Star Wars: Path of Destruction: A Novel of the Old Republic (22 page)

“We all have things in our past we would rather not revise he replied without stopping. “I knew you would tell me when you were ready.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back as he continued to knead her shoulders.

“My Master was a Cathar,” she said softly. “Master Handa. I studied under him for almost as long as I can remember; my parents gave me over to the order when I was just a toddler.”

“I’ve heard the Jedi care little for the bonds that hold families together.”

“They only care about the Force,” she admitted after a moment’s consideration. “Worldly attachments-friends, family, lovers-cloud the mind with emotion and passion.”

Bane chuckled, a deep, low sound she felt thrumming through the tips of his fingers. “Passion leads to the dark side. Or so I’ve heard.”

“It wasn’t a joke to the Jedi. Especially not to Master Handa. The Cathar are known as a hot-blooded species. He was always warning me and Kiel about the dangers of giving in to our emotions.”

“Kiel?”

“Kiel Charny. Another of Handa’s Padawans. We often trained together; he was only a year older than me.”

“Another Cathar?” Bane asked.

“No, Kiel was human. Over the years we became close. Very close.”

The slight increase in the pressure of his touch told her that Bane had taken in the full meaning of her words. She pretended not to notice. “Kiel and I were lovers,” she continued. “The Jedi are forbidden from forming such attachments. The Masters fear it will cloud the mind with dangerous emotions.”

“Were you really attracted to him, or just to the idea of disobeying your Master?”

She thought about it for a long time. “A bit of both, perhaps,” she said finally. “He was handsome enough. Strong in the Force. There was an undeniable attraction.”

Bane only grunted in response. His hands had stopped massaging, and were now resting on her neck.

“Once we became lovers it didn’t take long for Master Handa to find out. Despite all his preaching about controlling emotion, I could tell he was furious. He commanded us to set our feelings aside and forbade us from continuing our relationship.”

Bane snorted his contempt. “Did he really think it would be that simple?”

“The Jedi see emotion as part of our bestial nature. They believe we must transcend our baser instincts. But I know passion is what makes us strong. The Jedi only fear it because it makes their Padawans unpredictable and difficult to control.

“Master Handa’s reaction made me realize the truth. Everything the Jedi believed about the Force was a perversion of reality, a lie. I finally understood I would never reach my full potential under Master Handa. That was the moment I turned my back on the order and began planning my defection to the Sith.”

“What about Kiel Charny?” He was rubbing her shoulders once again, but his hands were a little rougher now.

“I asked him to come with me,” she confessed. “I told him we had a choice to make: the Jedi, or each other. He chose the Jedi.”

The tension in Bane’s hands eased ever so slightly. “Is he dead?”

She laughed. “Did I kill him, do you mean? No, he was still alive the last I heard. He may have died battling the Sith on Ruusan since then, but I didn’t feel the urge to kill him myself.”

“Then I guess your feelings for him weren’t as strong as you thought.”

Githany stiffened. It might have been a joke, but she knew there was truth in Bane’s words. Kiel had been convenient. Though there was a physical attraction, he had become more than a friend mostly because of her situation: studying day and night with him under Master Handa; the pressure of living up to the unrealistic ideals of a Jedi; the stress of being trapped in the seemingly endless war on Ruusan.

Bane ringed her neck with his hands, his touch firm but not tight. He leaned down and whispered in her ear, causing her to shiver at the warmth and closeness of his breath. “When you finally betray me, I hope you care enough to try to kill me yourself.”

She jumped up from the chair, slapping his hands away and spinning to face him. For a split second she saw a self-satisfied expression on his face. Then it was gone, replaced by a look of apologetic concern.

“I’m sorry, Githany. It was just a joke. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I opened up a painful part of my past, Bane,” she said warily. “It’s not something I want to make light of.”

“You’re right,” he said. “I … I’ll go.”

She studied him as he turned and made his way out of the archives. He seemed genuinely sorry for what he’d said, as if he regretted hurting her. The perfect situation to give her the emotional leverage she had been looking for … if only she hadn’t seen that flicker of something else.

Once he was gone she shook her head, trying to make sense of the situation. Bane looked like a great, hulking brute of a man, but there was wisdom and cunning beneath his heavy brow and bald skull.

She thought back on the last twenty minutes, trying to determine when she had lost control of the situation. There had been sparks between them, just as she had intended. Bane had done nothing to hide his desire for her; she’d sensed the heat as he caressed her neck. Still, something had gone wrong with her carefully planned seduction.

Was it possible she actually felt something for him?

Githany unconsciously bit her lower lip. Bane was powerful, intelligent, and bold. She needed him if she was going to eliminate Sirak. But he had a knack for surprising her. He kept challenging and defying her expectations.

She had to admit she found him intriguing in spite of this. Or perhaps because of it. Bane was everything Kiel hadn’t been: ambitious, impulsive, unpredictable. Despite her best intentions, some small part of her was drawn to him. And that, more than anything else, made him a very dangerous ally.

High atop the temple of Korriban, beneath the light of a blood-red moon, two figures stood poised in silhouette: one human, one Twi’lek. A chill wind swept across the roof, but though both combatants had stripped off their robes to fight bare-chested, neither shivered from the cold. They might have been statues, still and hard as stone, were it not for the smoldering heat in their eyes.

Without warning the figures lunged, moving so swiftly it would have been impossible for an observer to say which one acted and which reacted. They met with a thunderous crash of their savage blades.

Even as he desperately fought to hold his ground, Bane was studying Kas’im carefully. He was acutely aware of every feint and strike, analyzing and memorizing each block, parry, and counterstrike. The Blademaster had said his time would be better spent focusing on improving his own technique, but Bane was determined to negate Sirak’s advantage by absorbing all he could from the Twi’lek’s double-bladed fighting style.

The exchange lasted well over a minute, with no break or lull in the action, until Bane spun away to regroup. He had sensed his attacks slipping into an unconscious pattern, and predictability was death against an opponent as skilled as Kas’im. He had fallen into that trap once the previous week. He wasn’t about to make the mistake twice.

The two combatants faced each other once again, motionless save for their eyes, which flicked and darted in search of any sign they could use to gain some slight advantage.

Over the past month their training sessions had become less frequent but far more intense. Part of Bane believed Kas’im actually found value in sparring against him: the Blademaster had to grow bored crossing blades with apprentices and students so far beneath his own level.

Of course, Bane had yet to land a telling blow against his Master. But each time they sparred he felt as if he was getting closer and closer to a victory. Kas’im’s form and technique were flawless, but Bane was aware that the slightest miscue was all the opening he needed.

Both fighters were breathing hard; the session had gone far longer than any before it. Their battles typically ended when the Twi’lek landed a scoring blow, disabling one of his student’s limbs with the burning pelko venom. On this night, however, Kas’im had yet to land such a blow.

Kas’im charged forward, and the clang and clash of their weapons rang out over the rooftop in a sharp staccato rhythm. They stood toe-to-toe, hammering away at each other, neither giving ground or quarter. Ultimately Bane was forced to disengage, breaking off the melee before the Blademaster’s superior skill broke down his defenses.

This time it was Bane who initiated the charge. Once again their training sabers rained down, and once again they broke apart with both combatants unscathed. This time, however, the outcome of the battle was no longer in doubt.

Bane hung his head and lowered his blade in an admission of defeat. The last pass he had held Kas’im off, but with each swing of his saber he had grown a microsecond slower. Fatigue was setting in. Even the Force couldn’t keep his muscles fresh forever, and the seemingly endless duel had finally taken too great a toll. The Blademaster, on the other hand, had lost almost none of his speed and sharpness.

Bane doubted he would get through the next pass, and even if he did, the one after that would bring certain defeat. It was inevitable, so there was no point in pressing to the point that he actually suffered the pain of getting hit.

Kas’im seemed momentarily surprised at the concession, then nodded in acceptance of the victory. “You were smart to recognize that the battle was over, but I expected you to fight on until the end. There is little honor in surrender.”

“Honor is a fool’s prize,” Bane replied, reciting a passage from one of the volumes he had recently read in the archives. “Glory is of no use to the dead.”

After pondering his words for a moment, the Blademaster nodded. “Well said, my young apprentice.”

Bane wasn’t surprised that Kas’im didn’t recognize the quote. The words had been written by Darth Revan nearly three millennia earlier. The Masters were as lax as the students when it came to studying the ancient writings. It seemed the Academy had turned its back on the past champions of the dark side.

True, Revan had eventually gone back over to the Jedi and the light after being betrayed by Darth Malak. Still, Revan and Malak had come within a hairsbreadth of wiping out the Republic. It was foolish to discount all they accomplished, and even more foolish to ignore the lessons that could be learned from them. Yet Qordis and the other Masters stubbornly refused to spend any time studying the history of the Sith order. Fortunately for Bane, it was a trait they passed along to their students.

It had given him an undeniable advantage over the other apprentices. If nothing else, it had shown him the true potential of the dark side. The archives were filled with accounts of incredible feats of power: cities laid waste, worlds brought low, entire star systems swallowed up when a Dark Lord caused the sun to go nova. Some of these tales were likely exaggerations, myths that had grown with each retelling before being set down on parchment. Yet they had their roots in truth, and that truth had inspired Bane to push himself farther and faster than he otherwise would have dared.

Thinking of Revan and the Sith Lords of the past brought to mind another question that had been troubling him for some time. “Master, why don’t the Sith use the Darth title anymore?”

“It was Lord Kaan’s decision,” the Twi’lek told him as he toweled off. “The Darth tradition is a relic of the past. It represents what the Sith once were, not what we are now.”

Bane shook his head, dissatisfied with the answer. “There has to be more to it than that?’ he said, stooping to retrieve the robe he had cast off at the start of their duel. “Lord Kaan wouldn’t throw out the ancient traditions without justification.”

“I see you won’t be satisfied with the easy answer,” Kas’im said with a sigh, pulling on his own robe. “Very well. To understand why the title is no longer used, you must understand what it truly represents. The Darth title was more than just a symbol of power; it was a claim of supremacy. It was used by those Dark Lords who have sought to enforce their will on the other Masters. It was a challenge-a warning to bow down or be destroyed.”

Bane already knew this from his studies, but he didn’t think it was wise to interrupt. Instead he crossed his legs and lowered himself into a sitting position, looking up at his Master and just listening.

“Of course, few of the Dark Lords would ever submit to another’s will for long,” Kas’im continued. “Wherever one of our order took up the Darth title, deception and betrayal were always close at hand to snatch it away. There can be no peace for a Master who dares to use the Darth name.”

“Peace is a lie,” Bane replied. “There is only passion?’

Kas’im raised an eyebrow in exasperation. “Peace was a poor choice of words. What I meant was stability. Those Masters who chose the Darth title spent as much time guarding against their supposed allies as they did battling the Jedi. Kaan wanted to put an end to such wastefulness.”

From where he sat, it seemed to Bane as if the Blademaster was trying to convince himself as much as his student.

“Kaan wants us to focus all our resources on our true enemy instead of one another?” Kas’im asserted. “That is why we are all equals in the Brotherhood of Darkness.”

“Equality is a myth to protect the weak,” Bane argued. “Some of us are strong in the Force, others are not. Only a fool believes otherwise.”

“There are other reasons the Darth title was abandoned?” Kas’im insisted with just a hint of frustration. “It attracted the attention of the Jedi, for one. It revealed our leaders to the enemy; it gave them easy targets to eliminate.”

Bane still wasn’t convinced. The Jedi knew who the real leaders of the Sith were; whether they called themselves Darth or Lord or Master made no difference. But he could tell the Twi’lek was uncomfortable with the discussion, and he knew enough to let the matter drop.

“Forgive me, Lord Kas’im,” he said, bowing his head. “I meant no offense. I only sought to draw upon your wisdom to explain that which I could not understand myself.”

Kas’im looked down at him with the same expression he had used when Bane had abruptly ended their duel a few moments earlier. Eventually, he asked, “So now you see the wisdom behind Lord Kaan’s decision to end the tradition?”