'I have none.'
'You will not be able to return to your home; you must be willing to leave behind all your worldly possessions.'
'Wealth and material goods mean nothing to me,' she replied. 'I crave only power and purpose. With power, anything you want or need can simply be taken. With purpose, your life has meaning.'
Bane nodded approvingly, stirring the fire once more before continuing.
'If you become my apprentice, who you were will cease to exist. You must be reborn in the ways of the dark side.'
'I'm ready, my lord.' There was no mistaking the eagerness in her voice.
'Then choose a new name for yourself, as a symbol of your new and greater existence.'
'Cognus,' she said after a moment's consideration.
Bane was impressed. She understood that power rested not in her blades or her bloodlust, but in her knowledge, wisdom, and ability to see the future.
'A good name,' he said, setting the stick down and rising to his full height. As he did so, the Iktotchi dropped to one knee before him and bowed her head.
'From this day forward you are Darth Cognus of the Sith,' he said.
'I am ready to begin my training,' Cognus replied, still down on one knee before him.
'Not yet,' he said, walking past her and heading to the shuttles on the far side of the camp. 'There is still one important matter to take care of.'
Cognus jumped up to follow him. 'Your old apprentice?' she guessed.
Or was it a guess?
Bane stopped and turned back toward her. 'Have you seen what will happen between me and my apprentice?'
'Ever since I came to this world to meet the princess I have dreamed of you both,' Cognus admitted. 'But the meaning is unclear.'
'Tell me what you've seen,' Bane ordered.
'The details are always changing. Different locations, different worlds, different times of the day or night. At times I see her dead at your feet, other times she is the victor. I have tried to make sense of it, but there are too many contradictions.'
'The future of the Sith is precariously balanced between Zannah and myself,' Bane explained. 'Whoever survives our confrontation will control the destiny of the Sith, but our strength is too evenly matched for you to foresee the outcome.'
The Iktotchi didn't reply, pondering his words in silence.
Bane left her alone to think on her first lesson, continuing on to her vessel. He passed the twin graves without a second glance.
Climbing inside the shuttle, he set the commtransmitter to the frequency of Zannah's personal shuttle and sent out a coded distress signal.
Zannah had drifted off into a restless sleep, only to be awakened by a slow, steady beep from her control console. Examining the source, she saw it was a long-range distress call. Instead of being broadcast across multiple band lengths, however, this one was coming in on the Victory's private channel. Only one person besides her knew that frequency.
Curious, she decoded the message. It comprised only four words: Ambria. The healer's camp.
Her first thought was that Bane was setting a trap for her, trying to lure her in. But the more she thought about it, the less likely that seemed. It was obvious who the message was from. If he was setting a trap, why reveal himself like this when it would only put her on her guard?
Maybe he just wanted this to end. Before drifting off to sleep, Zannah had been thinking about what he said to her before their confrontation in the halls of the Stone Prison.
Only the strongest has the right to rule the Sith! The title of Dark Lord must be seized, wrenched from the all- powerful grasp of the Master!
If Bane still believed in the Rule of Two-if he still believed it was the key to the survival and eventual dominance of the Sith-then this message was a challenge, an invitation to his apprentice to come to Ambria and end what they had begun in the Stone Prison.
She had to admit, it was better than wasting years chasing each other across the galaxy, setting traps and plotting each other's destruction. Bane had reinvented the Sith so that their resources and efforts would be focused against their enemies rather than each other. When the apprentice challenged the Master it was meant to be decided in a single confrontation: quick, clean, and final.
Now, however, the Order had been fractured. They were no longer Master and apprentice, but competing rivals for the mantle of Sith Lord. They were effectively at war, and as long as they both lived, the Sith would be divided. Was it so hard to believe that, for the sake of the Order, Bane wanted to end it with a duel on Ambria? If Bane still honored the Rule he had created, then the message could be taken at face value.
But what about Andeddu's Holocron?
She had initially thought he was seeking eternal life so that he could defy the Rule of Two by living forever. Now she wasn't so certain. Would immortality really be a violation of the Rule's underlying principles? The secrets inside the Holocron might keep Bane from aging, but she didn't think they could protect him from falling in battle. If she was strong enough to defeat him, she would still earn her place as Master, just as Bane had intended when he first found her as a young girl on Ruusan. Now she wondered if the Holocron was just a safeguard to keep the Order strong. Perhaps Bane saw it as a way to protect against an unworthy candidate ascending to the Sith throne simply because the Master became weak and infirm with age.
Zannah leaned forward and plotted in a course for Ambria, wondering what had made Bane choose the healer's camp as the location of their final encounter.
The world was steeped in the energies of the dark side; for the first decade of her apprenticeship Bane and Zannah had dwelled there near the shores of Lake Natth. But he wasn't calling her back to their camp; he was waiting for her at Caleb's.
Two times the Dark Lord had nearly died there. Did that have anything to do with his choice of location? Or was there some other explanation?
It was still possible she was about to walk into a trap. Ambria was a sparsely inhabited world. It would be easy to make preparations there without drawing unwanted attention.
Yet her instincts told her that wasn't what Bane was plotting. And if her instincts were wrong about something as important as this, then she deserved whatever was waiting for her.
Either way, she reasoned as the ship made the jump into hyperspace, this will all be over soon.
Night had passed on Ambria, giving way to the scorching heat of day. With the rising of the sun, Bane and Cognus had retreated inside the shelter of the hut. There the Dark Lord had sat cross-legged on the floor, meditating and gathering his strength in preparation for Zannah's arrival.
'She'll probably show up with an army at her heels,' the Iktotchi warned.
Bane shook his head.
'She knows she must face me alone.'
'I don't understand.'
'The Sith used to be as plentiful as the Jedi. Unlike the Jedi, however, those who served sought to tear their leaders down. Their ambition was natural; this is the way of the dark side. It is what drives us, gives us strength. Yet it can also destroy us if not properly controlled.
'Under the old ways, a powerful leader would be brought down by the combined strength of many lesser Sith working together. It was inevitable, a cycle that repeated over and over. And each time, the Order as a whole grew weaker.
