perhaps since infancy to safeguard his secret. But there was no concealing it now: the Force was powerful in him! Bottled up for seventeen standard years, his innate power had finally burst forth and could never again be stoppered. All the years of repression, guiltless crimes, raw emotion bubbling forth, toxic to any who dared touch or taste it. But beneath his anger lurked a subtle enemy: apprehension. Newly reborn, he was at great risk. But only because he didn’t realize just how powerful he was or how extraordinarily powerful he could become. He would need help to complete his self-destruction. He would need help rebuilding those walls, to keep from being discovered.
Oh, what a cautious taming he would require! Plagueis thought. But what an ally he might make.
“I’m not sure I know what to think of this, Palpatine,” he said at last. “Have you always had such powers?”
Color had drained from Palpatine’s face, and his legs were shaking. “I’ve always known I was capable of summoning them.”
Plagueis rose from the chair and approached him warily. “Here is where the path bifurcates, young human. Here and now you need to decide whether to disavow your power or to venture courageously and scrupulously into the depths of truth — no matter the consequences.”
He resisted an urge to grasp Palpatine by the shoulder, and instead paced away from him. “You could devote the rest of your life to trying to make sense of this power, this gift,” he said, without looking back. “Or you could consider a different option.” He swung to face Palpatine. “It’s a dark path into a trackless wilderness from which few return. Not without a guide, at any rate. But it is also the shortest, quickest route between today and tomorrow.”
Plagueis realized that he was taking a great gamble, but there was no turning back from it. The dark side had brought them together, and it would be the will of the dark side that decided whether Palpatine became his apprentice.
“In your studies,” he said carefully, “have you ever learned of the Sith?”
Palpatine blinked, as if preoccupied. “A Jedi sect, weren’t they? The result of a kind of family feud.”
“Yes, yes, in some ways just that. But more: the Sith are the prodigal offspring, destined to return and overthrow the Jedi.”
Palpatine cut his eyes to Plagueis. “The Sith are considered to be evil.”
“Evil?” Plagueis repeated. “What is that? Moments ago you defined yourself as a storm. You said you were death itself. Are you evil, then, or are you simply stronger and more awake than others? Who gives more shape to sentient history: the good, who adhere to the tried and true, or those who seek to rouse beings from their stupor and lead them to glory? A storm you are, but a much-needed one, to wash away the old and complacent and prune the galaxy of deadweight.”
Palpatine’s lip curled in anger and menace. “Is this the wisdom you offer — the tenets of some arcane cult?”
“The test of its value is whether you can live by it, Palpatine.”
“If I had wanted that I would have forced my parents years ago to surrender me to the Jedi Order instead of transferring me from school to private school.”
Plagueis planted his hands on his hips and laughed without mirth. “And of what possible use do you think a person of your nature would be to the Jedi Order? You’re heartless, ambitious, arrogant, insidious, and without shame or empathy. More, you’re a murderer.” He held Palpatine’s hooded gaze and watched the youth’s hands clench in fists of rage. “Careful, boy,” he said after a moment. “You are not the only being in this plush stateroom with the power to kill.”
Palpatine’s eyes opened wide and he took a step back. “I can sense it …”
Plagueis grew deliberately haughty. “What you sense is a fraction of what I can bring to bear.”
Palpatine appeared suitably chastened. “Might I be of some use to the Sith?”
“Possibly,” Plagueis said. “Perhaps even likely. But we would have to wait and see.”
“Where are the Sith?”
Plagueis allowed a smile. “Just now there is only one. Unless, of course, it is your will to join me.”
Palpatine nodded. “I do wish to join you.”
“Then kneel before me and pledge that it is your will to join your destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords.”
Palpatine stared at the floor, then genuflected, uttering, “It is my will to join my destiny forever with the Order of the Sith Lords.”
Plagueis extended his left hand to touch him on the crown of the head. “Then it is done. From this day forward, the truth of you, now and forever more, will be
When Palpatine stood, Plagueis took him by the shoulders.
“In time you will come to understand that you are one with the dark side of the Force, and that your power is beyond contradiction. But just now, and until I tell you differently, abiding submission is your only road to salvation.”
12: SEDUCED BY THE DARK SIDE OF THE FORCE
The obedient orphan stood shivering in swirling snow. Around him rose ice pinnacles shaped like jagged teeth; a glacial wind howled through them. Plagueis stood nearby, flakes of snow and ice gyrating around him but never lighting on him, melting before they reached him. Unlike Sidious, who was outfitted in a thin enviro-suit, the Sith Lord was wearing only a cloak, narrow trousers, and a skullcap.
“It was on this world that I first became aware of my Force powers and dark impulses,” he said, loudly enough to be heard over the wind. “Compared with temperate Muunilinst, Mygeeto is ruthless and uncompromising, but I learned to adapt to its harsh conditions, and before the age of eight I could venture out into the most violent storm dressed in less than you wear now. But I haven’t brought you here to acquaint you with my past, Sidious. If you were of a species acclimatized to these conditions, I would have brought you instead to a desert world. If you were an aquatic being, I would have stranded you on dry land. The divide between the ways of the Force as practiced by the Sith and the Jedi has less to do with the distinction between darkness or the presence of light than between — in your case — naked cold and the presence of warmth. Between distress and comfort, entropy and predictability.”
Plagueis paused to regard Sidious. “Your blood is close to frozen. Too much time here and you will die. That is what you will think at the beginning, when the dark side has sniffed you out and sidled up to you. You will think:
Plagueis laughed shortly. “Perhaps I sound like some professor of philosophy in that fine college of yours in Theed. But this isn’t a lecture, nor should you think of it as physical conditioning. We need instead to prepare you for what awaits you should the dark side opt to take an interest in you. The comingling of fear and joy; of being humbled and empowered; of being escalated while at the same time used, as if an instrument. To be singled out and yet subsumed by an overarching grandness.”
A predatory look came to his wan face as he advanced on Sidious.
“Now tell me again, apprentice. And in greater detail.”
Once more Sidious allowed his memories to unfold, and he relived the crime — the event, as he had at last come to think of it. His father’s limp and bloodied body. The smashed skulls of the bodyguards. His hands clenched around his mother’s slender throat — but not really, only in his mind, strangling her with his thoughts. The lifeless forms of his siblings, slumped here and there … In telling and retelling it, in reliving it, he had finally gained a kind of authority over it, the ability to see the event merely for what it was, without emotion, without judgment. It was as if the event had occurred years rather than months earlier, and as if someone else had authored the crime. When that defining moment had come, a transforming power had curled up inside him, as dark as space without stars, born of hated and fear but one he could now draw upon.
