Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [18]
Beside him Zannah gasped, drawing a sharp breath in wonder then releasing it in a slow hiss of fear. He glanced down at her, but she didn’t return his gaze—her wide eyes were transfixed by the remnants of the thought bomb. Turning his attention back to the orb, Bane stepped forward into the chamber. Zannah took a single step to follow him, then held back.
Approaching the globe, he reached out with his bare hand and pressed it firmly against the surface. It seared his palm with cold fire, but he was oblivious to the pain, enthralled by the object’s mesmerizing call. Beneath his touch the dark swirling shadows within coalesced into a single mass. The thoughts of those trapped inside rushed up to meet him: faint whispers in the dark recesses of his mind, the words unintelligible but full of hate and despair.
Instinctively Bane’s consciousness recoiled. He resisted, fighting the urge to pull his hand back. Instead he thrust his awareness forward, penetrating the surface of the orb to plunge into the unfathomable depths of its black heart. The hateful whispers erupted into shrieks of torment. But these were not the screams of sentient beings: they were bestial howls of primal, mindless fury. The identities of those the thought bomb had consumed—Lord Kaan, General Hoth, all their Sith and Jedi followers—had been destroyed, ripped apart by the thought bomb’s explosion. Only torn bits remained, broken pieces of what once had been spirits, no longer capable of conscious thought, wailing in the shared suffering of their eternal madness.
They swarmed over Bane’s consciousness, cleaving to his still-whole identity like parasites attaching themselves to a fresh host. The keening spirits enveloped him, clutching and clawing at his sanity as they tried to drag him down with them into their dark abyss.
Bane tore free with contemptuous ease, shredding the already frail and tattered spirits as he cast them aside, and let his mind drift back to the surface. An instant later he was free, leaving behind the prison from which the others would never escape.
He let his hand drop from the oblong sphere as he took a step back, satisfied at what he had learned. There were no ghosts haunting him; Kaan was no more. Not in any real sense. The figure he had seen at the Sith camp had been nothing but a delusion conjured up by his own wounded psyche.
“Are they trapped in there?” Zannah asked. She was staring at Bane with an expression of both awe and terror.
“Trapped. Dead. It makes no difference,” he answered with a shrug. “Kaan and the Brotherhood are gone. They got what they deserved.”
“Were they weak?”
Bane didn’t answer right away. Kaan had been many things—ambitious, charismatic, stubborn, and in the end a fool—but he had never been weak.
“Kaan was a traitor,” he said at last. “He led the Brotherhood away from the teachings of the ancient Sith. He turned his back on the very essence of the dark side.”
Zannah didn’t reply, but she looked up at him expectantly. The role of mentor was a new one for Bane; he was a man of action, not words. He wasn’t used to taking the time to share his wisdom with another desperate to learn it. But he was smart enough to understand that the lessons would have far more meaning if his apprentice could figure out some of the answers for herself.
“Why did you choose to become my apprentice?” he asked, challenging her. “Why did you choose the way of the dark side?”
“Power,” she replied quickly.
“Power is only a means to an end,” Bane admonished her. “It is not an end in itself. What do you need power for?”
The girl furrowed her brow. Her Master already recognized this expression as a sign she was struggling to come up with an answer.
“Through power I gain victory,” she said when she finally spoke, reciting the final lines of the Sith Code she had learned only a few hours earlier. From her tone it was clear she was trying to work through her