Legacy V

Chapter 21

Revelation

A memory:

Qui-Gon, recumbent upon the passenger cushions of an air gondola on Keurax 9, long shanks crossed and hands propped behind his shaggy head.

Relax, Obi-Wan. The transit will not be a moment shorter, for all your eagerness.

It's not eagerness, Master… I have a bad feeling about what's waiting for us at the Presidium.

As do I.

…Then should we not be preparing?

We are, young one. At least, I am. And I strongly suggest that you do the same.

With all due respect, Master, you appear to be loafing while we rush toward imminent disaster.

Ah. But that is where appearances can be deceiving, my padawan.

Next you'll be telling me that 'disaster' is a state of mind.

Why should I? You've just said it yourself. With such an apt pupil, what else is there left for me to do but loaf? Take my present disposition as the highest compliment.

Obi-Wan jolted awake at the precise moment when the hired mercenaries had launched an enhanced sonic disruptor grenade through the conveyance's open moon-roof, resulting in the abrupt termination of their idle conversation. Even in the present moment, the surge of adrenaline in his veins caught his breath and raised hairs along his nape and arms; at the time, it was only Qui-Gon's inexplicable anticipation of the attack that had saved them from immediate disintegration. The details between the instant Force-enhanced propulsion of his person into the clear blue yonder – just ahead of the deadly impact plane – and his shaken and enraged reunion with the implacably calm Jedi master on a wrecked rooftop ten minutes later were lost in the mists of time, or more likely permanently relegated to the dark corners of traumatic recollection. In any case, he didn't care to dwell on the incident longer than necessary. Which was to say, at all.

Instead he rose and padded across the miniscule room, and the snoring bundle of blankets that was Anakin, deep in the throes of a post-sugar rush metabolic crash, into the adjacent fresher. The slap of cold water against his face brought him back to his senses: a nervous frisson still made his flesh crawl. He was awake not because of a dream, but because the Force was disturbed, specially and acutely for him.

Imminent disaster is a state of mind.

Of course, states of mind could still blow you out of the sky if you weren't careful.

He waved the door open and ventured into the hushed and dimly illuminated corridor, only to find his special and unique disturbance in the Force headed down the passage toward him from the lift tube alcove.

She hesitated, doubtlessly perceiving his tension. "Sorry. I was shielding…"

He waved the apology aside. "It's not you. What's wrong?"

Siri's hand brushed against his arm, a flutterwing's salute. Personal. He frowned.

"It's – "

"Qui-Gon."

She nodded, fingers now curling around his in the barest suggestion of an embrace and then retreating, the gesture contained behind the glittering ramparts of her blue gaze. "I was in the healer's ward, for other reasons…"

He remembered to exhale. "Master Li sent you." Because it's bad news.

Siri's eyes found the stretch of wall directly over his shoulder. "Master Jinn is.. conscious. Intermittently. He asked for you, we think."

You think?

One corner of her mouth dimpled, though throttled emotion roughened the forced tone of lightness. "Well. All he said was 'brat', actually… Master Li interpreted that as a summons."

A single swift glance though the open doorway assured him that he would not be missed; Anakin snored on in blissful ignorance, a tuft of dirty gold all that was visible of the boy amid his twist of thermal sheets and pillow. "I'll go now."

In the lift, they stood a scant pace apart, shoulder to shoulder, silently regarding the blurred reflection of two dark cloaks and a smear of palest white beneath. The burnished carriage walls refracted light, but eradicated the contours of individuality; their anonymous mirror-selves might have been mere glyphs in some painting, splashes of muted color representing the tradition at large. The repulsors dropped them with sickening rapidity to the lower levels, then buffered the deceleration without a sound, as stoic in their silence as either occupant.

Siri exited first, leaching the small space of its last warmth and leaving the ephemera of mandrangea bean blossoms in her wake.

Obi-Wan gathered the folds of his cloak across his chest and stepped forward into the inevitable.

Bant was there, along with Ben To Li and one of the obnoxious medical droids. Monitors and holo-displays fretted in the background; the tiny chamber was crowded. Claustrophobic.

"Obi," Bant Eerin murmured, wary globular eyes searching his face, and finding only the stony reserve he had plastered there as bulwark.

The Temple's senior healer stood brooding over Qui-Gon's inert form, fingers slowly and absently twisting the short point of his beard into a frazzled knot. "The stasis is disintegrating," he muttered, not making eye contact. "Guttering out. As is his vital energy…. When the artificial inhibitor fails completely, I can try the healing crystals. But that is the limit of my power."

Try was a word which seldom passed the lips of a full ranking master. Obi-Wan nodded, tightly. Understood.

"When that happens," Ben To continued, gravely, "It would be well if you were present. As anchor."

Any meditative trance requiring another Jedi to act as anchor was inherently risky. A stretch. "Master, I would not ask you to compromise yourself for the sake of – "

"This is my calling, Kenobi. Not a personal favor."

Bant winced, glancing swiftly from one man to the other – but it had been years since the gruff healer's acerbic tones had fooled present company. "Thank you."

"There is nothing for which to thank me," Ben To insisted, shortly.

The Force stirred, a murky pond's surface ruffled by gusting wind. Qui-Gon's hand stirred, the skin corpse-like, waxen. Muscles in his face tightened, in a ghost of a frown.

Obi-Wan leaned in, fiercely wishing that the two witnesses would retreat. "Qui-Gon." I'm here, Master.

Speech was too difficult, for either of them. Qui-Gon's spirit seemed to surface from a congealing muck, a drowning man thrashing to the surface and gasping for air then sinking beneath dark waves again; it was only the lifeline of the Force that tethered them, a primal skein of connection. An image shimmered between them, a shared memory, a question: the Sith warrior's face.

I did not slay him. I will not kill in anger.

Relief eddied in the depths, and a spark of warmth. Then, hard upon the first, another query. Anakin's slight figure, casting a long shadow upon the blanched sands. Stars fell from their melancholic dome, and a solitary moon rose behind him blacker than the night. Obi-Wan shuddered, resisting the vision, the imposition of sight, unwelcome revelation.

Padawan. Urgency. Authority. And supplication.

And then, impossibly, a once familiar chiming in the plenum, a cascade of sweet notes sounding down fathomless corridors, the echo of a warm laugh. Listen young one. It's important.

Master Tahl? How…? I don't-

Obi-Wan. Qui-Gon's voice, as though real, as though heard aloud. Sharp with warning.

I am here… but I don't –

You do. Both at once. Speaking out of nowhere, out of ubiquitous light. Time is short.

But why me? How can I? I don't understand!

This path is laid before you. It is yours alone to accept or refuse. But do not turn your face away.

His face was turned away, so that Bant and Ben To might not see his shame. But the speakers remained, chiming in unison, one and not one, within the inward heart of being, veiled in light, placeless yet present. Qui-Gon's hand was cold beneath his own, limp and lifeless.

The Force was rising like a tidal wave, slowly slowly, inexorably. Destiny trembled upon its pinnacle, blinding white,breaking foam.

"Obi?... Master, what's happening?"

Ben To's quiet, reassuring tones: "It's all right, Bant. Take over the regular shift – I'll see to these two."

Retreating footfalls; a hand on his elbow, firm pressure.

"Master Li." When he drew one hand over his face, it betrayed him with a slight tremor.

"Should I be concerned? Or will tea suffice, per usual?"

Obi-Wan straightened, dragging his gaze away from Qui-Gon's ashen features. "No. I've work to do."

The healer watched him cagily. "Why do I have a bad feeling about this?"

"It can't be any worse than mine." A shrug and a lop-sided grin. Bravado steadied his heartbeat, sharpened his resolve. Do or do not. "Call me. When the time comes."

Ben To inclined his head, dark eyes glittering with liquid sympathy, with the bitter certainty of age and experience.

Dooku did not appear surprised to see him; nor did the Sentinel appear to be wasting his night in the quotidian business of slumber. One white brow arched upward sharply when the visitor presented himself upon the threshold at third chime past midnight, but that was all.

"Dejarik?" the senior Jedi invited.

"No. I've come tardily upon a mission."

Dooku waved him inside. "Insomnia still plagues you, I see."

Obi-Wan indulged in a small private snort. Dooku often forwent sleep entirely, for purely voluntary reasons; his former padawans' occasional bout of restless nights had been a source of dark amusement and some irritation in years past.

But that was behind them now. "I'll open it."

The silver-haired Jedi master strode leisurely across his quarters to the wall of niched shelves, the orderly ranks of books and scrolls, and countless trophy artifacts from every corner of the galaxy. "The Kair'oss holocron, I presume. You've reconsidered your previous refusal, then?"

So many years ago. "I wasn't ready then." Much to the harshly expressed disappointment of his erstwhile mentor.

Dooku lifted a heavy chest from its place and pursed his lips. "This is not to be undertaken lightly."

"I am not in a light mood, Master."

The hard edge to his voice assuaged Dooku's dubiety. The Jedi master solemnly laid the casket upon his low-set ebony table and stepped back, one hand making a gesture of open invitation. "Then may the Force be with you."

The young Knight knelt, reaching out one hand to unclasp the heavy latch upon the tritanium box. Inhale. Exhale. Open lid, grasp the velvetar-wrapped object inside. It was heavy – far too heavy for its size. Inhale – slowly. Fear has no place in a Jedi's heart, nor anger. Let the luxuriant cloth fall away: hold this vile, pulsating crystal thing. Touch it. Feel it. Know it. Encounter it.

First, pain: because The Dark always prefaces a lesson with pain, that the knowledge imparted may be carved like a scar upon its recipient. The Light sometimes burns, too; pain is not substantial, for it belongs to gross matter. Then blackness swirling at the edges of vision, dizziness, the miasma of encroaching faintness . A second obstacle, set in the path to deter the unworthy. And then howling wind, gnawing cold, consuming fire, thunderous void. Veils upon veils, safeguards against the fragile of heart, the tepid in purpose.

The final test is subtler: the last curtain one woven of illusion and a thousand years' strife, curdled memory. The smooth contours of the holocronseem to shatter and then to melt , shards piercing flesh and burrowing molten trails through nerve and sinew, poisoning the very blood, ink pooling and blackening clear channels, writing a sinuous calligraphy upon clean parchment, staining body and soul with the sigils of an alien and perverse cult.

Tolerate it; the Drak cannot truly mark that which does not willingly yield. Like the body of some unseen, slimy deep-sea creature coiling in its native obscurity, the crystal etched its contents upon a new mind: a mirror held up to present reality, an image ever-shifting, refracting a million disparate lights, bending their luminance to its own theme, its own oracular secrets.

A vision, vomited from the hells, from some secret repository of truth chained in their tormented recesses:

The galaxy a dejarik board, piebald morning and night, dotted with the fantastic towers and strongholds of its playing pieces, palaces and promontories upon a thousand thousand worlds. Among the ranks of ivory and ebony, a solitary black knight leads a white army – sapphire eyed, golden haired, mantled in purest sable, he commands the legions to topple this mighty edifice, and then that; he heads the charge upon the last and greatest of the white citadels, an inverted pyramid crowned in five spires. The soldiers assault the high walls, crumbling them to dust. Beneath the façade, a rotted shadow stands, an armature of black bones and corrupting arcades. It burns, and the cities fall about it, their ruinous remains scattered over the checkered table, black and white melting to indifferent grey, the conquering hero standing alone amid drifting dust, grey ash. The black-mantled warrior weeps, and cries "Traitor!" to the empty skies.

Obi-Wan dropped the holocron upon the ebony table's surface, the harsh clatter of stone upon stone dissolving the vision into an acidic thrum of panic and the wild tolling of his heart.

"What did you see?" Dooku inquired, dispassionately.

He clutched the table's edge for support, breathing through headache and nausea, his body's instinctive visceral rejection of the scrying glass' illusions.

"..the future," he rasped out.

Force help us all.

Dooku cautiously returned the holocron to its casket, keeping the scrap of velvetar between the crystal's alluring surface and his touch. He closed the lid and slid the latch. "I too, have seen it," he said, grimly. "And now I think you understand. We must act."

"Yes," he agreed, feebly. Force help me.

"Good," the Sentinel purred, returning the chest to its keeping place. "I shall consider you an ally in the great battle to come. The battle of this age- and perhaps of that yet to come. In such a time, the wise must stand together, or else fall."

"Yes, Master." Force grant me strength.

"Excellent. We will speak upon this more, and soon."

Obi-Wan made his bow and retreated, seeking the sure center in a crumbling world, in a skein of destiny swiftly unraveling.

Force guide me.

Because he was about to set out alone upon an unprecedented and perilous path, one from which there would be no return, and an uncertain ending.