Star Wars: Path of Destruction: A Novel of the Old Republic (31 page)

As soon as Bane’s feet touched the Unknown World’s surface he felt it: a deep thrumming, similar to what he’d first felt on Korriban but much, much stronger. Even the air felt different: heavy with ancient history and secrets long forgotten.

Standing with his back to the ocean, staring into the virtually impenetrable wall of forest that covered the island’s interior, he sensed something else, as well: a presence; a life-force of immense size and strength. It was moving toward him. Quickly.

A few seconds later he could hear it crashing through the undergrowth. It must have been drawn by the ship’s landing on the beach, an enormous hunter looking for fresh prey.

The rancor burst forth from the trees and began loping across the sand, bellowing its terrible cry. Bane held his ground, watching it come, marveling at the speed with which the massive beast moved. When it had closed the distance between them to less than fifty meters, he calmly held up a hand and reached out with the Force to touch the mind of the charging monster.

At his unspoken command it stumbled to a halt and stood in place, panting. Careful to keep the creature’s predatory instincts firmly in check, Bane approached the rancor. It remained still, as docile as a tauntaun being inspected by its rider.

From its size Bane could see it was a full-grown male, though the bright coloration of its hide and the small number of scars suggested that it must have only recently come to adulthood. He laid his palm on one of its massive legs, feeling the trembling muscles beneath the skin as he probed deeper into its animal brain.

He found no awareness, concept, or understanding of the Masters who had once tamed such beasts for use as guardians and mounts. He wasn’t surprised: the Rakata had vanished many centuries before this rancor had been born. But Bane was looking for something else.

A collage of images and sensations assailed him. Countless hunts through the forest, most ending in successful slaughter. The rending of sinew and bone. Feasting on the quarry’s still-warm flesh. The search for a mate. Battling with another rancor for dominance. And then, finally, he found what he was searching for.

Buried deep in the creature’s memories was the image of a great four-sided stone pyramid hidden deep within the jungle’s heart. The rancor had seen it only once, back when it was still a youngling in the care of the herd mothers. Yet the structure had left an indelible mark on the brutish mind.

The rancor was an animal, the top of the Unknown World’s food chain. It knew no fear, yet it let out a low moan as Bane dredged up the memory of that Temple. The beast shuddered, knowing what was expected of it, but it was powerless to flee; the Force compelled it to obey.

It crouched low to the ground, and Bane leapt up onto its back. It rose carefully to its feet, its rider perched on its great, hunched shoulders. At Bane’s command the rancor lumbered off, leaving the beach behind and heading back into the forest, carrying him toward the ancient Rakatan Temple.

It took nearly an hour before Bane reached his destination. The vegetation around him was teeming with life, but as he was carried along through the jungle he saw nothing larger than insects or small birds. Most creatures scattered before the rancor’s advance, vanishing long before Bane ever cane close enough to catch even a glimpse of them. Yet though they scampered away, the rancor’s keen sense of smell often picked up their trail, and more than once Bane had to rein in the beast’s hunting instincts to keep it on course.

As difficult as it was to keep the beast from racing off in pursuit of its next meal, it became even more difficult to drive it forward as they neared the temple. Every few steps it would try to veer to the side or suddenly shy away from its course. Once it even tried to rear up and dislodge him from its shoulders.

Bane couldn’t see more than a few meters ahead through the thick vegetation, but he knew they were close now. He could sense the power of the Temple, calling to him from behind the impenetrable curtain of tangled vines and twisted branches. Clamping down with the dark side, he crushed the last of the mighty rancor’s will to resist and urged it forward.

Suddenly they broke through into a clearing, a circle nearly one hundred meters across. In the very center stood the Rakatan Temple. The structure rose nearly twenty meters to the sky, a monument of carved rock and stone. The only entrance was a broad archway at the peak of an enormous staircase carved into an outside wall of the Temple itself. Its surface was pristine: stark and pure, unsullied by clinging moss or climbing ivy. The grounds surrounding it were barren but for a carpet of short, soft grass. It was as if the jungle feared to creep forward and reclaim the tainted stone.

Bane leapt down from his mount, all his attention focused on the structure towering before him. Freed from his power, the rancor turned and fled back into the undergrowth. The terrible crashing cacophony of its escape was overlaid with its tortured howls, but Bane noticed neither sound. He had no more use for the rancor; he had found what he was searching for.

He took a trembling step forward before stopping short. He shook his head to clear it. The dark side was strong here, so strong it made him feel light-headed. That meant this was a place of danger; he couldn’t afford to be wandering around in a stupor.

According to the accounts he’d read in the archives, the Temple had once been protected by a powerful energy shield, one that required an entire Rakatan tribe-of which each individual had been a powerful Force-user-to bring it down. He didn’t sense any such barrier, but only a fool would proceed without caution.

As he had done in the tombs on Korriban, he began to probe the area around him with the Force. He felt the echoes of the safeguards that had once protected the Temple, but they were so weak as to be almost nonexistent. He wasn’t surprised. The shields around the Temple had been fueled by the power of the orbiting Star Forge. With its destruction, the shields had failed-along with all the other defenses that had made the Unknown World a graveyard of ships.

Wondering what else had been lost in the Star Forge’s violent end, he crossed the surrounding courtyard and mounted the Temple steps. The staircase was steep but wide, and the stone was neither worn nor cracked despite its age. It ended at a small landing leading to the stone archway of the entrance, three-quarters of the way up. He paused at the threshold, then passed through. He had a brief sensation of what it must have felt like for those who came before him: the anticipation, the thrill of discovery. Once inside, however, it only took a few minutes of exploration for his excitement to fade.

Like Korriban, the Temple had been stripped of anything of value. He searched for hours, beginning with the top floor where he had first come in and proceeding deeper and deeper until he reached the bottom level, combing every centimeter of the empty halls and deserted rooms. Yet even though his search was proving futile, he didn’t despair. The crypts in the Valley of the Dark Lords had felt drained-used up and sucked dry. The Unknown World felt different. There was still power here.

There had to be something here for him to find. He was certain of it. He refused to accept another failure.

It was in the lowest level of the Temple, far below the planet’s surface, that his obsessive quest finally ended. When he first stumbled into the room his attention was immediately drawn by the remains of a massive computer, but it was clearly beyond any hope of repair. And then he noticed something on the stone wall behind the computer.

The surface was etched with a number of arcane symbols: the language of the Rakata, perhaps. They meant nothing to him, and he would have dismissed them without a second glance. Except that one of them was glowing.

He almost hadn’t noticed it at first. It was subtle: a faint violet hue tracing the edges of one of the unusual shapes. It was almost perfectly level with his eye.

As he stared at it, the glow grew stronger. He stepped forward and reached out tentatively with his hand. The light winked out, startling him into taking a step back. He reached out again, but this time, instead of using his hand, he reached out with the Force.

The stone character flared to life.

Struggling to contain his eagerness, he again extended his hand and pressed hard against the glowing symbol. There was the sound of turning gears, and the grinding of stone on stone. The seams of a small square-less than half a meter on each side-took shape in the wall as a section of stone pushed out.

Bane stepped back as the chunk toppled down from the wall and shattered on the ground at his feet, revealing a small cubbyhole behind it. With no hesitation, he thrust his arm into the darkness to seize whatever was inside.

His fingers wrapped around something cold and heavy. He drew it out and stared in wonder at the artifact in his hand. Slightly larger than his fist, it had the shape of a four-sided pyramid-a tiny replica of the Temple in which he stood. Bane instantly recognized his prize for what it was: a Sith Holocron, a repository of forbidden knowledge just waiting to be unlocked.

The art of constructing Holocrons had been lost for countless millennia, but from his studies Bane knew something of the basic theory behind their design. The information they contained was stored within an interwoven, self-encrypted digital matrix. A Holocron’s protection systems couldn’t be circumvented or broken; the information couldn’t be sliced or copied. There was only one way to access the knowledge captured within.

Each Holocron was imprinted with the personality of one or more Masters to serve as guardians. When accessed by one capable of understanding its secrets, the Holocron would project tiny, crude hologrammic images of the various guardians. Through interaction with the student, the programmed simulacra would teach and instruct in much the same way as would a flesh-and-blood mentor.

However, all accounts of Sith Holocrons had made mention of the ancient symbols adorning the four-sided pyramid. The Holocron he held in his hand was almost completely blank. Could this possibly predate even the Holocrons of the ancient Sith? Was this a relic of the Rakata themselves? Would the guardians of the Holocron be the imprinted personalities of alien Masters from a time even before the birth of the Republic? And if so, would they be willing to teach him their secrets? Would they even respond to him?

Moving carefully, he set the Holocron gently on the floor, then sat down before it. He crossed his legs and began the deep, slow breathing of a meditative trance. Gathering and focusing his energy, Bane projected a wave of dark Force power out to engulf the small relic on the floor. The Holocron began to sparkle and shimmer in response.

He held his breath in anticipation, unsure what would come next. A small beam of light projected out from the top, the particles scattered and diffused. They began to shift and spin, coalescing into a cloaked figure, its features completely hidden by the hood of its heavy robe.

Then a voice spoke, crisp and clear. “I am Darth Revan, Dark Lord of the Sith.”

The empty halls of the Temple above trembled with the reverberations of Bane’s triumphant, booming laughter.

To Bane it seemed the teachings contained within the single Holocron surpassed those of the Academy’s entire archives. Revan had discovered many of the rituals of the ancient Sith, and as the Holocron’s avatar explained their nature and purpose, Bane could barely wrap his mind around their awesome potential. Some of the rituals were so terrible-so dangerous to attempt, even for a true Sith Master-that he doubted he would ever dare to use them. Yet he dutifully copied them down on sheaves of flimsi, preserving them so he could study them in greater depth later.

And there was far more than just the ancient practices of dark side sorcerers stored inside the Holocron. In only a few short weeks he’d learned more about the true nature of the dark side than he had in all his time on Korriban. Revan had been a true Sith Lord, unlike the simpering Masters who bowed to Kaan and his Brotherhood. And soon all his knowledge-his understanding of the dark side-would belong to Bane.

Githany woke with a start, kicking the covers off her cot and onto the dirt floor of the tent. She was sweating and flushed, but it wasn’t from the heat. Ruusan had entered its rainy season, and though the days were warm and humid, at night the temperature dropped enough that the sentries on duty could see the misty clouds of their own breath.

She’d been dreaming of Bane. No, not dreaming. The details were too sharp and clear to call it a dream; the experience too vivid and real. It was a vision. There was a link between the two of them, a bond established through their time together studying the Force. A connection between mentor and student was not unheard of, although Githany was no longer sure who had really been the Master and who the apprentice in their relationship.

Her vision had been one of stark clarity: Bane was going to come to Ruusan. But he wasn’t coming to join the Brotherhood. He was coming to destroy it.

She shivered, the perspiration cooling her skin in the chill night air. She rolled out of bed and pulled her heavy cloak on over her thin bedclothes. She had to speak to Kaan about this. It couldn’t wait until morning.

The night was dark: the moon and stars were blocked out by the brooding storm clouds that had filled the sky ever since she and the others from Korriban had arrived. A light mist fell from the sky, a slight improvement from the steady drizzle that had been falling when she’d crawled wearily into bed.

A handful of other Sith were wandering the camp. A few mumbled unintelligible greetings as they passed, but most kept their heads down and their feet plodding steadily through the mud. The ardor Kaan had inspired when the reinforcements had arrived had been dulled by the seemingly endless stream of gray, wet days. It would be several more weeks before the rains abated and gave way to the sweltering heat of Ruusan’s long summer. Until then Kaan’s followers would continue to suffer from the damp and cold.

Githany paid no attention. Focused on her mission, she slowed only when she reached the entrance to the great tent that Kaan had made his personal quarters. There was a light burning inside; Lord Kaan was awake.