Chapter Forty-Nine: What I Promised

Almost there you're—

almost there, so close it's—

close they're almost gone—

gone, the screams, the pain—

no pain there is no pain there is—

no emotion there is peace, no—

death there is the Force—

the Force the Force the Force—

In sleep, they wash over her all at once. Whispers like waves lapping upon a distant beach, caressing her. Everywhere she can turn there are new words, blending into speakers past and future like a never-ending sentence.

In dreams, she no longer sees light, shadow, foreground, background, color. Perhaps her waking life has drained sight from her sleep, rendered it an even deeper black than that of her new home. In any case, all that is there anymore is the voices, stretching on in an unceasing chain.

When she wakes, the screams return. Always, they return.

But quieter, today.

In the early weeks, even when the battlefield was out of sight, Qui-Gon could hear the army of wails plainly, every night as she tried to fall asleep. Now, the noise was a faint sigh from far enough away; as she sat near the lake, the sound of its gentle motion was almost enough to obscure the cries.

Damn you, Lor, you were right, she thought, not for the first time. If fish were to be weak-minded, they'd have to have minds to begin with.

She'd discovered the lake shortly after she'd given up writing in her journal, unable to concentrate enough to put pen to paper for more than a sentence or two. Staying parked near a valley of shrieking corpses, sleeping in her ship, had been proving too taxing to continue, so she'd wandered off exploring, and almost immediately come upon a glistening expanse of what, in Malachor's low light, looked like nothing so much as a massive puddle of ink.

Once her rations had run out, the lake had become her primary source of sustenance—to her great relief, the water was at least mostly drinkable, though it carried the tang of something acrid that she didn't like at all. And there was food too—fish, if one could catch them. But that was easier said than done—no matter how hard she thought into the water, Come closer, she couldn't simply make its denizens come to her. More often than not it was sheer luck that decided whether she'd have dinner that day.

She had not seen her reflection in months, but thought to herself with increasing frequency that she must be looking awfully thin.

Coughing in a grinding rasp—the planet's dry air was somehow no less arid on the shore of the lake—Qui-Gon brought her hand down onto the surface of the water, making a splash far smaller than she would have liked. "All right, stay away then," she said, stumbling a bit on the last few words as she swallowed. "Come back when you've evolved a brain I'm . . . capable of tricking."

Reaching down to her side, she raised her canteen to her lips and drank. It had a filtration unit, but the brackish undertaste of the lake's water remained; even as the liquid cooled her throat, the Jedi grimaced. When I get back to Jesmyn, they'll think my breath is absolutely revolting.

Lowering the canteen, Qui-Gon blinked once, hard. You can't be tired already, it's still morning. "Morning" meant that she could see her own silhouette in the lake water—no features, just a human-shaped shadow—and that, if she turned back, she'd be able to distinguish the shape of the hill rising between the lake and the battlefield, rather than seeing ground and sky alike as one amorphous mass. The sky's grey-black was a bit brighter than usual today—the cloud cover must have moved off a little in the upper atmosphere.

Still, as the Jedi rose from the lakeside, the overpowering urge coursing through her body was to return to sleep. It was easier now than it had been early on—without the overpowering presence of the screams, it was in fact remarkably easy. And then there were the voices—the voices her waking self hadn't heard once since she landed on Malachor. They still came to her in dreams, an unceasing babble she'd already half forgotten every time she woke, but comforting all the same.

A rattling breeze surged over the lake, wrapping itself around Qui-Gon. She hugged herself—the holes that sleeping on the ground had worn into her clothes made the chill feel deeper than it was. Perhaps it would be best to wrap herself in a blanket and get another hour of sleep. The work wasn't going anywhere.

That's not true, she told herself. You know it's not true.

Even as she thought it, her eyelids dropped. When she forced them open again, they held position for a few moments, then started to fall again.

You won't do them any good if you go on like this. If you drop dead before it's over.

They've waited four hundred years. They can wait a few days more.

Exhaling, she could feel the energy leaving her body, her extremities going numb. Her physical self already surrendering, ready to lie down right there and drift off.

Letting her eyes close, she saw herself there in the darkness—a single flame, present but guttering, bending in the wind. Calling on the Force, she poured energy into the flame, willing it to stand back upright.

It didn't, but its trembling against the wind eased a little. It would have to do.

Opening her eyes, she felt the tiredness take a step back. Smiling, she spoke aloud to herself. "You have your routine, Madam Jinn. Breaking it now just wouldn't be proper. You want to . . ." She coughed once more. ". . . to see this thing through, don't you?"

Pulling herself as straight as she could, she started for the valley.

She'd considered naming some of the statues, then decided that was too morbid—to reduce hundreds of years of endless suffering to a private joke would have been cruel. Still, faces had grown familiar in the months she'd been here. At the end of each day's work—which had grown earlier and earlier as the weeks wore on, the strength required to free each imprisoned soul coming less and less easily—Qui-Gon would look to the statues directly nearby, the ones she hadn't the energy to help today. She'd let her eyes roam over the details immaculately cast in stone—the cheekbones' curves, the eyes' expression, the mouths' cries—and commit them to memory.

"I'm coming for you next," she'd tell them all, wondering if they somehow could hear her—could draw hope from the promise. "I swear to you, I'll be here tomorrow."

And then, she'd turn and look at the battlefield in its entirety, and at the changes she'd made. Not many, in the early days—the handful she'd freed mere dents in the teeming mass, specks amid a dust storm, the shrieks of the dead as loud as they'd been when she'd landed. But as time had worn on, she'd been able to think back to her first memories of this valley, then look at the present, and see the shift. In one vast, uneven forward motion, it was being swept clean—bare stone where before there had been legions.

It could have been faster if she'd been more efficient—plotted her actions, made a specific path from point to point across the valley. But every time she'd tried, her thoughts had strayed back to the ziggurat—to how clean it would be to just carve a single line through the statues, to come back for the rest once she'd attained whatever was at the summit of the pyramid. Efficiency, she'd decided, would make it far too easy to forget that she was navigating not obstacles but people. Would whisper in her ear night after night that she should leave now, come back when she was more equipped to deal with the problem.

Rather than charting her course, then, she'd simply wandered wherever it seemed the Force suggested she go. Some days that meant staying in a relatively concentrated area—pouring her strength into half a dozen Jedi and Sith engaged in the same brawl, willing them to be at peace. Others, it meant traveling from one end of the battlefield to the other, the journey in between longer than the time she spent doing her work. Some days, she would toil long after night had fallen, far past the point where her courage should have given out, until finally she knew in her bones the work was done. Others, the Force would whisper to her after only a short length of time that she should rest—knowing, she supposed, that if there came a point where she burnt herself out completely, there wouldn't be any going back.

No matter how the days had gone, the horror of being directly within the field of shrieks had never faded. But neither had the sighs of relief, the wordless prayers of gratitude as those she'd freed vanished into something beyond, lost their power. They, more than the Force, Qui-Gon knew, were what had kept her going.

And now, here she was. Here on the last day.

Looking down, she could see her ship's silhouette against the ash-gray rock of the valley. Opening up beyond was a field empty of life, of death—stone that was just stone, flat and dull, nothing rising from it save a few scattered pieces of ancient war machines. Until, that is, her eyes crossed all the way to the other side—to the ziggurat that lay there, almost unobstructed.

Three distant figures still barred the way. Their shrieks echoed faintly in Qui-Gon's mind, as though carried on the wind.

"I'm coming," she whispered, and licked at her lips. Already, her mouth was dry.

Qui-Gon knew these statues weren't actually at the foot of the ziggurat—they were a few dozen yards away, the closest the battlefield's perimeter had come to the temple of stone. As she drew closer, however, descending the slope of the valley, the view in front of her seemed to flatten. It was as if these three were at the base of the steps, holding vigil, as they had for centuries.

All three were human—two men and a woman. They were young, younger than Qui-Gon; the woman, she saw as she drew close enough to see their faces, was little more than a girl. Whether she was a Sith or a Jedi, her two companions were on the opposite side—they bore down on her, one on each flank, each one's petrified lightsaber blade sweeping toward her. The girl's own weapon, Qui-Gon saw, was moving to intercept the blade on her right, but wouldn't have been able to parry the other blow. Whatever had happened here had saved her life—and what salvation, the Jedi thought, shaking her head.

Had the girl been guarding the entrance to the pyramid, making sure no one got close? Or had she broken from the battle, tried to get inside—been intercepted by the two men? No matter her object, she'd met the same fate as them—forever preserved, forever imprisoned.

Looking her in the eyes, Qui-Gon thought, I promise, I'll be there soon.

She started with the man on the left—his scream was the loudest, a roaring war cry mixed with a shriek of horrified realization. Placing her hand on his shoulder, Qui-Gon could feel the saber hilt within her own hands, clenched hard enough to hurt, the metal cutting into her fingers. For a moment, as it always did, the panic overcame her, the melding of her mind and the statue's to such an extent that it became hard to tell which was which. Then she pushed back with all the power she could muster—Be free—and a pile of ash was crumbling at her feet, its former inhabitant wafting away on a sigh of air.

The one on the right was harder—the primary feeling coursing through his frozen mind wasn't anger but fear, terror at dying on a foreign planet under a sunless sky. Holding onto him was almost impossible with how much Qui-Gon was trembling, but she managed it—releasing him, she gasped, lungs sucking in oxygen as she staggered forward.

And then there was only one left.

Absent her attackers, the girl's posture took on that of a waiting sentry—saber no longer moving to parry a strike but seemingly held at guard, extended forward, issuing a challenge. The weapon looked very big for the girl's hands, Qui-Gon thought—something that had been thrust upon her, not something she'd been meant to hold. The statue's scream was incredibly quiet—had there been a strong wind, Qui-Gon wouldn't have heard it at all.

Reaching out, very careful not to tap into the Force, she placed a hand on the girl's shoulder, felt the smooth, glassy stone under the palm of her hand. All record of her will be gone once you do this. No Jedi histories, no Sith texts, unless they're up there in that pyramid. Any family long dead, without any way to mourn.

Exhaling slowly, she grasped tighter onto the obsidian, let it steady her. Then, she touched the Force.

So many memories—growing up the youngest of five, raised by her older sister because Mother and Father are always working, everything on the farm smelling of the hacha grass they harvest. Learning to read, devouring the few books kept around the house over and over again, using them as windows into a wider universe.

Watching the people in cloaks as they walk up to the door, ask to see her, tell her she has a gift. The face of the leader, an older woman, kind but stern—the one who asks her if she wants to travel the galaxy with them. The one who first explains to her that the strange feelings she has are from something called the Force.

Sitting in a starship for the first time, staring out the viewport in awe as it makes the jump to hyperspace. Holding her new master's hand as they walk side by side into the temple. Kneeling and, as solemnly as she can in her ten-year-old's quaver, pledging herself to new teachings.

The first time she learns to make an object move, sitting there for hours as she whirls it in circles around her head. Spending days in the library, studying the ancient texts, learning that she is not alone but part of something—a legacy that stretches back thousands of years. Sneaking out of bed with new friends, heading down to the sparring ring and throwing padded objects at each other with their minds until they collapse laughing.

Really, truly meditating for the first time, after frustrated weeks of trying, tapping into the fiery bands that bind her to every other living thing. Looking up, after emerging from her trance, and seeing her master smile in approval. Sending messages to her family telling them how happy she is, that she'll see them soon.

Kissing Jonas Spin'el amid the archive stacks when he wishes her a happy fourteenth birthday. Consciously noticing, amid sparring practice, how strong she is for her age, and how quick. Dreaming of the day she'll make the pilgrimage, build her own lightsaber. Of the moment she'll reach into the Force and choose her new name.

Rumors of far-off battles, war, her master looking more and more troubled as older members of the temple are sent out to fight the enemy. Then her master gone too—whispers among the other students that the ruling powers of the order are growing too foolhardy, throwing more and more people into the conflict in hopes of overwhelming shock and awe. Sloppy. Easy to get caught. Exposed. Overextended. But still the temple empties itself, until eventually the students find themselves next in line.

Receiving a lightsaber—not hers, one from the weapons lockers, designed for someone taller and bulkier than she. Hastily, along with all her friends, cloaked and asked to choose her name. The syllables that leave her lips aren't important. They are not chosen but plucked, in a rush, before her turn is over. Their taste is sour on her tongue for days afterward.

When they get there, the battlefield is already on fire, blazing with red and green and blue and the occasional flash of something more exotic. Her own blade's fire feels like nothing more than a candle, engulfed by the darkness of this place. Swallowing, nauseous, she clutches Jonas's hand in hers—his new name already forgotten, as empty as hers—and tells herself she has to see it through.

This is it. Light or dark. Winner take all.

Jonas dies on the third day of battle.

She doesn't remember anything after that. Anything until the single moment of the great betrayal that forever traps her here.

Mother father I love you I'm sorry I—

The statue ripped itself apart. Qui-Gon's vision slammed to black.

—here, you're here, you're here—

When she awoke, her cheek was resting against the dead earth of Malachor. She'd been unconscious long enough for night to fall—perfectly black, the clouds obscuring even the faint moonglow she'd grown used to. As she rose, her own hand before her face was nothing more than a shadow; for the first time in a long while, she wished so much for her lightsaber's glow that she felt sick.

The silence around her was so oppressive it felt like a physical pressure, rushing into her ears, making them ache. Finally, no matter where Qui-Gon turned, there were no screams.

Looking down at her feet, she saw a few flakes of ash—all that remained of the valley's final guardian. Qui-Gon knew whoever it had been was gone now, nothing left to say goodbye to. Still, she imparted a sentiment of farewell into the aether through the Force, hoping that somehow it reached the person it was looking for.

For a long time, she stayed there, staring at the ground. Then, with a long, slow breath, she turned around.

The temple loomed there, one towering shadow foregrounded against a sea of fainter black. Nothing barred the way. Each of its defenders, its attackers, its victims—thousands of them, held in its thrall for centuries—had abandoned it.

Looking up at the slope, unfurling toward the sky for what seemed like miles, Qui-Gon was the size of an insect. If it were to swallow her, she'd leave no more trace than an ant stepped on by a giant. The sheer size of it was overpowering, her stomach sinking in fear as she struggled to comprehend this mountain of stone.

Underneath that, however, the ziggurat was . . . strangely calm. None of the nausea that Qui-Gon felt came from the Force, simply her own fear and, deeper down, her body's insistence that she rest. There was no crackling mass of dark side energy, no fog of cold wrapping it around her mind.

As if in answer to that thought, a sharp wind gusted past her, and she shivered. Pulling her cloak tighter around herself, Qui-Gon shook her head. "Of course you don't feel anything," she said, then felt her throat catch—it had been a long time since she'd last drunk water, hadn't it?—and finished the thought within her head. You've spent all this time freeing corpses that hadn't stopped screaming for four hundred years. Next to that, anything would feel normal.

And besides, you're certainly frightened enough with or without a bad feeling.

Slowly, hesitantly—part of her felt that if she took her eyes off the pyramid for even a moment, it would move—she turned to look back at the faint dot that was her ship, all the way back across the valley. Perhaps, if she'd been closer, it would have been tempting. In the shadow of the ziggurat, however, it looked like nothing so much as a toy, not the promise of escape but a child's distraction.

You promised Anakin you'd find him answers. You promised Jesmyn you'd do something that mattered.

You promised yourself you'd do something that mattered. You've been promising that for years.

You have to go on.

All this time, Qui-Gon had childishly thought that the stone steps of the pyramid must be gigantic, built by a species much larger than humans—somehow it had just seemed right, whenever she'd gazed across the valley at the tower, that something this big had been crafted by creatures equally impressive. But as she took her first step, she could see that these were the same as any other stairs—old, cracked, and stretching upward to a vast height, but made with any number of bipeds in mind, humans included. The sound her feet made as she climbed from step to step was so out of place that a chuckle formed in her chest—clip, clop against the stone, as though she were entering an art museum back on Coruscant.

A few dozen steps later, she was no longer chuckling. Her legs ached, and her back felt at places as though it were straining against painfully thin skin. After she'd tossed her old cane into the depths of Serenno, she'd largely learned not to miss it—on Aquilae, she'd still had the aches, the stiffness, but she could walk just fine. But walking was one thing—climbing, it seemed, was quite another.

She paused, inhaling deeply, and gasped out through her mouth. Besides which, Madame Jinn, you've not been taking very proper care of yourself lately.

Squeezing her eyes shut, she once again pictured herself as a flame against the darkness, drawing on the Force for fuel. You've brought me here. Help me to find out why.

Another step. And another. And another.

There was no ornamentation to the ziggurat's exterior, no stonework or sculptures, just the same unfolding of stair after stair after stair. Maybe there had been, once upon a time; maybe, in a stroke of irony, whatever Plagueis had unleashed here had flattened the statues upon the temple even as it had erected an army of them in the valley. Or maybe whoever had built this thing had done so without the need for any such frivolities. Whatever lay inside—that was the important thing.

Inside. Oh god, it's such a long way.

Halfway up, Qui-Gon looked back down and was struck with such painful vertigo that only a frantic steadying of herself through the Force prevented her from swaying and tumbling down a few stairs. The yawning expanse of the valley was like a giant mouth, ready to swallow her whole if she failed. And unlike those she'd freed, there would be no one to join her in her folly. If she fell here, she'd fall alone.

Even as that terror worked into her guts—even as she forced it down and continued on—Qui-Gon found she had a deeper worry. That physical weakness in the face of scale—the stairs' height, the valley's size—was fear enough, but it was still her only fear. Nothing had leapt out from the shadows, no roiling evil had latched onto her nervous system. As far as the Force was concerned, the ziggurat had remained still as . . . Oh, don't say the grave, please let's not be quite that morbid.

Look at you, frightened because you aren't in immediate danger. You've lost your wits as well as your fighting shape, Qui-Gon.

She began to climb faster.

She reached the summit as the sun rose.

The faint red tinge it lent the shadows was also just enough to illuminate what lay at the apex of the pyramid: a single door, about two meters tall, leading into a chamber about the size of the chapel in the old Coruscant Temple.

It was already open. A simple stone altar, empty of tools or sacrifices or writing, caked in ash, was all that lay within.

This, then, was where Plagueis had wrought his work, Qui-Gon thought, rooted to the uppermost stair, looking into the shadows. Had unleashed whatever weapon, whatever perversion of the Force he'd discovered, and with it trapped all the souls beneath him in living death.

For the Jedi, a humiliation, a tragedy, a great shame they'd spend the next four hundred years burying. For the Sith, devastation. Annihilation.

Transformation.

That much, she knew. Had known before she ever arrived here. The where she'd already gleaned from Jedi texts: the Great Scourge of Malachor, wrought by Sith greed. The who and why Anakin had told her, if whatever source he'd gotten them from had been correct: Darth Plagueis, a name she'd never encountered in a single Jedi text. A name who'd destroyed everything and everyone he knew on the altar of balance.

The what she'd discovered when she'd landed. Had spent the last five months fully, completely coming to understand.

But all that was mere fact. It wasn't knowledge. Wasn't the answer she'd come here for.

She needed to see it. To touch the doom Plagueis had let loose. To comprehend how what he'd done was even possible.

Ever since that moment, that rebalancing of the scales, the Jedi had been walking toward their end. Perhaps there was still time, perhaps she could still save them—if only she could understand.

Show me.

Pulling herself tall, Qui-Gon strode through the doorway, reached into the Force, and placed her hand upon the altar.

Once again, the guttering flame that is Qui-Gon's life dances in the darkness, illuminating its private corner of Malachor. As she surrenders her consciousness—turns her gaze not inward but outward, letting her self disappear—she can see strands stretch from the flame to reach across the galaxy. To Jesmyn. To Obi-Wan, to Dooku, to Anakin. To every speck of life on every world that is.

But on Malachor, her fire continues to burn alone.

Growling, she thrusts her perception deeper into the stone on which she stands—penetrating it down to the roots, from peak to crust, her senses burrowing through every flaw in every brick that forms a piece of the temple. It doesn't matter. There's nothing to latch onto, nothing to open herself to. No call in answer to her furious search.

The ziggurat is empty. Dry as a bone. There's no more indwelling of the Force here than there is in any one of the hollow skeletons of duracrete and steel that stretch toward Coruscant's sky.

There's nothing here at all.

Please oh please let there be something, I can't have come here for nothing, give me answers I promised I promised—

As she snaps back into her own head, Qui-Gon begins to sob.

Jedi Archives: Places of Power - Fragility
[fragment of historical Jedi writing found with a crashed Jedi starfighter among the Errivantus Asteroid Field, translated to modern Galactic Standard Basic]

As we further study the interaction between mechanisms and the Force, one thing has become clear: these pockets throughout the galaxy, these linchpins, these places of power . . .

They possess a certain fragility.

Do not assume their permanence. Do not take their presence for granted.

In our quest to nurture each convergence of the Force, to discover the undiscovered and even foster their creation, we must take great care. They came from nothing, and to nothing they can return. It is possible, under the right circumstances, to deplete a place of power.

Be cautious as you work.