Legacy V
Chapter 10
Roots
Troon Palo appeared upon the threshold to his clan dormitory in pronounced dishabille – which is to say, he was wearing nothing but his jet-black silken fur and an expression of affected martyrdom.
"I just got the last stubborn little holdout to bed and you come knocking on my doors at this hour, Kenobi?" The hirsute Jedi's orange eyes flashed alarmingly, one corner of his mouth tweaking up to reveal purple gums and ferocious serrated teeth.
"It is good to see you, too, Master."
"Heh!" A good-natured cuff aimed at the visitor's head was adroitly dodged; Troon balled both enormous fists upon his hips and peered over the visitor's shoulders at the small, very appalled human half-concealed behind the sweep of his cloak. "Who's this?"
Obi-Wan maneuvered his uncharacteristically trepidated companion into a more suitable position, placing steadying hands on the boy's shoulders. "This is Anakin Skywalker, a guest without chaperone. He was assigned quarters on the fourth level, but…"
The clanmaster snorted. "But you want me to adopt him, eh?"
"It's lonely in the other rooms," Anakin supplied, plaintively.
Troon abruptly squatted down upon his massive haunches, rubbing one hand over his hairy pate. "Hmmm. Huummmm." This growling overture was followed by a pointed interrogation. "All right, Anakin, let's see how you measure up. What's the most impressive thing you've ever done?"
"I won the Boonta Eve Classic podrace, sir! I'm the only human ever to be champion!"
The gargantuan Jedi's eyes narrowed. " Illegal sporting competitions, eh? Ever been in a street fight, lad?"
The boy shrugged. "Well, sure. Lots. Hasn't everybody?"
Troon chuckled darkly. "Oh? Did you win?"
Anakin craned his head round at Obi-Wan, seeking guidance - but all he got was a bland lift of the brows. "Ummm… mostly, sir."
"Think you can get away with anything, do you?"
Now the boy positively writhed beneath his inquisitor's penetrating gaze. "Well, I mean, not totally anything, but – "
"Think you could get away with anything on my watch?"
Blue eyes widened to earnest sapphire pools. "No, sir," came the prompt, and unequivocal answer.
Troon heaved himself upright with a truly awful grin. "He'll be just fine. Fit right in." He extended a paw to the newcomer, clawed digits engulfing the visitor's much smaller hand in a firm grip.
Anakin grimaced upward at his erstwhile escort, seeking reassurance that this was indeed a path of wisdom.
Obi-Wan half-smothered his smirk of amusement. "You can trust Master Palo," he told the uncertain boy. "He raised me, after all."
The clanmaster snorted. "That's no credential to boast of… I raised a hellraiser, is what you're implying."
"As you say, Master. It is a poor student who does not surpass his – "
A second cunningly aimed swipe missed by a hairsbreadth, evoking a deep chuckle on the part of both participants. Anakin watched the byplay with wide eyes, mouth slightly agape.
Troon cocked an eye at their fascinated audience of one. "Scoot on in there, youngling. The others are all asleep, but I'll fix you a spot in a moment."
Anakin withdrew into the dim interior with an impressively meek mien, permitting them a brief private word.
"So," the clanmaster said.
Obi-Wan crossed his arms. "So?"
Troon's purple lips curled sagaciously. "Looking to inspire the next generation , are we?"
"Hardly." An affronted exhalation.
One massive finger poked the young Knight in the chest. "For the record, I approve. But the Council's going to have a conniption."
Obi-Wan shifted in exasperation. "I don't know what you mean."
"The hells you don't. And… I'm sorry about Qui-Gon."
A difficult silence ensued. Then, " It will be as the Force wills."
Troon's third attempt at landing a hit succeeded, taking him quite off guard. A giant paw seized his nerftail and pulled him into an inescapable and quite emphatic one-armed headlock, somewhere between punitive measures and an affectionate embrace.
"All right, you feckless little rapscallion. Scram," the clanmaster sternly admonished, releasing his captive and pulling the sculpted door panels quietly closed behind him.
The duties of hospitality thus fulfilled – for that is what he had been doing, in delegating Anakin's care to Troon, Obi-Wan told himself – he returned to his ascetically spare temporary quarters.
The Force still bore the ethereal redolence of mandrangea bean blossoms; neither this, nor the dreary thinness of his sleep mattress, assuaged the nervous peregrinations of his mind. An hour spent contemplating the pale ceiling between deep breathing exercises, twenty repetitions of the Lotus-Floating-Upon-Placid-Waters mantra, and a textured recollection of Master Windu's advice to him earlier, and his unrest precipitated like a cold hail, inner tension dissolving into frigid shards of resolution.
You are a restless spirit, Padawan.
So he was; what of it?
What would you say if I told you we have the creature in custody?
He had rather a few things to say about that, but saying was not the point, now was it?
Ours is to do, not to know.
And you just might get some knowing on the side, at that.
Ignoring your anger is not defeating it; to suppress the first seedlings of Darkness is not to root them out. Be mindful and face your heart squarely. Do not turn your back upon anger, Obi-Wan: confront it. If the Dark is interested in you, you would do well to be interested back.
He could do better than interested. He could take the direct approach.
The winding subterranean passage stood unimpeded; each successive downward step carried him deeper into the empty spaces at the roots of the Temple, black-flecked thanatosine entombing him on every side, leaching Light and vitality from the very air, until his very blood seemed to still in his veins, a dammed and sluggish river, turgid with silt.
Emptiness yawned wide at the bottom of this pit; he passed beneath the last arch into a dank antechamber where two hooded and masked guards stood watch. He knew, from bitter former experience in this forsaken place, that the sentinels changed watch every six hours, for no Jedi could be expected reasonably to endure such privation for any long period. This hellhole was reserved for the truly apostate, those among them who had turned their faces toward the abyss and fallen headlong into its seductive embrace. It was a prison built of nothingness, purest void the only power fit to shackle Darkness.
At this nadir point of existence, where being shattered into isolated monads, where life coagulated and curdled about solitary specks in a meaningless ocean, his stomach predictably rebelled, threatening to protest the inversion of proper order, the snuffing of Life's fire into vacuous and nauseating smoke. He splayed one hand on the rough wall, bending over and breathing slowly until the sick spell passed.
The two guards took no notice, or else feigned obliviousness to his plight.
He should not have come down here… and perhaps the excessive indulgence in wine earlier this evening was a contributing factor to the imbalance.
Still, having got this far he was in no mood to surrender the fight.
"I wish to speak with the prisoner," he informed the two robed figures.
"By what mandate?' the nearest demanded. His voice was gruff, and easily recognizable: Chiros, the Iktotchi Sentinel, former padawan to Sifo-Dyas.
Obi-Wan's eyes narrowed. "You may take up the matter with Master Dooku personally," he suggested. "I'm certain he won't resent the imposition upon his time."
Not that Dooku had expressly authorized this visitation; but the revered Shadow's former protege and known associate could throw a bit of vicarious weight around, when needed. Nor did he mistake his man; Chiros shifted about testily, transferring the haft of his energy pike from one gloved fist to the other.
"Very well," he huffed.
The only advantage to the thanatosine enclosure: with the Force so attenuated, so absent, his sincerity or deceit were invisible, his intentions as opaque to his fellows as a solar-tinted viewshield. He could, in theory, tell a bald faced lie without creating a ripple of suspicion, so long as he kept a sabaac face. "Thank you." If his graceful bow had a touch of irony about it, that was just an idle flourish upon the coup.
The thing was incarcerated behind a glimmering crimson energy field. It stood face to face with him, parted by the barest veil , a mirror's stained surface warping each one unto the other, a molten symmetry of realms, an opposition of like parts.
Unlike parts. Obi-Wan's lip curled, and the Zabrak imitated his contempt, perhaps unconsciously, perhaps in mockery. Or something more... perverse.
Here, where the Force had withdrawn to the furthest margins of being, there was no thunder-roll in the plenum, no fell chaunt prophesying destruction, no lightning blazing on inner horizons. They stood opposed not as pawns in a mighty dejarik game, not as warring principalities, but merely as two creatures of flesh and blood, inextricably compacted by a single obscene act .
The bodiless wall separating them shimmered and crackled beneath the gusting of their breath.
At such close range, the Sith appeared young, possibly younger than even Obi-Wan himself, though it was difficult to gauge. He must be Iridonian; though the painted sigils upon his skin were a satirical variation upon the cultural norm. His cranial horns jutted harshly from a smooth skull, so many budding spears, still short and soft-tipped, the equivalent of a human's first beard. Scraps of black cloth hung over powerful shoulders and chest, a torso marked not only by recent battle but by innumerable healed scars and welts, the tracery of extreme training or else merciless discipline. The Zabrak's right arm terminated in a stump, presently enclosed in a medical stasis band, presumably to prevent necrosis until a prosthetic could be fitted.
If pity or regret stirred within the Force, their feeble protest could not be felt here.
"You killed my master," Obi-Wan growled, the words rasping up from a throat suddenly closed with . forbidden emotion, that which the stagnant currents could not wash away.
The energy field was not completely impermeable by sound, for the monster's glazed yellow eyes flickered with mephitic satisfaction, slat- pupils dilating. Stained lips drew back over crooked teeth , A capricious and challenging smirk. "I killed a weakling."
"Then you confess to cowardice."
The glib rejoinder provoked a furious snarl. Red sparks cascaded to the black flagstones as the prisoner raked his amputated arm against the field. "Weakness invites destruction. You will all perish, Jedi, for you are grown weak with the passing of time."
The young Knight's mouth curled in disdain. "If you are such a reaper of destruction, then you have made a poor first harvest." His gaze flicked contemptuously to the beast's severed hand, then to the claustrophobic walls.
The Zabrak pivoted angrily on one booted heel and paced side to side, strides consuming the narrow confines of his cell in rapid syncopation, left left turn right right turn left left pause center hold. "I do not think so…. You still bleed. You grieve. You hate. I have not reaped, but sown."
Matched, mirrored, they glowered at one another across an impenetrable wall, the fragile boundary between self and other.
"I don't think so," the young Jedi echoed his enemy's scoffing denial.
Do not turn your back upon anger.
But the Sith adept was adamant in his conviction. "I struck; you struck back." He held aloft his maimed arm. "Blood for blood, hate for hate, anger for anger."
"No," Obi-Wan retorted, icily. "Had I struck back, your head would now lie beside your scoured bones." Though at the moment, the fateful instant of decision, it had not been a clean beheading he intended. His 'saber had been poised for a brutal sai tok, the cleaving cut, halving the torso at midline – of all fatal blows the only one permitting its subject a moment of full, unmitigated agony before death's oblivion.
The Zabrak licked his blackened lips. "I remember your hate. It burns within you still. It illumines you."
Do not turn your back upon anger.
"You see only your own reflection, Liar."
Yellow lantern eyes flickered gleefully. "You spared me in order that I might suffer here, at the hands of your friends." The prisoner gestured round at the smothering walls. "Behold me now, and say with truth that you do not relish your vengeance."
"Your suffering is deserved; you have brought it upon yourself."
Do not turn your back upon anger.
"Look in your heart, Jedi: you enjoy my suffering."
Confront it. Confront your anger.
Obi-Wan unclenched his jaw, the shimmering energy field hypnotic now, a potter's glaze melting to hardened glass beneath kiln-fire. "You are a spawn of Darkness; I enjoy your defeat."
He stepped back a pace, shaking in the aftermath of confession. The void embraced him, wrapped stifling bands of emptiness about him.
His foe leered through the crimson field, a coldly beatific smile contorting his boldly scribed features. "Your hatred is beautiful. I thank you for this gift." A mocking bow ended the interview.
One of them remained interred beneath the Temple's immeasurable edifice, stone and tradition compacted to an immovable foundation stone of order, of peace; the other fled far from this scene of perdition, mounting the long stairway leading from tartarus depths to the threshold of Light, to the graceful domes and arches erected upon the bones of ancient strife, the graveyard of chaos.
And if, in his haste and distress, he felt a tremor quake at the very roots of that millennium-strong fortress, he accounted it an illusion born of his own folly and delusion, and sought refuge in places less defiled, in truths untarnished by the failings of any individual heart, in the Force's boundless currents.
And yet, though he sought meditative quiet until dawn, he found no rest that night.