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  As earlier, there was something in the way his mouth failed to turn up at the corners that made his smile feel hard and enigmatic.

  Leia forced herself to respond with a warmer grin. “I’ll try to keep that in mind.” She turned to Han, then said, “We’d better advance our timetable. By now, Daala knows we’re moving, and the less time we give her to stop us, the better.”

  “Right. I’ll get the droids and Amelia and then get us launched.” He leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, then added, “See you at Alpha Point.”

  Leia kissed him back. She started for the door, then turned to Jaden and Avinoam. “I know this isn’t really your mess—”

  “We’ll cover it,” Jaden assured her. “As far as GAS or anyone else is concerned, you and Captain Solo were already gone when the firefight broke out.”

  “Thanks,” Leia said. “But don’t try telling them we were transporting the Temple jewels or something. Daala is going to know exactly who was in that FloatVan, so just refer inquiries to the Masters. Clear?”

  “Just one question,” Jaden said. His gaze dropped to the Mandalorian Bazel had killed. “What do we tell them about him?”

  Leia turned to look at the dead man. The last thing the Jedi needed was some GAS investigator reporting that now crazy Jedi could reach through beskar steel—or suggesting that any Jedi could do such a thing. Daala was already frightened enough of them.

  “Just say you don’t know,” Leia said. “See if you can plant the suggestion that something went wrong with his armor.”

  Jaden nodded. “That should work.”

  “On GAS,” Avinoam finished. He seemed unable to take his eyes off the Mandalorian. “But, well, what really happened to him?”

  “That’s a good question,” Leia said, studying the dead man’s unblemished armor. Bazel’s fingers inside, the blood flowing out, but not a dent on the steel. So far, all of the new abilities that the delusional Jedi had exhibited had been duplications of something Jacen had learned to do on his five-year sojourn. But she had never heard of him being able to reach through metal. She shook her head, then said to Avinoam, “I’ve never seen any Force abilities like it—I haven’t even heard of one.”

  “We have,” Raynar said. As Leia turned to face him, he lifted his gaze from the dead man. “I mean, the Killiks have. When they created the Maw, they could use the Force to change the state of matter.”

  Leia frowned. Because their species absorbed the memories of any being who became Joined to one of their nests, the Killik sense of history was—to put it mildly—rather muddled.

  “Was it the Killiks who could do that?” she asked Raynar. “Or their Celestial masters?”

  Again, Raynar gave her one of his enigmatic smiles. “I suppose that depends on whose reality you are in,” he said. “But the important thing is this: now Bazel can do it.”

  FROM THE DEPTHS OF THE GROTTO CAME THE SOUND OF WATER, A single drop, bleeping into a pool. A week later, another blep. Then a month passed before three drops fell in as many seconds …or perhaps it was years. Without his body, Luke had no pulse, no living rhythm by which to measure the passing of seconds or days or centuries. He just was—an eternal, pure presence standing outside the cave mouth, allowing the mountain’s acrid breath to waft out over him.

  She was in there, the same familiar presence that had reached out from the Font of power. Luke could feel her in the damp gloom ahead, calling him inside like a lover in need of a visit. But she was hungry and desperate, all appetite and insistence, and he worried that to answer her call was to be devoured by it.

  “You have no need to fear anything inside,” said Seek Ryontarr, the onetime Jedi who was acting as his guide. The Gotal stepped down into the overgrown gully with Luke and went to stand beside one of the shadowy columns that supported the grotto entrance, then extended a hand into the sweltering darkness beyond. “Go and have a dip.”

  Luke shook his head. “I don’t like what I feel in there.”

  Ryontarr’s Givin companion, Feryl, descended into the gully and went to stand before the opposite column.

  “That is because you fear what is in your own heart,” he rasped. “It is difficult to face the truth about oneself.” The Givin’s skull-like head turned to look into the darkness. “There are not many who have the courage to go inside.”

  “But Jacen did,” Luke surmised.

  “That does not mean you must,” Ryontarr said. “Once a truth is learned, it cannot be unlearned.”

  Luke furrowed his brow. “If you’re trying to challenge me into going inside, it won’t work.”

  Ryontarr smiled, his broad mouth just showing the tips of his sharp teeth. “Well, then I guess we can leave,” he said. “Where would you like to go next?”

  It was a bluff, and Luke knew it. But as Han was fond of telling him, the best time to bluff was when you knew the other guy couldn’t call. And Luke couldn’t call, not if he wanted to find out what had become of Jacen.

  That didn’t mean he had to walk in there blind, though.

  Luke shifted his gaze to Feryl’s spectral face. “What I feel coming from there is desire—raw, aching yearning.” He put on a wry smile. “And I’ve reached the age where intense feelings of that kind are always a lot more welcome than frightening.”

  Feryl cocked his head in bewilderment and looked to Ryontarr, whose own amused scowl suggested that Gotals, at least, shared that particular aspect of human aging.

  Ryontarr dropped his eyes in thought and appeared content to contemplate Luke’s reply for as long as it held his interest. Of course, there was no way to tell how long that might be, since every moment felt like an eternity and eternity seemed only a moment. But during the long march from the Font of power, Luke had noticed that his escorts were beginning to move at a slower, more deliberate pace, as though they were savoring every step in this strange jungle world and were determined to make sure that Luke did, too.

  Whenever Luke had inquired how much time was passing for his body, he had received the same assurances: that the Force would sustain his body while he was away, and that he would know if it needed something. Pressing the matter only made things worse. They merely suggested that if he was worried about his body, he should return to it and check on its condition. They also noted that if Luke made such a journey, it would prolong the Skywalkers’ stay by several days—but that was of no concern, they reassured him, because time was, after all, an illusion.

  In the end, Luke had realized that he had little choice but to continue until his suspicions and sense of danger grew too strong to ignore, or he had learned what he had come to learn. The more time he spent with Ryontarr and Feryl, the more convinced he grew that the key to Jacen’s fall lay somewhere beyond shadows—and it was certainly worth taking a few risks to discover it.

  Finally, Ryontarr looked back to Luke. “Perhaps you do not fear what you feel, as you say. Perhaps you fear the cause of what you feel.”

  “I’m not that old,” Luke said. “The cause of this feeling is that I’m a human male. And I stopped being afraid of natural yearnings when I was still a teenage moisture farmer back on Tatooine.”

  “Of course,” Ryontarr acknowledged. “But you are also a human male who lost his wife not so long ago.”

  Luke frowned. “You think I’m afraid it’s Mara I feel in there?”

  “Are you?” Ryontarr demanded.

  “Of course not.”

  Luke started to add that if he thought he could see Mara again, he’d be inside the grotto in an instant. But when he turned his attention to the hunger coming from the cave, to the raw, selfish craving that was trying to pull him in, he had to wonder. The Mara he knew would never demand like that, would never be so selfish and desperate. But the Mara he knew was also dead—whatever that really meant. And it was at least within the realm of possibility that what he felt reaching for him now was some lingering, primitive part of her, some childish instinct that knew only desire, that understood only what she
needed, while caring nothing for the wants of others.

  But if that was all that remained of his beloved Mara, would he truly want to see it? He looked back to Ryontarr, who seemed to be awaiting Luke’s decision with the patience of a tree.

  “Is that Mara in there?” Luke demanded. He was starting to wonder if this place was some kind of spiritual limbo, where the presences of the dead were torn down so they could be returned to the Force. “Is that what you’re telling me?”

  Ryontarr spread his hands. “We aren’t telling you anything,” he said. “We can help you find the truth, but we can’t tell you what it is because we don’t know.”

  That much, Luke felt certain, was true. Leaving aside the question of whether he was here because he was actually dead—or dying—he could see no logical reason that the Mind Walkers would have a knowledge of the afterlife more accurate than any of the galaxy’s myriad religions.

  After a few seconds—or a few hours—Feryl asked, “There’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?”

  Ryontarr nodded. “Go inside and see. You’ll be glad you did.”

  Luke continued to stand three paces from the grotto. “As glad as I would have been, say, had I drunk from the Font of Power?”

  “That was a test,” Ryontarr said. The Gotal tipped his horns toward the darkness. “This is an offer.”

  “Of what?” Luke demanded.

  “Of what you came for,” Feryl answered. “Bathe in this pool, and you’ll have the answers you seek.”

  Luke raised a brow. “About Jacen?” he asked. “Or about Mara?”

  “About whatever you seek,” Ryontarr replied. “This is the Pool of Knowledge, where you will see all that has passed and all that is to come.”

  “That’s a bit much for one mind to comprehend, don’t you think?” Luke was beginning to see their trap—and how it would have been an irresistible temptation for a troubled young Jedi Knight on a galactic search for wisdom. “Did you bring Jacen here, too?”

  “Jacen did not need to be brought,” Ryontarr said. “But he was here, yes.”

  “Have a look,” Feryl urged. “You don’t have to get in, but maybe you will learn what you need to know about Mara.”

  “And Jacen.” Ryontarr extended his hand into the darkness, then added, “We all know you really have no choice, Master Skywalker. And you are the one who is always asking about time.”

  At that moment, Luke knew he was walking into a trap. Until now, the two Mind Walkers had done everything they could to keep him from worrying about time, to reassure him that there was no reason to be concerned about it. Yet here they were now, using time to pressure him into a dangerous decision.

  Clearly, they did not expect him to resist the temptation they were offering, which suggested that Jacen had not resisted. And that, of course, meant that Luke had no choice except to enter.

  Luke shrugged. “Okay, you win,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  He was hardly surprised when his two escorts motioned him through the entrance, while they themselves remained standing by the pillars. As he stepped past them, he saw that the grotto was small, and the interior was not as dark as it had seemed from outside. A soft, silvery light was rising from the mirror-like sheen of a pool in the center. Tiny crevices lined the walls, seeping wisps of yellow fume and filling the cave with a stench of brimstone. So foul was the air that, even had he needed to, Luke would not have drawn breath inside.

  The desperate longing continued to pull at him, drawing him closer to the pool. He went to the edge and saw that it lay not in a shallow bowl as he had expected, but in a deep, sheer-sided basin with an edge carved in a grotesque, serpentine braid. Through an exertion of will, he stopped half a pace from the water—he assumed it was water—and stared down at his own reflection.

  What Luke saw was not so much a man as the specter of one, with eyes of blue burning out of sockets as deep as wells. His flesh was yellow and haggard, so drawn and flaky that it resembled cracked leather. His lips had withered to a pair of white worms so cracked and bloody that they barely covered his teeth. The pool was not dark, he reasoned, so perhaps he was not really looking at a reflection. He raised a hand, and the specter raised one, too.

  “Is that …” Luke turned toward the exit, where Ryontarr stood leaning against a shadowy pillar. “Is that me?”

  “It is the truth, as you are now,” Ryontarr replied. “A man worn to nothing by duty and sacrifice, a dying husk animated by the Force and willpower alone.”

  “What about Mara?” Luke turned back to the pool. Instead of himself, he saw the honey-haired phantom from the Font of Power, the tiny eyes burning with desire, the broad mouth showing needle-teeth from ear to ear. “Is that her?”

  “If you can’t tell now,” Feryl said, “then there is only one way to be sure.”

  A stubby arm broke the surface of the pool and reached for Luke, the tentacle-fingers waving so close before his eyes that he could see the tiny slit-membranes in the bottom of their suction-cup tips. The hungry presence grew more familiar, somehow a part of Luke, and he wanted nothing more in that instant than to step forward into the pool and know the truth of her identity, to know whether this was where the afterlife began and the spirits of the dead began their journey back to the Force.

  Luke wanted to know what had happened to Jacen and what had made him fall, and he wanted to know what would become of his son, whether Ben would make a good Grand Master and how long he had to prepare for that terrible burden. More than anything, Luke wanted to know whether he had succeeded in his own life, whether the spark he had struck in founding the new Jedi Order would endure and flourish, growing into the bright golden light that he had envisioned, the beacon that would always be there to guide the galaxy safely through the dark times.

  And the hungry presence could give him all that knowledge and more. All Luke had to do was clasp the tentacle-hand before him and let it draw him into the warm silver waters with it, let it drown him in the liquid oblivion of absolute, infinite knowledge.

  But what Luke already knew was this: the choice that Jacen had made here was his undoing. The future was not the province of the living, and no human mind could know all things and remain sane. Luke knew he was still Ben’s father and the founder of the Jedi Order, and he knew he was still needed by both. He knew that Mara was gone, that if the thing craving him now had ever been part of her, it had certainly not been the best part …that if this was all that remained of her, he would not be doing anyone a service by trying to hold on to it.

  Luke backed away from the pool.

  Luke.

  The voice sounded cold and half familiar inside Luke’s mind, the last whisper of a lost love. The hand slid back into the pool, the tentacle-fingers beckoning him to follow.

  Come back.

  Luke shook his head and turned away. “I can’t.”

  He found Ryontarr and Feryl in front of him, blocking the exit. The Gotal’s flat-nosed face was scowling, and the Givin was shaking his bony head in disappointment.

  “Master Skywalker, you don’t strike me as the kind to leave without the answers you came for,” Ryontarr said. “I don’t believe you have seen what Jacen saw yet.”

  “I’ve seen enough.” Luke started forward, already calling to mind the haggard image of himself that he had seen reflected in the pool’s surface. “I’m returning to my body.”

  “Before you have seen what your nephew saw?” Feryl asked.

  “If doing so means bathing in your pool, yes.” Luke reached the doorway and stopped half a pace from the pair. “I’m only willing to follow him so far. I won’t go over the brink with him.”

  Ryontarr lifted his bushy brows, and Feryl tipped his bony head in disappointment.

  “Going over the brink is hardly necessary, Master Skywalker,” Ryontarr said. “Jacen didn’t bathe in the pool, either.” Luke frowned. “He didn’t?”

  “Didn’t even consider it,” Feryl reported. “He said no mortal mind could know e
verything, and the last thing he wanted was to become a Celestial.”

  Before Luke could ask what they knew about the Celestials, Ryontarr added, “But Jacen wasn’t afraid to stay at the pool until he had seen what he came to see.” The Gotal tipped his horns toward the water behind Luke. “Have another look.”

  Luke shook his head. “I’m done with your delaying tactics,” he said. “I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish, but I do know you’re trying to keep me here.”

  Even without the shiver of guilt that rippled through the Force, Luke would have known by their furtive glances that he had struck at the heart of the matter. Determined not to yield the advantage when he had it, he said, “Tell me what you expect to happen. And don’t claim you’re just trying to help me. I didn’t believe that in the habitat, and I won’t believe it now.”

  Ryontarr looked to Feryl.

  The Givin rasped, “What is there to lose?”

  Ryontarr nodded. “What indeed?” He pointed toward the pool. “Perhaps she is hiding it from you. Perhaps she doesn’t want you to suffer the way Jacen did.”

  “She?” Luke slowly turned to face the pool again. He did not see the thing that had reached for him earlier, only the silvery mirror of the water’s surface. “Who is this she? The phantasm I keep glimpsing?”

  “The lady in the mists is no phantasm,” Feryl replied. “She’s as real as you or I.”

  “Look for a throne,” Ryontarr advised. “It’s the Throne of Balance, upon which sits the course of the future.”

  Luke hesitated, suspecting yet another delaying strategy. But what they were implying about Jacen, that he had been both more courageous than Luke and more wise, was too compelling to ignore. It was Luke’s duty to investigate what had happened to his nephew, whether it had led to his fall, and that meant that he simply had to do as Ryontarr suggested.

  Luke peered into the water, looking for anything that resembled a throne, and soon he saw it, a simple white throne in a brightly lit chamber. There was no one in it, but it was surrounded by a hundred beings regal enough to belong in the seat. They were of all species, Bothans and Hutts, Ishi Tib and Mon Calamari, even Wookiees and Trandoshans—and they all had the easy bearing of old friends.