Part 4
"In a world beyond controlling, are you going to deny the savior in front of your eyes? Stare into the night."
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"The war hero of the Jedi will save his people from the hordes of honor and turn himself to break upon the jaw of the ravenous Destroyers and the founding Forge. Should he seek a path out of destruction, he will lead those who follow into the darkness, and return to seize all rule of Government and Order."
The words, incessantly meaningful, played over and over in Calum's mind. From beneath the fragile veil in his consciousness that still obscured his former and true self, knowledge bubbled forth.
It is a static prophecy; the worst kind there is. It's the only kind of prophecy that Jedi born in the last thousand years have been able to give or receive, because, unlike true prophecy, it does not require innate understanding. Static prophecies can be perceived by anyone with a connection to the Force, but always cause ceaseless trouble. They are impossible to avert. Even just knowledge of one's existence is enough to render it irrevocable. Because they are so deceptively easy to interpret, the past is filled with Jedi who followed the words literally and brought about the very calamity they were trying to avoid. Once bound to it, there is no way out of a static prophecy. The commitment is irrevocable, the outcome inevitable. The only thing you can change is yourself and how you deal with it.
A floodgate had opened in his mind, bringing forth arcane and confusing facts, theories, postulations. It all made inextricable sense to him. But more than forgotten knowledge of the concept, the words had evoked strong, vivid images that seemed at once to validate and invalidate the very nature of the prophecy before him. Key events, both past and future, played out before his mind's eye.
It was like looking through the words and seeing through the deception of their seeming simplicity.
It gave him the answer he needed.
He had saved his people and been broken for his knowledge of the Forge and his campaign against the ravenous Destroyers yet to be unleashed. Now, he had to continue his quest, plunge into the darkness to fight a battle for the existence of life itself.
A sudden gust of the chilly wind whipped some hair into his face, distracting him from his brooding. Calum looked up at the loping figure of Aliid just ahead of him and Juhani. The man moved in a graceful stealth with practiced ease, presenting only as small a silhouette against the star-filled sky as seemed humanly possible. Calum more than once wondered if the strange man had Cathar blood somewhere in his ancestry, so natural was his cat-like prowl.
Something about the fingerless man was indistinctly familiar to Calum, as was the name he'd mentioned; Izayus. He knew he should recognize the name, its importance to him and Bastila, but his mind drew a complete blank. He felt nothing stirring from the dark partitions of his mind where Revan dwelled, just the same placid existence.
At the thought of the name Izayus, Calum's thought immediately returned to his most pressing concern. He was almost certain that Aliid, in his guileless manner, had told him the truth, that Bastila indeed was at the house of this Izayus. That Aliid would so freely admit it to him gave him pause, however, and Calum realized he could very well be walking into another Jedi trap.
Already his mind was coming up with every worst scenarios conceivable, and even some inconceivable. Perhaps a secret team of Jedi enforcers were lying in wait. Perhaps the place was a heavily-armed bunker with a full contingent of security troops armed with stunner weapons he couldn't counter, nerve gas, and ultra-sonic cerebral devastators. Perhaps the Republic had raised an army for the sole purpose of capturing him.
Calum angrily brushed such doomsaying thoughts aside and concentrated on watching the strange man he followed. Aliid had stopped before the dark yawning mouth of a cave. Calum frowned, but Juhani beat him to the question.
She grabbed Aliid by the arm. "Why have you taken us here?" she hissed.
"Master Izayus awaits you within," Aliid responded calmly. "He charged me to bring you here, not to his house. He wishes an audience with Lord Revan here."
"Let him go, Juhani, he knows nothing," Calum urged quietly. A passive probe of Force auras within the cave had revealed something unexpected to Calum; he knew this cave, recognized the wafting Force signatures of sensitive crystals redolent in the air. He knew also that the powerful crystals would mask all but the most powerful of individual Force signatures, making it the perfect place for a Force user to hide.
They would have to proceed with utmost caution.
He pulled Juhani away from Aliid and ignited his green lightsabre to light the way. Juhani activated her blue blade and put herself again between him and Aliid, who led them into the cave. They passed the carcasses of freshly killed kinrath, whose liquid insides had spilled over the floor of the cave, sending up a spectacular stench. Calum almost gagged at the smell; it reminded him too much of acid-burned flesh, something a memory from somewhere told him was particularly gruesome.
Save for the periodic dripping of cave water and the hum of his and Juhani's lightsabres, the cave was silent as they moved through its lonely recesses. Scattered about here and there on the floor were dull fragments of lightsabre crystals, too small and impure for practical use and almost as worthless as pebbles. The broken fragments, dull and lifeless when Aliid passed them, grew brighter in sheen when Juhani and Calum were close, as if reacting to the different presences. Calum had heard of such things, but never really put much stock in the accounts. If it were true, then he could only wonder what it meant about the nature of Aliid.
Calum deactivated his lightsabre when he spotted a glow up ahead, a multi-colored wash of light he remembered from the last time he'd been in this cave. The main crystal vein was where he'd found the green crystal for his lightsabre. He'd given Juhani his original blue as a peace offering, which she gladly accepted. She still used the same one in her own lightsabre, having destroyed her old red crystal.
The crystal vein was every bit as breathtakingly beautiful as it had been the last time. The chamber, quite large for the cave system it was a part of, was covered with angular, jagged outcroppings of the glowing crystals. Piercing blue, vibrant green, and vivid gold crystal growths blanketed the floor in a tiny forest of exquisite stone, festooned the walls in great curtains of sparkling light, and hung from the ceiling like a majestic natural chandelier. In a few places, the rare violet and teal crystals were fused in their exotic patterns. In the whole chamber, Calum had only ever found one instance of the prized orange crystal in what was a tiny, impure growth.
Beholding the shimmering beauty of the crystal vein brought a tear to Calum's eye. It was still one of the loveliest places in the galaxy he'd ever seen.
Suddenly, his eye caught the silhouette of a figure standing amidst the glowing crystals. He lost track of Aliid, focusing intently on the man he saw ahead. In the luminescence of the glowing crystals, he saw that the man wore what appeared to be an archaic dress uniform beneath a heavy battle cloak. The soft light flashed off shiny buckles and brass buttons, and was absorbed by the crisply-cut fabric of a magnificent dress coat which bore many decorations, casting reflections of their own. The cloak, save for a gold crescent insignia that cinched it at the neck, did not merely dampen the light, but swallowed it.
"Who are you?" Calum called.
"I am Izayus, of course," the man answered in a deep, powerful voice.
Up closer, Calum could see his face in the light of the crystals all around. He looked well on in years, certainly into middle-age, but still possessed of an unmatchable vigor. Hard creases lined his face, he had a full head of thick graying hair and a short, well-trimmed beard on his chin and jawline. Izayus had predatory eyes, like an Alderaanian sea hawk, that watched with rapt attention from beneath his rock-like brow.
Face to face finally, Calum's patience was nearly at an end. "Where is she?"
Izayus casually rested a hand on a towering pillar of incandescent green. "She is safe."
"I want to see her," Calum growled. "Now. Or you'll have no 'audience' with me."
"Very well," Izayus acquiesced. He motioned with his hand at someone Calum couldn't see beyond the green glow--Aliid, it turned out. The statuesque column of green crystal dimmed almost to black when Aliid stepped up next to his master, laying a small device on the floor of the cave.
A hologram suddenly appeared, showing the disorienting picture of a woman sitting in an oddly-moving chair that was not included in the hologram. As if noticing, the woman stood, stroking shoulder-length hair. She was with child, and appeared nearly due.
"Aliid?" she exclaimed with a softness Calum was used to hearing from Bastila. She obviously cared for the man. "What is it?"
Calum instantly wondered what this woman was to the mysterious Aliid and the even more enigmatic Izayus.
"Lord Revan wishes to talk to his wife."
"Revan?" There was another voice. Calum couldn't see on he hologram who had spoken, but he knew who it was regardless. His heart leaped when he saw Bastila come into view on the hologram. He wanted to cry in relief, or cry out her name, or smile at her, or any one of a hundred other things he could have done. For the moment he was just so relieved to see her safe and sound that he couldn't make himself react.
"Bastila, are you alright?" It was Juhani voicing her concern. Calum didn't trust his voice to speak. There was a lump in his throat he couldn't speak past.
Bastila nodded. "I am fine. I don't know how I came to be here, but I have not been harmed."
"I can't tell you how relieved I am to know you're alright," Calum finally forced from his mouth. "I am going to get you out of this, Bastila, I swear."
She smiled one of her rapturous smiles that he lived for. "I know you will."
Abruptly, the hologram was cut off and Aliid removed the projector from Izayus' presence. The green pillar of crystal resumed its transcendental glowing as the strange man left its vicinity.
"Are you satisfied?" Izayus asked. His arms were crossed over the lapels of his dark jacket, he observed Calum with a scrutinizing stare that reminded him of something he couldn't quite seem to name.
"What do you want with Bastila?" Calum responded.
Izayus snorted at the question. "I want nothing with her. I wished the collateral damage minimal, and you promised it would be so. You brought her into this. This was the only way I could draw you to me. I regret I have to use an innocent bystander, but you of all people should understand the need to take the measures necessary to achieve a certain goal."
Calum gaped for a moment, trying to assimilate what he'd just heard. "I promised you nothing. I've never even met you, much less promised you anything." As soon as he said the words, he instinctively knew it was a mistake, even though it was truth. It was not what Izayus wanted to hear.
His voice rose in anger. "You lie! We had an accord, you and I. You, Revan, agreed to my price in return for my knowledge. How dare you think to so mock me!"
Stunned by Izayus' menacing fury, Calum couldn't form words. There were a thousand things he wanted to scream at the man, but couldn't put a one to his tongue. All he could manage was a bewildered, "What?"
Izayus' deep-set eyes, shimmering green with reflected light from the crystal beside him, glared balefully at him. "You would play me for a fool? I have not forgotten our agreement. What, did you think that I would? Did you think I would be so easily lulled into complacence over such a matter? You bring shame to the title of Darth!" He spat at his feet and suddenly Calum understood, at least partially, why he had angered the man so.
Under different circumstances, Calum would have groaned in helplessness and long-suffering. Izayus had to be a man he'd known during his time as Dark Lord of the Sith. He could very well be a Sith himself, Calum realized. He would have to be very careful around the man.
Dredging up a facade of self-control and authority from he knew not where, Calum forced himself to deal with Izayus as he thought a former Sith Lord should.
"Forgive me, Master Izayus." He grimaced, wondering if he dared tell him the truth. Starkly, he realized he had no choice. "I was stripped of my title and power over the Sith Empire well over a year ago. I lost allies, allegiances, powers, and even my memories when the Jedi attacked my ship and Malak usurped my rule." Calum felt a little sick saying the words, at the way they sounded to his own ears. He was convincing even to himself, he sounded almost... genuine. He was unsure just how much of him was Revan and how much was Calum as he spoke; the two roles were blurred almost into one.
"If you and I had an agreement, I can no longer remember it. My memories increase daily, but much of my knowledge and powers remain buried still. I came only because you are holding my wife prisoner and your servant informed me you wished to speak with me. If you would speak to me, then speak."
Izayus creased his brow at Calum, considering what he'd said. "I did not follow your war closely, Revan, but I did come to know that the Sith forces were eventually taken from you. Certain rumors came to my ears that you had been destroyed, while others claimed you had gone into hiding, and still others that you had defected from the Sith. I paid little heed to any, for rumors are the seed of mistrust. But I see now that some were based in truth." He held out his hand and grasped Calum's arm. "I see there is honor in you still. There was once truth and integrity within the Sith. Truth, honor, respect. I see you carry on in this tradition while I have forgotten my own."
Izayus bowed. "Forgive me, Revan, for the sin of my presumption."
"Think nothing of it," Calum said smoothly, still disturbed by how naturally he was dealing with the older man, a man who was obviously Sith. "Very few in the galaxy know the truth of what happened to me. You were wise not to put stock in rumor. True knowledge is the only pillar and ground of power and reality."
"There is no future without the truth," Izayus intoned knowingly.
"What is it you wished to speak to me of?" Calum asked finally.
"Forgive me, Lord Revan, but I meant to demand of you why the price of our agreement was not accomplished. When they came for her again, I could have no doubt that you had not fulfilled your promise to me. But I see now that things had gone beyond your control. I never should have discounted the potential for interference by the Jedi Order. Because of them, my daughter still suffers."
"The woman who is with my wife?" Calum asked. "She is your daughter?"
Izayus nodded his head, sighing. Calum's flesh tingled with anticipation of something he could not fathom. He felt as if he were on the brink of some revelation of great importance that would not come to him. Something was drawing him closer to this strange Sith, an intuitive feeling he could not discount urged him to probe deeper.
"Izayus, what was this agreement you and I made?"
Izayus sighed. "If you truly do not remember, then I will start at the beginning, for only then will you fully understand why I ask of you what I do." He gestured to him and Juhani. "Come, sit. It is quite a story I must tell you."
Calum sat just across from the strange Sith man while Juhani stood stoically just behind him, her lightsabre dangling from a short chain on her wrist, just a flick away.
"First you should know of the old Sith Empire," Izayus began simply. "Before Exar Kun's headstrong and foolhardy war with the Republic, there was a true Sith civilization in the outer reaches of the galaxy. For centuries the Jedi looked on us with disdain because we did not follow their stringent teachings, and they invented every sort of black lie to cast us in as cruel a light as they could imagine. We were tyrants, murderers, cold-hearted beasts without a shred of decency or reasoned thought, mindless animals enslaved to selfish desires. We were all that and more in their eyes. Fairly said, there were certainly enough Sith Lords who followed just that pattern.
"But there were those Sith who understood that widespread murder, torture, and oppression was no way to rule one's domain. Some knew the value of firm but honest rule. Make no mistake, however; none were democracies. No Sith Lord was ever elected by those he or she ruled. But there were those who understood that mindless death and destruction would never inspire true loyalty in their subjects.
"I was underlord to one such Sith, Nord Salga was his name, and for many years my greatest hope was to become his successor."
"This was before Exar Kun?" Juhani asked. Izayus nodded. "Forgive me, Izayus, but how can that be?"
The old Sith chuckled softly, a deep rumbling laugh. "It is difficult for me to explain to one such as yourself. For now, let it suffice to say that despite my appearance, I am not human. I have lived for many centuries, as do all masters of House Iza."
Juhani frowned, clearly not understanding, but let the matter drop. Calum raised his assessment of Izayus as he continued.
"Lord Salga was engaged in a bitter war with a rival empress, Darth Morte, when he presented me with a chance to advance myself in his eyes and put myself in a better position to carry on his rule. A traveler had come to him, a strange, masked woman purportedly from a place where she claimed they had conquered the Force itself. She offered to provide Nord Salga with the means to neutralize and destroy Morte's armies of Sith disciples, powerful Force users all of them. Salga informed me that I was to be part of her plan to create forces capable of nullifying Empress Morte's vast powers.
"It was my honor to serve my lord and my empire, but I eventually realized that Nord Salga, in fighting Morte for so long, had begun to think like her and act as she did. The things he gave the stranger from the unknown free reign to do came to sicken me to my heart."
A shallow cough interrupted Izayus' story for a moment. Aliid laid a concerned hand on his shoulder. "Master, are you well?"
The Sith nodded. "Yes, I am fine, Aliid. Thank you."
He was silent for long moment.
"What things?" Calum asked into the silence.
"Terrible things all of them. I told you what the Jedi thought of all of us, but I thought myself and the empire I served better than many other of the Sith Lords' domains." The old Sith shook his head regretfully. "What Lord Salga allowed to be done in his by the stranger from the unknown was no different than what the worst of the Sith would have done."
There was a glassy look of recalled horrors in his eyes as he continued his story. "This masked woman with no eyes first collected hundreds of the fairest virgins to be found in all of Nord Salga's worlds, and one by one she tortured them to death until she found one she said would suit her purposes. To the one she spared, the stranger in the mask performed all manner of sorcery with a power none of Salga's teachers, nor he himself, could fathom. When she was finished, Lord Salga declared my initiation rite, the price for which I could become his apprentice and successor."
Izayus stopped again. A lone tear tracked its way down his hard face.
"He commanded me to sire a child by this poor, tortured woman.
"And yet there were no doubts in my mind. I still thought Salga the Sith Lord I had served for decades, but he was not. His ally from the unknown had twisted him into the same kind of beast as the mad Empress Morte. He named me his apprentice after I fathered a daughter by his command, so yet for another few months I continued deceiving myself as he slipped farther and farther into this madness.
"I was finally woken to the truth when Izaya was born. No sooner had I given her a name and taken her in my arms for the first time than the masked stranger cut the throat of her mother and left, never to be seen again. Over the years, as I gradually uncovered the truth, it sickened me what I had been an unwitting part of.
"Salga's war with Morte died down eventually, and they even became allies when Salga promised greater conquest to be had at the expense of the other Sith Lords and their domains. I was forgotten. But by then, I no longer cared. Salga and Morte and their combined forces waged a new war against the fractured Lords' Alliance while I cared for my daughter as she grew. I wanted nothing more to do with any Sith Lord's empire when I saw what Salga had become--Salga, who I once believed the most honorable of all of us."
Suddenly, Izayus' face took on a chilling emptiness. His voice was a quiet rasp. "Izaya was sixteen years old, barely mature enough to carry a man's seed, when Salga's servants raped her. I caught them and killed them all, but not before they did to her things I will not describe."
Calum was horrified, revulsion sweeping through him in shivers.
Izayus was not yet finished with his account. His stone face looked to have gone beyond hatred, into a void where only vengeance existed; his flat voice evocative more by its lack of emotion than from any trace of feeling woven through it.
"Every one of those animals was a powerful Sith, and yet their power in the Force could not harm my daughter. It is her birthright to destroy the Force within others if they attempt to use it against her. Through all that pain and suffering, she had that one small victory over them. Salga knew this; it was the reason he sent his servants. When I confronted him, I learned that this had been his plan all along, his and the stranger's. Izaya was the first, he said, of the legions of Sith who would destroy the powers of his enemies.
"I despised him, hated Nord Salga, Empress Morte, and all the rest of "Sith Lords" who cared for death and bloodshed - whether it be their enemy's or their friend's - more than their empires, their people, or even their own principles. It is why I exiled myself to Republic space, forfeiting my right as Salga's successor. The only thing I wanted was to keep Izaya safe."
Izayus blinked another tear from his eyes, clenched his fists in fury. "I couldn't. Using what witchery I know not, he found us again and stole Izaya's first child; the child born of Salga's treachery."
In that moment, Calum hated himself for this man's sake. He wished to hear no more of the horrors attributed to the name of the Sith - the name he had inherited - but he could not summon his voice so much as to even offer what cold, empty comfort he could to Izayus. Nothing he could possibly say would soothe the wounds.
Calum stole a glance at Juhani. Tears were streaming down her elegant face. Calum hated himself for not having such sensitivity; he felt like a fraud enshrouded in meaningless feelings he could not express. Why did he feel so cold, so unfeeling, when his heart wanted to scream in anguish at such an injustice?
He felt trapped inside the shell of Revan.
"This has been the story of the last two hundred years, Revan," Izayus said. "Over and over the Sith have used my daughter for their own purposes. They give her children to be born with her gift - her curse - and take them from her when she gives birth. It does not matter what I may try to do to keep them away from her; eventually they find her and begin the cycle again.
"Her bastard offspring quickly became a clan, and after Salga and Morte's empire was crushed by the Lords' Alliance, after the entire old Sith domain dissolved, the monsters who so contemptuously call themselves "Clan Izaya" took up where their predecessors left off, and torment my daughter to this day. Aliid, here," he gestured to the silent, fingerless man at his side, "has been the one light of hope for my daughter's happiness."
"I'm sorry," was all Calum could force from his throat. Beside him, Juhani sniffled quietly, doing her best to mask her own distress from him.
He wanted to vomit at what he'd heard, and yet, he felt a strange calm gradually taking over. It was the calm of one who knew he was irrevocably committed to a single, terrible course and prepared to carry through with every ounce of his strength and willpower; a person willing to throw himself, body and soul, into the flames he could not see.
"What would you ask of me, Master Izayus?"
The Sith met Calum's eyes, his own blazing anew with a yearning for vengeance--not for himself, but for his daughter.
"I would ask you to destroy Clan Izaya from the face of the galaxy."
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"Power beyond containing, are you going to remain a slave for the rest of your life? Give in to the night."
End Part 4
Disclaimer: The song quotes are taken from the Disturbed song 'The Night' and is the property of David Draiman, not me.