Dynasty of Evil by Drew Karpyshyn Read Free Book Online Page B

transaction complete there was no point in staying at the cantina. Bane was eager to open his prize, but he resisted until he was safely back inside the privacy of the library annex on his personal estate. There, beneath the pale glow of the lonely overhead light, he carefully unscrewed the lid. He tipped the tube, allowing the single sheet of paper rolled up inside to slide out.
    His instructions to Argel had been simple: be on the lookout for any book, volume, tome, manuscript, or scroll that made mention of a Sith Lord named Darth Andeddu. He couldn’t say any more than that for fear of raising suspicions or awkward questions, but he had hoped it would be enough.
    For two months his supplier had turned up nothing. But then, just as Bane was beginning to fear the Jedi had successfully buried all trace of Andeddu and his secrets, Argel had delivered.
    The scroll was yellow with age, and Bane gingerly unfurled the dry, cracked page. As he did so, he marveled at the long and untraceable chain of events that had allowed the scroll to not only survive across the millennia, but eventually make its way into his hands. He had chosen to seek the scroll out, yet on some level he felt hischoice had been preordained. The scroll was part of the Sith legacy; a legacy that by all rights now belonged to Bane. It was almost as if he had been destined to find it. It was as inevitable as the dark side’s eventual triumph over the light.
    The page had been fashioned from the cured skin of an animal he couldn’t identify. On one side, it was rough and covered with dark splotches. The other side had been bleached and scraped smooth before being covered with handwritten lines in a language Bane immediately recognized.
    The letters were sharp and angular, aggressive and fierce in their design; the alphabet of the original Sith, a long-extinct species that ruled Korriban nearly one hundred thousand years ago.
    That didn’t mean the document was that old, of course. It only meant that whoever wrote it had revered and respected the Sith culture enough to adapt their language as their own.
    Bane began to read the words, struggling with the archaic tongue. As Argel had promised, he was not disappointed with the contents. The scroll was a religious proclamation declaring Darth Andeddu the Immortal and Eternal King over the entire world of Prakith. To commemorate the momentous event, the proclamation continued, a great temple would be built in his honor.
    Satisfied, Bane carefully rolled the scroll up and slid it back into the protective tube. Despite being only a few paragraphs scrawled across a single sheet of parchment, it had given him what he needed.
    Andeddu’s followers had built a temple in his honor on the Deep Core world of Prakith. There was no doubt in Bane’s mind that this was where he would find the Dark Lord’s Holocron. Unfortunately, he had to think of a way to acquire it that wouldn’t raise Zannah’s suspicions.
    Andeddu’s Holocron offered the promise of immortality; with it he could live long enough to find and train a new successor. It was unlikely his current apprentice would know the significance of the Holocron, but he wasn’t willing to take that chance. Though she was loath to challenge him directly, if she learned that he planned to replace her Bane had no doubt she would do everything in her power to stop him.
    He couldn’t allow the fear of being replaced to become the catalyst that compelled Zannah to finally challenge him. Fighting back simply because she knew she was about to be cast aside was nothing but a common survival instinct. His successors would need to do more than just survive if the Sith were ever to grow powerful enough to destroy the Jedi. Zannah’s challenge had to come from her own initiative, not as a reaction to something he did. Otherwise, it was worthless.
    This was the complex paradox of the Master–apprentice relationship, and it had put Bane into an untenable position. He couldn’t