“How come you don’t like the Queen?” Anakin Skywalker asked as the transport began descending.
       “Don’t like the Queen?” Obi-Wan Kenobi turned to his young apprentice with a puzzled look. “What gives you that idea?”
       The twelve-year-old boy hoisted himself onto the counter beside the console, swinging his feet. “Whenever we come here, you’re always in a hurry to leave.”
       “That’s not true.”
       “And you feel uncomfortable. I can tell.” 
       “It’s not me that’s in a hurry to leave. Our business demands us elsewhere. With things in the Republic as they are, we have precious little time for visiting.”
       “If our missions are so important, then, how come you’re leaving me here?”
       “This time, my Padawan, I must go alone.”
       “But I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Is it dangerous?”
       “Very.”
       “Is it exciting?”
       “Danger usually is.”
       “Will there be fighting?”
       “I hope not, but probably.”
       “Then I should go with you!”
       Obi-Wan sighed and wondered if he’d been this much trouble to his Master, Qui-Gon. Upon reflection, he thought not, for he had been identified and inducted into Jedi training when he was barely out of infancy, whereas Anakin hadn’t been accepted by the Council until three years ago.
      “Anakin, you’re not ready for a mission of this sort.”
       “I helped you on Endor’s moon,” the youth pointed out.
       “That was entirely different. And look how it turned out.” He gave Anakin a stern look.
       Abashed, the boy pretended to find the utmost fascination with the tuft at the end of his thin braid. “I didn’t mean to. I was just telling them stories. How was I supposed to know they’d take it so seriously? Besides, what harm could it do?”
       “Don’t ever say that,” Obi-Wan advised. “Those are the words that will come back to haunt you.”
       The ship settled to a stop, and the pilot came into the rear compartment. 
      “Naboo Royal City,” he announced. “There’s a greeting party on the way.”
       “All right!” Anakin hopped down and smoothed his cream-colored Jedi tunic. “How do I look?”
       “Very presentable.”
       The portal irised open and a ramp extended smoothly onto the marble flagstones. Directly ahead of them was a mammoth arch of pale stone, elaborately sculpted and decorated. Obi-Wan and Anakin moved forth into the clean, sweet-smelling air to meet the approaching group.
       Anakin rushed ahead. He had shot up several inches in the past three years, and thanks to his rigorous training, his build had kept up with his height, so that he lacked the gangly appearance of most teens. He stopped, swept his dark brown cloak behind him, and executed a gallant bow.
       “I once believed angels came from the deep reaches of space,” he said to the central figure of the group. “Now, having been over half the galaxy, I know I was wrong. They come from this world.”
       Queen Amidala, her slender body unbowed by the weight of her elaborate ceremonial gown and headdress, smiled brilliantly at Anakin. Her blush couldn’t be seen through the layers of white make-up, but Obi-Wan could sense that it was there.
       “Welcome, honored Jedi,” she said. Her warm gaze shifted from Anakin to include Obi-Wan. There, it lingered, and grew even warmer, until he had to avert his eyes and will his own face not to redden.
       “Majesty.” Obi-Wan inclined his head. “I’m afraid I must impose upon the generous hospitality of your people once more.”
       “We are always pleased by your visits. It’s hardly an imposition.”
       “He’s dumping me here,” Anakin said brightly. “While he goes off and does neat Jedi stuff. Hey! Artoo!” 
       A flurry of excited blips, beeps, and whistles issued from the squat droid as it trundled forward to meet Anakin.
       “Oh ... I see.” Amidala looked at Obi-Wan again. 
       “If that is agreeable to your Majesty. I would have sent word ahead, but this all fell together with rather short notice. If we might speak privately ...?” he finished reluctantly.
       The Queen nodded graciously and her party escorted them into the palace. Obi-Wan could hear Anakin regaling Artoo with the stories he’d spun for the poor primitives of Endor, blithely answering the droid’s questions as if he still 
hadn’t realized how unusual was his ability with languages both organic and mechanical. 
       “We are prospering under the guidance of the new Senate,” Amidala said by way of small talk as the Jedi followed her to her smallest throne room. “Chancellor Palpatine is working most diligently to drive out corruption. Some criticize his methods as harsh, but he assures me it is necessary to lead with a firm hand.”
       “I’m sure his wisdom is a credit to his office,” Obi-Wan said.
       Her orange-gowned handmaids flanked her as she slowly lowered herself onto the throne. Each bore a vague resemblance to Amidala, and Obi-Wan wasn’t sure which was the one who replaced the Queen as a decoy in times of trouble. It could, he reasoned, be any of them. But he’d no doubts that the one he was speaking to was the true Queen.
       “I apologize again for the suddenness of my request, Majesty, and I am very grateful that my apprentice will be able to await my return here. However, should I ... fail to do so promptly, the Jedi Council will send for him.”
       Concern filled her dark eyes. “Is there a significant chance that you will fail to return promptly?”
       Anakin laughed. “Don’t worry, Ami. They’re always saying things like that.”
       A few of the handmaids and most of the guards bristled at the youth’s casual address of their Queen, but she paid it no mind. 
       “I must go ...” Obi-Wan said heavily, “to Rannok.”
       “The prison moon?” Amidala’s voice stayed even, but he felt her spark of alarm and fear. 
       “Governor Tredze of Lancas has been usurped and taken there secretly. Some fear that he may be slated for execution.”
       “That cannot be allowed! The Governor is among the most just and reasonable members of the Republic. His death would be intolerable!”
       “Which is why it must be prevented.”
       “Surely there are other means. A plea to the Senate ...” she broke off with her lips pursed, perhaps remembering how well her pleas to the Senate had gone when the Trade Federation invaded her system.
       “There’s no time.”
       “No one has ever escaped Rannok.”
       “No one’s ever had a Jedi come rescue them,” Anakin said.
       “Why just one Jedi?” Amidala asked. “Why ... you?”
       This time the roil of fear that didn’t show in the Queen’s outward composure was more intense. Even Anakin caught it. He looked sharply at Obi-Wan, a line of suspicion creasing his forehead.
       Calm, calmer, Obi-Wan thought. “The Governor knows me. He will recognize and trust me. That will save valuable time that might otherwise be spent convincing him of our intent. One Jedi, alone, stands a better chance of entering the prison undetected.”
       “It’s not getting into the prison that’s the hard part,” Anakin remarked.
      “Which is why I mean it when I say there is a chance I might not return promptly,” Obi-Wan said pointedly. “And should I not, I will be counting on you to --”
       “Come rescue you?”
       “No!” Obi-Wan dropped both hands on the youth’s shoulders. “That, you shall not do. You’ll return to the Jedi Council and complete your training. What happens to me is not important.”
       “How can you say that?” Amidala protested, and Artoo warbled in agreement.
       He ignored them, fixing his will on Anakin. “Qui-Gon believed in you. So do I. You won’t disappoint us, but neither will you throw your life away.”
       Anakin’s lower lip jutted stubbornly. “I’m supposed to be your apprentice.”
       “You are. And a good one. But that means I’m responsible for your well-being. I cannot, in good conscience, lead you into a situation like this.”
       “You’re going to die on me, aren’t you? Just like Qui-Gon. Then I’ll be handed off to some
other master. It’s like being a slave again.”
       “Ani!” Amidala gasped.
       “It is not like that,” Obi-Wan said, giving Anakin a little shake. “Don’t you believe it, no matter what Master Yoda might say. You will be a Jedi Knight, and a great one.”
       “But in the meantime, I get left behind.”
       “Yes, I’m afraid so. But hardly as the unwanted baggage you’d make yourself out to be,” he added with a smile. “After all, aren’t you the Hero of Naboo?”
       Anakin grinned. “Well, I guess ...”
       “That’s better. Now, Majesty, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.”
       “Our thoughts go with you,” she said.
       “Thank you. May the Force be with you.” He bowed, and left the throne room.

  *  *

       “I’ve got Cahaldra in view,” Jefin Valtac said.
       The pilot’s voice roused Obi-Wan from a state that was part doze and part meditative trance. “Let’s have a look.”
       The screen filled with the image of the gas giant, which hung in space like a clouded marble of violets, blues, greens, and yellows. The bands of colors swirled and revolved with slow grandeur in a smooth flexion of colors that gave lie to what Obi-Wan knew must be the truth of the planet’s atmosphere. The winds would be screaming, the storms sheeting acid. 
       “The God’s Eye is just coming around.” Jefin tapped the edge of the screen. A colossal storm, bright violet with a brilliant yellow ‘eye,’ appeared as the orb continued in its rotation. Even from this distance, it was shot with flashes of electric blue lightning, each flash large enough to incinerate an entire city. “We should be picking up the Eye’s interference sweep in ...” he consulted his instrument panel, “six-point-five.”
       “Where is Rannok?”
       Jefin called up the image of a small moon, dark and featureless. “Not much to see, I’m afraid.” He enlarged it until they could detect a few glimmers of light -- signs of civilization. “That’s the main prison compound. I’ll set you down here, two clicks away, past these rock formations. We’ll make our initial pass when the moon is under the sweep of the Eye, so they won’t be able to detect us. Our window won’t last long. I’ll have time to land and take off again, and somewhere in there, you’ll want to jump out. You’ll have to make your way overland to the compound, and then meet me back at the same drop site.”
       “When?”
       “How long do you think you’ll need?”
       “I wish I knew ... give me forty-eight hours, and if I’m not there to meet you, another forty-eight. After that, assume that I’ve failed.”
       “Understood. This sensor will track the sweeps for you.”
       Obi-Wan pocketed it and leaned closer, studying the view intently. “Rock formations ... they look too regular for that. Almost like ruins.”
       Jefin chuckled. “Trick of the eyes. Without regular supply ships and power generators, even the prison colony couldn’t survive. Nothing grows. The only light and heat that dead moon gets is from Cahaldra itself, what the astrogators call a ‘brown dwarf.’ The system’s star won’t look much different from anything else in the skies from this far out. We’re
almost closer to Nachu, the next star over.”
       “Still, there’s something ...” he let his eyes go half-closed and pressed his fingertips to the screen. “I sense something down there.”
       The pilot gave him a sidelong look. “Um ... we’re almost into the interference sweep; I need to shut down all non-essential systems until we get through it.”
       “Fine.” Obi-Wan sat back, only the slight furrow of his brow betraying his troubled state of mind. 
       Rannok was a tidally-locked moon, the same face of it always turned toward Cahaldra. That side was barely hospitable, with a thin but breathable atmosphere created by gases issuing from fissures in the moon’s crust. The surface was bathed in dim, flat, blue-violet radiance that was more shadow than light. The other side, facing away from the gas giant toward the far reaches of space, was eternally frozen and dark.
      Not a place that many would willingly go. The perfect choice, some twenty years ago, when the Republic had authorized Minister of Justice Dol Bethra to oversee the construction of a prison compound. 
       Like most things that turned out badly, Obi-Wan reflected grimly, it had seemed like a good idea at the time. But misuse of power, and the corruption that Chancellor Palpatine was fighting in the Senate, had turned Rannok into a hellhole where enemies of those in power, not even necessarily criminals, could be kept out of the way.
       “Entering the sweep now,” Jefin said.
       The cabin was lit only by the amber glow of the instrument panel. The ship dipped slantways as if caught by atmospheric turbulence. Irregular patterns skittered across the screens. Outside, beyond the viewports, violet flickers sparkled and swirled in the emptiness. 
       “How wide is it?” Obi-Wan asked.
       “Like a cone,” Jefin replied. “It widens but disperses, weaker the farther from the planet it gets. We should be coming through in a few more minutes. Then I’ll swing around the back side of Rannok and wait for the next sweep.”
       Obi-Wan rose from his seat, bracing himself with both hands as the ship continued rocking side to side. He made his way into the rear compartment. His pack was there, and he mentally went over the contents yet again. It was always a 
challenge to balance what might be needed against what was too much to carry.
       The ship’s motion smoothed out. Jefin spoke over the intercom. “We’re through, and beginning the approach. Should be just shy of an hour until landing.”
      “I have some things to attend to back here,” Obi-Wan replied. “Alert me when we’re close.”
       He sat down and shut his eyes, turning his thoughts inward to clear them and prepare himself for the mission at hand. The sought-after state of alert serenity didn’t come as easily as usual. Distractions kept intruding. 
       The look in Queen Amidala’s dark eyes. 
       A recent meeting with Yoda, in which the diminutive Jedi Master insisted for the thousandth time that there was still fear in Anakin, that it was a mistake and a dangerous one for Obi-Wan to carry on with his training. 
       His own concern that Yoda was right, overpowered by the promise he’d made to the dying Qui-Gon. 
       One by one he pushed the distractions aside. Calm, calmer. Heed the future and the past, but not at the expense of the now.
       At last, his mind relaxed and opened. He quested outward. 
       There. The mild disturbance in the Force that was born of people, prisoners, in torment. Flavored with the cruel malice of their Wardens and the savage sadism of the Kadav warriors who served as guards and inquisitors. He let it flood fully into him until he was faint and shaking from the horror of it, then began systematically constructing barriers against it to keep from being overwhelmed.
       As he was finishing, he felt again what he had briefly noticed before. 
     Something ... someone ... a presence. He reached for it, and for a bare moment was assailed by a wave of icy anger. It wasn’t directed at him; had it been, he might have been knocked flat. 
       Someone strong with the Force. But no Jedi; he was sure of that. 
       What, then?
       “Landing in two-point-eight,” Jefin announced. “Ready?”
       He came out of himself to the realization that the ship was rocking again, back in the interference sweep. He looked out the viewport and saw the bleak and uninspiring landscape of Rannok getting closer. 
       “Yes.” He shouldered his pack and moved to the hatch at the rear. 
       When the ship touched down, the hatch in the floor slid open and Obi-Wan was looking down at black stones scoured clear of dust by their descent. 
       “Forty-eight hours!” Jefin called back. “During the first sweep after that! Be here!”
       “I’ll do my best.” He dropped through the opening, ducked, and hurried out from beneath the craft.
       Jefin immediately lifted off again. Obi-Wan spared a moment to watch the graceful ship wheel and soar into the distance. Then he was alone, with Cahaldra filling half the pale violet sky above him. 

  *  *

       Obi-Wan broke into an easy jog that carried him swiftly toward the rock formations between him and the prison compound. As he neared them, he slowed. 
       His earlier instinct had been right.
       They weren’t rock formations at all.
       He saw the tumbled wreckage of octagonal columns, and the shattered dome of the roof they’d once supported. A rubble-strewn flight of wide steps leading nowhere. A tilted obelisk of some obsidian-like substance, half-buried in the earth as if it had sunk. At its base, an opening in the ground with stairs leading down, but only a few feet before the passageway was choked with debris. Further on, a broken statue of a woman in a draped sleeveless gown lay face-down in the middle of what might have once been an avenue lined with large decorative pots. 
       Obi-Wan trailed his hands across the objects, and the clamor of the past filled his head. He heard voices crying out in agony and fear, silenced one after another with brutal suddenness. He smelled blood and fire. He felt the ground trembling beneath him, heard the topple and crash of buildings being destroyed.
      The past ... but not the far distant past that he might have expected. Not terribly recently, either ... but sometime between ten and a hundred years ago.
      He moved on, more cautious than ever, hand poised near his light saber. 
      Every now and again, like whiffs of an elusive aroma, he caught faded impressions of that cold angry presence. It had been here. Whatever ... whoever ... it was, it had been here.
       Nothing grows, Jefin had said. That wasn’t true. Vines snaked among the ruins, their color a dark gold, their leaves veined and edged in a purple that matched the sky. Matched, also, the clusters of tiny berries dotting the vines. Black mushrooms, their flat tops merging into large soft plates, sprouted in the hollows. 
       He found part of a fountain, the basin cracked into shards but water still trickling from its central spout. It was cool and slightly oily to the touch, and when he brought a drop of it to the tip of his tongue, it tasted of minerals.
       Ahead of him, a ridge of heaped stone blocks barred his way. He scaled it carefully, keeping his head low until he could see what was on the other side.
       The blocks had once made a wall around a courtyard. The building across from Obi-Wan was impossible to identify; it had been reduced to a heap, the very stones nearly pulverized. But that wasn’t what drew his attention. 
       The bones ...
       A huge mound of them, their ivory painted lavender by Cahaldra’s glow, filled half of the courtyard. They were laced together by more of the golden vines. He even saw the tiny fragile bones of children. Hundreds of people. 
       Obi-Wan made his way down the far side of the ridge and approached. A great and inexpressible sadness washed over him. He reached out, but stopped before touching any of the pitiable remains.
       “Force be with you,” he said softly.
       Questions filled him but he had no satisfactory answers. He was glad to put that terrible sight behind him, although the sight ahead of him once he reached the edge of the ruins was not much better.
       By every report, the prison on Rannok was to have been a simple thing. Long low dormitories to house the prisoners, a few sentry towers to monitor them, a fenced perimeter. The moon itself was their prison; there was nowhere to go and no way to survive even if someone did escape. 
       Why, then, was he looking at a fortress? The walls were sheer cliffs of stone topped with razored coils of bladewire, the gaping eyes of motion and infrared sensors set into them every few yards. 
      Obi-Wan crouched low, blending himself with the terrain, and dug his scanner out of his pack.
       Kadav warriors restlessly prowled walkways on both sides of the walls, their grey-white skin and four-armed shapes unmistakable. On many planets, their vulnerability to sunlight made them nearly useless; here, they could be as formidable as they were on their own home world.
       According to Dol Bethra, his guards were to be armed only with stun-batons. Yet those were Nachuran whip-knives at their waists, and most of them paced with blaster rifles resting on their shoulders. Security drone droids moved in precise patterns over the compound.
       Some of the structures within bore a striking resemblance to the architecture of the ruined city he’d just come through. Others were clearly of another design, solid and functional. The prison had been constructed on and incorporating some existing buildings that had already been on Rannok, long before Dol Bethra had informed the Senate that the barren and uninhabited moon would be a perfect site.
       Bethra’s duplicity aside, Obi-Wan was faced with a more immediate problem. 
       He began a wide, stealthy circle of the walls, looking for a way in and not finding one. There was a landing station atop the highest tower of the fortress, presumably where the supply vessels docked, but no gates.
       Obi-Wan waited and watched for several hours. 
       With the moon tidally locked, there was neither day nor night on Rannok. Just Cahaldra, always looming in the heavens, always shedding that strange light. Thus, no one time looked to be any better than another. No concealing cover of darkness to ease an escape.
       He let down his mental barriers and viewed the fortress through the Force rather than his sight. What he’d felt on the ship came back now, stronger than ever. Pain and misery. Savage malice. 
       But when he sensed the presence of that icy anger again, it wasn’t from within the fortress but from the ruins behind him. Even as his mind touched it, he felt it burst into a killing rage. And heard ... with ears as well as the Force ... the 
familiar and startling sound of a light saber flaring into readiness.
       As he ran, he heard the sharp snap of whip-knives, blaster fire, and the death-bellow of a Kadav, so loud it shook the earth. Mingled through it all was the resonant hum and clash of a light saber. 
       He rounded a corner and stopped short as a blaster shot blew off a chunk of wall just above his head. 
       Two wide avenues intersected at a large square that might have once been a marketplace. The buildings around the square were demolished. At the center was a vine-entwined octagonal dais with steps leading up to a round well. Half of the columns rising from the dais were sheared off. The remaining four still supported the domed roof, though as another blaster shot smashed a hole through the dome and the whole thing shuddered, Obi-Wan didn’t think it would last much longer.
       Six Kadav were converging on the dais. A seventh was on the ground with two hands clamped across the cauterized stubs of his other two arms, veins bulging and jaw tooth-cracking tight in an effort to keep from screaming. An eighth was beyond such concerns, sprawled on his back with his torso laid open from collarbones to belt, his organs bulging out between the charred edges of the blow that had killed him.
       The violet light was brighter here, coming not just from the sky but from the light saber wielded by a woman in black. It was an amethyst streak as she spun and sliced through a stun-baton. Sparks showered as the baton exploded, sending the Kadav head over heels down the dais steps. The woman threw back her head and voiced a laugh part triumph, part challenge.
       She was clad in black from head to toe -- boots to the thigh, close-fitting trousers, a long-sleeved tunic that fell in front and back panels to knee level but was open to the hip on the sides, and a cowled cloak very much like the one Obi-Wan himself wore. The cowl was thrown back, and violet energy spilled across her face. Her hair was as black as 
her clothes, drawn back in a braid.
       The nearest Kadav charged at Obi-Wan, shouting a guttural warning in his own language. 
       Obi-Wan’s light saber, vibrant blue-white, cut an arc through the dimness of the day. He caught the woman’s astounded expression, then put it from his mind because the battle was upon him.
       The Kadav’s whip-knife lashed toward him, each of the thousands of tiny needle-sharp blades winking in the blue-white glow. But Obi-Wan anticipated its path, and severed it. He thrust his other hand at the Kadav. With a single push of the Force, he sent the four-armed warrior flying backward.
       He deflected a blaster shot from the second Kadav into the leg of the third, then made a cartwheeling leap and came down right in front of the one who’d fired. Even as the Kadav’s eyes widened in surprise, Obi-Wan had sheared his blaster into pieces.
       The first Kadav regained his footing and swung at Obi-Wan with a stun-baton in each of his lower hands. The third, injured, flicked his whip-knife at an awkward angle. 
       Obi-Wan leaped over the whip-knife, parried both stun-batons, came down, pivoted, kicked the first one in the head, drove his elbow into the face of the second one who had been rushing him from behind, took a blaster shot from one of the others through the flapping hem of his cloak, realized he wasn’t going to be able to get out of this without killing them, beheaded the first, and hit the second on the juncture of shoulder and neck, leaving a deep burnt score diagonally across the pale chest.
       The third Kadav was up and running despite his wounded leg. Obi-Wan pushed out at him again, a hard sharp thrust of the heel of the hand, and the Kadav soared headlong into a section of wall. It broke apart and fell on him, sending up a gout of dust.
       Looking swiftly around, Obi-Wan saw that there was only one Kadav left moving. He had the woman cornered on the lip of the well, or so he thought, but as he lunged, she jumped-flipped over backward, cloak flying, and landed neatly on the far side.
       The Kadav wasn’t so lucky, striking the lip of the well at knee-level and plunging straight down. After what seemed a very long silence, a crunch echoed up the well’s stone throat.
       Now it was just the two of them, Obi-Wan and the woman, regarding each other warily through the glow of their light sabers.
       Her eyes were a rich gold, like the eyes of a bird of prey. He searched them. 
       “You’re no Jedi,” he finally said. “What are you?”
       “Revenge,” she replied.

  *  *

       “You helped me against the Kadav, and my idea of repaying debts doesn’t include leaving a stranger to be slaughtered for things that I’ve done.” The woman in black indicated the well. “This way. Quickly.”
       “There’s a Kadav down there.”
       “And there will be more up here any minute. Hear that? It’s one of their groundskimmers.” She grabbed one of the vines that trailed into the well and swung halfway in. “Whoever you are and whyever you’re here, I don’t think getting caught, interrogated, and then executed was part of your plan.”
       “True,” he admitted.
       She began a rapid hand-over-hand descent, and he followed. The well opened out at the bottom into a circular chamber with a narrow ledge ringing the water. It was upon this ledge that the unfortunate Kadav had ended up, dead from a snapped neck.
       “Now where?”
       “There’s a hidden door.” She edged halfway around the well and her body concealed her action from him, but moments later, there was a grinding squall of stone and part of the curved wall slid back to reveal an opening.
       “Are you a prisoner?” he asked as she started into the dark space.
       She paused and turned her forearm, pulling up her sleeve. There, burned into the tender flesh of the wrist, was a brand in the shape of a diamond filled with an X. “Occasionally.”
       “They did this to you? The Senate outlawed physical torture --”
       “Oh, yes, mind-probe droids are so much better ... effective, they don’t leave marks, the prisoner only thinks he’s getting his skin peeled away in strips.” She yanked her sleeve back down and looked at him evenly. “And the whip-knives the Kadav carry are just for show. They’d never use them on the prisoners. Right?”
       “They’re not supposed to have those. The Senate --”
       “-- has a lot to learn about Rannok,” she finished. “Or maybe they know, and just choose to hide the truth. Come on.” Her fingers folded around his and pulled him into the darkness. The hidden door closed behind them, leaving them in utter black silence.
      With his free hand, he tried to explore the walls. Sometimes he could touch them, the bumpy candlewax formations damp and slightly moist and smelling of the same oily mineral odor as the water. Sometimes he stretched his arm as far as he could and found nothing. Once, while doing that, his foot strayed over a drop and he halted with his pulse beating more rapidly.
       “There’s a bridge up ahead,” the woman said, and though she spoke in a very hushed tone, she may as well have been shouting. “Stay with me, right behind me. One misstep, and ... well, you think the Kadav had a long fall ...”
       “How can you see?” he asked as they began moving up a gradual slope.
       “I just know.”
       Obi-Wan shut his eyes and let the Force tell him what was around him. 
      Everything seemed to suddenly swim into visibility, dark on dark, a thousand 
shades of grey. And, when he realized they were nearing the center of the bridge 
she’d warned him about, realized that it was a span that he could have encircled 
with both hands, and that the floor dropped away into a fathomless fissure from 
which a breeze sighed like cold breath, he almost wished he had stuck to trying to 
use his vision.
       They reached the other side and pressed on. When he touched the walls 
again, he found them to be smooth stone, cut and worked stone, not the natural 
walls of a cave.
       Finally, the woman stopped and let go of him. “Stairs here. Spiral stairs.”
       Obi-Wan became aware of a faint light that grew brighter as they climbed. It came 
from a small room that opened off one of the landings. The room was nearly perfectly 
round, and monastically simple in furnishings. At the back, water from a fish-shaped 
spout in the wall and pooled in a basin. The light source, a battery-powered lamp, 
rested on a low table ringed by stools. Aside from that, there was a recessed bed-niche 
piled with blankets, and some shelves holding a few books and other effects.
       “This is where you live?” he asked.
       “It’s a place where I sometimes sleep,” she corrected. 
       “Where do you live?”
       “Here and there.” She took two earthenware jugs from a shelf, sloshed them, 
nodded, and gave him one. “Now. I’m Raven. Who are you? And what are you doing 
on Rannok? You’re not a prisoner.”
       “I am Obi-Wan Kenobi. A man is being held unjustly in the prison, and I’ve come 
on a rescue mission.” He sniffed at the jug. Juice from the vine-berries, he surmised. 
Risking a taste, he found it pleasantly sweet. 
       “Just you?” she asked, askance.
       “Just me. I admit, we’d been incorrectly informed about the size and security of 
the compound. Dol Bethra has misled the entire Republic as to what he’s doing here.”
       She snarled at the mention of the name. “You can’t expect to succeed.”
       “I had hopes.”
       “You’ll die. Without help.”
       His eyes narrowed. “What are you suggesting?”
       “Bethra claimed one of our Citadels for his headquarters. He keeps his most 
important prisoners there. I know every inch of it. There are secret passages that 
they’ll never discover.”
       “What do you want in return?”
       “You must have access to a transport.”
       “You want to leave your home?”
       She gestured at her surroundings. “There’s nothing for me here. Bethra’s army 
annihilated everything. I’m the only one left. There’s no point in dying for the sake of 
an empty pile of rocks and the memories of the dead.”
       He nodded. “Very well. What do we do first?”
       “Eat, then rest. The main shift will have started by now. We’ll wait until third 
shift, when the prisoners sleep and the guards are less attentive. Bethra sleeps then, too.”
       As they ate, supplementing her meager supplies with high-energy bars from his 
pack, she described the layout of the Citadel for him. 
       Wrapping himself in his cloak and a borrowed blanket, Obi-Wan sent himself into 
the alert but refreshing trance-state that the Jedi used when they didn’t dare risk full 
slumber. Across from him, the woman fell swiftly into a deep and genuine sleep that 
erased the habitual pain and anger from her face, and left her beautiful.

  *  *

        “Where did you get that?” Obi-Wan asked, watching as Raven checked her light 
saber, activating it and turning it back and forth.
       “It belonged to the Noctus. He taught me to use it.”
       “Who is this Noctus?”
       “Our high priest. Bethra killed him,” she said flatly, switching it off and 
slinging it at her waist. “He foresaw the attack too late to save everyone, but got 
many of his people into hiding. My mother was a tei-gam, a holy bride of Noct.”
       “Why would Dol Bethra destroy your people?”
       “Maybe he feared the power of the Noctus. Maybe he wanted the wealth of our 
city -- what little of it there was -- for his own.” She looked up at him with glittering 
golden eyes. “Maybe he’s a viper on legs who deserves to be cut slowly into small, 
smoking pieces, a bit at a time, while he yet lives.”
       The sheer venom in her voice made Obi-Wan draw back. “Don’t give in to your 
hate, Raven. It can only make you vulnerable to the Dark Side.”
       “My hate keeps me going.”
       “It will destroy you. Master Yoda says that fear and hate lead to suffering, which 
is the path to the Dark Side.”
       “I think your Master Yoda has it wrong. Suffering leads to hate. And hate hones 
the blade of revenge.”
       “Is that the teaching of your Noctus? What would he say to hear you speaking so?”
       “As a matter of fact, that is what he taught us. It’s Noct’s will.”
       Obi-Wan sat down and exhaled slowly. “Did ... did many of your people 
subscribe to that faith?”
       “All of them.”
       “And your Noctus ... who was he? You said he had powers. What kind?”
       “You have them too. When I first saw you, I wondered if you were a Noctus. 
You move like he did, with his speed, as if you know what’s going to happen before 
it does. I saw you throw that Kadav with nothing but your power. The Noctus could 
do that. How can you?”
       “I am a Jedi Knight.”
       “Jedi ... the Noctus used to tell stories about the Jedi. I never thought they were 
real.” She sat opposite him.
       “What was his name?”
       “He was only the Noctus. He didn’t need a name.”
       “Did he ever tell you about the Sith?”
       “The what?”
       “You ... your entire people ... worship the Dark Side of the Force! But you know 
nothing of the Sith? This is madness, impossible!”
       “How can you have the powers of a Noctus and know nothing of Noct?” she 
demanded in turn.
       “It’s the Force, Raven. It’s in all of us, in all living things. Stronger in some than 
in others. I sense it is very strong in you. A Jedi is trained to use the Force, but also to 
control our emotions so that we do not fall prey to the Dark Side. We serve the Republic, 
and see that justice is done.”
       She leaned forward alertly. “So you’ll kill Bethra?”
       “That’s not why I’m here. I came to rescue the Governor Tredze of Lancas before 
he can be wrongfully executed. But I will report Bethra’s deception to the Jedi Council 
and to the Senate.”
       “What will be done to him?”
       “I can’t say for sure. He may be removed from his post. They might even 
disband the prison altogether.”
       “But they’d let him live?”
       “Most likely.”
       “Then it’s a good thing that his fate’s not up to the Senate to decide.” She touched 
her light saber and a cold smile curved her lips.
       “No!” Obi-Wan recoiled from the surge of deadly emotion he sensed. 
      “Murdering Bethra is not the answer! It will not bring your people back, restore 
your city. It accomplishes nothing.”
       “Nothing but his death, and that’s enough for me.”
       “You can’t let your hatred for him rule you. To give in to your desire for revenge 
will lead you down that path.”
       She came at him with such speed that even he wasn’t prepared. Seizing his chin in 
her hand, she riveted him with that golden gaze. “Have you ever seen someone you care 
for die in violence and agony?”
       “Raven ...”
       “Have you?!” She gave his chin a shake.
       “Yes.”
       “Who?”
       “My master. My teacher. He was ... he died in battle against a Sith.”
       “Why didn’t you help him?”
       “I tried! The energy fields --”
       “You couldn’t get to him. So you watched him die.”
       He could feel the Force pouring from her now. Not used with the subtlety and 
finesse of a Jedi, but a raw bludgeoning that battered at his will. That wouldn’t bend 
the weak-minded but break them.
       “I --”
       “How did it feel, Obi-Wan Kenobi? Were you angry? Did you know hate? Like 
a cold black flame consuming your heart? Did you fight his killer? Fight him and kill 
him, hoping that his death -- and your revenge -- would douse some of that flame? 
Did you?”
       He pulled roughly away. 
       She reached again, lightning-quick, but this time he reacted. Her wrist smacked into 
his palm and he held her there, his fingers pressed against the coarse scar of her brand. 
His grip was so tight that his knuckles whitened, but she showed no signs of pain, no 
signs of backing down.
       Seconds stretched into minutes, neither of them dropping their challenge-locked gaze.
       “You did,” Raven said softly.
       “Only for that short time. Only in the heat of battle. But yes. I did.” He let go of her.
       She didn’t draw back, but slowly brought her hand to his chin. She touched it gently, 
then with one fingertip traced the line of his bottom lip. “See? We’re not so different 
after all.”
       Obi-Wan suppressed a shiver. He dipped his head slightly, brushing his lips against 
her hand, closing his eyes as conflicting impulses pulled at him. “I wouldn’t have hunted 
him for revenge. I wouldn’t have let myself be ruled by that dark desire,” he said, his 
voice little more than a harsh whisper. “That is the difference.”
        “You killed him. He’s dead and gone. You’ll never have to find out what you 
would have done if he had gotten away.” Her tentative caress, so warm in contrast to 
the coldness of her words, moved to his cheek, his jaw.
       “There is no good in hatred and revenge. It can only bring evil, only the Dark 
Side.” He spoke the words as if reciting by rote, covering her hand with his and holding 
it more firmly to his face.
       “I don’t think life can be that clear-cut. Good or evil, light or dark ... there’s some 
of both in everyone.”
       “That’s why the Dark Side is so persuasive. You must resist it, or it will overpower 
you.” His lips brushed her hand again, almost a kiss, and his soul moaned in mingled 
yearning and denial. 
       “I can’t turn my back on everything I’ve ever known.” She withdrew, moved 
away from him, the breaking of physical contact both a relief and a piercing sense of 
loss. “On everything I am. You said Noct was this Dark Side personified?”
       He nodded. “So it seems.”
       “Then I can’t ever escape it, even if I wanted to. Noct is my father.”

  *  *

       The cavern walls were covered with carved images and statues. In the eerie 
flickering unlight, they seemed to breathe and stir, and observe the movements of the 
woman below.
       Obi-Wan stood among them, concealed, one shape amid many. He knew he 
should not be here, but when Raven had left to prepare herself for the coming 
infiltration of the prison, he’d been unable not to follow with discreet stealth. He had to 
see if what she’d told him was true.
       Daughter of the Dark Side? It couldn’t be, it was impossible. Conceived through 
her mother’s ceremonial union with this world’s god of shadows and secrets?
       And yet ... and yet ... what of Anakin? His mother had been chosen to bear him; 
was that so different? Qui-Gon had believed the Skywalker woman, had known her so 
well that lies would have been impossible between them. 
       He wasn’t inclined to disbelieve in the power of Raven’s god, not here in this 
place. This was one of their halls of worship, the deepest and most secret sanctuary 
known to her people. This was the cave of the Soulfire.
       It burned in a circular pit in the center of the onyx-smooth floor. With no visible 
fuel, like no fire he had ever seen before. Its flames were violet-edged black, golden at 
the heart. They leapt halfway to the high ceiling, not crackling but emitting a low songlike 
melody. A blaze that size should have warmed even this large chamber, but the Soulfire 
seemed to give off no heat.
       In front of the pit where the Soulfire burned was a long low altar of that same 
onyx-smooth stone. Raven knelt before it, head bowed, black against black and nearly
invisible. If she knew she was being observed, she gave no indication.
       She conducted her prayers in silence, then rose and unfastened her light saber, 
setting it upon the altar. She took off her cloak and laid it there as well. Then her boots.
       Obi-Wan struggled to mask his sudden shock as he realized she was undressing. Now 
more than ever, he knew he should not be here, but was unable to leave.
       Raven lifted her tunic. She was facing the altar, her back to Obi-Wan, and as the 
black fabric came away from her pale skin he saw the vivid thorny weals that striped 
her from waist to neck. 
       His fists clenched, recognizing the marks of a whip-knife. They weren’t recent 
wounds but old, so old they must have been inflicted when she was barely more than 
a child.
       She removed the last articles of her clothing and unbraided her hair. It fell in ebon 
waves to the middle of her back. With calm, measured strides, she went around the 
altar and approached the Soulfire.
       “No,” he murmured, knowing what she was about to do.
       She stepped into the flames. Her hair streamed upward as if tossed by an unseen 
wind. She tipped her head back and raised her arms, her features transfigured with joy. 
Fire wreathed her limbs, danced along her body, clothed her in black and gold and bright 
violet. 
       Obi-Wan was drawn helplessly forward by this dreadful wonder. He stopped far 
from the altar. She opened her eyes, reflected flames shining in their gold. Rather than 
anger at his intrusion, she radiated serenity for the first time since he’d met her. Now
hers was the mind of a Jedi, composed and aware.
       When she emerged, tiny flames ran along her body like water, coursing down her 
torso and legs to leave glimmering fire-pools in her footsteps. Violet-gold smoke rose all 
around her. 
       She held out her hands, palms upraised as if to show Obi-Wan that this was no 
trick. He extended his own hands, holding them above hers, and the smoke curled 
around his fingers.
       “What is in there?” he whispered.
       “Everything,” she said simply.
       “You’re not burnt.” He touched her hair, then gasped as runnels of flame flowed 
from it onto his skin in a tingling path that left him unmarked.
       “It’s the same fire that burns in us all,” she said. “It can only harm those who don’t 
believe, or take their fears in with them.”
       “But I do fear the Dark Side,” he said.
       “Then maybe you need to redefine it ... or me.”
       “You’re too beautiful not to fear.” He took her face in his hands, and brought his 
lips to hers. Their minds flared together, setting them ablaze in a way even the Soulfire 
hadn’t done. 
       Her arms went around him, her body pressed against his, alive with its own heat 
that went though his clothes and left him feeling as if they were both bare. Her mouth 
tasted of violet-gold smoke, her kiss both pleading and demanding. There was no 
hesitation in her; a creature of raw emotion, she gave in to her passion as readily as to 
her anger. Caught up in it, Obi-Wan tried to regain control of himself. 
       “No, don’t,” she murmured, sensing his sudden resistance. Her breath was warm 
on the side of his neck as she embraced him tightly. Her lips made a trail down -- below 
his ear, on the pulse beating in his throat, his collarbone, along the edge of the vee 
formed by his collar. 
       “Raven, this is wrong,” he said, but he was stroking the starless night of her hair, 
holding her to him.
       She didn’t answer, just parted his shirt and slid a hand inside, kissing his chest. His 
restraint, his will, was crumbling, crumbling away. He caressed the sleek curve of her 
hip, the small of her back ... and froze as he felt the ridges and knots of the scars.
       Raven tensed at his reaction and moved his hand to her waist. “I know how they 
look. I know they’re hideous.”
       “It’s not that.” He very delicately touched them again, shutting his eyes as a terrible 
sadness assailed him, reading the awful past in the writing on her flesh. “They did this to 
you. The Kadav. They did this and no one stopped them.”
       “Bethra ordered it done.”
       “Why? You can’t have been very old ...”
       “I was thirteen.” She pulled away, turned away, crossed her arms over her breasts. 
“He wanted me. I fought him. Wounded him. He planned to have me whipped to death 
for it in front of all of his Wardens. He laughed while I bled. The Noctus saved me, and 
it cost him his life.”

  *  *

       Obi-Wan finished bandaging Tredze’s wounds and sat back on his heels. The 
governor had regained consciousness a few times, trying to speak, but now he was 
sleeping the sleep of the drugged, his pallor masked by the strange glow of the Soulfire. 
       Thankfully, his injuries were minor, and the only ones sustained during their 
escape. Now all they had to do was stay hidden, survive, and make their way to the 
rendezvous point in ten hours, when the transport returned.
       He stood, and looked at the woman who stood taut as a wire facing the cavern’s 
entrance. “Raven.”
       “You stopped me. You drew on me.”
       “I couldn’t let you --”
       “You knew I meant to kill him. I had to kill him. I thought you understood that.”
       “You didn’t want to kill him. You wanted to torture him.”
       She whirled on him, eyes flashing dark fire. “And you stopped me.”
       “We hadn’t the time --”
       “That’s not it at all.”
       Obi-Wan sighed. “No. It isn’t. Raven, I am a Jedi, I could not stand by and watch 
you sear the flesh from him inch by inch.” 
       He winced at the memory, of her light saber lowering toward the pinned and 
terrified Dol Bethra. The man had been pressing against the wall as if he hoped its 
stones would turn to mist and allow him to pass through, but there had been no way 
out, no way to avoid the humming violet beam as it paused just above his head. 
       In his mind, Obi-Wan could still hear the crisp sizzle of Bethra’s leonine 
silver-white hair burning away, and then the first scream as the light saber had 
scored a slow path down his forehead, forever marring his aristocratic despot’s 
handsomeness, headed relentlessly for his bulging, staring blue eye. 
       Such control; even in his horror Obi-Wan had been forced to admire Raven’s 
control of the weapon, the precision with which she handled it. Worthy of a Jedi ... 
except for the savagely cold expression shown clearly in the backsplash of amethyst. 
He could feel the sadistic satisfaction emanating from her, and how flash-quick it 
had turned to cheated fury as he knocked her blade aside in a the nova of blue-white 
and violet.
       “He deserved it,” she said now. “A swift death would have been too good for him.”
       “It’s not the way.”
       “It’s not your way.” She began to turn away, and he took her by the shoulders.
       “Raven, what you could be if you could forsake this madness for revenge!”
       “Forsake myself? It’s all I have, all that I am. You’re the one who doesn’t 
understand. You and your Council, high and mighty, coddled and comforted in your 
righteousness, unwilling to admit to your own darker emotions as if that’ll somehow 
make them go away ... but do you know what? I think they don’t go away. I think they 
fester, buried and locked away in your hearts, and you make greater monsters of them 
than they truly are. If you let them out, accepted them and admitted they were a part 
of you, instead of calling them evil and condemning those who don’t follow your strict 
code ... oh, Obi-Wan, what you could be!”
       “The Dark Side cannot co-exist with --”
       “Denying the Dark Side doesn’t make it go away. If this Force of yours is to be 
balanced at all, you have to have both.”
       “What did you say?” he asked, suddenly chilled.
       “Both. Light and dark. Good and evil. They both exist in all of us. Your Council 
doesn’t seem to understand that. They’d destroy everything they think of as evil. Then 
what would they have? Nothing. They’d start seeing evil other places, making it up 
where it didn’t exist. There has to be a balance.”
       “No ... no, that can’t be ...”
       “Am I all evil?” Raven demanded.
       He tightened his grip on her, shaking his head as he wrestled with what she’d 
said. “I ... I don’t want to believe that you are. There is good in you.”
       “And there’s darkness in you.” Overriding his protest, she continued. “In all of 
us. Yes, I’m further one way than the other, it’s my life. Maybe we both have a lot 
to learn.”
       “The Council would never agree with your reasoning.”
       “They would sense the hatred and bloodlust in me and call me evil. It’s easy for 
them to say, from their safe and lofty place.”
       “No one can blame you for accepting the only life you’ve ever known. But Raven, 
Raven, it doesn’t have to be like that anymore. We’re leaving Rannok. You can start 
anew.”
       “If I leave now, with Bethra still alive --”
       “No!” His hands slid from her shoulders to the sides of her neck, no longer 
gripping but holding, loose tendrils of her hair tickling softly along the backs. “Bethra 
doesn’t matter!”
       He sensed her struggling with her next words, and saw the earnest appeal in her 
golden eyes when she lifted them to his. “I cannot be the kind of woman you’d have 
me be. No matter how much ... no matter how much I might like to be. This is what 
I am.”
       “You can be more than revenge.”
       “I wish that was true.” Her fingertips found his face again in that tender 
caress. 
       “You have been so badly hurt. Let it go, Raven. Let it --” He was silenced by her 
kiss, silenced and overwhelmed as her passion stormed with power equal to her fury.
       “Too far a distance,” she murmured against his mouth, “Why ... why ...?”
       “I don’t know,” he murmured in reply. “I want ... I can’t ...”
       “You can.” She moved willingly against him. “The rest doesn’t matter.”
       “It does. I  ... if I were to ... make ... love ... to you ...” each pause was 
filled with a kiss, unable to stop himself, on her lips, her cheeks, her brow, the 
smooth column of her throat, filled with helpless increasing ardor, devouring her 
with his kisses. “It would be ... like ... yielding a part of myself ... to the Dark Side.”
       “This part?” She grasped him with devastating effect, and he threw back his 
head with his jaw clenched against a hoarse cry.
       “Raven, stop ... you don’t understand ...” Now his pauses were filled with frantic 
gasps for breath, his arms closing around her with involuntary strength. “A Jedi ... is 
not as other men.”
       “That’s not how it feels from here.” 
       He managed a strained laugh. “Not what I meant.”
       “Don’t tell me you’ve sworn an oath of chastity.”
       “No ... that’s not it ...” It took a tremendous effort of will, but he made himself 
take her arm and move her delicious, tormenting hand. “When a Jedi is ... intimate ... 
more than his body is involved. Even as I ...” he swallowed and nearly trembled at the 
thought, and she uttered a breathy moan as his feelings transmitted themselves to her, 
“even as I entered your warmth, I would be ... touching your soul.”
       “And my soul frightens you more.” She leaned her head on his chest. His shirt 
had come open and her cheek rested on the skin just over his rapidly-pounding heart.
       “My mind and my emotions are at war. I want you, and I fear you. What 
passes between us is more than a meeting of a man and a woman. Our very fates are 
at stake.”
       “Are you my redemption, or am I your downfall ... is that it?”
       “It could be that.”
       “I fear you, too,” she admitted, drawing away from him. “You and all that you 
represent. I ... don’t want to learn that there is more to life than pain and anger; it 
makes my purpose and very existence a hollow thing! But at the same time ... oh, how 
I want you.”
       “You’re right ... we’re not so different. I have been raised to be Jedi for as long 
as I can remember. All that we are, is what we’ve been taught to be, and now we are 
a threat to each others’ way of living. My path is not to be feared, Raven. You 
wouldn’t find emptiness behind your pain, but a new purpose.”
       “My path’s not to be feared either. But there’s no way ... except one.”
       “What do you mean?”
       “Walk in the fire, Obi-Wan. If you’d know my soul, know all that I am, 
you’ll find it in the fire.”
       “The ...” he looked at it, at the leaping gold-black-violet flames reaching toward 
the cavern’s ceiling. “I can’t go in there.”
       “It will only hurt you if you let it. It won’t change you, only show you.”
       “Will you come before the Jedi Council?”
       “A test for a test?” she asked with a slanted half-smile. “Fair enough.”
       “Then we’re agreed.” He moved toward the Soulfire.
       Raven stopped him, her smile widening. “Oh ... you’ll need to remove your 
clothes.”
       He raised his eyebrows at her.
       “Honestly,” she said. Picking up a scrap of leftover bandage from his tending 
of Tredze’s wounds, she tossed it into the flames. It blazed gold, then settled in a 
heap of glowing violet embers.
       Obi-Wan cleared his throat. “And this will only hurt me if I let it?”
       “You saw me go into the fire. You touched me, felt the flames run over your 
skin without burning.”
       “Mm-hmm,” he said, unconvinced.
       “I promise, I’ll keep my hands to myself.” She placed them demurely behind 
her back.
       He shrugged out of his cloak. “What about your eyes?”
       “Oh, now, Jedi, that is asking a bit much.” The eyes in question, bright gold, 
glinted amusedly.
       “I think I finally know what Master Yoda meant about being seduced by 
the Dark Side,” he muttered, undoing his belt and stripping off his shirt. “I never 
expected it to be literally.”
       When he finished undressing and looked over, saw how she was biting the 
fullness of her lower lip and watching him with such desire, he came very close to 
forgetting the fire and just going to her. Her hands were still clasped firmly behind 
her back, the posture pushing her breasts forth, and they rose and fell in time with 
the quickness of her breath.
       Instead, with the last strand of resolve, he turned and stared into the depths of 
the Soulfire. Right beside it, he still felt no blistering heat, but its radiance bathed his 
bare skin and its whispering crackle filled his mind.
       He hesitantly sent one foot toward the flames. They reached for him, and there 
was no searing pain, only a warm and welcoming fluttering sensation.
       Inhaling deeply of the smoke, Obi-Wan stepped into the Soulfire.
       Immersed. 
       Black and violet and gold, all around him, seemingly all through him. No sense 
of solid floor beneath his feet, as if he were suspended in space, floating. 
       No fear. It melted away like a thin sheen of ice. In the blink of an eye he was 
in a depth of meditative trance that it usually took even the best-trained Jedi several 
minutes to reach. Keenly alert yet thoroughly relaxed, distanced from his body yet 
aware of every nerve ending. 
       Peace and serenity. As one with all things. As one with the Force, both sides of 
it light and dark and all the myriad shades between. And he saw, understood, that as 
far removed as Raven was from the Jedi, she was nearly as far removed from the 
Sith. Yet ... yet they were all far closer to one another than he would ever have 
believed.
       “In us all,” he said, and the words came from his mouth as visible puffs of white-
blue that mingled and then were absorbed in the hue of the flames.
       He looked out at Raven, saw the tension and anxiety on her face, felt her worry 
that she’d been wrong, that he would find only agony in the fire. 
       Her soul was laid bare to him, as she’d known it would be, every secret and 
every hope set out before him, and the bravery, the sheer courage that would let her 
so expose her innermost self ... the miseries that she had endured brought him near 
to screaming, what a wonder that she wasn’t evil, under such torment, even a Jedi 
might have broken ... then, stark and terrifying, the realization that she would have 
gladly died once she’d seen her revenge complete, that the end of Bethra’s life 
would be the completion of her own. 
       “Raven,” he called, reaching out with hands and mind. “Don’t let it end that 
way! If you die to kill him, he wins even in death!”
       Visions whirled around him. The past, the future, a confusing cyclone that made 
perfect sense. He saw himself approaching a domelike structure in a dune-swept 
landscape, an infant in his arms and a terrible sense of loss and dread burdening his 
steps. He saw the child that he’d been, standing with the others as the Jedi Knights 
came in to choose their Padawan. A vision heard but not seen, of ominous mechanized 
bellows laboriously drawing and releasing air. 
       Then came an image still sharp and painful, only a few years old. Reddish energy 
keeping him apart from Qui-Gon as his master knelt in calm readiness, and beyond, the 
horned scarlet-black visage of the Sith. But with the new understanding of the fire, their
souls were open to him too, and something that he had long suspected but never 
admitted even in the most private corners of his thoughts was now proved to him.
       “Nooo!” he cried, and stumbled from the flames. 
       He fell to his knees and would have toppled full-length but Raven was there, 
catching him, kneeling with him, holding him.
       “He knew,” Obi-Wan said shakily. “He knew he was going to die, and he let it 
happen. It was the only way to bend them to his will.”
       “Who?”
       “My Master, Qui-Gon. He let himself die so they would allow me to train 
the boy. They wouldn’t ... I wouldn’t ... refuse his last wish. He knew that. Had 
he lived, he would have gone on fighting the Council, defying them. He believed ... 
he believed it that strongly. And I doubted him. We all doubted him. He made us 
accept it the only way that he could, at that cost.” Mute sobs wracked him, the 
unshed tears hot behind his eyelids.
       She held him and he clung to her until the wrenching grief began to ease. He 
realized how foreign the task of giving comfort was to this woman, something she’d 
never done before. What, he wondered, would Qui-Gon have made of her?
       “He would have liked you,” Obi-Wan said. “And seen the good well before 
the danger. He was ... a much wiser man than I will ever be.”
       “I should have warned you. I’m sorry. The fire ... it can be --”
       “No. I needed to know. All this time ... I’ve blamed myself for failing him. Now ...”
       “Now you know he had faith in you. If he let himself die, he did so knowing 
that you would be able to finish what he’d begun.” She twined his short hair through her 
fingers. “He did better than trust you with his life, Obi-Wan. He trusted you with 
his death.”
       He closed his eyes and lay his head on her shoulder. “Promise me you won’t do 
the same. You have more to live for than revenge.”
       “You’ve seen my soul ... what else is there for me?”
       He let his lips be the answer. No longer colored with fear, no longer struggling 
against himself, he gave over wholly into the kiss, feeling her surprise swiftly drown 
in sweet dissolving desire. 
       “My hands,” she whispered.
       “Your hands?”
       “I forgot about keeping them to myself.”
       “I forgive you.” He unbraided her hair and let the midnight satin spill down her 
back. “Do ... do as you will with them.”
       “It’s much easier now that you’re undressed.” She drew her palm and trailing 
fingers down his chest, to his waist, lower. 
       He groaned softly, pulling her close as she caressed him. “You’re not.”
       “That can be remedied.”
       “Let me.” He lifted her tunic over her head. Soon she was as revealed as he 
was. They reclined together in the shifting gold-violet light. 
       She explored his body with a demanding fervor that left him breathless. Her 
hands, her mouth, her full yet muscular curves, her hair sweeping across him like a 
curtain of night, her passion as intent and powerful as her anger had been. Then, 
startling, the brush of her mind that told him this was her first time willingly, first time 
with a man of her choosing, the apprehension she felt, and a surge of amazing 
tenderness filled him, no longer just wanting her and needing her but consumed with 
an overpowering wish to show her how it should be, share with her how it could be.
       He gently pushed her down on the onyx-smooth floor, her skin untouched  by the 
light of any sun as pale as milk, beautiful, the scars only accentuating that beauty, and 
bent to explore her just as diligently, just as purposefully, as she had done to him, 
taking even greater joy in her gasping cries than he had in his own sensations. 
       But as he rose over her, made ready to complete the act ...
       “No,” she protested, suddenly tense, suddenly shamed. “I can’t --”
       “Be calm, Raven, and trust me,” he urged. He lay back and drew her atop him. 
       She hesitated, searched his eyes and his mind, and saw that he never meant to 
hurt her in love. With excruciating slowness, she lowered herself, and they were one, 
body-mind-soul as one, the Force so strong in both of them creating a meshing, 
sinking into one another.
       “Ohhh,” she exhaled in wonder. 
       Backlit by the Soulfire, her body arched, her hips moving in a lazy rhythm, and 
he could feel the gathering explosion in her loins, both of them yearning for it and 
then striving for it, and her wail was silent, echoing only in his mind. She fell upon his 
chest, his arms encircling her tightly, locking their lips in a kiss as he let himself go, let 
himself pour into her, not so much meshed now as fused, her thoughts his, his thoughts 
hers, a single soul shining between them like a star.

  *  *

       “According to the sensor, the sweep should be beginning in a few minutes,” 
Obi-Wan said. “The ship will be along soon. We’ll have to be ready. He won’t dare 
land for long.”
       “Kenobi, I am in your debt.” Governor Tredze glanced at Raven. “Yours and 
your ... friend’s.”
       “Don’t thank us yet,” she said. “We’re not off this moon.”
       Tredze nodded. He was able to walk, albeit with a severe limp, and Obi-Wan 
hoped the man would be able to move quickly enough.
       He turned to Raven, but before he could speak, the Force was on him with a 
premonition. He saw her golden eyes go wide and she reached for her light saber 
even as he drew his. Both flared alight in time to deflect the barrage of blaster shots 
that streaked through the dim air.
       “Down!” Obi-Wan commanded the governor.
       “Kadav!” Raven spat as a groundskimmer lurched over a rise. 
       Then came another, and a third ... followed by a large armored vehicle with a 
familiar figure standing in the back compartment.
       “Bethra!” Obi-Wan and Raven said together.
       “I want them alive!” the Warden ordered.
       “Never!” Raven leaped in a somersault to the top of a broken pillar, and from 
there onto the hood of a groundskimmer. 
       Her first strike impaled the driver, passed completely through him in a shaft of 
amethyst light, pierced his seat, and came out the other side in a puff of smoldering 
padding. Her second blow cut through the instrument panel. The groundskimmer 
began to veer out of control. She dove off, rolled, and came gracefully to her feet.
       Obi-Wan used the Force to push a hard bolt at the second skimmer, bucking 
the front end. A half dozen Kadav warriors tumbled out. A blaster shot sizzled over 
his head, he parried a second and sent it into the engine of the already-ailing skimmer 
that Raven had crippled.
       “We’re outnumbered,” she said in a low voice, getting back-to-back with him 
as they stood protectively over the governor. “If you had let me kill --”
       He checked the sensor. “No, we’re not.”
       The ship soared over the horizon exactly on cue and dipped briefly as Jefin 
spotted and assessed the trouble. The lasers began loosing pulses of emerald green. 
The Kadav opened fire on the ship, but their blaster beams rippled and diffused on 
the shields. 
       “Time to go,” Obi-Wan said. He helped Tredze to his feet. The governor 
tripped on a rock and went to one knee, ankle badly twisted, his limp now a hobble. 
Obi-Wan slung one of the man’s arms over his shoulders and all but dragged him 
along over the rough terrain.
       The armored craft bore down on them, its shields proving more than adequate 
against the ship’s lasers. Bethra stood tall in the open back compartment. “Surrender 
now, Noctani!”
       She halted and wheeled.
       “Raven, no!” Obi-Wan shouted. Tredze was leaning heavily on him, the ship 
was coming down with the hatch opening. “Forget him!”
       “You’re a dead man already, Bethra!” She tossed her light saber menacingly 
from hand to hand.
       “That toy of yours may defeat a single blaster, but it’s no good against a 
ten-spread!” Bethra hefted a gleaming silver cylinder to his shoulder. The seared 
swath in his hair and the burnt scar on his brow were very visible. “Give up now 
and I’ll let Tredze and the Jedi live!”
       She began walking steadily toward him.
       “Raven --!”
       “Get to the ship.”
       “You promised.”
       “I don’t intend to die.”
       His instincts told him something altogether different. She continued on, 
unwavering as the barrel of the ten-spread centered on her. 
       “No!” Obi-Wan made a sharp seizing gesture but it was too far, too far 
away, all his effort did was slap the weapon a few inches to the side.
       The moment he did it, Raven went into a blur of motion. Bethra fired, but she 
was no longer there, no longer even close to where the ten projectiles struck and 
detonated. She jumped to the top of the vehicle and then down into it, tackling the 
silver-haired Warden. They vanished from Obi-Wan’s sight, inside the compartment.
       Jefin appeared at the top of the extended ramp. 
       Obi-Wan bundled the governor at the young pilot. “Take to the air. Quickly.”
       “What about you?”
       “I’m going back for her.”
       “Why? Who is that madwoman?”
       “My lover.”
       Jefin’s eyebrows shot up and his jaw fell open, effectively widening his entire 
face into an incredulous gape. 
       Obi-Wan paid it no mind and ran back to the vehicle. It shook from within from 
blaster fire, the hum of a light saber, a Kadav war-cry, Bethra’s frantic orders, and the 
snap-crack of whip-knives. He leaped up and over, dropping neatly inside, almost 
landing on a dead Kadav.
       “Kill her! Curse you all, what does it take to --” Bethra’s voice rose in a shriek 
and he reeled backward into Obi-Wan, then went sprawling on his back with his left 
arm severed at the elbow and his left leg scorched from hip to knee.
       Ignoring the Warden, Obi-Wan ducked through the door and another 
premonition slid like melting ice down his spine. Deflected blaster fire had gone 
into the power core. Already, smoke was belching from it and sparks rained down, 
casting the interior into strobic flashes. 
       “Raven!”
       Then he saw her, cornered by three Kadav, cloak missing, right sleeve torn and the 
skin beneath bleeding, a blaster singe along her side, disarmed. 
       He started toward her and his foot came down on something cylindrical, her light 
saber, he brought it instantly to his hand with the Force and activated it; wielding both, 
he struck down two Kadav from behind and Raven crouched and drove a kick into 
the belly of the third. That one drew his stun baton as he fell, but the baton only 
plunged into the damaged power core and burst in a gout of phosphorescent fragments.
       “Come on!” Obi-Wan sheathed both sabers and steered her toward the door. 
       A shadow fell over them as they emerged, and both looked up in alarm. But it 
was the ship, hovering over the rumbling-shaking-smoking vehicle. The hatch was 
open, and through the viewscreen, Obi-Wan could see Jefin mouthing urgencies and 
beckoning.
       “Jump,” he said to Raven, and, drawing her close to his side, sprang straight up. 
He landed with neat precision inside the opening.
 Snap-crack!
       The bladed whip snaked around Raven's leg and Bethra yanked. The 
sudden tug made Obi-Wan lose his footing just as he landed. He was spun in a 
circle and fell, ending up on his stomach, half in and half out of the hatchway. 
       Raven slipped, and he caught her by the left hand. She hung suspended 
between him and Bethra, who jerked at the whip with his right hand, laughing 
insanely.
       Obi-Wan braced himself and held on. The blades were shredding her clothes, 
carving deep gashes in her thigh and calf. He was treated to the hellish sight of her 
blood raining down on Bethra’s upturned maniacal face.
       A small explosion jolted the vehicle. The ship rocked, nearly dumping them from 
their precarious perch in the hatch. 
       Jefin made the ship rise, and now Bethra was being lifted, hanging from 
the whip-knife. Raven cried out as his full weight dragged on the blades, digging 
them cruelly into her flesh.
       Using all his strength, both physical and mental, Obi-Wan pulled her up 
until she was able to catch hold of the retracted edge of the ramp. She hooked her 
left elbow over it and clamped her wounded right arm with that hand. Her teeth 
were clenched tight, her eyes slitted.
       Obi-Wan leaned down as far as he could, and sliced a blue-white arc in 
the air.
       Bethra screamed as he tumbled down and away, his severed hand still clinging 
to the haft of the whip-knife. The Warden landed with a bone-jarring crash atop his
vehicle, tried to raise his head, and was engulfed in red-orange as the power core 
blew up.
       The shockwave tossed the ship onto its side, sending Obi-Wan tumbling 
across the floor and flipping Raven after him. They fetched up in a heap on the 
curved wall of the passenger compartment.
       “Hatch closed!” Jefin called back. “We’re away!"

  *  *

       "Is she all right?" Governor Tredze asked.
       "Unconscious." Obi-Wan used a damp cloth to wipe Raven's brow, and 
checked the bandages that wrapped her from elbow to shoulder, and from ankle to 
hip. Her boot had protected her lower leg from the worst of it, but maroon flowers 
were slowly blossoming higher on her thigh. 
       "I am in your debt, both of you."
       "Then I must ask that you indulge us a while longer."
       "Of course. Anything."
       "Before we can take you to Coruscant to present your case to the Senate, we need 
to stop on Naboo and retrieve my apprentice. As well as seek proper medical attention 
for both of you."
       Tredze glanced wryly down at himself in the dirt-smeared and singed grey prison 
uniform, then skidded a hand up his gaunt, stubbled cheek. "And an opportunity to 
clean up?"
       "I'm sure that can be arranged."
       The governor nodded. Obi-Wan could see the weariness in his eyes and 
feel it radiating off of him. He packed up the rest of the medikit and dimmed the 
lights, then made his way to the front where Jefin was alertly scanning the starfield.
       "All's well," the pilot reported brightly. "After what happened, I wouldn't 
have put it past the Wardens to be hiding their own armada, but we're alone up 
here. Naboo, next stop. Passengers?"
       "Resting."
       "I sent a transmission ahead telling Naboo we've got wounded."
       "Good." He slid a small glass tube into the ship's scanner and observed with no 
real surprise as the readout confirmed in Raven's blood sample what he'd already 
determined for himself. And what, he wondered, would the Jedi Council make of 
that? What would Master Yoda, who had been so opposed to the young and 
harmless-seeming Anakin, have to say now?
       When he leaned back and closed his eyes, he saw flames leaping there. 
Violet-edged black ones with hearts of gold. Never mind the Council's reaction to 
Raven, what would they think of him? Would they see it as he did? Would 
they understand?
       All of his musings left him with no greater insight, and before he knew it, the 
blue-green ball of Naboo was growing in the viewscreen. 
       They touched down in the same spot, in the marble courtyard. Obi-Wan went 
back and roused the governor. 
       Even before the hatch opened, he could hear Anakin's high, excited voice 
assuring someone -- the Queen, most likely -- that she shouldn't worry, that Jedi 
never got hurt.
       "If only that were true," he murmured to himself. 
       He helped Governor Tredze down the ramp, and felt the wave of relief 
emanating from both Anakin and Amidala when they saw him unscathed. The 
Queen retained her demeanor, her regal manners, and inclined her head to the 
governor just as if he'd arrived in state as an honored guest, instead of haggard 
and in rags.
       "You're back!" Anakin crowed, rushing up to Obi-Wan. "I knew you 
would come back!"
       He smiled at the youth. "Is this the same Padawan who was certain I was 
going to 'die on you', as you put it?"
       "Aw, I never meant that!"
       The physicians came forward as Tredze finished managing a polite greeting 
to Amidala, and coaxed him onto a floatpad. As they ferried him through the great 
arch and out of sight, the Queen approached Obi-Wan. 
       "We are pleased to see you return promptly, and unharmed," she said, extending 
her hand.
       He touched it. "I'm pleased to do so, Majesty."
       "Tell us all about it!" Anakin enthused. "How did it go? Was there a lot of 
fighting?"
       "I will ..." perhaps not all of it, he amended mentally, "but first, the 
physicians --"
       "Are you hurt?" Amidala asked anxiously.
       "No, I --" he began, then stopped, feeling her presence without even needing 
to look. Confirmation of it was in the Queen's gaze that shifted past him and upward.
       He turned as Raven emerged into the clean light of a living sun. She winced 
and recoiled, then nearly fell as her leg threatened to buckle.
       "So ... bright!" she said as he reached her side. "The world is full of colors. I ... 
can't see."
       "I should have warned you. It does take some getting used to." He took off his 
dark brown robe and draped it over her shoulders, then raised the hood, as tenderly 
as he might turn down a bride's veil, to shade her eyes.
       As he did so, he sensed sudden hurt comprehension from the Queen and 
a sort of leering curiosity from Anakin, but his attention remained fixed on Raven. 
       She blinked several times, then peered squintingly up at the crystal-blue sky 
fluffed here and there with pristine clouds. "It's ... pretty," she said.
       "You shouldn't be walking."
       "I'm fine." She tried to take a step to prove it, and this time her leg did 
buckle. He caught her even as she began to lose her balance and supported her 
with an arm around her waist. She laid her hand alongside his cheek and smiled 
through the pain. "All right, maybe I'm not, but you're not going to carry me, Jedi!"
       "Will you let the physicians do it, then?"
       "I suppose." 
       "Um ... Obi-Wan?" Anakin asked hesitantly. "Who's this? Picked up 
another pathetic lifeform?"
       "How many times must I apologize for that remark?" he laughed. "This is 
the Noctani Raven, who helped us greatly on Rannok."
       "She's --" Anakin broke off and looked meaningfully at Obi-Wan.
       "Here we go again," Raven muttered. "He's one, too. Please tell me I'm not 
getting the lecture on evil and the Dark Side."
       "This is my Padawan Learner, Anakin Skywalker. And this ... this is Queen 
Amidala of the Naboo."
       The two women regarded each other, and Obi-Wan felt a flurry of unspoken 
exchange pass between them. It occurred to him that perhaps bringing Raven here 
had been a mistake ... or the best thing, under the circumstances, that he could 
have done.
       Raven's lips curved. "Your highness. I'd curtsey, but then I'd fall down 
and bleed all over your nice clean courtyard."
       "We'd not want that," Amidala returned coolly. "Welcome to Naboo."
       "What's going on?" Anakin wondered in an undertone to Obi-Wan. "Why's 
Ami mad?"
       "That  ... might be an explanation best left for another time."

  *  *

       He woke, bathed, changed, and was just readying himself to go down to 
the formal dinner the Queen was holding in the Governor’s honor when the 
chimes over his door sounded their sweet music.
       “Come in.”
       Raven walked in with the barest hint of a limp, her hair drawn back not in her 
customary simple braid but in two golden clips that spilled it in a loose torrent down 
her back. “Talented physicians,” she said.
       “Talented tailors,” he replied, taking in the sight of her with great admiration.
       She stroked the simple gown of topaz-colored velvet. “I’d prefer black.”
       “It matches your eyes.”
       “These Naboo are very generous. This belt ... what are these stones?”
       “Black pearls, from one of the Gungun seas.”
       “I’ve brought your robe.” She set it over the back of a chair. “Thank you. 
It’s one thing to hear of a sun, another to see it for myself.”
       “There are many more worlds for you to see. Snow-covered mountains, 
desert sands, deep forests ...”
       “And the planetwide city where your Jedi Council might condemn me 
straight back to Rannok as a threat to their galactic order.”
       He took her hands. “I will not let that happen.”
       “Nice to have at least one ally.”
       “You will win many others.”
       “Not your Queen.” A grin played about Raven’s mouth. “She doesn’t seem to 
like me much.”
       “Ah. Yes. Well ...”
       “What is there between you?”
       “It’s not like that. Only her unspoken fancy.”
       “Not tempted?”
       “Once, perhaps ... but she is very young. And Anakin ...”
       “Gallant of you not to steal the queen away from your smitten apprentice. But 
does she know your feelings?”
       He caressed the side of her face. “I imagine she does now.”
       She covered his hand and led it to her mouth to kiss the palm. “Careful, Obi-Wan
... remember, I’m dangerous.”
       “Only to those who stand between you and your revenge.”
       “Which you did. But then you killed Bethra, so I suppose I’ll forgive.”
       “The danger is a part of it. I do not know, and I fear to learn, what the Council 
might say. I doubt you’ll ever be a Jedi. The restrictions of our codes and ways would 
infuriate you. Yet the Force is so very strong in you. You’ve already learned much. 
Your gifts should be trained. If only they could understand, as I do, what the Soulfire 
was, and what it meant.”
       She backed away from him, intent in concentration. Placing her fingertips and 
thumbs together, she made a space like a rounded diamond between them. “Watch.”
       The air in that space began to darken, to flicker. It took on the inconstant 
shape of flames, then took on the deep, distinct colors. 
       “The fire ... how?”
       “It’s in us all, Obi-Wan. It’s in me. I am Noct’s daughter; where I go, the fire 
goes with me.” 
       He passed a hand into it, and felt the same things that he had before -- serenity, 
awareness, peace, knowledge. And presences, fleeting but comforting, brushing 
against him like the barest flick of a moth’s wing. Presences of the dead.
       “Master,” he breathed as he felt the familiar spirit nearby. Offering him silent 
strength, counsel, support. Assuring him that what he did was the right thing.
       Then he sensed another, stern and strong but kind. Through the smoke, 
Raven’s face relaxed into a smile.
       “Noctus.”
       Obi-Wan reached out, seeking. “A ... a Jedi? He was Jedi! Wait! Who are you? 
What was your name?”
       Reached, reached ... gone as the chimes sounded again, startling Raven so that 
the flames dissipated.
       “What do you mean?” she asked.
       “He was Jedi,” Obi-Wan insisted. “I touched his mind. The training was 
there, Raven. He was one of us.”
       “That’s impossible. He was the Noctus, always the Noctus.”
       The chimes rang longer. Shaken, Obi-Wan called, “Come in.”
       The door opened and Anakin was there. He spied them standing so close 
together, and grinned knowingly.
       “Dinner time,” he said.
       “A moment.” He looked at Raven. “Where is your light saber?”
       “I’m never without it.” She hiked her skirt and Anakin’s eyes grew round. The 
weapon was bound to her thigh with violet ribbons. She extended her leg to untie it 
and the youth’s eyes nearly fell from his head.
       “Are you expecting trouble at dinner?” Obi-Wan inquired amusedly.
       She turned and pressed her hip against his side. “I could ask the same of you, or 
are you just pleased to see me?”
       “I can tell them to re-heat your soup for you if you’re going to be a while,” Anakin 
offered with a smirk.
       He looked at his Padawan and sent a very clear message, which Anakin ignored. 
Sighing, Obi-Wan took Raven’s light saber and studied it. 
       “This was made by a Jedi. I’d stake my life on it. See these symbols?” 
       “It doesn’t make any sense,” Raven argued. “He told us of Jedi, but he would 
have said if he’d been one!”
       “The Council will have to see this. They’ll have the answer.”
       “Um, so, are you coming down or should I go make excuses?” Anakin said.
       Raven retrieved her light saber. “It can wait for the Council. But I don’t know 
what kind of answer they’ll be able to give.”
       “Nor I ... but there must be one.”
       They followed Anakin to the spacious dining hall, where the setting sun 
through the arched windows turned everything to crimson and orange, and the 
dancing waterfalls became showers of jewels cascading into the dusk-shadowed 
chasms below. 
       Obi-Wan was just a little too late to stop his apprentice from gleefully 
announcing to the assembled that he was so sorry for the delay, but he’d 
practically had to drag the two of them out of Obi-Wan’s room.
       “There is such a thing as manners,” he scolded the boy as they sat, very 
conscious of the way the Queen’s spine stiffened and her clipped tone as she 
ordered the droids to begin serving the meal.
       “I thought you wanted me to be truthful.” Anakin put on his most 
innocent face and held it for several seconds before breaking into snickers.

  *  *

       Mace Windu’s countenance was as stony as a statue, a statue of some 
unforgiving god who demanded regular volcanic sacrifices.
       “You are becoming too much like Qui-Gon,” he intoned.
       “Thank you.” Obi-Wan stood straight in the center of the Council’s circular 
chamber.
       “It wasn’t meant as a compliment.”
       “But it is an honor.”
       “You are putting yourself, your future, and our entire order at risk.”
       “A danger, she is,” Yoda agreed. One of the smallest and least threatening 
in appearance of the beings in the room, his disapproval fell on Obi-Wan like a 
weight. “Yes, strong in her is the Force, but a Jedi, she shall never be.”
       “She was trained by a Jedi.”
       “No,” Windu said. “You’re mistaken.”
       “But Master Windu --”
       “Rules her does the Dark Side. Consumed by it, she is.”
       “It’s not like that,” Obi-Wan said. “Her teacher, this Noctus, was a Jedi! I 
know that to be true! I felt his presence.”
       “You are mistaken,” Windu said again, slowly, clearly, so that the upstart 
would not miss a single word, would not dare contradict.
       He dared. “The light saber was built by a Jedi. Raven has been trained in many 
of the ways of the Force.”
       “Of the Dark Side!” Yoda leaned forward, his wizened features pulled into a
scowl. “Much hatred is there in her!”
       “Who was he?” Obi-Wan asked. “This Noctus ... who was he?”
       A murmur rippled through the rest of the Council. He felt their minds closing to 
him, shutting him out, but not before he learned --
       “You knew. You knew there was a civilization on Rannok, and you gave 
Dol Bethra permission to destroy it!”
       “It was necessary.” Mace Windu’s voice was now as cold and dark as the 
vast distances between stars.
       “Why?!?”
       A collective sigh issued from every throat. 
       “Let this go, young Kenobi,” Zadrek Kellnu, another of the Masters, advised 
gently. “It does not concern you.”
       “But it does. I --”
       “Say it not!” Yoda snapped, whacking the arm of his chair with his gnarled 
walking stick.
       “Then tell me! Let me understand!” Obi-Wan pleaded. “What happened 
on Rannok?”
       “His name was Blake Damon,” Zadrek Kellnu said, paying no attention to the 
annoyed looks she earned from her fellow Council members. “And yes, Kenobi, he 
was a Jedi. A Master.”
       “A fallen one,” Windu added.
       “A Sith?” Obi-Wan asked warily.
       Kellnu shook her head. “No Sith, but one who followed his own ways, his own 
teachings. He held beliefs that the rest of us did not share. He was dismissed from this 
Council, cast out of the order.”
       “Never again the ways of the Jedi was he to practice,” Yoda said. “Yet 
discovered did we that a temple he had raised to the Dark Side. The people in 
the ways of the Dark Side he was instructing. Disobeyed the Council’s edict, he 
did, defied us.”
       “You had him killed.” He said it in a tone so shocked it was devoid of 
emotion.
       Windu scowled stormily. “He could not be allowed to continue. It posed 
a threat to the way of life of the entire Republic.”
       Obi-Wan shook his head in slow unwilling belief. “He disagreed with you, and 
you had him killed.”
       “It was not like that,” Kellnu said. “We do not order deaths.”
       “But when Bethra came forth with his idea to start a prison, you suggested 
Rannok. You knew what he’d find there, and what he’d do about it. You stood by 
and let thousands of people die, all to rid yourselves of one man ... one man who 
was not evil!”
       “Evil, he was!” Yoda said. “To the Dark Side --”
       “No!” Obi-Wan never would have expected to hear himself interrupt Master 
Yoda, but the word burst from him before he could stop it. “Not like us, but not evil! 
I have seen it!”
       “You yet lack wisdom and experience in these matters, young Kenobi,” Kellnu 
said.
       “My eyes have been opened, Master,” he said to her. “We have become self-
righteous and close-minded. Are we so threatened by any way different from ours 
that we must eradicate it?”
       “Enough!” Windu barked sharply. “You would do well not to challenge 
this Council. What was done has been done, and it is best put behind us all.”
       “I understand that, Master Windu.” He bowed his head. “But what of 
Raven?”
       A long and heavy silence stretched out, during which he felt only barriers 
around the minds of the Masters.
       “See her again, you should not,” Yoda declared. “A bad influence she is.”
       “On you, and perhaps also on your Padawan learner,” Windu said. “His 
fate is already clouded.”
       “I will not let her be killed,” Obi-Wan said, putting into words that worst 
of fears. 
       “Has your faith in us been so shaken?” Kellnu asked sadly. “We know you, 
Obi-Wan Kenobi. We know your soul. Headstrong, yes, and impetuous. Much like 
your master, as Mace Windu noted. We know your feelings for this woman. You are 
a Jedi, and of great value to us. We would not wish to make you choose. We caution
you ... we do not forbid.”
       Yoda’s expression was sour; he, at least, Obi-Wan was sure, was more 
than ready to forbid. “Dark times are there ahead for us. This we have foreseen. 
At risk are the Jedi, all the Jedi. If a part of this threat this woman becomes ...”
       “She will not.”
       “See to it,” Windu said.
       He nodded and, sensing their dismissal, left the Council chamber toward 
whatever future might await him.

  *  *

The End