Abyss

by Troy Denning

  “The greatest harm lies in doing nothing, Jedi …” Luke let the sentence trail off, reaching for the Gotal’s name. When none came—and the Gotal didn’t volunteer one—he shrugged and finished, “We’re trying to save this Duros’s life.”

  “There is no life,” said the Gotal. “There is only the Force.”

  “That’s not right,” Luke said, frowning. The Gotal was misquoting one of the most important tenets of the Jedi Code—one that lay at the heart of the Jedi’s willingness to sacrifice themselves for the good of others: There is no death, there is the Force. “If you’re a Jedi, you know that.”

  “I once believed I was a Jedi.” The Gotal’s gaze slid away from Luke’s. Whether he was embarrassed or simply recalling another time was impossible to say. “I called myself Seek Ryontarr.”

  “I’ve seen that name in the Jedi Holocron,” Luke said, using the Force to bolster his memory. “You vanished on a mission to rescue the Nath Goordian heirs.”

  Ryontarr’s gaze swung back to Luke. “Not vanished. I found them in a habitat near here,” he said. “I disabled their abductors and rescued the heirs.”

  “There’s no record of their return to Nath Goordi,” Luke pointed out. “And if they had been returned, I doubt there would have been a war of succession.”

  An enigmatic smile came to Ryontarr’s emaciated face. “There are many kinds of rescue.”

  A raspy pop sounded behind Luke, and Mode began to wail in pain. Luke looked back to see Ben straddling the patient’s injured leg, still holding it by a bent knee and pulling as he worked to set the broken femur. Although Ben was clearly using the Force to hold the hips and upper body still, Mode’s free leg was flailing about wildly as he tried to kick away his caregiver.

  Luke reached out with the Force to immobilize the thrashing leg. He half expected Ryontarr or one of the other spectators to attack while his attention was diverted, but the group seemed content to wait and watch. Ben quickly finished setting the leg—at least as well as was possible under the circumstances—and Mode’s wail faded to a moan.

  After a moment, Mode gasped, “Please …stop. I was only trying …trying to help you, Master Skywalker.”

  Luke raised his brow. “You recognize us, Qwallo?”

  “Of course … I know you,” Mode said. “I’m seeing you.”

  The emphasis on the word seeing suggested that Mode meant something more by it, but Luke was more interested in what the Duros hadn’t said. “You don’t think we’re impostors?”

  Qwallo shook his head. “Not possible,” he said. “I know that now.”

  “Then why did you fire on the Shadow?” Ben demanded. “You are the one who did that, aren’t you?”

  “Of course he is,” Ryontarr said, peering at Ben over Luke’s shoulder. “Don’t you recognize him?”

  “Yeah …but how?” Ben asked. “I mean, he wasn’t even wearing a vac suit. And how’d he get here?”

  “You’ll understand soon enough, young Jedi Knight,” Ryontarr said. He looked back to Luke. “You’ll understand everything, if you’ll just leave poor Qwallo be. Whether you realize it or not, you’re doing him nothing but harm.”

  “He’s lost a lot of blood,” Luke said. “And we’re not going to leave him to die.”

  “No?” Ryontarr shook his head. “I wish you would reconsider. You have no idea—”

  The screech of a discharging blaster sounded somewhere above, and the smell of scorched flesh began to waft down through the tangle of floating bodies.

  Ryontarr sighed, expelling a breath so stale it might have been in his lungs for a decade, then asked, “Do you think you can stop us all from dying?”

  Another blaster screeched, this time close enough that Luke glimpsed a brief flash as its bolt streaked from the weapon’s barrel into the head of the person firing it. There was a brief grunt of pain, and the acrid odor of scorched flesh grew stronger.

  “Uh, Dad.” Ben glanced over his shoulder, toward where the second blaster had discharged. “Maybe we should hear Jedi Ryontarr out on this.”

  “Don’t call him a Jedi” Luke exhaled through clenched teeth, then glared at the Gotal in disgust. “I can’t believe you were ever a Jedi.”

  Ryontarr shrugged. “Once, I was also young and a slave to the beliefs of others.”

  “But these deaths aren’t Seek’s doing,” said one of Ryontarr’s companions, the emaciated Ortolan. His nasal voice was raspy and hard to understand, for his trunk was so weak from disuse that it could not uncoil, merely loosen. “They’re yours.”

  Still holding Qwallo by the shoulders, Luke continued to glare at Ryontarr. “I’m not the one ordering them to blast themselves.”

  “You assume I am in charge because of what I once was.” Ryontarr spread his arms, as though inviting Luke to examine him in the Force. “But you are the one who is acting without understanding.”

  “You see, it is nothing to die beyond shadows.” This time, it was the yellow-haired woman who spoke. Her voice was warm and patient, as though she were a mother correcting a child. “But to live trapped in a body, that is … anguish.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ben was still floating in front of Mode, holding the injured leg. “You’re saying people are killing themselves because they don’t want us to interrupt their meditations?”

  “Mind Walking is not meditation, but yes,” said the yellow-haired man. His voice was close enough to the woman’s to suggest they were siblings. “Life is only a dream, our bodies mere phantasms of a long and restless sleep. When you keep us bound to our bodies, you interfere with our awakening.”

  “It’s not our intent to interfere with your …awakening,” Luke said. He wasn’t sure he understood—or believed—everything Ryontarr and the others were telling him. But at least Qwallo’s wish to be left alone was starting to make sense. “There’s no reason for anyone else to blast themselves.”

  “Then you’ll leave Qwallo to return beyond shadows?” asked Ryontarr. “If his body dies with him in it, his return will be very difficult.”

  Luke looked down at Mode. The last thing he wanted was to leave the Duros to die, but Mode had already made it clear that he did not want their help. Besides, Ryontarr was right about one thing—unless he wanted the place filled with dead bodies, Luke had no choice except to agree.

  “If that’s what Qwallo wishes, then yes.” Luke turned toward Mode. “We’ll let you return beyond shadows. But first, I would like to ask you something.”

  Mode nodded. “…Hurry.”

  “What happened when you disappeared?” Luke asked. “Why didn’t you complete your mission?”

  “I became …” Mode shook his head sadly. “Confused.”

  Luke and Ben exchanged glances, and then Luke asked, “You believed you were surrounded by impostors, didn’t you?”

  Mode’s eyes grew wide. “How did you know?”

  “It’s been happening to some other Jedi Knights,” Luke said.

  “Then you have come to …the right place,” Mode said. “All will grow clear here.”

  “I’m glad to hear that, Qwallo.” Luke hazarded a glance around, half expecting Ryontarr to try to hush the Duros before he revealed some mysterious secret. When the Gotal and his companions seemed content to let the conversation continue, Luke asked, “And you no longer think we’re impostors?”

  Mode shook his head. “No, I know better now.”

  “How?” Ben asked, not bothering to hide his excitement. If they could figure out what had cured Mode, then they might have something helpful to tell Cilghal when they left the Maw. “What happened?”

  Mode curled himself into the weightless equivalent of a seated position, so that he was facing Ben. “I went beyond shadows, and I saw the truth. You can’t be impostors …because you’re not real.” He took Ben’s hands. “Only the Force is real …and it’s beautiful, Ben. So, so beautiful.”

  To his credit, Ben managed to avoid jerking his hands away in horror. But his jaw dropped and hi
s brows arched, and even a half-dead Duros could read the dismay in his eyes.

  Mode pulled his hands free of Ben’s, and his tone grew harsh. “You’ll see, Ben,” he said. “Now that you’re here, you will have to see.”

  Mode reached out in the Force and tried to pull himself away, but Luke was still holding his shoulders.

  “One more question,” Luke said, refusing to release the still-pulling Duros. “Why did you fire on us?”

  Mode frowned over his shoulder at Luke. “I told you …to help you.”

  “With a missile?” Ben demanded. “Some help.”

  “It is,” Ryontarr insisted. He floated down and gently began to pry Luke’s hands off Mode’s shoulders. “We know how many attachments you have to the physical world, Master Skywalker. Qwallo was just trying to cut them, so they can’t pull you back.”

  Luke looked down at Mode in astonishment. “You were trying to maroon us?”

  “He was trying to free you,” Ryontarr corrected. “It is those attachments that bind you to your life of dreams.”

  He motioned Luke and Ben to release Mode. When they complied, he turned and began to float away. Luke frowned and started to go after him, but the yellow-haired woman slipped over to block his path.

  “It is your dreams that lead you astray, Master Skywalker,” she said.

  “Just as it was your nephew’s dreams that led him astray,” added her brother. “It was one of Jacen’s dreams that convinced him he had to return to the unreal galaxy.”

  “Then Jacen was here?” Ben asked.

  His excitement was sizzling through the Force like an electric current, and Luke could tell by the smug glimmer in the siblings’ eyes that they had felt Ben’s reaction—and that it was exactly the result they had hoped to achieve.

  “We were told that Jacen came here,” Luke said, nibbling at the bait. “That’s one of the reasons we did, too.”

  “Even though you were warned away,” said the Ortolan, “and told we drink minds.”

  “Something like that,” Luke admitted. He sensed that the discussion had entered a new and more dangerous phase with Ryontarr’s departure, but he could not figure out why—what it was the Mind Drinkers wanted from him and Ben. “But I’m curious. How do you know what we were told about you?”

  The woman smiled. “Because the Aing-Tii fear the truth as much as they fear Those Who Dwell Beyond The Veil,” she said. “And they told Jacen the same thing when he came to find the cold thing.”

  Luke and Ben exchanged puzzled glances, then Luke asked, “The cold thing?”

  “That’s what Jacen called it—the cold thing in the Force,” the Ortolan said. “He said he sensed it when he was with the Aing-Tii.”

  Luke nodded. The term fit the disturbance in the Force that he and Ben had felt just before departing the Aing-Tii, and Tador’Ro had told them that Jacen had left the Kathol Rift after sensing something in the Maw that wasn’t right.

  “Did he find it?” Ben pressed.

  The woman smiled at him. “He found us, Ben.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question.”

  “Only because you are afraid to see the answer.” She turned away and began to drift through the bodies, her brother following close behind. “When you are no longer afraid, you will have your answer.”

  Ben scowled and started after her, but Luke put out a hand. He wasn’t ready to take the Mind Drinkers’ bait yet—not until he knew why they were dangling it.

  “My nephew didn’t find the cold thing,” Luke surmised. “Or it wouldn’t have let him leave.”

  The woman stopped and smiled back over her shoulder. “Very good, Master Skywalker. He saw something else—something dark coming that he believed only he could stop.”

  Recalling the visions he had experienced in the opening days of the last civil war, Luke started to feel sick and sour inside. In his dreams, he had seen a mysterious dark man with a shrouded face—a face that had remained shrouded until Jacen killed Mara and became the dark man, the Sith Lord Darth Caedus.

  And this was where it had begun, where Jacen had taken that first tentative step into the shadows.

  Luke shook his head, silently raging at the tragedy, wondering how he had missed the hubris that had led Jacen to such a mistake—how he could have allowed a young man, a victim of Yuuzhan Vong torture and Sith brainwashing, to feel that the weight of the galaxy rested on his shoulders alone.

  “I should never have let him go.” Luke was speaking more to himself than the Mind Drinkers or Ben, wishing he had been wise enough to insist that Jacen stay with his family and friends after the war—to understand that no one who had suffered as his nephew had should be allowed to wander the galaxy alone. “He became the darkness he feared.”

  “Jacen, Master Skywalker?” The woman and her brother floated back toward him, their faces looking genuinely distressed—and disbelieving. “You think Jacen became the darkness?”

  Luke nodded, confused at their confusion. “This happened before Qwallo arrived, so I assumed you would know: Jacen became Darth Caedus.”

  The two siblings looked at each other and nodded, then the brother said, “We’ve heard that—but it is not so. It’s just part of the dream you mistake for truth.”

  “Jacen couldn’t have become the darkness,” the woman added. “His motives were pure. He could no more slip into darkness than a star could.”

  Luke shook his head sadly. “I wish that were so,” he said. “But—”

  “It is so,” the Ortolan insisted. “If you won’t take our word for it, come see for yourself.”

  “How?” Ben asked. It was clear by his scowl that Ben knew as well as Luke did what the Mind Drinkers were suggesting—and that he found it equally suspicious. “Jacen’s been dead for two years.”

  “There is no death.” It was the Givin who said this, speaking for the first time in a dry, gravelly voice. The living skeleton drifted around to face them, positioning his bony frame at Luke’s shoulder. “There is no life; there is only the Force.”

  Luke turned to meet the Givin’s gaze. Looking into the dark recesses of his exoskull was like gazing into the empty sockets of a human skull.

  “You’re saying I can meet Jacen beyond shadows?”

  “We are saying we can help you see what Jacen saw,” the Givin rasped. “Then you will be able to look into his heart. Whether it will speak to you is not for us to decide.”

  “Of course,” Luke said. “I understand.”

  He knew better than to think he might actually be able to talk to Jacen, and Luke wasn’t sure he would want to if that were possible. But the Givin was promising to help him understand what had happened to Jacen—and wasn’t that the whole purpose of the journey?

  When Luke did not instantly refuse the offer, Ben’s eyes grew wide. “Dad, you know they’re leading you on. Jacen’s dead, and nothing is going to change that.”

  “I know.” As Luke spoke, the cold tentacle inside began to grow larger, sliding up a little higher, scratching at the lining of his stomach and esophagus as it sought to root. “But this may help me understand what happened to him.”

  “Then you’ll be returning beyond shadows with us?” The woman smiled. “I’m sure you’ll find it very …enlightening.”

  “If I decide to come along,” Luke corrected. “First, I need to know what you want from me and Ben.”

  “Want from you, Master Skywalker?” asked the brother. “What makes you think we want anything?”

  “How hard you’re working to get it,” Ben answered frankly. “You haven’t exactly been subtle, the way you’re dangling Jacen out there like bait.”

  “Is that how you see it?” The woman’s smile vanished, and she turned to float away. “Then I suppose there’s only one question remaining: can you resist?”

  Her brother winked at Ben, then nodded to the Ortolan and turned to follow. The Givin remained where he was, floating beside the Skywalkers, patiently awaiting their decision.

&nbs
p; “Well, whatever’s going on here, it’s happening beyond shadows.” Luke met his son’s eye. “I don’t think we’ve got a choice, Ben.”

  Ben swallowed hard, but nodded. “Yeah—I just wish we knew what beyond shadows is.” He eyed the emaciated bodies floating around them, then said, “Maybe we should eat something first.”

  “I appreciate that, Ben. But you know it’s not we.”

  Ben lowered his brow. “Dad, I’ve got to face this, too. You can’t protect me from it.”

  “I’m not protecting you, Ben—I’m giving you an order.” Luke smiled, then added, “Someone’s got to repair the Shadow.”

  Now Ben looked truly frightened. “Alone? That could take a week!”

  “Let’s hope not.” Luke looked around the chamber and wrinkled his nose. “I don’t think I want to be in here that long.”

  “That’s for sure,” Ben said. “We’ll probably never get this stink out.”

  Luke chuckled. “I can see you’ve never been stuck in a Star Destroyer trash compactor.” He floated closer to his son, then clapped both hands on Ben’s shoulders. “Now listen—don’t come after me. If something goes wrong, you get back to Coruscant and tell the Masters what we found here. Okay?”

  Ben scowled. “What’s going to go wrong?”

  “Probably nothing.” Luke glanced at the Givin, who was a little too quick to nod his reassurance. “But if something does, we don’t want both of us wasting away here, and nobody knowing what we found. So that’s an order.”

  “Okay.” Ben nodded, but his gaze slid away. “I’ve got it.”

  “You promise?” Luke pressed.

  “Dad, I’ve got it.” Ben’s eyes came back to Luke’s. “There’s no sense both of us getting stuck here. I’m not an idiot. I can see that.”

  Luke held Ben’s gaze for a moment, then finally nodded. “Good.” He gave Ben a hug, then said, “I’ll try to keep this short.”

  “You better,” Ben said. “Just one question before you go.”

  “Sure.”

  Ben turned to the Givin. “How long do we have?” The Givin tipped his head. “Have?”