Dynasty of Evil (17 page)

Zannah braced herself for his next assault. In her mind the next few seconds played out in a thousand different scenarios, each unique in its specific details, each a vision of a possible future glimpsed through the power of the Force. The sheer number of possibilities could be overwhelming, but Bane had trained her well. Instinctively, she collapsed the matrix of probabilities into the most likely outcomes, effectively allowing her to anticipate and react to her opponent’s next move even before it happened.

Set fired out a sharp burst of dark side power in a shimmering wave designed to knock her from her feet. Zannah easily countered by throwing up a protective energy barrier, the simplest and most effective way for one Force-user to defend against the attacks of another. It was a technique taught to every Jedi Padawan, and it had been one of the earliest lessons Bane had required her to master.

“You’re a Jedi?” Set exclaimed.

“A Sith,” Zannah replied.

“I thought the Sith were extinct,” he replied, casually twirling his lightsaber in one hand, never taking his eyes off Zannah.

“Not yet.” She stood still, her own lightsaber still tucked inside her belt. But she was wary now: Set had almost fooled her once, and she wasn’t about to let it happen again.

“Let me see if I can fix that.”

As he leapt over the couch toward her, Zannah ignited her own weapon. The twin blades sprung to life, and she fell into the familiar dance.

Set came in low to start, slashing at her legs. When she parried his incoming blade he spun away quickly, moving out of range before she could retaliate. With the Force he picked up a bronze bust on the side of the room and hurled it toward her left flank. At the same time, he dived forward into a somersault that brought him close enough to strike at her right side as he tumbled past her.

Zannah easily repelled both threats, her spinning blades slicing the bust in half even as she pivoted just enough so that Set’s weapon missed her hip by less than a centimeter. For good measure she kicked him hard in the back as he rolled past, a blow meant not to disable him, but to goad him on to further aggression.

When two skilled combatants engaged each other with the lightsaber, the blades moved so quickly it was impossible to think and react to each move. Bane had taught her to rely on instinct, guided by the Force and honed by thousands of hours’ training in the martial forms. This training allowed her to realize within the first few passes that Set was using a modified variation of Ataru, a style defined by quick, aggressive strikes. In only the first few moments of battle she had already evaluated her opponent, noting his speed, agility, and technique. Set was good. Very good. But Zannah also knew without any doubt that she was much, much better.

Set, however, had yet to come to the same realization. Her kick had had the desired effect: when he came at her the next time his face was twisted with snarling rage. His fury allowed him to call upon the dark side, making him even more dangerous as he unleashed his next series of attacks. Leaping high in the air, crouching low to the ground, lunging forward, springing back, spinning, twisting, and twirling, he came at her from every conceivable
angle in a relentless barrage meant to overwhelm her defenses, only to have Zannah turn his efforts back with a cool, almost casual, efficiency.

Lightsaber battles were brutal in their intensity; few duels lasted more than a minute. Even for a trained Jedi, the effort of all-out combat was exhausting … particularly when using the acrobatic maneuvers of Ataru. It didn’t take long for Zannah to sense that her opponent was wearing down. She, on the other hand, was barely winded. At Bane’s urging, she had become an expert in the defensive sequences of the Soresu form. It was simple for her to parry, redirect, or evade her opponent’s blows by using Set’s own momentum against him, easily keeping the Dark Jedi at bay.

In their short encounter, she was presented with at least a dozen opportunities to land a lethal blow to the silver-haired man. But she hadn’t come here to kill him; not yet, at least. She had come here to test him, to see if he was worthy of being her apprentice.

He didn’t have to beat her to succeed in Zannah’s eyes; he only had to show potential. Despite his inability to penetrate her defenses, she had seen enough to satisfy her. He may have been reckless and wild with the lightsaber, but he was also imaginative and even, at times, a little unpredictable. He had shown enough cunning when they first met to make Zannah underestimate him. And most importantly, she could feel the power of the dark side raging within him as he grew more and more determined to take her out … futile though his efforts might be.

She was toying with him now, dragging the battle out. It wasn’t enough for her to want Set as an apprentice; he also had to want her to be his Master. She had to prove her superiority so completely that he would be willing to serve. It wasn’t enough just to beat the Dark Jedi; she had to break him.

When he was a step slow in retreating after one of his
thrusts, she kicked his feet out from under him and sent him sprawling to the floor, only to back away and let him get to his feet again. When he moved back in, she twisted her lightsaber in a sharp, unorthodox move, hooking one of her blades onto his and wrenching the weapon from his hand.

Set sprang back immediately and used the Force to yank the hilt back to his palm, then stubbornly renewed his attacks. But as the seconds slipped by, the fire of the dark side was less and less able to fight off the fatigue setting into his joints and limbs.

It was inevitable that his weary body would betray him, and soon enough he came in with his blade held out too far to the side, instead of tight in front of him. Zannah stepped forward and snapped her foot straight up, catching Set under the chin. He staggered back howling in pain while a string of unintelligible profanities spewed from his mouth, along with a spatter of blood.

“Do you yield?” Zannah asked.

His only response was to spit a gob of blood onto the expensive carpet at his feet and rush forward once more.

Zannah felt a small twinge of disappointment. She had hoped he would be smart enough not to continue a battle he could not win.
Another lesson I will have to teach you
.

As he drew near, she responded not with physical violence, but rather with a powerful spell of Sith sorcery that attacked Set’s mind. He tried to throw up a protective Force barrier in response, but Zannah’s power shredded his defenses, leaving him completely vulnerable.

Sith sorcery was as much a part of the dark side as the deadly violet bolts of energy her Master unleashed from his hands, and when Bane had first recognized her talent for the subtle but devastating magics he had encouraged her studies into the arcane. From ancient texts she had learned to twist and torment the thoughts of her enemies.
She could make them see nightmares as reality; she could cause their deepest fears to manifest as demons of the psyche. She could, and had, rip the minds of her enemies apart with a simple thought and a gesture.

With Set, however, she did not intend to destroy him completely. Instead she enveloped him in a cloud of utter despair and hopelessness. She reached into the innermost recesses of his mind and wrapped it in the nothingness of the void.

Set’s eyes went blank, his jaw hung slack, and his lightsaber slipped from nerveless fingers. He slowly slumped to the ground, his eyes closing and his body trembling slightly as he curled up into a fetal position.

This was to be his final test. A weak mind would collapse upon itself to wither and die, leaving the victim forever comatose. If Set was strong, however, his will would fight back against the horror. Little by little it would tear away at the emptiness, refusing to die, clawing its way back to the surface until consciousness finally returned.

If Set was truly worthy of being her apprentice, he would recover from his current condition in a day or two. If not, she would simply have to begin her search anew.

11

T
he Huntress brought her shuttle in low over the desert wastelands that covered the majority of Ambria’s surface. Though she had received no formal training, she was highly attuned to the Force, allowing her to feel it rising up from the sunbaked dirt as her ship skimmed across the surface.

Thousands of years ago Ambria had been a world of verdant forests, brimming with life and the power of the Force. But the lush vegetation had been devastated when a Sith sorceress tried—and failed—to bend the entire planet to her will through a powerful ritual. Unable to control the violent energies of the dark side, she was destroyed by her own spell … as was the landscape of the entire planet.

For centuries the corruption of the failed ritual influenced all life on Ambria, transforming the once beautiful world into a nightmare of stunted, poisonous vegetation and twisted, mutated beasts. Eventually the dark side energies released by the Sith sorceress were trapped in a great lake near the planet’s equator by a Jedi Master named Thon, but the damage was too widespread for the world to ever be completely healed.

The Iktotchi knew all this not because she had studied the planet’s history, however. Her connection to the Force allowed her to see things; it gave her glimpses of
the past, present, and even possible futures. The ability was common to all Iktotchi in varying degrees, but the Huntress’s talent went far beyond that of the rest of her species. Most Iktotchi would get nothing more than a subtle sense of danger when an impending threat was coming, or a general feeling of whether a new acquaintance might be friend or foe. On occasion they would be granted precognitive dreams, but even these were little more than random images that meant little without context.

With her, however, it was different. Over the years she had developed her skills so that she could control and direct the visions that flashed through her mind. When she concentrated on a specific person or place, she would get a rush of visual and emotional stimuli that she could often assemble into something useful and coherent.

She had meditated for several hours in preparation for her journey to Ambria, calling on the Force while thinking about her destination. In return, she had witnessed scenes plucked from the planet’s history: the Sith sorceress as she was consumed by her failed spell; the Jedi Master’s struggle to trap the dark side in Lake Natth.

But not all her visions were as clear, particularly those dealing with the shifting probabilities of the future. Her arrival and meeting with the princess from Doan had only been revealed in vague impressions. She was confident she wasn’t walking into a trap. More important, she had the sense that somehow this meeting was going to have a profound influence on the rest of her life. For better or for worse she couldn’t say, but she was certain the journey to Ambria would set her on a new path … and the Huntress was never one to shy away from her destiny.

The location for the meeting was a small abandoned camp located deep in the heart of Ambria’s impassable desert. As it drew nearer, the shuttle’s sensors indicated
that another ship was already waiting on the ground. Readings indicated a single life-form on board; as promised, the princess had come alone.

The Huntress landed, shut down the engines, and made her way from the climate-controlled comfort of her shuttle out into the dry, suffocating heat of Ambria’s midday sun. The princess was standing at the edge of the camp, facing away from her and lost in thought.

The camp itself wasn’t much to look at; it was nothing but a small, dilapidated hut and an old cooking pot suspended over a ring of stones and charcoal. But despite the modest surroundings, the Huntress could feel this was a place of power: a nexus for both the light and dark sides of the Force. Despite the heat, the Iktotchi shivered. Great and terrible things had happened here; events that would one day shape the course of galactic history.

The princess—Serra, the assassin recalled—turned to face her.

“I’m glad you came” was all she said.

The Huntress sensed something dark and powerful in the other woman, a strength of will and a hatred nurtured over many years.

“Your bodyguard said you wished to hire me?”

The princess nodded. “They say you can track anyone. No matter where they hide, you can find them. They say you can see across time and space.”

The statement wasn’t precisely accurate, but the Huntress saw no need to explain the subtle intricacies of her talent to this woman.

“I have never failed a mission.”

Serra smiled. “There was a man here. Many years ago. I don’t know his name. I don’t know where he is now. But I want you to find him. Can you do this?”

She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she closed her eyes and reached out with her mind. She felt the Force
gathering; it swirled around her like a rising storm, carrying the dust of memory imprinted on the campsite.

The captured memories encircled her; images flooded her mind. She saw a child, dressed in a frayed and tattered tunic; she saw the child blossom into a young woman; she saw the woman leave Ambria, only to return many years later as a princess.

“You grew up here,” she whispered as she continued to probe even deeper.

Sometimes the history of a place was faint, washed away by the passage of mundane events and insignificant people. Here the memories were strong, preserved by isolation and trapped in the currents of the Force that permeated the camp.

“I see a man. Tall and thin. Dark hair. Brown skin.”

“My father,” Serra explained. “His name was Caleb.”

“He was a healer. Wise. Strong. A man who commanded respect.”

She didn’t say this to please the princess; the Huntress never cared what her clients thought of her as long as they paid.

“There is another man,” Serra told her. “He came to my father for help during the New Sith Wars. Tall and muscular. Bald. He was … evil.”

Evil
. Reaching out with the Force required intense focus and deep mental concentration. Even so, the Iktotchi couldn’t help but notice the other woman’s hesitation.