The Eye of Darkness, page 1
Star Wars: The High Republic: The Eye of Darkness is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2023 by Lucasfilm Ltd. & ® or ™ where indicated. All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
Random House is a registered trademark, and Random House Worlds and colophon are trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Mann, George, author.
Title: The eye of darkness / George Mann.
Other titles: At head of title: Star Wars: the high republic
Description: New York : Random House Worlds, 2023. | Series: Star Wars: the high republic
Identifiers: LCCN 2023035718 (print) | LCCN 2023035719 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593597934 (hardcover; acid-free paper) | ISBN 9780593597941 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Star Wars fiction. | LCGFT: Science fiction. | Novels.
Classification: LCC PR6113.A546 E95 2023 (print) | LCC PR6113.A546 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23/eng/20230731
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035718
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023035719
Ebook ISBN 9780593597941
randomhousebooks.com
Cover art: Grant Griffin
ep_prh_6.1_145431659_c0_r0
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
The Star Wars Novels Timeline
Epigraph
Introduction
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
Chapter Sixty-six
Chapter Sixty-seven
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By George Mann
About the Author
_145431659_
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away….
It is a time of great turmoil. A year has passed since the destruction of the STARLIGHT BEACON station by the nefarious Marchion Ro and his Nihil marauders.
The Nihil have established an OCCLUSION ZONE in the Outer Rim, stranding hundreds of worlds behind their Stormwall. Communications are blocked, and ships that enter are lost to the void or destroyed by the Nihil.
The Republic is helpless against this sinister threat, and the brave and wise JEDI KNIGHTS remain fearful of Ro’s fabled NAMELESS creatures, which the Jedi have learned are very real, and very deadly….
HETZAL, INSIDE THE OCCLUSION ZONE
Like all living things, Jedi Grand Master Pra-Tre Veter had known fear.
It was, after all, a natural, biological impulse, a reaction to external stimuli that governed the behavior of beings and animals across the entire galaxy. Fear was what kept people safe, a warning system that alerted you when you were in danger, an impulse that urged you to flee, to seek safe ground away from the predators that would do you harm.
But fear was also a tool. A weapon wielded by the misguided, an instrument of control. Fear could be applied, sometimes with delicacy and precision, sometimes with the might of a hammer striking stone. Fear could topple even the strongest of individuals and drive entire populations to misery and subservience.
Fear could bring down stars.
It was, though, the weapon of cowards. Fear could be overcome. It could be defeated. It could be turned into strength.
As a Padawan, as a Jedi Knight, Veter had learned to control his emotions, to contain them, understand them, and use them. It was not that he had stopped feeling or recognizing fear—more that he understood it for what it was and had learned to compartmentalize it. To him, as to most Jedi, fear was simply information—that warning system flaring—allowing him to acknowledge danger and then act accordingly. As a Jedi Council Grand Master, no longer did he allow his thoughts to become clouded by fear. Each and every decision he made was rational, considered.
In this way, Veter, like so many Jedi before him, had learned to face danger head-on. To put himself in harm’s way to protect others, and to do it calmly, logically, and with acceptance.
Which made his current predicament even more troubling.
It wasn’t that he was troubled by the absolute, tar-black darkness. Nor the walls and cold metal bars of his cell. Nor was he scared of the Nihil, of Marchion Ro and his lackeys, of death and transcendence into the Force.
But that thing, that creature that lurked out there, somewhere in the gloom far beyond his cell—that was something different. That was something made to eat away at who he was, to erode him. It was designed to bring fear, and it was a fear that he couldn’t shake, coiling in his guts like a cold compress. The Nameless were supposed to be creatures of myth, the inhabitants of stories designed to scare younglings. But Veter—like too many unfortunate Jedi before him—had learned to his cost that the monsters were very real indeed.
If he listened carefully, he could hear the thing pacing, somewhere off in the distant gloom, tracing the walls of its own prison; a caged predator waiting for the moment to strike, to be free. A starved beast that knew its prey was near.
Veter opened his eyes, but there was nothing to see. No stirrings in the depths, no hint of a light. Memories were his only solace now. Trapped here, with that nameless thing so close, he’d been unable to clear his mind, to focus, for days, weeks, months? He’d lost all track of time. But he was a Jedi still, and he had not yet lost himself. He was fortified by his recollections of his fellow Jedi—by the hope that they had once inspired, not just in him, but in the entire galaxy. Hope that they would rekindle.
He wasn’t scared. But he had known fear. And he would find the means to overcome it, just as he always had.
Veter reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose, and hesitated, cursing himself as pain flared along the length of his forearm. His left hand was gone, reduced to an ashen stump. Traces of the strange calcification ran up the remainder of his forearm, like poisoned veins, marring his brown-black flesh. The calcification was still spreading, but slowly, agonizingly, consuming him a little more with every passing hour. He’d suffered other wounds—the Nihil had delighted in cutting away the horns that crested his head, trying to humiliate him, to make him lesser than the Tarnab he was. But he had never been proud. Those were scars he could live with, that didn’t alter who he was. But the strange calcification was something different, a creeping death, caused by his proximity to the creature.
It was the result of one of the Nihil’s “experiments,” carried out in a makeshift laboratory by a fervent, hammer-headed Ithorian who had muttered in his echoing na
That was the point Veter had lost control. The fear had overtaken him. His sanity had fled. He couldn’t quite remember what had happened next, but he knew he’d been dragged away before the creature could consume any more of him. He’d heard it howling, straining at its electrified leash to try to reach him, breaking its own bones in utter desperation and hunger as he was thrown back into his cell, slipping into a deep, disturbed unconsciousness.
When he woke again, he was surprised to be alive. His throat was raw from screaming, and his left hand was gone, reduced to a calcified stump where his wrist had once been.
He didn’t know how long had passed since that day. It might have been hours. It might have been days. But since that time, he’d been alone, with just a jug of tepid water left in the corner of the cell to sustain him. Whatever the Ithorian had done to him—Veter had noted the tracks of injection marks on his other arm, suggesting further experiments while he’d been unconscious—it seemed to have slowed the husking process.
A slower, more painful death.
How like the Nihil.
Veter sensed movement in the darkness.
The clang of a mechanical lock. The grating of hinges. And then a sudden flare of light, so harsh that it left him dizzy, as though reality had suddenly rushed in and burned a hole into his mind. He squeezed his eyes shut, holding up his remaining hand as an imperfect shield against the light.
The irony wasn’t lost on him.
For Light and Life.
Footsteps moved closer—the thud of heavy boots. They stopped outside the bars of his cell. Veter thought he heard a snort of disgust.
Slowly, he peeled open his eyes to discover that the light wasn’t as sharp and bright as he’d first thought. So accustomed had he become to the gloom that the merest glow—a familiar glow—seemed stark and painful to his dark-adapted eyes.
No, this was merely the yellow light of a stolen lightsaber, clutched in the fist of another. Veter felt the stirrings of indignation. A flash of his old spirit.
How dare he? How dare he use our own weapons, our own symbols against us?
How did we fall so far?
Like the beacon tumbling through the skies of Eiram, the Jedi had been brought low. But they would rise again. They would walk in the Light.
“You’ve regained your spirit.” The voice was cold, emotionless. “I see it in your eyes. You’re resilient, I’ll give you that.” The figure stepped closer, into the shimmering glow of the lightsaber. “But that seed of hope that you cling to, that belief that the Jedi will rise above this, will bring an end to all that I have done…it is a fallacy. I shall crush it as I have crushed everything else you and your kind believe in. I shall watch you beg.” The figure paused, then lowered his voice, adopting a reasonable, affable tone. “But perhaps not today.”
Veter glanced up. He fixed this being—this monster—with a defiant stare.
Here was the orchestrator of it all, the pain, the suffering, the chaos. Here was Marchion Ro, the Eye of the Nihil, the very center of the storm.
He looked resplendent in his crimson cloak, its fur-lined collar draped across his broad shoulders. And then there was the helm, its strange, swirling, cyclopean red eye peering down at Veter, where he sat in the dirt, like a penitent at the foot of his liege.
Just how Marchion Ro had devised it.
Determined not to give the Eye the satisfaction he so clearly craved, Veter levered himself up, trying hard to disguise the strain, the weakness that he felt deep down in his bones. He’d been starved, and tortured, and exposed to that thing, but he was still a Jedi. Still a member of the High Council.
He forced himself to his full height and took a step toward the bars, closer to his captor. The hum of the lightsaber was the only sound, save for Veter’s ragged breathing. Soon, he knew, he would be one with the Force.
He glowered defiantly at Ro, staring back at that stark, single eye in the center of the Evereni’s helm.
If he could only reach out and take the lightsaber back…
Veter reached for the Force. It was distant, faint, like an echo of what it had always been. The proximity of the creature was disrupting his connection to it, as if it were somehow siphoning away the living Force inside of him.
Veter had always felt the Force as a solid thing. Pliable and moldable, like clay. Something he could shape in new ways to express himself. But now it felt thin and loose, unable to take on the forms he tried to mold in his mind. The creature’s hunger gnawed at the edges of his concentration, distracting him, interfering with his every thought. A constant, ever-present needle, hot in the back of his skull, refusing him peace, preventing him from finding his center. And yet, as Master Yoda had once taught him, back when Veter was still a youngling: There is no trying, only doing. No matter the circumstances, no matter the pain.
Veter reached for the lightsaber, pulling it toward him. The hilt shifted slightly in Ro’s palm, twitching as if drawn toward Veter like the needle of a compass, but it was too much, and he took a staggering step backward, relinquishing his tenuous grip on the weapon.
Ro extinguished the lightsaber with a flick of his thumb, thrusting them back into the perpetual night of the brig. And then, without another word, Marchion Ro simply turned and walked away.
CORUSCANT
High above the soaring spires of Coruscant, the stars turned in their firmament as they always had, as they always would. Pinpricks of light denoting distant suns, distant worlds, distant peoples, mirrored by the glittering lights of the city far below.
It should have been beautiful.
Yet to Elzar Mann, the stars looked wrong. No matter how hard or how long he peered up at them from his vantage point on the grand balcony outside the chancellor’s office, they just seemed somehow off kilter, out of sorts. As if the galaxy had become kinked, twisted, changed. As if everything he’d once relied upon—every still point in a chaotic galaxy—had been suddenly yanked away, pulled out roughly from under him while he tried to remain standing.
It had been the same ever since the fall of Starlight Beacon and…
…and Stellan.
Elzar closed his eyes and allowed the breeze to ruffle his unkempt hair, as if hoping that the chill wind could somehow sweep away the memories, carry them off into the streaming lanes of traffic and away through the spires and domes until they were gone. He’d noticed that a few gray strands had appeared around his temples in recent months. He’d lost weight, too, and while he was still toned—he’d taken to practicing lightsaber drills late into the night, most nights—he’d grown thin. He’d tried to convince himself that it was a result of the work, of keeping himself so busy trying to figure out a solution to the Nihil problem, but he knew he was allowing things to worry away at him.
How Stellan would have laughed at him. Nudged him in the ribs and told him to cease dwelling on things that were done. To focus on the here and now. To do what needed to be done, and accept that the Force guided his hand, now as it always had.
