Author's Note: I wrote the bulk of this fic before "Son of Dathomir" came out, and therefore you'll see some stuff that, like Kilindi, is no longer considered canon. However, I've taken that into account and will include more "Legends" material later. This fic exists, as it was written, between the two canons.
Bao-Tan and Talon were left behind. They had a corner to sit in, which Mufsat insisted was not a cell. They were free to go wherever they wanted, as long as it was not with Maul.
"We're killing time," Mufsat said directly to Talon, ignoring the jittering Bao-Tan, leaning in close as if to make the information confidential even though Maul was standing close beside them. "We have to wait to see what the Nightsisters to do. But for now, we're curious."
Hadokar shouldered into the group. He was carrying something - not a weapon, but some kind of machine. Maul saw a small gear, and then traced the line of the metal piece to discover that it was some kind of leg trap, used to capture a large animal. Hadokar also had a rope slung over his shoulder and a commlink in his hand. "Time to go."
"Is he really your son?" Bao-Tan said, and absolutely everyone looked at him. Maul, Talon, Mufsat, Hadokar - it seemed like the camp went still. No one snarled. Hadokar sighed.
"How much do you know about our people?
Bao-Tan stared at him.
"I have no sons," Hadokar said. "The women, my mates, may have sons. But none of them are allowed to be mine. Time to go." Now he sounded angry. Maul moved smoothly to his side, peering sidelong at the other man's eyes but very much doubting that he would answer any more questions after the way he had answered Bao-Tan. Maul wanted to ask whether that was true, or whether Hadokar simply did not want to stoop to answer the useless curiosities of a whelp like Bao-Tan.
But he did not. He followed Hadokar away from the others, out toward the gate. As they left, Maul heard Talon offer to tell Mufsat more about the Rebellion.
A few other hunters joined Maul and Hadokar's party, bringing with them traps and other large, unidentifiable devices slung over their shoulders. Maul still had his small blaster, but felt no need to show it off.
Hadokar was much taller than him, so Maul had to crane his neck to look up at the older man.
"You broke your legs?" Hadokar said without looking at him.
"I..." Maul tipped his head.
"You walk strangely." Hadokar was still staring at the gate, once flicking his gaze toward the gatehouse that Maul now saw was built against a wall like a remora latched onto its host. The other hunters, three Dathomirian Zabraks who had been silent so far, angled toward the gatehouse.
"My legs are mechanical," Maul said. "I lost them in a fight."
"Huh."
Hadokar stopped at the gatehouse. "We'll make our marks," he said. A man inside the gatehouse handed out a digital tablet. He was young, practically a boy, with yellow skin and no tattoos. Although he had no hair either, the shape of his body was skinny and androgynous.
The hunters got in line to make small pictograms with their fingers, complicated little symbols that were not quite words and not quite letters, on a grid laid out on the tablet. When Hadokar quirked his thumb at Maul, the boy inside the gatehouse drew the tablet inside, turned it around so that the hunting party could see it, and thumbprinted a third box. A square symbol with a pattern inside it appeared in white on the navy blue background.
Hadokar watched the last stamp with extra care. "That means visitor," he told Maul.
So the Nightsisters would know that people from offplanet had been here. Maul wondered how ofter the Nightsisters checked the roster. It didn't matter whether one of them visited once a day or once a week, thought - Yujan would be doing her job over there and would receive a yes or a no along the way.
"Do you have many visitors?" Maul said.
Hadokar said, "No."
They walked outside the gates. The other hunters looked around warily. Perhaps, Maul thought, they were enjoying their rare moment of freedom.
"You have questions," Hadokar said quietly.
'I don't,' Maul almost wanted to answer. He almost wanted to explain the feeling he had that the questions came not from him but from outside him, from whatever the Force had meant by killing his brother and turning his Master against him.
"Tell me abut my brothers."
"If you are my son, then Feral and Savage were my sons also. They don't let us know which sons belong to which fathers, Maul. I could only guess from the color of their skins." He flecked his splotched hands and turned them over and over. "They were a good team. Savage protected his brother. They were unusually close, but we all thought that Feral's reliance on his brother would cause him trouble one day. I guess it did."
"I don't know what happened to him," Maul said.
"Neither do any of us. One day, the women just took them away."
None of his words had any emotional resonance with Maul. The color of the sky and the smell of the sap of the leaves the hunting party crushed under their collective feet did not create any particular feeling either. Maul's childhood was Coruscant and Orsis, not this, and to think that he would have any greater emotional connection to Hadokar Surin than he had to Darth Sidious, when Sidious had been the one who fed and clothed him, should not, he realized with a slight surge of disappointment, come as a shock.
"Is that all?" Hadokar asked.
"What must I do to prove myself?"
Hadokar laughed. "This is mostly a delaying tactic. Don't attack any of us. Try to be slightly more than useless. There is no ritual. We wanted to separate you from your friends so that we could compare your stories." Hadokar stopped and sighed. Maul let the silence settle. It seemed like Hadokar was not used to speaking this much, and had to take a moment to realize that he actually needed to. "I would be lying if I said I wasn't more curious about you as a person than about your rebellion. But we will find out, won't we?"
"I have been working as an assassin," Maul said. Surely these men would not see that as any more egregious a crime than hunting for animals.
Hadokar shook his head. "Do you see much industry here? We are kept inside our fortress walls. The Nightsisters know who goes in and out. Sometimes one of us will find that we're better at hunting or sewing rends in clothes or telling stories, but we don't have an economy, Maul. I don't care what your job is. I care what you are like." He looked at Maul. "Hunting will show me that."
Maybe there was some ritual to this, Maul thought. Maybe it was ritual to tell the victim that there was nothing ritual about the process.
As they walked, Maul realized that this was the same trail that he had walked with his two rebel companions when he had first come here. They had landed right where the Nightbrothers baited their prey. He hoped that that didn't prove to be appropriate symbolism. The trees had both green and red leaves, in a combination of seasons that confused Maul. The hunters talked and grumbled among themselves, quietly.
He watched as Hadokar and the other men set the traps. They were large jaw-traps, which were set on the ground and covered with leaves. When an animal stepped into the circle of metal, the spring-loaded circle would clamp together, breaking the animal's leg or piercing it with the sharp teeth set into the circle. Some of the springs were different sizes, and some of them looked like they had come from starships. From what Hadokar said, the Nightbrothers did not have many items or opportunities to trade with outsiders, and would probably have had to learn to patch and repair their tools many times over instead of relying on a supply of new ones. The Nightsisters did note exactly stock a general store. That would explain some of Savage's simplicity, as well as the way that, although he did not understand starships, indeed considered them as magical as if they had operated by teleportation, he had a basic knowledge of mechanical things.
Maul looked around as the hunters quietly went about this work. He could hear roars and squarks in the distance, through the thick forest. There were beasts in these forests, large and small, tooth and fang and scales. The mandibles, the metatarsals. Maul bared his own teeth in response, remembering the snake he had fought on Bandomeer, the same as creatures he had fought before, in the depths of Coruscant or stranger places. He watched them set the traps, feeling patient instead of useless, watching the light from the yellow and orange lanterns and the fading day on the red skin of his father.
Just as the primitive animal traps were starting to take shape, something like a noose and something else like fangs, Maul sensed someone behind him. It was as clear as a vision, that someone was sneaking behind him. He moved slowly back into the forest, but the hunters were well trained and attuned - as soon as he stepped on a leaf three heads switched toward him.
"Someone is following us," he said.
He got three yellow-brown stares. His father looked from one to the other, confrontational, the skin between his eyes wrinkling. He curled his lip, showing one yellowing, flat tooth.
Maul felt the skin on his back prickle, gooseflesh rising although he couldn't sense anything and did not have any fear to use to amplify his Force sense.
The moment he glanced behind him, an arm snaked around his neck and he was jerked backwards.
The other three Zabraks instantly turned, but two were bent over setting traps and bait on the ground, and Hadokar had no weapon. The arm was thick; Maul could feel the bulge of muscle against his throat. The person to whom the arm belonged was smaller than him, though, which made it easier for them to throw him off balance. As soon as he pressed against the person, he knew that it was a woman. She pulled him backward into the forest quickly, using a large red plant as cover, but as soon as they were behind the plant Maul dug his heels into the dirt and got ready to try to duck under her arm.
The woman threw something with her left arm; he saw it whip past his peripheral vision, but still could not sense what she was going to do next with the Force. Her presence was calm and fierce, but, Maul could tell now, she was actively preventing him from foreseeing her next move - she had been trained by someone in the higher arts of the Force.
She had thrown a smoke grenade. It exploded on the other side of the clearing, and Maul could sense the hunters looking toward it. Hadokar would find him in a moment if he didn't go completely off track, though, Maul knew.
The woman whispered, "I think I'm your mother."
Maul stilled, and the witch laughed.
"Come with me," she said, "and I'll answer your questions about your family."
Fear introduced itself into the woman's distinct presence, and Maul knew then that she wasn't sure that her words would be sufficiently intriguing to stop him from fighting her. She could be anyone. She might or might not know what he had been searching for this whole time.
But her wrist, where he could see a sliver of skin between a black sleeve and a black glove, was red.
Maul just grunted, but it was enough assent. She let him go. He spun around. She jumped backward a long way, landing beside a tree, gesturing with a wide sweep of her arm for him to come with her. "Hurry. I'll bring you back when we're finished."
Hadokar was close beside them now. Maul could see another smoke grenade on the woman's belt. He grabbed it with the Force, sending it sailing across the forest into his left hand, then spun, found and thumbed the activation stun, and whipped the grenade into the clearing. It would have nearly hit Hadokar in the face. Maul heard a strangled shout.
The woman turned and bounded through the forest, and Maul followed her.
He felt clumsy next to her. She clearly knew the terrain, knew which piles of leaves were stable and which hid lower ground, knew which angle of rocks to spring off of. She was dressed almost entirely in black, with black strips of cloth wrapped around her legs over her pants, and her head hooded. Maul had caught a glimpse of red skin and brown eyes before she turned away. He could not yet see whether she had any horns, or in what pattern.
She brought him to a hovel in the woods. It appeared to be made out of sticks cemented together with mud. He was almost out of breath by the time they arrived, simply by how much attention he had had to pay to his footing to move through the forest at that speed. They had left Hadokar and his gang far behind, but Maul could still dimly sense them, and resolved to keep track of them in the Force just in case he would have to deal with an impromptu reunion of his parents.
"What do you want from me?" he asked as the woman ducked into the hovel.
He followed her into a workshop. A hammer and mortar and pestle sat on a tiny workbench next to the skull of something long-jawed with predatory teeth. Piles and scraps of cloth teetered throughout the house. There were piles of things all around, but as far as living went Maul could only see the workbench, a fire pit on the far wall which was now filled only with ashes, and a red couch covered with a red, orange, and brown woven blanket.
The Force surged, and the woman pulled the hammer to her from across the room. It smacked into her right palm. With her left hand she pulled down her hood, revealing short black hair and Iridonian horns. Closer, Maul could see the lines on her face, but she had a pert chin and lean jowls that made her look younger than the at least sixty standard years she had to be.
"You can use the Force." he said. "How were you not taken by the Jedi?"
She looked at him quizzically, seeming not to understand the word. Maul was surprised that the Jedi would not send anyone to search for Force-sensitives on such a Force-rich planet on Dathomir, but he moved on from that topic, next asking, "What about my father? Was he...like us?"
"Hadokar cannot use the Force," she said. "Few of the men can."
"But you hid from me in the Force," Maul said. His voice was getting quieter now, more threatening. He wondered whether he would have to kill her to get back to Talon and the other rebels. He wondered whether it would be worth the trouble. She might refuse to answer his questions. But surely, in this matriarchal society, his civilized mother would know more than his barbarian father. On the other hand, this meant she was more likely to lie. Even quieter still, he said, "Do you expect me to trust you?"
"Have you trusted anyone, lately?" she said, and he almost shook his head before he realized that she was faking. He could sense the lack of prophecy. She was just throwing out phrases and seeing what stuck, now.
"Explain yourself," he said.
She narrowed her eyes. "I see that you won't be distracted. There is a reason why I found you. We were warned that you were coming, because others were likewise warned."
His mother set something on the table. It was a tiny projector, more high tech than he had expected to see in this hovel that was practically a parody of a witch-doctor's home.
She showed him a hologram. In the flickering blue image, Maul saw a man walking at the head of a column of stormtroopers. A cape flowed behind him, and he had long legs and a barrel chest, but there was something inhuman about his shape. Maul had to fight to see the recognizable features: the curve of the man's back as the cape flapped away from him, the short reverse curve of the neck. The head was covered with a helmet forged roughly in the shape of human features, but an unrecognizably militant and almost animal-like shape was conveyed even more clearly by the hooked ridge hanging down from the back of the helmet, the black bug eyes like a pilot's goggles, and, strangest of all, the severe triangular shape of the wall that passed for the person's mouth.
Maul wished that he could sense the man's Force presence, but not even the strongest Sith or Jedi could do that when the image he was looking it was a recording. If it was even a minute old, it would no longer match up to who the person in the image really was any more, and would be useless for identification by Force sense. Whoever this man was now, he had learned and experienced more things, even if they took just seconds of his life, that would change the sight/touch/taste/sound/smell of his Force presence.
"Who is that?" Darth Maul narrowed his eyes. It was the pillar man, or as close as he had ever seen in the galaxy.
"Darth Vader," his mother said.
"I know that name."
"You follow the news?"
Regardless of whether she was his mother or not he was not going to tell her of the half-formed sensation he had had during his whole time on Glee Anselm, of a desire to stay away from the Empire. "Something like that," he said quietly.
"He is here," she said. "On this planet."
"I must find him."
"For yourself, or for the Rebellion?"
"For..." Maul paused, wondering how she knew what the Rebellion even was. Half of Yujan's people didn't.
"I know that your friends from the galaxy outside this planet want us to join the Rebellion. Don't fear that you are somehow ruining it by becoming an accidental diplomat. Yujan doesn't know you're here."
"You know her?"
"I met with her at our homestead. A lot of us did."
"How many witches are there?"
"Dozens," his mother said. "We all gathered, not just the regional council."
"You recovered after the Separatists attacked," Maul said.
"We will not recover fully until the next generation. We have had to be very careful," Now she looked angry, the skin around her face wrinkling.
"That is not important right now. The important thing here is that this meeting, between us, has nothing to do with the meeting between Yujan and the tribal leaders. Do you understand?"
Maul nodded.
"Nor is it about you and I as family."
"We can agree on that," Maul said.
"You need to be aware of what Darth Vader is."
He was surprised that she was so eloquent, and did not stop to think about what that meant about his assumptions about the people who lived in the wild forest of Dathomir. He did not think he was missing any information about what Darth Vader was. He was another dark Force user, probably plucked from another hovel. Maybe Sidious had found the Chosen One, and Maul was due to pledge allegiance at his feet...although he did not want to be a stranger's servant.
"He is a human," the Nightsister his mother said. "He comes from a land where men rule, where they are taught that other people and other species are beneath them. This assumption makes them strong, but also cruel. Here, the women are strong and cruel. So we understand."
Maul waited. She didn't say anything more. "Is that all you know?" he asked.
"Yes. His mind is strange."
She had told him nothing that Maul did not already know about the pillar man - but she had been incredibly important in identifying the pillar man. He was a Sith, and one who had risen fast in the ranks if he had already gained the Darth title from Sidious. A few moments after thinking that Maul felt jealousy start to rankle within him. Maybe this was the Chosen One.
And maybe he wasn't of Sidious' lineage at all, but simply a self-styled warlord who had chosen to come to Dathomir because it was small and Force-rich. No one had outright said that Darth Vader was associated with the Empire - no one who would actually know what the Empire was.
Maul shook his head, but now his first priority was to get out of here and face Vader himself. "Do you know where he is?"
"He's coming soon. Look at the trees in the holo." Again, she was assuming that Maul knew something that he did not. She pointed at the foliage, moving her long fingers from branch to branch. "These grow near the Nightbrothers' enclave."
"I must find him," Maul said. He almost stood up. He had wasted too much time here. But...she was his mother. She did not know what her sons' lives had been like, and either did not care or resisted asking. He had a feeling it was the latter. She had self-discipline beyond even his own, and it had not been trained into her except by the loss of her sons. "What is your name?" he asked.
"Zanja."
"Did you have any daughters?"
She looked at him shrewedly, wondering about the change of topic, then relaxed, realizing that he was genuinely curious and making conversation. "No," she said.
So all her children had been sent away to become breeding stock. He could understand why she had become sad and bitter.
"I let you go," she said. "Not because you were boys, although that was part of it. I let you go because it was my job to give to the next generation. That is what we are raised to do, as Nightsisters - prophesy and give. You..." She peered closely at him. "I think you prophesy and take. Both are needed in the world."
"I do not prophesy," he said.
"I missed you," she said. "But I knew you were going to a better life than Feral and Savage were, and I knew that you would become something stronger than either them or myself.
His mother bent over the fire and watched him, golden specks in her brown eyes, orange light reflecting on her cheeks and forehead, as he left. "Go," she said. "Maybe one day you can come back. For now, Darth Vader is descending on your rebel friends, and you're curious. I can see it. Go."
He stood up, brushed the dust from his knees (how was Zanja not covered in dust? The hovel seemed to shed it constantly) and left, being careful not to step on any of her crowded possessions on the way.
As soon as he got more than a few meters into the forest he figured out why his father hadn't tracked him. The Nightbrothers had other things to deal with. Smoke was rising over the tops of the trees.