Star Wars_ Darth Bane 01_ Path of Destruction - Drew Karpyshyn [130]
“Good-bye, old friend,” he whispered. Slowly, his eyes opened, revealing the waking world and the empty darkness of his tent. “Good-bye.”
Sleep did not return to him that night. Instead he thought long and hard about what Pernicar had said to him in his dream. Pernicar had always been the one he’d turned to in times of confusion and trouble. It made sense that his mind would conjure up the image of his dearest friend to set him on the proper path again.
He knew what he had to do. He would swallow his pride and ask Farfalla’s forgiveness. They had to set aside their personal differences for the sake of the Jedi.
First thing in the morning he emerged from his tent, determined to send an envoy to Farfalla. But to his surprise he found that one of Farfalla’s people had come to speak with him.
“I wondered if I had made this trip in vain,” the messenger admitted once Lord Hoth had welcomed her into his tent. “I was afraid you would refuse to even see me.”
“Had you come a day earlier you probably would have been right,” he confessed. “Last night I had a … revelation that changed things.”
“I guess we’re lucky I came today, then,” she replied with a cordial tilt of her head.
“Yes, lucky,” he muttered, though part of him believed the timing of the dream had nothing to do with luck at all. Truly, the Force was a powerful and mysterious ally.
Bane could still feel the poison in his system as he drove the land crawler across Ambria’s vast and empty plains. The rumble of the engine couldn’t quite drown out the rattle and clank of the junk piled in the back. The clatter kept him from pushing the memories of the vehicle’s previous owners completely from his mind, but he felt no remorse over their deaths.
He’d left their bodies lying where they’d fallen—in the midst of the battlefield where they’d gathered their prizes. Their deaths had given him the strength to press on, but already the surge of power he had felt was fading. He had the strength to keep the synox at bay for a few more hours, but he needed to find a permanent cure.
He needed to find Caleb. If he could reach the healer, there was still hope. But the man’s dwelling was still many kilometers away.
It was only a matter of time until his body succumbed to the paralysis and his mind was swallowed by the fevered madness brought on by the toxin. For now, though, his anger allowed him to keep his thoughts clear.
He wasn’t angry at Githany. She had only acted as a servant of the dark side should. His rage was directed inward—toward his own weakness and misplaced arrogance. He should have anticipated the true depth of her cunning.
Instead he had let her poison him. And if he died now, his great revelation—the Rule of Two, the salvation of the Sith—would end with him.
Caleb felt the land crawler’s approach long before he saw or heard it. It was like a storm on the wind, a black sky rushing in to cover the sun. When the vehicle rolled to a stop before his hut he was already sitting outside waiting for it.
The man who climbed out was large and muscular, a sharp contrast with Caleb’s own thin and wiry frame. He wore dark clothing, and a hook-handled lightsaber dangled from his belt. His skin was gray as ash, and his features were twisted into an expression of cruelty and contempt. Even were he not sensitive to the ways of the Force, it wouldn’t have been hard for Caleb to recognize him as a servant of the dark side. What he might not have sensed was how powerful this grim visitor truly was.
But Caleb had dealt with powerful men and women before. Jedi and Sith alike had come to him in the past, and he had turned them all away. He was a servant of the common people, those who could not help themselves. He wanted no part of the war between light and darkness.
The man began walking toward him, moving stiffly. The foul stench of poison wafted out from the dying Sith’s pores, smothering the scent of the boiling soup hanging