Lineage IX

Chapter 23

They executed a tight hyperspace jump back to Republic jurisdiction, and set the shuttle into a holding orbit just outside the nearest inhabitable system before either of them spoke another word.

Dooku secreted the recovered holocron inside his own tunics and turned to his apprentice. "Let me see it," he commanded.

Obi-Wan extended his bruised and throbbing wrist with a slightly curdled smile. The Sentinel shoved his inner tunic sleeve up and frowned over the livid blotches of purple and red, then brushed questing fingers over the swollen joint, eliciting a small hissing exhalation.

"Fractured," the senior Jedi murmured, disapproving. A warm tendril of healing energy wrapped itself about the bone, subtly and slowly mending the damage wrought by Rue's iron-tipped boot. "The Sisters are lamentably uncivilized."

"You knew it would come to a stand-off," Obi-Wan muttered, relief from the pain unleashing his tongue.

"It was a possibility," the Sentinel admitted. "We must be prepared for every eventuality."

The younger man shifted testily. "Including defeat."

Dooku's hands rose to his apprentice's temples, mental touch skimming lightly over his aura, seeking further injury. "You performed your part admirably." A soft snort. "Indeed, Talzin was forced to intervene herself. It created the appearance of a hard-won triumph. The confrontation distracted her from the possibility of a more thorough treachery, a mistake she will regret very soon, when she finds the holocron missing." A wave of warmth suffused the padawan's limbs, soothing bruises and abrasions, smoothing away the edges of his mounting irritation.

Obi-Wan fought to retain his annoyance, obstinately clinging to its dissipating strands. "You might have told me."

A silver brow twitched upward, but Dooku made no immediate reply.

The padawan shook off the lassitude that always followed in the wake of healing. "We robbed the Dantooine Enclave, then robbed the Night Sisters, and forced a confrontation for the sake of covering our tracks… for the three minutes that will last… I hope this was worth it, Master."

"Nothing is achieved without cost. We have removed the holocron from very dangerous hands, and Mother Talzin was very forthcoming about certain other matters."

Teh young Jedi let his head loll wearily sideways, squinting at him in the cockpit's dim lighting. Outside, the stars drifted lazily in their ebony field. A nebula draped languidly along the upper edge of the viewport, an artist's whimsical brushstroke against the unvarying void. "Syfo-Dyas came to her first."

Dooku interlaced his fingers and propped one gleaming boot against the forward console. "Yes," he mused, eyes hooded. "She relayed certain…rumors… to him. Information I must share with the Council at the first possible opportunity."

Obi-Wan was wise enough to perceive that "the Council" did not include padawans, present company included. He exhaled slowly, sinking against his will into the comfort of the padded backrest. "So we will return to Coruscant, then?" Not an engaging prospect: however much clout Dooku held among his peers, there would still be hell to pay for his padawan, who would be grilled in the third degree before the assembled Masters, simply to determine the extent of his culpability and the constancy of his obedience. He seemed forever to be under intense scrutiny this last year, as though Qui-Gon's mutinous departure from the Order's ranks somehow called his own loyalty into question. His hand came up and tugged at the unbound end of his braid, where the black thread of bereavement was noticeable by its absence.

He would not brood. He would live in the present, no matter how distasteful, and hope for the future, which was always in motion.

He was not aware he had been drowsing until the comsat's gentle ping woke him with a start.

"Ah, my friend," Dooku greeted the transparent image of Yarriss Moll, rippling with interstellar static interference.

The Iktotchi Sentinel inclined his horned head, large hands folded into opposite sleeves. "You have important news to impart."

"Yes." Dooku directed a single regal nod of dismissal at his padawan; the latter person stood and excused himself to the aft passenger compartment, bowing deeply to his mentor and allowing the heavy plastoid panel to close between them.

Before the hatch sealed, however, he heard a single phrase, one that hung ominously in the cool, 'cycled air.

"It is as we feared, Moll. The Balance is indeed shifting."

Qui-Gon rose shakily to his knees and looked up, eyes widening as they rested upon the strangely shimmering figure. He would certainly have mistaken the ancient being for a holographic image, had it not been for his acute – nearly painful – presence within the Force. Flowing robes cascaded in long folds to the stones of the court; a long but meticulously groomed beard covered much of the face, but left a pair of deeply sunken yet bright-shining eyes visible. Palest blue light formed a blurred nimbus about this apparition as it gestured with one hand, an antique symbol of peace and greeting.

The Jedi master found his voice. "I come seeking the Shaman of the Whills; I was told by those who dwell below that he is long since departed into the Force."

An elusive smile creased the translucent features. "But the Force is everywhere, is it not?"

"Yes." Hesitantly, not daring to entertain the untamed thoughts surging in his heart, Qui-Gon bowed his head again. "May I – is it possible – that he may still speak? I have read of the Whills' doctrines…. I have come seeking their truth."

The luminous blue figure rumbled with mirth, a sound that emanated out of the Force's depths, soundless and yet compelling. A hidden chime tinkled merrily somewhere at the gardens' margins. "Finding truth and claiming it for one's own are very different things, my friend. Which do you seek?"

"Both. Whichever I am granted."

"Ah. You have learned caution, I see. That is a virtue rare in one so young."

It was Qui-Gon's turn to laugh, a mere breath of ironic derision. "I do not feel so young," he admitted, feeling the weight of the words settle in his aching joints, his weary mind. The burden of forgetfulness weighed him down, his anchorless journey haunted him.

"One without a past must be very young indeed," his mysterious interlocutor argued.

"From a certain point of view."

To his surprise, the shimmering image sat, as though the lip of the well's shrine could support some immaterial weight, as though matter was but a thread in some greater illusion, a tapestry in which spirit and appearance were but warp and weft. "You seek the Shaman. What did you desire to ask him?"

"I would ask – those of my Order have a doctrine. There is no death. There is the Force. I wonder… is this true of individuals?"

The old man smiled, enigmatic. "You would do better to ask, how is an individual true of this? Truths must be achieved, sometimes. The Force is not a concept, any more than its service is a fool's meandering quest."

And Qui-Gon knew in that moment. He bent over again, pressing his forehead to the aged stones. "Forgive me, my master. My presumption and arrogance are inexcusable."

The Shaman's voice was stern. "Wisdom does not lie in the gutters to be dispensed to beggars; nor am I an oracle to be milked of secrets by a passing stranger."

The sojourner maintained his deferent position.

"The teachings are only to be imparted to a member of our own Order, Jedi."

Face downward, Qui-Gon issued mild objection. "Yes, my Master. But is there truly any such distinction? We serve the same Force; we have our origin from it; it is our final destination and end."

"Well spoken," the Shaman replied, after a long silence. "If you are in earnest, then you will submit to me as an apprentice. You have already renounced your past; will you now set aside your identity? Only one without self or history may tread the steep way."

Qui-Gon at last dared to raise his head, looking upon one who had been dead for two centuries, and yet who was resoundingy, undeniably aflame with the Living Force, a nimbus of vivifying light flickering along the edges of his manifest form.

"What must I do?" he asked.

There was a moment in which the Whill seemed to judge his courage. Then the figure rose, gesturing to the shrine at eth garden's heart, the center of the Vergence here. "Drink of the well," he replied, gravely, "And forget all that you have been."

"Padawan."

Obi-Wan blinked, breaking his trance with difficulty, and looked up at the figure leaning in the hatchway. "Master. Are we… " But they were not in transit; he could feel the ship humming idly beneath them, the hyperdrive yet unengaged. "Has something happened?"

Dooku cocked his head to one side. "We shall see. You've received a new transmission form your Darshiki friend."

The young Jedi found his feet, aware that neither blossoming headache nor the anxious pit in his stomach had abated, despite his lengthy communion with the Force, A sense of impending crisis seemed to close in about him, one entirely unrelated to their clse escape form Dathomir, or his personal scruples with the Sentinel's methods.

"Yes, Master." he slipped past Dooku into the cockpit and fiddled with the comm equipment until a small holo of Kar'Thon appeared over the projector. The diminutive assassin's wrinkled mug was uglier than ever – an unworthy thought, but one that would not be repressed.

"Jedi karbuku," his conspirator and vassal grunted. "Listen. Planetfall we have made. Many of us hired for the job – training center. Ogg is here, and the chimmza you are looking for." A lipless reptilian mouth rippled over crooked teeth. "I send location of system."

And the small image disappeared, fizzling into nothingness. A string of coordinates, non Republic standard system, flitted across the data-terminal. The computer immediately set about converting the data to a compatible form.

"Ah," Dooku remarked.

Obi-Wan nodded, a strange numbness creeping up his spine, the hand of fate squeezing away all other awareness. Syfo-Dyas had been run to ground. The moment had come – the quarry all but flushed from its hiding place. He watched the string of numbers coalesce into an astro-nav projection, into a designated planetary system, statistics and hyperlane routes delineated in blue. He was not familiar with the world, and tapped the image in mid-air, pulling up the downloaded archival records.

"We will change our itinerary," the Sentinel decided, grimly.

"Your news for the Council…" his apprentice began.

"Can wait. This affair claims our foremost attention. We have waited a long time for this moment, Padawan."

They had indeed, an agony of deferred purpose. Like patient astronomers of old, they had waited for this fallen star to reappear, the cold comet of treason to make its cyclical return. And now they were abruptly faced with the conjunction of fate and their desire, the consummation of their mutual efforts, the day of reckoning suddenly drawn nigh.

The Sentinel noted the new destination and promptly set to programming the navicomputer, while Obi-Wan frowned over the briefing materials available on the shipboard database. "The Senate has declared this system a war zone in violation of the Arkai conventions, Master. Republic support has been withdrawn for decades… trade sanctions imposed, hyperlanes blockaded – why would anyone choose such a disaster zone for a base of operations?"

"Why indeed?" Dooku murmured, stroking his short beard, his gimlet eyes already glittering with e dejarik enthusiast's cunning anticipation. "He is up to no good, I assure you."

And that building certainty of doom tolled again, constricting the younger man's chest and crawling down his spine. "I have a bad feeling," he confessed, hoarsely.

The Sentinel shifted in his chair, one hand reaching sideways to touch his student's arm. "What is it, young one?" Genuine concern undergirded his tone, making the ashen-faced padawan look up in surprise and gratitude.

"I – I don't know… this started before Kar'Thon's message – "

Dooku's hands closed about his shoulders as he slumped forward, panting, the Force drumming loudly in his ears, a wail slowly building within the shuddering plenum."Another injury?" the older man demanded.

But this was nothing to do with Dathomir… or the Darshikki assasin's revelations. Obi-Wan shook his head, blackness slinking at the edges of vision, pain taking up its throne beneath his pulse. "It's something else… elusive," he tried to explain.

Qui-Gon.

He groaned, felt Dooku push his head down between his knees, focused solely upon the act of breathing. In. Out. In. Out. "...Master."

"Easy, Padawan."

"Master!"

He drained the shallow cup, the spring water sweet as blissful sleep, as cold as harsh awakening. It fell from his fingers, and he looked upon the garden and its shimmering guardian, and his own trembling hands, eyes wide as a newborn babe's.

And he knew neither whence had come, nor who he was, nor whether there was existence beyond this paradise.

The Shaman nodded once, a gong note rolling in the Force, signifying a new beginning. "Come," he said. "You have much to learn."

He bowed, accepting the yoke of this new bondage, his ignorance, his death. "Yes, my Master."

Dooku steadied his apprentice with both hands, stroked the young man's back, a wave of unfamiliar sympathy warming the Force between them, a recollection of days far gone – thirty, forty years hence – welling into his mind unbidden, and with it the image of a gawky and awkward apprentice, the link uniting him to Kenobi in the Force's lineage.

And with that unbidden memory came knowledge, and an unexpected sorrow.

"Qui-Gon," the young Jedi whispered, one hand pressed hard against his sternum, as though clutching at the laboring heart beneath.

Somewhere in the Force, a star was abruptly extinguished. Dooku closed his eyes and exhaled, slowly, slowly, feeling the balance shift, the precarious tilting of destinies. But he had long since outgrown sentiment, and the luxury of mourning. "Come," he told his current student. "This way."

It took only a minute to settle the boy – man – upon the ship's single bunk, and another brief moment to coax him into the embrace of sleep and the Force's oblivion. His fingers strayed to the learner's braid last of all, trailing along its knotted complexity, the colored ties marking milestones upon the path, the place where grief had already been renounced, the tangled auburn tuft beneath, the yet unwoven future.

He was tempted to tie the braid off again, re-anchoring the padawan in the tradition to which he was bound, in which Dooku himself had labored for nearly seven decades. But in the end he merely dropped the soft plait over his apprentice's chest and retired to the cockpit, where the shipboard computer proclaimed its readiness to initiate the hyperspace jump.

They would tend to their duty first, and before all else.. He took the helm and pushed them past lightspeed with a steady hand, unafraid and unbending in his resolve. Their path now lay in the direction of an old enemy, one long overdue to feel the just wrath of light, one who had taken refuge upon a war-ravaged distopia, a planet so torn by strife that the Republic had abandoned it to its dreary fate, one so bifurcated by hatred that its double vendetta was reflected in its very name.

Melida-Daan awaited.

End Book IX

But of course that isn't really the end at all; this tale will be continued in its immediate sequel, Lineage X -rb