20

Kyp Durron trudged through the dense rain forest of Yavin 4, trying to find hidden paths where the jungle would allow him to pass. He knew exactly where to go. The dark spirit of Exar Kun had shown him.

With the stirring of the underbrush, reptilian predator birds burst squawking into flight, disturbed from the bloody carcass of a kill they had dragged into the canopy.

Kyp’s assigned companion Dorsk 81 stumbled beside him. The thin, smooth-skinned alien had a much more difficult time with the steamy air and the steep climbs.

A purple-furred woolamander clambered through the overhead network of Massassi trees. Dorsk 81 looked up, startled—but Kyp had sensed the beast minutes before, feeling its primal panic and indecision build until finally it had to flee.

Kyp wiped sweat out of his eyes and shook his head, sending droplets of perspiration flying. He squinted again and moved forward with greater speed, knowing they had almost reached their destination—though Dorsk 81 had no idea yet.

Insects and small biting creatures buzzed and scuttled around them, but none bothered Kyp. He consciously exuded a shadow of uneasiness around him so that lower creatures had no incentive to come nearer. Exar Kun had taught him that trick too.

Dorsk 81 opened his lipless mouth, panting as he tried to keep up with the vigorous pace. His yellow and olive-green skin was unblemished, his nose flattened and smooth, his ears tucked back against his head as if someone had designed his race in a wind tunnel. The alien looked miserable; his wide-set eyes blinked, and his face gleamed with a sheen of moisture. “I was not bred for this,” Dorsk 81 said.

Kyp slowed, but not enough to bring relief to his companion. He softened the tone of his instinctive retort. “You were not bred for anything but bureaucracy and a comfortable life. I don’t understand how the planet Khomm could have survived unchanged for a thousand years. Or why your people wanted it to.”

Dorsk 81 took no offense and followed Kyp. “Our society and our genetics reached their perfection a millennium ago, or at least that’s what we decided at the time. To prevent undesirable changes, we froze our culture at that level. We took our perfect race and cloned them rather than risking genetic anomalies.

“I am the eighty-first clone of Dorsk. Eighty generations before me have been identical, doing the same jobs with the same level of skill, maintaining our level of perfection and not slipping back.” Dorsk 81 frowned, and with a burst of surprising energy he pushed around Kyp. He flung himself into the effort of making a path through the dense brush with all the strength he possessed. “But I was a failure,” he said. “I was different.”

Kyp gestured to an identical-looking thicket of raven-thorns, spotting the invisible maze of a relatively simple path. “You have the potential to become a Jedi Knight,” he said. “How can you consider that a failure?”

Dorsk 81 clawed his way out of the tangle he had become trapped in. Stains from crushed berries and flower petals dotted his uniform. “It is unsettling … to be different,” he said.

Kyp spoke partly to himself and partly to his companion. “Yes, but sometimes it’s exhilarating to know you can rise above the others who are trapped down below.”

He ducked into the low tunnel of gloomy foliage and dangling mosses. Tiny gnats flew away from his face. The deep shadows suddenly made him think of the black spice mines of Kessel where he had been forced to work as a slave.

“The Empire ruined my life,” Kyp said. “My parents were political resisters. They marked the anniversary of the Ghorman Massacre, and they protested the destruction of Alderaan—but by that time the Emperor had lost all patience with political objections.

“Stormtroopers came in the middle of the night, battered their way into our home on the colony of Deyer. They took my parents, stunned them in front of our eyes, leaving them paralyzed and twitching on the floor. My father couldn’t even close his eyes. Tears ran down his cheek, but his arms and his legs kept jittering. He couldn’t get up. The stormtroopers dragged him and my mother out.

“My brother Zeth was five years older than me. They took him. He was only fourteen, I think. They put stuncuffs on his hands. They kicked him, pushed him out, and then they stunned me.

“I found out later that they took Zeth to the Imperial Military Academy on Carida. They put my parents and me in the Correctional Facility on Kessel, where we had to work in the spice mines. I spent most of my days in pitch-darkness because any light straying into the mine shafts spoils spice crystals. My parents died there after only a few years.

“I had to take care of myself even when the prisoners overthrew the Correctional Facility and took over. The crime lord there, Moruth Doole, tossed the captured Imperials down into the spice mines. Doole let some of the prisoners out—but not many and not me. Our masters had changed, but we remained slaves.”

Dorsk 81 looked at him with his glittering wide-set eyes. “How did you escape?” he said.

“Han Solo rescued me,” Kyp answered; warmth filtered into his voice. “We stole a shuttle and fled into the black hole cluster. There we stumbled upon a secret Imperial research installation, and we were captured again—this time by Admiral Daala and her fleet of Star Destroyers. Han got us out of there after Daala had placed a death sentence on me.”

Anger curled through him, making his head buzz, making him feel stronger. He tapped into that strength. “You can understand why the Imperials make me so furious,” he said. “It seems that every step of my life the Empire has tried to beat me into submission, tried to take away the rights and pleasures that other life-forms enjoy.”

“You can’t fight the Empire alone,” Dorsk 81 said.

Kyp didn’t answer for a long moment. “Perhaps not yet,” he said.

Before Dorsk 81 could say anything, Kyp parted a dense clump of blueleaf branches. He felt an electric thrill down his spine as the Force told him they had arrived.

“This,” Kyp whispered, “this is our destination.”

In front of them the jungle gave way to a circular pond that shone like a flat quicksilver mirror, completely free of ripples. In the center of the lake stood a small island dominated by an obsidian split-pyramid of sharp angles showing the distinctive markings of Massassi architecture: another temple, the same one Gantoris and Streen had located weeks before, but Luke Skywalker had not yet explored it. Exar Kun had told Kyp all about it.

Between the bifurcated spire of the tall pyramid stood a colossus, a polished black statue of a dark man, with long hair swept back behind him, the tattoo of a black sun emblazoned on his forehead, and the padded garments of an ancient lord, the Dark Lord of the Sith.

Kyp swallowed hard at seeing the image of Exar Kun.

“Who do you think he was?” Dorsk 81 asked, squinting to stare across the water.

Kyp answered in a quiet, husky voice. “Someone very powerful.”

The great orange sphere of Yavin lurked on the horizon with only a fuzzy curve peeping over the tops of the jungle. The system’s small sun would also be setting soon. The twin lights in the sky cast intersecting glitter paths across the still lake.

Kyp gestured toward the temple. “We can spend the night there if you’d like,” he said.

Dorsk 81 nodded with more eagerness than Kyp had expected. “I would like to sleep inside shelter again,” he said, “rather than up in a tree tangled in vines. But how are we going to get out there? How deep is the lake?”

Kyp went to the edge. The water was as transparent as diamond and so deep that it reflected the bottom like a lens, making it impossible to determine how far down the water went. Just below the surface he saw columns of rock rising from the bottom like submerged stepping stones that stopped just barely beneath the water.

Kyp stepped out onto one. The clear water rippled around the bottom of his shoe, but he did not sink in. He took another step to the second stone.

Dorsk 81 stared at him; Kyp knew that he must appear to be walking directly across the surface of the water. “Are you using the Force?” Dorsk 81 said.

Kyp laughed. “No, I’m using stepping stones.”

Without hesitation he splashed to the next stone and then the next, eager to reach the temple—a source of new knowledge and secret techniques. On the island he stepped onto mounds of pitted volcanic rock splotched with orange and green lichen that looked like droplets of alien blood. He could already feel the power.

Kyp turned to watch his companion pick his way across the lake. It looked very much as if Dorsk 81 balanced on the fragile membrane of the pool’s surface. The illusion was very effective. Around him silence blanketed the island, as if none of the jungle creatures or insects dared to come near the empty temple.

“It’s cold here,” Dorsk 81 said, shaking water off his feet and looking around. The smooth-skinned alien hunched his head closer to his shoulders.

“You were complaining before about how hot it was,” Kyp said. “You should be grateful.”

Dorsk 81 clamped his lipless mouth shut and nodded once, but said nothing else.

Kyp walked around, looking at the polished black glass angles of the pyramid, the jutting point at the top. The architecture had been designed as an angular funnel to concentrate the Force, assembled to enhance the powers of Sith rituals.

He stared up at the frozen statue of Exar Kun. The brooding dark lord looked so real to him, so awe inspiring, that Kyp expected the sculpture to bend down and grasp him.

Kyp knew now that the Great Temple was the focal point for the entire Massassi civilization that Exar Kun had built up from primitive decay. The Great Temple had been the headquarters, the prime focus of Kun’s battles in the Sith War. But this small, isolated temple had been more of a private retreat, the place where Exar Kun had concentrated on improving his own abilities, strengthening himself.

A cool wind breathed out of the wedge-shaped opening as if the silent temple were some kind of sleeping monster. “Let’s go inside,” Kyp said.

He ducked his head and took one step into the enfolding darkness. But when he blinked his eyes, the light gradually grew inside the chamber as if lightning bolts trapped within the black slabs of glass continued to send faint sparks visible only from the corner of his eye. When Kyp faced the polished dark walls, he saw nothing in them, only faint etched markings of hieroglyphics in a long-forgotten language. He could not read any of the words.

Deep green tendrils of moss grew like frozen biological flames that worked their way up the polished stones. Against one wall stood a smooth rounded cistern filled with water.

Kyp stepped over to the cistern and dipped his fingers in, surprised and delighted to find the liquid cold and clean. He splashed his sweaty face, and then he drank, savoring the sweetness of the water as it slid down his throat. He sighed.

Dorsk 81 stood just within the opening, looking out at the jungle beyond the lake. The sphere of Yavin had vanished below the treetops, and the sky began to thicken with purple twilight as the distant sun also set. “I’m very sleepy all of a sudden,” he said.

Kyp frowned, but thought he knew what was happening. “You’ve traveled a long way today,” he said. “It’s cool and dark in here. Why don’t you sleep? The floor looks smooth and comfortable. You can curl up against the wall.”

As if hypnotized, Dorsk 81 shambled over to a corner and slithered down against the wall until he lay with his back pressed against the obsidian slab. He fell asleep almost before he had settled into place.

“Now you and I can continue in a more appropriate setting.” The deep, loud voice echoed like distant thunder inside the chamber.

Kyp turned to see the hooded silhouette of Exar Kun like a black oil stain shimmering in the air. Kyp stood tall, squashing a thrill of terror every time the ancient Lord of the Sith spoke to him.

Kyp indicated Dorsk 81. “Will he wake up? Will he see you?”

Exar Kun raised his shadowy arms. “Not until we have finished,” he said.

“All right.” Kyp squatted on the cool floor, tucking his robe around him as he found a comfortable position. He knew that his relaxed attitude might appear to be haughtiness or defiance of Exar Kun, but he didn’t care.

The ancient Sith Lord began to speak. “Skywalker has taught you everything he knows. He makes excuses, but he can go no further because he has denied himself other options. He cannot grow as a Jedi by blocking out possibilities, by wearing blinders to what can be and what should be.”

Exar Kun loomed over Kyp, hovering closer even though he didn’t appear to have taken a step. “You have already learned more than Skywalker will ever know, my student.”

Kyp felt enthusiasm and pride burn through him, and he tensed his body, wanting to leap to his feet. But he restrained himself.

“Look at what I can show you today,” Exar Kun said, gesturing toward the obsidian walls and the incomprehensible hieroglyphs barely visible, black lines against black volcanic glass. But as Kyp looked at them, the words filled with white fire, standing out against the bottomless, opaque background until they burned into his eyes.

And suddenly Kyp could understand. The words snapped into focus and filled his mind, an incredible history from four thousand years ago, telling how Exar Kun had begun to learn forbidden teachings, how he had come to the fourth moon of Yavin to find a lost Sith power object, and how he had enslaved the timid and weak Massassi people, making them build enormous temples for him as focal points for the dark forces he played with.

“The Brotherhood of the Sith could have ruled the galaxy, could have squashed the doddering Republic and turned the other Jedi Knights into mere parlor magicians—but I was betrayed.” The shadow of Exar Kun drifted about the floor of the temple, making no sound as he moved. He hovered over the sleeping and helpless form of Dorsk 81.

“When the Jedi combined their might and came here to this moon to fight me, they unleashed such power that I had to drain dry every last one of the Massassi just to trap my spirit within these temples—to survive so that one day I could come back.”

Kun’s coal-black arms reached down, as if to strangle Dorsk 81. The smooth-skinned clone stirred uneasily in his spellbound sleep, but he made no move to defend himself.

With a thrill of fear and reluctance, Kyp called out, “Exar Kun! I’m the one you’re trying to teach. Don’t waste your time with him.”

He was enthralled by the new wonders Kun had shown him, but Kyp was savvy enough to know when he was being manipulated. Exar Kun thought he was playing Kyp like a mesmerized convert. But Kyp was skeptical—Han Solo had taught him that much. He could play his own part, however, to get what he so desperately wanted.

As Exar Kun turned back to face him, leaving Dorsk 81 unharmed, Kyp spread wide his arms in complete acceptance of his new instructor. “Teach me more about the ancient Sith ways.”

Kyp swallowed, then made his voice strong, because this was what he really wanted. “Tell me how to use these new powers so I can crush the Empire once and for all.”