Revenge of the Jedi/Part 43

When the doors parted, Chiron Brascel took the first step into Vedya Gasald's sanctum. For a brief moment the outer corridor threw his long silhouette upon the chevroned stairs, but the doors sealed behind the last of them and stole away the light. Sconces set into engaged columns around the room emitted a uniform blue glow, but their low light defined the contours of the architecture without giving a clear picture. Chiron saw the countless stars through viewports high above. Amongst the soft blue glow, the dead silence apart from Jedi footsteps, and the chill wind in the Force, Chiron thought of the winter season on Procopia, wrapped up in a blanket with his wife and son when Tarsus had been only a small boy, watching the snow fall. But no blanket would keep out this cold; only the Force could do that.

Chiron suppressed the art connoisseur inside that wished to examine the tapestries hanging from the walls and the ceiling mosaics that gleamed with reflected blue; if anything, such trappings were abominations, veiling corruption with a thin veneer of beauty—a plaster on a weeping sore in the Force. He felt them all around him—corrupted minds and diseased souls.

The children of the dark.

"Master—" Narasi whispered.

"I sense them," Tirien replied. "Not yet."

How many surrounded them, Chiron could not say, but he felt their presence: Sith warriors and assassins, the dark side coiled within them, waiting to strike. Refusing to surrender to fear, Chiron strode to the base of the stairs and laid one foot on the first step.

"Welcome, Lord Brascel."

The high, soft voice cleaved the silence, and all eleven of them froze. In their moment of hesitation, white figures appeared upon the dais above them—giants in white armor and helmets, with dark cloaks thrown back over white pauldrons. Each warrior had to be taller and burlier than Amaani Wisté even without the armor, and each carried a staff taller than himself.

Cortosis staves? Chiron wondered. Or lightsaber pikes?

A figure appeared between two of the Guards—they dwarfed her physically, but in the Force they were no more than dust motes compared to her. Chiron did not know what he had expected of Vedya Gasald, though it had not been this tiny woman, garbed in close-fitted white like an Echani, save for a gleam of red around her neck that even the darkness did not hide—a fire ruby, perhaps, Chiron thought, lit with its own light, though it drew his eye in a way that had nothing to do with its color.

Gasald blocked a blue sconce glowing behind her as she stepped between the Guards, and when her shadow fell on them, Chiron heard some of the beings around him shiver.

Bracing himself with a deep breath, he bowed from the neck without taking his eyes from her and answered, "Lady Gasald. You've been expecting us, I see."

"Of course." She considered each masked and hooded figure at Chiron's back in turn. "Are you here, Kal-Di? Come, there's no need for such empty deceits now."

Tirien stepped onto the stair beside Chiron, who stepped up to match him. The young Knight said, "What happens here, you have brought on yourself."

He shrugged off his black robe and peeled off his lacquered mask, casting it aside. Whether it was Tirien's telepathic guidance or that of the Force itself, Chiron did not know, but he found himself joining all the others in casting aside his robe to clear his body of needless burdens for combat. For one second, he felt hesitance around him, beings shaken by their unity of purpose and obvious commitment to the battle that was to come.

"I might say the same of you, young Knight." Gasald's lips were painted dark on her pale face, so Chiron saw her smile. "And what an assemblage you've brought to sacrifice to me."

"Raven Kaivalt," she mused as the young man appeared on Chiron's other side. "The exile."

"Exile?" Raven asked.

"Even if all your dreams come true and you destroy me today, your fate is sealed," Gasald told him. "You defy your High Council to face me, and they'll cast you from your Order for it. And you'll find no sanctuary in your home, breaker of oaths, faithless one.  Twice a betrayer, trusted by none, an unworthy scion of a failing line."

Chiron felt the faint tickle of falling snow in the Force, and he drew the light to himself to prepare, but the shafts of light that pierced the darkness were thin and few.

"And you dragged a cousin to death with you," Gasald continued, "though he has more Kaivalt blood on his hands than you ever will."

"How do you figure that, my lady?" Gaebrean asked; even facing the Sith Overlord, he found a bit of that gentlemanly charm for his voice.

"The lover, the libertine, the man with a willing woman in every port who'd take any port in a willing woman," Gasald mocked. "The Tapani Jedi, so proud to be the blood of a fallen hero. And yet how many children of that bloodline have you sired on those you've loved and left, abandoned for your next dalliance without a second thought for their disgrace?  And how many of those women, with the man who used them and lied to them forevermore out of reach, could not bear being left with those constant reminders of their unworthiness to keep you?  I slew many Jedi at Eriadu, Gaebrean, but you have a bloodier Jedi holocaust on your soul than I ever will."

Gaebrean said nothing, but Chiron saw the fear in his Raven's as he beheld whatever expression his cousin wore.

"You weren't thorough enough at Eriadu, Gasald," Yan said; she already had her lightsaber hilt in hand. "You'll pay for that oversight."

"The survivor," Gasald replied. "Or so you'd have your comrades believe, but you and I know better, don't we, Yan Razam? I struck down your squadron, your friends, but Kal-Di and his minions did you a worse hurt still—they rescued you.  You've come here seeking a death, Razam, but that death is not mine."

"And speaking of Kal-Di's minions…first and foremost, of course, Zaella Sabir. No longer a pretender Sith, and yet not a Jedi…you have no place here, Twi'lek—this battle is not yours.  A victory will not belong to you, and a defeat will be laid at your feet.  You had your chance to flee beyond my reach, yet you've come here to die alongside beings who would slay you as easily as they would me."

"That's not—" Tirien started, but Gasald raised a finger and Tirien stopped, grunting and wincing.

"Master?!"

"He needs no help you can give him, Narasi Rican." Gasald's lips curved up into a serial killer's smile. "But you don't need me to tell you that, do you? Your master must forever pursue his intellectual challenges, and now that you've confronted your demons, you're just not very…interesting anymore, are you?"

"And you…" She tilted her head a little, and the blue lights illuminated enough of her face for Chiron to make out her look of childlike curiosity. Chiron heard a deeper grunt than Tirien's somewhere behind him, and Gasald arched her head. "Ahhh, I see. You need no words from me, Jarkun'eir'saikal—you're a broken Knight already."

That snow in the Force was falling all around them now, and, too late, Chiron realized the danger of being buried. Centering himself in the truth of the light, in his Jedi principles and his noble heritage, he drew her focus back to himself as he said, "And me, my lady? Have you no twisted words to strike at my spirit?"

"Words?" she asked softly. "No, my lord—deeds, not words. Have you still not realized how I knew of your coming?"

"Someone talked," Tirien said. "Somewhere we were betrayed."

"Indeed you were, but not somewhere, foolish Knight—here. You think you stand united against me, eleven of you against all my force and fury, but you're mistaken."

Lezascan Wisté stepped up to Chiron's side, and the presence of his old friend bolstered Chiron's spirit. But Lezascan kept walking, and when he was halfway up the stairs, he turned around and took the lightsaber hilt off his belt. "I'm sorry, Chiron."

"Father?" Amaani asked.

Chiron shook his head, stricken and disbelieving. "Why?"

"Because you wouldn't listen to me! Because you would throw away our lives, the flower of our Jedi, our homes and heritage and people on this doomed expedition!  I told you I would do whatever was necessary to protect the Tapani sector," Lezascan said. "I never believed I would have to protect it from you, but that's what you've left me to."

"What?" Amaani demanded, and Chiron felt the wave of his anguish in the Force. "Father, you can't do this!"

"It's the only way, son; there is no victory against power like this. Join us and we can protect our home!"

"Us?" Tirien asked with narrowed eyes.

For once, Raven was a step ahead of him. Drawing his lightsaber hilt from his belt, he pointed it back and said, "Will you walk up there and own your evil, Sir Kobold, or will you make me cut you down in our midst?"

Chiron turned in dismay to see Kobold Baliss shoulder through the strike team, his face rigid with suppressed emotion, and skip up the stairs to his former master's side. "There's nothing we can do, Amaani."

"We can be Jedi!" Amaani roared, and his lightsaber snap-hissed to life.

The sound was echoed on all sides as the Sith in the shadows of the columns ignited their scarlet blades, Gasald's bodyguards activated short white ones on their pikes, and the Jedi team drew lightsabers in a rainbow of colors. Chiron tried to center himself in the Force, to think past the pain of his old friend's betrayal, as he raised his saber to guard. Lezascan ignited his blade too, but though Kobold had his lightsaber hilt in hand, he did not call forth the blade.

"Please, Amaani," he said. "He's your father. You're like my brother.  Please don't make me do this."

"I'm not unreasonable, or without mercy," Gasald said; the glow of her guards' lightsaber pikes showed her face clearly at last. "I claim the lives of Kal-Di, Rican, and Raven Kaivalt for their insults to me at Milagro, but the rest of you may lay down your arms and live. And I will hold to my oath and spare the Tapani sector."

"It's the best way to protect our people," Lezascan said. "It's our only chance now."

Amaani's blade kept up a steady hum; his sword hand was shaking. "How could you think I would ever join you? How could I look in Kaelora's eyes when I stood with the traitors who got her brother and her cousin killed?  All your talk of honor and redemption, Kobold, all the chances to restore your family's good name, and you've thrown them all away for a Sith.  Coward."

Kobold turned to Lezascan, his eyes pleading for an answer, and Chiron grasped the truth even as he felt the young knight breaking inside. Lezascan glanced at Gasald, looming over them, then back down to Amaani, but Amaani's glare silenced him before he could get a word out.

"You told Kobold, but not me—why?" Amaani demanded. "Because you knew I'd never submit? Because you could abuse your apprentice's trust to wrap him up in this, but not me?  You betrayed our High Lord, dishonored our family, corrupted my best friend, and for WHAT?!"

"Son…"

Amaani pointed his blade, his face twisted with fury. "You are not my father. I have no father."

Lezascan recoiled, and Chiron hated him for daring to look wounded by the words. As tension mounted in the Force, Chiron knew the moment was coming—the tide of violence surged against the dam, the breakers striking harder every second, the rupture inevitable. Let that tide be the light, he told himself. Let it spill out of me to flood upon the enemies of life.

"Raven?" Gaebrean asked in a strangled voice.

Raven breathed in and pointed his blade. "Nothing's changed. We came here to destroy the Sith."

"And everyone who stands with them," Jarkun growled.

"So that's what we'll do," Tirien finished.

Raven glanced sideways. "Sir Amaani?"

Chiron had to shift aside, lest Amaani shoulder past him. Now the point of their formation, the tall Knight stared at his father and his best friend for a long moment before Chiron sensed him summoning the Force. "There is no emotion—kill them all. But Gasald is mine."

Chiron felt a reflection of his own sudden wariness as Tirien said, "Amaani, remember the—"

But Amaani cried out and charged, and the Jedi had no choice but to follow.