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Silence.
Maul hadn’t always hated silence.
There had been a time when the silence was his—when he was a hunter, a phantom, a shadow in the night.
Now, though, the silence unnerved him. He had noticed the change on Mandalore, when, late at night, he would awaken from a nightmare, calling out for a long-dead brother into the dark. Or perhaps the change had come before? While he was trapped on a world that smelled of excrement and garbage in the Outer Rim. Yes, Maul mused, kicking at a helmet half-buried in ash, that was where he had found his voice. After years of lessons from a ruthless master with the goal of teaching Maul how to move silently in the galaxy, it had been freeing, almost, to speak—to scream —into the void.
This place was not as odoriferous as Lotho Minor, but it was silent in a way that put the great junkyard of the galaxy to shame. Here, beneath the thin grey crust of the planet, Malachor’s true majesty lay revealed. The battlefield, unnaturally smooth, reached in every direction as far as Maul could see; the temple (and temple indeed, judging by its immensity and complexity, it must have been, despite Maul’s inability to find any sort of entrance) loomed, nearly crackling with dark energy. The only light came from the miniscule cracks and holes to the surface of the planet—by some dark miracle, the place where Maul’s ship had fallen through to this underworld only days before had already been covered by a knitting together of grey dirt. It rather depended on the moment whether Maul thought of that as the planet simply restoring its surface or, more malevolently, trapping him underground for all eternity.
When Maul had realized what power lay beneath Malachor’s surface, he had thought it ironic, at least at first, that he had merely stumbled upon such a Sith treasure while his former master had spent years telling Maul of his tribulations finding anything from the days of the Sith Empire. But “stumbled” wasn’t the right word, not at all—
He had come here because of the dreams. Which meant that he was now trapped here because of the dreams as well. The dreams had come with such force , such vividness , that they left a dull throb in Maul’s head long after waking up. The dreams were always the same—between his nightmares and dark visions, a single voice would ring out with enough clarity to leave Maul gasping for air when he awoke: “ Malachor. Your path, and his, meet on Malachor .”
His. Maul thought the word, then hissed it aloud into the gloom around him. The petrified corpses of fallen Jedi and Sith did not stir, but the world around Maul lit a little, as though the very thought of him could illuminate the ancient battlefield.
“Of whom do you speak?”
Maul’s lightsaber was drawn and lit before the end of the sentence, but when he turned, there was no one there. Maul growled and spun back to the way he had been facing before—where he found a woman, elderly and slightly ethereal, standing before him.
“I asked you a question, traveller,” the woman said. “Of whom do you speak?”
Her robe, plain and brown, had a deep hood drawn low upon her brow, and her white hair was arranged in two neat plaits framing her face. She had no obvious weapons, but Maul was well-trained enough to recognize her apparent disregard of his lightsaber and upright stance as indicative of one familiar with the ancient weapon of the Jedi and the Sith.
“Who are you?” Maul asked.
“Do you truly not recognize my voice?”
Maul frowned. It was the voice from his dreams, it had to be, with the same reedy quality and self-important attitude, but Maul had learned from his former master well—this woman could clearly use the Force, and the Force was not to be trusted. “Tell me who you are, woman, before I cut you down where you stand.”
The threat sounded weak, even to him, and sure enough the woman laughed. It wasn’t a pleasant sound. “You know I am the one who drew you here.”
“That still doesn’t tell me who you are.”
“You will know, in time.” The woman wavered slightly, as if she were made of dust, brushed by an unnatural breeze.
Maul turned off his lightsaber. “ If you are the one from my dreams, then why did you bring me here?”
“You seek knowledge, do you not?” She tilted her head. “Knowledge about him .”
Maul growled. “You do not know of what you speak.” He turned, intending to walk away, but found that the woman stood before him again, as if he hadn’t turned at all. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at where she had been a moment before and instead bared his teeth. “You brought me here claiming that… he would be here also. How can you help me if you don’t know who it is I seek?”
“I made no claims as to another’s location,” the woman said. “But this place holds many secrets, including the answers to any questions you might ask.”
“How can that be?”
The woman shifted her gaze away from Maul to the temple behind him. Without thinking, Maul turned and looked at the temple as well. When she spoke, her voice sounded weary. “There are many things I can teach you, many secrets of the Force you do not yet know.”
Maul turned back to where the woman had been standing, only to discover her gone once again. He turned back around to face the temple, but the woman was not there either—she was completely gone, as if she had never been.
I hate the Force, Maul decided.
—
The silence was deafening. Even as time stretched interminably around Maul, even as day and night coalesced into a terrible twilight, what Maul hated most was the silence. He had no way to measure how long it had been since he had spoken to the woman, yet in spite of her damnable arrogance Maul missed hearing another being’s voice. Even if that voice belonged to some vision in the Force.
Now Maul stood at the base of the pyramidal temple, checking once again for a door of some sort. The woman had said there was something here , something in the hellish wasteland that was Malachor, which could answer any question.
Maul had spent much of his time since he last saw the woman trying to figure out what that might be. The nightsisters had access to such magics—perhaps the temple contained an altar for arcane ceremonies? Or maybe even an oracle of some sort. Maul frowned. His old master had spoken of the power contained in the Sith temples of old. Of course, he had never shared specific knowledge of what that power might be with his apprentice, lest Maul be tempted to use such power in an usurpation in accordance with the Sith way.
“Useless,” Maul spat. “All my experience, all my power, and I can’t even get inside.”
“That’s because you lack a teacher.”
Maul felt a terrible mix of things—surprise at the woman’s reappearance, anger at her previous disappearance, frustration at her mocking tone, and a treacherous dash of relief at hearing her voice again—as he turned to face her.
The woman seemed slightly less ethereal today, but was obviously still not entirely real. “And are you offering to teach me?” Maul sneered.
“Come, stand next to me,” the woman said, stepping next to the corner of the temple. Maul paused a moment before stepping over. She nodded in approval as he took his place by her side. “Now place your hand on the wall—there.”
Maul did as she directed, and suddenly the very ground beneath his feet began to move. “A lift?” Maul asked. The woman, standing tall at his side, didn’t respond.
The lift stopped at the first terrace. The woman stepped off the lift first, and Maul followed. They walked in silence for a few moments, before the woman stopped at the adjacent corner and gestured again.
Maul paused. “Why should I follow you?”
“I thought you wanted knowledge.”
“I have no reason to trust the knowledge you give me.”
The woman hummed. “Tell me—what do you perceive as the relationship between knowledge and power?”
Maul ground his teeth. “I had a master once, but you are not him,” he spat. “I have no reason to entertain your little test.”
The woman continued as if she had not heard Maul, which only annoyed him further. “The one who built this temple believed that knowledge and power were one in the same. If you follow me, I can show you what such fallacies led her to create.” She gestured again at the wall in front of her.
Maul considered drawing his lightsaber for a moment (tempting, though likely fruitless against a ghost), but instead sniffed disdainfully before stepping next to the woman and placing his hand on the wall as she directed. This time, Maul was prepared for the lift to begin moving, and when it stopped, he stepped off before the woman.
To Maul’s consternation, despite stepping off first, the woman stood before him again. He pursed his lips, stepped forward to her side, and joined her in looking up at the final section of the pyramid above their heads.
Maul followed the woman to some stone steps, and climbed to the temple’s top.
Maul was unsure what he thought he would encounter at the top of the temple, but what he found was strangely underwhelming. The final terrace was as plain and lifeless as the rest of the temple, and once again Maul saw no door, only a smooth obelisk at the plateau’s center.
“Is this it?” Maul sneered.
When he turned around, the woman was gone.
—
What felt like days passed before Maul saw the woman again.
Meanwhile, atop the temple, Maul waited for what he (dreaded? hoped?) assumed would be the old woman’s inevitable reappearance.
He studied the battlefield from above, and tried to imagine how the attack had commenced; he could almost see the way the Jedi had attacked from each side at once, pushing the Sith back to the slopes of the temple. Until something had happened that killed all combatants, Sith and Jedi alike. When he became bored by historical recreation, he looked more closely at the obelisk. It was as plain and underwhelming as he first thought, the only feature of interest a rhombus-shaped gap between the two arms of the obelisk.
When the silence became too much, Maul thought about the woman’s question: what was the relationship between knowledge and power? A long-buried memory stirred in Maul’s mind of a lesson given by his old master on a planet far in the Outer Rim. Maul had been young, little more than a child, when Sidious had taken him to a barren icy world. It had not been Maul’s first lesson—his training in fighting, assassination, and pain had begun years before—but it was Maul’s first lesson about the Sith. Sidious did not allow Maul to wear warm clothes or even shoes as he stood in the snow, and at night Sidious denied Maul the warmth of a fire. When finally Maul’s anger and hatred of Sidious became strong enough, he reached into the depths of the Force and sunk into the ecstasy of dark power. The darkness warmed him and his pain became fuel for his survival in the face of Sidious’ abuse.
“Good,” Sidious had praised, seemingly feeble hands clasped. The praise made Maul happy, which in turn made him angry at his own happiness. Sidious smiled at the terrible collusion of emotions raging within his apprentice. “Now that you have taken your first steps in the Force, you must learn the Sith Code.”
The memory faded as quickly as it appeared, and Maul shook his head to clear it. He didn’t consider himself a Sith , precisely, but the Code still pounded in his mind. Though the Code didn’t address knowledge, it did address power: “Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power.”
And knowledge? Maul turned the matter over in his mind. It seemed passion could be antithetical to knowledge—it was his passion that had led him to attempt to draw Kenobi to Mandalore, but knowledge might have told him that Kenobi would be the one assigned to address the attack on Coruscant. But the failure of Maul’s plan hadn’t been a lack of knowledge—it was his knowledge of Sidious and insight through the Force that had awakened him to the truth of Sidious’ plans in the first place.
“Are you familiar with a device called a holocron?”
Maul blinked in surprise at the sudden interruption of his fruitless musings. The woman must have taken his surprised look as a yes, for she continued placidly. “A holocron can be used to unlock the power of this place.”
“Power?” Maul asked. “What power?”
“The one who built this temple built it as a tribute to an ancient evil. With a holocron, one can turn the temple—and the planet—into a weapon capable of great destruction. The corpses you see below,” the woman continued, “are the result of a battle between Sith and Jedi over control of this weapon.”
Maul considered the obelisk more carefully. Sure enough, the space in the obelisk looked as though it could fit a holocron.
“What ‘ancient evil’ inspired the creation of this weapon?” Maul asked, suddenly more interested in the obelisk.
The woman looked pleased, as though that had been a question she wanted him to ask. “Long ago, this planet was known as Malachor V. It was the site of a terrible creation—the Mass Shadow Generator.”
“I’ve never heard of such a weapon,” Maul said, stepping closer to inspect the obelisk.
“It was used during the Mandalorian Wars.”
“There have been many ‘Mandalorian Wars,’” Maul said, rolling his eyes. He ignored the rush of anger at the mention of Mandalore. Yet another thing taken from me by Kenobi and the Jedi . “To which one are you referring?”
To his surprise, the woman sounded angry when she replied. “Whether you claim to be Sith or Jedi or something of your own creation, you would do well to study history,” the woman snapped. “I speak, of course, of the Mandalorian Wars—the wars between the Mandalorians, led by Mandalore the Ultimate, and the Galactic Republic forces, led by Darth Revan.”
This made Maul stop. “I know of Darth Revan,” Maul breathed. “My master—my old master—” he cursed inwardly at the slip—“spoke of Revan as the last true Lord of the Sith.”
The woman scoffed. “An inaccurate title, but perhaps it captures the magnetism of Revan.”
“Is this then the Mass Shadow Generator?”
“No,” the woman said. “That weapon was destroyed a decade after the Mandalorian Wars. This is a… tribute .” The woman stepped closer to Maul, and her form flickered unnaturally. “This weapon feeds upon the energy of the one who awakens it as well as the power of a holocron, and transforms those sources into an energy blast that can destroy all the life on a world.”
“So the device fed off of these people’s energies?” Maul asked, gesturing to the ash and dust remains of warriors below.
“No,” the woman shook her head. “A single Jedi managed to reach the top of the temple and sacrificed herself to turn the weapon’s power onto Malachor itself.”
“A Jedi caused all this?” Maul breathed, looking out across the dim wasteland in shock. It seemed impossible, for so much death and destruction to be caused by a Jedi.
“The Jedi thought that destroying the Sith army’s chances of utilizing the weapon was worth the deaths of so many allies.”
Maul was struck by the sudden desire to know her feelings on this matter—did she think the Jedi did the right thing? Though she was incorporeal, Maul still tried to reach out and feel her thoughts. To his disappointment, he felt nothing—as if he were trying to feel the mind of a gust of wind. He suppressed the urge to shudder.
“Who are you?” Maul asked.
The woman smiled slightly, and for a second Maul glimpsed her pure white eyes. “I told you—I am the one from your dreams.”
Maul wanted to roll his eyes, but pushed the instinct aside. “Did you fight at this battle?” Maul asked. He had read of ghosts of Jedi and Sith remaining in this world, especially when tied to a certain place.
“No,” the woman said. “I have been on Malachor far longer than these corpses, and longer even than this temple.”
“Are you a Jedi or Sith?”
The woman was silent for a moment, and cast her unseeing eyes out across the battlefield below. “You are not the first to ask me that,” she said after a time. “My last student did not like my answer. I wonder if you would?”
Before Maul could object that he was not her student, she sighed and faded into nothingness, leaving Maul alone again.
—
Maul left the temple’s top after that. If the woman truly was some sort of trick of the Force, Maul assumed she would find him wherever he was on this hell-world.
He had hoped the woman would clarify her earlier claims, about knowledge and answers to questions, but instead she had obfuscated the matter further. Back at the base of the temple, Maul considered what he should do next. He came here seeking knowledge, but apparently the temple could be used as a weapon. Which do I desire more?
A lifetime ago, after that child had somehow managed to capture him on Mandalore, Maul had escaped the crashing GAR ship on the last functional shuttle, leaving her to her doom. He had foreseen the perverse depths of Sidious’ plans—so he knew that as a Force user, he would be hunted to the ends of the galaxy. Most of Maul’s Crimson Dawn contacts remained loyal to him; with their help, he spent the infancy of the Empire hopping from safe-house to safe-house, orchestrating the actions of his criminal syndicate from rat-infested dens and hovels throughout the Outer Rim.
When he had first seen Kenobi’s picture on the HoloNet listed among the dead “traitorous” Jedi, he was furious. “He was mine to kill!” Maul had shouted, drawing his lightsaber and destroying the furniture in his little room. “ Mine to destroy! Sidious stole my greatest victory from me!”
The dreams had started after that. The hope the dreams awakened was treacherous—Maul knew it was madness to think that he could have survived… and yet to whom else could the dreams be referring? “ Malachor. Your path, and his, meet on Malachor .”
It seemed impossible for Kenobi to still be alive, but if the old woman was telling the truth, he could use the temple to discover Kenobi’s fate. But Kenobi was not the only being Maul had reason to seek out. If the temple could be turned against Sidious—if Maul could kill both his old master and Sidious’ new pet, the one called Vader, in one fell swoop—Maul could finally take the revenge he so long desired. Knowledge or power? Maul pondered, looking out across the battlefield.
“You asked if I was Jedi or Sith,” the woman said suddenly. Maul suppressed his surprise and did not turn to face her. “Which are you?”
Maul paused. “I,” he began slowly, considering his words carefully, “am neither.”
Though he couldn’t sense her presence in the Force, he felt a wave of approval at his response. She stepped up to his side, and suddenly Maul felt a strange cold presence in the Force where she stood.
“The Jedi are charitable fools, and the Sith can be short sighted,” the woman said. For a moment, Maul thought it seemed as though her robe flickered from brown to black, the ties around her hair from white to red. “I reached through the Force to you because you have potential to rise above the pitfalls of each school of thought.”
“I’ve had enough of your riddles,” Maul snapped. “In my dreams, you said Kenobi would be here—”
“Kenobi?” The woman pressed her lips into a line. Maul thought perhaps that was her smile. “Is that his name?”
“It does not matter what his name is,” Maul spat, itching to draw his lightsaber. “You speak of knowledge, and yet you’ve given me nothing but oblique clues! Why do you keep speaking of knowledge and power? Where is the holocron which powers this battle station?”
“The holocron lies within the temple,” the woman said, turning her back to Maul. Her voice sounded far away. “The entrance is below, by the tomb of the one known as Darth Traya.”
“Lead me there,” Maul commanded and stepped toward her.
She nodded, and Maul barely registered the crack beneath his feet as the ground shattered.
Maul had assumed the grey dust around the temple had been the ground, but clearly Malachor had secrets yet to spill; he had no time to jump to safety—only a split second to use the Force to lessen the impact of his fall—before he was trapped below, in a cavern impossibly darker than the one above.
It was difficult to see—without the cracks to the planet’s surface overhead, the only light came from the simmering red of the temple. Maul halfway expected that the woman would have disappeared again, leaving him alone in this dusty crypt, but to his surprise she stood over him, expectant.
Maul pushed himself in a sitting position. At first, anger burned in his mind, the adrenaline from the fall acting like an accelerant on its flames. But part of him too felt closer to whatever secrets this place held: here, the power from the temple was like a blanket on his mind. The insidious power emanating from the temple was a dark liquid seeping into the farthest reaches of his being.
“The builder of the temple chose Malachor because of this place,” the woman said as Maul stood. “Darth Traya’s tomb is ahead, and these ruins,” she gestured to the shattered stone around them, “were once part of a place of learning for Sith—the Trayus Academy.”
She began to walk toward the temple, and Maul stood unsteadily to follow. “And there, by this Academy— ” he sneered the word, “I can find the entrance to the temple? So I can awaken the battle station?”
The woman flickered again from brown and white to black and red. When her form restablized, she spoke condescendingly. “Like I said before, the one who built this temple believed that knowledge and power were one in the same. If you are as foolish as her, you can use the holocron within to awaken the temple—but at the cost of destroying the holocron.” She paused. “Or, if you seek knowledge alone, with the understanding that knowledge can be used to manipulate oneself to greater power, you can use the holocron to answer any question you may ask—including the fate of Kenobi.”
“How?” Maul asked, hating the desperation in his own voice.
“When the power within a Sith holocron combines with the power of a Jedi holocron, the result is a tunnel in the Force, granting one insight beyond what is available to light- or dark-side users alone.”
The woman had continued walking, but Maul stopped. “There would not be a Jedi holocron within the temple,” he growled. “You led me here for nothing!”
The woman turned around, mouth pressed in a thin line. “It’s true that I have led you to only a piece of the puzzle. There are few holocrons, Jedi or Sith, remaining in the galaxy, most in the possession of your former master. This,” she said, gesturing at the temple ahead, “is one of only a few extant in the galaxy. If you are so shortsighted to destroy such an artifact, that is your choice.”
“Where am I to find a Jedi holocron?” Maul snapped. “The Jedi are nearly all gone.”
“Nearly is not all,” the woman intoned. They stood now within meters of the temple, and her voice grew weak. “Do you believe you are the only one I drew to this place? I used most of my power to reach through the Force to those who might listen. Others will come.”
“Then lead me to the planet’s surface so I can prepare for the Jedi’s arrival!” Maul pled. Her form flickered again, and Maul feared for a moment that she would disappear.
“There is no way to return to the surface,” she said after a moment. “The only way to escape is through the temple itself.”
He had been to Sith temples before with Sidious, and knew he could not enter alone. “Then we must open it!” Maul commanded.
“I cannot. I no longer wield the Force as you do.”
“Then, you—” Maul’s blood turned to ice. “You’ve trapped me,” Maul hissed, drawing and igniting his lightsaber.
“Another will come,” the woman said, unperturbed by the lightsaber pointing at her heart.
“When?” Maul demanded. “Who?”
She cocked her head, as if listening to something far away. “My time here is nearly gone,” she muttered. Then, with a stronger voice, she said, “I have told you what you need to know.”
Maul swung his lightsaber, but the red blade passed through her form like smoke. “Why would you do this to me?” Maul yelled.
“You must forge your own path.” Her form flickered again, and now Maul saw her eyes were inky black. “The galaxy needs its betrayers.”
“That’s not an answer,” Maul growled, but within his heart beat wildly. She’s going to leave, I’m going to be trapped—like Lotho Minor, but Savage is gone—
Then, the ground shook, and for a moment, it was as though the Force opened his eyes to see her as she had been—a terrible woman, surrounded by three spinning lightsabers, standing in battle against one she both hated and loved. “I see your future, Maul. You are an exile, like me, and like another I once knew.” Her voice reverberated with the final spending of her power. “I wonder if I should tell you of what I see?”
—
The silence was no longer his. It was hers now, Maul knew it. He sat upon her tomb day in and out, his only company the skittering of foul-tasting rats in the dark.
Time passed, perhaps hours perhaps years, and he thought about many things: darkness and the Force, power and betrayal, knowledge and hatred, and, in the unending silence, perhaps most of all he thought of the future.
When he first heard the muffled footfalls and voices above, he thought it was a final cruel trick of the woman. But when the echoes of running feet went directly above his head, he knew what he had to do. When finally the ground shattered and a form, unmistakable human, fell through, he smiled.
The future was here. And he had a plan.