Moments of Truth/Part 16

Zodo got his wind back while Tirien was still staring down from the Second Chance, thinking through this unexpected development. Zaella got to her feet at his side, but Narasi spoke first.

"It's a trick," she said. "A trap. It has to be."

"We couldn't beat him together," Zaella replied. "What's she going to do alone?"

"It isn't what it seems, remember?" said Narasi. "We can't take it at face value."

Tirien had thought all these things, but hearing them spoken aloud helped him sift through them. "You're both right. I'm going to meet with her, but I'm not taking anything for granted.  Narasi, put Gizmo inside and seal the ship, then the two of you go to the village center and stay alert.  If anyone makes a move—the Dark Jedi or the queen's guard—call me."

He thought Narasi would argue, or Zaella would ask for her lightsaber, but the Twi'lek only cracked her knuckles and nodded, and though Narasi made her rasping, feline sigh in the back of her throat, she said, "Yes, Master. May the Force be with you."

"And also with you both." Tirien hopped down to the ground and nodded to Zodo. "Let's go."

The walk to the square took no more than a minute, but time expanded for Tirien. His meditation had reinvigorated his body, but as he had sunk deeper into the Force's current, he had perceived the writhing energy, like some subterranean leviathan had awoken and disturbed the surface with its lashing coils. It was the dark side, of course; Tirien could see clearly enough for that. But what Maia and her minions were planning, and when and where and why…those questions were harder to answer. Conscious, as Narasi had reminded him, that it was not what it seemed, Tirien tried to keep one mental foot in the flow of the Force while the other stood on the riverbank of mundane reality.

Maia stood at the base of Marekka's Tree, her clothes shimmering white against the tree's bark and the orange light from the Big House's open door, though she had lowered her hood to reveal her fine features and shining platinum hair. She turned toward Tirien a second after he saw her, and he watched her take a deep breath.

"I thought it might be best if we spoke alone," she said.

Never looking away from her, Tirien touched Kodo on the shoulder, and through the contact he perceived the young man's fear. "Thank you, Kodo. Please tell Boss Mukka I'll speak with her once I'm done with Maia."

Once Kodo bowed and ran for the Big House, Tirien said, "We're alone. Say what you've come to say."

She looked around, and the way her dark eyes leapt from shadow to shadow told Tirien she was on edge. Did Narasi have the right of it—was Maia planning an ambush after all? That did not feel right, but Tirien could not imagine what Maia thought she had to fear from the Guudrians.

"Not here," she said, sweeping one arm in a familiar direction. "Will you walk with me?"

"After you," Tirien said, and he followed her out of the village toward the shrine.

They found Jebba polishing the floor just inside the doors. He jumped to his feet as they approached, looking dumbfounded. Maia made no comment about his presence inside the shrine, but she said, "Leave us."

"Please," Tirien added. They stopped even with one another, a few meters apart, and Maia gave him a look. She was taller than him by several centimeters, but slender and statuesque as befit a Makashi stylist. Tirien returned her look, then said to Jebba, "Maia and I would like to talk, Jebba. If you'd please give us the shrine and wait in the Big House, I'll come speak to you and Boss Mukka when we're done."

Jebba looked back and forth between them, swallowed, and bowed. "Of course, Masters. Excuse me…"

He tried not to run for the steps, though Tirien felt him quicken his pace when he thought no one was watching. Maia made another sweeping gesture, but Tirien said, "You first."

She made a face, but went in, keeping him in her peripheral vision. With no moon and a cloudy night, it was hardly brighter outside than inside, and Maia gleamed like a spirit as she walked through the dark. She had not removed her boots, so Tirien did not either in case she forced the duel upon him. Maia walked up to the corae; the door stood open. She slid one hand up the polished edge of the door, frowning. "This should be closed…"

"One of many lies you've told them," Tirien said. "No true Jedi considers the dark a coequal part of the Force or a necessary aspect of reality."

She turned to him, and her dark eyes, set in her pale face, looked like holes through her skull. "I thought that way once. There's so much more to the Force, though…"

Tirien crossed his arms. "You were a Jedi once, weren't you?"

He thought she might insist that she still was, even that she was the true Jedi and he the heretic, but she surprised him with a nod. "Yes."

"But not a Knight."

"If Knighthood comes only from the High Council, then no." Her lofty tone made clear what she thought of that. "If Knighthood comes from the Force…"

Tirien remembered having this same debate with Karr Shadeez years before. "The Force would never anoint a tyrant one of its champions."

"Are you so sure of everything?" Maia snapped, and she crossed her arms to mirror his pose. "You think you've come to Guudria as some sort of Force-sent savior, yet you're too narrow-minded to imagine that might be my destiny, not yours."

"You think you're saving these people?" Tirien demanded. "How many have been executed under your laws? How many maimed or tortured?  And to protect them from what?  In all the years you've been here, how many Sith Lords have you defeated to protect them?"

Maia flinched, and Tirien thought he had scored a point. "Sometimes the Jedi need to lead," he pressed; he did not want her throwing the string of Jedi Chancellors in his face as Zaella had. "But if the people we're leading are worse off than they'd be without us, we're doing something wrong, and we've grown far from the light."

"I can save these people," she insisted. "I will! I just need a little more time."

"Save them from what?"

Maia looked away. Tirien tried to get a read on her thoughts, but for all she was not a Knight, he found her challenging to read all the same. He felt a twinge in his mind, the telepathic equivalent of a finger flick against his forehead, and she snapped, "Stop that."

"Then answer me—what do you think you're protecting the Guudrians from?"

Maia tented her hands over the bridge of her nose for a moment. "Tirien, I need you to trust me—"

"Trust you?" Maia's tone had come down to earth in a hurry, and Tirien did not miss the hint of desperation, but it made him no less incredulous. "Your First Knight tried to murder Barka today. All three of you tried to Force choke us to death the first time we met."

She flicked a hand. "I specifically told Bras not to do that. He's getting difficult to restrain…"  Now Tirien could sense her aggravation, but she continued, "And we wouldn't have killed you.  If we had taken you alive the first day, we'd have made you see, you'd understand…"

"You'll have a time of it making us do anything," Tirien said. "But if there's something you need me to understand, now's the time to share."

She paced back and forth before the corae ' s door. "Just trust me. Leave Guudria in my care.  A little more time and everything will be fine here; the Guudrians will be safe.  I'm sorry some of them had to suffer, but sometimes a few have to die for the rest to have peace."

Tirien shook his head. "I don't know what you're so afraid of, but that's Sith logic. We don't sacrifice innocents.  It's one thing to be unable to save everyone, but striking them down yourself for some nebulous future benefit is something else."

Maia stopped and covered her eyes. Sharpening his sight as much as the dim allowed, Tirien saw the lines beside one thumb from how she had squeezed her eyes shut, and the quick rise and fall of her chest. When she rounded on him, though, her lovely face darkened. "You told me today that you've been holding back. You should know that we have too.  If you won't stand aside, we'll—I'll be forced to resort to extreme measures to stop you."

Tirien narrowed his eyes and uncrossed his arms. "I can't make your choices for you, but I will stand between you and the people you've hurt. This is your last chance, Maia.  Give up this nightmare and return to the light."

Was it a trick of the dark, or did Maia hesitate? Tirien could not tell, and after a moment her choice was made. "When your Padawan and the Twi'lek die, remember that I gave you a chance."

Tirien did not trust himself to reply, and so he merely stood aside as Maia stormed out of the shrine. Following her into the darkness, he watched her white-garbed form turn into a pale spot as she walked around the village and out of sight. Only then did he take the steps back up to Marekka.

Narasi and Zaella stood beneath Marekka's Tree; still without her lightsaber, Zaella had her sparring stick in hand instead. When she spotted him, Narasi asked, "What'd she say?"

"Let's go inside; Jebba and Boss Mukka will want to hear this too."

No sooner had they fallen in with him, though, then Zaella whirled toward the shrine. "Who's there?!"

Tirien and Narasi both looked, but no one was visible in the shadows of the sleeping village. The moment he turned, though, he felt it too—a watchful presence, malevolent and hateful, bearing down on them all. The temperature dropped by the second, and instinctive fear bypassed thought and seized Tirien's heart in an icy grip, trying to paralyze him into inaction.

Snap-hiss. Narasi had her blue blade in hand, but it was shaking, and she cried, "Where are you?!"

Narasi's panic and Zaella's fear—Zaella, who had only a stick for defense because Tirien himself had left her unarmed—melted the ice holding Tirien in place. Jedi protect. Stepping in front of them, he raised his hand and thought, Light.

A sunspot flared behind his palm, so bright even he had to squint against the light pouring back between his fingers. The three buildings before him were lit bright as day and the shadows vanished…all except the long shadow of a man on the ground, unyielding as if it had been painted on the dirt. It was darkness made solid, a living thing of evil. Tirien thought it an imprint of the dark side itself until it reached a shadow hand toward his ankles.

Zaella screamed, and Tirien focused harder on the light, willing the Force to shield them against this nameless, disembodied horror. The shadow stretched toward them as if cast by a man growing taller by the second…the light brightened behind Tirien's hand until he felt his hand burning from the intensity of it…

And then, with one last shiver, Tirien saw the shadow wobble, then recede into the crack between buildings and vanish. The light died behind his hand too, and he doubled over, clutching a stitch in his side and realizing in retrospect that he had called on the light side for far more than simple illumination. Flash-blind in the sudden darkness, it took him a moment to be sure he had not really burned his hand, though his whole forearm tingled.

Quavering lights appeared behind shutters as Guudrians lit candles, and some of them burst out of the Big House while the nightly patrol came running into the square. Zaella had fallen; Tirien caught her arm and pulled her to her feet, then gestured downward to Narasi.

She deactivated her blade, but her eyes were wide and her ears almost flat. "What the hell was that?!"

Tirien frowned the way the shadow had fled; the cold had fled with it, but he felt it inside him still, lingering around his galloping heart. "Something much more dangerous than three Forceful con artists."

He let his Padawan and Zaella enter the warmth and light of the Big House first, gazing out into the darkness until Narasi noticed he had stopped and called his name. Even as he followed them inside, his mind was far away, remembering Maia Kyss's cold expression in the darkness and wondering just what she had been holding back.