Star Wars_ Darth Bane 03_ Dynasty of Evil - Drew Karpyshyn [10]
As the explosion ended his life, Medd finally understood the true horror of the dark side.
2
The nightmare was familiar, yet still terrifying.
She is eight years old again, a young girl huddled in the corner of the small hut she shares with her father. Outside, beyond the tattered curtain that serves as their door, her father sits by the fire, calmly stirring a boiling pot.
He’s ordered her to stay inside, hidden from view, until the visitor leaves. She can see him through tiny holes worn in the curtain, looming over their camp. He’s big. Taller and thicker than her father. His head is shaved; his clothes and armor are black. She knows he’s one of the Sith. She can see that he’s dying.
That’s why he’s here. Caleb is a great healer. Her father could save this man … but he doesn’t want to.
The man doesn’t speak. He can’t. Poison has swollen his tongue. But what he needs is clear.
“I know what you are,” her father tells the man. “I will not help you.”
The big man’s hand drops to the hilt of his lightsaber and he takes a half step forward.
“I am not afraid to die,” Caleb tells him. “You may torture me if you want.”
Without warning, her father plunges his own hand into the boiling pot over the fire. Expressionless, he lets the flesh blister and cook before withdrawing it.
“Pain means nothing to me.”
She can see the Sith is confused. He is a brute, a man who uses violence and intimidation to get what he wants. These things won’t work on her father.
The big man’s head turns slowly toward her. Terrified, she can feel her heart pounding. She squeezes her eyes shut, trying not to breathe.
Her eyes snap open as she is swept off her feet by a terrible, unseen power. It lifts her into the air and carries her outside. Upside down, she is suspended by an invisible hand above the boiling cooking pot. Helpless, trembling, she can feel wisps of hot steam rising up to crawl across her cheeks.
“Daddy,” she whimpers. “Help me.”
The expression in Caleb’s eyes is one she has never seen in her father before—fear.
“All right,” he mutters, defeated. “You win. You will have your cure.”
Serra woke with a start, wiping away the tears running down her cheeks. Even now, twenty years later, the dream still filled her with terror. But her tears weren’t those of fear.
The first rays of the morning sun were streaming through the palace window. Knowing she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep, Serra kicked aside the shimmersilk sheets and got up.
The memory of the confrontation always filled her with shame and humiliation. Her father had been a strong man—a man of indomitable will and courage. It was she who was weak. If not for her, he could have defied the dark man who had come to them.
If she had been stronger, he wouldn’t have had to send her away.
“The dark man will return one day,” her father had warned her on her sixteenth birthday. “He must not find you. You must go. Leave this place. Change your name. Change your identity. Never think of me again.”
That was impossible, of course. Caleb had been her entire world. Everything she knew about the healing arts—and about disease, illness, and poisons—she had learned at his knee.
Crossing the room to her wardrobe, she began to sift through her vast collection of clothes, trying to decide what to wear. Her entire childhood had been spent wearing simple, functional clothing; discarding it only when it became too threadbare and worn to be mended. Now she could go an entire month without wearing the same outfit twice.
She didn’t dream about the dark man every night. For a while, in the first year of her marriage, she had hardly dreamed about him at all. Over the past few months, however, the dream had come more frequently … and with it, the ever-growing desire to learn the fate of her father.
Caleb had sent her away out of love.