Star Wars_ Darth Bane 02_ Rule of Two - Drew Karpyshyn [20]
“Tomcat!” Zannah shouted, her face lighting up with joy. She took a step forward, extending her arms as if she wanted to hug him. Then, as if suddenly remembering the presence of her Sith Master, she pulled up short and clutched her hands to her chest.
Oblivious, the boy kept coming. He didn’t register her sudden change in mood; he hadn’t even noticed the two-meter-tall figure looming in the shadows behind her. There was something pathetic about him, a desperate loneliness in his voice and his eyes that turned Bane’s stomach.
“I’m so glad, Rain,” the boy gasped as he skidded to a stop in front of Zannah, reaching forward to hug her. “So glad you’re—”
She stepped back and shook her head, causing his words to catch in his throat. The happiness in his face vanished, replaced by a look of hurt bewilderment.
“I … I am not Rain,” Bane’s apprentice said, rejecting her childhood nickname and all it symbolized. “I am Zannah.”
“Zannah?” A look of confusion crept across the boy’s face. “Your real name? But why?”
Fumbling for answers, he finally tore his gaze away from the young girl and noticed Bane standing motionless in the background. His bewilderment became comprehension, and quickly turned into righteous rage.
“You!” he shouted, pointing an accusing finger at Bane. Then, as if suddenly remembering the weapon in his hand, he ignited his lightsaber. “You stay away from her!” he screamed. “I will fight you!”
The boy knew he was overmatched. He knew he had no chance to win a battle against a Dark Lord of the Sith. Yet he chose to stay and fight anyway—the actions of a complete and utter fool.
Darth Bane regarded his doomed adversary with contemptuous indifference. This boy was nothing to him—an inconsequential speck he would wipe away. If the boy wanted the vain and empty glory of a so-called courageous death, Bane would grant it.
He dropped his hand casually to his lightsaber, but before he could ignite his weapon, Zannah reacted. Just as she had done when she had broken the necks of the unfortunate Jedi who had accidentally killed her friend, the girl unleashed a wave of unstoppable dark side energy. She acted on pure instinct, drawing on her natural affinity for the Force with no forethought, preparation, or even training.
It happened so quickly Bane never even had a chance to put up his guard … but the attack wasn’t directed at him. The right hand of the boy she had called Tomcat—her cousin and childhood friend—disintegrated. With a mere thought she obliterated everything below his wrist: flesh, bone and tendon vanished in a bloody explosion, leaving only a ragged stump.
With nothing left to grip it, the hilt of his lightsaber clattered to the floor, the blade extinguished. Howling in pain, the boy fell to his knees, clutching his mutilated limb to his chest. Small spurts of blood pumped out of the wound and splattered onto the cavern floor.
The Master glared down at his apprentice. “Why?” he demanded.
“Because there would be no use or purpose in his death,” she answered, echoing his own explanation for letting two of the mercenaries survive.
Bane was smart enough to recognize what was happening. Zannah was trying to save her cousin’s life. He knew that the emotions driving her—sentimentality, mercy, compassion—were weaknesses from which she must learn to free herself. But he didn’t expect his apprentice to learn the ways of the dark side in a single day.
He looked down at the injured boy crumpled on the ground. The blood spurting from his stump had slowed; the blast that had taken his hand had also partially cauterized the wound. The flow was further stanched by dust and grime from the cavern floor as he rolled back and forth at Zannah’s feet. Tears poured from his eyes and mucus ran from his nose to clog his mouth and throat, turning his cries into thick, blubbery whimpers. She regarded him with a cold and calculating eye, feigning disinterest.
The risks from letting this wretched creature live were small, Bane decided. Like the mercenaries, no one would believe his tales of surviving