Star Wars: Path of Destruction: A Novel of the Old Republic (27 page)

Yet the harsh evidence before him was undeniable. The ancient manuscripts had failed him. He had gambled everything on the truth of their words-even defying Qordis himself-and he had lost.

In desperation he cast his head back and threw his arms to the uneven rock of the ceiling above. “I’m here, Master!” he cried. “I’ve come to learn your secrets!” He paused, listening for a response. Hearing nothing, he shouted, “Show yourself! By all the power of the dark side, show yourself!”

His words reverberated off the walls, sounding empty and hollow. He dropped to his knees, his arms falling to his sides and his head slumping forward. As the echo died away, the only sound was the shrill clicking of the pelko bugs.

Kopecz spit on the ground as he surveyed the camp. He was surrounded by an army, but it was an army of inferiors. Everywhere he looked he saw the minions of the Sith: battle ragers, assassins, and apprentices. But there were precious few Sith Masters. The seemingly endless war against the Jedi on the battlefields of Ruusan was taking a heavy toll on Kaan’s Brotherhood of Darkness. Without reinforcements they would be forced to retreat-or be wiped out by General Hoth and his hated Army of Light.

The heavyset Twi’lek rose to his feet, spurred to action by the realization that something had to be done. He made his way through scattered pockets of soldiers, noticing how many were injured, exhausted, or simply defeated. By the time he reached the entrance to Lord Kaan’s tent the contempt he felt for his so-called Brothers had reached a boiling point.

When Kopecz entered, Lord Kaan took one look at him and dismissed his other advisers with a sharp wave of his hand. They filed out, none of them daring to come too close.

“What is it, my old friend?” Kaan asked. His voice was charming as ever, but his eyes were wide and wild, like a hunted beast.

“Have you seen what passes for our army out there?” Kopecz snarled, poking a thumb over his shoulder as he walked slowly forward. “If this is all we have to stand against Lord Hoth, we may as was well burn our black robes and start practicing the Jedi Code.”

“We have reinforcements coming,” Lord Kaan assured him. “Two more full divisions of foot soldiers, another core of snipers. Half a platoon of repulsorcraft armed with heavy guns. There are many who are drawn to the glory of our cause. More and more each day. The Brotherhood of Darkness cannot fail.”

Kopecz took little comfort in his promises. Lord Kaan had always been the strength of the Brotherhood of Darkness, a man who had rallied the Dark Lords to a single cause through the greatness of his personality and vision. Now, however, he looked like a man on the edge. The strain of constantly battling the Jedi had left him frazzled.

Kopecz shook his head in disgust. “I’m not one of your sycophantic advisers,” he said, his voice rising. “I won’t grovel and scrape before you, Lord Kaan. I won’t heap praise on your fool head when I can see with my own eyes that you are leading us to our destruction!”

“Keep your voice down!” Kaan snapped. “You will destroy the morale of our troops!”

“They have no morale left to destroy,” Kopecz shot back, though he did lower his volume. “We can’t defeat Jedi with ordinary soldiers. There are too many of them and not enough of us.”

“By us you mean those worthy of joining the ranks of the Dark Lords,” Kaan replied. He sighed and stared down at the holomap spread out on the table before him.

“You know what you have to de Kopecz told him, his voice losing some of the anger. He had chosen to follow Kaan; he wouldn’t abandon him now. But he wasn’t about to sit idly by and face certain defeat. “We face an army of Jedi Knights and Masters. We can’t stand against them without our own Masters from the Academy. The students, too. All of them.”

“They are mere apprentices,” Kaan protested.

“They are the strongest of our order,” Kopecz reminded him. “We both know even the lowliest students on Korriban are stronger than half the so-called Dark Lords here on Ruusan.”

“Qordis’s work is not yet complete. The students there still have so much to learn,” Kaan insisted, though without much force. “So much untapped potential. The Academy represents the future of the Sith.”

“If we cannot defeat the Jedi here on Ruusan, then we have no future!” Kopecz insisted.

Lord Kaan clutched his head with his hands, as if a great pain threatened to burst his skull in two. He began to tremble in the grip of some terrible palsy. Kopecz involuntarily stepped back.

It only took a few seconds for Kaan to regain his composure and lower his hands. The haunted look in his eyes was gone, replaced by the calm self-assurance that had drawn so many to the Brotherhood in the first place.

“You’re right, old friend,” he said. The words were smooth and easy; he spoke as if a great weight had been lifted from him. He radiated confidence and strength. He seemed to glow with a violet aura, as if he were the very embodiment of the dark side. And suddenly, inexplicably, Kopecz was reassured.

“I will send word to Qordis,” Kaan continued, the Force emanating from him in palpable waves. “You are right. It is time for those at the Academy on Korriban to truly join the ranks of the Sith.”

Bane had never been so hungry in his life. It twisted his stomach into knots, causing him to hunch over as he trudged slowly across Korriban’s wastes toward Dreshdae. For thirteen days he had searched the tombs in the Valley of the Dark Lords, sustaining himself only with the Force and the hydration tablets he’d brought along for the desert journey. He never slept, but rested his mind from time to time through meditation. Yet for all its power, even the Force couldn’t create something from nothing. It could ward off starvation for a time, but not forever.

Twice he’d been set on by packs of tuk’ata, the guardian hounds that prowled the crypts of their former Masters. The first time he’d driven them away with the Force, seizing the body of the alpha male and hurling it into the rest of the pack, injuring several of the beasts. They’d scurried away with high-pitched howls that had sent shivers down his spine. The second attack had been far bloodier. While exploring one of the most recent tombs he’d found himself surrounded by a dozen tuk’ata: a pack twice the size of the first. He’d unleashed his lightsaber on them, slicing through flesh and bone. When the pack finally broke and fled, only four of the twelve tuk’ata still lived.

After that the tuk’ata left him alone, which was a good thing, because he was no longer sure he’d be able to hold them off if they attacked again. To fuel his muscles for the ongoing search through tomb after tomb, he’d overtaxed his body’s reserves, literally devouring himself from the inside out. Now he was paying the price.

He could have eased his suffering by slipping into a meditative trance, slowing his heartbeat and vital functions to preserve his energy. Yet in the end that would accomplish nothing. Nobody would come to find him, and eventually even a state of hibernation would end in a slow, if relatively painless, death.

Death was not an option he was ready to consider. Not yet. Despite his futile search, despite the crushing disappointment, he wasn’t ready for that. Not if it meant that the truth he had discovered would die with him. So he endured the pain, and willed his rapidly failing flesh to take him back. Back to the Academy.

It had taken him only a day to walk to the valley at the beginning of his quest. He was now on the third day of his trip back. He had been strong and fresh when he’d first set out; now he was famished and weak. But there was more to his slowed pace than mere physical wanting.

Before he had been buoyed by expectation. Now he was weighed down by the burden of failure. Qordis had been right: the ancient Dark Lords of Korriban were gone. Nearly three thousand years had passed between the time the Sith had been driven from Korriban by Revan, and the day Kaan’s Brotherhood of Darkness officially reclaimed this world for the order. In that time the legacy of the original Sith had been completely wiped away.

He’d gone into the desert seeking enlightenment, but found only disillusionment. Korriban was no longer the cradle of darkness; it was a husk, a withered, desiccated corpse that had been picked clean by scavengers. Qordis had been right … yet Bane now understood that he was also very, very wrong.

Bane hadn’t found what he was looking for in the tombs. But in the long trek back across the desert his mind had finally become clear. Hunger, thirst, exhaustion: the physical suffering cleansed his thoughts. It stripped away all his illusions and exposed the lies of Qordis and the Academy. The spirits of the Sith were gone from Korriban forever. But it was Lord Kaan’s Brotherhood of Darkness-not the Jedi-who were to blame.

They had twisted and perverted the ancient order of the Sith. The Academy’s teachings flew in the face of everything Bane had learned in the archives about the ways of the dark side. Kaan had cast aside the true power of the individual and replaced it with the false glory of self-sacrifice in the name of a worthy cause. He sought to destroy the Jedi through might of arms, rather than cunning. Worst of all, he proclaimed that all were equal in the Brotherhood of the Sith. But Bane knew equality was a myth. The strong were meant to rule; the weak, to serve.

The Brotherhood of Darkness stood for everything that was wrong with the modern Sith. They had fallen from the true path. Their failure was the reason the spirits of the Dark Lords had vanished. None on Korriban—not Master, not apprentice-had been worthy of their wisdom; none worthy of their power. They had simply faded away, scattered like a handful of dust cast across the desert sand. Bane could see the truth so clearly now. Yet Qordis and the others were forever blind. They followed Kaan as if he had bound them up with some secret spell.

A faint gust of wind brought the sound of distant voices to his ears. Glancing up, he was surprised to see the temple of the Academy looming ahead of him, less than a kilometer away. Caught up in his philosophical ramblings, he hadn’t realized how far he’d come. He was close enough to see small figures moving at the base of the building: servants, or possibly a handful of students from the Academy out wandering the surrounding grounds. One of them noticed him approaching and scurried back inside, probably to deliver news of his return to Qordis and the other Masters.

Bane wasn’t sure what kind of reception they’d give him. In truth he didn’t care, as long as they brought him food. Beyond that they were of no use to him anymore. He despised them all: Masters and apprentices alike. They were no better than the Jedi who had looted Korriban three millennia before. The Academy was an abomination, a testament to how far the Sith had fallen from the true ideals of the dark side.

Bane alone understood this. He alone saw the truth. And he alone could lead the Sith back to the way of the dark side.

He wouldn’t be foolish enough to say so, of course. The Brotherhood would never follow him; neither would Qordis or any of the others at the Academy. Weak and ignorant as they were, they could still overwhelm him with their numbers. If he was to restore the Sith to their true glory, he would need an ally.

Not one of the Masters: they were all too close to Kaan. And the apprentices were nothing but groveling servants, blindly following their Masters. They had no real understanding of the dark side. They didn’t sense that they were being led down a false path. Not a single one of them was worthy.

No, Bane corrected himself. There was one. Githany.

She wasn’t intimidated by the Masters. She had defied them to train Bane. The fact that she’d done it for her own selfish reasons only offered further proof that she understood the true nature of the dark side.

He wished now that he had spoken to her before he’d left the Academy. He could have at least tried to explain why he had to go. She had been disappointed in him for letting Sirak survive. Rightfully so. But in the end he was the one who had turned away from her. He was the one who left her behind while he went in search of Korriban’s hidden secrets. What could she possibly think of him now?

As he reached the edge of the temple grounds the scents of the midday meal being prepared in the kitchens wafted out to him, driving all other thoughts from his mind. Mouth watering and stomach rumbling, he hobbled up the steps toward the ever-nearing prospect of food.

The news that Bane had returned did not sit well with Qordis. The timing couldn’t have been worse. Lord Kaan had sent an urgent message: everyone from the Academy was to come to Ruusan to join the battle against the Jedi. The apprentices were all to be presented with lightsabers and given seats in the Brotherhood of Darkness, elevating them to the ranks of the Dark Lords of the Sith.

It wouldn’t do to show up with one of his most powerful students being as defiant as Bane had been at their last meeting. It would be even worse if Bane spurned the offer and went off on his own, disobeying the command to go to Ruusan. Lord Kaan had managed to keep the Brotherhood together, but it was an alliance that was always on the verge of disintegrating. In the face of their repeated failure to drive the Jedi from Ruusan, the refusal of one prominent Sith to fall into line might be all it took to make everything unravel.

One defection could lead to others, and things would return to a state of chaos: Sith fighting Sith as the various Dark Lords sought to dominate and destroy their rivals. The Jedi would survive and rebuild their order, all the while laughing at the foolishness of their mortal enemies.

If only Bane had perished out in the wastes of Korriban! Unfortunately, he had returned, and Qordis couldn’t do anything to eliminate him now. Not after Kaan’s directive. They had need of every lightsaber and every Sith, especially one as strong as Bane. For the sake of the Brotherhood-for the sake of Lord Kaan’s glorious vision-Qordis would have to find some way to make amends.

News that Bane had returned spread quickly through the Academy. Sirak wasn’t surprised. If anything, he was relieved. When Master Qordis had informed the students they would soon be shipping out to Ruusan, he’d feared they would leave before Bane returned, denying him his vengeance.