. This was an old, old Jedi exercise, one that all students practiced in one form or another. Physical challenge as the path to mental control, psychic power, and spiritual freedom.
Patiently he held his breath, for a minuet, ten, twenty, feeling his body slow down as if in hibernation, conserving oxygen. Drawing inspiration from the cool, gentle currents flowing over his body, Qui-Gon let his mind go fluid as he had been taught to do when he was under mental attack, or when he wished to conceal his thoughts and feelings. As he did, he thought he felt a faint flicker of darkness, the demon just barely showing itself. It must have done so because he had disturbed it. He was encouraged, but put it out of his mind. He felt no need to concentrate too fully on his goal. He simply reached out for the Force that, like the water, flowed all around him. After a while he became so involved in what he was doing that he forgot where he was and took a deep breath.
He was so relaxed and inhaled the water so quickly that he never even choked as it poured down his throat and filled his lungs in seconds. Panic was almost an alien concept to Qui-Gon, he felt only shock, and even that didn't last long. It was soon replaced by awe. There was no pain, no crushing suffocation; it felt strange, but . . . he could breathe. He didn't know if he was absorbing oxygen from the water like a fish, or if he no longer needed to breathe, and he didn't care. He threw back his head and laughed, first in wonder, then at the strange sound of his own laughter transmitted only through water.
After several hours Qui-Gon kicked his way to the surface and climbed out of the water. Outside the arched window over the pool, the sky was deep indigo, covered in stars like tiny pieces of shattered glass. Getting ready to return to the main hall, he gathered up his cloths, and draped his robe over his dripping shoulders. He felt purified, blessed, alive. It seemed impossible that he had done the psychic equivalent of swallowing poison and hoping his blood turned to anti-venom.
Once again Qui-Gon settled himself on the stones of the main hall, preparing for another night's vigil. Dry now, except for his long hair, he dropped into the kneeling position he would be comfortable in for hours. As he closed his eyes to meditate, if he had been a cat he would have purred. The light of the lamp in front of him shown through his closed eyelids, dyed brilliant red orange by his pulse.
Suddenly his slate blue eyes opened wide. In the lamp light Qui-Gon's pupils dilated, expanding as if against darkness.
Chapter 7 A chorus of hate filled the air. Insane throbbing screams, abyssal moans, screeches that writhed and twisted like serpents, whispers thick with the cold cunning of the dark side. Ancient, amplified, and given malevolent rhythm, they rose around Qui-Gon like a garden of poisonous plants sprouting. The multitude voices of the vergence rang out of the cacophony, cruelty, fear, and lust for vengeance that had outlived the beings they had consumed.
Qui Gon gathered himself against the threatening cries, and continued meditating. They where just a distraction, the way his own mind could be if he allowed it to get in the way of the Force and the intuition it gave him.
Suddenly the room fell dark; he was struck blind. Unable to see, Qui Gon cocked his head, listening, as he felt the voices crushing close around him. He felt shadowy presences moving in the Force, as thick as the crowds of Coruscant. He imagined red outlined shapes drifting through the murk around him, sometimes drifting through him. This is not me, he though when the darkness made him shudder. He was a center for the dark side, intimate with it but not a source of it. The cave had not been evil, just a possessed place of weathered stone, and he contained his own spirit of light as well as the demon.
But then he started to feel a profound rending deep inside. He sank deeper into the Force, trying to center, but the dark spirits wrapped around him, not trying to destroy him now, just *tearing.* Qui Gon's senses snapped like threads, and the thing forced him from his body. He began to rise with the phantom voices up into the ceiling of deep space. Fevered and obsessed they worked their way into his brain and grew, and grew, and grew.
Qui Gon fled, unable to help himself, harried, hounded through the void of space. Stars, cold, hard, distant sparks whose light burned him, swept by like dust in the wind. The stillness and life he had practice was a mocking hallucinatory memory now, drowned out in the howl of a rabid beast. The only other thing that remained to him was a bottomless and final emptiness that he loved, and hated, and that drove him on to the deep spaces between the lifeless stars and worlds beyond the galactic rim. This, he knew in his heart, and in time his helpless, punished mind also came grasp it, was the madness that Dark Lords of the Sith came to when they died, as surely as Jedi joined the Force. But he was no child of darkness. These two revelations woke him from the nightmare, began to ease the torment, and slow his cursed wandering. He came back to himself and stopped, anchored in the cords of resonant energy between the stars.
The voices now had faces, bodies. They gathered around him in a thick swarm that blocked out the stars, their faces blank and insentient. Dark Jedi. Darksiders who lived for rage but couldn't touch the force. Light Jedi who had not fallen, but who had left the imprint of their fear and anger in the cave. Kray and Mang standing together, frightened and shadowed.
And then Qui Gon saw himself emerge from out of the massed ghosts, darker and more solid than any of them. His robes were black and hung off his gaunt body. The apparition stared at Qui Gon its narrowed eyes like the raw edges of blued steel vibroshivs.
"Pure Jedi," it growled. Qui Gon didn't know if he was really capable of that tone of joyous contempt, but he truly hoped he wasn't. "You are worse than dark. The darkness disdains you, but it follows at your side. You will not fall, but you bring darkness crashing down on all around you. In time you will see this to be true. You are our storm bringer, Master, and always will be."
"No." Qui Gon suppressed a deep shiver. The apparition lied, the dark side was ever deceptive, but he felt an innate sureness that this lie pointed out a path to a very dark truth. "No. The hate, fear, and anger of others cannot come from me. Everyone makes their own choice. It cannot even come from you. The Force itself has no more darkness than light, sentient beings create it, gather it. Those beings that created you are long dead, and you can not outlive them." Qui Gon spread his arms wide encompassing the many manifestation of the darkness. The figures were fading, the evil melting away like it should have naturally. "This is an illusion, the shadow of a ghost."
The voices were all gone now, the echoes dead, the faces that went with them faded into oblivion. Only Qui Gon's dark reflection remained. "I," it said solemnly, "am very real."
The reflection actually seemed to get clearer, taking on a depth it had not had before. Before it had been the face and voice of the demon, but now it was truly what it appeared to be. Qui Gon's dark side, the potential for evil that lived in him. Qui Gon, his eyes mild and deep, stared into its empty ones.
"You are mine. Come back to me," he said, and grabbed his shadow self hard by the shoulders. It was even more horrible than letting the vergence attack him, touching this cold, dirty, sly, and vicious thing, because it was real, and it was him, and he could become it. But it *was* his and he had power over it. He held on, and he gradually felt it dissolve back into mere potential. A potential he had dedicated his life to never realizing. Qui Gon was exhausted and everything was fading, but he knew his task finished, and he was drifted slowly back to flesh and blood.
Whether he had sleepwalked out to the terrace or gotten there some even stranger way, Qui Gon would never know. But when he opened his eyes he was sprawled out on the flagstones overlooking the desert. The air was cool, the sand far below was dull, dun, gray in shadows, the brightest stars were still shining in the sky, and the sun was just beginning to come up and throw a film of golden light over the cold, rough, gray stone he lay on. Aching from lying out there for at least a night and fighting the demon he gathered himself into a sitting position as more light spilled over the horizon. Truly he didn't know how long he had been there. It could have been the dawn of time in the empty desert and green island. It could be a billion years in the future with all sentient life but him faded away into the clear vast space around him.
Qui Gon stepped off the public transport at Coruscant's central spaceport, and walked home to the temple. All through the day, the color of the temple's surface shifted with the color of the sky, lavender at deep dawn and dusk, gray under clouds, golden in hazy afternoon, and blinding white and silver at clear midday, symbolizing the building's affinity with the light that played over it. Now it was rose-toned in the early sunset. Qui Gon waited for a moment before entering. His eyes wandering up over the shining layers on layers of pyramidal terraces, the graceful, monolithic five towers, the elegant lines of architecture designed to foster quiet contemplation and peace. But still he hesitated, unwilling to enter.
He wondered why. Had he really been cleansed of the demon, or did he no longer feel it because it had conquered him completely? He remembered what the demon had said in his own voice, how it had seemed to mark him as its own. If he walked into the temple right now would he be bringing the dark side into the heart of the Jedi? Never, he told himself. Never. If he had failed and the darkness of the vergence was now a part of him, best go in self imposed exile. But the feeling of being clean of the shadow was so true it was hard to deny. Deep down he was as sure of it as he had been when he awoke from his vision.
Since his knighting, the Temple Master was only the seventh person to sneaking up on Qui Gon completely without his knowledge. "Thank you, Teacher." He turned to see her walking along the sunset-dyed temple wall towards him, staff in hand.
The End