Only then do I dress the wound and apply bacta. I feel myself begin to heal.
As the night drags on, exhaustion from my battle with the pain that is not pain settles into my bones. I dress my wound again with bacta and bandages and stretch out on my sleep-couch. Despite my best efforts, my mind drifts. I remember back to the time I felt pain so searing I thought I would die from it. Pain so intense that I could not even remember my name.
That was the day I became a Sith.
It is years ago. I am old enough to feel that I am already full grown and mature, but young enough not to know what that means. I do not know how old I am, for my Master never told me how long ago it was when he took me, or what my age is. Age is of no consequence to a Sith. We live long lives. We do not track our development in such a mundane way.
So it is not my age that tells my Master I am ready, but my abilities. I know I am strong and fast and I never break. My control of the darkness that fuels the Force is close to perfect.
I am happy when my Master tells me I am ready to take the last tests that will allow me to become a Sith Lord. I have already fulfilled two years of missions for my Master. I have pleased him. I am ready.
For fourteen days, I take a series of physical tests. Lightsaber duels, endurance exercises, fasting. Some tests I take blindfolded or in a sensory-deprivation suit. It is the most grueling fourteen days I can imagine. By the time it ends, I am exhausted.
And I find that the test has not yet begun.
"I am sending you to a planet in the Outer Rim, " my Master tells me. "It is made up of three kinds of terrain: desert, swamp, and mountains. You will have at least three matches on each terrain. I have sent a fleet of a.s.sa.s.sin droids to attack you. Each are programmed with different strategies. Some will work together, some will work alone. They are all programmed to kill. "
That gets my attention.
"That is correct, " Lord Sidious says quietly. "I am prepared to lose what I most value. So must you be to become a Sith. You must be prepared to lose your own life in order to win. "
I nod. "I understand, my Master. "
"You will have to survive for a month, " Lord Sidious adds. "You will have only a survival pack. "
Despite my exhaustion, I am exhilarated, too. Did I ever imagine it would be easy to become a Sith Lord? The value of anything is measured by effort. I will prove to my Master that I am the best apprentice in the history of the Sith. I shall not only survive, I shall conquer.
I realize now how young I was. I couldn"t have known what was ahead of me.
I land on the planet and begin my test. It is infinitely more difficult than my imagination has been able to grasp. The a.s.sa.s.sin droids are relentless. Again and again I am awakened by an attack. Again and again I fight, move camp, fight again. I am driven into the mountain snows and across the burning desert. I lose my survival pack in a battle and have to kill and forage for food.
Ten days go by. Fifteen. Twenty.
I grow thin and my strength begins to ebb. I have never felt such weakness, even during my fasts. And yet I have to go on. I have to fight, I have to find a place to rest, I have to fight again. I count off the days in my head.
One battle with two a.s.sa.s.sin droids almost undoes me. I sustain a bad blaster wound to my thigh. I drag myself to a cave to hide. I have no bacta, no bandages. Yet I know I must recover before I fight again.
The wound festers. It is a searing, blinding pain. I am too weak to forage for food. The days blur. I no longer know how long I"ve been on the planet. Surely it has been more than a month. Has my Master forgotten about me?
I am close to hallucinating when Lord Sidious appears at the mouth of the cave. I am so glad to see him that my bones turn to water. I look at him hopefully.
"Now it is time for your final battle, " he says.
Another battle? I can"t even walk.
Yet his power over me is so strong that I rise on my watery legs. The cave walls shimmer in front of my eyes. My balance is off. I fumble for my lightsaber and activate it.
"Where is the a.s.sa.s.sin droid, Master?" I ask. My voice emerges hoa.r.s.ely from thick, swollen lips. I need water. I would kill for water.
My Master powers up his lightsaber. "I will be your opponent. "
I take a step toward him. I know this is my final test. I summon up the dark side of the Force. I take all my pain and anger and form it into a tightly packed ball. I set that ball aflame in my chest.
I feel a trickle of strength enter me. That encourages me. I use that strength to stoke the fire inside me.
"You cannot be as pathetic as you look, " my Master says. He raises his lightsaber and attacks.
I parry the blow and reverse, come at him from the opposite side. But he is already gone by the time I am able to make my attack. The lunge throws off my balance. I weave, the cave walls blurring. He laughs.
"I take it back, " he says. "You are that pathetic. "
He tells me I am weak, not worthy of being a Sith Lord. He tells me he has misjudged me. I attempt to attack him. The ball of anger inside me turns to howling rage. It is painfully obvious that he is playing with me. He can kill me in a heartbeat. Yet something in me will not accept this, even from my Master. My life force won"t allow it. I struggle on, even in the face of his laughter.
He tells me that he has expected my failure. He saw my weaknesses long ago. Secretly, over the long years, he has trained another apprentice. I have not been alone.
I point out, gasping, that more than one apprentice is against the rules of the Sith.
"You are right, " he says. "A spark of intelligence at last. "
The second apprentice is on the other side of the planet. He conquered all the a.s.sa.s.sin droids sent after him. He did not sustain more than a flesh wound. He is healthy and strong.
"Unlike the pathetic weakling I see before me, " my Master says.
I realize dully what this means. My opponents had not really been the droids. My opponent had been someone I had never seen. My enemy has been chosen by my Master. He will become a Sith Lord. He will receive the honor I was due. He will reap the glory I had punished my body and disciplined my mind in order to receive.
A slow rage begins to burn through me. It is a terrible anger, no less fierce because it starts as a kernel of disbelief and then builds. I have never felt anything like it. I know it can consume me.
No. I can direct it. My rage will consume my enemy. It will consume my Master.
Yes, my Master is now my enemy. He is my betrayer. Hatred sears me, hardens me.
"Can you make the next leap in logic?" Lord Sidious asks me contemptuously. "Try to focus, Maul. If there can be only one apprentice, then one of you must die. Who do you think I have chosen to die. Maul?"
The rage rockets within me, pumping energy into my muscles. I can do anything. I can kill my Master. I want to kill him. My hatred is so huge it blots everything else but my desire for his blood.
With a howl torn from the depths of my belly, I spring at him. He barely misses the first blow from my lightsaber, for even in my rage I have employed strategy, coming at him from below, hoping to rip him in two.
He parries my next blow. Sweat stings my eyes as I move across the rough cave floor. I do not stumble. I am nothing but the pulse of my anger, pure energy, pure darkness. I streak across the cave floor and come at him again, somersaulting through the air. My lightsaber whirls in the darkness. When he parries the blow, he staggers.
I am going to kill him. Every beat of my blood exults in my power. Every blow I deliver is meant to be the killing blow. I use reserves of strength I did not know I had. My blows are sure and precise, my footwork flawless. I gather in the power of the dark side. I feel my power clash with his. The air is thick, charged with our dark, t.i.tanic powers.
He parries every blow. But I see that he has to work hard to keep me at bay. Triumph roars through me at my Master"s weakness. He is not as powerful as he appears.
"You want to kill me?" he taunts. "You want to kill your Master?"
"Yes, " I grunt.
"You hate me?"
"Yes!" I scream out the word through gritted teeth.
But I have been weakened by my ordeal, and my Master maneuvers me against the cave wall. I am gasping, trying to suck in enough air to keep going. My vision blurs as Lord Sidious raises his lightsaber. I parry the blow, but my lightsaber suddenly flies out of my hand, torn by the power of my Master directing the dark side. I realize then that he has just begun to tap into his own reserves. Mine are played out.
I will not be able to deflect the next blow. It will rend me in two. In a blur of heat and pain I see the mighty power of my Master raised against me, see the lightsaber come toward me, see my death as clearly as a bone-white moon in an ebony sky.
I lunge forward and sink my teeth into his hand. I strike like an animal, so quickly he doesn"t have time to step away. I taste his blood and spit it back at him in contempt.
Yes, he will kill me. But I will die with his blood on my lips.
The lightsaber comes down. I wait for the pain and shock. I wait to die.
My Master laughs. He tosses the lightsaber aside. It is a training saber. It does not harm me.
I am alive. He will not kill me. My muscles fail me but I don"t let him see it. I lean slightly against the cave wall in back of me. The rock bites into my back and I concentrate on the pain while my Master continues to laugh. I will never forget the sound of that laughter. There is no mercy in it.
"Do you feel the hate?" he asks.
I nod.
"It Is the source of your strength. You still hate me, " he says. "No matter. Today you have delivered yourself into my hands. I have the power of life or death over you, Maul. Someday, you will hold that power over another. It is the honor of the Sith. You will devote yourself to the idea of domination. "
Confused, I ask him about the other apprentice. But there is no other apprentice. It had been a lie.
"You have pa.s.sed the test, " Lord Sidious tells me.
I deactivate my lightsaber and shove it into my belt. I taste my Master"s blood on my lips. The world is returning to me slowly. My rage is ebbing, but I have not fully grasped what has happened.
My Master fixes his gaze on me, the ice-gaze that holds such power.
"From this day forward, you are a Sith Lord. You have chosen the path of darkness, the path of power. You are Lord Maul. You are my instrument. "
"Yes, Master. "
"Your rage, " he says. "You enjoyed it? You enjoyed wanting to kill me?"
"I took great pleasure in it, " I say.
He laughs again. But this time, his laughter does not mock me. "You will do well, Lord Maul, " he says.
And my rage against him leaves, never to return. I am a Sith Lord. I am his instrument.
My Master takes me back to Coruscant. I am tended by a medical droid. The days pa.s.s quickly. I am determined to get better and be stronger than before. The initiation has turned me to bone and sinew. I have been emptied out and filled again with anger and purpose. I am harder than I"ve ever been before.
When I have recovered completely, my Master sends for me.
"You are a formidable warrior, Lord Maul, " he tells me. "Now you need a weapon to match. "
He shows me the Sith archives for the first time. He has perused them for long hours and found an overlooked entry. Thousand of years ago, a Sith Lord fashioned a double-ended lightsaber.
My Master points to the entry. "This will be your weapon, Lord Maul. In order to serve me well, you must be invincible. "
He tells me I must build it myself so that I know it intimately. It shall be fitted to my hand, balanced for my stroke. I shall train with it until it is part of me. And then I will join him on the greatest mission of all.
"What is that, Master?" I dare to ask.
"The domination of the entire galaxy, " he tells me.
That day, I feel a savage exhilaration close to the joy I feel in battle. I am involved in great things. Domination. Control.
I am only beginning to taste the dark power of a Sith.
Entry Seven
The little rest I got during the night revives me. My wound is stiff, but my powers of recuperation are remarkable. The probe droids have not sent back any readings, but I am certain that they will this day. I can feel the disturbance in the dark side. There is a power of good on the planet, a concentration of the Force.
The Jedi are near. The antic.i.p.ation I feel is like a ravenous hunger.
The twin suns of Tatooine rise. Within an hour, the heat is stifling. I hike to the nearby mesa where I can see for kilometers. A sea of coa.r.s.e sand surrounds me. The two suns overhead broil the earth, sending waves of heat upward that batter against my body like solid walls. The light is blinding.
Yet Tatooine is the kind of planet I prefer. I feel comfortable with its harshness. It operates outside the Senate"s laws. It"s full of criminals and drifters, but they crowd into the s.p.a.ceports. Vast areas of the planet are left to hide in. Stealth is currently my best weapon against the Jedi.
But I grow impatient waiting to hear from the probe droids. The hours crawl by. I prowl around the ship restlessly.
Sith are never restless. Our discipline is no less absolute in delay than in action.
But Master, I have never been so close before!
Finally, I settle myself into a meditation pose. I focus on the darkness within. I start with an image of a battle fought on a mission for my Master. I don"t remember my opponent"s face, but I remember how he fought. I remember how he tried to elude me in the end, and how I ran him down. My anger and pleasure mix and rise to a furious pitch.
Then another memory comes to my mind. I am a small boy, walking with my Master on a planet that is all ice and snow. The wind cuts like a laser as we walk by a deep blue lake, but I am warmly dressed and don"t feel the cold. I have just completed a series of exercises, rigorous ones that conclude with my having to run up the icy sheer slope of a mountain and come down at top speed. The effort called for superior balance and control. I feel fear, but I perform well, and I am hoping my Master will praise me. Instead, my Master raises a hand, and suddenly the dark side picks up my small body and tosses me into the middle of the lake.
I sink and then fight my way to the surface. Chunks of ice surround me. The water is so cold I can"t catch my breath. It stings my exposed skin. I remember the shock of fear I felt as I realize my thick clothes, my heavy boots, will drag me down and I will drown.
Turn your fear to anger, Maul.
That had been my lesson. I see that I have not learned it to his satisfaction.
I struggle, gulping the icy water, going down and rising again. I try to call for help. I see my Master on the sh.o.r.e. He does not raise a hand.
My fear becomes anger. The dark side propels my arms and legs, makes me push against the water furiously, allows me to kick my feet in my heavy boots and swim to sh.o.r.e. I drag myself upright, shivering.