by Troy Denning
Vestara’s shoulder shifted against Ben’s, and he could tell that she was looking toward the Font … no doubt wondering the same thing he was, what would happen if they drank, whether there was any way they could risk even a sip.
“Don’t do it, Ves.” Ben’s throat was so dry and swollen that words came out as a croak. “That has to be what she wants, why she didn’t let us drink on the trip. So we’d drink from the Font.”
Vestara’s shoulder did not shift back. “That might be better than dying, Ben.”
“Think so?” Ben asked. “You remember what happened to Taalon, right?”
“That was the Pool of Knowledge,” Vestara pointed out. “And he fell in.”
“And this is the Font of Power,” Ben replied. “I can feel the dark side gushing out. Do you really think you can touch that and not turn into the kind of freak he became?”
“That might be better than dying,” Vestara repeated.
A swirl appeared in the fog a few meters ahead, and Abeloth spoke in her multiple voices. “You see, Ben? She cannot be trusted to resist temptation.” The swirl approached closer and resolved into a ghostly face. The face had tiny silver eyes and a too-wide mouth, full of pointed fangs. “That is why I brought you here—so that you would learn whom you can truly trust.”
Vestara pivoted around to stand at Ben’s side. “And that would be you?”
“I am not the one hiding my betrayal from him,” Abeloth replied.
“If you’re talking about the attack on the Falcon,” Ben said, “I know all about it. Vestara told me what happened.”
“Yes, but did she tell you everything?” Abeloth asked. “Did she tell you about—”
“Of course I did.” Vestara looked over and caught Ben’s eye. “You can’t listen to her, Ben. She’s just trying to drive a wedge between us.”
“No worries, Ves, it’s not going to work,” Ben said. “All we’ve got is each other—and no way am I letting that go on her word.”
“Good, Ben,” Vestara said. “We just have to remember who’s holding us captive.”
“You are holding yourself captive, Vestara,” Abeloth said. She raised an arm, and four fluttering tentacles pointed toward the churning fountain next to them. “The power you crave is there. It is Ben holding you back—not I.”
Vestara glanced past Ben toward the pillar of dark waters, then shook her head. “No, Ben’s right,” she said. “Drinking from the Font would destroy us, not save us.”
Abeloth lowered her arm. “The choice is yours to live with.” She withdrew into the fog. “Or to die from.”
Ben waited until even the swirl of her retreat had vanished, then said, “Good job, Ves. We can get through this as long as we stand firm—and stand together.”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Ben, but that’s a load of poodoo.” Vestara pivoted to stand back-to-back again. “In case you didn’t notice the last hundred times we tried to leave the courtyard, we’re kind of outclassed here. No way are we getting past Abeloth to safe water.”
“Probably not.” Ben tipped his head as far as he could toward Vestara, then whispered, “But we just have to hold on. Dad’s on his way—I can feel him reaching out to me in the Force.”
Vestara whispered, “Are you sure?”
“Would I lie about something like that?” Ben asked. “Trust me. He’ll be here.”
“When?”
“As soon as he can,” Ben said. “I tried to let him know we’re desperate.”
“Well, that’s something, I guess.”
“It’s hope,” Ben replied quickly. “And hope is enough to get us through this … as long as we stick together.”
Vestara fell silent for a moment, then said, “I’m with you, Ben. That’s not going to chaaa … aaaigh!”
Vestara screamed as she stumbled back into Ben. He spun around instantly and found Abeloth already on Vestara, tentacles probing for her mouth and nose. Lacking a lightsaber or any other sort of weapon, Ben stepped into the melee and slammed a palm-heel into the center of Abeloth’s chest, at the same time hitting her with a panic-fueled blast of Force energy.
Abeloth went flying, doubled over, trailing a spray of bloody bile. Vestara recovered her footing and stepped forward into a fighting crouch, her arms raised and ready to attack, either hand-to-hand or with the Force. Ben found himself staring in amazement at the cone of red mist that Abeloth had left behind, surprised by the power of the Force blast he had just unleashed. He felt cold and queasy from the effects of so much dark-side energy, and had he not been so thoroughly dehydrated already, he probably would have vomited.
“Ben?” Vestara grabbed his arm and stepped in close, propping him up. “Are you okay?”
“I will be, as soon as I get rid of this rot inside,” he said.
“Rot?”
Ben jerked a thumb toward the Font of Power. “The Force is corrupt this close to the fountain,” he said. “All dark side.”
Vestara turned toward the pillar of dark water. “We may have to use it anyway, Ben. The Force is all we have to protect ourselves with.”
“No—it’s like poison,” Ben said. “We can’t use the Force until we get out of this fog.”
Vestara shook her head. “You know that isn’t going to happen,” she said. “That’s why Abeloth is keeping us here. She’s trying to corrupt us.”
“We won’t let her,” Ben said. “We won’t use the Force.”
“Ben, we’re going to have to,” Vestara said. “It’s the only way to hold her off until your father arrives.”
Ben fell silent. Just a small taste of the Font’s dark side energies had convinced him that it would be better to die than to let himself be corrupted by its power. But of course, they wouldn’t die. Abeloth would take them as her avatars, just as she had done with Callista and Akanah and countless others, and they would learn the literal meaning of a fate worse than death.
“Then we’re going to have to make a run for it,” Ben said. “She can’t be in two places at once, so at least one of us should be able to get clear.”
“And then what?” Vestara asked.
“And then we make sure that she doesn’t make an avatar out of the one who falls behind,” Ben said. “We’ve used the Force here before, so we know that the fountain’s corruption doesn’t extend for more than a few meters. Once we’re both clear, we can fight with the Force again.”
“So one of us is almost sure to die?” Vestara asked. “And the other one is going to have to do the killing?”
“Probably,” Ben said. “But it has to be better than the alternative.”
Vestara turned toward the Font. “That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”
Ben frowned, unsure of what Vestara was suggesting. “If you have another way, I’m all ears.”
“Maybe dying isn’t the best thing.” Vestara turned back to Ben and touched her hand to his chest. “Maybe there’s a reason we’re here … a reason that we were brought together in the first place.”
Ben’s frown grew deeper. “Like what?”
Vestara stepped back, as though his stern tone had pushed her away. “We need to follow the will of the Force, Ben.”
“And you know what that will is?”
Vestara nodded, turned toward the Font of Power. “I think I do, Ben.”
“I don’t like where this is headed,” Ben said, following her gaze. “Ves, you can’t be serious.”
Vestara continued to gaze into the Font’s dark waters. “But I am, Ben. If we both drank, together we would be stronger than Abeloth—probably strong enough to destroy her.” She reached out and took Ben’s hand. “And wouldn’t that be the best thing for the galaxy?”
It had been three days since the frigate Redstar had dropped Luke and Jaina at the entrance to the Maw, and that meant it had been three days since Luke had first been handed the crumpled flimsy he now held in his hands. On the flimsy was the text of a short S-thread message from Corran Horn, which the Redstar’s communi
cations officer had retrieved as soon as the frigate emerged from hyperspace outside the Maw.
SOLOS OUT SAFE WITH AMELIA. JEDI WARV KILLED IN SITH AMBUSH LED BY VESTARA KHAI. FALCON CRIPPLED, BUT TARGET HEALTHY FOR NOW.
The message was only three short lines, but it had done more to incapacitate Luke than any of the wounds he had suffered fighting Abeloth. He had trusted Vestara—had even been the one to persuade the other Masters she would be a valuable asset inside the Temple during the battle against the Sith.
He could not have been more wrong.
His mistake had cost Bazel Warv his life and—assuming he was correctly interpreting Corran’s conspicuous use of the word “target”—nearly gotten Allana killed. Now, after three days of meditation, he continued to find himself mired in doubt, wondering what else he might be wrong about, and reluctant to trust his own judgment.
And he was running out of time.
The Rude Awakening, a sleek little pinnace infiltrator manufactured for the space marines’ elite Void Jumper units, was already approaching the choke point where Sinkhole Station had once hung suspended in a binary black-hole system. Luke could see the accretion whorls of the two black holes with his naked eye, a pair of fire-rimmed disks centered in the forward viewport, and he could feel Ben ahead, on Abeloth’s hidden planet, reaching out to him in the Force, urging him to hurry.
And still Luke didn’t know what to do, whether he was following the will of the Force by following Ben—or defying it.
The Histories of Thuruht had convinced him and the rest of the Jedi Council that the galaxy went through a regular cycle of destruction and renewal, and that Abeloth—as mad and deadly as she was—played a crucial role in that cycle. But the cycle had been disrupted by the death of the Ones, and without the Son and the Daughter, there was no one capable of ending Abeloth’s chaos and supervising Thuruht’s construction of a new prison. Unless the Jedi could stop her themselves—and that seemed to Luke a very big if indeed—she would go on sowing disorder and chaos until civilization itself vanished from the galaxy.
“A little advice from the junior Master on the Council?” Jaina asked from the other side of the cockpit. Even smaller than her mother, she looked almost child-like sitting in a pilot’s seat designed for a two-meter Void Jumper in full combat armor. “Not that I want to rush your planning or anything, but a mind divided against itself cannot win.”
Luke cocked a brow. “You interrupted my meditations to quote a training aphorism that the Banthas learn in their second week?”
“Yes,” Jaina said. “That, and we’re about to get jumped.”
“You’ve sensed Ship?”
“Not yet,” Jaina replied. “But we’re entering a choke point, and it’s where I would mount an ambush.”
Luke nodded. “And Abeloth is trying to draw us in,” he said. “Ben has been reaching out to me, trying to let me know their situation is desperate.”
Jaina shoved the throttles to their overload stops. “And you didn’t tell the pilot?”
“You’re not the only one expecting an ambush.”
Luke started to tell her to pull the throttles back. Then he decided Jaina was as aware of Ship as he was and that it was better to let her fly her own vessel, and then he almost decided to tell her to slow down anyway, so they could develop a plan. That was the trouble with being so emotionally involved in a mission. It made you indecisive, clouded your thinking. He wanted nothing more than to rush to Ben’s side and rescue him. It was killing him not to do it—but he knew just how foolish that course of action would be. Abeloth was baiting him, trying to make him race in unprepared, because that was the surest way to a kill.
Then, too, there was the other thing—the thing that had been consuming Luke’s thoughts since departing Coruscant. “And, I’m still trying to decide whether we’re doing the right thing.”
Jaina’s astonishment quivered through the Force, and she took her eyes off the fiery whorls ahead long enough to look over in open shock. “You mean by going after the Sith Abeloth?”
“Sort of,” Luke said. “I mean by going after Ben and Vestara.”
“It’s all part of the same problem.” Jaina’s reply came a little too quickly. She was arguing for what she wanted to believe, not for what she knew to be true. “To recover Ben and capture Vestara, we have to take out Abeloth. Take out Abeloth, and we recover Ben and capture Vestara.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Luke said. “But I went back and checked the Archives for anything on the Mortis monolith.”
“And?”
“I found confirmation in a report from Obi-Wan,” Luke said. “It was just as Yoda told me. Obi-Wan seemed to think that he and Anakin had been drawn to Mortis because the Father was dying and wanted Anakin Skywalker to take his place as the Keeper of the Balance.”
Jaina’s jaw dropped. “Chosen One indeed,” she said. “What happened?”
“Obviously Anakin didn’t accept,” Luke said. “The Son ended up murdering the Daughter with a special Force-imbued dagger, and the Father tricked the Son by sacrificing himself with the same dagger—so that Anakin could kill the Son.”
Jaina nodded. “I see what you’re thinking. It was your father’s refusal that resulted in the death of the Ones. So maybe it’s your son’s destiny to become the new Keeper of the Balance?”
“Close,” Luke said. “I’m wondering if it’s Ben’s destiny to take the Daughter’s place and become the embodiment of the light side.”
“And Vestara’s to become the embodiment of the dark side?”
“After the way she played us, you have to admit she fits that role,” Luke said. “And since the two of them are in love …”
“You think it has the will of the Force written all over it,” Jaina said. “The two lovers, opposites bound together.”
“Something like that,” Luke admitted. “And you know it’s not just the Archives. I have other reasons for thinking this might be the will of the Force—all the Masters do.”
Jaina sighed. “The dream,” she said. “Ben and Vestara fighting for the Balance in the courtyard of the Font of Power.”
“That would be the reason,” Luke said. “If I had been the only one to see that, maybe it could be dismissed as a dream. But when all of the Masters have the same dream …”
“Okay, that’s hard to ignore,” Jaina agreed. “But the will of the Force? It’s pretty arrogant to claim the Force is telling you what it wants. That’s the kind of thinking that led Jacen to … to do what he did.”
As Jaina spoke, the fire-rimmed orbs of the two black holes ahead began to swell and rapidly drift apart. The two Masters were approaching the point of no return, and Luke still didn’t know whether going after Ben was the right thing. Perhaps Luke was being just as selfish as his own father had been when he refused to become the Keeper of the Balance. Perhaps all that had followed—his own birth and Leia’s, then Ben’s birth and Mara’s death and Ben’s short journey into darkness—had been destiny. Maybe it was simply a way for a new trio to restore Balance to the Force.
Luke shook his head. “Jaina, I want to agree with you, to say that we have to do the obvious thing and rescue Ben. But—”
“But that’s the trouble,” Jaina finished. “You want to agree, and that’s why you can’t be certain it’s the right choice.”
“There is no emotion, there is peace,” Luke agreed. “But I’m filled with emotion. I’m terrified for Ben, and it’s clouding my judgment.”
“Of course it is,” Jaina said. “You’re Ben’s father—and that’s part of the Force, too.”
Luke frowned. “I’m not sure how that fact helps.”
“I’m saying that you can’t ignore who you are in this,” she said. “If the hand of the Force is at play in Ben’s fate, then it’s at play in yours, too. You can’t hold yourself above the will of the Force, or you make the same mistake Jacen did.”
“So I should just do what I want to?” Luke shook his head. “Sorr
y, life is never—”
“No—I’m saying you should do what you know is right,” Jaina corrected. “And you do know what is right. It’s simple—it’s always simple.”
“So, act on principle,” Luke said, boiling her argument down to three words. “Don’t worry about the results.”
“Mortals can’t always know the results,” Jaina replied. “Not for certain. We can only act according to our true natures, and leave the rest to the Force.”
“And we just ignore the visions the Force sends us?”
“Of course not,” Jaina said. “But we don’t take them literally, either. The Force doesn’t send comm messages, right?”
Luke half smiled. “I suppose not,” he said. “When dreams speak, they do it in symbols.”
“Exactly,” Jaina said. “So, who’s Ben? The ideal Jedi, right?”
“And Vestara is pure Sith,” Luke agreed. “It’s the Jedi and the Sith who must take the place of the Son and the Daughter … and deal with Abeloth.”
“That’s my guess,” Jaina said. “The only thing I don’t see is, if the Father is dead, who keeps the Balance?”
Luke thought for a moment, then said, “Us, I think—the Jedi and the Sith. Thuruht said the galaxy enters a new age whenever Abeloth is freed—and the dream means that in this age, it’s the Jedi and Sith—each following our own natures—who will keep the Balance.”
“So, Jedi and Sith, at war forever?” Jaina asked.
“Not forever,” Luke said. “Just until the next time Abeloth is freed.”
“If we can stop her this time,” Jaina said. “And that’s a very big—” Jaina’s voice was suddenly drowned out by the screeching of proximity alarms and target-lock alerts. She started to put the Rude Awakening into an evasive spiral, then glanced at the gravity readings and seemed to realize that they were already too deep into the choke point to risk maneuvering. She simply activated the automatic laser cannons and brought up the shields, then watched wide-eyed as lines of color began to fly back and forth between the little pinnace and a dust-sized propulsion halo hanging dead center between the two black holes, blocking their only approach to Abeloth’s hidden world. “Ship?” Luke asked.
