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Krath High Priest Mairin

Desire and Darkness

A slender, dark-haired woman sat behind a broad mahogany desk and gazed up at the ceiling.  She was distracted these days, as though hearing a call of some discordant song, lost in a world of her own.  She had felt this way since the recent troubles on the ISD Challenge.  Her home, or so she had thought, had become almost like a prison cell since then.  She no longer knew who to trust, who to believe.  Although the tormentor, the insidious cancer that had nearly torn her ship apart was gone, still his subtle malaise remained… deep within herself.

A sudden burst of anger, and the High Priestess flung a heavy crystal ornament across the room, watching with vicious pleasure as it shattered into a thousand tiny pieces, crystal dust showering over her thick lush carpet.  So let them all die.  Her cruel smile would have struck fear into the heart of any normal man, as she remembered the terrible wounds that had been inflicted on Locke Setzer prior to his “retirement”, but not Chancellor Shadonyx.  He leaned in the doorway watching her, a similarly cruel smile playing about his own lips.  The scowl that covered the beautiful woman’s features shocked him.  She had seen him.

“Good morning, my dear,” he murmured, and glided gracefully across the broken ornament, esconcing himself in a chair opposite her desk and observing her quietly.

“Come to tell me you fixed your screw-up have you?” she demanded haughtily.  She glared at him for a moment, and in response to his equally haughtily raised eyebrow snapped, “The medals?”

“Oh, that trivial little matter.”  Shadonyx ran his finger delicately along the edge of her desk as though expecting to find some dust.  “Yes, that’s all sorted.”

“Good,” she retorted, and stared intently at her computer screen for a moment.  Five seconds later had her staring back at Shadonyx.  “Are you still here?” she demanded.

The Chancellor gave a disarming shrug and a somewhat out of character cheeky grin.  “Rather looks that way,” he smirked.  “Masterful way of getting rid of that nasty Commodore of yours by the way.”

“You… you… GRRR!”

“I must admit, it was a brilliant way of getting rid of him.” He paused infinitesimally as he leaned across her desk.  “You do know if you ever do that to me, I’ll hunt you down and drown you in your own blood, right?”

Mairin picked an imaginary lintball from her tighter than strictly necessary black trousers.  “I know.  That’s why I’d come up with something untraceable for you.”

“Oh pish posh,” commented Shadonyx.  Two wolfish grins met across the table, and the Priestess’s mood lightened for the first time since the Chancellor had entered the door.  “So what has my luminescent Priestess been up to recently?"

“Bah, flattery will get you nowhere,” she responded with a grin.  “I’m waiting for Sebastian to bring me those books I ordered.”  A pause.  Shadonyx gazed at her, scrutinising her appearance.  A lithe grey cat leaped into the woman’s lap, distracting her attention from him.  “Hello, Avalon,” she murmured.  “Decided to grace me with your presence?”  The only response was a purr.  Shadonyx looked at the woman again, as though attempting to divine something from her.  “Are you done staring yet?” she asked.

“Not quite,” he answered levelly.  Mairin looked up at him.

“Come on then, big eyes,” she said, smiling.  “What’s the reason for the stare?  Green-eyed monster got you?”

“Not in the slightest.  Of course,” he added, “you know that this d’Alavel is besotted with you, the insolent whelp.  As if a woman like you and a man like him could ever…”  He left the thought unspoken.

“Yes,” she responded.  “Desire and darkness.  They do not always mix, my friend.”

“You say that almost as though you regretted it,” accused Shadonyx, eyes flashing.  Her violet eyes flashed darker, her jaw set with rage.  “My apologies.  I have touched a raw nerve,” he murmured.  A look up at the door showed a young man standing there, about to knock.  “You might as well come in, d’Alavel,” he snarled.  “Your mistress has been expecting you.”

“I can come back later if I’m interrupting,” interjected Sebastian gently.  Shadonyx glared at him haughtily.  He was a tall, extremely handsome young man of mid to late twenties, possibly early thirties.  His eyes glowed golden in a pale face, and dark hair fell to his shoulders, tied back loosely in a ponytail.  He wore a tightly fitting black sweater, showing off every last muscle.  Yes… Shadonyx could see what the High Priestess saw in this particular lackey.

The twinge of jealousy surprised him, but as he stalked from the room he felt it calm, and lay itself deep within him, a kernel of malign thought that would resurface again when the time was right.

Mairin gazed up at Sebastian for a moment.  Her violet eyes swam like twin flowers in a field of golden grain.  Sebastian bowed, feeling uncomfortable, and sat down in the chair so recently vacated by the Chancellor at her indication.  Wordlessly, he reached into the bag he had brought with him and drew out four ancient tomes.  “Excellent,” the woman purred, and leaned across the table to take them from him.

Sebastian sat and watched as she leafed carefully through the books, touching the anicent vellum on which they were enscribed, inspecting the bindings and the pages for any sign of forgery.  “They are authentic,” he said softly.  “Their previous owner… passed away.”

A raised eyebrow was the only response.  “How many credits did we agree for these?” she demanded.

“Fifty thousand, my lady.”  The High Priestess reached into her top drawer and drew out a credit note, signed it with a flourish and then handed it over to him.  “Thank you.  And your next order?”

“I thought I might join you,” she rejoined.

“I beg your pardon?”  Sebastian stared at her with shock registered plain on his features.  His palpable desire for her already half-choking him after only minutes in her presence, the concept of spending whole days in her company with only his crew to distract him from her enchanting beauty was more than the soul could stand to believe.

“I’ve decided to join you on this next little expedition,” she confirmed, smiling.  “I need a break, Sebastian.  I need to get back out into the really real galaxy and do some butt-kicking.  You don’t mind, do you?”

Sebastian’s heart nearly melted.  He could say nothing but yes.

***

“Are you entirely sure that this is a good idea, Seb?” asked his co-pilot.  She was a small woman, as besotted with Sebastian as he was with Mairin Astoris – not that he knew of course.  Laila Maine was smart enough to at least keep that silent.  She had almost revealed her thoughts however when she had returned to the ship on Lantare to find the Krath witch she loathed so deeply sitting in the lounge of the YT-2400, christened Firebird by Sebastian, busy fine-tuning a lightsabre.  The sheer coldness of anger that had washed over her had been enough to cause the woman to look up, give her a calculated look, and then return to the delicate repositioning of an adegan crystal within the sabre casing.

“I could hardly say no, could I?” snapped Sebastian, concentrating on pre-takeoff checks.  Laila scowled at him.

“You perfectly well could,” she snarled back.  “The woman pays us to find books, not junket around getting herself in our way.  You know what they say about those Krath.  Noses stuck in books twenty-four hours a day.  I bet she doesn’t even know what she’s doing with that lightsabre she’s footling around with out there.”

“That’s not the impression I get, Maine.”

“You’re batty about the evil witch,” retorted Laila.  “You’d get any impression she chose to plant in your mind.”

“Is it your time of the month or something?” demanded Sebastian bitterly.  Laila’s barb had struck home and it stung like poison.

A third member of the crew popped his head around the cockpit door and gave a cocky salute.  He was burnt brown from the hot Lantare sun, and his nose was peeling.  Laila frowned at him.  Rekio had always been the swashbuckler of the team, dashing and debonair, likely to get himself killed if he thought too hard about anything.  He was a man of action, foolhardy, funny, and quirky.  He tweaked her braided hair playfully.  “I see we have a new member of our team,” he commented casually.  “Damned fine one too.  Where’d you pick up that piece, Seb?”

“The nearest brothel, Rekio, where the hell do you think?” snarled Laila.

“Oh… oh you mean,” Rekio started, dropping his voice to a whisper.  “That’s her?”

“No it’s a flying rancor, bantha-for-brains.  Who do you think it is?  Jabba the Hutt?”

“Is it your time of the month or something, Laila?” said Rekio, without batting an eyelid.  Sebastian covered the smirk on his face with a well-placed hand and tried to keep his amusement out of his eyes.  Laila merely made a jerking motion with her hand in Rekio’s general direction.

The fourth and final member of Sebastian’s crew stuck his head around the door, caught the motion and grinned.  “Been up to your old tricks, Rekio?” he chuckled.

“No, Laila’s just being her usual prickly little self, isn’t she, Seb?”

“Oh, that would explain it then,” said Pip with a lopsided grin.  He was the weapons and explosives expert of the team, and he claimed with pride that there was nothing in the galaxy that he couldn’t blow up with perfect precision.  His tousled blonde hair and baby blue eyes coupled with a boyishly charming grin frequently led to him being nicknamed “the Angel”.  Those that called him by that name had never seen him bloodstained and battle weary as had his companions.  Armed to the teeth, he was a fearsome opponent.  “Who’s the hot chick in the lounge, by the way?” he threw in.  “Man, what wouldn’t I give to bang that, I tell you!”

Sebastian gave Pip the most expressive glare he could muster up.  “That’s Jedi Adept of the Dark Side, High Priestess of the Krath, Mairin Astoris.  You might want to watch what you say about her.”

“Um… oops?” offered Pip.  He grinned again.  “Come on, Seb, you can hardly blame me.”  His cheeky grin coaxed a rueful smile out of Sebastian.  “Besides, there’s no need to get pompous.”

“Point taken,” said Sebastian.  He seemed to have relaxed slightly, but his hands shook as he reached to the controls.  Laila shook her head at him.

“I’ll fly,” she said.  “Why don’t you boys go play the gracious hosts with Miss High Priestess in there.  Gull some money out of her playing Sabacc or something.  You know how all the girls love a rogue.”

“Sure, princess,” grinned Rekio.  Sebastian’s smile of gratitude was enough for the moment to calm Laila’s jealousy and anger.  He still cared about her.  Maybe one day, she thought, the pang of rage returning, he would realise that it was her he loved, not some jumped up Jedi princess who thought more of herself than anyone else.

“Lay in a course for Naboo, Laila,” instructed Sebastian.  “I’ll brief everyone properly once we get there.”

“Naboo?  But we’ve just come from there!  That woman wants us to go back?  Sebastian, that’s suicide!”

“We’ll be fine,” responded Sebastian, calmly.

“Their security forces nearly caught us once already.  Going back again so soon is ridiculous.  Is that what she ordered us to do?”

“We get paid for danger, Laila.  And no.  This was my choice.”

“Showing off?  What?  How can you put all our lives in danger like this?  What about her life – have you thought about that?”  Laila realised that she was shaking with rage, and put her hands flat on her thighs, holding them still.

“That’s my concern and hers,” snapped Sebastian.  “Lay in the course.”

As soon as he had left the cockpit, Laila punched in the course for Naboo, hurting, angry, raging, bitter.  He had never ignored her opinion like that before.  Something didn’t feel right about this at all, and Laila raged ever hotter as she guided the ship into the air and pushed it into the cold blue tunnels of hyperspace.  How dare he treat her like that?

***

The YT-2400 set down gently on a long rolling plain covered in tall grass, and the small party disembarked, settling down on the ground near the craft, staying within its shadow as they went over plans and prepared their equipment.  Laila sat slightly apart from the rest of the group, listening and watching, but not part of their discussions and planning.  She was essentially the getaway driver, not needed on this expedition by dint of the extra woman being here.  She had been… demoted.

Hatred lanced through her.  Hatred tinged with the subtle and dangerous hint of despair that only the woman truly in love can know, the one who will fight and die to protect the one she loves, would kill the one she loves rather than see him with another.  Love, or at least the love that Laila Maine knew, was total, utter, consuming, and above all things completely selfish.  Her brown eyes rested on Sebastian.

He was laughing, his smile wide and the sound he made filled with joy.  The Krath woman at whose joke he laughed was smiling, eyelids lowered, the very image of the coquette who knows her arrow-eyes have smitten the target.  Laila scowled, staring at them in the long grass, shutting out the images of Rekio and Pip, busy checking their equipment, so that the picture imprinted on her mind was that of two people, a man and a woman, laughing, seemingly in love.  Was it just her imagination?  Laila thought she could almost see the sparks of unfulfilled desire flying from the two.  Just what was it, Laila thought sadly, that Mairin Astoris had and she did not?

***

Benjamin Arsenen watched his father training the two bewitchingly beautiful young girls.  Galadriel, the elder, who was sweet and patient and kind as the day was long, idealistic, longing to join the Rebel Fleet as soon as she was old enough, training with the blue sabre.  Mairin, the younger, given to tantrums of sheer temper, petulance and rage, as idealistic as her sister, yet longing for something Ben had never been able to elucidate from her, training with the red.  To the twenty-one year old Benjamin, inexperienced, enamoured of life as it continued around him, excited by the recent victory of the Rebel Fleet over the Imperial Navy at this very planet, the seventeen year old Mairin was the only thing, the only being, that had any meaning.  Even his mother, supposedly the most important woman in a young man’s life, could not persuade him to give up watching the girl like Narcissus watching his own reflection.

But Mairin Astoris, fondest desire of his heart, paid him no more attention than anyone else.  It was Galadriel, her sister, who gazed at him with longing in her eyes.  The longing in Mairin’s was directed elsewhere, but, blind with love, Benjamin did not see it.  Instead he spent time with Galadriel, speaking to her, hearing her hopes her dreams, and forgetting them as soon as he had heard them, longing to be with another.  Caught in the throes of first love, the most painful of all loves, the one whose memory never leaves, its imprint forever engraved on the heart, Benjamin knew no greater sorrow than to be near the object of his desire, near enough to touch her, to inhale her delicate fragrance, but never acknowledged, and knew no greater pleasure than the same.

Yet whilst Benjamin Arsenen, son of her tutor, went through the agonies of first love, the object of his desire was not without her own pangs of youthful emotion.  Even as he loved her, she loved another, one who was entirely unattainable, forbidden, and would take her down a path that had long been forseen by another.  Benjamin’s childish love for the beauty of Mairin was destroyed by events that were to follow – the birth of a son none other than his own half-brother, the murder of his father, an accusation and an escape.  But something, something deep down inside, remained.  Although the tormentor, the insidious cancer of the love that had nearly torn him apart was gone, still her subtle malaise remained… deep within himself.

***

“Naboo is so beautiful at this time of year,” proclaimed a young, hazel-eyed woman.  The lightsabre at her belt proclaimed her part of the new Jedi Order, and her Republic Fleet uniform proclaimed her important.  Captain Galadriel Astoris had the world at her feet.  She turned to the company of soldiers that she had with her, and directed them to various areas of the palace.  On her watch, the important senator who was coming to Naboo would not be disturbed.

Senator Gracchus Vorsilian had fought long and hard in the old Imperial Senate to secure the freedom of the galaxy from the control of Emperor Palpatine, the usurping former Chancellor of the Senate himself.  Threatened with death from an angered Emperor, he had fled to the Rebel Fleet, hoping to secure for himself safety and the chance to influence the future.  He had done so, and with the Senate now re-established in its home on Coruscant, he had decided it was time to come to this far-off world to see for himself the places where the formative elements of the Galactic Empire had met and fallen into the toils of Palpatine.

The newly elected Queen of Naboo looked forwards to his arrival, and his trusted attaché, Captain Astoris, had been sent ahead to set up his quarters in the palace, and to ensure that security measures were in place.  As one of the Republic’s senior Senators, Gracchus was a prime target for hostile manoeuvres.  All seemed quiet, but Galadriel was perturbed by news of a possible unauthorised YT-2400 entering the system and landing on the planet.  She had sent her husband, and second-in-command, Captain Benjamin Arsenen, to reconnoitre the area where the ship was said to have set down.

Wordlessly he had gone.  After another of their frequent arguments, Galadriel found herself too worn out to even think about what was wrong with their relationship.  It seemed like four years after the events that had ripped both their families apart and driven them into each other’s arms, the past came back to haunt them again and again, driving wedges between them where once it had brought them closer.  She began to think that nothing would ever heal the rifts between them

She was not the same girl she had been, and now, at twenty-two, she felt like an old woman, worn out with caring too much for others, worn out with sorrow; worn out with guilt.  Above all, she was worn out with something that she hid well from every other person in the galaxy, including herself.  She was worn out with anger.

Galadriel paced in the cloister of the palace, mulling over the past.  She was angry with her father for dying at Endor.  He had been the catalyst for all the terrible things that had happened.  She was angry with her mother for trying to keep Mairin from the Dark Side.  It had been her destiny, and she had gone that way without being able to help herself.  She was angry with herself for ending up with a man who didn’t love her, angry with Benjamin for not loving her.  She was angry with Mairin for having been the one Benjamin had always loved, she was angry with her for bringing shame on their family name.  She was angry with Mairin for causing the stain of guilt she bore.

Bowing her head, long hair braided and pinned into submission, she looked down at her glistening boots and then back out over the palace courtyard.  The sun shone on her, but it was undeserved.