LIVING HISTORY
by ardavenport
= = = Part 17
Obi-Wan woke. It was early morning, the sky outside the thin white curtains was brightened by the coming day and Maarzim's largest moon hanging over the forested hills along with one of the smaller ones over the plain. He and Qui-Gon had trained and meditated for the rest of the previous day and part of the evening, stopping only to eat and then wash before retiring early to opposite sleeping areas in the apartment. But while Obi-Wan settled down to sleep, he saw the outline of his Master sitting up in meditation.
The air in the apartment was fresh and cool, but warm under the coverings. It was tempting to stay, but Obi-Wan threw them off and rose. Bare feet on the cold wood floor, he went to the fresher. He saw his Master sitting on the bench at the end of the sleeping platform, head up, eyes closed, meditating. Exactly in the same place he had been the night before.
While he went about his usual morning business in the fresher Obi-Wan wondered if it was likely that his Master had meditated the whole night. Jedi Masters certainly did that. But it was just as likely that he retired late and rose early. He had no doubt about what Qui-Gon was contemplating.
It had to be about Darth Yarr's holocron.
Qui-Gon must have learned something about it during his meeting with the Creative Committee. But there had been no compromise in his stern expression the day before. Obi-Wan knew that to even hint about the holocron in passing would be disobedient. It was rumored that the Jedi Archives had Sith artifacts, live ones, not broken pieces, in their deepest and most secure vaults and that only the Jedi Council and the most senior Masters were ever allowed to view them. Qui-Gon was a Master senior enough to be included among them. In fact, he almost certainly was since he had been assigned to this mission.
Obi-Wan finished and slipped out of the fresher. The room was growing lighter, the sky noticeably bluer. His Master had not moved. He quietly padded back to his side of the apartment and sat cross-legged on the padded bench at the end of his own sleeping platform. Straightening, he relaxed his shoulders, feeling every part of his body. If the Force would give him an answer about Darth Yarr's holocron, he would gladly accept it.
He closed his eyes and cleared his mind.
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Sebo arrived to tend the garden as Obi-Wan finished putting away the cleaned dishes from their breakfast. Wearing her usual pale yellow pants and long shirt and scarf, hands clasped before her, she inclined her head to them.
"Good morning, Qui-Gon. I hope you are well. And I hope that you might join me in the garden. I thought we might discuss . . ." Her eyes shifted toward Obi-Wan, standing by the table, watching with interest. " . . . Director Tykon's offer for you to participate in the History Play."
Obi-Wan's eyebrows rose.
"There is nothing to discuss," Qui-Gon rose from his chair, "Since I will not be participating."
Sebo shrugged. "I told Director Tykon that I would ask. I did not promise him any results."
He looked at his Padawan. "Obi-Wan, go downstairs. You should be able to exercise there."
Obi-Wan drew in a breath, but stopped whatever he was about to say. He bowed his head. "Yes, Master." First going to his sleeping area to retrieve his robe, he went to the lift. Neither Jedi Master or Maarzim Venerate said anything until he was gone, the lift hatch closed and sealed flush to the floor.
"I have been wondering about what happened yesterday." Sebo strolled toward the table and paused to touch Qui-Gon's robe, hanging off of his chair.
"You have a question," he stated.
Her eyes looked up at him. "Yes." She moved beyond the table and clasped her hands before her before speaking. "You saw something, when I revealed Darth Yarr's lightsaber. And I am burning to know what it was."
He looked her up and down, but did not answer.
"Is it something that Jedi do not discuss with outsiders?" she persisted.
"Yes."
She waited for more, but he saw no reason to go on. Her face clouded with annoyance. She went to a food prep area, slid open a cabinet and took out a basket. "I can guess." She marched out to the garden. Qui-Gon glanced down at his robe, running his hand on the soft, textured fabric before leaving it behind to follow Sebo outside. While there were wide patches of blue sky visible, the sun was overcast with gray and white clouds hanging low over the forested mountans.
His boots clumped heavily on the boards of the verdanda. Coming around a tall, dark green and thickly-leafed bush, he found her, a simple tool in hand, snipping dead leaves into a bucket, the food-gathering basket laid aside.
"It would not be wise to speculate."
"Why?" Still annoyed, she lowered her garden tool.
"Because you will be wrong."
"Really? I don't think so." She claimed a few more withered leaves for her bucket. "I know you felt something. I saw it in your eyes. They were almost wild. And they were not seeing me."
"Did you see anything?"
The tool went down again. "No," she admitted. "I saw nothing. I felt . . . nothing. At least nothing other than what I usually feel when I speak the Mystery."
"Do you do it often?"
"No." She smiled at him. "Only for specific occasions. The investiture of Venerates to the Castle when we reveal the Mysteries. Yarr's relics are hardly the only Mystery sealed down below, though her Mystery is only revealed to senior Venerates. And, of course, on the year anniversary of Darth Yarr's fall. And Nirid's reclaimation."
Qui-Gon shook his head. "That is not possible for a Sith."
"Why?"
"The Sith follow the Dark Path to their own destruction, after they have destroyed the lives of many others. They don't just take on a new name when they fall to the Dark Side; the people they once were are consumed and remade into Dark Lords. They are changed forever once the lust for power is burned into them.
"So you think that this," she gestured to herself, "my life," and to the garden and apartment, "is all just a myth? Do you think that little of me now?"
"Yes," he answered directly."While it might be a faniciful and romantic tale that a Sith could be reclaimed by love. It could not happen. And this fantasy that you perpetuate is offensive to me."
He looked around at the peaceful green garden, reached up to touch the long slender leaves of an overhanging plant and the flowers in white cluster. "Anyone who goes down the Dark Path leaves a trail of destruction in their wake, lives ended and twisted in worse ways than death. A Sith gains strength from subjugating and destroying others and they desire that more than their own lives." He towered over Sebo who had backed up against the plant beds. "To commemorate any Sith, as you do, is to also commemorate their acts." He backed up, allowing her an escape if she wished it. "No Sith would, or could forske their desire for more and more power to live a peaceful life here."
Unmoving, she glared back up at him. "Not even if they were exiled as a prisoner? That even if she still desired her old power, that Nirid no longer had a choice?"
Qui-Gon shook his head. "No. This place could never hold a Sith."
She looked very skeptical. "And why not?"
"Because it could never hold a Jedi."
She quirked a smile up at him. He couldn't help smiling back. Then he inhaled deeply, throwing his head back, feeling the Force, a great, rising stream of light rising up through his body. Effortlessly, he swung his arms, down and up and the light carried him high into the air. He spread his arms wide, letting it carry him up and around and down, his feet landing, his knees bending, the Force placing him exactly where he needed to be.
Qui-Gon looked up at the tower. High overhead, amidst the bushes and the rows of decoractive and dangerous spikes that ringed the tower, Sebo stared down, her mouth open, her eyes wide.
Qui-Gon whirled about, the Force carrying him again, practically dancing over the roof of the Castle. One. Two. Three. Four steps. A final leap into the air. His arms out again, he pulled his legs into a tight roll, going around and around until the flow of light pulled him upright again, his boots solidly landed on stone, again, his knees bending, the Force easily absorbing the impact.
"Aaah!"
Four very surprised young people in loose, pastel pants and tunics leaped back from the Jedi who had just landed in their midst. Others beyond them on the other garden paths stared at him in shock.
Qui-Gon again looked up to the tower, but Sebo was gone.
He strode toward the large open doors leading into Tamwa Hall. Crew and cast member from the Play jumped out of his way. Even with the quarantine and the delay in rehersals, they were allowed out for exercise. His Padawan met him at the door.
"Master!"
He held up a warning hand, not slowing down. "Stay here, Obi-Wan." But a few steps later he slowed, stopped and went back. He stood close, towering over the young man.
"Obi-Wan, if I have not returned by sundown, and if you cannot locate me, you are to inform the Jedi Council immediately and have them send someone to assist you. Do you understand?"
Eyes as wide as the dancers' Obi-Wan's mouth opened.
"Do you understand, Obi-Wan?" he demanded.
Obi-Wan's mouth closed and he responded with short, jerky head bow. "Yes, Master."
Qui-Gon whirled around again, striding across the hall to the large staircase up to the gallery, through a doorway, down a corridor to a spiral staircase. He went round and round to the base below ground. He turned left to a blank wall and raised his hand, pulling it left to right and it was as if it touched the rough surface, the Force felt so solid on his palm. The mechanisms inside the wall surrendered and it smoothly slid aside. He entered.
The gray door at the end of the stone corridor yielded to him as well. He descened, down and down, the long echoless stairways, the lights flitting on and off as he went. Finally reaching the bottom, he strode down the narrow corridor to the anteroom to the Hall of Mysteries. He pointed as he approached and the heavy doors parted, the stone as thick as the breadth of his shoulders, the lights coming on transformed the blackness inside into the simple sacred room from the day before. Going to the center of the patterned floor, he turned around, raising his arm, sweeping a complete circle. The walls were featureless between the columns, but a rough heat touched his palm and the panel concealing Darth Yarr's artifacts slid aside. He stepped up to it carefully. The compartment was a simple stone cube recess, the metal tray of artifacts on the bottom. He reached out, fingers extended toward the lightsaber.
He closed his hand, lowered it and stepped back to the center of the room. He went to his knees. Closing his eyes, he raised his hands, palms out. The tray and its contents rose up and out of the recess and floated to him, the Force a sheen of power, extending out from him. But the touch of the Force on it was no different than on the floor or walls around him. The ancient Sith artifacts were more ordinary and unremarkable than the Hall of Mysteries itself. The floor and walls had very slightly different hues of age and use.
The tray came to rest on the floor before him as the sounds of running footsteps intruded on his senses, descending and getting louder.
"Qui-Gon Jinn!" Sebo's voice cracked over a high pitch of outrage. He did not move or respond to her in any way. She gasped, panting, her feet slapping the floor as she stopped.
"Aaah!" He sob of anguish was followed the grinding of heavy stone on stone, the doors to the Hall of Mysteries closing. When he opened his eyes and turned his head to her, she had her back to the door, now looking the same as the fixed walls of the chamber.
"How DARE you!" Her outrage burst from her in a near shriek. She pushed away from the walls, her pale yellow scarf disarrayed and hanging loose over her shoulders. "To just come in here as you please? And you left the doors open!" She waved back at the closed entryway. "If I did anything like that I would rightfully be cast out! Defrocked and forbidden to ever set foot in any of the Living History Lands. Have my name and whole life banished from any archive to leave my memory to wither and die to ashes." She shook her hand at him. "You have taken too much liberty of our hospitality." Arms extended, she dove forward.
Fzz-zzzz-tttt!
Qui-Gon's lightsaber was off his belt and activated in a flash. He did not even extend his arm, but she threw herself backward away from the tray of artifacts and from the deadly green blade pointing at her.
"It is no less a sacrilege for you than it is for me to see a Sith holocron venerated, concealed and hoarded intact." He flicked off the lightsaber and clipped it back to his belt. Yarr's holocron was nestled on black cloth between the mask and the lightsaber hilt. "They are too dangerous to be in the possession of non-Jedi."
Glaring scornfully down at him, Sebo stayed back. "You have seen so many of them, have you?"
Qui-Gon lifted his eyes to her. "I have."
The derision drained from her face.
"Are you surprised?" he asked. Raising his arm, he slowly passed his hand, palm down, over the holocron. "The Jedi Order has Sith holocrons in the most secure parts of our Archives." He pinned her with a hard stare. "This is something that is not spoken of outside the Jedi Order. And only then among the Council and senior Masters. I would expect you to keep this confidence."
She tidied her scarf around her neck, put her hands together, palms pressed to each other. "I am the vessel of the sacred past, the Mystery that I guard with my life."
Qui-Gon nodded, accepting her vow. "A Sith makes a holocron for the same reasons that a Jedi does. To preserve knowledge. But not just data, it holds the essence of what they know, and what they are. And imbued with the Force, they are alive in their own way. They can only be made, un-made and accessed by those skilled in the Jedi arts.
"A Sith holocron contains all the desire, the ambition, the evil that drives its maker. The Dark Side of the Force is a path to unspeakable power that leaves no room for compassion or love. It is the antithesis of them. It is a power that needs to dominate and twists the thoughts of its possessor to delight in achieving more and greater power. All other beings become insignificant at best, useful tools possibly, or fodder for the Sith's ambition, blind to any other pleasure but the power of the Dark Side, but always craving more."
Yarr's holocron wobbled before rising up in the air under the Jedi's hand.
"That is what I felt yesterday in this Hall. For one instant, before it vanished." He had averted his eyes from it before but now he dared to look deep into it's center. The edges of its cube shape were sealed in tarnished gold metalloid. Silver lines and etching spidered out in patterns over parts of gold-tinted, semi-tanslucent sides, stained with black soot on the inside as if a circuit within had burned out. It was clearly very old, but now, examining it closely, he felt nothing from it, as if it were merely a decorative bauble.
"Did you see her?" Sebo whispered loudly, stepping forward in the silent, sealed room. "I know that Jedi see visions." She leaned close, her voice urgent. "Did you see her? Did you see Nirid?" Her tone held the yearning of decades of privation and isolation.
Qui-Gon shook his head. "No. I did not see the past. Only the Dark Side." He raised his other hand and slowly brought it up inder the holocron while lowering the hand above. They got closer and closer to the holocron until he hesitated, just short of actually touching it. He let out a long exhale . . . .
. . . . it dropped into his palm.
It was as cool and dense as a stone, metal and smooth ceramic. He closed his eyes and stroked the top of it, feeling the fine lines of edges, angles and faces. He inhaled, the Force solid and calm within him; slow and dliberate, it spread up to his arm, his hand, the fingers touching the holocron that warmed under his touch.
He gave it nothing. His fingertips on the outside felt the barrenness on the inside. It was well worn, a hard, fixed center, smooth as if melted, but ordinary and inert. Drawing the Force tighter into himself, more discipline than power, he felt Sebo, very close to him, intensly alive. And outward from her, the room and far above the Castle and its inhabitants.
The holocron gave him nothing in return.
He inhaled deeply again. And extended himself down through his fingers as he did when he held his lightsaber. The holocron became warm in his hands. But the only life in it was his own reflection.
He opened his eyes. A gentle blue-green glow emanated from the center of the holocron, shining on Sebo's face. Sighing, he let it go and the light faded.
"There is nothing here." He put the holocron back in its place on the tray. "I do not understand." It was the same as his meditations, late into the night and early that morning, he could sense no trace of that flash of evil, as if it had never been there at all.
Looking disappointed, Sebo straightened, her eyes on the tray on the floor before the Jedi.
"The Jedi Archives has Sith holocrons far older than this one and they are still very active and very dangerous." He sat back with an exhale of frustration. "The power of the Sith does not fade this completely in time." He looked up at Sebo who smiled serenely down at him. "It feels as if this holocron was never used. I do not understand."
"Then perhaps, Qui-Gon, Nirid and Keths' love was stronger than you thought after all."
Shaking his head, Qui-Gon climbed to his feet. Then he bent to retrieve the tray. Sebo stopped him.
"I should do it."
He stepped back while she picked it up and went to the recess in the stone wall. But she stopped, and narrowed her eyes at him.
"Please, Qui-Gon, Turn around."
He tilted his head at her, a bit surprised by the futileness of her request.
"Please," she repeated.
Sighing, he turned around, obliging her ritual. He heard the stone close up on Yarr's artifacts. She rejoined him in the center of the floor.
"I regret that you are so offended by me and our History. Why do you hate them so much?"
"I do not hate them," he snapped back without thinking. And then immediately he regretted the obvious contradiction between his words and tone. Anger and hate were the tools of the Dark Side. "At least, I strive not to.
"But the peaceful life you lead in your tower is a complete contradiction to everything that the Sith were. I cannot believe that you comprehend anything of their true nature. So, I find this pretense that you maintain here to be . . ." he paused, searching for a kinder word, but none came to him, " . . . pathetic."
She half smiled, pretensiously wise. "You don't know everything."
She went toward the door. Raising his arm, he waved his hand, the Force easily pushing the immese door aside. Sebo whirled around to glare back at him.
"Sebo!"
Custodian Tykon rushed forward. And then stopped at the threshold as if there was a force field. She fell to her knees, rushing through an entry prayer at barely intelligible speed. Stunningly spry for a woman of her great bulk, she leapt up again, her huge bosom bouncing.
"Sebo!"
Her fellow Venerate smiled, just as amused by Custodian Tykon's performance as Qui-Gon was.
"Are you, are you well? Did, did - - " her voice firmed up, going low and ominous remarkably quickly as she glared at Qui-Gon "did anything happen?"
"No," she answered, the picture of innocence. "At least . . . . nothing that did not need to happen."
Eyes flicking around the room, Tykon looked unsatisfied. "Then we will leave."
The two women took positions at the open door, Tykon's face stern while Sebo grinned. Qui-Gon cooperated better with this part of the ritual. He fell to his knees and accepted their permission to leave. Once the doors to the Hall of Mysteries were closed, Qui-Gon preceded them up the long stairs, the two women following.
"I was told," Custodian Tykon began, "that there was some kind of disturbance."
"There was a bit," Sebo confessed. "Qui-Gon needed to discuss some Jedi mysteries that could not be spoken anywhere else. And that cannot be shared."
"Well, I suppose that would be proper," Tykon grumbled, trudging up the stairs, She raised her voice. "And I suppose that it is proper for Jedi to leap off of their Temple on Coruscant as well."
Built up over thousands of years by many, many generations of Jedi, the Temple was a mammoth structure that dwarfted the Naardin Castle, but still, jumping from its parapits or towers was not an unusual occurance though it was generally frowned upon.
"Yes," Qui-Gon agreed with a grin that the women behind him could not see, "And it is quite exhilarating."
= = = End Part 17